One Man’s Psychic Vampire

If you’re coming at it blind, Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible can make for a rousing rebuke of christian BS.  Particularly the idea you should love your enemy is mocked as hypocrisy and foolishness.  Well, I don’t know if one should feel as bitter about one’s enemies as I do, but the idea of loving those bastids is profoundly wrong.

That said, the book is rotten to the core.  Much of it was repurposed from a proto-nazi book called Might is Right, and another big influence was Rand’s objectivism.  Dude said evil is live backwards, christians be asking us to live shadows of a real life, so doing evil equals living, something something yadda yadda.  But somehow this morality shook out to being much the same as mainstream christianity in LaVey’s country – this wonderful land of genocide and slavery.  The poor and the disabled are only allowed to live until they’re inconvenient.  Anybody you regard as an enemy can be completely dehumanized, oppressed, segregated, exiled, or slaughtered.  Real daring, Anton.

The specific part I want to address is his big tirade against “psychic vampires” – people seeking sympathy or help from you, who always take and never give.  We all know people who drain our mental health, one way or another.  (I believe there was a big running joke on What We Do in the Shadows about it, but I’ve only seen gif compilations of the show.)  Sometimes they just have an energy that hits you the wrong way and they ping you with it so hard that you lose hp by the minute.  Bip Bip.  Sometimes they really do need more of you than they can ever give back – the gratitude won’t make you even close to whole after the ordeal is done.

But most of us need to get less selfish, not have our callousness reinforced with polemic.  That thesis is ableist as all hell.  Either we think the disabled should be helped or we don’t, right?  The sloppy middle ground as it plays out in reality is bad for everybody.  And there will be disabled people who drain your emotional reserves, but they need help just the same, from somebody somehow somewhere, or their suffering is just another failure of our species to live up to our potential as thinking creatures.

I’m getting into all of this because I’ve been thinking about people with paranoid delusions again recently, for some reason.  They’re so freaking exhausting.  Here’s an interesting wikipedia article on a guy, James Tilly Matthews, whose ideas may sound familiar to you.  Supposedly, near the end of his short life, his delusions had fallen away.  May the same happen for everybody with such problems, and not at the expense of their well-being.

I’m given to understand that the recommended way to handle paranoid delusions is to not question or contravene them, just see what you can do to help the person in unrelated ways.  Like at an old folks’ home, a lady with dementia thinks all her things are being stolen, you say “That’s terrible, what would you like for lunch?”  I’m sure there’s no one-size-fits-all for it.

But equally sure we don’t need to banish all the exhausting people from our lives wholesale, leave them in the terrifying margins of civilization.  We don’t all have to put ourselves out any more than we can, but we do need to figure out how much we can do, and do at least that.  One man’s psychic vampire is another’s disabled person that needs whatever help we can give.

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The Streak is Broken!!!

I had been doing at least one post a day for months, but on 11/30/2024 I made no post whatsoever, even accounting for time zones!  And with this break in my streak, I feel free from the pressure to continue it.  On the other hand, sometimes it feels like I need to pick up where others be slacking, try to keep this scene alive.  I dunno tho, I feel the same global malaise and lethargy and sense of being wreck’d by life that anybody else feels.  Short-ass little shitposts are the best I can do, most of the time.  Does that really help anything?

I resume less frequent posting, unless something changes, and it may.  Until then, see you when I see you.

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The Anticipation Kills

What horrors will happen in 4 years, and with their power cemented by all the things they can get away with between now and then, what horrors will happen after that, and for how long?  Don’t answer that question.  We all have some pretty good ideas, I don’t need ’em spelled out.  But my mind can’t help but ask, like the way we think “why?” when we feel pain.  Doesn’t have to make sense.

I just hate it.  It’ll be more bearable to me if they at least lose their vile messiah.  Leave us in nazi hands, apparently we asked for it, but just lose the hideous smug face and insufferable voice at the top.  Fuckin ben shapiro’s uncle tom ass lollipop guild voice would be more bearable.  Entropy i pray, please do your inexorable magic, disintegrate the life, steal it away, reduce this horrific waste of flesh to atoms, and then to nothing.

If you’re one of the few tender souls who doesn’t think we should wish death upon the worst of us, take heart that this is as useful as thoughts and prayers, and can do no harm.  Shit, you know he’d be proud and pleased to be despised by people like me, so if anything I’m doing him a favor.  Even knowing my ardent desire for his extinction might cause his desiccated member to twitch, I can’t help it.  I need it so much.

I have wondered in life sometimes who I hate the most.  Con men tended to be number one, followed shortly by nazis, transphobes and misogynists somewhere down the way as well.  These were always categories, not individuals, but how apt that all are rolled into this creature, the number one category embodied there with primacy.  Just cease to be, bitch.  It could happen any day, or not for twenty years.  The luck we’ve had, you know which is looking more likely.  But fuuuuuck.  Let it be.

