Fukshot

Cranky

Marlene — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:09:57 +0000

I’m grumpy and impatient with everything. It’s my period; my ten day waiting period.

Such a great joke with such a tiny audience.

Something Very Smart

Marlene — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 16:05:26 +0000

On Actually Keeping Queer Queer: A Response to Cherie Moraga

By Morgan Collada

Cherríe Moraga’s essay, entitled “Still Loving in the (Still) War Years: On Keeping Queer Queer,” is a two-part essay that was first published in 2009. The first part is a brilliantly written critique on the mainstream gay rights movement’s focus on marriage equality. The second part is a misguided and misinformed attack on the trans* community in general and the transmasculine community in particular.

Read the rest, do it!

is this a prose poem?

Marlene — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:19:06 +0000

I have a friend who I do not see very much. We have known each other for a very long time, but we are also newly acquainted these past few years. We are also falling out of touch. First her schedule, then mine, then the boy, then trouble, always trouble. Am I reaching out or mourning her loss? Is the very idea of writing poetry too full of the bitter taste of my mother and Emily Dickinson’s Black Cake and also of her?

Last night, no, the night before, we read her poetry aloud in bed. I thought about writing something like this.

My Brush With Greatness

Marlene — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:02:40 +0000

Last night, Iggy Pop dove off the stage and landed on my head, bending my glasses.

A Mechanical Moment

Marlene — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:13:32 +0000

I’ve recently been lucky enough to come in to possession of a couple of guns I’ve been coveting for a long time. They are the 1897 Winchester shotgun and the 1896 Krag-Jorgensen. My Krag is actually an 1898 model, but that’s hardly important. Getting hold of both of these guns in a short time period has made it clear to me that my appreciation of the two is similar and that similarity is inextricably tied to the time of their design.

Winchester 1897 action closed

When you work the slide on an 1897 Winchester, all sorts of things happen. A friend once described it to me as “The damned thing sticks out its tongue and bats its eyelashes at you.” The bolt slides out of the receiver and cocks the exposed hammer. The cartridge lifter swings out of the bottom of the action. Parts seem to be sticking out everywhere. If you’re not careful, it’ll take some skin off of your thumb. By comparison, working the slide on almost any pump shotgun designed since seems to do nothing but make noise.

Winchester 1897 action open

The Krag – Nobody says Jorgensen. It’s like we’re on a first-name basis with the rifle. Poor Jorgensen doesn’t get his share of the design credit. No, it wasn’t Christine. No, I don’t know if there’s any relation. – is exquisitely built. It is known among afficionados of such things to be the smoothest functioning bolt action rifle ever built. It also has a feature that I think is one of the neatest things ever; the magazine is completely wacky.

Krag action, magazine open, bolt closed

The Krag magazine runs horizontally under the action. It feeds in to the action on the left side and the magazine is loaded from the right side. To load it, you open the door on the right side that also retracts the magazine follower and dump in a handfull of cartridges and snap the door shut. It’s like a cartoon of how a complex machine is supposed to work; open the door, drop in a large number of improbable items, close the door, ?????, stuff comes out of the other end of the machine! All of those vertical magazines on all of those other bolt actions may be cheaper to manufacture and easier to load with stripper clips, but that will never be this cool. Never.

Krag action, magazine closed, bolt open

I won’t explain why I find all of this mechanical intricacy so compelling. If you don’t get that, you just don’t. These things are just beautiful to me. I will, on the other hand talk a little about why all of this stuff happens in the eighteen nineties.

Several factors come in to play at once: There was lots of money around to make these things; the nineties were like the nineties, there was an economic boom not unlike the dot com boom. Smokeless powder was a new technology that allowed/required redesign of firearms to take advantage of its properties. One of the important properties of smokeless powder was that it did not foul the firearm with combustion products the way black powder did; this allowed for much more complex mechanisms to work without being jammed by soot. This was also before Henry Ford (who gets too much credit, but everyone knows who I’m talking about). Designing for ease of manufacture without the use of expensive hand fitting was in its infancy; John Browning had just designed the 1894 Winchester, which was a brilliant simplification of the more complex 1892 Winchester. Minimizing parts count and machining procedures would not come to dominate industry for several years.

