Nina Paley

Spoiler Alert: DUNE 2

If I recall correctly (from a few hours ago, I just got home) DUNE 2 starts with a recap of DUNE 1 from a pretty posh lady recording her diary on another planet. Looks like a pile of dead bodies is getting set fire to on Arrakis. I remember the name Arrakis from reading the books 40+ years ago but really not much else, and I didn’t see DUNE 1 so I’m relying on the filmmakers to catch me up.

On a sandy duneside, Paul Atrides aka Timothee Chalamet wakes up with the Fremen, a charismatic and sexy desert people. Apparently his family “House” is mostly dead, killed by the House of Bald Guys, led by the Fat Ugly Bald Guy. Who’s that woman Timmy is talking with? Is that his girlfriend? Wait that’s his MOM. She pukes which in movie language means she’s pregnant.

Timmy wants to be accepted by the charismatic desert hotties which is very reminiscent of Lawrence of Arabia. Also their Lead Charismatic Guy speaks with a strong Lawrence-Arabian accent. He’s on Team Timmy, believing him to be a prophet of prophesy. But first Timmy has to prove himself to the Fremen, who are not only strong fierce and good-looking but also racially diverse, unlike the ugly Bald Guys who are so white that when they have a tournament outdoors the film itself has no color at all.

Looks like a Younger Bald Guy is being chosen as a royal heir, and he distinguishes himself by being a psychopath with a sort of cute face for a bald guy with really dark teeth. He slits the throats of a few bald sluts just for fun. He’s being set up as a foil for Timmy, who is learning the desert ways, helped by an especially cute young Freman possibly named “Chani” but pronounced Johnny. Johnny is the salt of the earth, not like those posh brittle Bene Gesserit ladies. She fights like hell along with all the other Fremen women who are apparently all soldiers. It’s not clear who’s raising the Fremen babies, but we occasionally see old ladies hobbling around in the aftermath of attacks. Johnny teaches Timmy how to camp, and Lead Charismatic Guy teaches him how to ride a sandworm which turns out to be so gigantic it fulfills another prophecy! These prophesies keep getting fulfilled!

Timmy’s Mom becomes Head Woman of the Fremen because there’s a job opening and they’ll kill her if she doesn’t. She drinks blue poison which predictably turns her eyes blue. Also it turns her power-mad, along with her fetus which got bathed in the stuff in utero and is now both psychic and possibly psychotic. Timmy has recurring nightmares of following a woman to The South which leads to catastrophe. Is the woman his Mom? His girlfriend Johnny? Because Johnny and Timmy have hooked up by now. Johnny is devoted to her people and doesn’t want Timmy to just be fighting for his dumb foreign House. But she doesn’t believe he can be a real Freman either, until he rides that giant sandworm. Then he is accepted into the tribe and given a new name: Ulla or Ulsa or something like that, plus M’aud Dib (I remember that from the books!) which means “desert mouse.” Cute!

Now Timmy’s Mom goes to The South because her job demands it, also she gets tattoos all over her face of some script that looks vaguely like a hybrid of Arabic and Devangari. If I knew someone with a tattoo like that I’d say, “her face is an open book,” but no one says that in the movie. Her eyes are bluer than ever and she’s trying to get Timmy worshipped as a messiah. But Timmy doesn’t want to go to The South because of his nightmares. Who is that woman he’s following? I bet it’s his sister, who’s still just a fetus but obviously psychotic and power-mad like most of the non-Fremen characters. The Fremen aren’t crazy or power-hungry, they just want their land and some water so they’re not dessicating all the time. The outworlders, like Timmy and his Mom and the Bald Guys and the Emperor and the Bene Gesserit and all the Houses, are all WHITE COLONISTS. But obviously Timmy is more than that, he really wants to assimilate into the Fremen but they can’t help but worship him as a god which makes him a White Savior. d’Oh! In 2024? Oh man I can’t imagine the cognitive dissonance the filmmakers suffered here. Eventually Timmy, too, drinks the Blue Poison, which turns out to be baby sandworm puke, which also gives him blue eyes which symbolize INSANITY and POWER to remind us that white saviors are NOT OKAY sort of except they are maybe and that’s NUANCE.

