I was – typically – late to the party, the Wordle party. Irritated by the number of my friends who were gleefully posting their results on a daily basis (about as obnoxious as the ones who posted their daily meal choices), I had read about this idiotic game, and was sure it was boring, stupid, and a huge waste of time. At the same time, I was playing the highly annoying, regularly maddening NYT’s game Connections, and regularly trying to complete crosswords in several different magazines, with some success.
Wordle. Meh. Created by a fellow for his game-loving wife (who was sick or something? during Covid or something?), and sold to the NYT for a huge amount of money, I finally got into it about four months ago and it has ruined, completely and utterly ruined my life. LOL. Not really but it did ruin – mildly, admittedly – my day yesterday. Lemme ‘splain it to you.
First, and typically for me, I have to play ‘a pure game’ of Wordle, which means I don’t look at the consonant or vowel the NYT gives players on a daily basis because that’s a kind of cheating in my asshole brain. This is an aspect of my style of thinking that actually has harmed me in life, harmed me, but given my age, I doubt there’s much hope of changing it. None of that Moj-determined, completely random and meaningless to anyone else definition of ‘cheating’, which any sane person would designate as being a part of the game but noooooo, not I. Can’t do it.
Asshole! Human!
The only time I have looked at the vowel-consonant clue was when I was trying to figure out how the game was played, on the 2nd or 3rd day. This is because I am also incapable of following a tutorial or reading the rules, which is another idiotic aspect of my thinking. Read the manual? Huh? No way. If I can’t figure this out on the fly, then it’s not worth figuring out, but I’ll get there, you patronizing freaks! This resistance to reading he instructions, is also, I know, I admit, not very bright of me – and has led to numerous moments of frustration, especially in regard to car nonsense, but here we are and there it is. C’est moi.
Second, and back to WORDLE, I was at 100% until yesterday, when overthinking the stupid, time wasting game (overthinking is yet another asshole aspect of my personality and temperament), I fcked it up for the very first and only time in the 4+ months of playing the damnable game.
Ouch. It almost, almost ruined my day. Okay it kinda did ruin it, especially when, after a string of 15 wins, I also lost at Connections. Double whammy. But there was relief too. I can never, ever get back to 100% in Wordle. And that’s okay. I can exhale. I am imperfect. We knew that already, but it’s always good to have it reconfirmed.
Dammit. It’s NOT okay!!! LOLOLOLOL. Of course it is.
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! Stupid games. Why did I ever start? Because they’re good for your aging brain, Moj, that’s why. Meh.
I posted a comment – (“no i.d. for the human in the picture?”) – on a photo of Bridget Bardot on a Fakebook page celebrating cinema of which I am a follower (I love love love love movies!). The photo caption identified the photographer, not Ms. Bardot herself, and then this – see below – happened.
It has’t happened for a long time but once upon a time it was a regular feature (election era 2016, and 2020 but other times as well) of existing as a female on the inter-web, especially when expressing an opinion that differs from the male respondent in question.
Generic White male (‘He/Him’) commented in response, “The name of the actor is literally like the least important thing in any movie. The director is the artist. They’re furniture.” (*They’re meaning actors)
As a former actor, I took and take exception to that, and said so. “thanks for sharing your opinion – which is dead wrong. theatre & film are deeply collaborative arts, requiring acting, directing, writing, cinematography, costume, set & sound designers, musical score & more – all of these artists matter. for good measure, here are a few roles that are unthinkable being played by anyone else – Patton, Forrest Gump, Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund, Scarlett O’Hara, Alonzo Harris, Regina Giddens, Rhett Butler, Catherine Sloper, Diana Christiansen, J.J. Sefton, Oda Mae Brown, Vito Corleone, Jim Stark, George Bailey, Virgil Tibbs, Lisa Fremont, Sargent York, Jack Torrance – I could literally go on and on and on.”
