Longer Posts – Jamais Mayville

Cable “News” & Church Pews

I think about this all the time, because I have relatives and peers who were — at one time — (seemingly) normal people.

But after years of exposure to Fox News and QAnon, and other things of that odious nature, their brains have rotted.

You may be thinking, That’s extreme. You don’t need to exaggerate, or be mean, or be judgmental. Be a little kinder!

No. I don’t think I will. People have already spent too much time mincing their words about a pretty serious situation. This is something that’s poisoned minds and hearts. We may as well call Fox News and QAnon Jupiter, because these folks have gone there to get more stupider.

And — in addition to acting more ignorant by the hour — these people are suffering from other diminished faculties. They’re more fearful than ever. They’re angry all of the time.

They’re also convinced that all Christians in America are secretly spied upon and persecuted, even though there are dozens of Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Catholic, Episcopal, and non-denominational churches around here. None of those churches are boarded up, and they’re constantly holding events for new members. They send out postcards begging young families to bring their kids to game nights and car shows. They really try to make it a family affair.

Truthfully — and even the brainwashed folks, if they were being rational, would acknowledge this — the biggest “enemy” working against “the faith” is apathy. Many of these people have kids and grandkids who don’t have an interest in the church. Many young people also won’t go to church because they can find faith-based information and/or community in a judgment-free zone. The church is not — generally speaking — a judgment-free zone. The young people are tired of being bullied by people who think church is a competition or a fashion show. That is why they have no interest in attending a “more traditional” church. It feels too much like high school.

But the concept of “traditional values” has given these (usually older) folks something to rally around. They think that, if they could just convince their kids and grandkids to go back to church, that suddenly everything would fall into place. Lots of cherubic babies, little ones with soft curls and dimpled cheeks, would spill out of us, the young women, like lace unspooled from a slender filature.

With a Gunne-Sax dress covering my body from shoulder to ankle, and a beautiful (but silenced) baby on my hip, and a young man with an unfortunate ~~face~~ expression standing in front of me, I would be the model of perfect femininity. I would bend to my husband’s will, as the perfect helpmeet, and listen to whatever tidbits of nothingness he’d managed to collect from a busy day of listening to Ben Shapiro’s podcasts while he either (1) drove an air-conditioned tractor up and down the field or (2) dumped numbers into Google Sheets.

My husband and I would pretend to smile from sunup to sundown, and we would only get a break while we cried ourselves to sleep, miserable at having been paired off to meet the church’s No Husband Left Behind policy.

But on Sunday morning, with Cherubleigh on my hip, we’ll walk into church with our heads held high — but not too high, because the preacher’s daughter will inevitably be there, too. And she will expect us to know our place, as slow-witted peons who can’t afford designer clothing. She — and her peers and her daughters — will glide in wearing matching Coco Chanel and pearls, while I’m stuck in a cheap-o prairie dress that came from a virtual vanity boutique.

The boutique, of course, is run by the preacher’s wife or daughter. And that’s yet another way they expect us to tithe. I’m starting to wonder whether this money is funding the house of the Lord or the House of Chanel.

Anyway — as bleak as that sounds, I think that some people think this “return to traditional values” sounds nice and normal, simply because people are given a place to be in the world. That’s true — so long as everyone knows their place.

Nobody expects to be at the bottom of the ladder — except for me. I know that I would be placed on a bottom rung, and that I would be given a philanderer or an abuser, and that I would be expected to straighten him out or be a good little SAHM Soldier. I would be expected to tame the dishes, the mistresses, the laundry, and the insatiable libido. And I know I couldn’t do it, because my spirit would be broken.

Surprisingly — to many people — I am actually a straight woman. But I would prefer to choose things for myself, just as every living being does. Even children and the elderly like to choose things for themselves, because they are people, too.

And while it’s true that some children and some elderly folks need extra assistance, they still have the autonomy to refuse things — or to ask for an alternative option. If our ability to even have preferences is taken away from us, then I’m at a loss for what to do.

