Month: April 2020

Poem – Darwin Award

Why do I hate it when you say ‘darwin award’?

because you are trying to protect yourself from something by saying it hurts dumb people, so it can’t hurt me
but it can

because Darwinism isn’t about what you think it is about
because Darwin isn’t about what you think he is
because my relationship to the history of science
and to the history of faux science
runs deep, and the meaning of your statement
expands in my mind
way beyond what you mean
and it fills me with despair

you wish death on people
you relish the idea of a deserved death
inside a mad world
where death comes to the people helping us
to the people helping them

also
Social Darwinism is steeped in a history of rich American racism
a racism that is reflected in the deaths in my city
why is this killing black people?
because the society we live in doesn’t believe black lives matter
I don’t know how to navigate
when you say
‘Darwinism’ what I hear is
I don’t understand history
I don’t understand science
I’m scared
I’m angry
I want to feel in control of the uncontrollable

and to me
it means you are just as bad as the people you wish harm on
and I don’t know how to explain
I am too interested in the history of science
I am steeped in pop science and faux science of the past
I can’t explain to you that
this isn’t what Darwin would have wanted
that this isn’t how evolution works
this isn’t about evolution, or Darwin or Social Darwinism

you don’t know about the racist history of science
the intersections of eugenics and meaning-making

every time I read your comments of
– Let Darwinism take them out
– Give them a Darwin award
I hear an echo of a history of racism and hatred that I can’t convey
I don’t know how to explain
it’s a history deep and old
and it isn’t about science
and it is about hatred and division
and

please stop it
please don’t say it anymore
I don’t want to read it
every time I do
I revisit a history you don’t care about
and I can’t stop you

you say ‘natural selection’
with a sneer
like it will protect you
like it will save you
and that isn’t how it works
you’re looking at death
and making it the other

Originally posted on facebook
https://www.facebook.com/lena.marvin/posts/10101239143079644

Poem – Snooze You

the facebook snooze function saves friendships
if you don’t like what I’m saying now
try snoozing me
disappear my posts for 30 days
and after that time
I’ll likely be the same, but maybe you’ll have grown
snooze me
snooze friends
snooze family
snooze frienimes
snooze strangers
snooze at will (and don’t forget to snooze Will)
happy snoozing

https://www.facebook.com/help/538433456491590

in this time of social distancing
don’t neglect your mind and your eyes
virtual distance is a valid choice

snooze me once, shame on me, snooze me twice
consider unfriending

game on

I played Ticket to Ride (the app of the boardgame) on Monday with my friend Joseph. The game has a basically unusable chat feature and while I enjoyed the game it highlighted what I was missing (hanging out with my friend) more than it scratched my itch to game. It did reignite my desire to game.

Last night, I played Die Crew on weird unwieldy software mostly in German (http://brettspielwelt.de/Community/Download/) remotely with friends in both Madison Wisconsin and New York City. We paired the software with Google Hangouts for voice and face viewing. The game is a cooperative trick taking card game with a space theme. I like it! And I look forward to playing it more.

Today I played two player Tsuro, which is a wildly different game at two player. With more players (it plays up to 8 beautifully) and it is light but feels much more like chance than strategy. Two player gives room for deeper strategy. I played this with card board bits face to face with my husband creature and it was wonderful.

This evening we began playing a legacy game which we bought back in 2018 after Joseph described it with such glowing praise that I bought it before the conversation was finished.

Pandemic Legacy

How did the first game go? Well we (ET, Rose and I) messed up and didn’t actually play the first legacy game, we just played normal pandemic. We won! Winning was wonderful. I look forward to playing more.

Is it in bad taste to play pandemic during a pandemic?

Holy gnomes

These appeared on my porch. I think they are local, but they may be invasive?

I don’t know what to do if they are a breeding pair? I’m worried about exponential gnomes.

But mostly I feel loved and seen and understood. And deeply deeply curious as to the origin story.

Mystery gnomes!

Last night I cried but today my hair looks great

I cried real hard. Snot escaping at velocity hard. I want to see my friends, I want to go out, I want to be able to focus. I feel guilty about how good I have it. I hate that I feel like I’m buying my safety from a supply chain that doesn’t support the people doing the hard work, I’m meaning Amazon and instacart but also parcel delivery folk and grocery store employees.

Today is going better. The stuff getting to me is still getting to me, but crying loosened something in my heart and I feel better for it.

My dad’s shrinks office called and he can have a telepresence meeting with him. This is good news as now would not be a good time for him to be manic (which is how he got a shrink).

All my previous new hair pictures were from before I re-did my hair dye. Which I did because I said I would on this blog.

I really like that on camera my hair looks pretty much like it used to, but in person, whoa, punk rock.