While my father was still around, he and my mother revered all things “African.” Kente cloth covered and protected our bodies like saran wrap. My parents didn’t like Dove, Irish Spring and Lever 2000’s suggestion that soap should be white or light-pastel. Cleanliness was next to godliness and since God was Black, our soap was black too. Glade plugins, Lysol air-fresheners, perfumes, colognes and lotions were for white people and those who wanted to be like them; we freshened our air with incense, scented our bodies with oils, and moisturized our skin with shea butter. We would have been Amish had we been white instead of black, and lived in Lancaster County instead of Bed-Stuy. But seeing that I was black and living in Bed-Stuy, Rumspringa came earlier than expected.
Choire is correct, and we have this conversation in desperation with some regularity:
The Internet is a swirling death trap of dubious gossip, outraged tweet-to-tweet combat and a million identical pieces of over-processed, hormone-injected “news content” written for fourth-graders. There’s a reason for that. It’s called money.
I learned a bunch about pentagons today:
Most people assumed Reinhardt had the complete list until half a century later in 1968 when R. B. Kershner found three more. Richard James brought the number of types of pentagonal tile up to nine in 1975.
That same year an unlikely mathematical pioneer entered the fray: Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife in her 50s, who had read about James’ discovery in Scientific American. An amateur mathematician, Rice developed her own notation and method and over the next few years discovered another four types of pentagon that tile the plane. In 1985 Rolf Stein found a fourteenth. Way to go!
Was It Good For The Gays? My Own Private Idaho edition!
But despite its unappealing (at least, for me) elements, and its typical indie-movie wandering narrative, it’s the central story of Mike’s quest to understand himself that is the film’s most lovely — and heartbreaking — aspect. To be queer is for many a solitary experience; the same goes for the street kids, who must establish connections and platonic relationships in order to build a family and (temporary) homes. There’s nothing political about My Own Private Idaho, nothing that ruthlessly attempts to prove queerness as ordinary or normal. Instead, Van Sant achieves what few artists do: he tells a story about those with an experience other than our own, and does so with such a kind and hopeful eye and results in an audience’s empathy for those who seem lost and on their own.
Here is a picture of my friend Carrie’s puppy (did I mention the puppy is a girl puppy and her name is Carmella?):
Moira Weigel on the Tinder thing:
When half a dozen friends and relatives emailed me “The Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse” last Friday, I struggled to get through it. I have spent the past two years researching a book on the history of dating, which has meant two years reading countless versions of exactly this kind of article. As long as young people have gone out and done things they call “dating,” older people have struggled to keep up with their exploits. And writer after writer has made a living out of chronicling them with a mix of prurience and outrage.
That article about ISIS and the systematic rape of Yazidi women and girls pretty much ended me yesterday. It’s unimaginably sad, and if you want to read it, you can do so here, but if you don’t want to read it, that’s a-okay too. I don’t have any earthly idea about what to do about ISIS (though I did give to the IRC after reading, which does good work with Yazidi refugees, amongst other things, and is well-regarded by the various watchdog orgs.)
Deleted comments of the day:
Oh, hell, no, you have misunderstood our WHOLE DEAL, sir:
Always remember that the last photo taken of Jim Morrison makes him look like a preppie in a beer ad. pic.twitter.com/Dw8VODWQy2
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 13, 2015
