Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Tirades

An eye to the future

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m writing this on Christmas Day, and I’m contemplative. I don’t celebrate Christmas, but everyone else in my life does. It’s another thing where I don’t mind that I’m different from everyone else, and I’m not bothered by people wishing me a Merry Christmas. it’s taken me many decades to be truly neutral about Christmas, and I still have a reflexive instinct to wish people a Merry Christmas.

I went through a period of time where I wished people Happy Holidays, but that never felt natural to me. We all know that it’s Christmas today–and, indeed, the month leading up to this day. No one thinks about Hanukkah, let alone Kwanzaa (interesting note, Hanukkah started on December 25th this year). I had to roll my eyes when some Christians got so upset about salespeople saying ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’ because ‘They’re taking the Christ out of Christmas!’.

Um.

I hate to break it to them, but if Jesus really did exist, he probably would have been on the side of the people salespeople who were working their asses off for peanuts during the holiday season and dealing with entitled assholes screaming at them because they could not find a PlayStation5 anywhere and little Timmy would be sooooo disappointed when he did not get one under the tree. The only thing that Christmas really celebrated these days was crass commercialism and capitalism.

Hm. Maybe I’m not as neutral about Christmas as I thought I was. But the idea of gathering with friends and/or families and/or other loved ones is a lovely one. Winter is fmy favorite season so I see nothing wrong with letting people know that I love them–even if it’s on an overly saccharinely sweet holiday.

See, I may be against traditions for the most part, but I believe in love. Love is what got me through dying (twice) and me fumbling back to some semblance of normal afterwards.

There is one holiday song duo that I like, one Christmas carol that I love, and two other Christmas-related (sort of) songs that are quite lovely, indeed. The first one is Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy by Bing Crosby and David Bowie. It’s just really beautiful.

The rest of them, though, can mostly get in the bin. Not because they’re necessarily bad songs, but because they have been so overplayed. Christmas music starts being played in the stores any time after Halloween (and one horrible yer, it started in early October). I hated that year, let me tell you what.

Note: I didn’t feel like finishng the post on Christmas, so I wrote the rest of it the next day.

I still hate the commercialization of Christmas (which started when I was in high school. I wrote an op-ed in 9th grade about how Christmas had become one month-long, overpriced commercial. That was over thirty years ago!) , and I get so tired of the forced cheer.

I don’t hate it the way I used to, but I don’t understand why people are so into it, either. Here’s Jennifer Hudson singing, O Holy Night. I actually sang that for church one Christmas. A solo. This is the only traditional Christmas carol that I love with all my heart. I get chills every time I hear it.


Continue Reading

Why the holidays are so fraught

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I have hated most holidays all my life. The only holiday I liked was Halloween, and it’s because black is a featured color. Plus, you can dress up in a costume as an adult and it’s not weird. That’s pretty cool. I did a bait-and-switch yesterday in that I was gonig to talk about holidays, but then ended up talking about bigots. I think it’s pretty clear how I got from one to the other because holidays are when bigots seem unavoidable. Or rather, when people feel pressured to spend time with faaaaaaamily.

I’m not saying bigots and family are the same thing. I am saying that they are often the same thing. I’m also saying it’s when you see the bigots in your family if you have to see them at all. This is one reason I don’t like tradition for the sake of tradition–it makes you do things you don’t want to do and it makes you the problem if you don’t.  I mean, this is a problem with family, too, so it’s no surprise that when you put the two together, it just makes everything worse.

I think one of my issues with holidays/traditions is that they become so hardened over time. And they harken back to a time that people romanticize, but were not better for the majority of people. Any time people talk about the good old days, all I hear is “we don’t like diversity” or “we don’t realize that not everyone is like us”. It’s not surprising that most people who mourn for the good old days are white people. In America, I mean. Anyone being wistful for the sixties and is still alive to talk about it is most likely not a PoC or a queer person. Or, quite frankly, a woman.

Especially in this year, I have no tolerance for this bullshit. It disheartens me that I have to reiterate what I wrote about more than ten years ago when marriage equality was being debated. If someone does not believe that I deserve the same human rights as straight people, we cannot be friends. There is just no debating this.

I hate the framing of ‘this is just politics’. It’s not just politics. The political is, as the saying go, personal. If it didn’t have any impact in the real world, then we wouldn’t care about voting at all. (Not going to get into voting right now; I’m just not.) If it didn’t matter, there wouldn’t have been the Capitol attack. Only people who aren’t disadvantaged would say that politics don’t matter.

