The Evil, Twisted Domestication of the Middle Class American Female
I sit on the side of the road, a paper bag in hand. I am vomiting and staring at cars as they pass on the highway. It is 2 o clock in the morning and I am alone, brazenly walking the streets of a dead town. I have been walking the streets of this town late at night since I was as young as 13 , 12 years old.
I love the sound of the cars that roar by on the interstate, the sound of the mighty trucks, the sound of the occasional shrill scream in the distance.
I walk through a long parking lot and I shatter a bottle that I have found, sitting on the side of the curb. I shatter it in the name of the domesticated middle class female, a creature whom I find beyond revolting, and certainly always have.
These roads are dark, but I would prefer to walk them by my lonesome, until the end of time, rather than submit myself to any domesticated middle class female and her diseased ways. I find her revolting. I find her murderous. I find her, above all, sickening. Even her very voice, which you can har in little towns all over America, typically between the hours of 7:30 am until roughly 10:00 pm, insufferable. She is worse than a General of war in the middle of a lost battle. She is worse than a Ships captain on a sinking boat. She is not nearly as bad as a cop, or, worse, a prison guard, but I can assure you, she is definitely close.
Her sister, "Working Class Gina", seems to be such a different creature in comparison to her. So too does her other sister, "Upper Class Gertrude". But she ... this abominable creature...the middle class female...specifically the middle class American female...what is wrong with her? Why, for example, does she insist on baking cupcakes 300 different ways? Why does she think anyone cares about how curtains are designed, or how couches are organized in a living room? Why does she think anyone cares about her endless photographs with her children, all organized and arranged so neatly on insufferable Facebook? Who is this creature? From where does she come? WHy will she not leave the human race be, for once and for all? What punishment must we award ourselves, for having created this insufferable thing?
I would say this being comes from the depths of Satan's Hell, but Hell sounds marginally intersting and intriguing, and so there is no way she could come from there. She is from somewhere lesser than Hell. She is from the drabbest, most boring, humdrum place on Earth. She lives her life as a barrage of appointments, schedules, 9-5's, playdates, and last but never least, insufferable childrens birthday parties. Everything in her life is arranged, and planned, for the next 60-70 years. None of them are quite wealthy -- yet the whole lot of them seems to eventually find some way to spend upwards of 35-40,000$ on "weddings". Weddings of course, in their eyes, are little more than taming ceremonies. It's like an auction block in the old south. That's what a "wedding" is for the middle class female....
Sometimes she willl laugh and snarl, pretending that, once upon a long ago, she was a "hot young thing". She was sexy. So she says.
Don't fall for the joke. She is a fat old wife now and never was anything more. She was born, spit from the womb, a fat old cake baking hag. She is the domesticator. She is the enemy of not merely man, but also women. That's right. The middle class American female is the enemy of her own gender. In fact, I consider her a gender traitor and a biological failure. Don't believe me? Gather some film of the great females who walk the Earth in this time period we call our own, and let her watch them. Then, take note of her dismal reaction to the truly liberated female. Watch as her eyes go blank, as her tongue begins to snarl, when she sees a liberated female prancing around on the TV set. The middle class female is, almost as an absolute rule, always a "hater". She gets no joy from life, from fashion, from jewels, from anything. Usually the dead giveaway mark of her is her pride of how well she can cook, "even in the 21st century". Any female still bragging about her cooking abilities in the year 2018 is to be avoided like the plague. There's someting almost mortifying...something ghastly..about a woman 18 years into the 21st century still discussing cooking.
I have never in my life met a working class woman who can do more than throw a steak onto a firey grill and burn it. And how I love them, and how I love this. Lighting steaks on fire is beautiful. It is real.
I simply do not trust a woman who can cook more than 3-4 simple meals. I find such "women" revolting -- and desperately unattractive, to be sure. The working class female will stab you directly in the heart, while staring your eyes.
The middle class brat will kill you as you sleep. She will suffocate you. She is from a long line of cowards and she will live as a coward and die as one.
The middle class female is the locker of gates, the bringer of metal bars, the frightened rabbit in the dark forest. She is, along with a good number of her middle class brothers, perhaps entirely to be blamed for our current mass imprisonment problem, in the USA. She looks at the working class man, at the lower man, and she does not see a human being, but a beast. She has the characteristics of a SLAVER and she seeks to buy and sell hardened working boys as such. The feminists tell us that marriage is essentially an institution of slavery, always for the women alone. I say that it depends what social class you are from. For the working class boy, if he falls into the clutches of the middle class female, who is the real slave? The working boy. That's who. The fat old bitch has found him, hunted him, and now taken him like an animal to be tamed, broken, and made into something to serve her endless fat wants. She will pollute his spirit. She will strip him of his soul.She will tear him away from friends, from nature, from the beauty of all things. In the end, she will leave him completely BLANK. And then of course, if he gives her a child,o r a few such children, she will undoubtedly bring them up, from the get-go, as tired domesticated slaves. House niggers dressed in little bowties with clean white socks and shiny pearl teeth. House slaves in clean rooms with carpets that smell like roses and never suffered a stain. House niggers, indeed, trained to arrive eerywhere precisely on time, to sit quietly at a table, to cook the same tasteless cupcakes she always cooked, to never sing too loud, to never scream....
The middle class American female is the one who never lets a young boy swear, listen to loud music, smoke a few cigarettes, drink a few bottles of beer, essentially do anyting at all. She is,as i say, the biggest prison guard of all. She votes for the prisons to be built, and then she spends her time snarling like a snake in the vicinity of those exact prisons, looking for her prey to catch. She is like a vulture feeding on dead bodies... she hunts the scent of the wild man, seeking to tame him, to "civilize" him. But even when it comes to civilization, the midlde class female falls desperately short. The word civilization reminds a learned man of things like poetry, of art, of great paintings, of beautiful cities, of a Renaissance. The middle class female has none of this...knows none of this. She is a dead boring goblin in the darkness of the most boring place on Earth. She spends the best years of her life in pure middle class desperation, trying to pull socks onto a kicking boy, trying to force him to wear shoes he does not like, bowties he hates, to get haircuts he never wanted to get. OH! How I dread the typical haircut of the middle class daughter or son. The haircut of the worst slave on Earth. Every time i see it, I cringe. Every time I see a pair of little childrens shoes, I just fold my hands in prayer... "Please, dear Lord, I hope this child is not the child of a middle class domesticator..."
There is next to nothing individual or unique about the middle class female. Unlike the upper class girl, she is void of all true rich beauty and creativity, and unlike the working class girl, she is void of all vulgarity and "booty shaking" as well. She has nothing going for her. She is frightfully typical, and forever afraid. In my experience, she usually comes into full form by the age of 23-25, and never changes so much as a single time afterwards. She can and will find ways to have full 2 hour conversations about things like baking pans, plateware, curtains, bathroom designs, and stairs. She will be happy to discuss something like cooking apple pies, for 6 hours, rather than the latest Beyonce record, which she presumably finds "weird and scary and unusual". How low of a creature must one truly be, i beg to know, that still cannot understand an artist as mainstream as Beyonce in 2018? You already know who. The middle class female. That's who. She is the last one on every train. She still finds punk rock terrifying and rsique -- even though it might as well be a centuries old in so many other circles.
