wood hooks and bird bells

here in evanston where the air is damp and rich in the march months, and the smell of mcdonalds curls around warm gentle gusts of spring, we will for a fleeting moment catch a small bird frantically twitching its acorn head before rapidly penetrating a tree like a little drill, with an intensity that i would dare to call erotic if it not for the bestiality witch-hunt that the recent oscar win has spurred.

these birds are gorgeous and so potent with frenetic energy it can also give you a migraine if you're not careful. there is a boy (?) in my art class who wears camouflage baseball caps and glasses with the geriatric strap who reads and draws and talks incessantly about local birds, and he's more suited to writing about this than i am, but these Downy woodpeckers, as they are called, deserve a spotlight.

they are petite fellas who work a mile a minute. i've found that searching any term on eBay is a great way to discover surprising facets of your topic, objects in orbit of whatever you're searching bound by practical usage, aspects of your topic that you wouldn't find on wikipedia or a quick google search. ultimately you get a more intimate and personal understanding of your given topic. for example, i would never fully comprehend just how illegible governmental scripts could be were I to have simply wikipedia'd Ronald Reagan. instead, i found the 1981 inauguration invitation. 

did you know that gargoyle-like decoy owls are used to deter woodpeckers from your trees?

soggy art class all-american bird boy would never get the opportunity to buy this for $18 on ebay just by reading those silly books.

on amazon.com you can also find more psychedelic decoy owls for your conservative, silent-generation-era woodpeckers. 

SPEAKING OF POLITICS!!!!!!!

read bell hooks's criticism on potentially life-altering documentary Paris is Burning.

first of all, i should clarify that in case you've forgotten i'm an 18 yr old white girl in evanston.

so my stance here isn't particularly crucial to feminist discourse. i'm also a huge bell hooks fan.

however: this essay is Plain Silly as Fuck.

we already know she has some grandmotherly tendencies. but i mostly chalk those up to her fundamental opinion that any violence, or depiction of violence, is unproductive. but this dignified standard can reach some dangerously respectability-like requests, like for the oppressed to thoughtfully reject the media of the oppressor— in a nonviolent and measured, but also no-bullshit and constructive way.

but go after Paris is Burning?????? come on!!!!!!

for bell hooks to ask homeless black trans women with no proper education to construct their own "alternative femininity" that exists entirely on their own terms without any tethers to whiteness demonstrates that she's missing the point... these people are recycling and reclaiming the values they have been taught. they are not given any "alternative femininities" to expand upon— yes, it's a nightmare but american pop culture does in fact revolve around icons of whiteness. this group fights for their identity every day. to scorn a disenfranchised group for modeling themselves after this, yearning for this sense of glamour and power (however fallacious and destructive it may be) is silly. they've been robbed of their identity. they can't attend your new school lectures.

whatever ms. hooks. i still love you.