K: So, lately I’ve been thinking about creative endeavors and our various creative endeavors. And I’ll be honest… I’m thinking about how differently creative we are. How different our creative endeavors when you look at them more deeply, but, on the surface, they seem the same. And how much of a creative endeavor the podcast is.

C: Yes, you – I think it’s the… one creative endeavor we do together. We are not that couple that does like… tandem finger painting. I don’t even know if that’s a real thing or that’s what it’s called

K: It is a real thing. I saw like the snarky face you made afterward, and I’m like “dude that’s a real thing.”

C: I was thinking “or if that’s what it’s called.” Is it really called tandem finger painting?

K: Yes, there is tandem finger painting.

C: Okay. Yeah, we don’t do that.

K: So, okay, I’m a therapist, and I had to d – you know, my least favorite rotation was art therapy.

C: Yes.

K: You know I absolutely hated art therapy, which is weird because I’m an artist.

C: Yes.

K: Like, I can do traditional, classical sketching and painting and all of that, which I don’t… enjoy even though I can do it.

C: Right.

K: And I can macramé and crochet. Can’t knit, we tried to learn how to knit together, and it was just too much. And I feel like… you either learn how to knit, or you learn how to crochet, and… the grandmas as the children shelter taught me how to crochet. One of the grandmas taught me how to crochet when one of the other grandmas wasn’t there.

C: Mhm.

K: And, when the other grandma came, she said, “now that girl’s never going to learn how to knit.”

C: Was she like, “that was so cruel.”

K: Yeah, she thought it was like a travesty. She said, “because if you had taught her to knit first, then taught her to crochet, then she could choose whichever one she liked, but she’d know how to do both.”

C: Mhm.

K: Because they’re both equally difficult to learn was her theory.

C: Yeah.

K: Except once you learn one, it feels like – because you can do – almost everything you can do knitting, you can do crocheting.

C: Mhm.

K: And, so, why would you learn both?

C: Interesting.

K: So, I didn’t know how I would end up learning crocheting. I thought, then that would just mean I would’ve learned to just knit.

C: Right.

K: I wouldn’t learn to crochet as well.

C: Well, and if you had learned to knit, you could have learned to tat. You could have tatted a bunch of lace for us.

K: Well, and I know how to cross-stitch.

C: I don’t know how to cross-stitch. Cross-stitch is completely different from either one because

K: Yeah.

C: We got to the point in knitting where I could have knitted a scarf.

K: (laughs)

C: But that was it.

K: I feel like we could have knitted a potholder.

C: Okay. I got like a

K: Straight up, I blame Rosario Dawson.

C: I got like a foot into the scarf before…

K: You did not. Oh my god. You are telling lies and eating pies, my friend. You got a foot into the scarf.

C: Yeah.

K: That’s your story.

C: Yeah, that was the problem. I was like knitting along, and I was like “what is my foot doing in this scarf?”

(laughter)

K: Because I feel like you got halfway through a potholder.

C: Probably. Yeah.

K: So, you had several rows.

C: I got enough that I could see that I could do the… the actual knitting motion.

K: Yes. So, we both did that. We both got far enough along to see that we could actually knit something.

C: Right.

K: But it wasn’t fun. Just like crocheting

C: Yeah, the payoff was really slow.

K: Not fun. Yeah. Like, I started crocheting a baby blanket for our son when I was pregnant and never finished it.

C: Mhm.

K: And he knows about it.

C: And now with my fingers, I’m really glad that I don’t… have any creative endeavors that require fine dexterity.

K: Well, not now with your fingers. Now that you’re diagnosed with – now that you have your adult diagnosis of AS.

C: Yes.

K: Because you act like – you wiggle your fingers – you have this weird thing that you do because you do have big, meaty hands. Like, your hands are… when they’re talking about meaty hands

C: (laughs)

K: They’re talking about your hands. And you know I love your hands.

C: Yes.

K: I’ve always thought your hands are sexy. Twitter After Dark sexy. But… you like to do this thing, like “these sausage fingers. If it weren’t for these sausagey fingers.”

C: I wasn’t saying my sausage fingers – I was saying that my hands now hurt significantly more than they did when we were learning to knit.

K: But the motions that you do – so, he flips his hands palms up, and then he looks downs and says, “if it weren’t for my hands” while he looks at his hands and just makes this gesture like “why hands? Why?”

C: Okay, I’ll admit I got that gesture from a movie.

K: (laughs) Well, I just admitted that we took up knitting because of Rosario Dawson.

C: Yeah. So, if you’ve seen the movie The NeverEnding Story

K: (laughs)

C: The rock biter character when he goes “they look like big, strong hands don’t they?” Because everything’s falling apart even though he’s got his big hands. That’s the motion that I make.

K: Yeah.

C: And I always think of it, too, when I’m saying that.

K: And, so, the reason Rosario Dawson – because everyone’s going to be like “how did Rosario Dawson make you want to knit?” So, she’s not even with the person anymore, but she was on… the David Letterman show – I want to say 17 years ago. And, at the time, her and her boyfriend would knit together.

