Coffee: today it fails me.

Coffee has many varied purposes, including tasting delicious and making chocolate taste especially delicious. But for me, its central purpose is to wake my tired ass up in the morning.

Today, that is not happening. I have been awake and drinking coffee for three full hours. I have had an egg and the last piece of cheesecake in addition to several cups of coffee. I have been working and watching TV, as is my routine. I've walked around, done some gardening.

But I am still fully prepared to wake up in three hours with no memory of what's happened and qwerty on my face.

Coffee, what is your DEAL today?

I don't have a microwave, and that makes me better than you.

I own the hell out of my TV. I watch that shit critically, and daily. I am not ashamed to l-o-v-e my tee-vee. I am watching it right now (The Office UK special).

But there is one common household appliance that makes me feels superior because I do not have it. A microwave. Yeah, that's right, I'm avoiding the shit out of some cancer.



Actually, I'm probably putting plenty of cancer freons or particles or whatever in my system. They're everywhere.

But I like not having a microwave, for whatever reasons. I adore cooking, and I like doing it a little slower. Heating things slowly and manually requires more care and attention, and for me, that means a better tasting dish. Efficacy is one of my favorite concepts from political science - it's the idea that feeling like you have control over something makes your appreciate it more. The feeling that I am putting active work into whatever I'm doing, whether it's my writing, my body, my friendships, the herbs I'm growing, or my cooking, always makes me more satisfied with the subject of my efforts.

Of course, it would be easier for, like, boiling water or reheating stuff. I'll probably get one eventually, particularly after I become a mom. Microwaves are convenient everyday appliances that are necessary to many people, and it's indicative of my class privilege that I can exist without one.

It's silly that I am so smug about not having a microwave. But smugness is kind of silly in general, isn't it?

Dirty dishes, everywhere.

I hate doing dishes. Especially without a dishwasher.

I've been down for a week, and between my work-generated dishes and the dishes I'm supposed to do because my boyfriend cooked last week, I'm basically a step below Liz Lemon taking her fork out of the dishwasher. I wish I had a dishwasher.

When I was a kid, my least favorite chore was taking dishes out of the dishwasher. I was generally pretty obnoxiously lazy in general but particularly with regard to housework. I was supposed to empty the dishwasher after dinner, and I would usually put it off for hours after forks were down.

Ugh. Youth. I had it so easy and I didn't even know.

The pile-up of dishes means that one load is a fucking production. I have to soak the dishes (because they're disgusting), then empty the water and clean off the food particles. Ew and ew. Then I fill with hot soapy water and wait some more, go do something else for a while. Then I have to either put up the clean dishes or move the dirty dishes to another part of the kitchen, which, when my kitchen is in the state it's in, is also an ordeal. Then I have to rinse them, which is not a big deal.

At this point, I say to myself, "Look at what you've accomplished. You are done with cleaning for the night."

Then I go and make and eat dinner, generating at least another two loads. My life, it's so hard.

In short, fuck dishwashing. My least favorite part of any day.

Y'ALL I LIKE "ACROSS THE SEA"

SPOILERS DUH

Okay, so, I really liked Across The Sea. Like, I really liked it. I was taken in, involved, everything.

It's a little bizarre, and yeah, you know, it is about magic after a fashion. But honestly, what the fuck did you expect it to be? Was the "it's PHYSICS" explanation really any more articulate or seriously meaningful? Time travel doesn't actually exist, you know. It doesn't. Time may be a dimension but we don't understand it. At least they're giving some kind of explanation instead of being like "WELL IT'S THIS MACHINE WITH WHEELS AND GEARS YOU SEE". We already got the sci-fi weird machine bullshit out of the way in seasons 2-5. And besides, as my nerdy brother is fond of quoting, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This is a weird fucking island. A lot of weird, inexplicable things happen. Is magic really that surprising?

And it's not just magic (though it is very much magical). It's also about spirit. And yeah, it's hokey, but again: the fuck did you want? This is all about the power of fucking love and the human spirit and faith versus fact and all of that.

And it's not just magic and spirituality: think about the role that light, overpowering, beautiful light, has played on this island as a theme and a motif. Most notably, this light accompanied the time jumps of season five, due to the malfunctioning wheel MIB fashioned. When Desmond pressed the fail-safe, light accompanied the tremors that brought the plane down.

Also, what's so fucking wrong with magic? Magic is awesome. I love Harry Potter, and magical realism, and all of that bullshit. Magic kicks ass.

Was the CGI corny? Yeah. So? I thought it was also beautiful. This show is not about fucking reality.

I love this episode because it did not give "the whispers are SPIRITS" bullshit direct answers. It told a story of mythology that moved forward my understanding of the island and the essence of this show. Across The Sea shifted the way I view the show: what it's about, what lies beneath it, where it came from, what it represents. And I couldn't ask or expect anything more of it.

Further reading:

Lost S6E15: Across the Sea

Thesis statement

I love writing. I love writing for my usually very serious critical feminist blog Deeply Problematic.

But sometimes, it's a little hard to verbally and critical limber up in the morning. I don't think about feminism and my privilege twenty-four hours out of the day. I don't always want to write about the Problems in the World and why they're Relevant. I don't always want to re-draft and re-draft, and re-draft and re-draft, to make sure I'm not offending, not centering my privileges, etc. I love doing this a lot of the time. I feel honest and real and insightful when I write for Deeply Problematic, and it's deeply challenging and deeply gratifying.

But that's not all I want to write. I want to write about, like, my struggles with gardening, or why I love Bette Davis. I want a space to write about stuff without having to re-draft. I want a place to write about silly things. I want to write like a regular blogger, really colloquially, write and press publish, etc.

So, this is my space to write things off the cuff. It's where I'll come to warm up my critical skills in the morning while drinking my coffee, and to vent at night while I'm drinking my beer. There will be feminism on occasion, since I am a feminist. And just because I'm sick of considering my privilege doesn't mean it won't show here, and hurt people, and you're welcome to call me on that. But mainly it's just going to be my critique - positive or negative - on things not necessarily directly relevant to dismantling the kyriarchy.