She is an abominable being. An enemy to her own gender and every other gender anyone might think up in the coming century. Remember her. Avoid her like the plague.
-- Jack
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
more journals about more sameness
I really do think Jen was trying to purposely lead me to commit suicide. I literally think she got some sick joy out of what she did and that is the real reason she's upset about how I pulled myself away now.
I think she figured I'd play the game out to the deep end, when i'd be dead, and now that it didn't happen, where has her power gone? A part of me also believes that her ex was in on it with her the entire time. She and him were always fighting and I definitely think they mostly hate each other, but they also had such a sick bond between each other that, it wouldn't shock me, if she and him were both scheming to try and get me all emotionally twisted, so I'd kill myself in grief. I know for a fact that the ex didn't like me -- he was very jealous that i never accidentally had babies like he did (starting at age 16) -- and he was also jealous of what he saw as my "easy home life". To him my existence had never been troubled, but always perfect. Every fact that i myself saw as depressign about my own upbringing, he ignored and saw as enviable. He wanted my life, and even Jen commented this numerous times. So what do you do wheny ou want someones lif but can't have it -- or get it out of your head? I suppose maybe you make an attempt to end it. And i think maybe thats what he did.
And Jen, of course, being the snarky little rat she was, being someone who would literally smoke crack if this guy asked her to do, decided to play along, in an effort to make hm happy. So she roped me in and got emotional with me, made it sound like she loved me, like she wanted to go with me, etc, only to then repeatedly break me down the moment I would try to take it further. She wanted me to eventually lose my marbles over it and start getting passionate, which of course i did, and i swear, i often get an image of her "ex' just being there with her, laughing at all my crazed text messages as they were sent. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was the case the entire time. The day i walked there, even, i kind of had a feeling he was in there. Someone was at least. Who? I'll never know.
Alas, I think now even he is depressed, because if he really was in on it, the game ended in a way he didn't expect. I find thinking about his reaction more comedic than Jens in a way because he never really believed me, for example, about the story I lived with my own ex Kim, years ago. Keep in mind that Jens "baby daddy" has a very intimate connection to the world of KIm: The first girl he ever had his baby with, was Kims younger sister by 3-4 years. Yes, thats right. It was Kims younger sister...and for this reason he knew very well -- or thought he did -- -the details of the relationship i had years ago with Kim, in 2006-2012. But one detail "Joey" always got wrong about me and Kim was that he seemed to intensely believe she left me, when in fact, I had left her. He believed this because of a stereotype he had of me: Joey was persuaded that i was some socially awkward nerd boy, and he found it hard to believe that I'd leave Kim, who was fairly good looking and even a bit popular then. In Joeys eyes, I had fought like a devil to maintain hold on Kim until the bitter end. I tried to explain to him, and even to snarly Jennifr,numerous times, that this hadn't been the case. "I left Kimberly." i would explain, "She tried desperately to contact me multiple times after i left her. I didn't want her anymore. Believe me, i would never go with her now, even if she begged...."
Joe never believed this. He thought i wanted back with Kim. He believed i was, like him, desperate for a woman in my life -- literally any woman. To Joe, i was someone who couldn't pull a woman but wanted one badly. Now, obviousyl, this is a bit true for all men: Every man has a certain woman he would like to pull but probably can't --- but when you're talking about all women, thats a different story. There is always someone for everyone, not necessarily someone for 50 years at a stretch, but certainly someone for a weekend, a month, or half the year, and Joey never seemed to understand that, for the most part, I just lost interest in women, throughout my early 20s. I find the idea of going with one annoying, mostly the same way I do now. The life of being in a steady relationship didn't seem at all enviable to me. It had been desperately annoying--- i wasn't eager to repeat it. Not with anyone. He did not believe this, of course. He thought i was desperate for love.
Hence, like I say, I feel he may have seriously set up Jen to do what she did, in hopes that my emotions would be so tragically wrecked, that i'd never come to the surface again. Just like he never believed me about how i cut off the "Beautiful Kim", he never believed I'd cut off Jen either, mostly cause it seems Joey himself -- for all his so-called male bravado and ease of getting girls --- never seems to be able to really give any of them cut. He's gotten himself stuck with two babies he can't afford after all.
So if he was really there, following it all, I think he's sitting there in just as much shock as Jen....
He sees now that some of us in this world really just don't give that much of a damn about love. We can and will dart off into the woods alone, to ride alone, even if it is painful for us. We will live with the pain of what is certainy heartbreak, rather than find out how dark the relationship can get. Joey always instead does the opposite. He rides the relationships, literally, into a ditch. He will take it truly as far as it can go, until there are no fond memories of the r-ship left at all anymore. No heartbreak. His first baby momma couldn't be happier to be done with him. She was ready to kill him last i heard.
Honestly though, for readers who might be wondering what motive Joey would have, in getting Jen to try and make me love her (beyond the idea he wanted to ultimately make me upset), just think of something like, y' know, maybe he thought it would make him love her more. Joey always seemed viciously bothered, for example, by the idea that he knew Jen wasn't very desirable on the dating market. He was an incredibly vain person and he wanted Pam Anderson basically, and though Jen was supposedly a "nympho", she wasn't really sexy, almost at all. Jen was pretty, but not sexy. She had next to no sex appeal, no ass, no real nice tits, and beyond that, as i said, Joe knew she had no hope of success on the dating market--and i think this drove him nuts. It wsa like he needed to feel her being pulled away from, in order to gain interest in her. So he enlisted me, in an effort to see if i would eventually try to steal her away. I never did... for 2 years...until he caught the strangulation charges...and then i felt bad for her...so i started....
But even then, my interest was short lived, wasn't it? So its hard to know if it worked for him. My ultimate dismissal of Jen, my refusal to call now, etc, it all might just be serving to make his interest in her completely plummet, further than it already has. I really think he's a mirror image of her in so many ways. If she is shocked and hurt by my refusal to call, so is he. He wants to feel like he's got a hot woman on his hands, a hot woman who someone will fight and growl over. I did do some growling, but i get the idea i didn't do enough for his liking. He was expecting a full mental explosion--maybe even a fist fight. He was expecting me to be in contact with Jen for years, i believe, until she or he made the decision to cut me out.
Didn't happen that way, Joe.
I think she figured I'd play the game out to the deep end, when i'd be dead, and now that it didn't happen, where has her power gone? A part of me also believes that her ex was in on it with her the entire time. She and him were always fighting and I definitely think they mostly hate each other, but they also had such a sick bond between each other that, it wouldn't shock me, if she and him were both scheming to try and get me all emotionally twisted, so I'd kill myself in grief. I know for a fact that the ex didn't like me -- he was very jealous that i never accidentally had babies like he did (starting at age 16) -- and he was also jealous of what he saw as my "easy home life". To him my existence had never been troubled, but always perfect. Every fact that i myself saw as depressign about my own upbringing, he ignored and saw as enviable. He wanted my life, and even Jen commented this numerous times. So what do you do wheny ou want someones lif but can't have it -- or get it out of your head? I suppose maybe you make an attempt to end it. And i think maybe thats what he did.