All of these factors contributed to a moment when designers went wild with complexity and a manufacturing style that could only be called decadent. Dozens of parts were fitted by hand like those of fine watches. Levers and buttons and pivots and ratchets and latches ruled the day. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the best example I can give of this design style. If that car had been equipped with a rifle, it would have been a Krag.

The Krag was quickly replaced in 1903 with the Springfield, a Mauser style vertical magazine bolt rifle. The 1897 Winchester was replaced in 1912 by the Model 12, although the 97 would continue being made for many years. Both of these replacements are the beginning of firearms technology we readily recognize as modern.

I appreciate the elegance of more minimal design. I appreciate design that maximizes production and reliability and reduces the price of technology and high quality goods for the largest possible number of people. Those are the factors that have ruled manufacturing to a greater and greater extent over the last hundred years. I appreciate how much those priorities have improved the quality of a great many people’s lives. On the other hand, given unlimited resources and no priority other than my own pleasure, I would design things like these guns.

I remember them

Marlene — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:02:28 +0000

It’s Transgender Day of Remembrance. Today we remember those lost in the last year to transphobic violence.

I refuse to remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

I have hands and mind and the will. If need be, I have guns and knives and boots and bricks and I know where to get torches and pitchforks. All of these things I have are for you, because I refuse to remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

You are quiet and I have not heard enough from you lately. I hope you are ok. Are they mistreating you? Are you mistreating yourself? I have a comfortable couch and quiet conversation and a glass of brandy and a bowl of soup and a loud laugh. These things too are all for you, because. I insist.

I spend the time I can surrounded by boxes full of other people’s memories. I am nearly a professional rememberer. Whether you slip quietly away, surrounded by those who love you, or you fall in the fight against those who would see you suffer, I will collect the box of things that others can remember you by. I am not afraid to remember you, but I will not remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

ETA: The specific mention of soup is a shout-out to a brilliant piece by a brilliant friend. I’ve added a link so that everyone knows the reference, because it is such a good one.

Breakup Announcement!

Marlene — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:14:08 +0000

That’s it! I’m a little heartbroken, but I’ll get over it. I’m dumping my boyfriend, Feminist Ryan Gosling. I was completely head-over-heels, but then I discovered that he’s a patronizing weasel.

My people are not a badge of political coolness for you, Feminist Ryan Gosling. I’m very disappointed in you.

I’m a Romantic

Marlene — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 03:10:10 +0000

I can’t help it. I have ideas about how the world should be. I have ideas about how people should be with each other. Sometimes I’m self-indulgently nostalgic for the present.

Are there any two words sweeter than General Strike?

SHOE!

Marlene — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 03:45:28 +0000

I was doing some archive stuff today. I found a pair of shoes that I was completely astounded by. Words don’t do them justice, but in case you aren’t believing your eyes (or are vision impaired), they are fairly simple pumps with short pointy toes of the nineteen fifties variety. What’s special about them is that they don’t have heels! There is a steel shank that curves away from the sole where the sole meets the ground, providing a little platform to extend the center of support back about two thirds of the way to where a heel would touch the ground. They look like regular heels without the heel. They are very very worn. I expect that their previous owner (a 1950s NYC pro-domme) just could not give up wearing them. These shoes certainly deserve a little restoration. If you know someone who does shoe repair of an archival/restoration sort, please let me know.

I love my work!

Cookies!

Marlene — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:14:07 +0000

In what seems to be a new trend in my writing, another quick throwaway in which I barely even say what I’m saying.

I’m gonna be eating Girl Scout cookies this year. Even if they aren’t made from real Girl Scouts.