Birthing a Radical: Anarchy and Parenting.

Occasionally, I feel the word "different" was invented to describe me. Even within typical outsider circles, I don't feel like I belong. Despite the fact that I've never really fit in neatly anywhere, I never bothered to be bothered by this fact.

Until my daughter was born. Then all the weirdness and unorthodoxy and eccentricity seemed to pile up and crush me under their combined weight.

I've been a vegetarian since I was a teenager. This never caused me any grief, but when it came time to start raising my daughter, I was bombarded with alarmist reactivity regarding the idea that I would DEPRIVE my DARLING DAUGHTER of the infinite meat-eating possibilities of life. Because of me, she would only grow to half-size, her IQ would be so low you couldn't register it on a chart, and she'd immediately vomit upon her first taste of rebelliously-procured meat products (in puberty). And how dare I do that to her? Easily. I sleep well at night knowing I'm such an awful person that I'd opt out of the factory farmed, antibiotic-laden, hormone-infested, carcinogenic junk-trap that is omnivorous food consumption. Not to mention the many animals whose demand for death was not made by my family. I'm pretty cool with that.

I've been an anarchist for most of my life. Now, possible misconceptions of anarchism aside, I've been through a very real schism from the rest of this community. Most anarchists identify as libertarian socialists or anarcho-communists. Ideologically, these kinds of anarchists intentionally separate themselves from anarcho-capitalists, whom they say are not "really" anarchists because they support the power structure dynamics of a hierarchical system. How dare they! Well, guess who thinks currency and jobs and companies and the free market and civil liberties and autonomy are awesome? Me. That makes me an anarcho-capitalist. Even in the subset to which I belong, I still disagree with many of the proponents. For example, I would probably enjoy bitchslapping Ron Paul. I think "can't stand" and Ayn Rand rhyme for valid reasons. Beyond this disagreement, many anarchists hate the fact that I've procreated. As if perpetuating the species with a child that has a higher-than-average chance of being an anarchist, I've somehow betrayed the most integral tenet of anarchism. I believe that parenting my daughter in such a way that teaches her the responsibility of autonomy and self-efficacy will be the thing that defines her life as she makes her way toward adulthood. She's only six now, but it's never too early to start.

Which brings me to my next problem. Er, point. Yeah, my next point. So, I teach my daughter autonomy and making responsible decisions. This means that I enable her to do things that would give most parents of similar-aged kids a heart attack. She uses the stove, cuts with santoku knives, plays barefoot outside if she wants, snacks if she's hungry, and she is a huge player in her own educational decisions. How do I manage these? Easily. I taught her how to use the stove responsibly, and I supervise when she uses it (for now). I taught her how to use a santoku knife (and scissors and lighters) so that she doesn't have to wonder about it, and I don't stress about her being barefoot or eating between meals. She's average height, on the thin side, and is so energetic I constantly joke with strangers that she's "powered by vegetables." I homeschool her, and she weighs in on how her lesson plans go.

Oh, I homeschool her! I must be religious, right?! Nope. All atheist, all the time. Which brings me to another issue: even within the minority homeschool community, I am still a black sheep. Foregoing the Bible in favor of Cosmos is seen as a Hellfire and brimstone transgression to many of the homeschoolers in my country. But, here's the thing... I don't homeschool my daughter to shelter her, I homeschool her to help her learn to think for herself. I don't want her to go through school with a blindly-patriotic, pro-'MURICAN slant. I want her to learn "just the facts, ma'am" and she can come to her own conclusions about them. P.S. If you think this isn't a problem, think of the way you learned about Thanksgiving in elementary school. Was there a table of brotherhood? A nicey-nice sit down meal where they all thanked the same Christian god? Cough. Many of the things we learn as children, we have to re-learn REALISTICALLY when we hit college (or HS if we're lucky).

So, that's a portion of me in a nutshell. And what I've told you isn't even the "worst" of it. But instead of these things making me feel angry or divided from humanity, I use it as an object lesson to teach my daughter all about the beauty, diversity, and infinite wonder of the world. I am allowed to have these differences and they won't be the death of me, as they may be in some other places. I can speak out against perceived injustice and I won't be immediately executed. She can live comfortably as a vegetarian without starving to death. My husband can pursue his medical school studies without being denied entrance due to caste issues. Because of our differences, she can experience an amazing variety of things, in life. The majority of her dinners are borrowed from another culture. I have major wanderlust so we travel across the country fairly regularly. She gets to see how all kinds of people live, and she is always a part of their festivals and events. We watch strange independent films about clowns and fairies, funky documentaries about spirituality, listen to oud and gamelan music, read stories from greco-roman mythology and amazing old classics, she has frequent exposure to all kinds of international art history. She's diversity-sensitive because she grew up with a throng of drag queens, queer artists, transsexual activists, performers, and strange birds. She's always curious, and I'm always willing to teach her more or help her find information. I named her after Salvador Dali and Roald Dahl. Her name is Dahlia. She's going to end up a name in your household someday. She is love.

