#1 – For Cubs Fans Who Encourage Me to Root for The Cubs in the Playoffs

Today is our third birthday! To celebrate, we have been counting down the top-ten most-read posts from the last year. This one is not only the most popular piece we published last year, but by far the most popular piece we’ve ever published. Never underestimate how big the anti-bandwagon is.

 

Hey Guys!

My my my, you have been working over time trying to convince me to root for your Cubbies. It’s cool that you’re excited. The Cubs haven’t given you much to be excited about and I get it. You just don’t know how to handle all of this pure joy. While I appreciate the invite allow me to explain why I am turning down your offer.

Few things first: I am a White Sox fan. I also recognize that the Cubs are a better team than the White Sox both on and off the field. Theo Epstein is a genius that should quit baseball and solve world hunger through the use of sabermetrics. I don’t know how that would work but I’m sure he could do it. The Cubs roster is filled with young, talented, and gritty players that are fun to watch. Joe Maddon is like your neighbor’s cool uncle that comes through town in his hippy van every summer with a different girlfriend and let’s you smoke weed with him while he talks about how Burning Man used to awesome before it went commercial. They are an enviable team set up for long-term success.

That being said, Fuck The Cubs. Why? Glad you asked.

1) I Don’t Care About Your Dead Grandpa.

I’ve heard, “C’mon Cubbies! Let’s do it for Grandpa! I know he’s watching from heaven” or a variation of that quote on Facebook, on sports radio, in person, etc a thousand times. The Cubs are not winning it all for your grandpa. Javier Baez gives no shits about your grandpa. Anthony Rizzo gives no shits about your grandpa. Cubs fans act as if the Cubs winning the World Series will unleash a zombie horde of their dead relatives to help them celebrate the title. I understand the connection between family and sports. I have a lot of great memories of going to games with my grandparents. I also have a lot of great memories of my grandparents that don’t involve sports at all. If the only connection you had with your grandpa was baseball, he was probably a shitty grandpa and he deserves nothing.

#2 – 26 Things Emotionally Strong People Do

 
Today DMC is Three! We are celebrating by publishing the top-ten most-read posts from the last year!

 
1. Emotionally Strong people are less discouraged by the stresses and discouragements of life than people who aren’t Emotionally Strong people.

2. Emotionally Strong people are able to unemotionally express their emotional needs.

3. Emotionally Strong people don’t focus on the hurdle itself, but on the nourishing Light near and around and on the hurdle.

4. Emotionally strong people eat correctly and exercise the right, and correct way.

5. Emotionally Strong people are able to recover quickly from the emotionally harmful nature of emotional wounds i.e. rejection, failure, or when Whole Foods is out of umeboshi paste.

6. Emotionally strong people get the amount of sleep they need, and understand how to best navigate their own specific and Loving sleep patterns.

#3 – Why It Matters That Harley Quinn & Joker’s Relationship Is Abusive

Our third anniversary is tomorrow! We are counting down the top-ten most-read posts from the last year.

 

Harley Quinn and the Joker’s relationship is abusive. It has been from the beginning, way back in Batman the Animated Series. In her second appearance ever, Joker force-feeds her fish after she tells him she can’t eat it and she throws up. Later in the series Joker gets mad at her for stepping on his joke and he throws her out a window. There is no way to read this any other way. This relationship appears equally toxic in the comics and video games that feature the couple. Joker hits Harley, tries to kill her, insults her and dehumanizes her constantly, then says something sweet the next minute and she believes she’s in love. It’s one of the most honest artistic portrayals of the dynamics of an abusive relationship I’ve ever seen.

In the dumpster fire that is the new Suicide Squad movie, Harley and Joker’s relationship has been edited to appear more progressive and mutually respectful. I say edited because apparently the film was originally written and shot in line with the canon abusive narrative and then because of the studio’s fear of coming across too dark, the movie was re-edited to make Joker seem not so bad. He looks out for her. He tries to save her. He doesn’t try to kill her on camera at any point.

#4 – Grindr Troll #6 – Sock Guy

Our 3rd anniversary is on February 6th. We are counting down the top-ten most-read posts from the last year.

#5 – While Watching the Music Video for “Only One” at Midnight, Kanye West Walks Into the Fog Holding His Daughter in His Arms and I Can See the Clouds Outside of My Window Parting Into Two Wings

 
As we approach our 3rd anniversary on February 6th, we are counting down the top-ten most-read posts from the last year.
 
 
& there, gentle smoke cleaved by a small girl’s face
looking into the eyes of her father as if it is the first time &
the shape of her own eyes are a gift from a buried woman
& I realize this part of the performance is not for us
& maybe all life is the years being plucked from our arms
like rose petals & cast into the fields by some god
until we are nothing but alone & eager for the rain
& the mist that rises from it & carries our voices
to those who have survived the wreckage we left &
Kanye West is alone on the screen now & he is alone
in the rain & he is alone clutching the heavy air like he knows
that there is something living inside of it &
I know what it is to never actually be alone
I know what it is to think you are alone &
instead be in the arms of an entire family &
I hear my mother’s voice in the threatening
of the sky & the small silence that comes after lightning
pulls its bright dress over the dark of night &
this is something the wind cannot paint over
even as the clouds are split from each other

#6 – Three Poems (#2) – April Ranger

 
As we approach our 3rd anniversary on February 6th, we are counting down the top-ten most-read posts from the last year.
 
