Body High vs. Head High

I sometimes write about characters involved with drugs, but don’t know much from firsthand experience.  This is something I just randomly remembered from when I was in high school.  Sometimes people would talk about a body high or head high, more often the body high.  I feel like it was in reference to LSD.  That was in the ’90s.  Do any of you remember this, and can you explain to me what it means?

I suppose I could dig up the facebook for my old home boy Try-Anything-Once Todd and ask him, but I might need a facebook account for that, and no thanks.

Who Are You? (Owl Impression)

Politics, amirite?  Hooboy.  This will be the last article in my attempt to top all categories of FtB articles, unless some sneaky fucker edges me out of one of the categories I already topped.  Get it, I’m a top.  I kid, you know I switch.  OK I’m probably a pillow princess but you know I got a bad back.  LL Cool J would rap about banging my girlfriend if I had one.  Remember that line?

OK, so politics, I know I’ve been thinking something about this lately, what was it?  Hm…  Oh yeah.  Last night while I was non-sleeping, I was trying to explain myself to the mute audience in my head, and felt the need to preface my arguments with who I am, politically.  I haven’t felt the need to put that into words much, so here it is.

I’m a personal anarchist.  I think society should have laws but that all people should be willing to break them, as needed, to suit our personal ethos.  Be willing to do the time for your crimes, but be willing to do the crimes you feel are most necessary.

I’m a socialist, maybe even a communist, at the end of the day.  No allegiance to the ghost of the USSR, no worries in that Charly.  I just know that in a world where every inch is owned by either the government or billionaires, there is no room for any person to truly meet all their own needs.

In the USA we live by that myth.  All our laws are constructed around an idea grown more absurd every day, that every person can work, and that the fruit of that labor can be sufficient to care for us through our whole lives.  If we, the poor, can’t have one fucking thing that isn’t fragile as hell, can’t have any social safety net to pick us up when getting worked at this rate inevitably breaks us, then the government needs to step up with cradle-to-grave social services, given generously and without stipulation.  And as far as the commune goes, that isn’t just breaking your back with a hoe.  I think all Hollywood movie-making and corporate art should ultimately be destroyed and replaced with artists working communally to make art for its own sake, profit as incidental rather than the sole motivating factor to make or do anything.  And tech and science and education and child-rearing.  There are many things that can be done communally.

The rich bore me as much as they oppress me.  Their idea of the good life, of what is worthwhile at all, it’s a cosmically bad joke.  I’d be OK with them existing, with their cheek implants and lambos, if they could just leave it at that and not suck us dry at every opportunity.  They can’t be trusted with what they have.  Class war now, babes.

I keed, I keed.  Or do I?  I do.  Unless..?  Ahaha, I had you going.  Or maybe…

EDIT – I DID IT!!!! I’M NUMBER ONE!!!!  for as long as it lasts.

No Regrets in The Struggle

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE FtBlogger atop all the main page categories of FtB articlesGimme the prize!

Anyway, I just flew in from Social Justice and boy are my arms tired.  I mean airplane food, amirite?  Wocka wocka.

Some of my articles in this series have been quasi-thoughtful, but I’m running out of power.  What can I do?  Social justice, social justice, what can I say about that?

You know, there’s an idea you would sometimes see come up in comments in the early days of the Deep Rifts 2.0, when many of us were becoming “woke” for the first time.  It was a sense of gratitude that women were bringing to light the way they’d been mistreated, that it was opening up all these other conversations, and that this would give us a chance to become better people.  To truly realize the equality we’d always just assumed was part of the movement, in contradistinction to the naked sexism of christian fundies.  I just want to bring that gratitude back for a moment.

I love that we broke up the atheist movement.  The crudlords and fogies are still out there, somewhere, embarrassing themselves in Elon’s Thunderdome.  But they forever have to sit there in full awareness that they have been rebuked.  That a sizeable chunk of their former bedfellows just said “Fuck Y’all” and never looked back.  Everybody said their piece, then went their separate ways.

Can they even understand what we feel?  I don’ t think they can.  Dawkins can only conceive of this as us being led astray, bewitched by the sorcery of women in glasses and colorful hair.  He doesn’t know how good it is to look at society as it really is, the same way he’d look at the physical world as it really is, and know what you’re going to do with that, do with your time here.  We’re gonna be good, as good as we can be.  We’ll make mistakes but we’ll learn, because yeah, we woke up to the importance of social justice.

I’m still proud to be an SJW.  Power on, comrades.

The Ivory Tower

I won’t say I woke up this morning with a mission because that would imply I slept last night, but now I’m trying to write an article in each of the categories of FtB articles. There are some categories in which I rarely appear.  I’m a BFA, I shouldn’t talk about science.  But I’m gonna talk about science.

