The white bedsheet crew

Some yoyo put a KKK recruiting flyer in our driveway. My wife found it Saturday. She's all wigged out and the guns loaded. I'm all like...eh...yawn. Not because I don't necessarily take them as a semi-serious threat, just not a very BIG semi-serious threat. And they aren't a NEW threat, if that makes sense.
They have always been here, and when there's less crumbs falling from the table, the cockroaches WILL crawl out of the woodwork...

Probably less of a threat now since it became harder to get pseudoephedrine.  A lot of the white power guys were making their money off of bathtub meth production around here.

We're kind of on the dividing line between suburban and rural here, and on the Gulf coast somewhere, so, unfortunately this sort of thing comes with the territory.

I seem to remember this happening before, and nothing came of it.  But I'm contemplating a concealed carry for when I'm exercising in the neighborhood-and a handgun that is concealable.
My current pistol's a heavy sucker, and classic verging on antique-I don't want to get sweat on it.
Everybody knows us as the dyke couple, so it's possible I/we could get targeted...if anyone felt like targeting us. I just think they won't get anybody.

repost, but added to...

I pick fights over stupid crap! Stupid, stupid crap!

Today I started an argument because my wife tried to plant a tree in a plastic pot after she pulled the tree up up like I asked...and she got all mad because I wouldn't let her use good potting soil that was bought retail to stick some random tree in-I wanted to use the bucket and soil for growing herbs.(I looked it up, the tree was a green ash) .

And I just can't seem to stop arguing with her...I'm tired, I'm angry, and any time my wife does something or fails to do something...for instance, she did laundry once this week, and by today, when I woke up and found that, again, I couldn't find any clean work pants...and my wife hasn't bothered to fold and put away the giant pile of clean, disordered clothes on the dryer, or do any loads since Tuesday... because she's busy making this lovely, artistic mandelbrot program..I got really pissy.

Y'know, I had a painting I wanted to paint last month...but I was a bit busy trying to make sure the fucking bills got paid, honey...that kind of took precedence over my desire for artistic expression, no matter how much I felt like I chopped off a bit of my soul.
She isn't chopping off bits of her soul for survival's sake...she quit a job because she got called "sir" once too often.

Yeah, I think I have a right right now to expect her to do more housework, and the house is trashed. I work 48 hours a week, drive another 12 hours to do that...and I'm busting ass because she has no job. Admittedly, she quit for a fairly valid reason, but...her choice to walk off the job. I don't feel like I was offered a choice, I just feel like I get to deal with the consequences, and I'm fucking angry.

Also, very, sad.   I love and trust this woman more than I trust anyone else on the planet, and she seems to impulsively do stuff that turns me into a nervous wreck...since this isn't the first time she's just blown off a job for whatever reason...or told off the wrong person and gotten fired...and I'm really beginning to hate the awful unpredictability this adds to my life. I can't trust her to keep a job.  I've  been with her for eight years.  This is her life's pattern.

And that may well end up making me ask her to leave someday. As it is, I've demanded she get into DBT or CBT as soon as she gets a job. I also want her to go see a gender therapist, because she obviously has leftovers.

I'm also just tired...depressed, lonely, frustrated, angry as hell. My moods are whipping around like crazy-up one day, down the next.

BUT ALL THAT does not excuse me being a douche. It might excuse me thinking about ending my marriage...but not being a douche.


At this point I'm making a conscious bad decision...
I'm giving myself blanket permission to SI because it's the only way I know to control the level of bad that keeps happening inside me right now. I'm going to do something I've not done before also-explicitly buy razor blades for cutting.

Because I am not going to wreck my marriage stupidly. Am not, am not, am not.

Later:  I bought a package of ten razor blades.  I took one out of the package, and did my first cutting with it.  Ohhh...it is very sharp indeed, and the feeling of using the new razor to cut is...very soothing.

She gets to walk out of a job because the customers hurt her feelings, then I get to self-injure as I see fit. Fuck it.

I'd rather bleed than cry, to be honest

Part 2 of 2: Forget the system: what's wrong with the f*$^%ing electorate?!?!?!

Or: more CItizens, less Consumers.

 

Our vocabulary word for today, kids, is: brainwashing.

 

The American people are being brainwashed by a number of things.  The first of those things is advertising, mainly that of television.  Adverts are constantly, from the time we are old enough to actually see the television in some cases, streaming into our consciousness, and making us less satisfied with what we have-that's what they are designed to do.  The cumulative effect though, is less happiness, and defining our happiness by material things.

 http://mattbrundage.com/publications/materialism-happiness/.   (This is why I'm a dumpster-diver: I like having lots of things,especially new clothes.)

 

But people today not only don't realize they are being brainwashed, they are fishes swimming in a stream of propaganda.  Such that when someone tells them the full truth, it sounds very odd. (Try explaining the true complexity of any given geopolitical situation to a CNN or FOX watcher you know...they will eventually stop listening due to boredom, tell you you're lying, or ask for a dictionary.)  Because most media communicated to them is designed to talk down to them(so as to not challenge them and make them feel inferior), cater to their prejudices (ropes in more ears/eyeballs), and accuracy in reportage is no longer a big concern (accuracy causes cost of production to rise and profits to fall.)

 

So the corporate media have failed to make Citizens out of the American people, by not educating them about the issues in an accurate, reliable, and most importantly, holistic way.