Definitive Guide to Turning Your Wii Into a DVD/MP3 player (with photo storage capabilities).

So, you bitch aloud because you can't stick a Redbox DVD into your Wii. Why the hell did Nintendo make something that can read thin, plastic/metal, circular discs... but ONLY in the form of games? Those games are written on DVDs... what gives, dudes?! Why the hell can't I play CDs and DVDs on my Wii?!

The answer is: you CAN, it's just that Nintendo doesn't want you to. Seriously. They *could* include an update, or a channel, that would give your Wii DVD/CD player capabilities, without taking away any game-play functionality... buuuut they don't. They'd have to fork over $20 per Wii to The DVD Consortium (proprietary usage of "DVD" technology, and all). So I'm going to teach you how to do this for yourself. It's *not* hard.

And now, the steps! - DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE WORDINESS OF THE STEPS, I just tried to make everything as ironclad and as clear as possible, without delving into any of the technicalities or using any shortcut lingo:

This is an SD card. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

0. Get an SD card, and a computer that you can stick the SD card into. Full size (like the one pictured above), or if you need to use a Micro-SD card, have an adapter [if you try using an SD card that doesn't work, it's probably the rare unicorn SD card that isn't FAT32 formatted, so you'll need to fix that, either by formatting, if you know how, or using a different card - but the chances of that happening are near-null]. Make sure your SD card's little switch is NOT set to LOCK for this entire process. Make sure your Wii is fully updated (to 4.3U). Do these things BEFORE you start the process.

The screen where you can find your MAC address.

1. Get your Wii's MAC address. Turn on your Wii. From the channel screen, press the button on the bottom left. It's marked "Wii." Then there will be two buttons, and the one on the right, "Wii Settings" is what you're looking for. From that screen, page over to the right with the arrow, which will bring you to the option "Internet" which is the third down from the top. From there, you'll select "console settings" and that will show you your MAC address. If you don't understand written instructions well, here's a video for reference, that makes it easy for you visual learners: http://youtu.be/UF6PjCU37xI

2. Put the SD card into your computer's card reader. Go to http://please.hackmii.com/. Select 4.3U, enter your MAC address, keep Bundle the HackMii installer option checked, and try... with all your might... to enter the CAPTCHA correctly (which is my personal Achilles heel). The red wire/blue wire thing is just flair, you can choose either option. I pick RED, myself. It's a cuter color. That letterbomb will give you a .zip file, which you should open. Once inside, put the PRIVATE folder and boot.elf onto your SD card (drag and drop). Take the SD card over to your turned-off Wii and put it in. Turn on your Wii. If you need a better set of steps, here's a Youtube video: http://youtu.be/mEB4nz1gsbE

You've got mail! And it's much better than AOL spam.

3. Go to your Wii messages. Scroll back and forth if you don't see anything, it may take a second to load. As soon as you click on the letterbomb, your Wii screen will turn black and show a bunch of text. This is good!

This will happen after you select the LetterBomb in your Wii's messages.

4. Even though you can't see the Wii hand, your Wiimote still works. Use it! Click on Continue - which is already selected. The next screen, scroll up to The Homebrew Channel, click on it. That will install the Homebrew Channel. MOST INTEGRAL PART OF ALL YOUR JOY THAT FOLLOWS. It will dump you back at the same screen. Click "exit." Homebrew will load immediately. You'll see bubbles and cute shit, but nothing else... yet. TURN OFF YOUR WII, take the SD card out, and put it back into your computer.

5. Open the following link, after your SD card is in the computer: http://www.codemii.com/wiihomebrew/homebrew_browser_v0.3.9e.zip - Unzip that file! Then, make a folder on your SD card called "Apps" - put the contents of the zip file into your Apps folder on the SD card. Take the SD card out of your computer, put it back into the Wii, and turn the Wii on.

The loading screen of Homebrew.

6. Go to the Homebrew channel (which should have installed into your first empty channel slot), and click on it. You'll have the option of using the Homebrew browser, which you didn't last time. Use it! Click Load, and you'll get the above screen. Let it do its stuff for a while and eventually it should show you this:

This is basically an app store, but everything's free!

7. Navigate over to the Media tab, and somewhere near the top of the list should be WiiMC. This is the Wii Media Center, which is currently the best (but definitely not the only) Wii app that will play all your media, including DVDs! After you install it, you can exit the Homebrew Browser and access it from the Homebrew Channel. Note: this channel will not be available on your main Wii channel screen, only through the Homebrew Channel! Now you can play DVDs, CDs, Youtube Videos (even better than the native Wii Youtube App!)... and life is beautiful. ;)

I listed a few links below so you can see the ridiculously plentiful opportunities to make your Wii into an entire media center, with all kinds of awesome. If you know about Emulators, this will run Roms for basically every obsolete console. SOOO MANY POSSIBILITIES.

Best Homebrew Applications. WATCH IT.
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Browser
http://hackmii.com/
GREAT list of Homebrew Apps you may like!