dorinda

Episode 54: Holy balls.

( More things )

A few days ago, Mum found out that she may have a close blood relative she didn’t know about, who was the product of an affair and put up for adoption after he was born. Details are sketchy but we worked out from his birth year that it’s possible his birth parents met at a party my mother’s parents threw. 

I only know all this because she asked me to look into him and make sure it wasn’t a scam, and while it’s not a scam it’s also fucking uncanny how similar he and I are – not just physical appearance but hobbies and personality (as much as you can get personality from a facebook and a blog). He’s ten years older than me, but otherwise we’re pretty similar. 

I emailed her like “I think this guy’s on the level, he’s just looking for a missing piece of his family” and had to stifle a strong urge to be like “Also I want to hang out with him, so be nice.” 

I hope Mum likes him, I want to be his Facebook Friend. 

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Okay. Okay, this thing that I've been pouring hours into for more than month -- it's here. It's finally live. I am so proud of it. I am already thrilled and overwhelmed by its reception!! It definitely started with a late-night annoyed tweet, and now it's a 2,000-word examination of how and why we form and curate cultural memory. Thanks, Wonder Woman!

"Why Do So Few Hollywood Movies Take Place During WWI?" - Pacific Standard (a very big deal!!)

Going to the movies became a ubiquitous means of participating in patriotic culture closer to World War II. The Great Depression halted most memorial-building in its tracks, as memorials required huge local investments. In the 1910s, when movie palaces were still new, they became sites of moral panic for civic and community leaders concerned about sexual looseness and the corruption of American youth, even as only about one-third of the total population attended each week. However, by the 1920s, that number rose to half, and, by the 1930s, two-thirds of Americans took weekly trips to the movies. During WWII, studios supplied hundreds of fictional films torn from the headlines.

Simple, hagiographic narratives about the war predominated. In titles like So Proudly We Hail! (1943), Hell Is for Heroes (1962), and Saving Private Ryan (1999), WWII was "the good war," waged by the U.S. to crush fascism and imperialism. Hollywood did work closely with the War Department to produce pro-war documentaries during the war. But, historically, even films that are not government-funded, or those that have questioned American wars, have largely refused to condemn those who fight it. It is perhaps easier for film studios to sell a vision of Americans as principled heroes fending off all-threatening evil, rather than naïve young men fighting in a conflict of ambiguous nobility.

There's so much more! I got to talk to some amazing people! My job doesn't pay bupkis but the work can be so good!! (And if you feel inclined to share, you can credit me at ejbergdahl.)

1. All of my posts turn into angry rants about things I don't have words for.

2. Day Seven: A song about drugs or alcohol



It's so good this song exists because I can't think of ANY OTHER SONG I like about drugs and alcohol. There are much better categories of things people write songs about.

3. Richard Littlejohn apparently genuinely thinking of Oates as a guy that just fucked off when the going got hard makes me laugh every time I think about it.

4. It's my mum's birthday, so I've spent the morning making an afternoon tea of cake and jelly and sandwiches. Every time I make party food I plan it with logic and sense but when I'm making it I'm like 'just FOUR THOUSAND sandwiches? PEOPLE WILL STARVE' and I double everything. There is so much food in my fridge now and there are only going to be five of us.

One of my closet doors has been messed up for a long time, and after years of it grinding along horribly and throwing metal shavings all over the place I finally got tired of it. So today my dad and I fixed it with—I swear to god—some glue and a couple of toothpicks. It's just such a dad move, as well as completely in character for him. Apparently it's a trick he learned from my mother's father. So I'm having a moment of belated father's day reflection.

And now my closet door actually slides in the track and I can reach the clothes on that side of my closet again! Thanks, Dad.

It's been a lovely day. I slept in, for moderate values of "sleeping in," and then had as brief exchange with the person at the press who is managing my current editing job, which ended up with me basically being told to take the rest of the week off while they try to catch up to the work I've already done on the manuscript. Okay then!

Then I had a long phone call with my best friend, whom I hadn't had a chance to catch up with in a while. I got on the treadmill for half an hour of the first real exercise I've gotten in weeks; I'm just getting over a wicked cold that settled in my lungs, and before that I was crazy busy for a couple of weeks.

And then Geoff and I went round to the local independent canoe and kayak and general boating outdoorsiness store and picked up our new kayaks! Geoff's been wanting to get them for a couple of years; he grew up sailing, and we went kayaking when we visited his brother and brother-in-law a couple of years ago, who live on a waterway. Now we have kayaks and life jackets and paddles and a roof rack for the car, and we took them all down to the edge of Lac Saint Louis (which is really just a wide spot in the Saint Lawrence River near us) and launched them! We spent about an hour paddling around, seeing ducks and making jokes about playing pirate on the occasional sailboat and just rocking gently in the waves. I expect my shoulders will be achy tomorrow, but we calculated we have to go out about twenty times before buying becomes cheaper than renting, so we will keep it up!

