Six Quarters

I don't remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. (To be fair, I wasn't even one at the time.) My associations with the Wall are the CHECKPOINT CHARLIE sign a friend of mine had in his dorm room, the East Berlin-themed restaurant in the Mission, and the Soviet-era map we had on my fifth-grade classroom wall. ("Is that all Russia?" someone asked the teacher. He stared at it and said, "You know, I hadn't even noticed it was wrong until now. No, hon, not anymore." I was extremely disappointed; that would obviously have made an awesome coloring section in geography.)

( I do remember, however, the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. )

So I'm reading about the history of the Philippine-American war. And the only way I can do it without actually getting so angry I put my fist through a wall is to listen to "The Ballad of Czolgosz" on repeat.

( If he had to choose between the writer of that letter and the writer of that bedroom scene, Grant considered, he would choose the writer of the letter every time, whatever either of them had done besides. )

The Person Sitting in Darkness is almost sure to say: "There is something curious about this – curious and unaccountable. There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive's new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land."

...We should say to him: "...True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a Shadow from an enemy that hadn't it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty; we have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit's work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America's honor and blackened her face before the world; but each detail was for the best. We know this. The Head of every State and Sovereignty in Christendom and ninety per cent. of every legislative body in Christendom, including our Congress and our fifty State Legislatures, are members not only of the church, but also of the Blessings-of-Civilization Trust. This world-girdling accumulation of trained morals, high principles, and justice, cannot do an unright thing, an unfair thing, an ungenerous thing, an unclean thing. It knows what it is about. Give yourself no uneasiness; it is all right."

Now then, that will convince the Person. You will see. It will restore the Business. Also, it will elect the Master of the Game to the vacant place in the Trinity of our national gods; and there on their high thrones the Three will sit, age after age, in the people's sight, each bearing the Emblem of his service: Washington, the Sword of the Liberator; Lincoln, the Slave's Broken Chains; the Master, the Chains Repaired.

It will give the Business a splendid new start. You will see. -- Mark Twain.

Today, I drove down the coast to Santa Cruz and back again. It's not the longest I've ever driven, or the longest I've ever driven on my own, or the longest I've ever driven on my own in this car -- but it might be the longest I've ever gone just for sheer pleasure. I spent most of my adolescence avoiding driving school with every hemp fiber of my earth-loving body. San Francisco has an excellent public transit system, I pointed out, accurately (although one which, due to its frequent bankruptcy, has just made my blog name obsolete by hiking the price to eight quarters.) It's cheaper, it's easier, it gives you a better sense of self-righteousness, and who wants to visit the boonies anyway?

Well, me, it turns out.

I tell you now, those faint of heart and fond of buses, they're not kidding, driving is a joy. Particularly with the right soundtrack. "O Valencia!" has gotten me in more near-crashes than the dark and my cell phone put together because when it comes on I always end up doing ninety, whichever lane I happen to be in. My car, which has steadily been collecting dents, rust, dirt, and coffee cups, puts up with all of this with good grace. I suppose I should clean it out or at least clean it off, but I'm holding out the hope that one day it'll molt and suddenly I'll have a Maserati.

I've driven up to Oregon before and I'll be driving down to Los Angeles at the end of the summer, which may go some way to scratching the itch that comes over me whenever I see signs for 80 to take it straight through to Chicago at least. California is weird. I mean, besides the fact that our state government appears to be held together with spit and denial and besides the fact that we contain both the Bay Area and Los Angeles, not to mention San Diego and Yosemite; I drove for an hour and a half today and saw nothing but California nor any sign of anything but California. You can't drive five minutes in Chicago without seeing a sign for Iowa, and it's not like Illinois is a little state. The effect produced is that of a massive island, kind of like the early maps, though on most islands you don't pass through three different climates in an hour and a half.

I think I would probably like New Zealand.

Dreamwidth's autosave really needs a booster shot.

I planned to make this post in celebration of the release of The City and The City, China Mieville's latest, about a city that is actually two, one in this world and one not quite. Circumstances intervened -- namely, the Supreme Court ruling that Prop 8 is constitutional, an act which does not surprise me but does depress me. It's the sensible legal decision, perhaps the only legal decision, but it makes things very hard.

So, instead of a post where I compare and contrast Star Trek and Terminator's future San Franciscos, I'm just going to talk about Terminator's.

( I promise it's related; I don't promise it's unpretentious. Spoilers. )

Patricia Wrede recently wrote a book called "The Thirteenth Child," which is coming out soon from Tor, featuring an America that was never inhabited by American Indians. People are angry. I'm not going to touch on the many, many reasons that it's not a healthy premise for a book, because I can link you to many other versions of that.

I am going to say that Lois McMaster Bujold has been commenting on the issue, and her latest has been an assertion that talking on the internet is slanderous and silly (we have no evidence that the book treats things carelessly --
you know, except for the many reports from people with ARCs that yes, it is a book that has a hole at its heart. Why don't we donate to American Indian tribal charities instead?)

It is a hilarious complaint. Her targets are some of the most active, involved members of anti-racist activities around. karnythia founded Verb Noire and is working at Operation PUSH. kate_nepveu and popelizbet sent fans of color to WisCon with a fundraiser whose runoff went to the Carl Brandon Society. In fact, this entire post contains only constructive responses to RaceFail. Furthermore, a number of the fans she's castigating for not doing Real Work for the American Indian/First Nations Communities are tribally enrolled. They are doing Real Work for the American Indian/First Nations Communities every day with their friends and families. And not to bring the haunted specter of class into this, but of the people she addresses who do not donate, some of them are not able to spend a dollar more than they need to.

But besides the many, many reasons that it is unwise to castigate an active community of radical people of color (to borrow delux_vivens's phrase) and anti-racists for "not doing enough," why do so many fiction writers complain that we're paying too much attention to fiction? How many of them have, in other contexts, assured us that stories are what make us human? How many of them have, in other contexts, talked about the power of words? Do words only have power when they want them to? Do they honestly think that words and that fiction only serve the purpose they were initially intended to serve, and do they think that such purposes are unimportant?

So it turns out, in a move that surprises nobody, Joe Quesada (head honcho at Marvel) thinks that I shouldn't read his comics.

( no, that isn't hyperbole. )

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A better version of what I said; what all the fuss is about.

And who are you?

Emma, aka Six Quarters or SQ, is a city/activist/literary/music/nerdblogger who hails from San Francisco and has a lot of time on her hands.

What can I expect out of these here parts?

Based on my job description, I imagine you can expect me to write about the use of Melville quotes in the Britney song they were playing at the Anonymous protest down on Polk Street.

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

No. No you haven't. And if you did, it was an illusion, and I was somewhere else at the time. Or: please don't bring real-life or other online identities of mine into the comment section of the blog. My goal is to preserve my pseudonymity within the confines of the Google search.

What are the house rules?

Only two: be careful and party hard. Since the second is self-explanatory, a quick rundown on the first: this is a safe space and I will not be tolerant of those who I think are endangering that. Though I am unlikely to delete or screen anything that isn't blatantly a troll, I will not be nice.

Where should I introduce myself?

Right here!

How do I comment?

You can either get a Dreamwidth account (very cheap!), or you can comment using an OpenID, or you can comment anonymously, although anon comments should sign their names. Comments here are threaded; if you'd rather read it flat, append ?view=flat to the end of the page's url.

Why Six Quarters?

Bus fare on MUNI.