And Jen, of course, being the snarky little rat she was, being someone who would literally smoke crack if this guy asked her to do, decided to play along, in an effort to make hm happy. So she roped me in and got emotional with me, made it sound like she loved me, like she wanted to go with me, etc, only to then repeatedly break me down the moment I would try to take it further. She wanted me to eventually lose my marbles over it and start getting passionate, which of course i did, and i swear, i often get an image of her "ex' just being there with her, laughing at all my crazed text messages as they were sent. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was the case the entire time. The day i walked there, even, i kind of had a feeling he was in there. Someone was at least. Who? I'll never know.
Alas, I think now even he is depressed, because if he really was in on it, the game ended in a way he didn't expect. I find thinking about his reaction more comedic than Jens in a way because he never really believed me, for example, about the story I lived with my own ex Kim, years ago. Keep in mind that Jens "baby daddy" has a very intimate connection to the world of KIm: The first girl he ever had his baby with, was Kims younger sister by 3-4 years. Yes, thats right. It was Kims younger sister...and for this reason he knew very well -- or thought he did -- -the details of the relationship i had years ago with Kim, in 2006-2012. But one detail "Joey" always got wrong about me and Kim was that he seemed to intensely believe she left me, when in fact, I had left her. He believed this because of a stereotype he had of me: Joey was persuaded that i was some socially awkward nerd boy, and he found it hard to believe that I'd leave Kim, who was fairly good looking and even a bit popular then. In Joeys eyes, I had fought like a devil to maintain hold on Kim until the bitter end. I tried to explain to him, and even to snarly Jennifr,numerous times, that this hadn't been the case. "I left Kimberly." i would explain, "She tried desperately to contact me multiple times after i left her. I didn't want her anymore. Believe me, i would never go with her now, even if she begged...."
Joe never believed this. He thought i wanted back with Kim. He believed i was, like him, desperate for a woman in my life -- literally any woman. To Joe, i was someone who couldn't pull a woman but wanted one badly. Now, obviousyl, this is a bit true for all men: Every man has a certain woman he would like to pull but probably can't --- but when you're talking about all women, thats a different story. There is always someone for everyone, not necessarily someone for 50 years at a stretch, but certainly someone for a weekend, a month, or half the year, and Joey never seemed to understand that, for the most part, I just lost interest in women, throughout my early 20s. I find the idea of going with one annoying, mostly the same way I do now. The life of being in a steady relationship didn't seem at all enviable to me. It had been desperately annoying--- i wasn't eager to repeat it. Not with anyone. He did not believe this, of course. He thought i was desperate for love.
Hence, like I say, I feel he may have seriously set up Jen to do what she did, in hopes that my emotions would be so tragically wrecked, that i'd never come to the surface again. Just like he never believed me about how i cut off the "Beautiful Kim", he never believed I'd cut off Jen either, mostly cause it seems Joey himself -- for all his so-called male bravado and ease of getting girls --- never seems to be able to really give any of them cut. He's gotten himself stuck with two babies he can't afford after all.
So if he was really there, following it all, I think he's sitting there in just as much shock as Jen....
He sees now that some of us in this world really just don't give that much of a damn about love. We can and will dart off into the woods alone, to ride alone, even if it is painful for us. We will live with the pain of what is certainy heartbreak, rather than find out how dark the relationship can get. Joey always instead does the opposite. He rides the relationships, literally, into a ditch. He will take it truly as far as it can go, until there are no fond memories of the r-ship left at all anymore. No heartbreak. His first baby momma couldn't be happier to be done with him. She was ready to kill him last i heard.
Honestly though, for readers who might be wondering what motive Joey would have, in getting Jen to try and make me love her (beyond the idea he wanted to ultimately make me upset), just think of something like, y' know, maybe he thought it would make him love her more. Joey always seemed viciously bothered, for example, by the idea that he knew Jen wasn't very desirable on the dating market. He was an incredibly vain person and he wanted Pam Anderson basically, and though Jen was supposedly a "nympho", she wasn't really sexy, almost at all. Jen was pretty, but not sexy. She had next to no sex appeal, no ass, no real nice tits, and beyond that, as i said, Joe knew she had no hope of success on the dating market--and i think this drove him nuts. It wsa like he needed to feel her being pulled away from, in order to gain interest in her. So he enlisted me, in an effort to see if i would eventually try to steal her away. I never did... for 2 years...until he caught the strangulation charges...and then i felt bad for her...so i started....
But even then, my interest was short lived, wasn't it? So its hard to know if it worked for him. My ultimate dismissal of Jen, my refusal to call now, etc, it all might just be serving to make his interest in her completely plummet, further than it already has. I really think he's a mirror image of her in so many ways. If she is shocked and hurt by my refusal to call, so is he. He wants to feel like he's got a hot woman on his hands, a hot woman who someone will fight and growl over. I did do some growling, but i get the idea i didn't do enough for his liking. He was expecting a full mental explosion--maybe even a fist fight. He was expecting me to be in contact with Jen for years, i believe, until she or he made the decision to cut me out.
Didn't happen that way, Joe.
journals 2
126 days later and, the only thing I can really say is, how f'n glad I am that Jenny never tried all that hard to guilt trip me, into getting back into touch with her. Yes, she tried to contact 5 times, and sent texts to my phone, but imagine how much further she could have gone? Imagine how much more of a so-called "hoover" she could have put on? She could have left crazy voicemails, or written really long and angry emails. Or of course she could have written sad emails, trying to plead with me to contact her, etc.
"Can't you please just quit it with this? I'm sad...super sad. I'm sorry for the way i acted. I just want to talk again. I thought we were so close. Stop, please, stop being like this. I don't feel good."
One big reason i personally believe she didn't do this stuff is cause, deep in her dumb head, she was mortified that I'd get the emails, or the voicemails, and immediately show them to her ex, which i never would have done (but how can she know that?). Probably that was a big fear of hers, because she had no real way of knowing just how angry I was or wasn't, so between that fear and just being upset and frightened herself, she never sent much of anything substantial. Just those little things. Things that weren't enough to provoke me to contact her again. She was basically mortfied of starting something "real" with me, and she knew that if she wrote me something substantial, i would have interpreted it as her saying she wnated to. So nothing big came. ....
Like I say, I'm stil la bit melancholy over it, but mostly happy. I nearly got trapped in the single momma claws and it wouldn't have been fun, once it really got going. Hell, maybe thats even the reason that the whole story about the Titanic has recently been coming to mind. My God, could it be? Think of all te details that are similar, after all. The Titanic looks impressive at first, it seems like the best boat in the world to get on, like you just won something grand and sorta sexy, and even the Third Class passengers are elated to be aboard. All is grand! Then of course, 4 mere days into the voyage, and you're fastening a "lifebelt" on (should be called a deathbelt) and praying you get the hell off the ship and ino a lifeboat. This is probably how stepping into Jennys single mom rabbit hole would have ultimately been. Just think of how heavy the attachment to her already was for me, and i had never even lived with her, or slept with her. NOw imagine if i slept with her and got to know her kids better. How would i have ever escaped? It would have been crippling...essentially a double edged sword. Staying with Jen would have blown, and then trying to eventually escape her would have also blown. The truth is that I got the best deal of all here. I got the chance to learn a lesson. Never date young single mothers. Ever. Under virtually any circumstances.