I don’t like having hate in my heart, but it’s where I am right now. I am old. I am tired. I went through hell with my medical crisis back in 2021–well, kind of. Not going to expand on that, either. This year has been a really shitty year. A very shitty year. I don’t want to talk about that, either, but it’s been such a downer of a year.


Continue Reading

Have a holly, jolly–oh stop it

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m in a pensive mood. Not just because of the holidays, but just because of gestures at the world all around. There are people who believe that voting for that man is ‘just politics’ and why would someone end a friendship/family relationship over ‘just politics’? And why are we (those on the left) being soooooooooooooo intolerant? Aren’t we being just as bad/hypocritical/intolerant?!?

In a word: no. In two words: hell fucking no. Ok, that was three, but you know what I mean.

There’s a theory called the Paradox of Tolerance that was coined by Karl Popper in 1945. It’s enjoyed a resurgence in the past several years, probably because of the thing that I want to talk about. Basically, the theory goes that if a society is tolerant of the intolerant, then it erodes the very tolerance it wants to espouse. This is a very gross generalization of the theory, but it’s good enough for my purpose.

Whether someone likes pizza with pineapple or not is a personal opinion. I don’t care if someone likes the same musical groups I do, for another example. Hell. What someone wants or doesn’t want to do in the bedroom is fine by me! (As long as it’s consensual, obviously.) Whether or not someone thinks I am a human being who should be allowed to exist? Yeah, no. That’s not a matter of opinion or something I need to entertain.

That’s the devious part of the whole conversation and has been for as long as I have followed politics. Or rather, the disgusting part. This happened during the debates for marriage equality, too. The bigots were all, “Can’t we be civil about this?” Nope. I am not civil with people who believe I am less of a human being than they are. Also, I resent the narrative that the people who are being oppressed need to present their side in a perfectly calm and, let’s face it, servile manner or be viewed as uncivil. This is the whole ‘tone police’ argument, by the way. “Oh, if you only present your case in an agreeable enough way (i.e., supplicating), then maaaaaaaaaybe we would deign to listen to it.

Again. Fuck that noise. If someone wants to do the work of trying to win over the bigots–more power to them. BLah blah blah win them over to your side whatever the fuck. I ain’t got time for that shit, and I have no patience for begging people to grant me my humanity. Accept me or don’t, but I am not going to try to win anyone over.


Continue Reading

More thoughts on holidays and capitalism

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Still musing about capitalism and holidays. I was at Cubs, and Christmas music was blaring from the overhead speaker. In November. No. Just–no. I mean, it’s better than the year I saw a Christmas ad in the first week of October, but not by much. Here is my post from yesterday.

I used to hate Christmas. I find it amusing that I wrote an article about the commercialism of Christmas when I was in high school–which was nearly forty years ago. I got some flak for that back then, and I still get it periodically throughout the years.

I don’t think I was ever really into Christmas. I liked the presents, of course, but the holiday itself was pretty fraught. I remember when I was seven or eight, I woke up fairly early and raced to my stocking. There was nothing in it, which crushed me. I went to my mother and told her about it. She told me to go back to bed and Santa would be there soon. A half hour later, the stocking was filled, and that’s when I realized that my mother was Santa. I didn’t believe after that.

My issues with Christmas didn’t really have to do with that, though. Nor with the fact that it’s a Christian holiday trying to masquerade as a secular one. I do have issues with that bit, but more because some Christians take such offense at ‘happy holiday’ and try so hard to feel persecuted as a majority.

My main issue was with tradition itself. This is a constant battle I have with my mother. She is Taiwanese by birth and it runs in her veins. In addition, her mother was really rigid as to what she thought was The Right Way To Be, and those ways were deeply, deeply sexist. DEEPLY. So much so, it’s embedded in my mother’s DNA. Here’s the irony. Both my grandmother and my mother were untraditional women. My grandmother was the first woman to attend a certain college in Japan and to be the equivalent of a senator in her prefecture in Taipei. At the same time, she espoused that women should stay home, have children, and always hyped up the men in her husband’s family.

Here’s the other irony. She had eight children–four boys and four girls. Of the four boys, only two weren’t completely screwed up. And only one made what you could arguably call a success of himself (the oldest). Of the girls, all of them have done well for themselves.