C: Okay.

K: The boyfriend that she had 17 years ago.

C: Yeah.

K: And I’m sorry Rosario if you’re hearing this and that’s tearing open new wounds. Not at all what I’m trying to do, girl. Not at all what I’m trying to do.

C: Yeah. Yeah.

K: Just put that out there, so, you know.

C: Okay. Just – just like

K: You never know. She could be listening to the cast.

C: Okay. Okay. And just frog those feelings, girl, just frog those feelings.

(laughter)

K: And, so, you may have noticed that we are still using the same microphones.

C: How would they have noticed?

K: (laughs) So, my beautiful husband, Chad, has the absolute… worst luck when it comes to electronics. So, we did purchase the mics. They did come. We did set them up. We did try to use them, but, for some reason, one of the mics has this horrible buzzing sound. And we’re trying to figure out is it the mic, is it the wiring – I don’t know. Talk tech stuff. (laughs)

C: So, the mics that we’re using right now are dynamic mics, which means we just plug them into the jack in the Zoom recorder that we have.

K: Yeah.

C: Unrelated to the Zoom Online Conferencing thing. The… handy – H5 Handy Recorder by Zoom. Not – no endorsement implied. So, we plugged that into the jack, and they just work. But we have to turn the gain up to like 9, which means we get all the background noise and everything. And they’re omnidirectional, which means that we get the noise from everywhere. We bought these new mics, which are… are condenser mics, which means they need power, and they’re cardioid which means they only go one direction. So, after I figured out that the jacks on the microphone port are… a weird shape because they actually take two different kinds of connectors

K: Mhm.

C: So, I figured out the right connector to use.

K: Yeah.

C: Which is the XLR connector. And that the microphones require power, so I figured out how to turn on the power on the recorder.

K: Yeah.

C: Then one of the mics is working, and the other one… depending on how the gain is set, it either has zero noise all the time, or it’s maxed out the entire time with just this buzzing sound.

K: Yeah. Which is really unpleasant.

C: Unless Kisstopher cups her hands about

K: (laughs)

C: Half a centimeter away from it, and that quiets it down.

K: Yeah, and I can’t – I can’t figure out how to project my – how to do it and talk into – it’s really uncomfortable. And, so, it’s just ridiculous.

C: And do it for the whole podcast. If we could manage that, these mics wouldn’t be a problem.

(laughter)

K: Rude. Rude, if I could manage sitting in one position.

C: I said we.

K: Okay. Because, you know, we do have joint and – both of us have like… pain problems.

C: Yeah. Yeah.

K: So… the… podcast is the one creative endeavor we do together, but I also think of puzzling as a creative endeavor. And I know some people don’t, but, then, I feel like those are the same snobs who won’t consider someone listening to a book as having read the book.

C: See, I consider puzzling a valid leisure endeavor. But because

K: I think it’s creative because we’re making a picture together.

C: We are making a picture together, but I feel like because

K: And we shop and decide which pictures we want to make.

C: We do. But I feel like because there’s one right answer… and the right answer can be found in a predetermined fashion

K: But we do not go after the one right answer. We have not done – I think the last

C: We do not go for the one right answer

K: The last five puzzles we’ve done completely different.

C: Yeah, so we mix it up.

K: Our approach. So, how is that not creative? I’m going to argue with you on this. Fight me. This is creative. Deal with it.

C: I feel like… doing jigsaw puzzles, we are undoing the destruction that was wrought upon that completed picture. So, I feel like

K: But I feel like it’s in the approach of undoing that destruction

C: See, I feel like

K: Therein lies the creativity.

C: I feel like it’s artistic

K: and isn’t art creative?

C: I think knot all art is creative. I think some art

K: Really?

C: Yeah.

K: What art is not creative?

C: I think some art is just a reproduction of what was already there.

K: I find paint by numbers to be creative. Because, to me, cre- it’s creating something.

C: Yeah.

K: And which numbers you choose to fill in – because they have this paint by numbers app on the iPhones or the smartphones. I’m not an Android or Apple snob.

C: You don’t have either one.

K: Yeah, I have a flip phone.

C: We’ve discussed your flip phone before.

K: Yeah. I have a flip phone. Ohh, the American congress would be dragging me right now because they find everybody with a flip phone suspicious. So

(laughter)

C: “How can we hack her?”

K: Yeah. They do – there’s this one… one senator that’s going after everybody who has a flip phone. And they’re calling them “burner phones” so, in American, flip phones are now – all flip phones are now seen in burner phones.

C: You’ve had the same phone for 8 years, and it’s registered under your name.

K: Yeah.

C: Although, when we were in America, we did buy a flip phone at an airport vending machine.

K: Yes.

C: And just used it the whole time we were there.

K: Well now that they sell smartphones. Now they sell smartphones in vending machines at the airport.

C: That seems just so expensive. Because it was like 40 dollars for the phone, and that included a month of service.

K: Yeah. So, we don’t know what the state of phones are in the United States right now.