Suppose I do decide to marry a Godly young man, but I would prefer for us to attend a different church — for one reason or another. If I don’t have a say in the matter, how is that fair to me? Similarly, how is that fair to my husband and/or family, to have a sulking mother who’s on the path to becoming an apostate, all because they wouldn’t allow me to have my own thoughts and feelings?

Ah, well. They don’t care about that. These are the same people who leave “F**k your feelings!” in the comments on every Facebook posts — from the poorly-generated AI art to the AT&T ads.

While I know they don’t care about confining people to a lifetime of unhappiness, I find it odd that they think their sons and daughters, or grandsons and granddaughters, would find being a Trad Spouse Content Creator exciting. Besides, that market is beyond oversaturated by now. I can’t compete with the Ballerina Farms lady, because I’m not a ballerina and I don’t own my own farm.

I’m certainly not opposed to spirituality and faith — and I find a lot of folks find strength in their faith. But making faith a commodity and/or fodder for influencers, and making church feel like a country club, and making people feel that any Outsiders — even other Protestants — are not to be trusted?

Those are the things that have made me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in the various churches I’ve attended or visited.

Yet there’s still this lingering idea that, if we could get every American soul — to say nothing of the bodies! — into a pew on Sunday morning, that the country would experience a complete reversal of fortunes. Everyone would have a stately, ornate dining room. Everyone would have a solid gold toilet. Everyone would drive a freshly-waxed Maserati.

“Well, everyone except for the people I hate!”

But enough about that.

Anyway, the folks at that terrible cable “news” network — a channel that focuses on punditry and opinion shows, a channel that rarely broadcasts actually news content — have landed on a gold mine. They know that they can pay someone to ramble about highly-emotional topics — faith, bravery, veterans, children — and that they’ll entice millions of Boomers to sweat issues that …

Frankly, these issues are best handled on a family-by-family basis. Not every family has kids — some are childless, some are childfree, some are TTC, and some have stepchildren who are only in the home half of the month, or half of the year, or only during summers. Not every family goes to the Baptist church — though some are Methodists, some are Catholics, some are not religious, and some are happily living in interfaith families. Because of this variety, there’s no one prescription to “save” all the “families” of America.

For the people who are all about states’ rights, or taking away federal power, it seems that they’d be able to understand the need to make less centralized decisions, or to give the power to choose back to the individual.

But these are the same people who ignore the “well-regulated” in front of “militia,” so I can’t be too certain they’d appreciate the irony of this situation.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t spend a lot of time drafting this post — simply because I spend most of my time living this post. The South is, of course, where America buckles its Bible Belt. I’m used to hearing people (of all backgrounds, ages, economic classes, denominations) speak about their faith, their church, their volunteer group, or their Bible study class.

I don’t flinch. I certainly don’t insult people. I’ve even taken people up on their offers to visit their churches, because I am admittedly quite nosy, and because I have family members who’ve affiliated with nearly every denomination.

So perhaps it’s shocking when I say that church can still be isolating — and that the biggest “offenders” who have lectured people for not attending church are usually people who are themselves unchurched.

These are the people who have had their names read at a packed Sunday service, or who have argued with a preacher, or who got hopping mad when they saw that a gay couple is now “allowed” to attend services.

It’s hard not to judge the judgmental person who wants to “ban gays” from coming to church. On the other hand, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the woman who quit going to church because she had her name read — a form of public shaming — after divorcing an abusive spouse. There are all kinds of people who have left church — from the judgmental to the unfairly judged.

Through careful planning or dumb luck, the folks at Fox News — and Conservative commentators and podcasters — have landed on the magic formula: make people afraid and get them screaming-mad about feeling persecuted. The delicious irony of this, considering that their own enemies are “snowflakes.”

In fact, that was my original reason for writing this post. After seeing pushback in the wake of the Opening Ceremony — pushback to “mocking religion,” to Greek gods, to pagan priestesses — I realized we were fighting a losing battle against willful ignorance. And after calmly explaining the allusions to Greek mythology at an Olympic celebration, I realized that they didn’t even want an explanation. They’re just as bad as a playground bully who wants to fight. How childish and weirdly unnecessary. Get a better hobby than arguing on Facebook!