To which generic white male responded, “they would’ve been slightly different roles if they were played by somebody else, sure. For that matter, if the shade of paint was different, the atmosphere in a movie would not look the same. Like I said, furniture. One couch is not necessarily perfectly interchangeable with another. They aren’t subjects, they’re objects.” (& by the way, imo, referring to humans in any profession as objects is objectionable)
And then, after a whole, interminable hour had passed, he again commented, “I thought that would be a fun argument but I guess you’re done.”
I responded, “um, are you kidding? I have a life and it doesn’t run on Christian Walters time. Actors – & I was one, as well as being a director & scriptwriter currently – aren’t furniture. If you love films (which I now doubt) you would acknowledge the collaborative process, particularly between say a Scorcese & a DeNiro or others of his regular cast of players. Wm Wyler is another example of a director who had muses, as was Cukor. Among many others.”
Him: “yeah all my cover photos are actually from films because it’s a way to show how much I hate movies.”
Me: “how odd – I’m not familiar w your cover photos. Navel gazer much?”
Him: “you aren’t familiar with me at all, but you made an assumption about whether I like movies. You seem to be a deeply unpleasant person. Have fun with that.”
And then generic white man on the internet wrote this: “oh, you’re a girl, that’s good. At least there’s a decent chance you’ll get r*ped.”
Ah. Such a gent. And not, sadly, untypical of how male humans behave on the web.
Me: “Actually I have been, as a child. Are you happy now? History of Cinema – can we please ban this a$$-$hat from this community?”
And then I took a screenshot, because in the age of incivility and Orange Menace, it’s important to ALWAYS KEEP THE RECEIPTS. He, of course, after waiting a good hour, deleted it but too late, asshole. Reported to the page and FB, sent to his partner as well, because why not, and here we are. Expressing opinions is what I do, in life and in the World Wide Web-a-nightmare.
But he wasn’t done – sending me this message (screen shot) which landed in my spam folder. I will be forwarding it to his place of employment because a few consequences beyond getting restricted by FB might teach Christian a lesson. Might. Staying silent when I have a POV is not an option, even if it opens the door to this kind of stupidity and hate.
*How the hell did I miss this story? I know, I know – I say all the time that Americans are insular, navel gazing, spoiled babies – including me, myself and I – but again, how the hell did I miss this one? And the Netflix documentary?! Wow. This article is from the Guardian, and whether it was justice or not, decide for yourselves, yet as a woman with a hit list I only wish I had the skills to execute upon, I have to say, you go, girls. Women. Sheroes.As RBG said, ‘When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes a duty.’ This is more than resistance, this is revenge, and yes, in a world that is stupid, corrupt, cruel and unfair, revenge can be a form of justice.
For years, police claimed a 2004 killing was due to a feud. Now (*actually 2022) a documentary digs deeper into why women from a Nagpur slum murdered a rapist on a courtroom floor.
The doors and windows of all the tin shacks in Kasturba Nagar slum in Nagpur, were tightly shut, the streets eerily empty. An overcast sky threatened rain. Ashu Saxena, a social activist, was going from house to house, urging people to come out and talk to her. But the doors remained closed.
Three days before, on 13 August 2004, about 200 women from the slum had killed a man on the marble floor of a district court room in the central Indian city. As police and court officials fled, witnesses say that women across Kasturba Nagar who had marched to the court carrying stones, kitchen knives and chilli powder, took part in the killing of Akku Yadav, a 32-year-old gangster. He was stabbed about 70 times and his ears and penis sliced off.
For years, Indian police claimed the killing was the result of a criminal feud but a new documentary series (*2022) on the murder has India looking more closely at a dramatic episode of vigilante justice that few remember, but which touched on important themes of caste, violence against women and public corruption.
Saxena recalls how difficult it was to get people to talk to the fact-finding mission set up by civil society organisations in the days after Yadav’s death, as they knocked on doors and assured people that no one was in danger of arrest. “I could hear women sobbing inside,” says Saxena. Yadav, born Bharat Kalicharan, was a petty thief who had graduated to bigger crimes, terrorising Kasturba Nagar, on the edge of the city of Nagpur, in Maharashtra, from the 1990s until his death. An extortionist, killer and rapist, he dragged women out of their houses and assaulted or raped them. He barged into homes and gang-raped women with his associates. He didn’t spare children or pregnant women.