C: We do not. We do not. That was 2008

K: But – yeah, so – but we went to… let’s see, we were in a Japanese airport – when was the last time we were in a Japanese airport?

C: Let me think. The last place that we lent together

K: Was Spain.

C: Overseas was Spain – right. So, that was

K: For my residency – for my PHD – which I’m still doing.

C: Yeah.

K: Which I’ll be doing for the rest of my laugh.

C: So, I think that was only a year ago.

K: Was it?

C: Yeah. It seems a really long time ago, but that was

K: Yeah, it was last – no, summer before last. It was two years ago.

C: Okay.  Two years ago?

K: Two years ago. So, at that point in time, you could buy smartphones from vending machines in the airport in Japan. But I didn’t pay attention to whether or not – in Spain – because in Spain we got there during the taxi strike, and it was a whole thing just trying to get onto the bus and get off the bus in the right place. My Spanish is bused, and we were relying on my California, barely understanding of gesturing because Chad just turns into like – because – well, whenever we go someplace because Chad’s autistic, I’m in charge of navigation.

C: Yea.

K: Because even if Chad knows where he’s going, navigating is really difficult. So, when he goes out on his own, I don’t know what happens. I assume there’s a meltdown at some point in time in the process, but, with me, I do my best for him to not have any meltdowns in public because they’re very embarrassing for him.

C: Well, I have no special awareness. So, I have graph awareness. Like graph theory. So, if I know exactly where I am at, I can know the path to the next point if I’ve been there before. But if I step off of the road, I can’t figure out where I am in relation to anything. I have to be on a path that I know to not be lost.

K: So, I think the difference is when you go out by yourself, you can stop until people are off of your path.

C: Yes, that’s correct.

K: Because I won’t let you stop.

C: No. I never feel pushed by people when I’m out alone. When I’m out with you, I’m very conscious of you don’t want to be… stopped.

K: So, I clear a path.

C: Right.

K: And you just follow behind me.

C: Yes.

K: So, what that means when we travel in a foreign country is that I have to have that same skill not knowing where I am, and I was expecting to get into a taxi and instead we got on a bus.

C: We did. And the people on the bus were very nice. They gave me

K: Yes, very nice. Very helpful.

C: Gave me a seat and everything. And then we realized that we were passing our stop, and the bus driver stopped after the stop and let us get off because we weren’t quite quick enough.

K: Everybody in Spain was just absolutely lovely.

C: Yes.

K: I had so much fun in Spain, and I have such – just a warm view of the Spanish people. You would never know they were conquistadors or descendants of colonizers. There was none of that colonizing energy.

C: Well, they were at their home – at their home base. So, I wonder what going to the U.K. would be like.

K: I have no desire to go to the U.K.

C: Well, and I don’t know what part of – we were in Madrid.

K: (laughs) Not for any historical reasons.

C: Yeah.

K: I just like – on an island.

C: Right. You’re already in an island nation.

K: Yeah. The only other island I want to go to is New Zealand because they have some of the best tattoo artists in the world.

C: Mm.

K: Which is like, I don’t know how they’re keeping this under wraps, but, like, seriously: four of the top, top tattoo artists in the world for the types of tattoos that I want to have are in New Zealand. And I’m not giving them any shoutouts yet because, hurt my feelings, one of them came to Japan, so I’m not going to say his name because I’m not going to blow him up. But I feel like why didn’t he want to do my tattoo?

C: Yeah, I don’t know.

K: He was coming to Japan – this was two years ago – he was coming to Japan. He put it on his Insta. I followed all the rules, and he never got back to me. And he had that opening. Like, I don’t know, did he just not tattoo that day? Did he decide to take it as a vacation day?

C: I don’t know because that’s rude to take a vacation when you’re traveling abroad.

K: No, it’s not rude to take a vacation when you’re traveling abroad.

C: (laughs)

K: It is rude when you are a world-famous tattoo artist that lives in New Zealand, and you’re coming into Japan, and you’ve been promoting it for six months, and someone does all of the steps

C: Mm. Yeah.

K: And you don’t do their tattoo, and then you don’t fill that opening. So, like, did he just not want to do my tattoo? As soon as COVID is over, I will be going to New Zealand, and we will be having a conversation about it.

C: Okay.

K: I will be asking him what’s up with that.

C: Yes.

K: Because I will make an appointment, and then I will pay him to do the tattoo, and then after he is done, I will tell him something.

C: Mhm.

K: After giving him a very nice tip if he did a good job.

C: (laughs)

K: Because, like, don’t piss your tattoo artist off (laughs) before you get your tattoo. And I think getting tattoos is a creative endeavor, so one of my passions is tattooing. Not doing tattoos but getting tattoos. And one of my life goals, which I think it’s really awesome that you’re supportive of, is I want to cover both my legs in tattoos.

C: Yeah.

K: And I think it’s really sweet that you support that.

C: I do.

