Getting on the Take

Note:  I feel like this whole post was poorly considered.**  I’m just spittin’ it out to have a post up and keep myself in the sidebar.  ignore it or bust my chops in the comments, as u please.

They always say we’re paid by George Soros; we ain’t.  They are often paid by the Koch bros and like-minded shitstains in fascist think tanks up and down the beltway.  All you gotta do is be conservative on the right podium, and if a few shills in the crowd cheer, you’ll get a bank full of money.  Conservativism is like drug use.  It’s obviously* wrong-hearted to the people who want desperately to believe in it, so they’ll seek reassurance, and abuse any detractors.  They use peer pressure.  For the in-group:  “What’s so bad about feeling good?  Everybody does it.  You’d be a sucker not to.”  For the out-group:  “Narcs and squares and pussies, what’re you gonna do?  Tell my mommy?  (please don’t)”

(speaking of mommy, i wouldn’t be surprised if hegsdeth literally threatened to have his mother whacked if she didn’t walk back her criticism of him.  he’s a murderous fucking monster in the light of day; what kind of vile ass shit does he do behind doors?)

But these are all sidetracks.  I had a thought here.  Lemme see…  Well.  We should be on the take!  Somebody should be paying us!  Maybe not Koch money.  Not like we have cocaine habits or blackmailers to hush.  But the thing conservative pundits and profiteers are getting paid to do, that’s something we could do from the other side, right?  They get paid to promote evil, we should get paid to promote goodness.

What we do get really isn’t enough.  How many progressive bloggers are flogging shady advertisers on yewchoob, or living on food stamps, or losing all the time and energy they could use for the cause just toiling to get the mortgage paid, or endlessly line the coffers of landleeches?  We’d have more sauce for this if we were funded.  Not much.  Just pay for our modest lifestyles, and we will evangelize harder than the way we do now.

Because what we do now, we’re doing for free.  Some of us have patreons or other schemes to connect the dots and still have to work some kind of day job, or rely on a generous lover to stay indoors.  And the imbalance is obvious!  The scum have us on the ropes.  All around the world, fascism is still winning.

Anybody with eyes can tell that fascism is going to be the death of human civilization (not for a minute and the end of civ ain’t necessarily the end of you #nodoom).  It can’t do anything else.  No civilization, no rich people.  So all you vampire lords that wanna keep the baloney rollin’ and aren’t as shortsighted as your cousins who are currently in charge, consider ponying up.  Pay for people to fight fascism.  Your children will thank you.

Now one lil’ post in the snowy hinterlands of wordpress won’t bring any foundations grants or endowments to our doors, so I wonder aloud, what might a lobbying campaign look like?  What kind of progressive lobbying organizations are out there already and how are they doing it?  Less like the ACLU who were formed in the time before time, more like idk… Whoever Junior.  How’d they do it?

Just to annoy the nazis, I want everyone except rich Jewish people to reply.  Goyim with greenbacks, hmu.

–

*ok, i don’t think this is universally true.  i think some conservatives are just profound fools and jerks who have bought a bad bill of goods.  but the particular flavor of fascism practiced by the creepy misogynist kids, and by jumped up crapitalism zombies like mfvk, i’m pretty sure i got their number on this one.  this is the kind that has taken over america.

**on the poor consideration, i have grave misgivings about sacrificing my day job for something with less job security and likely less money.  barely scraping by as it is.  i’d be unlikely to bite on any offer that came down the pipes, not that any were going to come down anyway.  makes the post pointless, but might be funny to talk about.

Five Holidays in a Row?

if u go obscure enough u can have a holiday every day of the year, but at the moment a few notable &/or trendy ones are clustering in a fun way.

Friday the 13th

Pi Day 3.14etc

The Ides of March

? no notables

St. Patrick’s Day

to fill the gap tomorrow, you can take your pick.  panda day looks like a good time.  curl crush day, when u appreciate the beauty of a curly haired person, that’s coo.  here’s lookin’ at you colm meaney.

but personally?  i think i’ll pour one out for ebony magazine on black press day.  three cheers.

–

Lyrical Genius

There’s a song by Electric Six called “Be My Dark Angel” and it is great, altho haters of novelty music and pop culture references therein should give the band a wide berth.