I think Chunderf00l said it best, when he did a video about how Ivory Tower shouldn’t be derogatory for science boyz because ivory towers are cool and shiny and hold up THA TROOF for all to see.  Then he switched gears to chortling through his tears about Anita Sarkeesian for a decade.  Yewchoob atheism, amirite?  Is this thing on?

Science can be real cool.  I think my favorite blog ever has to be Tetrapod Zoology.  The universe, especially at the very local level of this planet, is chock full of interesting shit.  Some of it is beautiful and inspiring, and so there’s a tendency to latch onto that, as the tool to promote a sort of positive atheism.  We don’t need the majesty of some false vision of glorious afterlife, we can marvel at the world we inhabit to feel inspired.

But science is always a mixed bag.  Darwin knew it.  Nature is full of fucked up repugnant shit.  There are animals that can only reproduce like the fucken Alien xenomorph, their entire existence predicated on nightmarish cruelty.  Not just a species here or there, but clades full of species that do the same nasty nasty.  And within our own lives, we can marvel at human beauty and compassion, but are also stuck in a species with fucking millions upon millions of actual fascist motherfuckers.  Brains so ugly they can turn you to stone.

I don’t think there is an inspiring or magical or fun version of atheism, frankly.  Sorry, Ivory Tower.  Sorry, Science.  Philosophical materialism has one solitary advantage over all religions.  It’s true, and it is brave to look at things as they actually are, to deal with the world you actually live in.  That bravery makes it possible to do greater things than any religious person is capable of – to give of yourself fully knowing how precious every second of your brief life is – but it doesn’t guarantee that we will do those great things.  Many of us are just unreconstructed shitbirds.  But we love us some science!

The Religious Stage

I was gradually failing high school in the ’90s and in an effort to make up credits I took some college classes in the summer.  My Philosophy 81 course (lol) was kinda influential on me, had me calling myself an agnostic instead of an atheist for like, twenty-five years?

Anyway, that class surveyed the landscape of Western philosophy without getting into a lot of depth on any of it.  As part of that, we looked at the recurring themes in the field.  There was the search for “substance,” the way to live a “good” life, logicking one’s way to god, and more.

More than one philosopher had ideas that a human life moves through set stages, like we’re all on our own Hero’s JourneyKierkegaard got a closer look, and the last of his stages was The Religious Stage.  I don’t remember particulars, but the idea was something like, when you’ve done all the big things in life and all that’s left is to look upon death, you will inevitably come back to god.

I had my sixteenth birthday in that class, was obnoxiously confident about my own philosophical materialism, and didn’t cotton to being told I would someday fogey into submission to the Invisible Tyrant.  What would you do?

At least the professor didn’t act like all these dead white guys had the truth on lock, unlike my Philo 101 teacher at the art school, who – fucking absurdly – found Descartes’ ontological argument completely irrefutable.  I rattled off three counter arguments in three minutes and he had the placid, glazed, uncomprehending expression of a true fucking zombie.

But no, I’m closer to fifty than forty.  Jeezis here I come…

Oh My My, Oh Hell Yes

Honey, put on that party dress.  I don’t suggest looking up the music video that goes with those lyrics on yewchoob.  Content Warning: Necrophilia.  Not on this post, just that video.

I like Tom Petty’s hot jams tho.  But if I make this post about music, it won’t help me top all the categories of FtB articles.  I need an article about “Miscellaneous and Meta.”  So, um, I dunno… Weed.  There’s no weed category.  I don’t smoke weed but I like the memes and humor.  Some of it.  By the last Cheech & Chong movie that shit was tired.  Wait, that’s a kind of Art Culture and Humor, just like Tom Petty.

I’ll just say a little about my situation again, today, this morning, 8:52 AM as I type this sentence.  I’ve been having occasional insomnia since something like mid- to late-December.  My job requires brain power and emotional self-control, both of which are impaired by lack of sleep, so I just called in sick.  Awake all night.

I don’t know why this is happening, but both my brother and father are bipolar and this has something like manic features.  But the fact it has only happened in the dark part of the year makes me think it’s possible that’s related.  And I drank a can of Pepsi close to midnight.  But still.

I don’t deserve this, man!  Imma get arrested by the motherfucking Dream Police.  Cheap Trick were right!

On Genital Preference

My conquest of the categories of FtB articles continues apace, with this rip-roaring number about Feminism Gender and Sexuality.  I don’t know if I’ve posted my thoughts about genital preference before, so I’ll lay out the main points.

It’s OK to have a genital preference, when it comes to doing the sex.  When it comes to casual conversation, less so, but it’s a situational thing.  I’d say a good rule of thumb is this – express your love for the genitals you want to get with, never express disgust for the genitals that you’d prefer to avoid.  Somebody has those genitals, and doesn’t deserve to have to feel disgusting, right?