K: Because it was a really long conversation about what the tattoos would be, what they would look like, what the placements of them are, and I have about six of them planned out so far. And they’re around your creative endeavors – and at first that made you really uncomfortable.

C: Yes, it did.

K: Why?

C: Because I feel like… my creative endeavors are so… tentative.

K: How so?

C: I… because most of what I do is write.

K: Yeah. Books.

C: Well, and also poetry and – and flash fiction and such.

K: Did you all catch that discomfort? I just outed Chad.

C: Yeah.

K: I outed Chad – not only does he write books – I’m outing you all the way, babe. I’m sorry.

C: Okay.

K: You can get mad afterwards and like (laughs) I don’t know why I – I am outing you, but there’s not going to be a brawl after the podcast. We do not fight after the podcast, you all.

C: How dare she tell people that I write sensitive coming of age novels?

(laughter)

K: You do not write sensitive coming of age novels. Which one of your books is a sensitive coming of age?

C: None of them.

K: One of our peeps writes those.

C: Yes.

K: One of our tweeps. I don’t know if she’d like a shoutout or not.

C: No, I think we do enough shoutouts in more effective platforms.

K: Yeah. So, okay, so – every single book of Chad’s is different, and he has… so, there’s one book – okay, we ha- I’m sorry, babe, we’ve got to talk about the Mormon book.

C: Okay.

K: It’s never going to be published,

C: No.

K: But we have to talk about it. It was the weirdest thing I have ever read in my life. Because I read all of Chad’s books with the exception of one. So, he wrote a book that was based on the Book of Mormon, and it was the craziest thing.

C: (laughs)

K: Like, sneaking into someone’s house. Killing them and then kidnapping their child and putting that child in a cage. And like driving – it was all this violence and insanity. So, you all know I was raised atheist, and I’ve dabbled in different religions and such. My mother did read the Bible to me, and it’s a crazy book. So, – sorry if I offend you all that just rolled off my lips. But I think all books – all religious books – are just… weird, violent splatter punk with random science fiction. I don’t get the genre.

C: I think that religious books are, by definition, esoteric.

K: Yeah.

C: Their knowledge is only meant for people who study them in the right way in the right mindset. And that’s what makes them religious rather than… philosophical.

K: Yes.

C: So, I think that they do come across as just weird and nonsensical if you are not of that tradition and don’t have somebody to initiate you. I think that’s what differentiates between a religion and philosophy.

K: Yeah.

C: So, yeah. I was writing a book based on the Book of Mormon.

K: Yes. And you were shocked… shocked by how confused I was by everything.

C: Right? Because I was just doing what the

K: Like, who is Nephi?

C: He’s the guy who writes the first part of the Book of Mormon, and they’ve got to escape from Israel because they’re Jews, of course, and, so, they have to murder the… their boss and steal his records and also steal some of his slaves because of course the Jews kept slaves.

K: Yes, and that was so – I was like, this is just so violent and out of character for you.

C: So, they steal his slave, and his slave’s daughters, and they’re like “come with us.”

K: But that is so out of character for you. That is not the energy…

C: (laughs)

K: I would expect you to bring to a book. I don’t think anybody would expect a book written by you to have slavery in it.

C: Yeah.

K: So, I was just like, “this is offensive and wrong.” And you’re like, “what do you mean?” I’m like, “why are you even writing this? Is this what’s in your heart?” We had a serious

C: (laughs)

K: Intervention. Like, “what’s going on with you?” Because you’re so not like that. That’s not your energy.

C: Yeah.

K: And everybody knows I’m Jewish – or you might not. I don’t know. If you’re a Musick Note

C: I know you’re Jewish.

K: Yeah, I know you do.

C: Oh, okay.

K: But I don’t know if everybody on the podcast knows. I don’t know if everyone who’s listening knows that I’m black, indigenous, and Jewish.

C: Yeah.

K: So, (clears throat) the reason I say indigenous instead of my tribe is that my tribe was taken from me. Just like the reason I say black instead of African American – however if you follow us on Twitter, I say Cherokee, but Cherokee is a nation not a tribe. So, the Iroquois nation, the Cherokee nation – those are different – so, I don’t know which tribe within the Cherokee nation my descendants come from.

C: Yes.

K: Because they were slaughtered. So, there’s that.

C: Well and because your grandmother – which we’ve had the conversation about – your grandmother and you and I

K: Well, my grandmother’s mother died in childbirth, and, so… yeah.

C: Yeah.

K: My grandmother was raised by her father’s former slave owners. So, my grandmother was half indigenous and half black – we think fully half black, but we’re not sure about the mix going on there because, with slavery, you don’t know. So, for Chad to write a book that has slavery in it would be very offensive to me, and really I felt like that book was more a form of therapy for you to – because for a while there you were really, really angry.

C: I think so. I think that writing it was like – and you reading it. Your reaction was kind of what I was looking for. Like, “this is what you were fed growing up?”

K: Yeah.

C: Like, the “if you have a problem, the response is to murder people?”

K: Yeah.

C: “Because God tells you to murder people? Like, how does it become okay for God to tell you to murder people?”

