About today:

In 2008 (and please correct me if I'm letting nostalgia color things with a warmer palate than deserved), those of us on the left were proud not just because we won after 12 years of conservatism, not just because we proved that when your candidate is brilliant, erudite, and - y'know, cool - he could win an election even if his skin tone was brown, his hair tight and curly, his name dangerously Middle Eastern, and his opponent a beloved, universally admired hero of war (with, granted, conveniently horrific taste in running mates). 

No, we were most proud of Obama's victory because we believed it was a victory for America. For all Americans. Yes, we were too quick to dismiss some of his detractors as unable to see past his skin color and background (while this was true of some, the generalization backfired greatly). But even to them, we said: look, this is the one. This guy is here for you, too. You don't have to worry. He's one of us, and he's going to make you better off too. Everybody chill the fuck out. He's got this.

Nobody is saying this about the new guy. 

Today, it's "better run, Muslims. Get outta town, illegals." And to liberals, those "snowflakes," they have one word:

                                                       Or is that two?

The happy people are at their happiest when they're rubbing it in the faces of the losers. That's right, go cry, losers! You sad, pathetic - when will the right figure out how idiotic they sound when they use "snowflake" as a pejorative? Geez, conservative Twitter has more snowflakes than Fargo. They have 80-gallon drums of "liberal tears" too, and...ah, you know the details. You've seen them. The variations are limited, to say the least.

Shortly after the election, a conservative (but staunchly anti-Trump) friend of mine contacted his liberal friends personally. He told them he knew they were upset, but he didn't want us to worry - he truly believed everything would be all right. Before you get angry at him for not getting past his white male privilege, at least join me in appreciating his intent. He knew we were hurting, and he wanted to help, even if he didn't know how. Even those of us who are LGBTQ, African American, Latinx, disabled, or otherwise in the crosshairs of the new administration appreciated his attempt at being a friend.

Thing is, it didn't last. His patience wore thin. He started lashing out at those who bemoaned the Electoral College, who took to the streets in protest, who refused to ever accept the winner as "my president." He started painting us all in the same strokes as the most radical, hateful "liberal" he could find - if some jerk wrote that he wished the new guy would have a heart attack, we all wished it. That sort of thing. He started taking delight in posting deliberately provocative missives and responding "get over it" (and "get used to it") when we protested. In short, he, like nearly every conservative on social media, enjoyed our loss far more than his victory. 

And so it goes. Snowflakes. Liberal tears.

Granted, some people really do want this particular guy in charge. Sure, some peeled off when the campaign promises that pushed them to vote 'R' vanished like rice paper in a volcano, but many cannot wait for the new rules, whatever they may be. Another faction doesn't want the new guy to succeed, exactly - what they want is to tear the whole thing down (riots, Martial Law, the works), forcing us into a governmental do-over that omits key phrases like "all men are created equal" and the 19th Amendment. Their guy won, too.

Look in the bios of these folks, and you see the same thing. They "drink liberal tears." (Another one.) They can't wait to restore law and order. Watch out, liberals and gays oh wait that's redundant (haw haw!). There aren't many variations on this, so it gets boring quickly - the only game is to see who is willing to use full-on racial, homophobic, misogynist slurs, and who isn't. (They're all willing to use offensive memes.) You lose, losers. All lives matter, but not yours.

The spirit of 2008 is gone. These folks aren't the least bit interested in communicating that the country is better off for everyone, that the new guy has good ideas for all of us, that we'll be okay and everything will be all right. 

Maybe they're just being honest. Maybe they know that while they'll be all right, we certainly will not be. Which means they really did win. And man, did we ever lose. 

A friend wants to know how performers can "discriminate" against the inauguration and still expect the proverbial wedding cake baker to make a cake for two people with the same junk if they think that's an abomination.

First, yes, antidiscrimination laws do take away a freedom. It's a shitty little freedom, a vigorously poop-coated freedom. But it's a freedom nonetheless. And so they aren't passed lightly.

They are passed when there's a longstanding history of bigotry, of disenfranchisement, of suffering and discrimination vastly out of proportion to the "suffering" imposed by being forced to carry out your customary business for anybody with the dollars. We limit the freedom to refuse someone's custom only in certain very narrow circumstances.

That's good, right? You don't want any more government interference than necessary, right?

Now you may argue that the United States has a long and proud history of discrimination against racist, sexist, narcissistic, habitually lying sacks of human excrement which needs to be remedied. And I would argue that, sadly, you are wrong about the first four, all five are self-imposed and nothing has ever been denied to people in any of these categories. Nothing. Sadly. Ever. So what remedy would you make?

But even supposing you're right: starting Friday, we have one hell of an affirmative action program for human sacks of excrement. So there's that settled.

I have honestly never been that into my lashes - even now that there is a lash extension place on every block - but OMG - I started using LashBoost and I am officially OBSESSED!!  Hands down, my favorite thing - get yours here 

I'm resurrecting my account after a long hiatus. It looks like the community has grown so much over the last two years and I'm excited to connect with some new OPWs.

Interesting that the "inspiration" for today's post is the question, "What's your favorite country, other than your own?"  That's a tough question because countries have so many different beautiful things to offer.  The country I'm most connected to is Jamaica because that's where I do my research, which brings me to my next thought...

