I’m sitting in a cafe waiting for a hearing and there is a radio playing. The DJ said, “It’s 1982 and THIS is on the radio.” It then proceeded to play something bloody awful and I have to wonder Why? Why is it we are listening to something that was on the radio on 1982 and should not have been? It shouldn’t have been then and it shouldn’t now. It is invasive. It’s unpleasant to listen to. It’s making my insides crawl. It’s still going on right now. I will be so glad when it is over because I still have an hour before my hearing and I need to stay in this coffee shop a bit longer.
Month: May 2014
Asses
I used to write all of my thoughts down. I don’t write all of my thoughts anymore.
Tonight I crossed a street, and then crossed a parking lot. Two men were walking up the sidewalk when I entered the parking lot. Halfway across one of the men shouted at me, “You have a nice ass!” I said low and to myself, “No I don’t.” Then I got to thinking about the concept of a nice ass and observed that having a nice or not nice ass is a weird construct, but I also thought that the man who said that probably didn’t think it was a weird construct. He probably just had some idea of the way asses look and determined that some ways are nice. I suppose this is the way most people who think about asses being nice or not thinks about them. But I find it odd that we determine that certain shapes of body parts are nice or not. I know there is some biological basis to finding certain features attractive, that it seeks out opposite and healthy genes, and youthful characteristics that are likely to increase the success of child bearing. However, I’m not sure I see where asses fit into that and I wonder how it is that our society has developed into one where we make judgments about body parts. Actually, I don’t really wonder about it. I can ascertain how we got to this place. I just wish we hadn’t, that’s all. Not because I’m offended when someone yells about my butt, but because we are where we are now and that we are headed where we are and it’s not pretty.
I spend much too much time alone. And it’s probably a good thing I don’t write my thoughts down anymore.
When Ice is Fire
Humans, humans. Going about their business. Living their lives. Making their sounds. Taking up more than their share of space everywhere. Assuming they are the center of everything. Ignoring the meteor heading right toward Earth.
Ah, there she goes again, getting all caught up in that climate change hype again.
Yeah, that’s me. Certain our future at this point is a ball of fire headed in a trajectory straight toward the center of the planet. I keep leaning toward the possibility of something else, then turn my face toward the sky and see that meteor hell bound for us and feel that reality forcing me to acknowledge its existence. I feel that meteor’s heat upon my skin. I see the path it is burning and it is impossible not to feel a little frightened, not to feel overwhelmed by the probability of it all, not to feel ashamed for my race, not to feel desperate to do something, anything besides sit back and let it happen.
A huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting a glacially slow, unstoppable collapse. Alarmed scientists say this means even more sea level rise than previously expected.
Genius, humanity. Good for you.
I’m Glad I’m not from a Crime Syndicate Family
I’m so glad I wasn’t born into a crime syndicate family. I suppose had I been born into a crime syndicate family that perhaps I might not be aware how much the stress of the violence and constant disruption was harming me
I’m sitting here typing this and it sounds like a cat is growling outside my window. However I got up (got cold) and went and stood out there, but couldn’t hear anything. I leaned over to determine whether the moaning sounds might be some kind of deep whistle emanating from Isabel in her sleep, but it wasn’t. No. Definitely sounds like cat moan. I have no idea what it could be that I can hear it in my house and not outside, which is where it would have to be. I even checked upstairs and in the basement. Silence. Distraction.
My primary point isn’t the cat moan. It is supposed to be my gratitude that I’m not from a crime syndicate family. My family had enough problems without adding the stress of constant crime and murder and disappearing relatives and all that. I’ve spent most of my adult life reconnecting the disconnected parts of myself, becoming whole, examining patterns from the past and working to change blind spot reactions and all that. The result is that I’m beginning to see the splits all around me. If I had been born into a crime syndicate family (I’m going to call it a CSF for short), I likely would not have these insights without having experienced some incredible trauma, and even then, it would have been really difficult. In this regard, I’m so grateful to my family for only traumatizing me a little bit, in their own blind-spot way.
If I had been born into a CSF, I probably would have had to go live in Australia or some kind of witness protection program. That would be rough in any circumstance, but imagine it from the perspective of a person who grew up in a CSF. You have no normal moral compass. You realize something is wrong, turn against the family, and have to be put into witness protection, whereby you are forced to live in some other place with strangers, etc., and act like a normal person, only you aren’t. You’re used to seeing people handle problems with revenge and whatnot. Someone cuts in front of you in line at the grocery and you want to knock them in the head and throw them in the trunk, but you can’t, or you might get put in jail, whereupon the family would have you killed for turning snitch. Or the head hitting and trunking might end up on the news, at which point your protection isn’t so secret anymore. Being in witness protection as one raised in a CSF is simply fraught with peril. Perhaps there is some moral code if you grew up with the boss, and could see when the boss was lenient or whatever. But what if you grew up in one of the lesser families, one where revenge and drug use were rampant. Maybe because you were allowed to watch movies or something and you could see that others weren’t like your family. Or maybe because a school teacher or counselor was kind to you, you figured out there was an alternative, but really you have no idea. Or worse, you just turn against the family to save your own ass from jail. Real issues there. And then you get to go into witness protection. That would be tough. It really isn’t something I would want in my life, that’s for sure.
I got this all typed up and then I was typing up the tags and picked “Crime syndicate family,” but I’ll bet I’m the only person with that tag on any posts. That would be cool. The only person in the whole wide world with CSF for a tag. Awesome.
Privatized Suffering
This excerpt comes from the John Steppling blog. Disheartening as it is, this is truth.
Privatized Suffering
by John Steppling
“The white liberals today are defending Obama and Hillary because they don’t recognize their own dead zone and because they really don’t care about the poor anymore than the ruling 1% do. They don’t care about the targeted abuse of the poor, especially black and brown, and they are able to provide expensive education for their own children, so they don’t care about the absence of education for marginal classes. And that same expensive education is the one that trains people for shopping, for compliance to authority, and to think just like they think. The reproduction of a dead *now* is by design. Liberals are not in conflict with Reagan values, they only tell themselves they are. This is intellectual three card Monte.”
Random Thoughts on Everything and Nothing 