K: Yeah.

C: I’m like, “have you read the Bible” and you’re like, “okay, yeah, I have read the Bible.”

K: Yeah. Well, the Bible was read to me. I haven’t read it.

C: Yeah. So… yeah. We – I – I put that book away. I did reuse certain… parts of it that I liked a lot – that weren’t from the Book of Mormon – that were other story. So, I kind of cannibalized parts of it for other things, so… yeah.

K: So, I’m really hoping that you’re at a place where… you will release your second book, which I believe the title is still Not My Ruckus. I don’t know.

C: Yeah. That’s still my planned title.

K: Okay. So, you change your titles like… I don’t know your relationship with your titles. So, Not My Ruckus has – trigger warning, trigger warning, trigger warning – I’m not even going to say what it’s about. I’m going to say it’s about trigger warning, trigger warning, and trigger warning. And it does have some… racist parts of it. But the racist parts of it were done by evil people and part of their evilness was racism. But it wasn’t done in that trope of “we have to show how bad they are by making them racist.”

It was actually taken from something that… if you were in the United States in the 80s, there was this rash of white women. One famous, but several different white women killed their children and blamed people of color in the most ridiculous of ways. And the most famous one – you can go look it up because that’s dark. And, so, your book draws and plays on that, but it’s finished. It’s edited, and… it also draws on things from your own, personal history, but you made the character that goes through what you go through a young Jewish girl rather than making her

C: No, she’s not Jewish. Her friend is Jewish.

K: Okay. So… why didn’t you make it a young Mormon boy going through all the stuff that you went through? Why did you change their gender? Because I feel like you were working through the stuff that you went through.

C: Yeah.

K: And not everything that – in the book – you didn’t go through everything in the book.

C: No, no.

K: It’s way more horrific in the book than what you went through.

C: Well, I think one thing is I didn’t want it to be non-fiction. I wanted to keep it fiction.

K: Okay.

C: So, I think that was a big aspect of it. I think another thing was that, as soon as you make the character a boy, it changes the dynamic on certain things in ways that I wasn’t ready to… deal with at the time that I wrote it.

K: And, because of that, it can’t be traditionally published.

C: I think it would be very hard. There are a couple of books that have been traditionally published, including by male authors, but it is… definitely out of fad at the moment.

K: Yeah. It can’t be published traditionally. I don’t see how. I don’t see how you could get agents for that book.

C: Yeah, I think that it… it would be very difficult, now. So, there have been other books published, including books that have won the Pulitzer and that kind of book, about the same topics written by men, but it has been a while, and that…

K: Those days are gone.

C: Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. That things have shifted to where

K: It’s an “own voices” era.

C: Right.

K: And I think it should be. And, so, I think by changing the gender and having it be – wanting that distance form your own story I think is absolutely your right. So, I feel like your creative endeavors are writing books – I’m not going to talk about the other books he’s written because he has another completed novel.

C: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. (laughs)

K: Hopefully, you all will get access to – to Chad’s writing – because, hopefully, he’ll start to self-publish. That’s what I’m hoping.

C: Mhm.

K: So, my creative endeavor – my primary creative endeavor – is this podcast. My second creative endeavor is… puzzling. No, I’m just kidding. It’s my work as a therapist. And everybody knows that I think that’s… super creative. And then my… PHD takes up a lot of my creative energy.

C: That does take a lot of creative energy.

K: Yeah. And when I feel like I have extra creative time, I blog. But, then… I usually blog either on the Musicks in Japan

C: Right.

K: Or I blog, depending on what I want to blog about, or I blog on the adjustment guidance website. But we’ve made a decision to put our beliefs into practice. And so, while we still post on Facebook and while we still post on Instagram, we’re not doing anything to further or promote those platforms. And, so, our social media platform of choice is Twitter.

From – I’m going to talk about my view of why I have chosen Twitter, and then you can talk about yours. Does that sound groovy?

C: Yeah.

K: So, the reason that – what made me decide to stop putting energy into Facebook specifically was the 2016… elections in the United States. When false stories were put out and misrepresentations were put out, and the Facebook team decided to go ahead and let that stand. And then, with Instagram, I was just starting to get into Instagram, and then Facebook bought it, and I decided, mmm, Not for me. I’m not going to put a lot of energy into something that just grows Facebook. So, because of all of the plat – because of the platform that Facebook gives people who are abusive and a liar and… the ability to – also, Facebook does not protect abuse victims.

I think this is something that we don’t talk about enough. But, if you go private, you can still – there are still ways that people who are escaping their abusers, if they have any activity even if it’s private on Facebook, they can still be tracked by their abusers.

C: Yeah.

K: And, for me, that was just too far. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back because I was like “you cannot post anything” because I help women escape abusive partners.

C: Mhm.

K: And doing that in Japan is super complicated, and I’m not going to say any of the details how because… giving any information whatsoever puts people in danger.

C: Yeah.