There’s a website called lyricsgenius where contributors can wiki-style post the words of songs they know.  Not every musical act elects to include a lyrics sheet in their albums, and of those who do, not all are accurate or well-known enough to inform what ends up there.  The bridge of this song, per the website:

I am havin’ a whirl
Of Canadian go-go girls
Japanese karate girls
Black girls
White girls
China girls
Australi-asian
European
Pan-American girls

OK.  This is a person who does not know the words “inhabit” or “australasian.”  As basic as those words may seem to you and I, they are not vocabulary possessed by any Electric Six fan with the gumption to edit lyricsgenius dotcom.  Should I do it, succumbing to siwoti?

No.  If I started into that site, I’d cave to the temptation to make the entries worse.  Like in Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like an Eagle,” I’d make that one line into “How’s the people livin’ in the street?” and that other part to “Shoos the children with no shoes on their feet.”  Then I’d make a footnote on it (you can make notes on lyrics there) to say, “How do you think they’re livin’ Steeeeve?” and “Don’t shoo them; it hurts to walk.  Pay attention!”

There.  That’ll keep me in the sidebar a lil longer.

–

OK I’m Done Now

Since coming back from the unplanned hiatus I went on a little tear of posting, but I have a lot going on in life at the moment, and I’m so tired it’s unreal.  Will return when I’m more able, or when I randomly think of something to say.

 

–

I Spare a Thought for Slime

I’ve made posts wondering before if any of the people from the shit side of the regressive/progressive atheist split find themselves looking at what has come of their politics, looks at the war, the hatred, the censorship, the reality denialism, the terror that has taken over the world, and realizes what they’ve done, feels at all bad about it.  There’s no evidence of this in the “thought leaders” and I’ve never seen any from the trenches.  Like the SlymePit™ seemed, for a while, to have more popularity and even perhaps more staying power than the FtB it was born to oppose.  And yet here we are, and they are..?

I can see from comments elsewhere that many of them are in the comments at the blogs of fascist tools like Jerry Coyne, so not much evidence of reality penetrating their skulls yet.  But still.  Not even one of them?  I suppose this is like wondering why there are no good billionaires.  Or maybe it’s me asking that question that vexed me so often as a small child – the earliest evidence I had theory of mind – that I always wondered why bullies did what they do.

Why do they want to be despised?  Why do they want to do harm?  These things never made sense to me, even as their cruelty fostered a violent imagination in me.  I want to hurt people because they hurt people.  Clearly not the same goal for us, and they still don’t make sense to me.  I do think observation of people and other animals has slowly teased something like understanding out of me.  It’s entertainment, diversion.  Humans suffering is, to them, like the erratic movement and bleeding of a tormented prey animal to a cat.

Back to the point tho.  We are literally under nazism, in all but name!  There are people in the halls of power with neonazi tattoos!  Science in the USA – once a point of pride to movement bros like Chundersh1te – has been decimated, hosed with a goddamn flamethrower, with no hope of recovery in sight.  We’re involving ourselves in holy wars on purpose.

Every ideal of freedom and rational thought and wisdom that the nu atheists claimed to uphold is being piled into mass graves.  Things aren’t even as bad as they can get!  You’d just think that like, fuckin Matt Dillahunty, who spent time trolling Atheism+ as a “social experiment,” might take a look at this shit and connect some dots.  Might realize this is the logical end point of regressive beliefs, and hey, maybe that means y’all were wrong about progressives on some level?  Just a bit?

I saw a comment somewhere from one of the shitbirds saying “i can’t believe you made us do this, ftb!  look what you made us do!”  Hey, who is winning, bruh?  Who controls everything right now?  When Sam Harris crows that murdering Persians is a good thing, it’s not because he’s trying to convince the powers that be, it’s because he’s defending them doing the thing he’s always promoted.  He’s saying how cool it is that he got what he wants, and begging the naysayers to drop their distaste for mass murder long enough to be as happy as he is.

If antifeminists have literally taken over the world, how did we make anybody do anything?  The powerful side was yours.  This is the history you always sought.  All we did, in opposing you, was to help elucidate the difference between us, help you understand yourselves.  You do understand yourselves by now, don’t you?