Activist Bhaganbai Meshram recalls one brutal attack on a friend’s pregnant daughter. “That night, Akku and his associates gang-raped the seven-month pregnant woman. She [the woman’s mother] came to me carrying her unconscious daughter and asked for help. I took her daughter to the hospital and admitted her. Later, I tried to convince the mother to make a police report. I advised her to act to prevent other women from suffering the same fate. But she was terrified and refused.” When one woman did stand up and made a complaint to police, Yadav threatened her with acid, finally convincing others in the slum that enough was enough. With an angry mob forming outside his door, police took Yadav into custody. When people heard he would probably get bail at a hearing in Nagpur district court, there was an outcry. Women from the slum, and allegedly some men, stabbed him to death in the courtroom as the overwhelmed police couldn’t save him.
In October of 2022, Netflix released the documentary series Indian Predator: Murder in a Courtroom. Through interviews with people in Kasturba Nagar, the series shows how Yadav raped and killed women – mainly lower-caste Dalits – with impunity.
The director, Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni, says making the documentary was challenging. Reconstructing the events, from Yadav’s initiation as a criminal to his murder, was complex and riddled with inconsistencies. He couldn’t convince Yadav’s family to speak in front of the camera.
Also, there is the theory that Yadav was murdered by a rival gang using a mob of women as a cover because, as one man said, few could believe women’s “hands that cut the vegetables” could kill.
Gender researcher Cynthia Stephen says there was a reluctance to admit that women from a marginalised community would rebel to deliver a justice the system denied them. “It was a painful lesson, which they [the state] don’t want to publicise too much.”
But a report by the fact-finding team states the murder was “neither the result of caste conflict nor a gang war nor the handiwork of any extremist political organisation”.
For many Indians, the new series is the first they have heard of the case – widely covered at the time in international media. One review commends the documentary for emphasising “the ordinariness of Kasturba Nagar’s people, thereby making it clear that this is not a ‘heroic narrative’”.
Other reviews have praised the avoidance of violence in the re-enactments and for giving voice to survivors. The series has also been lauded for depicting the stark reality of being a slum dweller in India, lacking access to civil liberties many take for granted.
But the dominant reaction from viewers has been shock at the brutality of Yadav’s crimes, which went unpunished by the authorities.
Poorvi Priya, a research associate for the series, says that, for many, the case had faded from memory.
“We came across so many reports during our research,” she says. “I think social media now shapes our collective memory. And because this incident happened before social media, people don’t remember it. It is still referred to in academia when people talk about vigilante justice,” says Priya.
Nidhi Salian, head of research for the series, suggests the case was overshadowed by the execution of a rapist on death row in Kolkata on 14 August 2004. “There was a huge media buildup to that execution. It is possible that this incident got buried in that frenzy.” Caste also plays a role in deciding which news gets more attention, says Sowjanya Tamalapakula, assistant professor at the School of Gender Studies, Tata Institute, in Hyderabad. She says rape of Dalit women is seen as part of normative society. While the rape of an upper-caste woman is an aberration. “There is shock value when the woman is Hindu and of upper caste. The news plays an important role in constructing middle-class and upper-caste women as pure victims. There is this essential [idea of] sexual purity that comes with caste. And these are unconscious processes [of casting lower-class Dalit women as sexually impure] as we are shaped by the society we live in.” Almost two decades on, survivors are yet to come to terms with the events surrounding Yadav’s death.