The education system has failed to make Citizens out of the American people in many ways.   Not the least of which is by not teaching them about the ways of psychological manipulation .  Not knowing what it is, the fail to recognize it.  Failing to recognize it, they do not question it. Failing to question it, they believe it at worst, or at best, become suspicious and isolated.

Worse, the education system teaches so poorly these days that 18-year olds graduate not knowing enough facts to be able to tell lies from truth, a fact from an opinion, a feeling from a thought, or even how to determine when something is a lie or not: how to do one's own basic literature or internet research.

 

You see, I used to be a believer in anarcho-syndicalism...and in my heart of hearts I would like to see a radically destructured and restructured society.  But I came to recognize that this would require a very deep tectonic shift in the way people behave towards each other in order to produce a healthier, happier society.  I also came to see that that shift in culture was more crucial than government structure.

 

What we need is a critical mass of Citizens.  This as I define as people who are used to taking action for themselves AND responsibility for their society, try not to take actions that needlessly cause harm to others... care for the survival/happiness of all humans everywhere on this planet to some degree, and care about the survival of the ecosphere as well.  Citizens educate themselves, find out the truth, and try to make the world a better place.

 

 What we do have is a huge majority of Consumers trained to look for leaders, money, stuff, substances, food, sex, attention, and dominance over others to make themselves happy.  Worse, they will do so at great cost to their own future, never mind the future of others.  Because they have been brainwashed all their lives to need, need, NEED all this crap...and then will find the crap WILL not make them fulfilled when they get it-or not for long... they must have More Crap, or More Crap than someone else who has More Crap than they do...a constant influx of crap, like some sort of giant inverse cloaca...

 

Consumers consume...they do not create, they don't try to make a sustainable future for everyone.  At best, they may look out for their kids...but they don't think about the entirety of the world their kids will inherit.  That world can go to hell for all they care...and they just pull out their big spoon, and keep scooping. 

Tell them they need to take on more responsibility for the long-term consequences of their actions...and many behave like addicts when confronted-in an infantile, egotistic fashion.

 

As a dumpster-diver, I see a whole lot of working appliances, or ones that can be easily fixed, just waiting for me to come along and rummage them out...good clothes, tools, canned food good for years...thrown away because they didn't fulfill people. With no thought about its' potential utility to anyone else or how throwing away useful goods fills up a landfill uselessly. 

I despise waste...and my society is a profoundly wasteful one.  Can you walk a 30-foot square area thoroughly in any part of your landscape (that has not been recently tidied)-and not find trash? That's what I thought.

 

If you've read this rant, chances are I'm preaching to the choir, and you're already at least part of the way to being a Citizen. We need Citizens.  We need a critical mass of them.

Look around you.  Look for the tweaks.  Look for how a Citizen is created, how a Consumer is created.  Find ways to throw the levers and start shunting people from the Consumer memeplex conveyor belt (thanks, RD) to the Citizen thought/behavior set.

 

I'm not saying turn into a Communist...in fact, the Soviet Socialist Republic destroyed what it did have of this native collective spirit in a very devastating manner.

I think this actually runs deeper than politics alone,or at least what most people would call politics.  This goes right down to how we interrelate, how we think, and how we behave towards each other.

It's something I'm still mentally turning about in my head myself, so I'd welcome helpful feedback.

oops, I lied

Politics rant next time...first this thought-I was replying to someone else's post somewhere else, and I've thought this before:

If you take all the people who have ever taken antidepressants, add in anyone who's ever had a substance abuse problem, figure that a *ahem* large percentage of morbidly obese people are using food in a druglike manner(remember-me keeping my own binging under control's a daily struggle), consider caffeine, nicotine, and other addictive behaviors like shopping, shoplifting, gambling and the like...you realize that a majority of people in this society are using external things to habitually medicate chronic distress.

That seriously says to me the problem is not just individuals failing to adjust. Our society is not conducive to human happiness, nor is it meant to be...and I'm not sure when it was decided happiness didn't constitute a priority to be achieved.

politics rant: a 2-parter

Here's my rant o' the day about politics, and why, even though I voted, I know it doesn't matter that much:


The people who choose the people we vote for are not us.  They are not necessarily on our side. They do not necessarily have our best interest at heart.   They have an agenda that may or may not match the one we have for ourselves, and may or may not include the application of force or punishment.


I vote for the Democrats, but as a queer-identified person since the age of 16, I fully know what it's like to be "serviced" by only one major party.   They know full well that as rabid as the republicans have gradually become, very few of us are going to vote for the GOP.   Which means they don't really have to do very much FOR us, just not be malignantly OPPOSED to us.

They don't have to do anything to get our support, really-the far right republicans do all the work for them.


As for people who aren't gender or sexual minorities, though, both parties have been bought, and that's fairly obvious.   What's sad though, is that we, the American working-class, are now, as a group, SO broke, and the rich people so wealthy in comparison, that even were we to pool our resources, I don't think we can afford to buy our politicians back.


In my earlier post, I mentioned trying to grow my own food.  I'm also trying to learn to fix my own car...and I want to grow my own medicinal plants.
Americans really need to learn the kind of creative making-do that typifies third-world countries, because I think that is where we're headed-most of us, those who aren't rich.


The politicians don't want us to make our own decisions...but if we did, we would need to be the kind of people who made our own decisions...not just a few of us, but all of us-or at least most of us-would have to be more resistant to being deceived, because we've somehow become a nation of ignorant, pigheaded fools, very eager to have someone cater to our prejudices, rather than challenge them.

And that's going to be the second part...coming soon.