Now that I’ve thought about it, Rupert Murdoch has made me a more devout person. Not because I’ve bought into any of their programming. Not at all.

Instead, this wellspring of faith has come about for another reason. I hope and pray that there is a just God watching all of this nonsensical, mean-spirited programming. And I hope that God shows mercy to every person who’s suffered at the hands of someone who’s weaponized the hateful rhetoric on that channel.

I also hope that the same God who shows mercy to others smites dishonest CEOs. If that’s not too much to ask, then I will — as they say — pray on it.

Thoughts and prayers, prayers and thoughts. Pardon me for not having kind thoughts about any of the media moghuls who are trying to deliver us to evil.

Slap My Face Like A Drum

After finding out about Physical 100, I lost a good two weeks of my life lusting after unattainable men.

I’ve come to realize that a variety of body types are sexy to me, but I really took an interest in finding out which sports — and what types of training — these folks do.

Particularly the hottest of the hotties. I found about four or five hunks that I plan on Instagram-stalking for a couple of weeks until I forget about them entirely by mid-May. Right on schedule.

To my surprise — and mild horror — I realized I had no idea that MMA fighters were lethally sexy. I’ve never been that into abs and pectorals — not as a primary requirement, I should say. But I promptly began lusting in my heart after watching these guys grapple and run and flex and do all sorts of strength-related stuff.

I was the living embodiment of an In Living Color: Men On … Sports sketch. I was wilting internally as I thought about the streennnnnth of these MMA men.

I Googled a couple of them, admired their rippling muscles, and then reminded myself that most MMA fighters are probably headed directly toward another big abbreviatory battle: CTE.

UFCTE? Yikes. Yiiiiiiiikes.

I realized that I would be worried about my hypothetical boyfriend’s health all of the time. I would worry about the injuries and the long-term effects on his health. I would be too afraid to get into a long-term relationship with an MMA player, even though I suppose a ships-in-the-night situation is still on the table. 🤫

But just as I was about to quit searching for information on CTE and MMA fighters, I found out about the Power Slap League.

Now, I’m the same woman who said I would rather play two sets of jai alai without a helmet than to play two minutes of pickleball. But … why?

The whole damn thing is a mess. The head injuries. The poor compensation. The lack of recognition. The limited cross-over potential. The poor compensation.

And circling back to earlier themes, it’s not even that sexy.

😬

Coveting The Neighbor’s Wife

Last week at work, some folks were talking about goals you’ve seen other people reach that you also want to attain/achieve/use cut-throat violence and extreme manipulation to acquire.

But I don’t usually look at other people and think, “I want that for me, too.”

I only quote that 700 Club meme when I’m looking at a picture of a hot celebrity.

I’m not the kind of person who looks at other peoples’ houses and says, “Oooh, I want to live there.” I just say, “Oooh, that’s a pretty nice house. I love this part, but I wouldn’t want to deal with that part.”

Obviously, I wouldn’t say that last bit out loud – about not liking every part of something. Most people are proud of the stuff they’ve recently acquired. They like the parts and the sum of the parts, you know?

Unless it’s something truly far-out, like a person with a fear of mice moving into a scientist’s palatial mansion — only to realize that they installed a maze in the basement for their cat-sized lab rats.

Basically, I’ve never liked any new houses or new cars badly enough to want that exact same thing for me – everything from pets to boyfriends to purses. I’ve either liked something different, or I wanted to attain my own thing with its own personality and/or features.

To be perfectly honest, I can’t stand all these hypotheticals that come up during early morning chats and meetings, just because it’s tough to think of an “appropriate” answer to a hyper-specific question.

The other day, I felt absolutely silly trying to think of a favorite artist or architect – but I just couldn’t. It’s not that I don’t appreciate art, but it’s that I’m more of a … farm-fed type of person.

If you’ve followed this blog from the beginning, you know where I’m from. I’m a country girl who’s made do.