“There is fear, mistrust and resistance to looking back at those times and reliving those memories. Gaining the trust of Kasturba Nagar’s women was not easy. It took six months to convince them to talk to us,” says Kulkarni. “Some rape survivors told us they wanted to talk about their experiences but couldn’t because now they have grownup kids, daughters-in-law and sons-in-law,” he adds. Meena Gajbhiye, 53, lived through Yadav’s reign of terror. She says she always wanted the world to know what the women had endured. “I hope the documentary will start a conversation around the incident, about how no politicians, police or anyone else helped us. “Even now, when I tell someone I am from Kasturba Nagar, they do a double-take. I tell them we are not killers, and they have no idea what the women tolerated before they took this drastic step.” In 2014, the court acquitted 18 accused of Yadav’s murder. According to the judge, the eyewitnesses’ testimonies were unreliable, the prosecution failed to corroborate accusations, and there were many lapses in the initial investigation.
The judgment noted that the police did not seize crucial evidence immediately after the crime; and news outlets published pictures of the accused before an identification parade. Additionally, the autopsy revealed Yadav had alcohol in his system, which implied he was not being treated as a criminal in his police cell. It accused the local police of being in cahoots with Yadav and recommended action against individual officers. It is not clear if any such action was taken. People from Kasturba Nagar were treated with frosty suspicion in Nagpur after Yadav’s murder, some even lost their jobs as no one wanted to be associated with the slum dwellers. “They were traumatised financially and emotionally. It is something they have to live with. It’s not over yet,” says Kulkarni.
*The other day I ran into a local acquaintance while I was out with Diego. He’s a dog person, too; good with my big boy. He mentioned that he’d just met Shirley’s big Newfie, who I must’ve met as well, ‘what a giant of a dog!‘ – except I haven’t met the dog, or spoken to Shirley in years, which I didn’t say. He was out on his bike; I was out with my mini-pony; let’s notgo there. In rural communities, close friendships are public knowledge, like acknowledged teams in the rural landscape; the end of same not as much. So yes, I didn’t get into it, but…here we go.
Friends come, friends go. Often it’s as simple as they move to another state, or country. Sometimes they show their true or different colors in a friendship ending fashion, causing a hurt or shock so deep that the connection is severed. Sometimes, friends die, leaving a gaping hole.
There is also a subset of humans who are friends when you are providing them with a service of sorts. In my case, this was my being useful to their children. Once that time was at an end, so too was the friendship, although in general this wasn’t immediately apparent; there are graduation gifts to buy, after all – but most seem to cease friendly-ing shortly after the kid in question is off to college or not long after. Each case is, of course, different. And, when it comes to friendship, each to their own. And how.
I am ashamed to admit it, but I stayed friends with Shirley even after she told me what she did to her brothers, because we had a lot in common, and had been close friends for a long time, a decade at least. Some breaches take time. The relationship – friendly acquaintance to close confidantes – solidified over mutual stress: Shirley placed her aunt in the local nursing home the same month I settled my mother there. We did this with little familial help or support, and oh boy did we bond over that outrage! The thing was, my outrage faded over time; it had to, for the sake of my own mental and physical health.
Still, Shirley helped me remove old carpeting in the house I was renovating. I helped Shirley clear out and clean her aunt’s home. Shirley’s son played tennis; I coached the team. Shirley was a college educated ex-cheerleader born locally; so was I. Ra Ra Ra! Shirley’s husband was and is named Fred; I have a brother named Fred. Both Fred’s were very respectable local businessmen, solid citizens, and – let’s be honest – total stuffed shirts who had inherited or been given their successful small town enterprises. Rural nepo babies, bay-bee.
Yet there were differences between us, too. Shirley was older than I was by a handful of years, what I call a true Boomer, with my younger self a member of the overlooked chem-trail generation, the Obama gen. Also, Shirley didn’t like her brother’s wife, Sandy, and was open about it. I was deliberately positive or positively neutral about my sister-in-law because if brother Fred is happy, fine by me. Plus, my brother’s choice of co-captain sure runs a tight ship (their spotless home, and well-considered honey-do lists), which I respect. Mostly.
When we became close, Shirley’s mom was already gone, a victim of cancer, and her aunt died of cancer just one month after moving into the long-term care facility; my mom lingered there for four long years, and my dad died almost a decade before Shirley’s pop, who was also, ultimately, placed in the local nursing home, suffering from dementia.