Timmy almost dies from the blue poison and the only thing that can save him is girlfriend tears, so Johnny has to be summoned to cry on him. Earlier in the movie we learn that Fremen don’t cry because it wastes water, but Johnny and Timmy openly cry in spite of that and no one seems to chastise them. Johnny’s tears revive Timmy which is exactly like Disney’s Tangled (Rapunzel) but when he wakes up she slaps him because why did he drink blue poison?? She told him earlier she’d always love him as long as he kept being him, but you know that blue poison is a powerful substance that changes people and now he’s probably not who he is anymore.

Then there are a bunch of fight scenes and more fight scenes and stabbings and big boom explosions and zillions of soldiers running at each other and hand-to-hand combat and shooting and killing and I would have checked my phone for a distraction at this point because I hate battle scenes but it’s rude to use a glowing device in a theater, even an almost empty one. At least the movie didn’t have explicit sex scenes, that was a relief. Timmy says he will love Johnny forever and then Young Bald Guy and Timmy have a showdown involving choreography and daggers and guess what, Timmy wins! And then he offers to marry the Emperor’s posh daughter, RIGHT IN FRONT OF JOHNNY! Clearly it’s just politics but Johnny, being the salt of the earth, doesn’t play such games so she catches the first sandworm out of there.

THE END

Dear Young Self: The Conversation

Note: I have recently been writing to my 18-year-old self, who wrote crazy journals in 1986. Here’s an excerpt.

March 16 2024 8pm

Young Self, you are oblivious to men’s interest in you. In this respect and a few others, you really are an idiot. Yes, it’s kind of charming: a kind of modesty, not full of yourself like other girls. But if you’re acting that oblivious just to support an idea of yourself as “modest,” an identity, then you are a narcissist. Fortunately that’s not why; you are genuinely, sincerely clueless.

Unrelated: you are also a narcissist. Don’t panic! It’s normal for 18-year-olds. Your depressions, which grow more severe, are abysses of self-loathing, which is self-obsession, which is narcissism. I know you don’t want to be depressed; you are a victim of mental illness. Unfortunately framing yourself as a victim is also narcissism. But don’t panic! You are ill, but you are also robust. You will recover.

It’s not like Future-Me saying this to Then-You would make any difference. It would just make you cringe and despair. There is a chasm between us, of Time, maturity, and recovery. You will cross that chasm but you can never go back. Sick mind doesn’t understand healthy mind.

Is it healthy for me to call you a narcissist? Maybe not. I am grateful every day I am recovering. When I consider how much less narcissistic I am today, I feel relief and peace; I smile. But you are still in the Bad Old Days. Your strong mind attacks itself, and the label “narcissist” is just another cudgel you will beat yourself with. I want to handle you with kid gloves, kid, but that won’t help you either. I want to save you, but only Time can do that.

Instead, let me enlighten you about men: they are horny. They desire women. You are an attractive young woman. Yes, your body alone is enough to attract men. You think men are like you: that they seek understanding, or at least compatibility, or meaningful connection. You think a man’s attraction to you signals he thinks you’re really awesome and special and worth some kind of risk. Actually, men do think that, for seconds or even minutes at a time. But it’s just their hormones talking. Yours do the same, except it takes weeks or months to really sink into your brain and alter your thought patterns even when the object of your infatuation isn’t present.

Men are not like you, no matter how male-identified you are. You think men are so awesome they couldn’t possibly desire awkward nerdy little you. Your mistake is that they do want you, but they’re not awesome. I see these men are giving you ample evidence they are both attracted to you and not awesome, and your oblivious idiot self gets it backward. Which causes you a lot of pain, I’m afraid.

Still, I blame hormones. When they finally release you (yay menopause!) you are no longer attractive to men anyway.

From ages 13 to 50 you will be in a hormone haze, attracted to men despite ever-accumulating evidence this hurts you. Somehow your life contains other items of interest, so it’s not a total waste. Speaking of total waste: your uterus! You have to menstruate for 37 years too, and it’s continually horrible. It never “smooths out” or whatever. Female bodies are made for having children. It infuriates you, having a female body. When you’re finally diagnosed with that giant cervical fibroid at 49, you learn pregnancy and gestation are prophylactics against fibroid development. The female body is like, make those babies or I will punish you myself.

You are at war with your body as well as your mind.