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Silver linings,ugh, lemme see…  Just the usual.  I think for most of us our lives may be negatively impacted but they will not end, we will survive and love our people and go into the night the same as we would have in a better world.  Stick around, my friends.

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Another one:  I don’t feel homicidally cranky about these fuckers all the time because I don’t think about them all the time.  If I’m thinking about them, I want them dead.  But mercifully my mind allows me to think about other things during the day.  I can lean into that.

In fact, I’ve been queuing posts, and by the time this one comes up, I’ll probably be a lot more chill.

Satire is Dead

Seriously, what is anybody going to joke about now?  It’s over.  I cannot imagine ever laughing at anything related to politics ever again, not that I was laughing much in the year leading up to the end.  The cackle of demonic glee I might get from seeing one of the new clowns get brutally murdered?  Doesn’t count.  Mirthless.  The second the SNL people put on their wigs and get to doing impressions again, it will just be a demonstration of the fact.  Is Colbert cracking wise?  I wouldn’t look it up to find out.  All of the court jesters should just go home and call in sick for the rest of their lives.

We are all the joke now, and the only people laughing are the worst people in the goddamn world.

I gotta stop thinking about motherfucking politics like right the fuck now.  Woof.

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Gaslight Ghetto

I’ve had the strange experience a few times in recent years of mentioning my childhood poverty to another person and their response making me feel gaslit, like what am I remembering wrong?  For example, mentioning I have lived in a few housing projects and homeless shelters, and them asking which ones, and then…  I don’t remember the names, barely remember the locations.  I wasn’t living in them for long enough to identify with them, to see that as my “hood,” get to know the other kids there.  We’d be kicked out or otherwise shuffled along to our next flophouse before that could happen.  My father helped me fill in a few of these details, but he didn’t remember all of it either.

So to gird myself for this situation in the future, I’m trying to remember everything about my childhood that wouldn’t be too creepy to tell.  Maybe some of those things too, with appropriate content warnings?  Here we go…

Content Warnings:  Violence Against Animals, Animal Death, Description of Poverty, Mention of Parasites and Pests, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Child Injury, Children in the Context of Sexual Things (but no CSA mentioned in this one), Racial Tension, Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Marital Infidelity, Teen Pregnancy, Vomiting, Terminal Illness, A Man Dying Young, Mental Illness, Generational Abuse.

This will take more than one post and include details that don’t have to do with the poverty itself, just me trying to remember what I can before it slips any further into the void.  For this post, I’ll lay out what I can recall of the chain of places I’ve lived. [Read more…]

Just Don’t Like his Face

if nature could finish the job on the scrotum elect, i wouldn’t mind.  i’d sure appreciate it.  as incompetent as he is, him staying alive is probably the least worst scenario at this point.  but i’d take competently evil replacements over him, just to not have to see his face or hear his voice ever again.  just to see every single reference to him be in past tense, damn, that would feel like a hit of ecstasy every time i saw it.  i feel the lack of that in my life right now.  c’mon.  just a tiny taste, i’ll never ask for anything else as long as i live.

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How to Not Live in Rage

God damn this is a hard one to write, in this moment.  That said, not a hard one to live up to – for me.  You see, I might hulk out from time to time, but most of any given day, I’m thinking about things neutral to positive.  I’m thinking about the creeping sorrel in the crack at my front door, about whether I could make a breeding habitat for alligator lizards in my back yard.  My mind is biologically healthy, mercifully so, and just doesn’t want to cling to bad feelings.

Anger is a bad feeling.  Some people with pathological minds think of it as “fun,” but they somehow don’t look like they’re having fun when they snap their xbox controller in half and bellow obscenities.  People who think about who they hate all day?  They are unwell.  It is said if you aren’t outraged you aren’t paying attention.  Well, if paying attention leads to poor health, then one must spend at least some amount of one’s life not paying attention.

I don’t know what else to say on this one.  I’m writing at two in the AM, and within the space of composing the first paragraph I lost the rage from the first sentence, then got it back at the beginning of this paragraph, then lost it again.  Think I might be tired.  Baby needs a nap.

But seriously tho.  If you’re angry all day, you need to jailbreak your mind.  I don’t have any constructive advice aside from the usual shit you have already heard a million times.  “Touch grass” meme.  I’m just here to remind you it is actually important for your health that you figure out how to do this.  And good luck with it!

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If anybody has some good suggestions or wants to start a discussion about this in the comments, the floor is open.

Acceleration

Fuck accelerationists a lot, those people who, realizing crises precipitate change, have decided any amount of mutilated or dead innocents is a reasonable price to achieve their aims.  That said, if acceleration is happening despite our best efforts, they are not wrong that it can precipitate change.  This is a dark one, but it is a cause for hope.

Just how bad can the rethuglicans fuck this up?  How bad can they make themselves look?  Will they dismantle Social Security?  Privatize Medicare A and B?  Put ten-year-olds to work in Amazon distro warehouses?  Will they exonerate hate criminals?  Deputize proud boys to shoot up downtown Portland?  Be caught filling mass graves at the southern border?  Just considering the possibilities fills me with a murderous hatred, so I’ll just stop there.  Fuck those guys an awful lot.