I am on research leave for the first time this semester.  This is a huge opportunity that rolls around once every 6 or 7 years based on merit. Truthfully, I'm a little burned out from working toward tenure in a contentious environment, trying to support and enrich my students, trying to maintain a research agenda without the time needed  as an ethnographer to truly conduct the kind of fieldwork I was able to while working on my dissertation research, and balancing family life, feeding myself, etc.

At the moment, I am technically still on January break and allowed myself time to do nothing guilt-free for the week after New Year. Now I'm trying to stave off the flood of thinking that leads me down the path of "you might squander this semester if you don't pay attention".

This is, in part, one of the reasons I'm rekindling my account.  It's a space of simplicity, whereas Facebook is a space of over-stimulation and Twitter is a space I only visit to witness users trolling The Donald. I think this might be a good space to think through and track life on research leave. To the other academics out there, this is my "low stakes writing assignment" where I can freely regroup and freely think outside of evaluative structure.  Here we go...

Goals for leave:

IRB

Revise and submit two conference papers as articles

Launch new research project by making contacts, preliminary interviews, sussing out who will be willing to participate and who might not be.

Based on the ease of the "launch" dig into deeper fieldwork or rethink strategy

... in response to Meryl Streep's gorgeous speech last night:

“We are going to have an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout for the inauguration, and there will be plenty of movie and entertainment stars,” Mr. Trump said. “All the dress shops are sold out in Washington. It’s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration.”

I can't wait until January 20th rolls around and nobody comes to his party (except maybe The Nuge). Maybe that's what it'll take to show this clown that no really dude, nobody likes you, and nobody wants to come to your party, no matter how many moon bounces and ice cream flavors you're gonna have.

With everyone's luck, there will be a horrible nor'easter hitting the whole DC area from the 19-21st, making that the reason in Donald's orange little head why people couldn't come.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinkin' about here in my folks' spare bedroom in north Jersey at 7:40am. Back to sleep.

So a topic keeps coming up with a boy I like (probably boyfriend? Mostly?) -- he keeps telling me things are lifestyle choices... like how I live (currently a little chaotic) and how I parent (possibly, same --but sorry, parenting a 15 year old girl is never not chaotic, to a degree, or you're a lying sack of poop; add in copatenting with a megaDick ex, and... yeah, chaos)...  

I don't intentionally choose chaos; I yearn for the zen kind of minimalist lifestyle that the whole KonMari lifestyle is all about.  But maybe I'm more of a hygge person. Definitely more that than minimalist. Thing is, life happens.  

Life is messy.  Finances are messy. Anxiety and depression are messy.  I think I'm kinda doing okay, all things considered. 

And yet! Right now what I want, really really want, is a more streamlined and simple existence.  I want a house organized how I like things. I want a healthy eating and moving lifestyle that has me two degrees more active than a sloth. I could totally be all over making some of that happen, sorting through twenty years of household shit and making some kind of sense of it all, purging shit like a good flu does...

so why why am I resisting?

Hello. Nice to be here. Have a cat photo: I introduce Mr. Pants, King of the dirty laundry bin.

Some things are new on One Post Wonder today:

1. Follow Fridays! This is very simple: on Friday, the "suggested topic" is always "who else should your friends follow on One Post Wonder?" and there's a little "Follow Friday" indicator. When posting, consider using the little-person icon, which is a handy way to mention someone in your post. It is my hope that this will help people who show up with just one or two connections and never really get "plugged in" beyond that. 
2. By popular request, the header bar now stays with you as you scroll, even on phones. But I am interested in feedback from folks who may have been happier the other way. Let's see how this goes.
3. Numbered lists (as you may be noticing).
4. Strikethrough (as you may be noticing).
5. The plaintext versions of important emails like account confirmation emails have working URLs in them. This is important to my fellow nerds people who for various valid reasons loathe HTML email, and possibly other corner cases.
6. When you paste a URL into your text and OPW makes a nice little presentation block out of it, the URL field gets populated right away.
7. The "bug report" icon is only available to logged-in users now. Which means no more spam for me to sort through. Which means I will pay better attention to your bug reports. w00t.

What would you like to see? What do you think would help the platform reach more people for the right reasons?

• 2 cups white flour
  
• ½ cup whole wheat flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ⅔ can coconut milk
• Italian seasoning to taste
• ¼ cup coarsely chopped walnuts (I just crush a handful of pre-shelled walnuts in my fist as I’m dropping them in)
• Enough almond milk

Mix the dry ingredients. Add the coconut milk, then enough almond milk to get to a slightly sticky but rollable consistency. Roll out with a rolling pin, not too thin, keep it maybe half an inch even. If there's leftover dough, you can roll it out again who am I kidding you ate it.

Use a small glass as a biscuit cutter, who has biscuit cutters?

Bake for 12 minutes at 350. Awesome as-is or with your spreadable fat of choice.

This recipe happens to be vegan. I would have put in an egg if I'd had one. Glad I didn't, I think they are perfect as-is.

They are on the salty side, but these are biscuits. Biscuits are not health food. They are snowy-day warm belly food.