You do see the blood money medical crank piling up quack dollars over dead American kids?  Right?  That’s you.  You do see the petty con artist thrust into nuclear godhood from a base motivated with literal cult behavior, right?  That’s you.  That’s the fruition of your beliefs winning.

Does this not give any of you pause?  Insert we’re the baddies meme?  What will it take, you fucking creeps?

We’re tired of saying “we told you so” over the innocent dead.  If you can’t come correct now, at this late stage, just fucking eat shit and die.  I wish I could say I was done thinking about you, but I don’t know if I ever will be.  That first question I ever asked myself about the minds of others, it never goes away; it only changes.

Why do bullies hurt people?  I might as well ask my fucking cat.

–

The Time the FBI Tried to Entrap Me

So I don’t have evidence this was entrapment or the feds, but there are strong indicators it was.  I was the target of a sex sting in the 1990s.  Alternately, I had some awkward conversations with teenage girls, of which one was too horny for her own good.  But I’m pretty sure it was the former, and if it was, then it had to be the FBI, because the reach of this law enforcement activity crossed state lines.  Here’s how it went.

Internet dating and internet chatrooms were relatively new, and I was on them, trying to get more people in my life than the homies with whom I had repeated moments of disenchantment, and of course, trying to get with the ladies.  On the dating sites I always put the age range of ladies I was willing to get with rather high, but older ladies never went for it.  I was too immature, too broke, too something.  Through the internet dating sites I ended up collecting a number of pen pal gals, and having a few bad dates and bad relationships, but that was mostly after the time in question.

The dragnet that tried to get me was not in the dating sites, but the yahoo chatrooms.  I wasn’t looking for love in those, just trying to have passable conversations about movies and other interests.  Those rooms were terrible, full of baby-talking future facebook moms and bitchy behavior.  Also guys from India or Pakistan that would hit on anything that breathes.  Before I gave up on those places altogether, I got into some kind of discourse with a person that claimed to be a fourteen year old girl.

I don’t remember what we talked about, but I feel like we were busting each other’s chops in a way that could be seen as flirtatious?  Wasn’t meant that way.  But at some point she insisted on introducing me to a friend of hers named Michelle or Mandy or somesuch, who was fifteen.  Michandy engaged in more of the same kind of foolish banter, which somehow segued into exchanging addresses and phone numbers.  I was a lot less wise about sharing my personal info back then.  After all, that Canadian gal I corresponded with sent me nice things by post, and in those days it only took a few days for letters to get where they were addressed to.  Hard to imagine, I know.

So the sting worked in stages, and the next step was a letter in the mail.  Girly handwriting, lined notebook paper, return address in Oklahoma.  I don’t remember how flirtatious it was, but right after receiving it, things advanced to what ended up being the final stage – a phone call.  I was rooming in the attic of a friend’s house and I remember his mom handing me the phone.

On the phone, this supposed child mentioned to me that she liked to sneak out and get sexual at truck stops.  Now, I don’t doubt that some unfortunate girl might actually do that of her own accord.  Traci Lords famously got into sex work at that age.  But here I was, in my early twenties, with a girly voice in my ear talking that kind of shit.

It did not register to me at the time she was faking, and I know some of you will insist that if I believed it was real I should have jumped right on trying to rescue her from herself in some way.  Perhaps I should have.  It caught me off balance.  All I could say was something like, “Girl.  You shouldn’t do that kind of stuff.  Take care of yourself, for real.  What the hell.”

She made some nicety and ended the call.  And/or the girly FBI agent made some nicety and ended the sex sting.  I went back upstairs and told my roommate what had happened.  He was probably the person who had hipped me to the idea it could have been a sting.  Thanks, good to know.

Now how to feel about that?  Offended.  Fuck the police, and fuck entrapment.  If some teen girl comes onto a grown young man like that, like a ton of bricks, at the time in life when he’s most desperate, I don’t believe he’d be a total monster for capitulating.  Well, maybe that exact scenario would be kinda monstrous – traveling over state lines to meet a child for sex after she’s already confessed to being demented from hormones.