I don’t go for steel and glass – and I can’t say I’ve been particularly awed by any modern buildings. I don’t hate cities — but I would rather visit a city than live in one. I know that ~~some~~ basically all skyscrapers are incredible feats of architecture, but I’m not into industrial-type stuff. I like things that blend in, and I’m not into, like, the Burj Khalifa. I don’t need to look at something that stands out against a desert landscape, a forested backdrop, etc.

But I really struggle when it comes to answering “oh, me, too!” types of questions. I feel like a fake person every day when I walk into work. I have a Work Persona that is quieter and softer than I am in real life. This persona is also a little bit shy and a bit of a non-assertive office drone.

I’m not an office siren. I’m an office fire detector with a low battery.

And I can tell people don’t like this workplace persona – not really – but I can’t seem to break away from it. I can’t be too … too different out of nowhere. So I’m stuck in my current (unusual, half-melted) box. Of course, I’ve never really minded being unusual. It’s the most distinctive thing about me — that I don’t mind being unusual.

Of course, I blame myself sometimes for not trying harder to fit in. I tell myself that maybe I seem too stupid, if I can’t think of a “good” answer to an icebreaker question.

But … I can’t rehearse my own life. I just have to try to live an authentic life — I just have to be me, and I just need to be satisfied with this version of myself.

Catalogue of The Lonely 2020s

Similar(ly) to my index of the Squelching 2020s, which recaps some of the worst trends of the decade, I wanted to start a list of …

I don’t know what to call this. It’s just a list of the moments in our era that have made me realize that many, many people are frustrated and depressed. Here are the things that are making us sad:

1. high-beam headlights aggravating other drivers (and contributing to accidents and road-rage)

2. medical administrators outnumbering hands-on medical professionals and nurses

3. nurses burning out and quitting their jobs to do multi-level marketing

4. people oversharing online — and I don’t mean XOJane essays

(I’m talking about people posting embarrassing videos of their kids for clout. Willobeigh doesn’t want you to post a YouTube video of her diaper blowout! Your ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend doesn’t want you to post on Facebook about how her miscarriages gave you an idea for an essay about how to conquer your own jealousy. You don’t have to do this!)

5. posts on nearly every social network about people coming home and not having the energy to do anything besides cook dinner and take a shower — posts that are often written by young people

There are also memes about how “I’m going to spend the whole summer rotting in bed” or “the first thing I do when I get home from work is take off my bra and take a five-hour nap” — and when I see a 22-year-old writing sincere posts like this, I know that times are tough.

6. pressure to keep up with everyone else — without any satisfaction over where you’re at, because you’re always looking to accomplish something even more impressive

People aren’t satisfied with stability, either. They see that their friends are going on a cruise, so they have to go on a cruise. They see that their friend is taking Ozempic, so they have to try it, too. I think people should try new things, set goals, and all of that. But if you’re only doing it because you want to impress someone else, then you’re not doing it because you want to. You’re doing it to fit in and not be excluded. That sucks. ☹️

7. road rage — which seems to have worsened in the wake of the pandemic

8. (some) folks insisting that the pandemic is behind us, when we see the effects of it manifesting every single day

PTSD, Long COVID, isolation, trauma, depression, loneliness — all of these things are brutal, and these things can’t be swept under the rug so easily.

8. teachers burning out and quitting their jobs to stay at home and do multi-level marketing

9. twenty-four/seven news, twenty-four/seven shopping, twenty-four/seven social media — twenty-four/seven consumption

I’ll add more points as more things come to mind!

Nightcap

Last night/tonight/this morning, I decided to take advantage of this cross-country wind/snow/ice maelstrom by making the most of the time I’m spending indoors.

Sorry for all of the slashes, by the way. I promise that I’ll slow down with those. But I’ll never let go of the em-dash. Never.

I decided to do chores and drink some Asti. I did laundry, I did some dishwashing, I did some baking, and I had a wee drink.

The bottle seemed like a Nebuchadnezzar, even though it was probably a Jeroboam.

I feel like I ought to know more about who Jeroboam was, considering that he has so much to offer.

I didn’t overdo it, by the way. I had a rather small glass — but I drank on a mostly empty stomach.