I have no solution for this, Young Self. Being human is hard. Having a body is hard. But this is, literally, Life. Suffering of one kind or another is normal; it’s inevitable. In Time, you will come to love and appreciate your body. At 55 I am much more comfortable in this old body than you are at 18.

You will make peace with your female-ness specifically. Fuck babies, fuck “moon cycles,” that all sucks for you forever. But you are still a woman, and you come to love and respect that. Many women your age today similarly hate their female-ness, and they are not so lucky as you. That’s because if they say they “identify as” boys, doctors will put them on testosterone and cut off their breasts. Yeah, I know you’d love that right now, but you’d still hate yourself and your body. You’d just have some irreversible medical damage and trauma to contend with as well.

9:41pm

I hear you saying,

“Irreversible medical damage and trauma? But it sounds cool! Maybe I want to be trans. No more periods, no babies ever, and I hate my breasts. I like gay men more than straight ones — I could be a GAY MAN! I already say I’m a gay man trapped inside a woman’s body. Sign me up! What’s the problem??”

Okay Young Self, let’s have The Conversation. The one where I tell you about the transbirds and the transbees.

First, just because some people say you’re a man, and you really want to be a man, and you modify your body to resemble a man (facial hair is especially convincing), you will never actually be a man. No one will know that more acutely than gay men. Gay men like men, not women who look kind of like men. Not mastectomized, hysterctomized women on exogenous testosterone.

You already have delusional expectations of Life. Expecting to become a man, which is physically impossible, will put you on a path of continual, endless frustration and disappointment. It will make you angry and depressed — even more than you are already, although that’s hard to believe!

Don’t give me that look. Are you mad at me, telling you you can’t become a man? Maybe you think I’m the only reason you can’t, that if it weren’t for my negativity and “transphobia” you could be a man why am I saying no why do I hate you???

Young gender-dysphoric Self, Life has limits. Yes, you can overcome some limits, those imposed by human beings and society (called social constructs) if you are brave and believe in yourself. People say you can’t survive as an independent artist and cartoonist, but you will! They say you can’t make an animated feature film all by yourself, but you will! They say you can’t drop out of college and make something of yourself, but you will!

But changing sex is physically impossible. Sex is not a social construct (although claiming sex is a social construct is a social construct). Sex is a true limit.

You say,

“I’m not so delusional I think I can literally change sex. Obviously I won’t be able to father children, but I won’t want to. You’ve already told me how awful menstruating is, why wouldn’t you want to spare me that? And what use are these breasts? I just want to ‘live as a man.’ Looking like a man and being treated like one is enough.”

So, no stable relationships? No gay man will go for you, they require a working penis. And het men are turned off by masculinity.

You’ve already told me we never have a long-term healthy relationship with a man anyway, Old Self! So who cares? At least I won’t have breasts and periods.

Hmm, you make a fair point there, Young Self. Do you know about the myriad health complications of cross-sex hormones? Vaginal atrophy?

I’m not gonna use my vagina anyway, not as a MAN!

You are going to want to be as healthy as possible. Medical transition is unhealthy.

Being FEMALE is unhealthy! I have irregular painful periods. I have painful breasts—

That’s Fibrocystic Breast Disease, by the way. Yeah it’s bad. It goes away after your hysterectomy though. Yay menopause!

You’re saying menopause is so great, wouldn’t medically transitioning me just put me into early menopause? Sounds great to me!

Well, Young Self, medical menopause isn’t like natural menopause, it’s much harsher.

Harsher than 32 more years of this menstruation and hormone haze shit?

Okay Young Self, you are wearing me down. It’s late. Let me try to sleep on it and try to persuade you tomorrow.

*****

March 17, 6am

You are 18. You won’t transition. You’re old enough to comprehend the consequences. Like I said before, a few years ago, when you were 13 or 14, you would have transitioned, had it been an option. But at 18 you’re already having sexual experiences with men. You currently fancy yourself “in love,” albeit with a man who moved to California over a week ago and still hasn’t even called. Meanwhile you’re hanging out with your male friends, soaking up their attention as you convince yourself it’s JUST FINE that R_____ hasn’t contacted you yet with a phone number or address. Your dorm friend Eric calls you a “stupid shit.” He’s calling everyone a that nowadays because he’s “divorcing” his girlfriend and is bitter. You think he’s funny. But here you are, Young Fool, absorbing his attention and that of ____ _____, with whom you will have a fling in just a few weeks or months. You stupid shit.