My mother continued the tradition of trumpeting traditional gender roles for boys and girls*. My brother was allowed to run around and be energetic. Granted, he was also on the spectrum, but that wasn’t well-known at the time so my mother didn’t know what to do about it.


Continue Reading

More pensive thoughts this holiday

Posted on by • 0 Comments

It’s Black Friday, y’all. When did this become such a thing? I’ve never been a shopping kind of person, so I don’t understand why this is such a big deal to people. Then again, I also am not someone who is heavily influenced by marketing. I am not loyal to brands. I mean, if something works, I will stick to it–until it no longer works. Or until I find something better. To me, that’s how it should be. I don’t get putting one brand over another simply because of what the label says. Back when I drank pop, I was a Coke person (Caffeiene-free Diet Coke, then Diet Coke, then Coke Zero). I drank the last until they changed the formula. That tasted gross to me so I quit drinking it. Then I quit drinking pop completely. If I do have a pop, though, it’ll be a Diet Coke. I have heard that Coke Zero is back to the old formula, but I haven’t tried it in years.

It’s interesting because I’ve been on a bit of a shopping jag lately, but only for one specific thing–Giant Hoodies. They make huge hoodies that fit most people, and I had bought a few of them in the past. The reason being that the hoodies I had been buying recently were ‘unisex’, but did not fit my massive chest. I cannot buy women’s clothing because it’s usually fitted and will have problems with the shape of my body over all. I have broad shoulders and big biceps on top. I have thick thighs and calves on bottom. I’m just thick and very muscular all over. So, yeah. Fitted women’s clothing is a no-go. Also, what’s up with the capped sleeves? I hate them so much. I hate short sleeves in general, but especially the capped sleeves.

Unisex is usually better about shoulders and arms, but that’s because they are just men’s sizes under a different name. Which means boobage is not taken into consideration. Of course. Also, the sweatshirts that I had this issue with (way too tight across the chest) was with a British company–which I think matters sizing-wise. I’m guessing sizes are smaller over there than here in general. But also, I have just huge boobs. They’re HUGE. And I hate them being squished–which is why I gave up bras.

I also gave up on getting sweatshirts from this company. I’m not naming them because it’s not the company’s fault. Although, weirdly, their t-shirts don’t have the same issue. I live in hoodies in the the winter, and I love them. They are comfy and warm, and they feel like a gentle hug. In fact, they feel better than a hug to me.

I don’t know how I heard about Giant Hoodies, but I was skeptical upfront. Why? Because ‘most people’ usually doesn’t include me. All their hoodies were one-size fits most, and they are pretty pricey. I decided to try one out, and I was delighted with it. Shadow claimed it as his own, and I quickly ordered another one. They also have blankets that are supposed to be really soft and warm. I was skeptical, but I got one one sale, and it’s amazing. Seriously. I sleep with it every night, and it’s the best blanket I’ve ever used. I recently got another for free with the purchase of two more sweatshirts, which was a really great deal.


Continue Reading

Pensive on sometimes-turkey (but sometimes other things) day

Posted on by • 0 Comments

It’s Thanksgiving today here in the states. Given the state of the country, I’m not feeling very thankful. I’m not feeling t all grateful. I’m fearful for what is to come in the upcoming years. I was going to set that aside, but I can’t do it quite yet. I’m still not over what happened at the polls, and I don’t know what to do about it. It really feels like a line-in-the-sand moment for this country, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.

The fact that over half the voters in this country are that threatened by a black/Indian woman being president was a cold, hard slap in the face. It’s fucking 2024. Aren’t we past this yet? My mother was half-joking that I should move to Taiwan. That’s not a good idea for several reasons, but they did elect a woman as president in 2016. I remember because it was the same year that Hillary Clinton was running for president. Taiwan is also the first Asian country to make marriage equality legal. My mother brought that up as well.

Those would be two very big reasons I would consider Taiwan if there weren’t other big negative reasons to counteract the positives. It galls me, though,that my country of heritage has done two very progressive things, one well before my actual country (assuming we ever elect a non-male president). It was such a shock to me how big the win was by because in my mind, race and gender should not matter at all. I don’t think of either in anything but a positive way, so knowing that others don’t feel that way–my fucking countrymen (and, yes, emphasis on men)–infuriates and saddens me.