 
Not A Mother

for Purvi Patel, sentenced to 20 years prison in Indiana for feticide and child neglect after miscarrying a fetus, April 2015

How you bled & bled
till you nearly died,
but how you wanted to live:
trusted those bald hospital walls,
gloved hands, sheets clean
as preacher’s speech.
Wrists cuffed, knees spread,
body splayed, courtroom bench
your emergency room bed – the bed
you made, they’ll say.

And how I have praised
my own sudden blood:
my red verdict spelled plain
in the folds of my underwear:
my private sentence, a free woman’s walk
to the drugstore. How I swallowed pills
before and after. How I’ve danced.
How I danced till I sweat
when my blood arrived
one month after
he carried me home,
refused the condom

#7 – THIS THING CALLED LIFE – Prince and the Nature of Collective Grief

 
As we approach our third anniversary on February 6th, we are counting down the top-ten most-read posts from the last year.

 

When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

William Shakespeare – Julius Caesar

“Style ain’t sittin’ court side with the owner of the team
Style is owning the court and charging ’em all a fee
Style is not lusting after someone because they’re cool
Style is loving yourself ’til everyone else does 2 “

Prince – “Style”


It was just hours since the news of Prince’s death had been released, and social media was already filled to the brim with shock, news stories, remembrances, and a massive outpouring of grief. I was behind the counter at the shop where I work, listening to every Prince song I had on iTunes, which thankfully was several hours worth, when two women walked in. They were fairly unassuming Pearl District types, which by Portland standards generally means freshly scrubbed, gluten-free, Barre workouts, and a mild aversion to tipping. That’s all fine for what it is, but I only mention it because it tempered my expectations for the interaction. They were around my age and nice, and we fell right away into casual, friendly conversation. We were talking as I rang them up, and just then the song “Purple Rain” came on the speakers. The woman who was paying froze, and her face began to twist with pain, her cheeks flushing and her eyes filling with water. “Oh my God,” she said. “I haven’t heard any Prince songs yet today. Oh my God I’m so sad. I can’t believe it, I’m going to cry.”

And that’s exactly what she did. Real, wet, hard tears, right there in front of the register. She wiped her eyes, embarrassed, but that didn’t stop them from coming. In fact, they seemed to flow even harder. Her friend touched her arm, and said “Oh honey,” and she had tears in her eyes too. And then there I was, raw from too little sleep, and those warm, sweet opening chords filling the room and Prince’s wounded but upright voice singing earnest lyrics about sorrow and pain and laughter, which had certainly made me weep before in other distant personal circumstances, and I too felt my throat tighten and tears burning my eyes. The three of us stood there suspended together for a moment, the only ones in the whole place, as the song rose into its gospel-infused chorus, between us the absolute encapsulation of grace and beauty and loss, and the guts and talent it takes to give such a gorgeous gift to the world.

“Unbelievable,” she muttered, sniffling and doing her best to gather herself. We all looked at each other wiping our eyes and laughed. I handed the woman her change, and she said thank you with a trembling smile that I will never forget, and they turned and walked out together, leaving me there, shaking and laughing to myself as the rest of the song played out.

Later, when I thought about what had happened, there were a number of surprising things about it. Firstly, I had not expected a moment of such unbounded intimacy over the far-out, sexed-up artiste. Not there, certainly not with them. I mean, I suppose when I saw them I unconsciously expected them to not care that much. They didn’t seem like outwardly sensitive or musical people, or that the music of Prince would be anything more than a distant soundtrack to their lives, no different from any other dusty, cracked CD in a box in the basement. But then, of course it was. He was such a massive musical force, his divine gift was to create the kind of music that transcended any and all boundaries. It was so contagious, so potent, so emotionally resonant that it made its way into even the most obscure cracks and corners of the world, filling them with his wild, transcendent soul.

#8 – On Prince -Eve Ewing

 
As we approach our 3rd anniversary on February 6th, we are counting down the top-ten most-read posts from the last year.

 

 

Eve L. Ewing is a Chicago-born essayist, poet, editor, and visual artist. Her work has been published in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, Union Station, In These Times, and the anthology The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. She has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, and a scholarship recipient for the New Harmony Writers Workshop. She is one half of the writing collective Echo Hotel (the other half is poet, essayist, and critic Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib). She loves cookies and bikes.

#9 – Three Poems – Nicole Homer

 

Our third anniversary is on February 6th. This week we are counting down the top-ten most-read posts from the last year.

 

A Running List of Questions I Plan to Ask the Never-Married Girl Who Routinely 
Puts Down Married Sex and Who, Coincidentally, is Fucking My Husband

Do you know cute your arrogance is?
Why is it, exactly, you imagine his body is, only with you,
something snatched from an ee cummings poem?

Do you think you make it quite a new thing?
Have you heard the expression that steel against steel is sharpened?
Which part of me did you think you saw rust on?

Where do you think he learned practiced perfected everything you so enjoy?
How big is your alone? Do you set a place for it at the table or
is it a lapdog, hiding in your purse, and growling at sweet smelling strangers?

What were your parents like? Did you ever hear them in the night?
Did you think they were arguing?
All of those tricks of his –

where do you think he learned them?
Did you think you weren’t one of them? 

#10 – a lineage

 
Our third anniversary is on February 6th. We are counting down the top ten most-read posts from the last year.