Tomorrow will be May 31st. Day after that and it'll be the first of June. Jennys pool is opened. I wonder if she sits by it and swims with the kids and wonders of me? Maybe she's expecting a call because its summer and she thinks "he's more likely to give in, since its summer".
I still won't. Fuck her and her pool. A part of me cannot wait until summer is over and September arrives, just so she can realize how deep this hatted of mine runs. To me, you see, thats really the best part of this all. Every passing day and every passing month of no contact being made is just another nail, somewhere in her dumb head, of how much I despise her. I find this beautiful in my own way. It's like, even if she does not want to admit it to herself, deep down, she knows that every passing day is another day further away from that great tsunami wave of Love we both experienced, and so its all just another day closer to hate instead. I don't care what anyone on earth says really..i know the girl is sitting there and still expecting my eventual phone call... i know it basically for an absolute FACT...and how glorious it really is, to simply never give it. The one year anniversary of cutting her out will be glorious, and im sure she'll realize that month when its upon her..that being January. Ah! How i long for the day when i can say Jenny is actually a complete YEAR in the past. I have 240 days to go until that point. ...
In other news, i was watching that old movie Shutter Island yesterday evening, over a glass of 3 day old wine, and i was kind of shocked when i saw that the main plot point was about how Leo DiCaprios' wife in the film murders their 3 chilldren. The film had a very dark vibe to it. I honetly wouldn't be surprised if Jenny did something like that...that's literally how crazy i believe she's been driven by this pathetically sad set of circumstances. Now I'm thinking that a movie set on an island would be cool to write. Jen will be the star. She will be turned into a lunatic. Maybe i can insert it somehow into my 200,000 word quest with the vampire book, which I have not written in since Thursday or Friday, but which i fucking SWEAR I'm going to write something in now. I swear i swear i am.
Yes now im thinking of that again. I need to really focus. Hold on. Cut out---
Jack you made a vow to yourself dont you remember? You posted a blog about it. Said you would keep going with that vampire story all summer, till 200 K words. Your sisters graduation on Saturday distracted you. Plus the night before due to the celebration. Then on Sunday you were angry about how rude your Aunt always is. But its all over now, it's fucking Wednesday Jack, and you ought to get back to writing it NOW before anothr day goes by. Then it'll truly be lost foreva...
I swear all my long winded novels always get derailed by these fucking family events. It has happened countless times. The graduation was like aholiday, so it wa derailed. I have to try desperately to hop the train again.
Ciao.
"Can't you please just quit it with this? I'm sad...super sad. I'm sorry for the way i acted. I just want to talk again. I thought we were so close. Stop, please, stop being like this. I don't feel good."
One big reason i personally believe she didn't do this stuff is cause, deep in her dumb head, she was mortified that I'd get the emails, or the voicemails, and immediately show them to her ex, which i never would have done (but how can she know that?). Probably that was a big fear of hers, because she had no real way of knowing just how angry I was or wasn't, so between that fear and just being upset and frightened herself, she never sent much of anything substantial. Just those little things. Things that weren't enough to provoke me to contact her again. She was basically mortfied of starting something "real" with me, and she knew that if she wrote me something substantial, i would have interpreted it as her saying she wnated to. So nothing big came. ....
Like I say, I'm stil la bit melancholy over it, but mostly happy. I nearly got trapped in the single momma claws and it wouldn't have been fun, once it really got going. Hell, maybe thats even the reason that the whole story about the Titanic has recently been coming to mind. My God, could it be? Think of all te details that are similar, after all. The Titanic looks impressive at first, it seems like the best boat in the world to get on, like you just won something grand and sorta sexy, and even the Third Class passengers are elated to be aboard. All is grand! Then of course, 4 mere days into the voyage, and you're fastening a "lifebelt" on (should be called a deathbelt) and praying you get the hell off the ship and ino a lifeboat. This is probably how stepping into Jennys single mom rabbit hole would have ultimately been. Just think of how heavy the attachment to her already was for me, and i had never even lived with her, or slept with her. NOw imagine if i slept with her and got to know her kids better. How would i have ever escaped? It would have been crippling...essentially a double edged sword. Staying with Jen would have blown, and then trying to eventually escape her would have also blown. The truth is that I got the best deal of all here. I got the chance to learn a lesson. Never date young single mothers. Ever. Under virtually any circumstances.
Tomorrow will be May 31st. Day after that and it'll be the first of June. Jennys pool is opened. I wonder if she sits by it and swims with the kids and wonders of me? Maybe she's expecting a call because its summer and she thinks "he's more likely to give in, since its summer".
I still won't. Fuck her and her pool. A part of me cannot wait until summer is over and September arrives, just so she can realize how deep this hatted of mine runs. To me, you see, thats really the best part of this all. Every passing day and every passing month of no contact being made is just another nail, somewhere in her dumb head, of how much I despise her. I find this beautiful in my own way. It's like, even if she does not want to admit it to herself, deep down, she knows that every passing day is another day further away from that great tsunami wave of Love we both experienced, and so its all just another day closer to hate instead. I don't care what anyone on earth says really..i know the girl is sitting there and still expecting my eventual phone call... i know it basically for an absolute FACT...and how glorious it really is, to simply never give it. The one year anniversary of cutting her out will be glorious, and im sure she'll realize that month when its upon her..that being January. Ah! How i long for the day when i can say Jenny is actually a complete YEAR in the past. I have 240 days to go until that point. ...
In other news, i was watching that old movie Shutter Island yesterday evening, over a glass of 3 day old wine, and i was kind of shocked when i saw that the main plot point was about how Leo DiCaprios' wife in the film murders their 3 chilldren. The film had a very dark vibe to it. I honetly wouldn't be surprised if Jenny did something like that...that's literally how crazy i believe she's been driven by this pathetically sad set of circumstances. Now I'm thinking that a movie set on an island would be cool to write. Jen will be the star. She will be turned into a lunatic. Maybe i can insert it somehow into my 200,000 word quest with the vampire book, which I have not written in since Thursday or Friday, but which i fucking SWEAR I'm going to write something in now. I swear i swear i am.
Yes now im thinking of that again. I need to really focus. Hold on. Cut out---
Jack you made a vow to yourself dont you remember? You posted a blog about it. Said you would keep going with that vampire story all summer, till 200 K words. Your sisters graduation on Saturday distracted you. Plus the night before due to the celebration. Then on Sunday you were angry about how rude your Aunt always is. But its all over now, it's fucking Wednesday Jack, and you ought to get back to writing it NOW before anothr day goes by. Then it'll truly be lost foreva...
I swear all my long winded novels always get derailed by these fucking family events. It has happened countless times. The graduation was like aholiday, so it wa derailed. I have to try desperately to hop the train again.
Ciao.
