This Week's Laughter #17: Election Edition
An archive of some kind of happiness
UPDATED NOTE: I apologize for my absence from this project. In finishing my novel draft, I opted to giving myself some time truly free from productivity. I’m not sure if that was an apt or proper choice. I don’t dislike writing, though I did find my body and mind and spirit heaving and gasping in the absence of my diligence. That said, expect to hear more from me through the Winter. Here is a draft I started the day after Trump’s election win.
What do you wish to hear from me?
I find myself writing to myself. For myself. Of myself. Yet this type of narcissism never is with the intent of making myself feel valuable, important, or necessary. Not to insert myself into your lives, but rather to add some dimension to your own abilities of finding yourselves. For finding yourselves. To finding yourselves.
To speak clearly of the election and then move on as we will have four years of this: I am sad this country chose Trump once more. I think he will instill a degree of suffering on many vulnerable communities of America like trans-people, like the unhoused, like our incarcerated. I think that America has been demonizing and instilling suffering on these communities under a Biden administration and for the last century. I do not think a Harris administration would have drastically changed this, though I think a Harris administration would have made a majority of individuals who are not suffering from these affects more comfortable with the less conspicuous violence that she would commit.
This is what the difference in these campaigns came down to, for me: a conspicuousness of suffering. Trump has made clear that he values putting down others, values the rise of narcissism, and makes it clear the plans he wishes to enact toward the suffering of others. Harris would speak politically gentle around issues of suffering, but largely still send the bombs, still sign the bills, still fund the cops and the prisons. For example, Trump reduced the federal budget for arts organizations nationwide by some 90% - this money wasn’t given back under Biden, the organizations and funding wasn’t magically re-conceived. For example, dozens of billions of dollars are spent sending bombs to Israel to annihilate the population of Palestinians in such an obvious genocide; there are five million Palestinians globally, of which about three million lived between Gaza, the West Bank, and Beirut (a city that became a Palestinian haven the last time there was an attempted genocide by Israel in the ‘90s); there are an estimated three-hundred thousand Palestinians dead and/or missing, or approximately 10% of the population, which would be the equivalent of 33 million citizens of the USA being killed or the combined populations of the top 20 most populated cities in the U.S.
There have been arguments for years now over what’s better for progressive and revolutionary action: a conspicuous evil that people can unite under (and, ultimately, face more resistance under), or a subtle evil that people will find less support for progressiveness under. I hope that people will, out of their grief, find the strength to come out of their comforts once more and fight for a better future. However, I’m also fairly beyond the state of hope. I will continue to fight against injustice and continue to support my communities as I have done. There is simply so much going wrong in the world that I have little hope of widescale societal integrity for more than another fifty or sixty years.
So, I rest my barking. I can and likely will speak on it more every chance I get. But hope is not something afforded with cheap currencies.
As for laughter, I’ll detail these over the last short while.
I went to a small Halloween gathering in which one of the topics of conversations was Ari Aster’s mommy problems. I’ve never seen an Ari Aster film, I’m not really a big movie person even if I do enjoy watching movies and find the art form meaningful, it’s just not the media I tend to latch my time onto when I have the freedom of choice. I enjoy listening to others speak passionately about their movie interests, though. Ari Aster is a director, though, and if there’s one thing I can gather about directors most frequently it is that so many of the male-coded directors have such jarring issues with women in some way, shape, or form. Though I suspect this is less to do with the profession influencing the problem and more to do with men, generally, having more loud and public issues with women lately. Go figure. It made me laugh to talk about Ari Aster’s mommy issues knowing nothing about him. I even made some bold assessing comments like it’s so obvious the way he gives his female-coded characters auras of dominance that have a subtle sinister vibe to them or his movies always seem like they’re thinly veiled expressions of his desire to be stepped on. I felt like both the clown performing for their audience and one among the audience, perhaps with a lovingly purchased clown nose in their pocket.
Not one but two dearests to me have expressed the desire to make the times in which I laugh with them arrive in these posts.
We watched compelling film Meth Gator on the night of the election which was so poetic and full of extraordinary cinematography. I’m convinced the CGI model for the eponymous Gator was, in fact, a dachshund with a Gator skinned over it. There was a bar and inn owner who casually had a live, active RPG in their basement. Most of the cops got eaten by the Gator. I think this is a revolutionary film.
I enjoy playing board games. I’ve really been enjoying the game Castles of Burgundy lately — me and my friend Andrew play it in a 1v1 setting — it tickles so many simultaneous itches of mine in that there are hordes of variables to play around with, there’s some silliness to it, turns are exceedingly short once you get into it so there’s a dawdling pace to it, and the environments of it change frequently enough. We started playing this game as a nod to our mutual desires to exercise our competitiveness more openly. I don’t think I’ve won against him in any of the games we’ve faced-off against each other. But they’re all quite close. Usually we are neck-and-neck until the final turn, or in retrospectives we can pinpoint singular actions that led to my downfall. Analysis can be funny too, sometimes.
Found the joy of using some audio-recording app that assigns a vocal range to your high & low notes. I like having some metric to my singing. What this actually looked like: me sustaining high and low notes experimentally for about an hour one afternoon while Heather was out, feeling a little psychotic, walking around our apartment and practically screaming into my phone. I’m an alto. I don’t know what that means. But introducing the idea, the concept, to my friends? What a mischievous, gleeful laugh to picture all of their warbling throats.
Take care of yourselves, everybody.
Also ensure you’re still getting enough vitamin D as we begin to progress toward the dark seasons.