Space-Born Jellyfish Hate Life on Earth

I've been feeling very linkspammy these days, haven't I?

I love this idea:

From an article on re-reading Xanth (and why you probably shouldn't).

If you found the article, like I did, from the Radish Reviews Friday linkspam page, you probably also found the set of re-titled books from some dude's childhood which I totally loved when he was retitling Dragonflight as "Mary Sue Gets a Dragon," but then I got to "Child Porn is Totally Acceptable in Some Cultures," and he picked the cover of Dragon on a Pedastal and NO NO NO NO

I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

You can eviscerate all the Xanth books you like, as long as by "all" you mean "not Dragon on a Pedestal," because I still have that book memorized.  And yeah I know it's just as skeezy as all the rest with the misogyny and rape threats because it is Piers Anthony but YOU CAN'T HAVE THAT BOOK.  There are thirty-seven other books you can have.  This one is MINE.

So, um, onward with the linking.  How about this lovely, sad, funny short on The Toast?

Or this much longer narrative about biracial cultural identity, especially this bit—

I continued showing off my Indian jewelry and making grand, historic claims about Hinduism as if the culture were my own. I think it even got worse after the trip, given that now I had been to the “homeland” and convinced my friends I could speak with even more authority. But that summer I went to a new camp, and met a girl whose father was vaguely Buddhist and who named his baby son Jai, the male version of my name. She was so excited to find me, and insisted that after camp she would bring her dad into New York and we’d all go get Indian food. 

 I assumed this wouldn’t happen, but a few months later I found myself in one of the basement Indian restaurants on 6th Street, trying to make recommendations off the menu. The restaurant was one I chose, at random, but asserted was the best. I knew samosas, and naan, but the curries all seemed the same to me. My friend, airy blonde curls popping out of her ponytail, said I would definitely know what was best. I looked up at her dad, who leaned down to me and whispered “try the korma, I think you’d like it.” The jig was up.

—because holy shit that sounds like me.

There are a lot of other things worth reading on the Radish Review page.  A piece about how the technology of film was developed for white people, and thus ill-suited for photographing other skin tones.  Because Technology is Not Value-Neutral.  Also an article that mostly exists so it can be titled Space-Born Jellyfish Hate Life On Earth.  I mention it here so that I can title my post that, too.  It's the gift that keeps on giving.  But the list exists already, so there's not much point in replicating it, link for link, here.

Also, since I spent so much time recently redesigning my website, and then a blog I read also went through a redesign, it makes me want to redo this.  Except any of the blogger templates would just look like variants of blogger templates and I like this best out of my options here.  I could move my blog to my official site but that's a terrible idea and will never happen.  I could either try to import this all over to WordPress or start a new one or something there, which gives me access to better templates.  Except I think that what I want is to make this look like a magazine and not a blog except it IS a blog and not a magazine and moving addresses is awkward for everyone and why would I bother?

But they're so pretty!

There's a pretty good chance that I'm going to be posting a link to a new blog soon...