Diary 7 November 2009

(Westward IV screen shot)

In my e-mail today is an offer from Sandlot Games to pre-purchase the upcoming release of their game Westward IV for half-price. These folks already have my business for several reasons: They have equal or almost equal numbers of available heroines in a variety of races, classes, and body types (yes, fat heroines); they deal with historical realms but frequently contradict the white Western take on how things went down (though the Westward series is terrible about ignoring theft of First Nations territory); the action increasingly relies on smarts and cooperation as much as "battles"; and, thrillingly, the last release Tradewinds Odyssey had a small positive lesbian subplot written into one of the sequences. Now, the opening line of the blurb for Westward IV refers to the villainous railway owner as "patriarchal". Sign me up, kids. Pretty soon they'll be offering women-only vegan collectives who are fighting the criminal justice system and power-sex conflation.

Last night I watched a rather timely PBS Empires episode called "Holy Wars" about Salah Al-Din and his reconquest of Jerusalem during the Crusades era -- his decision to not slaughter or terrorize the Christian population made him a legend among Islamic and Arabic nations, but cut him no respect from the bloodthirsty Christianists of Europe. Like Bushies, they viewed compassion and respect for others as a sign of weakness.

When you have a nation (and city) where prevailing values are adherence to authority, a narrow and base-emotion definition of patriotism, and limited funding for "social" issues, internal violence will be the norm, not the exception.

Dinah finally left my immediate presence for a couple of hours to sleep, which I take as a sign of healing on her part. I'm still not sleeping more than a few hours at a stretch, related to pain. I myself sorted through some of my feelings last night with Martha, mostly having to do with being at the literal mercy of anybody who walked into my hospital room and having little room to say no or insist on autonomy. People think giving advice to those who are ill, pushing them to "do what's best", telling them stories about their own medical experiences or those of their friends & family, and/or generally assuming their thinking and decision-making is somehow impaired even in areas it is clearly not, are all manifestations of caring instead of actually simply being roadmaps to the advice-giver's own emotional blocks about what is going on -- i.e., "here's my difficulty with your difficulty, since you're lying there unable to get away or go find other resources, let me demand you deal with my difficulty right now". No wonder we can't think rationally about a simple health care plan, when we're all so bollixed up with panic about ever being truly sick and helplness ourselves.

Work on it, people. Work on it with each other, that's all I ask. Just like you work on your crap about brown people with other white folks, and your shit about women with other men.

Dinah has discovered the yellow "FALL RISK" bracelet from the hospital that I ripped off my wrist I got home and thinks it is a great toy.

My stamina is still so hammered, typing this much leaves my fingers trembling to the extent I have trouble keeping them in line with QWERTY. I guess I'm done for the time being, need to go lie down again. Dress your children in bright colors, not camouflage, and remember what Mark Twain said: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."