As painful, delusional, and crazy all this relationship business is, you simply adore men and are hopelessly attracted to them. Transing won’t fix this. In fact, testosterone would almost certainly increase your sex drive. It would likely alleviate your depression temporarily, but in the longer run have a devastating effect on your fragile psychology. Yes, I’ve said you have a strong mind, but it’s also fragile, the “sanity” part. At 18 you know something is wrong, that your mental state is delicate, which is why you don’t use psychoactive drugs despite your fascination (you recently read The Doors of Perception, after all). Testosterone is a psychoactive drug and some women who use it are genuinely psycho, like “The Nashville Shooter” who shoots up her former school and kills 6 people in 2023. You care enough about your mental health to consider that a deterrant.

But the biggest transing-deterrant at 18 is you become aware that your female body is admired by men. You love men; men love your breasts that you hate, your curves that you hate, your femaleness that you hate. Using pure intellectual reasoning alone, you understand more men are het than gay, so if you like men, this female body of yours will help you “get” them. If you transition, gay men won’t be into your body no matter how much you masculinize it. If you transition, het men will be turned off by your masculinization. Your sexual experiences, fraught as they are, will get you more connected with your body and cure you of your adolescent fag-haggery as you discover het men are in fact good for something.

As for your uterus, if I could go back in time and get you a hysterectomy, I would (keeping your ovaries of course, you need gonads for health, as much as you hate your hormones you would have worse problems without them, like brittle bones). But they don’t let teenagers get hysterectomies even today, unless they claim they’re trans. Then it’s a medical free-for-all.

If you medically transitioned, your life would be much different. But it’s moot because in 1986, transitioning children and teenagers isn’t a Thing. For this reason, becoming a “transman” is not your story. It is the story of the similarly confused, depressed, alienated-from-their-bodies young women of today.

PRESS RELEASE: Nina Paley Declines Screening Permission to Vagina Museum

Urbana, March 15 – Nina Paley, a renowned filmmaker known for award-winning films like Sita Sings the Blues and “This Land is Mine” has announced her decision to deny permission to screen her film Seder Masochism to the UK Vagina Museum, an organization which purports to stand for the values of respect, integrity, and inclusiveness, but which has demonstrated a pattern of behavior directly opposite of those aims.

Although Seder Masochism is Free Culture, dedicated to the Public Domain and therefore free to show, edit, reuse, remix, and redistribute by anyone, Vagina Museum Community Cinema Co-Founder Charlie Corubolo (They/Them) wrote in the UKVM’s enquiry, “Even if our understanding is that we can screen the film for free, we would like to ask you for permission to do so and if there is any requirement prior to the screening,” thus granting Paley this opportunity to deny.

As a committed artist who has produced comics, textile arts, films, books, and other works, Paley has historically supported the screening of her work by small organizations, schools, and festivals, believing that culture should be open, free, and inclusive of everyone. Seder Masochism has won awards from the Moscow Jewish Film Festival and Fantaspoa (Brazil), but since its release has been pulled from venues by fearful organizers who surrender to anti-woman activist calls for Paley’s works to be canceled due to her personal gender critical views.

Paley’s decision is extraordinary. This is the first time she has refused permission for a screening of her work, but Paley is standing up for the belief that an organization that purports to realize feminist goals must be consistently inclusive of women. When women objected to the Vagina Museum deploying woman-erasing language, the Vagina Museum reacted with derision and mockery, even referring to objectors by the misogynistic slur TERF. “How can I, as a woman, work with organizations that cancel women? I would be working against myself and my sisters,” Paley added.

Paley hopes this decision will encourage other artists and organizations to reflect on the values they support and promote their work through partnerships with organizations that respect women. “Organizations can support women by acknowledging the definition of women: adult human females. Until they do so, any claims to support women are meaningless,” said Paley.

The Vagina Museum and others like it which wear a feminist cloak and then muddle and confuse the meaning of biological sex, conflate gender identity with sex, and deny the well-established historical oppression of women on the basis of sex, must be held accountable for their detrimental behavior against women.

