Five Star Friday's 199th Edition Is Brought to You By Denise Levertov

This week's Five Star Friday is brought to you by being alive meaningfully, sudden loss, a Roomba's revenge, unequal ethics, the truth about rape jokes, being gay in America, and Denise Levertov:


taken by Elsa Dorfman on Flagg St, Cambridge, MA (Own work)

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

     — Denise Levertov

Happy Friday!

"Cutlets" from Edenland:

People we love die. I'm going to die. Some of us are already dead. Quick, do something meaningful, to prove you're alive.

"Why I Will Never Be Asked To Blog For Roomba" from Not Going Postal:

First, my nose woke up enough to recognize the horrific smell in the living room. Then, I realized that what my bare foot was standing in was, in fact, unequivocably NOT a brownie.

Then, I turned on the light.

And there, I saw the revenge of the Roomba.

"If You Already Know What Today Is, You Might Want To Skip This Post" from Make It Stop!:

It was the closest I've felt to her in a very long time. That kind of love has to go somewhere. And so it's still here, in the people who loved her and the lives she changed, and I still feel it around me sometimes, just like I feel her voice in my ear, or her arm around my shoulder.

"Walmart Greeter Buys 6-Pack of Beer & Is Condemned" from Jane Devin:

My point is that morality arguments fall short when certain values are applied only to one class of people — in this case the poor. If we believe that privileges should be earned, then all people should be held equally accountable for earning them. If we’re going to damn the poor for their lack of contributions, then we should damn with equal vigor those wealthy people and corporations who go out of their way to contribute as little as possible. If we believe in the tenets of hard work and perseverance — if we are disgusted by laziness, a sense of entitlement, a lack of circumspect behavior, or a failing of personal responsibility — then these precepts should apply to all classes of people: rich, poor and in-between.

"A Parade of Two" by DidacticPirate at DadCentric:

As far as I can tell, absolutely no one cares about who Anderson Cooper might be sleeping with.

And yet actually being gay still means existing on the fringe of the larger collective. It means that when you go out in public, you wonder if people can tell something about you by the way you walk, talk, or dress. Hopefully you don’t care what people think. You shouldn’t. But you’re aware they might be thinking… something.

Warning: this website's title image is NSFW:
"A Woman Walks Into a Rape, Uh, Bar" from Fugitivus:

So, here is my challenge for those who want to tell rape jokes:

Ask every woman in your life if she has been sexually assaulted. Ask her to tell you her story. This means your mother, your sister, your girlfriend, your grandma.

Once you have heard all their stories, go watch a movie with a rape scene in it. One you didn’t mind before. One you thought people were overly offended by.

Now tell me a joke.

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Comments

[Helen]

Really great selection this week (as always!) I read all of them and they gave me lots to think about. Ta very much!

[vikki]

thanks, schmutzie! happy to be back, and to read these posts. and since the comments are closed, i just want to tell fugitivus what an amazing post she wrote--i wish it wasn't so true, or such a universal experience among women. beautifully done.