K: But stopping all… social media activity – Facebook and Instagram together is one of the most important things if you want to escape an abuser or an abusive situation. And Facebook will help your abuser track you down if you do not take that app off of your devices. So, you have to log out, you have to make your accounts dormant, and then you have to get ri – delete the app off your phone.

And, for me… any app that makes it that difficult for a victim to escape an abuser

C: Yeah.

K: Or an abusive situation – I don’t want to feed into that. I don’t… want to do anything with a that company, they’re gross.

C: In the app, it records your GPS da even when you’re not using the app.

K: Yeah. They’re gross.

C: Yeah.

K: So, I do have… Facebook is installed on my iPad. I have a couple family members that will only contact me through Facebook. But I’m not in any danger or at any risk, and I’m – I don’t use my iPad for anything. But I don’t have it installed on any of my computers.

C: Yeah.

K: So, the app that I do use is Twitter, which you all know because I’m like, “follow us on Twitter. If you don’t follow us on Twitter” (laughs)

C: Yes.

K: “Why not? Be a Musick Note. Buy in.” (laughs) I think our Twitter is the bomb. I like Twitter because Twitter supports political and social movements. Twitter supports science. During COVID, Twitter, to me, acted right. They let their employees work remotely. They’re still doing remotely because they realize working remote is a lot cheaper than working in person, which I think we’re all finding out. Which you all know I recently found out.

C: Some of us knew.

(laughter)

K: So, for me, I love Twitter because I love the social activism. I love that I can curate what’s going to be in my timeline. I can have no ads or some ads – I feel like I just have so much autonomy, and now this is not sponsored by Twitter. And why not, Twitter? Sponsor us. (laughs)

C: Well, I think, and going to lose this Twitter sponsorship here: I think that, with Twitter, you still have problems with nazis and trolls and abuse and all of that, but everything happens

K: But that’s what you blocking everybody’s for.

C: Yeah.

K: (laughs) Because you block quick.

C: I do.

K: You will block pe – you block people in threads.

C: Yes.

K: Like, you will – if you’re reading a thread and someone says something greasy in a thread, you will block them.

C: Yes. And, so, I’ve noticed that I’ve blocked a lot of people. Sometimes, I’m like “why did I block this person?” and then I’m like “Mnm. Trust the reason.”

K: I never do. I always look at then I’m like, “dammit. Trust the block.”

C: Trust the block.

K: And the other day, I had to – a few weeks back or probably… yeah, I’d say a few weeks back now, probably a couple days ago, but I think it’s a few weeks back – I often have to unblock somebody if they’re harassing one of our mutual to report the harassment and then reblock them.

C: Well, and I try to block people so that our mutual don’t get harassed. So, I know we are not – we are not the reason somebody’s getting harassed.

K: Yes.

C: They’re not getting harassed because they’re mutual with us.

K: Because I block and then tweet who I blocked and why I blocked them, so our mutual can know, so they can stay safe. Because we really want to have… as a positive an experience of like-minded individuals. And I know people are like, “if you don’t talk to people who don’t think like you, how are you going to change your thinking?” I’m in my 50s. I did that in my 20s. And…

C: Yeah, I feel like

K: Yeah, I’m not doing that.

C: I’m not interested in changing my thinking, and I don’t block along ideological leve- along ideological lines. I block along behavioral lines.

K: I don’t block – so, to be – I have friends that are Republicans. I don’t agree with everything that they agree with, but they’re not racist.

C: Right.

K: So, racism is… that’s different. I won’t block you for politics. I’ll block you for ethical – for if your ethics are different from mine. And, if you doubt my humanity and my right to exist, I’m going to block you.

C: Yeah, I think as soon as you say somebody doesn’t have a right to be alive, that’s no longer politics.

K: Yeah.

C: So, the weirdest thing I saw we had blocked is somebody responded to a tweet positively – and this happened sometimes – and I checked who had tweeted it. We had blocked them. And I was like, “well, who is it? Why did we block them?” And we’ve blocked the head of the NAACP.

K: Yes.

C: And… so, I just

K: We stand by that block.

C: Yeah. That’s why I’m like “trust the block.” But I had to go back, and I was like, “oh, okay.” There was just a whoo boy, some ableist stuff in there. Just, like…

K: So, if you want to know about the NAACP, go onto YouTube and Google “Malcom X discussing the NAACP”

C: Mhm.

K: And you will learn everything that you need to know.

C: Yeah, so… as often as not, I find the people that we’ve blocked are… are blue on the political spectrum, but there’s a lot of racism, a lot of ableism, a lot of sexism… on the left as well as on the right.

K: Yeah. A lot of ableism. Lots and lots of ableism.

C: So, I – I just have… I have to remind myself, but I’ve learned trust the block. So, I feel like Twitter has the same problems of Facebook in terms of who they allow to remain on the platform.

K: Yeah.

C: The difference is the secrecy and the ability to cover your tracks. I feel like, with Twitter, the only way to cover your tracks is to delete tweets because you can’t alter them.

K: And – honey – people are snapping screenshots. Delete a tweet? Mnm. Someone has snapshotted that tweet.

