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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December 12th

Given they’re talking about the election being close, and given that the rethugs have been gearing up for ages to do a bunch of dirty tricks in courts and state governments, it’s possible we’ll have a replay of Bush v Gore 2000.  If that happens, expect some measure of suspense, because it wasn’t decided til December 12th.

On the other hand, if it happens, we really do know how it will be decided already, and the shitbird court du jour will just be a formality and a rubber stamp, so the suspense won’t take that long.  I just know that my expectation now is that by the time of the next FtB Poddish Sortacast on November 9th, there will still be no decision, and we’ll be twisting in the wind, sickened and upset.  That’ll be a good time.

I just want to tell everybody things I wasn’t able to understand the first time hair fuhrer was elected by a minority.  You will almost certainly survive.  Life will go on. We will get up and go to work and come home and love and live and whatever we need to do, to the best of our ability.  And people will still fight against fascism every way they can, whether you personally are able to or not.  People will be fighting for you, and sometimes those people will win.

Also, while some conservatives may be as monstrous as you imagine, the majority are not!  Foolish, cruel, petty, greedy, craven, maybe.  But they don’t want to kill everybody!  They’re just swimming in toxic horseshit, because every fucking ounce of media outside major cities has been bought lock stock and barrel by billionaires who have a vested interest in selling conservative shit.  This is important to understand.  Just because the boy favored by nazis wins, even if he does some nazi shit, it is not immediately time for death camps.  That shit would almost certainly not fly, even in Kansas, even now.

Many people will suffer, a non-zero amount will die from that suffering, but some of us won’t even notice a difference in our daily lives, and most of us will be able to live through whatever happens with just a little perseverance.  The democrats are selling you mortal fucking terror because they know it gets them money, but will it get them votes, or will people feel too paralyzed to go to the polls?  This is going to prove to have been a mistake, or at the very least, unnecessarily abusive to the masses.

Nobody die now, OK?  And before you comment with more blood-throated freakouts, read my doomerism policy.

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Where to Escape Politics?

It’s hard as hell to find a genuinely non-political place to chill and take in content.  One could argue that everything is political, but if I’m not liking politics and I’m still capable of liking some things in this world, then that’s disproven from go.  A good pomo BSer can give you the politics of a kitten falling asleep while playing with a ball of yarn.  I know, because I’m a good pomo BSer and could do that right now if I wanted to, but it would be bullshit.

No, to me, political content is information about government, whether true facts, opinions, or bad information.  If it’s about the government, it’s political.  To another extent, opinions about people’s bodies and relationships and metaphysical beliefs can also be political, particularly if prescriptive or proscriptive regarding speech and behavior – saying something is a good way or a bad way to be.

What does that leave?  Dad jokes, funny animals, practical information about day-to-day life like recipes or the weather report, sportball, vidya games, hobbies, science that omits portents of doom…  Doomy science is important and has its place – in steering politics, frankly.

I just want a place where I can go and reliably expect nobody is going to shit on somebody else’s entire existence, or look at me with coal black eyes and hollowly intone the specifics of the death of me and everybody I love.  I recognize it’s a privilege to even imagine it’s possible to cultivate an experience like that.  Some people are staring down the barrel of the political every day, up to and including their grisly deaths.

Very sorry to y’all, but I don’t feel like every human alive must live in torment because some humans do.  I will do what I can to face the political on wednesday and help the tormented out, but on thursday and friday I want to enjoy what life has been granted to me by the unfeeling indifferent radioactive constantly exploding and crumbling abyss of a universe we live in.  Give me a fucken minute, guys.  I’ll get back to you.

Srsly I do recognize that is an unspeakably cruel position to hold, in certain company.  I’m not gonna say that to the face of a Palestinian, right?  But we all need this sometimes.  We need to be able to feel OK, when and how we can.  If nobody is ever allowed to feel perfectly hunkydory for a minute, that’s no kind of world to live in.

Anyway, drop recs for non-political content in the comments.  If you can think of any times when said content got political, don’t bother to mention it with caveats.  Just don’t even start typing until you can think of something genuinely without politics in it.  Maybe we can make the comment section a resource for well-being, right?

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         …and for now i’m FUCKING done, thanks

I Knew It

Remember my post about leftist accelerationists?  Saw some evidence of it in the wild.  Couldn’t get a screencap and lost track of where it was, but it was one of those pro-palestine trans anarcho-whateverist tumblr gals who discourage voting and mock people for promoting it.  And in this post she said something like, “how can you be aware of the US and what it does in the world and not want it to fail?  not yearn for its utter destruction?”

This is what I mean.  The only way for the USA to improve, in their eyes, is to be utterly destroyed.  And if that takes X years of fascist rule and a million dead LGBTQ people and women who needed reproductive healthcare and unionists?  Fuck all those dead people, serves ’em right for being born in the wrong country.  And every other country that will be worse off because fascists control the USA, including Palestine?  Fuck them too.

Given this accelerationist impulse, I wonder if they would look at the terrorist actions of Hamas that inspired the current genocidal push and think, yeah, no matter how many Palestinians are slaughtered, it’s worth it to see the world being inspired to stop Israel and liberate the leftover living among the mountain of corpses.

Accelerationism bad.  Anti-voting leftists are accelerationists, and they’re bad.  Don’t be like that.

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WordPress Earthquake

WordPress is the software on which FtB runs, and I’d always assumed it was a service like facebook or xitter under control of one random corporation, subject to enshittification per their whims.

But not so!  WordPress was an open source nonprofit project to establish a shared software for bloggers great and small to use.  There are businesses involved that sell their own variations and services that are compatible with the core platform, and there’s a tradition of them chipping in some nominal amount to the org to keep the lights on for everybody.

But wait!  The org has a tiny board with only one active member, that guy is also CEO of a for-profit WordPress company, and he has started ignoring this blatant conflict of interest to leverage the org against his company’s competitors. (i tried to link to a website about the subject and it broke this article until I removed it! umm…)

That’s all very arcane, isn’t it?  What does it mean for you?  This is all very much above my pay grade as a bloggy persona, but more than one of the competing WP companies have had basic functions – including security features – threatened by this rampaging mini-musk, and the one we use could get disrupted as well.

In fact, I know so little about the subject that I don’t know if it ever will be a problem for us, what the problem will look like, if there’s a problem already, or if there have been problems for months.

On which corporation or corporations does FtB depend for basic function? If it’s Automattic, we’d be safe from the crisis by merit of being under the rogue CEO’s company.

Or maybe not, depending on how far-reaching his unethical behavior goes. The guy also controls a social media platform (tumblr) and once revealed a trans woman’s side accounts on xitter in retaliation for criticism – a move so blatantly wrong-hearted even musk hasn’t pulled it yet.

But it all just goes to show everything we have online is at the whim of bastards with too much power, and could be snuffed like a match in a hurricane if they sneeze. It prickles one in the anprim feels.

Shit, if FtB was a newsletter distributed thru the USPS, we’d still be spitting distance from a republican privatization push subjecting us again to the whims of hyper-aggressive coked-up billionaires. Whatever.
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