For further information:

Nina Paley
nina_paley@yahoo.com
https://twitter.com/ninapaley

Nina Paley remains dedicated to free culture and the widespread screening and distribution of her work, which can be used without permission by anyone, even those she disagrees with.

My Last Hospital-Administered Skyrizi Infusion

$320-per-minute infusion in progress (it takes just over an hour).

What does one wear to a $20,000-a-dose drug infusion? At least one person suggested a tiara and evening gown.

One Skyrizi intravenous infusion dose is 600mg, or ~~2.1164~~ .21164 ounces. At $20,000 per dose that’s ~~$9,450~~ $943,333 per ounce.

CORRECTION: my math was off by a factor of 10. Via JO 753 in a comment below:

“There are 28.3 gramz per ounse. 600 milligramz iz .6 gramz, so an ounse iz 47 dosez. Thats 943,333$ an ounse.

No wonder they can run commercialz for this stuff all day.”

For comparison, gold is $2,051 per ounce, as of this writing. So Skyrizi retails at more than ~~four~~ fourty-six times the cost of pure gold.

I could have saved so much money if I’d gotten infused with pure gold instead of Skyrizi.

Since starting my Crohn’s disease adventure I’ve learned that basically no one pays the retail price of these drugs. Instead, an insurer pays a fraction, and the rest is written off by the pharmaceutical company and hospital so they can claim they’re “charities” and avoid taxes.

It would be like if I charged $150,000 for my $150 Drawings. Customers would still pay $150 and I’d set up a “financial assistance program” to generously cover the rest. Then I’d mark a net loss of $149,850 per drawing, which I could write off my taxes if I made enough to pay big taxes in the first place, but I don’t because I stay just below the poverty line so I can continue qualifying for Medicaid which pays for my Skyrizi.

That’s the difference between someone who buys a cheap tiara and fake movie-prop money off Amazon, and someone who is actually rich.

My friend Minette, who took these photos, thought a shot of my back was important.

Anyway that’s it for my hospital-administered Skyrizi infusions. My next $20,000 dose will be a 360 mg/2.4 mL “single-dose prefilled cartridge with on-body injector”. That’s ~~$15,748~~ $157,222 per ounce, equivalent to about ~~7.68~~ 76.8 ounces of gold.

Gold is looking like a real bargain right now.

I think it’s working

My “biologic” drug infusion regimen, I mean.
I think my Crohn’s disease is going into remission.
I’ve done some food experiments and have been pooping like a boss.
I don’t trust that I’m fully back to normal yet – I’m still not going to experiment with chocolate or nightshades – but yeah, I think it’s working.

My third and final hospital-administered Skyrizi infusion is this Friday. To celebrate its ridiculous $20,000-a-dose price tag I’m bringing a tiara, a rhinestone-studded purse filled with fake money, and – finally – some hope.

The Autoimmune Empire: Depression

Depression is the mind attacking itself. It’s been called a “psychic autoimmune disease.”

This morning, part of me woke up asking, what can I fix? What problem can I attack?
I know — ME!

My motives are good: what can I purify and improve? But the target is wrong.

My impulses — to fix, to cure, to control — may be overactive and delusional, just as my immune system is overactive and confused. My Crohn’s disease is treated with immunosuppressants, designed to calm down the immune system.

My mind, over time, has learned to calm down itself. I have come to accept that I can control very little, so I have learned to give up more, to surrender. This has required me to endure some grief.

I have also simply run out of steam as I’ve aged. No wonder depression was such a problem of my youth: all that energy! All those good intentions run amok! Age itself acts like an immunosuppressant of the mind. As an older friend once told me of the remission of his own depression: “my angst circuits just burned out.”

I have recovered a lot since my severely depressed youth. But a big stress can trigger depression again, just as a big virus can trigger a body’s immune system to attack itself. In fact, having an autoimmune disease seems to be triggering some depression in me now. I can’t fix my Crohn’s disease. But my mind still responds to the stress by saying, FIX IT! Failing to fix it, my mind turns on itself, because what else does it have at hand?

Only surrender, and grief. I wish my immune system could grieve whatever it needs to grieve and leave my tissues alone. Meanwhile, I hope my mind learns to accept it, because however unpleasant Crohn’s disease is, depression is worse.