Once her son was out of high school – no more tennis or drama club – things did seem to cool between us a bit. But I was busy and my life was changing, too, so – let it go, Moj. But there also came a point – a crack in the facade – when I told Shirley I couldn’t hear any more about her awful, terrible, horrible brothers, and that witch, Sandy. I liked her brother, the local one, and had nothing against the one who lived in Oregon who of course wasn’t as able to help her out, caring for their dad. I liked Sandy, too – still do.
This request, that she stop chewing my ears off trashing various family members (I did not use the word chew), did not go over well. Oops, and c’est la vie, but my ears literally, actually hurt. I’d started holding the phone away from my head while she went on and on and on and on about these terrible men, her father’s sons.
The real break, however, came after she called one day to ask my opinion on changing her dad’s will. He had been in the nursing home, where she visited him daily for his entire, years-long, residence (did I mention her impressive martyr complex?) for over a year by that point. While she was unable to entirely disinherit her brothers, she explained, she was able to alter the will to deny them access to most of the monies and property. What did I think of that? I told her I thought it was a terrible idea, unethical and improper, and that, having done it, she could never go back. – In doing this, Shirley, you would be throwing any chance of ever healing the breach with your brothers down the toilet. Is that really what you want?
I explained I had an opportunity to get sole ownership of my parents’ house – but had not done so because to do that to my siblings would be wrong, just plain wrong, especially as the parent who wanted to do it – give me their house – was my mom, who like Shirley’s dad was suffering from dementia. Also, Shirley, any attorney who would help you do this, is doing something illegal, in my view (I am not an attorney).
Well, she said, I’ve already done it. – Oh! Oh!? Then why did you ask me my opinion? – I just wanted to know what you thought. That’s all. – Well, Shirley, I think it’s shitty. – Fine. But they deserve nothing. I’ve done all the work. – But it’s his will, your dad’s, and he cannot change it in his current state, Shirley, it’s simply wrong! – I’m getting another call. I have to go.
She hung up.
We limped along for a few months after that, but I knew the friendship would never recover. I didn’t want it to. I also told her brothers and Sandy what she had done, after her father’s death. Maybe it was too late for them to make any changes, to call her out legally or otherwise, but running into all of them in our rural town – the west coast brother here for a class reunion – it felt necessary to come clean.
Was I angry at my siblings for not doing more to support my parents as they made their way down the exit ramp? Yes, I was. And, I did my personal best for the ‘rents, because I wanted to feel good about myself ten and twenty years down the line – which I do. My siblings consciences, however, are their own business, but disinheriting them because I did all the work, work that occurred over a decade and then some? Never. Never.
Sometimes friends show their true colors, and those colors are ugly. So, no – I’m not friends with Shirley anymore.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.
Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Kansas, in 1917, and raised in Chicago. She was the author of more than twenty books of poetry, including Annie Allen (Harper, 1949), for which she received the Pulitzer Prize. She also wrote and edited numerous other books. In 1985, she was the first black woman appointed as ‘consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress’, a post now known as Poet Laureate. She also received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Frost Medal, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Foundation. Brooks lived in Chicago until her death on December 3, 2000.
How do we keep our young people looking forward, and – most of all – alive?It feels right now as if we – adults – are failing them terribly, setting bad examples and abandoning what is good and right, including saving this beautiful planet for them. And what must trans-kids be feeling right now? Adolescence is hard enough without being targeted for what you are. It gets better. It really does. I thought about killing myself for decades, at times it was acute, at others simply a throbbing, ever-present bruise in my brain and heart. It amazes me I ever felt and thought that way, but I did; it was real and omnipresent, oppressive, heavy; my chest literally felt as though a gravestone had been placed upon it at birth. Eventually my hunger for life and a deep, abiding love for myself – whatever my challenges were – reasserted itself, beating the blues and the burdens of my childhood away. I am so grateful. Stay alive, I want to say to all those who struggle with suicidal thoughts, just stay alive one more day, one more week, breathe, let death wait. Let him wait.