C: I think, too

K: Screenshotted.

C: Yeah. I think, beyond that too, there are sites that catalogue the tweets in a way they can’t be altered.

K: Yes.

C: So, you can make a screenshot of anybody saying anything. I don’t think that happens very often, but you can make a screenshot of anybody saying anything.

K: Yeah. Fake screenshots.

C: Yeah. So, there are sits that you can find out whether that was an actual tweet.

K: Well, don’t propagate that. So, why are you – why do you choose Twitter over Facebook and over Instagram over TikTok and over Snapshot?

C: So, TikTok I think – I don’t even know what Snapshot is.

K: Snapchat (laughs)

C: Oh, okay. So, Snapchat and Instagram… I have… as part of my autism, I have aphantasia. I don’t have any pictures in my head. I just literally don’t… picture things in my head. It’s part of my face blindness where Kisstopher knows we could be out in a crowd, and if I look away and look back, and she’s not exactly where she was, I’ve lost her.

K: I wave.

C: And you’ve got to wave. Let me know this is where you are.

K: And I have a specific wave that I do.

C: I can’t remember what people look like. I can’t remember what things do. I can remember how people move. I can remember people’s voices.

K: But you can’t remember what people are wearing.

C: No. But what that means is that primarily visual mediums, like Instagram and Snapchat, I just fundamentally don’t… get it. I – I just don’t… like, I can look at art and appreciate “wow that’s really beautiful” but as soon as I

K: But Snapchat and TikTok are people doing stuff and saying stuff.

C: Yeah, I feel like I just…

K: You don’t watch a lot of YouTube either.

C: I don’t watch a lot of YouTube. I don’t watch a lot of t.v. Like, just visual media – I don’t consume a lot of it. A little bit. I do enjoy some visual art, but I can’t tell you what it looks like after I’ve stopped looking at it. Like “that’s cool. I like the way that works. The way that looks.” You’re like “describe it to me” “I… cannot describe it to you.”

K: Yeah, which is nice for things that are repetitive. Like, sorry Cirque Du Soleil, but your shows are becoming a bit repetitive.

C: (laughs)

K: It’s the same stuff in different orders. I’m surprised when there are new – the last show had something I had never seen before from Cirque Du Soleil, and I was like, “oh my gosh. They did something new.”

C: But, see, for me – I can remember the general category. “Okay, does this one have hula hoops? Okay, no hula hoops.”

K: (laughs)

C: “Oh, look, there’s hula hoops again. I don’t remember what they did last time with hula hoops, but they’ve got hula hoops this time.”

K: (laughs) Yeah, and so for me, I love – it’s all about the costuming and stages.

C: Yeah.

K: I really – one of – so, I love the staging of Cirque Du Soleil. But, anyways, we’re talking about creative endeavors. So, that kind of ties in. So, why Twitter?

C: I think because

K: Do you believe in the company?

C: I do not believe in the company. I think the company is… not as bad as some and worse than others. I think that their… enforcement

K: So, is not believing in Twitter part of… your whole thing against capitalism? Because I feel like one of the creative endeavors that we do is tweeting. I think tweeting is a creative endeavor. I think that we curate our timeline sometimes, we don’t always curate it, but sometimes we do curated threads. Sometimes, we do promotion of creative others. And, like, in all of August, we – we both participated in hashtag Black August.

C: Right.

K: And promoted black creators and things of that nature. So, to me, that feels creative. Creative activism.

C: Well

K: I think activism is a form of creativeness.

C: My specific objection to Twitter: I do think some of their practices, particularly in San Francisco, are a product of… capitalism taken to the level of extremity. With, like, the tax dodging and the… exp- but I feel like that’s mostly irrelevant to Twitter as a platform.

K: Okay.

C: I feel like Twitter as a platform… I have a disagreement about what freedom of speech means.

K: Mmm.

C: I think that freedom of speech – if you say that it means everybody gets to say everything except for the most extreme and violent, that you’re setting up a power dynamic that’s just going to recreate the status quo.

K: Mmm.

C: Because if you say, like, to take an example from a few years ago that I feel like was relatively innocuous in the individual actions but pernicious in the overall effect was tweeting the snake emoji at Taylor Swift.

K: Mm.

C: I feel like, if one person tweets the snake emoji at you, you think “that’s weird” and you go on with your day.

K: Or like letting the Beehive tweet bees.

C: Right. But when you have hundreds of thousands or millions of accounts – because they’re not necessarily separate people – the effect is to drown out the speech of certain people.

K: So, you don’t like cyber bullying. And you feel that Twitter hasn’t gotten cyber bullying under control yet.

C: I don’t think that Twitter will ever get cyber bullying under control because I think that the way that cyber bullying happens

K: What’s going on with you and Taylor Swift these days?

C: I do – I haven’t listened to her new album yet. I don’t have any particular

K: Like, the last two weeks, you’ve been speaking really positively about Taylor Swift, which is really weird because you don’t usually speak positively about Taylor Swift.

