Blackmoor Vituperative

From time to time, I will see a story about the Stonewall riots, or about a person like Ruth Coker Burks, and the story will use a phrase like “drag queen”. And some well-meaning but painfully naive person will wag their finger and comment, “Correction! It’s not ‘drag queen’, it’s ‘trans woman’.”

I don’t (usually) argue with them, because I try to follow the admonition of picking big fights with my enemies, not small fights with my friends. But what I want to say is,

You little snot, you have no fucking clue what DRAG QUEENS did for you. DRAG QUEENS hurled bottles at cops. DRAG QUEENS held fund-raisers for AIDS patients. DRAG QUEENS marched to remind the straights that they existed and would not be erased. You want to sneer at your allies and “correct” them for not using the term-of-the-moment? Be my guest. Today, it’s “trans woman”. In two years, it will be something else. Just know that you can keep “correcting” people on your own side from now until the end of time, and you won’t come close to doing what DRAG QUEENS did for human rights in this country in a single day.

Fun fact! It turns out that I can, in fact, read in my dreams, despite what TV and movies have been telling me for years.

Last night I dreamed I went on a trip to China with a group of people, one of whom was [the actor who played “Thirteen” on House and “Quorra ” in Tron 2]. For some reason, Susan didn’t go.

When we got back, I brought several members of the group, including [the actor who played “Thirteen” on House and “Quorra” in Tron 2], back to our house (which was completely unlike any house we have ever lived in) to meet Susan, and vice versa. In that house, we had a huge living room with lots of art — not classical art, but poster art and “pop” art, including a huge impressionist painting of [the actor who played “Thirteen” on House and “Quorra” in Tron 2]. Susan, perhaps wanting to prevent any awkwardness, had covered that painting and another (also of that actor) with other framed pieces of art.

Looking closely at one of them, I saw it was a certificate or award of some kind. An inscription on the frame read “Hochschule Bruderschaft” (roughly translates as “college fraternity”). So not only could I read in my dream, I could read German.

P.S. Why am I referring to Olivia Wilde as [the actor who played “Thirteen” on House and “Quorra” in Tron 2]? Because in the dream, I was going to introduce her to Susan, but then couldn’t remember her name. That’s why I went over to look at the new art to begin with: to buy time while I tried to recall her name. When I woke up, I *still* couldn’t remember her name. I had to Google it to write this paragraph.

If Firefox has updated and now your tabs are huge and you can’ t tell which tab is open by looking at them, you can switch it back. Type “about:config” in the address bar, search for “proton“, and change the “true” values to “false“.

I am contemplating writing a script to generate headlines for the news. Each day, it will randomly choose three of these:

[random number] dead and [random number] injured in mass shooting

Republicans in [random state] propose legislation to prevent off-white people from voting

[movie industry person #1] reveals that [movie industry person #2] was a jerk to them

[random number] dead and [2x random number] injured in mass shooting

Senate Republicans [random traitorous act]

[random country] extends state of emergency due to the pandemic

Republicans in [random state] propose legislation to deprive poor people of what little government support they still get

[music industry person] says something obnoxious and stupid

[2x random number] dead and [random number] injured in mass shooting

Republicans in [random state] stage protest against literally anything that might shorten the pandemic

Warner Brothers releases a new superhero movie, which earns hundreds of millions despite being terrible

Scientists say that the world is warming faster than anyone predicted, but there is still time to do something about it

[random Republican] compares a minor inconvenience to being a Jew in Nazi Germany