Asshole relatives
So one of my hated uncles (well, the most hated of them all) recently moved down to Florida, and every time I think of it, i just get this beautiful fantasy of his old dumb ass getting swept away in some tsunami wave or something. I honestly can't lie: I wouldn't even be slightly sad if this happened to him.
I would be jumping up and down--with tears in my eyes---tears of pure joy. I hate the hell out of this dude and, though i would feel bad if he died of some nasty disease, I think a nice "Florida style death" would just be the perfect ending for him. Mostly because he's always been such a smug little asshole of a dude, and his move to FLorida has pretty much upped his "smug" card by 9000. Since, y'know, he can't let anyone in the entire family forget, that he managed to save enough money, to move there.
What I find hilarious about the idea that Florida is 'good for retirees' thing , is the idea that, just by virtue of being in the South, people in Florida have their "death likelihood" shoot way up. And, of course, once you take in all the physical activities my uncle is probably engaging in now, like swimming in the sea, surfing (so I hear), and probably just waltzing around random places he hardly knows, the odds of his actually dying in some type of accident shoot fairly high. Especially when you consider that he's nearly in his 60s, and lived in the North his entire life, in a fairly urban, non-beachy area. This guy has absolutely no idea what he's doing, and he waited far too long to go and do it.
For example, I'll admit that, somewhere inside of me, there is absolutely a ting of envy, for the fact that he has moved there, but on the other hand, I can't help but feel this deep disgust. Besides the fact that I have always hated this uncle, why do I feel disgust for it all? Well, after thinking about it for a few days, i think the main reason is because I can't help but feel he just did this all far too late in life. You see what I mean? It's like...every holiday for years now..my uncle has sat there preaching at the dinner table, about how he and his truly insufferable wife Anna, will be moving to Florida, and every time he said it, i used to just always think "...why couldn't you have just fuckign gone years ago?"
He always talked so big about how he would eventually get to Florida, and now he is indeed there, but what the fuck is it all even worth when you're nearly 60 anyways? I'm disgusted, i feel, by the fact that this guy talked so loudly about it all -- but didn't do anything until "retirement age". He thinks he's so cool for moving down there, but it's just the state that is cool....not him. I don't admire what hes done. I would have actually admired him more if he stayed in the city here. Something would have been bad ass about that to me.
Instead, the way it is now, something about it all just wreaks of .. i dont know exactly... but it wreaks of something gross. Again, why wait your entire life to go there? Why wait literally 30 years? He would say because he had to make money. You could have made that in Florida 30 years ago, no? Could have tried to be a real Floridian.
Like i say, to me it all wreaks of too little, too late. The image of him down there is almost revolting to me. Maybe because here i am, at 29 years old, trapped, and there he is, able to do it. And you know he wants to inspire envy with it, as i say. He's the smuggest man on earth and, of course, he never sent out any invitations to anyone. Because he's an absolute cunt and he knows no one can stand him. Alas, i guarantee he will be here to harass us for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. If not, I'll be sure as shit shocked. If he does start spending holidays in Florida i'll be extremely relieved of course. At that point my "envy" for his being able to live on the beach will be all but submerged under my elation over never having to bicker with him at Christmas again.
I don't know. I just think it's all so phony and, of course, so dreadfully mainstream. Is Florida a cool place? In some respects, absolutely! There's no doubt about that. But his decision to go there is so in lockstep with what "everyone else does" that it's actually rather conservative (just like him, a die hard Republican). After all, retiring to Florida is an immensely popular thing in this country. It's literally a sort of meme. And so naturally, just like he also bought the house in the ugly suburbs, just like he married the fat cupcake wife, just like he had the 2 obligatory kids, and just like he sent them to smug little private schools, and just like he always voted Republican, he now must do this next step in the dance of pure conformity and sameness. He must move to Florida! As have all the other Northern assholes who have a handful of dimes. What an absolute asshole. I really do hope he has some miserable swimming accident or other. I'm going to write it down on a slip of paper and take a walk thru the city and stuff the paper in some stone wall or other. That's how curses used to be cast in Ancient Roman times. I shall write "...damn this scumfuck man to hell, oh please Lord God..." then I'll write his full name , date of birth, etc. "Have a shark find him and rip his legs off."
Of course i suppose i should be grateful, as i say. If he had done something actually daring, like moved to California, or to another country (like, say, Italy, or elsewhere in hot Europe) i would have been so jealous that my head would have burst. Probably i would have gone and found him and shot him...heh heh heh. But instead he just moved to the FLA, and that state is fairly easy to mock, and once you put the beaches aside, not really that enviable for its quality of life, as i remarked earlier. Indeed, FLorida is basically a nest of snakes like any other "Deep South" state. It has an awful crime rate, health industry sucks, Republicans suffocate it, gun crimes are bad, job prsopects low, etcetc. Plus, from what i've read, its miserably hot in a way that is very different than California (or Italy). Of course, Uncle Gino is such an asshole, he probably does not-- or won't--realize this, until its too late. I won't be totally surprised if he winds up returning. His wifes parents did that after jut a few years, and then his wifes mother died a pretty miserable death in his house. I have always kind of suspected he may have murdered her. Mostly cus I knew he was enraged she lived with him, and then one day she took a mighty tumble down the stairs...and died. I have also sometimes thought he may have killed my grandfather (his father) too. Cause he thought he had money and wanted it. For all i know, he got it. He is a very, very sneaky and malicious man, my uncle. Beyond malicious. The biggest SNAKE in the game. On his deathbed my grandfather warned me "..he will put everyone against one another...he is full of evil.." It was creepy but i swear the old man said that! The old man and him never got along. Cause he's a prick!
I do have to thank him for one thing, however, if i can take a moment to do that. Whats that thing? It connects to my "ex" Jenny actually. I literally think i might have gone walking into a marriage with jenny, had i not known of my uncles horror story life. Thanks to him, and how miserable i have always seen he is with that fat shit of a wife he has, I realized very early on that life with kids an life with wives, no matter how much money you got (and they say he might have 1-2 million) ain't worth a good god damn. Better off a lonely bum. I got a better chance of getting to Florida that way, after all, long before I hit my 60th birthday. Shit, I could go there tomorrow, and probably be just as well-off as I am, right here, right now. Broke.
Now though, I'm kind of thinking of how cool life would be, if I had been so lucky as to have an uncle that was actually cool. What would actually cool mean? It would mean childless. Ah, god damn, if my uncle had been chidless, I can't imagine what an immense help he may have been for my life. He would have actually been worth something to me then, and i think thats what he never really understood, when it came to our broken relationship. For it's here and now that I'll admit that my uncle has tried - at times- to connect with me over the years, but every time he did, it was always so disgusting, because it was like he didn't really know how to play the "uncle" role. He only knew how to play "Father" -- and this made him worthless. An uncle with no children would have actually been an amazing relief to have in my life, and I do know a few dudes who got so lucky as to have that, but unfortunately for me, it wasn't in the cards. In fact, if my uncle had no children, I'd probably be plotting a move down to Florida with him right this very instant. We would probably be partying and drinking together. We would probably be best friends. Instead, he had his own kids,who of course despise him because he's their mean old daddy, and he's also trapped with that god awful -- and i mean truly awful--wife. So he is surrounded by rats and submerged. I suppose he probably realizes tis himself. His son, for example, appears to have no relationship whatsoever with him. Mostly because my uncle is not privately educated, but that prick son is, and he has become impossible to relate to for all of us.