I keep stumbling over the fact that we are regressing in a hurry. I had more rights when I was in my twenties than my niblings do today. And the next administratin will do their damnedest to make sure that generations to come have even less personal rights than our ancestors. And the fact that apparently queer people in general and trans people in specific are the number one issue to be dealt with. Even if someone is against queer people, how does it affect them at all?

So. What am I thankful for? I’m thankful for my friends and my brother. I’m thankful that I am still alive, I guess. It’s difficult to say that unequivocally because of what’s going on, though. I keep thinking, “I did not come back for this shit.”

Uh. Oh. I’m glad that I ‘m able to write again. Sometimes, it’s the outside pressure that gets me to do what I need/want to do. That was what grad school did for me. I went to New College of California (sigh. I’m sighing because they got their accreditation stripped for financial shenanigans) to get my MA in Writing & Consciousness. It was a year-long MA program, and while there were many problems with it, it made me write every day.


Continue Reading

Feel jolly, but not holly

Posted on by • 0 Comments

More on Christmas. Here was yesterday’s post, and I’m going to continue my musing. I have hated Christmas and I have been studiedly indifferent to Christmas, but now, I’m feeling warmly about the holiday time. Not Christmas itself, but community. Atnd being alive.

As I said in the last post, it’s been a long road to get where I am now. This year, I’m feeling warm and cozy about, not Christmas, but about the holiday season and how much I love the people who are meaninngful to me. My two besties, my Taiji teacher, my brother, my nibling and their brothers, my cat–of course!!–and people on the periphery.

I love the forums to which I belong. Well, one forum. The RKG Discord. However, I am starting to feel a bit…

Here’s the thing. I get to the end of things and then I am done. With websites, if they don’t evolve, then I get bored. The same thing with the same comments by the same people…what’s the point in that? I used to follow politics back when Obama was president. And I would get tired of people being so limited in their points of view. I am sure they would say the same things about me, by the way. That’s the nature of people. They don’t hugely change on the daily. It would be a wild and woolly time if they did. But it’s frustrating when I constantly butt up against the limits of each person.

That’s what I’m starting to feel about the RKG Discord. I like the people very much. Most of them are really kind and caring. But. (You knew there was going to be a but, right?) The limits to the understanding of life outside their own experiences are very restrictive.  Here’s the thing. RKG are three cis het white Western dudes. They’re great guys, yes, but they’re still very much in the mainstream themselves.

To that point, their commenters are much like them. The vast majority are cis het white dudes–which is othering at times. Not on purpsoe, obviously, but just because that’s what they know. There is a channel for the grot, and it’s interesting when certain topics come up. Someone brought up polyamory and asked where all his poly people were at. The three of us who responded were all queer people (of varying alternate gender identities). The white straight dudes (which the guy asking was) were all quick to say NO WAY NUH UH HELL NO! Well, one was not, but that was a more complicated response. He wasn’t pro-poly, per se.


Continue Reading

Have a holly jolly–nope

Posted on by • 0 Comments

As I am writing this, it ‘s the eve before the eve before Christmas. In other words, it’s December 23rd. We had our last Taiji class of the year at noon, and my teacher was the only one who showed up in person. There were six of us Zooming in, which was strange. It’s usually five or six people in person and two or three of us on Zoom. I assume it’s because it’s the holidays, but I’m not sure.

During the break, people were talking about what they were doing for Christmas. One couple were making cookies all day today, and another woman talked about how she was going to be cooking after class as well.

Last week, another classmate had a party to go to after class. Online, everyone is steeped in Christmas. I have had a few people ask me what I’m doing, which did not bother me. I don’t celerbate Christmas, but I did not bristle at being asked, either.

I have in yeras past. I don’t celebrate and it can get annoying after awhile when everyone assumes you do. “What are you doing for Christmas?” becme the bane of  my existence.

Side note: My mother is very wedded to traditions. This is an issue with us because I am most empthatically not. We have had this argument all my life–whether tradition is good or bad. She once said in exasperation that just becasue something was traditional, it didn’t mean it was bad.

I immediately retorted that just because something was traditional, it didn’t mean it was good, either. She was not happy with that, but she couldn’t really argue. My point was that it should not be automatic either way. Yes, I side-eyed doing something just because it was said to be tradition,  but that was because a lot of nasty stuff has been done in the name of tradition.

For example. Many people complain about all the things they have to do for christmas. The cooking and the baking and the decorating, not to mention putting up the tree, sending out cards, and wrapping presents. It is a lot.

