Right Now: June 15-19

Here's what I'm reading, listening to, and thinking on today/this week.

Currently Listening

• Fleetwood Mac - Beautiful Child
• Fleetwood Mac - That's All for Everyone
• Now, Now - Saved
• Chloe x Halle - Ungodly Hour
• RTJ - A Few Words for the Firing Squad (Radiation)
• Evil - Evil

Currently Reading

• You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl: queering country music on the Bitch Media Blog
• I knew there was a reason I had little interest in Hunger Games, Divergent, etc: How dystopian narratives can incite real-world radicalism by Calvert Jones on Aeon
• Is your favourite brand Anti-Racist by Zara Sehr
• The Priory by Dorothy Whipple
• BUST magazine's Summer 2020 issue focusing on Music and starring the one and only Big Freedia 

(Not technically) Currently Eating (but will soon)

• Buffalo cauliflower tacos with avocado crema (except making a lime crema cuz allergic to avocados like a sucker)

Currently Looking Forward To

• The bandcamp fundraiser tomorrow! Here are some ideas for music if you're need some inspiration. 

CW from here to the end of this post: 

racism, racism in the workplace, reference to a massacre

Currently Reflecting

Permit me a troubling reminiscence. 

Yesterday, June 17th, 2020, was the five year anniversary of the Charleston Church Massacre. 

The following people were murdered by a terrorist in the Charleston Church Massacre:

Clementa C. Pinckney, 41 

Cynthia Graham Hurd, 54 

Susie J. Jackson, 87

DePayne Vontrease Middleton-Doctor, 49

Tywanza Kibwe Diop Sanders, 26

Daniel Lee Simmons Sr., 74

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45

Myra Singleton Quarles Thompson, 59

At the time, I was working at my first gig in the animation industry here in Vancouver. On June 18, 2015, the day after the massacre, myself and my coworker (who is also a woman and Asian/not white) were talking to a white, male colleague of ours. 

My coworker and I were chatting with said colleague about something that was troubling us in the workplace, I don't even remember now what exactly it was. 

My colleague laughed and he said (words to the effect, I'm glad I don't remember his quote verbatim): "don't get so angry that you go and shoot up a church!" 

My coworker and I were stunned into silence. 

I'm ashamed to say I don't think I SAID anything, I was utterly horrified and caught off guard.

He must have read the horror on our faces and hastily said, "Oh, too soon?" and tried to laugh it off.

This happened in Vancouver, in 2015, and in a professional setting.

The person who made this comment still works in the animation industry as far as I'm aware.

Pictures: taken by me at the Richmond Sunflower Festival here in BC. Richmond is the traditional and unceded territories of the Musqueam people