There are a lot of ramifications of this.  Don’t equate your genital preference with your orientation, even if it makes intuitive sense.  “I love vag because I’m a lesbian.”  There are lesbians that don’t love vag for any number of reasons, there are lesbians who don’t have vag and don’t deserve to think of themselves as undesirable to lesbians for that reason – even tho it’s valid for that to be true in your case.  Does that make sense?  It’s complicated.

I find a very, very useful way to think of this is like fatphobia.  It’s OK for you to not find fat people attractive.  You can’t control what your instincts tell you, and they’ve been warped by simmering in global fatphobia your whole life.  You shouldn’t have to force yourself to be with a person you can’t physically love, and much more importantly, no fat person deserves to be stuck with somebody who cannot physically love them.

But wearing a “no fatties” t-shirt or dropping that preference in anything but the most hushed and apologetic tones is a fucking vile thing to do.  Likewise, unless a transbian makes a pass at ye, vag-requiring lesbian, don’t feel the need to bring it up.  It just isn’t necessary, until it is, which is sure to be an extremely rare occurrence.  (Ditto in reverse gay dudes in cis/trans situations.)

This is one way terfs ruin shit for everyone.  Lesbians should be able to yell about how much they love muff as much as gay men yell about dick.  It’s still an option, of course, but thanks to terfs identifying AFAB parts with their hate movement by way of their internet handles and slogans, any lesbian reveling in their genital preference may result in a nearby trans person of any stripe feeling unsafe or unsettled.  Is this person going to try to harm me?  Don’t know.  Non-nazi dykes don’t deserve to have to think about that every time they put on the “I Love Pussy” hat.

I could be wrong about any of this in any way; I am not up on the current discourse, and have never had a meaningful conversation with genital dysphoria-having person about the subject.

FreethunksBlogdotWho?

In pursuit of my conquest of the categories of FtB articles, I must think a thought about FREETHOUGHT.  Sometimes our network shows a bit of disunity in the continuing mission to be progressive and secular charismatic preachers.  But there can be reasonable disagreements within that remit, and no one lately has come out the side hatch with regressivisms or god belief, so we’re cool on that level.

It’s just a little funny to see somebody who is like, God?  Nuh.  Ghosts, well…  That’s alright tho, as I said.  It’s interesting to me that we all have different reasons for our unbelief.  At least one of us has stated unequivocally they arrived at it through a kind of Cartesian meditation, another that it was the injustice of christian dogmas alone that pushed them away.

My own feeling du jour is that some people are constitutionally incapable of believing in the immaterial, some people being me.  I didn’t have a choice, and still don’t.  Whenever I’ve had a feeling that touches on the transcendent, I recognized that there was nothing genuinely supernatural to it.  No, not strictly accurate.  I never stopped noticing the real.

The activism was a choice.  I speak out in defense of philosophical materialism because people like me, who have never seen a ghost and never will, shouldn’t have to feel like grim outliers in the no-fun police.  We’re fun, I swear!  So fun.  I like to think   I’m fun.

Pepsi and Mania

Don’t drink mildly caffeinated beverages close to midnight when you’ve been having random nights of insomnia.  A recurring theme of these episodes is feeling the need to explain myself, in some way, to some hypothetical audience I’ll likely never face.  Last night it was the annoyance of seeing yet another leftesque person decide to take a “bold” stand against AI art, locking arms with exactly everyone in the entire universe except apparently my boyfriend and one subreddit.  And so I was contemplating making that my first ever yewchoob video, which I’ll likely never do.  But I kept contemplating, getting no sleep whatsoever.  It’s ten minutes to eight and my work alarm goes off at 8:20.

So I’ve decided to make eight posts, so I can have the top article in every category on FtB’s front page.  Here I am, born to be kings, I’m the princes of the universe.  This post has already mentioned art, and so it will be the top post for “Arts and Culture.”  I rule.

Antisemitism and Phishing

They say the misspellings and shoddy construction of phishing emails are specifically to weed out potential bites from people clever enough to do fraudsters some damage.  It seems every conspiracy except for the real ones trace back to antisemitic beliefs – flat earth, qanon, hollow earth, pizzagate, 9-11 truth, antivax, gender crit, foreign infiltration, whatever.  “They” are always, at the end of the day, “the jews.”  It makes me think, in this moment, what if antisemitism serves a similar function?  If you can believe “the jews” are up to no good on that level, you can believe any wack thing.

There are definitely holes in that.  The spelling errors are there from go, in your spam trap.  Sometimes the antisemitism is buried kinda deep; it can’t be the gateway drug.  Just a random thunk on a random day.