One of my classmates (who was not in class this week) was complaining last week about how overwhelmed she was with the holiday activities and all she had to do. This was not unusual. She was usually freaked out over all she had to do. She reminded me of my mother in that she made things way harder than they needed to be. Or rather, she held herself to a standard that then made her lose her mind when she actually had to do the work.


Continue Reading

O Holy Night

Posted on by • 0 Comments

To continue my musing on Christmas, here is the post from yesterday. No, that isn’t contiuning, but whatever. It’s my blog, and I’ll do whatever I want. For many years, perhaps even over a deacde, I have done a post about my one and only true Christmas carol, O Holy Night. I did a quick search and I did not do a post last year (but I did one in 2021). Apparently, last year around this time, I did two weeks’ worth of posts about Elden Ring instead as part of my GOTY posts. Or rather, in place of my GOTY post.

I am not sure I will have a GOTY post this year, either, because while I have played more new games this year than last, I’m not sure I want to call any of them my GOTY. I might just do a ‘state of my gaming’ post again instead. Or just gush about Elden Ring again. That’s always something I can do at the drop at a hat.

Anyway. More on games later. This is about Christmas and how much I love it! I do not love it, obviously, but I don’t hate it, either. In fact, to my surprise, I feel vaguely warm about it. Not about Christmas in general, but about love and community and being alive.

Here are some of my favorite versions of O Holy Night. In no particular order. first up is Andy Williams with a very classic version. I heard this a few years ago, and I really dug it–much to my surprise. I’m not usually one for old-timey musicians. for whatever reason, though, this version hit my sweet spot.

Next up is one I found just this year. It was filmed two years ago, and it’s by the Mav City Gospel Choir, featuring Melvin Crispell III. It’s soulful and earnest, without veering into saccharine. It’s really, really good.

Continue Reading

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas (because I love snow)

Posted on by • 0 Comments

So. My shtick for the last few decades has been that I hate Christmas carols–except one. I’ll get to that one later, but it’s not competely true–that I hate Christmas carols, I mean. What is more accurate is that I don’t like the schlocky versions that seem to saturate the airwaves in the months (months!) leading up to Christmas. It’s as if the powers that be chose the worst possible versions and said, “Yes, let’s play these repeatedly in the mall over and over and over again.”

Things got much better once I stopped watching TV (no commercials) and stopped listening to the radio (no ads). I haven’t been to a mall except to eat in over a decade as well, so that helps. The local stations that play Christmas music all December long? No longer on my presets in my car. That’s the only time I listen to the radio, by the way. When I cut out the listening by 95%, it made it so much more tolerable.

It also helped that I have continued my journey with Christianity. I touched on the hatred I had for Christianity in this post from two days ago. I was raised fundie Evangelical Christian with very sexist tenets. A girl who had sex outside of marriage was condemned to hell. And, yes, specifically the girl because she was a harlot, a tramp, and an evil temptress/seductress. It was ridiculous to the point where our youth pastor (not Taiwanese, which was interesting at a Taiwanese church)  said that it was better to not kiss before you got married because kissing led to sex. This was before I had dated anyone, but even a sheltered naive girl like me could tell that was utter bullshit. Or rather, that there were many steps between kissing and sex. It wasn’t as if you kissed someone and then suddenly their penis was inside you. Come on!

Once I realized that the church had been lying to me all those years (and being deeply sexist), I reacted with extreme anger. I could not bear the mention of Christianity or that god, which was hard because that was when my mother was at her most religious. I was so angry at God (with a capital G). Even though if He existed, it most certainly wasn’t His fault that His followers were being such assholes in His name. But that’s what happens when you’re abused–you get angry. Which is a healthy response!

Then, as the years went by, the anger slipped away. The further I got from the religion, the more I just…let it go. I will say that Taiji helped tremendously, but I put down that burden. I did not forgive* God (because I did not believe in him) or the religion (because it’s still trash to me–the version I was forced to ‘believe’ in), but I no longer felt the searing hatred or anger I had in the past.

For a decade or so, I just felt studiedly indifference to it. With a small amount of anger in the back of my mind. Again, it was Taiji that helped soothe the savage beast within. I was able to say, hey, it’s not for me, but whatever. I still hated Christmas during that time, but that was more because of the crass commercialism than the Christianity aspect.


Continue Reading