At any rate, even with all my anger for this old prick, and my curses, and my hope that he will get eaten by a shark or a massive wave, I still penned some poetic song lines about him, or anyone like him:
I would be jumping up and down--with tears in my eyes---tears of pure joy. I hate the hell out of this dude and, though i would feel bad if he died of some nasty disease, I think a nice "Florida style death" would just be the perfect ending for him. Mostly because he's always been such a smug little asshole of a dude, and his move to FLorida has pretty much upped his "smug" card by 9000. Since, y'know, he can't let anyone in the entire family forget, that he managed to save enough money, to move there.
What I find hilarious about the idea that Florida is 'good for retirees' thing , is the idea that, just by virtue of being in the South, people in Florida have their "death likelihood" shoot way up. And, of course, once you take in all the physical activities my uncle is probably engaging in now, like swimming in the sea, surfing (so I hear), and probably just waltzing around random places he hardly knows, the odds of his actually dying in some type of accident shoot fairly high. Especially when you consider that he's nearly in his 60s, and lived in the North his entire life, in a fairly urban, non-beachy area. This guy has absolutely no idea what he's doing, and he waited far too long to go and do it.
For example, I'll admit that, somewhere inside of me, there is absolutely a ting of envy, for the fact that he has moved there, but on the other hand, I can't help but feel this deep disgust. Besides the fact that I have always hated this uncle, why do I feel disgust for it all? Well, after thinking about it for a few days, i think the main reason is because I can't help but feel he just did this all far too late in life. You see what I mean? It's like...every holiday for years now..my uncle has sat there preaching at the dinner table, about how he and his truly insufferable wife Anna, will be moving to Florida, and every time he said it, i used to just always think "...why couldn't you have just fuckign gone years ago?"
He always talked so big about how he would eventually get to Florida, and now he is indeed there, but what the fuck is it all even worth when you're nearly 60 anyways? I'm disgusted, i feel, by the fact that this guy talked so loudly about it all -- but didn't do anything until "retirement age". He thinks he's so cool for moving down there, but it's just the state that is cool....not him. I don't admire what hes done. I would have actually admired him more if he stayed in the city here. Something would have been bad ass about that to me.
Instead, the way it is now, something about it all just wreaks of .. i dont know exactly... but it wreaks of something gross. Again, why wait your entire life to go there? Why wait literally 30 years? He would say because he had to make money. You could have made that in Florida 30 years ago, no? Could have tried to be a real Floridian.
Like i say, to me it all wreaks of too little, too late. The image of him down there is almost revolting to me. Maybe because here i am, at 29 years old, trapped, and there he is, able to do it. And you know he wants to inspire envy with it, as i say. He's the smuggest man on earth and, of course, he never sent out any invitations to anyone. Because he's an absolute cunt and he knows no one can stand him. Alas, i guarantee he will be here to harass us for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. If not, I'll be sure as shit shocked. If he does start spending holidays in Florida i'll be extremely relieved of course. At that point my "envy" for his being able to live on the beach will be all but submerged under my elation over never having to bicker with him at Christmas again.
I don't know. I just think it's all so phony and, of course, so dreadfully mainstream. Is Florida a cool place? In some respects, absolutely! There's no doubt about that. But his decision to go there is so in lockstep with what "everyone else does" that it's actually rather conservative (just like him, a die hard Republican). After all, retiring to Florida is an immensely popular thing in this country. It's literally a sort of meme. And so naturally, just like he also bought the house in the ugly suburbs, just like he married the fat cupcake wife, just like he had the 2 obligatory kids, and just like he sent them to smug little private schools, and just like he always voted Republican, he now must do this next step in the dance of pure conformity and sameness. He must move to Florida! As have all the other Northern assholes who have a handful of dimes. What an absolute asshole. I really do hope he has some miserable swimming accident or other. I'm going to write it down on a slip of paper and take a walk thru the city and stuff the paper in some stone wall or other. That's how curses used to be cast in Ancient Roman times. I shall write "...damn this scumfuck man to hell, oh please Lord God..." then I'll write his full name , date of birth, etc. "Have a shark find him and rip his legs off."
Of course i suppose i should be grateful, as i say. If he had done something actually daring, like moved to California, or to another country (like, say, Italy, or elsewhere in hot Europe) i would have been so jealous that my head would have burst. Probably i would have gone and found him and shot him...heh heh heh. But instead he just moved to the FLA, and that state is fairly easy to mock, and once you put the beaches aside, not really that enviable for its quality of life, as i remarked earlier. Indeed, FLorida is basically a nest of snakes like any other "Deep South" state. It has an awful crime rate, health industry sucks, Republicans suffocate it, gun crimes are bad, job prsopects low, etcetc. Plus, from what i've read, its miserably hot in a way that is very different than California (or Italy). Of course, Uncle Gino is such an asshole, he probably does not-- or won't--realize this, until its too late. I won't be totally surprised if he winds up returning. His wifes parents did that after jut a few years, and then his wifes mother died a pretty miserable death in his house. I have always kind of suspected he may have murdered her. Mostly cus I knew he was enraged she lived with him, and then one day she took a mighty tumble down the stairs...and died. I have also sometimes thought he may have killed my grandfather (his father) too. Cause he thought he had money and wanted it. For all i know, he got it. He is a very, very sneaky and malicious man, my uncle. Beyond malicious. The biggest SNAKE in the game. On his deathbed my grandfather warned me "..he will put everyone against one another...he is full of evil.." It was creepy but i swear the old man said that! The old man and him never got along. Cause he's a prick!
I do have to thank him for one thing, however, if i can take a moment to do that. Whats that thing? It connects to my "ex" Jenny actually. I literally think i might have gone walking into a marriage with jenny, had i not known of my uncles horror story life. Thanks to him, and how miserable i have always seen he is with that fat shit of a wife he has, I realized very early on that life with kids an life with wives, no matter how much money you got (and they say he might have 1-2 million) ain't worth a good god damn. Better off a lonely bum. I got a better chance of getting to Florida that way, after all, long before I hit my 60th birthday. Shit, I could go there tomorrow, and probably be just as well-off as I am, right here, right now. Broke.
Now though, I'm kind of thinking of how cool life would be, if I had been so lucky as to have an uncle that was actually cool. What would actually cool mean? It would mean childless. Ah, god damn, if my uncle had been chidless, I can't imagine what an immense help he may have been for my life. He would have actually been worth something to me then, and i think thats what he never really understood, when it came to our broken relationship. For it's here and now that I'll admit that my uncle has tried - at times- to connect with me over the years, but every time he did, it was always so disgusting, because it was like he didn't really know how to play the "uncle" role. He only knew how to play "Father" -- and this made him worthless. An uncle with no children would have actually been an amazing relief to have in my life, and I do know a few dudes who got so lucky as to have that, but unfortunately for me, it wasn't in the cards. In fact, if my uncle had no children, I'd probably be plotting a move down to Florida with him right this very instant. We would probably be partying and drinking together. We would probably be best friends. Instead, he had his own kids,who of course despise him because he's their mean old daddy, and he's also trapped with that god awful -- and i mean truly awful--wife. So he is surrounded by rats and submerged. I suppose he probably realizes tis himself. His son, for example, appears to have no relationship whatsoever with him. Mostly because my uncle is not privately educated, but that prick son is, and he has become impossible to relate to for all of us.
