An Ambush at the Finish Line, or, Kingslover, You Cunt

Dear AOL,

Yesterday, I cheated on you with Netzero when you refused to connect. He's a dirty himbo on the cheap and closed the door in Firefox's face in favor of bloated, scabby, drunk IE, but he got the job done. For free. You're a high-priced whore, AOL, and as such, I expect you to drop and give me good baud rate when I snap my fingers. Do it, bitch.

Love,

La Guera

I finished The Poisonwood Bible yesterday. I thought it was an outstanding book until the last 100 pages, when Adah, the book's moral center, is magically cured of her hemiplegic lameness by "retraining". Christ, what a cop-out. Kingslover does intimate that Adah's cure might not be a good thing, and Adah mourns the loss of her "slant", but neither objects too strenuously. "Well, I've lost my skewed perspective, but I can walk, so lalala."

Even better(or worse), Adah goes from the perspective that all life is precious and deserves an opportunity for survival to a Darwinian survival of the fittest proponent. I guess her moral egalitarianism was disposable with her healthy body. When triplets are born blind during her neonatal internship at Emory, does Adah speculate on what they can offer the world, as she would've done 200 pages before? Why, no. Instead, she pities the teenage mother the "burden" and muses that maybe she'd have been better off if they'd died in the womb. Bear in mind that this is the same Adah who once said the following:

"If you are whole, you will argue: Why wouldn't they rejoice? Don't the poor miserable buggers all want to be like me?"

Not necessarily, no. The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands, but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you... We would rather be just like us and have that be alright."

Truer words were never spoken. That is, in a nutshell, what limpers want. Hell, isn't that what everyone wants?

But now she's all about "some lives are worth more than others" because she doesn't need to root in the dirt with the rest of us anymore. HATE. Absolute, frothing hate. Kingslover was doing so well until she unloaded that staggering load of ablist bullshit into my unsuspecting face in a warm smear of smug bukkake. I much preferred her in her "Every life is valuable" ensemble. I had been prepared to read her other books because the writing was so engaging, but now I'm not sure I want to line her pockets with another red cent.

I received my prompt for all_hallows_fic and will start as soon as I finish Part II of Et Tu, which should be this week.