I almost made some Indomie chicken curry noodles, but I realized that I could just eat some of the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies I was in the middle of baking. It was a matter of waiting fifteen minutes instead of five minutes, so I braved the moment by thinking about … well, a lot of nothing. As always.

My body was moving faster and faster, getting things done more quickly than I felt like I had any right to. But my brain started moving more and more slowly. I kept walking around and moving, even though I could feel my thoughts sloshing around.

Whenever I drink wine, I feel sleepy and happy — but mostly sleepy. I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced anything quite like I experienced tonight, though. The closest comparison I can make is that I felt similarly lightheaded the last time I donated blood.

I calmed down pretty quickly, but I still felt a weird combination of … euphoria and confusion. Everything was going haywire. I burned my hands while trying to put away glasses that got too hot in the dishwasher, so I decided to just sit quietly and try to collect myself.

I sat on the couch and opened TikTok. I don’t know why I thought this would help. I watched a couple of TikTok lives. One was an older South Korean man who wore a wig and played the recorder. The next one was an older American man who wore a suit and sang Nina Simone songs.

“!” I said, as I watched these two performances. I couldn’t really form long sentences or meaningful words, but I could form !s.

If you want to know what ! sounds like, then imagine a muted hiccup. A hiccup that’s followed by a fuzzy tingle in your consciousness.

My mind began to race and then slow down again. I felt like a laptop with a whirring fan.

I also felt like I was made out of someone else’s secrets. I was just a bundle of bubbles and … even more bubbles.

But I also felt warm and jazzy. I felt like Corporate Memphis. I felt like a saxophone solo.

A saxophone solo followed by seven hours of sleep. And it was amazing.

Our People, Our Place

A couple months ago, I watched a documentary about a young woman from my hometown. She was murdered, and the circumstances surrounding her murder were tragic. She was a mother. She was especially young — still a teen, if I remember correctly. They found her on a football practice field. I think about her when I drive past that field, which has since been landscaped with a garden in her memory.

Throughout the documentary, there were repeated mentions of how football has always been a huge cultural asset in our town. This is the kind of place where you have to make your own fun — throw a house party, go to someone else’s to hang out, or drive around looking for other people who don’t have anything else to do. There are restaurants that serve alcohol, but there aren’t any bars or clubs. The only “big” opportunity to get out and be around a crowd of people is to go to the Friday night football games, where there’s almost a guaranteed chance that our team will win, no matter who they’re playing against.

The town’s high school football program is near the top of the list of the “most winningnest schools” out of all the high schools around the country. It’s true that the football program is ancient, and that’s part of the reason they can claim so many wins. But football has cemented itself in this town. It’s the kind of thing that children are scouted for, from the time they’re six or seven – if they have talent, they will be playing football when they’re sixteen.

When it comes to professional sports, I’ve generally been more of a basketball fan than a football fan. But always I love to see local kids play well and get recognized for it. I’m always happy when they make it to the state tournament, because … well, they’ve earned the praise.

The documentary I mentioned earlier — about the young woman from our town — seemed respectful. The narrative covered more than the football program. Although the story of our town is intertwined with the stories and the fate of the people who live here, our town is more than just tragedy or triumph. The story of the town and its best features isn’t the same story as the story of what happened to her — her life and her death, and her family’s path to seeking justice.

It’s not winning titles that makes this town worthy of praise. The people around here are the ones who make everything what it is — from the teams to the neighborhoods, from the crowds at parades and games to the folks you see in passing. Not to sound overly sentimental, but the people around here make the town what it is.

Our people — the ones who care about each other — are really our best feature.

Critical Thinking

I posted a TikTok earlier today that was just, like, a wee little joke. It was a lighthearted joke — and not a hurtful comment or a slam.

If I had said something prejudiced or hateful, I would’ve deserved some pushback. But I know I didn’t say anything sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, ageist, or violent. I wasn’t making a personal attack, or being vicious about someone’s bad outfit, or even taking a cowardly approach to bullying by saying, “Post this on IG Reels if you’re brave.”