At any rate, even with all my anger for this old prick, and my curses, and my hope that he will get eaten by a shark or a massive wave, I still penned some poetic song lines about him, or anyone like him:
He moved on down to the Florida sun
After 100 years, it finally got done
I suppose it felt like a battle he won
As he flew down, he felt he was a lucky one
He walked to the beach, he look'd at the waves
A million miles from these Northern graves
A million mile from the Northern slaves
There in Florida, he'll spend his final days
in the Florida sun
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
madonna Video
MADONNA --- DON'T TELL ME (REMIX)
Marvel at the Queen! Good summer morning listening for sure. Inspires a thousand images and words---
Rabbits in the ocean
rabbits in the sun
DRink the magic potion
swallow the magic rum
Gotta go to Wonderland
gotta go one more time
Alic run wild
alice run free
in the summertime
alice kisses me
laying on my bed
before they come to kill me dead
wwwww wonderland
let me touch the fingers, of the magic hand
people in the real -- they dont understand
throw me thru the wormhole
to wonderland
rabbits in the sun
DRink the magic potion
swallow the magic rum
Gotta go to Wonderland
gotta go one more time
Alic run wild
alice run free
in the summertime
alice kisses me
laying on my bed
before they come to kill me dead
wwwww wonderland
let me touch the fingers, of the magic hand
people in the real -- they dont understand
throw me thru the wormhole
to wonderland
Titanic song
I was watching the Titanic again,
It always makes me weep and moan, when I see the end
Jackie and Rose went down
Jackie and Rose went down down down
Jackie and Rose went down
Jackie ain't never, ever gonna be found
And oh, it makes me cry cry cry
When i think of all the little old ladies
when i think of all the sweet babies
the way they died,
the way they died died died
the way they died....
Oh that water was so so cold
Didn't care if you were young or old
DIdn't care if you had all that gold
That ship took your soul soul soul
That ship took your soul
When youre on titanic
youre gonna panic
when youre on titanic
you'll get a bit manic
when youre on titanic
it gets a little bit frantic
when you're on titanic
youre going down down dpwn
It always makes me weep and moan, when I see the end
Jackie and Rose went down
Jackie and Rose went down down down
Jackie and Rose went down
Jackie ain't never, ever gonna be found
And oh, it makes me cry cry cry
When i think of all the little old ladies
when i think of all the sweet babies
the way they died,
the way they died died died
the way they died....
Oh that water was so so cold
Didn't care if you were young or old
DIdn't care if you had all that gold
That ship took your soul soul soul
That ship took your soul
When youre on titanic
youre gonna panic
when youre on titanic
you'll get a bit manic
when youre on titanic
it gets a little bit frantic
when you're on titanic
youre going down down dpwn
Sunday, May 27, 2018
Child raising and housework deserve compensation
The reason why womens housework and particularly childcare should be compensated is exceedingly simple, and I Find it unfathomable when people don't understand it. This is the reason:
Children are not just some random luxury that certain people have "for fun".
Do some people get serious lifetime fulfillment out of having children? Yes.
Do some people turn into teenagers and realize that all they ever want to be on Earth is someone who raises children? Absolutely.
But none of that means that raising children should be unpaid labor, as it is currently is now. This is because, if people suddenly stopped raising children, or, if people stopped being able to raise children, we, as a society, would have a serious problem on our hands. We wouldn't have replacements for future tax dollars. We wouldn't have new cogs in the machine of our economies. And the truth here is that, like it or not, but ultimately the economy does not see the precious children as anything but future replacements for our economy.
As a result of this, people who are having children and raising them are, in fact, doing a very vital service for our economy.. In a certain sense, they're doing the most vital service of all. Without them, we would have no economy. And yet, when we look at the current set-up of things, we see that this is a section of life that, somehow, even in 2018, is still going entirely unnoticed and unpaid. The modern individual frequently finds the idea of paying a woman to raise her own children absolutely bewildering. Why should she be paid, they say, since this is what she wanted, and also what she herself says she adores doing, anyways? They may even find it offensive from the perspective of the child. They'll say something like "...but if my parent had been paid to raise me...wouldn't that mean I was just, like, a job for them? And how could i know they had really loved me? They were just raising me for money!"
Some, in fact, would even take this idea that women should be paid a wage to raise their children, and use it to exclaim that women will have tons of babies, so that they can "get rich" off having them. We already, for instance, see gigantic echoes of this, in the current welfare system we have at work, where many lower class single mothers, we are told (ususally stereotyped as blacks) are "milking the system of Uncle Sam to get rich off welfare money". The way the milking works, the conservatives tell us, is that the poor girls spit out 5 babies, and with each baby they have, they just get richer. Because they collect Uncle Sams welfare money and spend it on literally everything except what the 5 kids they have need. Usually we are underhandedly told that these women spend it on drugs, and that they don't care for their children.
There are a few reasons, of course, that this idea of anyone getting rich and being able to luxuriate on a welfare "wage" is pretty stupid and deeply flawed thinking. In the first place, there is the very basic design of what wage work even is. Wage work is not designed to help anyone get rich. It is designed to help people stay alive just long enough to come to work for the next round of wages. If wage work -- or welfare "wages" paid to single mommas -- was designed to get people rich, then you would see that all the menial jobs of our society were vacant very fast, because everyone would be able to escape the jobs within just one month, or one year etc, of working them. But we all know very well, unless we are lyign to ourselves, that escaping wage work is not that easy. One needs to be clever to figure out how to escape wage work, becuase it is a system, as i say, literally designed to make sure you only ever have enough to show up to work again, and nothing more. This is especially the case for someone who has children, whether 1 or 5 of them. For the most part, next to no one escapes wage work all that easily. The common person never will.
As a result of this simple fact, we are able to see that, even if we take a step beyond welfare, and we pay all women money to raise their children, it will not be a system that helps them get "rich". It will just be a system that helps women be able to have children and not slip into dangerous poverty as a result of it.
You see, the basic fact about having children in our current society, is that it seems we have arrived at a very curious and interesting pass. What's happening now is that many middle class women, who work careers, who graduate college, and who actually have a lot of money, are opting out of having children. The birth rate has been steadily declining since the 70s, mostly as a result of this exact thing. It is now, in fact, at the point where the birth rate has dipped below the replacement level.
At first, of course, keeping the standard argument in mind, this fact about the birth rate being so low and below replacement level, sounds absolutely confounding. After all, how could this possibly be the truth, when we are told, over and over, that all those "low class womens" are spitting out 500 babies a year, day after day, that they can't afford? Surely those people are able to help keep the birth rate steady. Look how many babies they have, right? We've all seen "them" wandering around at Wal-Mart or something, tons of babies in tow, all of them screaming and looking like future criminals...
