Name:Sarah Elizabeth Country:United States State:Indiana Metro:Bloomington Birthday:2/6/1983 Gender:Female
Interests:Watching Buffy and Queer As Folk, bisexual pride, hanging with the Peanut Gallery, reading comics, actually doing my homework (because I'm a dork), and working with Eric on our plans for impending world domnation... wait... I mean... studying... Expertise:Being me. It's worked pretty damn good so far, so I think I'll keep doing that. Occupation:Student
The video quality is crap, but all you need to do is listen and you will love how funny John Oliver is. Seriously. He is tied with David Tennent as 'most awesome British guy ever'.
I read The Terror Dream by Susan Fauldi and it was a phenomenal book. One of the most interesting parts was about Jessica Lynch and how the media ignored all the stories of heroic women in combat in Iraq in order to focus on Lynch as a "poor little defenseless girl" story. Reporters concocted stories that enhanced the bravery of the men, portrayed Lynch as a pretty girl instead of a soldier, and when Lynch tried to speak for herself about the experience, she was derided and ignored. What was ignored was Lori Piestewa, the soldier who saved her life and the lives of numerous people in her unit before becoming a statistic -- the first woman soldier killed in Iraq and the first Native American soldier to be killed on foreign soil. And while rich white men made Lynch into their fairy story, Piestewa laid forgotten. I read that chapter in the book and I fucking cried. Our country has this collective delusion that racism has evaporated, and it is just fucking wrong. I'm long past any romanticized notions of military service, but it disgusted me that heroism was scrubbed out for sexism and racism.
In 1903 a man named Omar A.
Turney named a mountain in Arizona "Squaw's Peak", since rich white men often get to name things (particularly mountains in land they stole from native peoples). Since squaw is a pretty racist term, some people were not real happy about this. Native Americans have been trying to change the name for years.
And on April 10th, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names agreed to change the name from Squaw's Peak to Piestewa Peak. That moves me. It makes me happy. She was a hero and damn-well deserves to be treated as one, and I can't think of any better way to renounce the racism of the past. Events like this give me a hope that things will not always be as bad as they are now.
So I changed the header quote on my Xanga from the Brady-inspired classic "I'm not morally deficient, I'm magically delicious!" to "Just as you can
recognize seawater because it always tastes of salt, you can recognize
enlightenment because it always tastes of freedom" from Buddha. My reasoning for this is two fold.
1) I really like the Buddha quote.
2) I'm past the point of the magically delicious quote defining me. I remember that Brady said that to me right after Krista called me morally deficient, as I sobbed on his couch. But I'm not really that person anymore. I don't need to be giving the finger to every asshole who thinks they have a right to judge me sexual or religious life. And I've largely stopped blaming myself when people are hostile and mean about those two qualities. I've stopped feeling like it is my responsibility to Queer 101 everyone, and I don't have to justify my life to strangers or friends in order for them to like me.
When I think about Krista, I don't feel mad at her anymore. I don't sit around and wish for a childhood where she wasn't a bully or harbor any anger over the multitudes of bullshit that she pulled over the years. I didn't forget it, but I don't really think of it. Now, when she pops into my head, it is more like a sense of gladness and calm that I no longer have anything to do with her. My experiences with her made me who I am, and I have no desire to change the past or fit her back in my present life. That taste of salt she left in my mouth has truly been replaced by freedom and I'm really glad to finally be free of her.
This may seem like a strange thing to say, but all of it came upon me yesterday out of nowhere, which was pretty strange. I am free of the pain and resentment I've harbored for so long. And it tastes delicious and sweet.