C: Oh, a lot of people like her new album, so

K: I feel neutral. I feel completely neutral about Taylor Swift. I have never met her.

C: Yeah. I haven’t, either.

K: I don’t know her. I feel like meet me on this: I don’t know her.

(laughter)

C: A lot of people have been speaking positively of her new album, so her name has been in my… consciousness is all.

K: Okay. And she made millions off of those snake emojis.

C: Yeah. So… but I think that, if you say “well we’re only going to take down speech or limit speech that is directly threatening violence” or that kind of thing, that you just… open it up to more subtle kinds of abuse that tends to silence people who are already on the fringes in terms of their identity rather than their politics.

K: See, and I think that Twitter – I feel like the reverse. I feel like, yes, Twitter does allow mob mentality, but I don’t think on any other platform would you ever get… Black Trans Lives Matter trending. And it was just for a hot minute in time that Black Trans Lives Matter was trending.

C: Yeah.

K: At the peak of the Black Lives Matter was trending. The movement is still active, you all. That hashtag is still active. I know that… Say Their Names isn’t as active.

C: Well, the trending algorithm, if you bring it up to a million tweets a day and then keep it there, it stops trending because it’s not increasing. So, you have to be perpetually growing to trend, which is a clever way of making sure nothing ever dominates the trending forever because eventually it can’t grow.

K: Okay, so like for me – I feel like Twitter is largely responsible for – there’s this really talented drag queen and drag artist called the Vixen’s World on Twitter who has an amazing album out, and I’m sorry, Tea Party – that is a bop. And it’s sold out. Tea Party and Unicorn sold out. And I believe that Tea Party and unicorn sold out because she was able to promote it on Twitter.

C: Yeah.

K: I believe. And, like, I believe that people are able to go and – even in the era of COVID – are able to attend the Black Girl Magic shows that she puts on with other black drag artists. And… they’re really creative and… they have a lot of drag queens from – if you’re drag race fans, there’s a lot of drag race girls on it. But also, a lot of really talented black, Chicago queens. Like Lucy Stoole who’s just epic. If you all haven’t watched the black drag town hall… honey, baby, go on YouTube and watch it. That is just some restorative justice in action. And, so, like those types of creative endeavors – I really enjoy it, and I feel like Twitter turns me on to people that I wouldn’t – that I normally wouldn’t come across because I live in Japan.

C: Yeah.

K: And, so, there are a lot of artists – like the drag town hall in Chicago – someone, one of our people, retweeted it, then I watched it and was like “this is awesome restorative justice.” And, so, then I was able to follow a bunch of local queens that exist in Chicago who I will probably never go see in person, but I’m able to watch their shows.

C: Oh yeah, I think the connections that it allows – and we have mutual who very kindly, if they see a trigger warning in terms of seizures will retweet those specifically so that I will see it, which I really appreciate. So, I think my problem with Twitter – I don’t have huge problems with Twitter -my problem with Twitter comes down to this: if you live in Germany, you can’t see Holocaust denial tweets because they’re illegal.

K: Yeah.

C: But if you live outside of Germany, you can see those tweets, which means… Twitter has the ability to identify Holocaust denial and chooses to allow it outside of Germany. They don’t allow it in Germany because they would be fined as a company.

K: Uh-huh.

C: So, I feel like they are… choosing

K: You feel like they’re courting the business of disgusting people?

C: Yeah. I feel like they are making their profit knowingly on violent ideologies and on hate speech. And calling it “we are supporting free speech.”

K: So, speaking of hate speech, when are you going to release your book? Your book’s not hate speech. (laughs)

C: (laughs) What was that transition?

K: You just took this in a direction – I don’t know how to reign you in when you go off on a tangent. I’ve tried several times to reign you in and back you off, but you’re just really pissed off at Twitter today. Which I’m really surprised: I’m surprised by you talking about Taylor Swift. I’m surprised about you being all mad about the Holocaust deniers. Because these are things that I talk about to you, usually. So, it’s so weird when the shoe’s on the other foot.

C: Mhm.

K: And it’s so random. It’s like, “what is going in my husband’s head?”

C: Yeah, I don’t know.

K: And when are you going to publish your book? Everybody wants to know.

C: Also, I don’t know.

K: (laughs)

C: I guarantee it will be in the fu

K: You will not be pressured.

C: Yeah. I guarantee it will be in the future.

K: So, I’m proud of you for saying you don’t know because every time we promise a specific deadline on the podcast, it blows up in our face. It never works out, so we are always going to be future-focused and forward-focused, and we hope that you’re staying creative, and that you feel creative and inspired enough to follow us on over to the take two, where it will be cheery and light.

C: It will be.

K: (laughs) I have mandated it, so it will be thus. I hope this was interesting for you all to hang out with us next week. Oh, sorry for that clatter, but I had to make noise sometime. (laughs) I always make some kind of weird noise. Eugh. I’m blathering on. Anyways, talk to you next week.

C: Bye.

K: Bye. Or on Patreon. Follow us.