I think that’s the best hope for a reversal of this country’s course, of us staving off decades of fascist rule: that the fascists cannot help themselves, and go so hog-wild for evil that even badly suppressed, the anti- votes will wipe those motherfuckers off the ballot.  And if voting is off the table?  That blue states might secede.  Who’s to say only bigots can rebel?

May we start living in less interesting times as soon as possible, but in the meantime, it’ll be grimly fucking interesting to see what happens, with fascism’s jackboot on the gas pedal.  This has become their country to lose, and that’s a dark hope, but it is a hope.

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We Talked About It

The cool thing about livestreams on yewchoob (the way we do our podish sortacasts) is that when they’re done you can go back and watch them.  I think we did a passable job at talkin’ about the bad week.  I’m sure it’s grim, but hope it wasn’t too grim.  At the beginning and end there’s a little foolery related to our technical difficulties, kinda chuckleworthy.  Oh, also, once it was going, I couldn’t really read the chat, so I am going to go back and read that stuff now.  –EDIT:  I used to be able to look at the chat after the fact, but can’t seem to do it now.  Is it just me, some setting on the video?  Oh well.  If you wanted to say anything to us about the video, holler in comments here or there.  I’m personally only likely to see them here tho.  –EDIT EDIT:  I got the comments to load and checked ’em.  Thanks for showing up and discussing, ye all.  Much love.  Altho I think half the views on the video are from me checking it out again to feel some gender euphoria lol.

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Reverse Thoughts and Prayers

What if, instead of thoughts of positive energy and prayers for jesusly intercession, we could make a bad situation better by constantly feeling guilty and afraid?  Wait, neither one works?  While we rightfully mock right wingers for thoughts & prayers, there’s a lefty version of the same idea which is that if you aren’t feeling terrible, you aren’t doing things right.

Reddit used to be very nazi, but in the wake of a few noteworthy purges, has swung left – some liberals, some commies.  Sounds like a good time, right?  Not so much.  Something in the way upvoting works, the way the site is structured, lends itself to social snowballs.  This could be dogpiling harassment, but more often is blithering panic.  A news report comes that North Korea is playing around with nukes.  People talk to each other on reddit about it for about twenty minutes and become convinced the bombs are about to fall, immediately jump on the phone and say tearful goodbyes to loved ones on the west coast.

How’s that helping anything?  Be real.  Think about it for even a second.  NK would only launch nukes if its leaders were feeling suicidal.  Why would they want to die?  They’re the god emperors of Sadland.  Being god is pretty cool.  Now, in addition to making everybody in your subreddit feel terrible for no reason, you’ve reached out to your innocent relatives and possibly made them feel worse too.  Let’s model our behavior on ghost curses, that’d be cool.

If somebody on the internet says, in a calm but concerned tone, “I am feeling scared about this thing,” some leering poison-dripping ghoul will slither out of an ichorous oubliette to say, in a Ren Hoek voice, “You feel bad, huh?  You should feel worse.  You should be shitting your pants.  You should be planning your suicide.”  I’ve said before that conservatives have based all of their modern positions on cowardice, greed, and disgust, but some liberals sure like to rival them on all counts.

I mentioned before liberals saying they watched the New Zealand mosque shooter’s video because they felt like they had to.  They literally did what the shooter wanted them to do, turning it around in their head so that was honoring the victims or something?  Self-harm to magic something positive into the world.  It very obviously doesn’t work.

Instead of Thoughts & Prayers, we could call it Laments & Sorrows.  “If it makes you feel any better, well, I feel pretty bad about your situation.  Mighty sad, that.”  There’s a human instinct that our emotions, if strong enough, can have a tangible effect on the world.  If we’re not all feeling miserable constantly, we have failed, because our collective sorrow has a magical power.  But only if we all do our part, so join in the shit pit!  Liberal prayer warriors, start feeling bad about stuff now!

I get that the main thing people are mocking in Thoughts & Prayers is that the scumbags offering them really do have the power to contribute to change that will prevent the evils in question, but the money from Big Evil is too good.  It’s basic and transparently motivated hypocrisy, and that’s not what I want people to get out of my comparison to liberal Laments & Sorrows.  Most of the people doing this are near powerless to make significant change happen, especially in terms of legislation, global politics, the whims of the rich.  That’s all the more reason to stop doing it.

One can try to be informed about the things one feels one should know, treat serious subjects with the gravity they deserve, without having to harm yourself.  If you’re too easily overwhelmed and can’t deal with bad news, then maybe you, personally, should be less informed and less engaged.  You can help somebody closer to home, feed a bird, water a plant.

Not everyone has to or can body-block genocide.  Your pain will not heal anyone or make anything better.  Do what you can, do your best not to obsess about the rest.  That is all.

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