Xismosa Xit

Hello all,

Happy Fall! Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the two wolves inside me. They’re girlfriends.

Is this from cinematic masterpiece What We Do In The Shadows (2014) dir. Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, featuring Rhys Darby eight years before his beautiful role in Our Flag Means Death (2022)? Who’s to say.

Prose of the Week

Decolonizing My Body In A Colonizing Religion (updated link)

I was raised Episcopalian. I am grateful that this denomination tends to be more liberal than others, of course to varying degrees. I was always on the radical side, even in church politics. For instance, I believe that people don’t have to be baptized to receive the Eucharist, which for many Christians defeats the whole purpose of baptism. People should get to do what they want, as long as they are not hurting themselves or others (without consent). This piece encapsulates my thoughts on being Christian during my junior year of college (already 5 years ago. Shit.). I was trying to separate Christianity as it is from what Jesus preached. To be clear, I still maintain respect for brown Jesus. None of that white Jesus bullshit.

Gospel of Love

Currently, I have a difficult time defending Christianity, even when separating it from Jesus. I cannot ignore ALL of the colonization done in the name of bringing the Christian religion to “uncivilized” peoples across the world. This story explores the reality of being someplace that our ancestors never expected us to be, but still belonging to where you were raised, but still living on Indigenous land. You can read about rematriating land and Indigenous women’s stories here.

Rabbitholes

Things I’ve learned, laughed about, and/or obsessed over

• Workplace Dystopias Aren’t Just Fiction, They’re Here
• Should I start a union? I should start a union. If this is used as evidence against me in a court of law, this is a joke.
• FINALLY A LORE OLYMPIS PLAYLIST (season 1 AND season 2) instead of (allegedly) downloading them from YouTube to iTunes to Spotify 
• Did you know that if you wanted to live off of 300K per year (a comfortable amount) for 150 years, you would need $45 million. This would, of course, last less than 150 years because of costs upfront (like buying a house, which can be more than $300k) and inflation, but would still be livable for a decent time. $45 million IS a lot of money. More than any of us could imagine. AND YET. Beyoncé’s net worth is at least $450 million. I would like one TENTH of her net worth. The $45 million that I would like is 4.5% of one Billion. 4.5% of 1,000,000,000. Elon Musk (fuck Elon Musk), the current richest person in the world, has a net worth of $241 Billion. I would like 0.018% of what Elon Musk has right now for LIFE. 5,555 of us (actual people) could be set up for life with what Elon Musk has right now. Is Elon Musk worth the lives 5,555 people? I don’t say labor, I do intend lives, because we are more than our labor. We deserve to be comfortable in life. That’s what technology was supposed to be for us – a way for us to reduce human labor. Yet, we have been exploited by the rich to only work MORE and be MORE productive. And produce more. For what? So others can be comfortable, not everyone. In the US, the top 1% makes 26.3 times more than the bottom 99% per capita. There are no ethical billionaires.

• Maintenance phase podcast, to combat weight loss and wellness myths and to argue that fat people are people.
• Ultramini cars
• Olivia Rodrigo’s album SOUR. Am I currently a 17-year-old who’s been broken up with and found out that two weeks later her ex started dating someone else he specifically told her not to worry about? No. Do I have that 17-year-old deserved angst inside me? Yes.

Book Búho

What I’ve been reading/listening to bc audiobooks let me do both. Yes, comics count.

• The Library Of The Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith – it’s queer, it has interesting ideas about the importance of stories and human potential, but the ending is unsatisfying. It leaves on some kind of cliffhanger for the next book, but there are two compelling characters that may have “died” and I can find NOTHING about them coming back, which makes me not want to read the next one.
• Related content: (spoiler alert for Gideon the Ninth/The Locked Tomb series) Me finishing Gideon the Ninth and IMMEDIATELY researching whether Gideon would be back, not caring if I spoiled the next book for myself because I was so desperate to see lesbian Jesus again.  

Personal Chisme

chisme = gossip

• an annoyingly rigorous sleep schedule. I’m trying to get up at 7am everyday, no matter what time I go to bed because apparently it’s “healthy”

• Car buying. Everything capitalistic confuses me. BUT we have a NEW-TO-US CAAAAAR 
• A Tesla I parked next to sensed that I was a peasant and it started tracking me

• The exact shade of purple I want my hair to be

• Little snail crossing

The Void Shouts Back

If you would like to respond but don’t know what to say, answer the question below. If you don’t want to, just respond with keysmashing or send me a hug with your thoughts. If you don’t want to do that either, that’s okay too.

• Do you have a dream product? Like a dream car? There might not be ethical consumption under capitalism, but I think it’s okay to imagine having nice things.

Thank you for coming along on my shouldn’t-be-revolutionary-but-unfortunately-are rants. If you’d like to see more, please visit Colochos de Flores! Hopefully you look at my stickers and just think they’re neat.

Abrazos and/or high fives,

Ariana