We came home, figured out how to get the kayaks off the roof rack and into the back yard, and -- after showering the river water off -- went out to dinner, because by that time it was almost seven. And when we came home I sacked out on the couch while Geoff made a loaf of banana bread with not only extra bananas but a good half cup or more of rum. It is hot and moist and delicious and we may eat the entire loaf before we get to bed, I'm just saying. (Not all the alcohol seems to have cooked out, but since Star Trek: The Final Frontier is on TV, that may be a good thing.)

So far, this year of my life is going pretty well!

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Ways to Give:

dreamwaffles linked to a fundraiser for Kaye, who has been researching Rat Lungworm, a disease that almost killed her son Graham, who is now disabled and uses a service dog for everyday life. Kaye was a crucial part of the University of Hawai'i's RLWD research team and also the team trying to get legislative support and grant funding, but she's fighting medical debt for Graham's treatment and ongoing needs. You can read more and help out here.

rilee16 is still struggling to cover medical expenses after two head injuries last year, and is now dealing with an eye infection they need to get treatment for before their roommate and her toddler come back from vacation, so they don't infect the baby. They're raising $50-$60 in the short term for medical treatment; they also have a long-term fundraiser running to cover living expenses, previous medical bills, and a recent rent increase. You can read more and help out here.

anna-guth is a student from Germany who was recently accepted to Redroofs School for the Performing Arts in England, but her parents can't afford the full GBP24K tuition. She is raising E6.5K for tuition and school fees; you can read more and reblog here, or give directly to the fundraiser here.

echosiriusrumme is a student trying to buy her own clarinet; at present she doesn't have her own instrument to practice with but has a pressing need to practice before auditions and recitals for a Performance track next fall at her university. She has a few options lined up for between $800 and $1.3K, but needs to raise the funds to cover the cost; she is offering to repay over time any funds contributed to the purchase. You can read more and reblog here (plus find a ko-fi link) or give to her paypal here.


And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help (or ask for help!). If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

My housemates are back! All of them! This is good and bad. It was nice having the bathroom all to myself, but it was getting kind of lonely in a house made for four people, only having two.

Critical Role continues to be a delight. I'm watching Episode 52 now. ( Plot! )

Housemate and I are almost up to The Coming of Shadows in B5. We took a detour to watch some more Season 1, and watched the A Voice in the Wilderness two-parter. You know, every time I watch the show during a Republican administration, Seasons 3 and 4 seem relevant, but right now I feel like the Mars stuff even in Season 1 is super timely. I keep forgetting how much of the Mars plotline is brought up in Season 1, especially in that two-parter.

goss has created a cool new community for fan artists called Drawesome. If you're an artist or just interested, go check it out. I keep thinking about trying to learn to draw--I'm completely wihtout talent, I can't even draw stick figures, and I really don't know how to even go about it, but I'm surrounded by artists and they're always grousing at me that anyone can learn, you don't have to be born with talent. I don't believe this, but I still want to learn, at some point.

drawesome: A Drawing Community for Fan-Artists

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I haven't been making this public much yet, but I feel like I have to, just so everyone knows what's going on. They found a cancerous tumor during the colonoscopy Thursday, so…yeah. Guess who has cancer. Did you guess me? You're correct!

It's weird, I've been expecting this for years, but not this one: I figured it'd be melanoma or the thing that killed my twin sister, ovarian cancer. This one is my ultimate nightmare--I'm phobic as hell about bodily functions, and there's so much awful stuff that results from colon cancer that I'm completely freaked out about.

I don't see the surgeon till Thursday so right now I don't know much. I had a CT scan yesterday to see if there's more cancer anywhere else and additional bloodwork, and then I had to put on my everything's normal face and go do a guest lecture at the UW. This one woman waited till I was saying thanks goodbye to pop up with a question, and to say she had resting bitch murderface is to put it mildly; I wouldn't be surprised if her whole family was axed to death and they're buried in her basement. And she asked this totally angry, pissed off question and I just didn't have spoons to answer so I was like a deer in the headlights.

Anyway, my biggest fear is that this means I can't go to Vividcon. Like, I care way less about my life, especially these days, and am totally willing to wait till after so I can go. I have a feeling they will not like this. But it's the one thing keeping me together. Not to mention very expensive nonrefundable tickets. The doctor kept stressing how early they'd found it and how good that was. But he also smiled when he said I might have cancer so who knows what's going on with him. Oh and also I got notice that the insurance I have through the ACA is going away next year--the only reason I was able to afford the colonoscopy was that this insurance was really good, and the only other decent one doesn't work with my doctor and clinic. So even if the fucking republicans take everything away in two years, I'm out for 2018 just when I need it most. (And they're such fucking liars, they blame this on market volatility and say it was such a hard decision…no, it's not, you just want more money lining your bonus pockets.)

I'm turning off comments, even though yes, I am really sad and depressed and feeling very lonely. My family's all gone, and most everyone lives far from me or useless (like, I love my BFF, but he's useless) so it's a lot to expect of people. It's been hard just doing day to day stuff like I'm fine. But I have a lot of this in my future so I have to get used to it. I hate the not knowing the most, though.