I didn’t do anything vile or cruel. I didn’t. But after posting this video, I received a bunch of … I don’t know how to describe these comments. Other than — and I really don’t want to go there, but I’m going to go there — a bunch of young people complaining about what I’d posted.

So what was my big mistake? I made fun of an influencer.

I understand that going after influencers ~~might seem~~ can be misogynistic — depending on the type of criticism you’re levying. If I’d made a comment about her body, her face/beauty, her personality, her voice, her aesthetic, or even her choice of clothing, then I understand that people take umbrage with that sort of non-constructive “criticism.”

I also think it’s crucial to note that those types of cruel comments are often directed at young influencers and BIPOC influencers. (The influencer I referenced in my video is, for the record, a white woman in her late twenties or early thirties.)

But a woman making a crack at a specific video posted by another woman is not misogynistic. It’s just … it’s just clowning on a corny post. She put it out there for a global audience and she left it up, presumably to drive up engagement.

People rushed to her defense in my comments, and because I was afraid they would snitch-tag her, I shut the whole conversation down. I made my post private, which I would say is a cowardly thing — but I don’t care.

I took the video down because of the deluge of complaints in the comments. After I thought about it some more, I realized that the influencer was complaining in her video, and I made a video about her complaint, and then my comments were full of complaints. It was all too complain-y/Karen-y for me.

In 2024, I reserve the right to protect myself from bland commentary.

That’s the difference in the influencer and myself. I put it out there — and I took it down. Maybe that makes me a coward. Maybe that makes her braver than me. Oh, well. Good for her!

I almost replied to one of the teens in my comments section — I was a teen once, and I know what it’s like to make your voice heard. I know that — sometimes — it feels good for someone to validate your comment by sending a reply.

So I almost said, “I hear what people are saying. To keep it completely real, not all ‘news’ sites are truly in the news business. They’re just content aggregators trying to push content to get clicks. I get it.”

As soon as I typed that up, I felt like … damn. This is exactly what overexplaining is. As a teenager and early twenty-something, I often overexplained concepts and theories to my parents, my grandmother, and my best friend. I cringe at all the times I lectured my best friend, and I hope she forgives me for acting like a ninth-grade history teacher when we already had a ninth-grade history teacher.

We had the same ninth-grade history teacher, now that I think about it. And he was a much, much better lecturer than I could ever be.

I cringe at all the preaching I did to my best friends. And my family! Wow! They sure put up with a lot of overexplaining about politics and things they already knew about! I should’ve overexplained things like WiFi routers and PDF rotation. That would’ve been more helpful.

Not to be the old woman who shakes her fist at the clouds — especially because I’m just a young woman shaking her fist at the clouds — but it always makes me laugh when a nineteen-year-old who just took a JMC 101 course tries to explain to me “how the media is exploitative.”

I always want to respond with something like this:

“Hell yeah, girl. Do you know why the media is exploitative? Lemme guess. Your mass comm professors have talked to you about why stories sell, and which stories will sell, and all of the business behind the business. I understand that, too, because I was exactly where you were, ten years ago. But let me tell you a little secret. Every industry is exploitative — to one degree or another.”

Here, I’d have to take a pause and collect myself. I’m not done. This is a speech.

“I’m not done, girl. This is a speech. You teach the 101 class; I teach the graduate seminar. And I appreciate the fact that you are trying to teach me something — but I live that experience every day. And so do you. And I’m glad you’re more and more aware that the world is exploitative. So now, on social media, you should realize that everything here is exploitative, too. I was trying to exploit your (underdeveloped?) sense of humor to get a laugh — but I exploited your sense of incredulity and you gave me a lecture instead. Ah, well. Let’s keep it moving. I’m giving a lecture down the hall in thirty minutes. Drop in if you finish your lecture early. Toodles, babes!”

I’d be exhausted after all of that. So I didn’t post any lectures of my own. I just bailed.

2024 is the year of picking your battles — and I’m not battling nineteen-year-old media theory students.

I would rather encourage them than to argue with them. And even though they can teach an old dog new tricks — which is a good thing! — I want them to understand that the old dogs already know the old tricks.