But take out some details.  Maybe guy gets idealistic and thinks he can save her from herself by being a steady sweetie.  Maybe guy has developmental delays, or mental health issues that impair his judgment.  Does he deserve to be targeted by cops for life-ruining incarceration?  It’s like cointelpro fuckers buddying up to radicals that want to make the world a better place with pamphlets and stickers, and goading them into planning violence.  The radicals are not the problem there; the pigs are.

Anyway, I passed the test and am not on any registries, tho at least one dude with my legal first-middle-last name combination is, down in Oklahoma.  Hey, Oklahoma again… Maybe he’s alternate history version of Bébé, who took the bait.  Better you than me, bro.  But still.  In this life, watch for snakes.

–

Sidebar Mysteries Solved?

When FtB had an outage that lasted a full week, upon return there was no sidebar of recent blog posts.  That changed as soon as PZ posted something.  Apparently it’s the top ten most recent people, but drops entries when fewer than ten have posted within the last week.  So… as long as it’s not very hopping around here, I can be reasonably assured of a place in the sidebar, as long as I post at least once a week.  very good to know.

OK I don’t know know, but it seems close enough to accurate that it might work as a guideline for how to keep my good standing there.

–

Can’t Even with these Dicks

i was listenin’ to whatever yewchoob throws at me, as much as i can tolerate that.  this time it was giving me nothing but stuff i’ve heard before, which is ok because i’m a basic bitch like that.  this is “unable,” by suburban lawns.  i think the first few times i had it on, i wasn’t paying close attention and assumed it was about frustration in some general sense, but no, it’s about how her lover’s dongus is too longus to be contained in condoms as it should be.  reminds me of the quentin tarantino “like a virgin” bit from reservoir dogs.

well this is a punk song by a wacky lady vocalist that is about frustrating limitations in a broader sense, and i prefer it.  the chorus is about domestic violence tho, in a dark humorish kind of way.  check it out.

su tissue from suburban lawns presumably got a day job and fell off the face of the earth.  good for her, i think.  fame no bueno for some ladies.  polly succumbed to the scourge of punk rock: cancer.  i don’t know why, most of the ramones and ari up from the slits and more got punked out by the big c.  don’t do world tours, people.  airplane travel involves too much radiation.  but she did live long enough to perform a few duets with her adult daughter, to reap the appreciation of the nostalgic in her last years.  get what you can out of the time u got.

–

Dunt Love CEOs

one might think i’d be enthralled with anthropic’s ceo defying shitler’s administration and causing orange apoplexy, as i’m a big llm booster.  and i do use claude (anthropic’s llm) for some things.  still, have you seen the statement that made the shitgibbon lose it?  the ceo said he was cool with all sorts of terrible shit, just a few things were too far.  the language was drenched in normalized fascism, going so far as to use the dod’s disgusting new chosen name.  the fact it was composed like that is just one of a million demonstrations of how far we’ve fallen down the path of tyranny.

naturally mainstream liberals loved it (see katy perry screencapping her purchase of a subscription to claude), which moves the needle more in favor of llms than it used to be.  and i’m ok with that, but still.  these are the kind of democrats that are gonna jam through a gavin newscum presidential nomination.  i say fuck that shit with my entire chest, tetas incluidas, izquierda y derecha.

–

WWIII: Picking Sides

Shitler and murderhomie Netsferatu’s newest aggression hasn’t turned into World War Three yet, but any of this kind of shit has that potential.  The funny thing about world wars is that the sides are not always what one would expect.  It was always possible the US would have joined the Axis powers, if politics at home had been x degrees the other way.  Good job to the hardworking propagandists that saved us from that particular shame.

This time around, we are the Axis.  No fucking question on that.  We are the imperialistic aggressive enemies of freedom, full stop.  But has Germany swung hard enough to end up in the new Allies?  My outside impression is fuck no, which has the added irony they might end up on the side of Israel in any coming expansion of these conflicts.

In fact, as much as Europe has made some good noises about protecting themselves from US horseshit, we are all united in propping up our aging economies draining the blood of the global south.  That might help prevent this from bleeding into a world war all by itself.  The nations that have the most reason to oppose us don’t have the power to do so, except as insurgents in the aftermath.

If this new round (or some future shitlerism) goes WWIII, who will be fighting whom?  Place your bets in the comments, careful to avoid going full doomer (see my comment policy in sidebar).

–