Woof, woof!

CBO (Chief Blogging Officer)

I was a teenager in the days before Vine — right before Vine, I should say. Vine was a big thing when I was a young college student. (I remember trying to film Vines at Bonnaroo, which was another experience that defined that stage in my life. Both of those things shaped the bulk of my personality back in 2013.)

We had Vine, sure, but we didn’t have lots of ways to watch what other people were up to. We could read blogs or Facebook posts, but the world of vlogging? That was definitely more of a niche thing. I’m sure there were vloggers, but the world hadn’t yet pivoted-to-video. At that point, we couldn’t even post videos on Instagram.

We watched MTV, if we wanted to see real-life eccentricity. (“Eccentricity” covers a lot of territory: the delightfully-eccentric good, the cringeworthy bad, and the maddeningly wild.)

MTV even came to my super-country high school to audition someone for True Life or Made, or one of those reality shows. They decided not to film at our school. I don’t know if they couldn’t find anything worth filming, or if something else happened. But we didn’t miss our turn in the spotlight. A couple years later, a television crew from another country came to our school to film a specific club, because said club won a national championship. That was a cool experience.)

There were other shows that appealed to our desire to watch people do bizarre things. We didn’t have ice cream so good, but we had trashy television. We watched things like To Catch A Predator and Jerry Springer. Two of my high school classmates even ~~acted on~~ appeared on an episode of Jerry.

I didn’t go with them, so I never got my beads.

We also watched a lot of YouTube skits. In the era before people filmed their beauty hauls, their skincare routines, and their video game play-throughs, people filmed annoying skits and posted them online. Two of my friends and I even got together to plan a bunch of silly YouTube skits, which we wrote scripts for, but never filmed or posted. And that’s a shame, because both of these friends are artists. One of them is a professional photographer, so the videos would’ve been high-quality. But I know I’m not a natural-born performer, so … I’m glad there isn’t video evidence of my bad acting.

The kids who visited Jerry? They were stars! They got beads!

This was back around 2010, 2011, 2012. We didn’t have Vine. We didn’t have TikTok. We didn’t have Twitch.

All of that stuff is new. And I see this evolution as a good thing, because … I’ve decided I’m going to try get ahead of the curve. I’m going to turn my focus to the Generation Alpha and Generation Beta demographics. But first, I need to convince them that ✨blogging✨ is cool. Blogging is it, baby!

When we bring back the pre-Ice Road Truckers Weather Channel, just to have something vaporwave-y vintage to vibe to, we also need to bring back Blogspot-style blogging. The general vibe of that era, from 1999 to 2009, was fascinating. Those were the original years of realizing things. And I want to revisit that era. I want to convince everyone that blogging is the next big sphere of influenceability.

I want to stumble upon a Bulgarian math teacher’s music blog. I want to scroll through an uptight Mormon woman’s recipes. And I want to read about what’s happening to a random design student in Toronto, or Berlin, or Lagos.

I don’t want memes or filters or trends. I want to read confessionals, I want to read workplace/classroom gossip, and I want to read poorly-written poetry. I just … I just want to read someone’s diary.

I want to stare into your blog, baby. Is that too much to ask?!

Authenticity

I’m making a list — and I’ve already checked it twice. Earlier this month, I mentioned that there are some people obsessed with proving that they’re “authentically country” or “authentically Appalachian” or “authentically Southern.”

If you’re authentically doing your thing, then you probably don’t need to take great pains prove yourself. I don’t feel like I have to flash my credentials, but if you’d like to see them:

My mom’s mom’s mom’s family — the folks on my maternal side — were sharecroppers. They picked tobacco and corn under the blanket of humidity that smothers western Kentucky every spring and every summer.
My mom’s dad was a cattle farmer. He wasn’t a rancher — he was a farmer, with a small-ish farm and a wood lot and a pond for the cows and the snakes.
My mom’s dad’s dad and his family were sorghum farmers.
My dad’s mom’s brother and his family were ~~cattle~~ dairy farmers. They had cattle, but they mostly did dairy operations. They milked cows all the time and all of that. My dad would go over to the farm and bale hay. My dad’s cousin — one of his favorite cousins, a man whom we all remember fondly — would muck the stalls and sing “It’s Such A Pretty World Today” while he was … tidying up.
My dad’s dad had a tobacco patch, but he never planted again after coming up a nickel short on his crop. (He didn’t make a profit. He lost money on that enterprise, is what I’m trying to say — and he never planted another tobacco patch.)
My dad’s dad was a miner. He ran a dragline and did above-ground strip mining in the Western Coal Fields.
My dad’s dad’s dad could sharpen an ax finer than anyone else in the county. (I’d noticed that this was the kind of job you could do while sitting down, which suited him. He was a pretty … casual man. He would always weigh down his bushels of turnips with rocks before going to the market. That’s just … that’s just how he was.)
My dad’s dad mended and tarred his own fishing nets. He loved to go fishing out on the Tennessee River.
My dad’s dad’s dad was a bona fide alcoholic. He would get … a little bit happy and float down the river — mostly for fun, but also because he didn’t have a license or a vehicle.
My dad’s dad was good friends with the local bootlegger.
My dad’s dad’s dad’s uncle was the oldest living Union Army veteran in Kentucky.
My dad’s mom’s brothers played the violin and the mandolin. The mandolin-player put out an album when he moved down to Arkansas. (He was also a long-haul truck driver. He was a cool guy.)
My mom’s dad’s mom played the guitar. She was a tiny little woman — unlike me, a big-built gal — but she was apparently quite the entertainer.
My mom’s mom — my beloved grandmother — was a hairdresser and a laundress and a housecleaner.
My mom’s mom’s mom ran a hamburger stand and worked in a munitions factory and a clothing factory. She was the real deal. She was hard-working and objectively beautiful. I only inherited the first part, but … I’m glad to be like her, in some small way.
My dad’s mom’s brother was a long-distance trucker. I only found this out years and years after he’d retired. (I guess I mentioned this earlier — but it deserves a separate mention!)
My dad used to drive a dump truck, while we’re talking about big trucks.
My dad’s mom’s brother was blinded in a spar mining accident.
My mom’s mom’s mom’s brother’s wife was blinded when she got chemicals in her eyes while sharecropping.
My mom’s mom’s mom’s brother was shot and killed on his ~~own~~ brother-in-law’s front porch.

The guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy has nothing on me.

Hay Is For Horses, Straw Is For A Drink

… and straw shouldn’t go in my hair, don’t you think?

I realize that’s a ridiculous and unnecessary rhyme, but I wanted to preface this ridiculous and unnecessary post with something that’s as goofy as I am.

I’ve never worn straw in my hair, I should say. I have thick, super-curly hair, so I try not to stick too many foreign objects in my curls. I have to admit that I did put feathers in my hair back in 2012 — back when that was trendy.

I only wore clip-on feathers. I didn’t get any sewn in. If any Gen Z or Gen A folks are reading this and didn’t realize that Hair Feathers were not only a real thing, but also the height of early 2010s Indie Sleaze fashion, then … let me disabuse you of the notion that anything that awkward couldn’t possibly be it.

Hair feathers were it and then some. Everyone from tweens to forty-something indie rockers got in on the befeathering. 2012 was a wild year, that’s true — but I miss that era so much. Not to be stuck in the past, but I really loved the Blog House/Indie Sleaze years.

The only other “accessory” I’ve worn woven into my hair — other than a headband or flower crown — is rice. This was entirely accidental. I went to a Halloween showing of Rocky Horror and I walked around with rice in my hair for several days. Even after washing and detangling it, I would find little grains of rice. I dealt with that situation by combing it all out, one grain at a time.

Back in November, I would braid my hair every night before going to bed — but every morning, it would look more wild than ever. From time to time, my hair looked decent in the morning, but by mid-afternoon, it looked like frizzy straw. I felt like a hay bale.

But everything changed when I bought the UnBrush. This brush is incredible. I’m not doing any spon-con — and I don’t want to.

I just want all the curly-haired folks to know that this brush works wonders! I love it!