This is not the truth, however. What is the truth is that, yes, those women often do have a lot of babies, that they cannot afford, and yes, they do keep us close to the replacement level, but even with their help, we are still not able to adequately replace the numbers of one generation for the next. This is actually a major problem, and the other major problem is this: Since so many of the women who are having children now are often the exact women who can't afford them, it's actually the case that many of the adults we are sending out as "the replacements" are malfunctioning. This fact about these children malfunctioning once they are adults is something that is frequently said by Republicans and conservatives . We have essentially been being told for 40 years now, for example, that the disintegration of the nuclear family, the divorce rate, and "single mothers" especially, are the cause of all the criminal issues our society experiences. This, of course, isn't necessarily wrong: the statistics do indeed show that an incredible nmber of criminals and felons are those who were raised in single mother households, with no father ever around.
The conservatives solution, however, is also not a very good one. Whats his solution? Well it is the same age old answer he always has: If only everything was again as it once was in 1945, when women didn't work outside of the home, and when divorce was illegal, everything would be great again, because then we would have no single mothers. You see, what the conservative basically does is he uses the wonderful manner in which our society has uplifted women since a decade like the 1940s, and he uses the legalization of divorce, to tell us that we have destroyed society.
Oddly enough, however, what the conservative never wants to do is express just how unusually expensive child bearing now is, in this modern age. He never, for example, seems to want to accept the fact that all those nice, educated middle class women with money don't want to have kids and help us with the sinking birth rate because... gues what? They know they wouldn't have any money anymore, if they did. He never wants to take a second to wonder just why the divorce rate is so high, or just wy so many mothers wind up single. Could it perhaps be connected to the fact that child raising is absurdly expensive? The men try to do it, but quickly realize they hardly can stay afloat, so they flee. As for the responsible people, as I say, many of them are just opting out of child raisin' altogether. Cause they are realizing beforehand, just how much of a struggle it is, under this current regime...
As a result, the responsibility of the replacements isb eing left up to people who are, in many ways, entirely unaware of just how expensive child bearing is, until its too late and they already have them, at which point they sit in disbelief at how dysfunctional and unfair this all is. Unfortunately for us, most of their kids are never given a chance to see what has happened to them: They instead go storming out into society, after being thrown into it at a young age, and probably rob us at knifepoint, and turn entire cities and towns into no-go danger zones. We then have to play a game of cat and mouse with them, paying cops money to chase them in circles all around teh city, lock them up so they won't kill us to get some food in their bellies, and then of course we pay incredibly exorbitant fees, to keep them locked up.
It's this part about how much we are paying to keep the prisoners locked in chains that is really the most interesting of all. Why? It is simple: Often, when the discussion about welfare comes up at the 'round table', the first card everyone wants to pull is how they are responsible hard workers, and they don't want to spend their tax dollars, on people who aren't. "I ain't helping to raise someone elses kids." is what they say. "They shouldn't have been such fools. They should have waited to have kids til they could afford them!"
The flaw in this argument, however, is that it's basically just sweeping the problem under the rug, until a later date. In other words, since we absolutely refuse to help raise the needy children in our society, we then just wind up paying for it all anyways, when we have to keep the insanely aggravated adult versions of them, locked up in prisons, for 40-50 years. We also pay for it in other ways beyond prison, too: After all, I would vey much liek to go take some walks around my city, but my city is one so particularly hard hit by crime , that a good three quarters of it has now been rendered insecure, especially for women. Keep in mind at this point that the USA has the highest incarceration rate out of any nation on Earth. We also have some of the longest prison sentences, too. No where on Earth is a citizen more likely to go to prison for an unusually long time, than in the USA. It's an incredibly dark and scary fact-- but the reason it happened is all because of this ridiculous idea. The Americans don't seem to be realizing that you're going to end up paying for all these children, whethe you like it or not. Its literally inevitable. They exist in the same socieyt as all the rest of us. They're our problem.
And all of this could be solved , if we just examined the womens issue, of them not being paid for work that is just as good and just as necessary, as all the other work in our society. Because having children isn't just some "fun thing" that people do for their own self fulfillment. Having children is not a hobby. It is not a pastime. Having children is a literal necessity for our society, and without the women raising them, we would have no society. We pay people for literally every other thing necessary in our culture, from cleaning up garbage to street sweeping to wiping down a table in a restauraunt. Why then should we not pay them to do the thing that is literally the starting point of it all?
You see, what I personally find so fascinating about this concept of women being compensated for this supreme duty of having children to keep the wheels turning, is that, at first glance, many people often take offense to it, as I wrote earlier, and they seem to think that, by involving wages in the raising of ones own child, we are demeaning it and making it "not sacred". It is almost as though people see bearing children as so spiritual and so holy that, to involve money with it, would make it disgusting and impure. It's like they see it as an art form, really, and they don't want to believe that the Creator Artists in question here -- i.e. the mommas -- should need money for this thing. Somewhere in the back of 'societys head', its like we all just think that women will endlessly keep creating these babies, with or without money, with or without means. Yet, as the plummeting birth rate shows, particularly with the middle and upper class women, we are seeing now that this isn't the case. The truth, again and again, must be stressed, that the artists have ceased to sing us their song. Women are opting out of childbirth because they know theres no money in it,and we are living in a society that depends only on money. Women are opting out of childbirth because they've been educated now, and gotten wise to the stacked deck of cards this society is playing with now. And it is for this reason, again, that it needs to be compensated, recognized, and appreciated. We show appreciation to men who sweep streets and who clean sewers, by paying them. We show appreciation and pay farmers who grow food, food which would grow -- just like children -- with or without a civilization surrounding it.
So why the hell shouldn't we pay women who grow children, too?
Children are not just some random luxury that certain people have "for fun".
Do some people get serious lifetime fulfillment out of having children? Yes.
Do some people turn into teenagers and realize that all they ever want to be on Earth is someone who raises children? Absolutely.
But none of that means that raising children should be unpaid labor, as it is currently is now. This is because, if people suddenly stopped raising children, or, if people stopped being able to raise children, we, as a society, would have a serious problem on our hands. We wouldn't have replacements for future tax dollars. We wouldn't have new cogs in the machine of our economies. And the truth here is that, like it or not, but ultimately the economy does not see the precious children as anything but future replacements for our economy.
As a result of this, people who are having children and raising them are, in fact, doing a very vital service for our economy.. In a certain sense, they're doing the most vital service of all. Without them, we would have no economy. And yet, when we look at the current set-up of things, we see that this is a section of life that, somehow, even in 2018, is still going entirely unnoticed and unpaid. The modern individual frequently finds the idea of paying a woman to raise her own children absolutely bewildering. Why should she be paid, they say, since this is what she wanted, and also what she herself says she adores doing, anyways? They may even find it offensive from the perspective of the child. They'll say something like "...but if my parent had been paid to raise me...wouldn't that mean I was just, like, a job for them? And how could i know they had really loved me? They were just raising me for money!"
Some, in fact, would even take this idea that women should be paid a wage to raise their children, and use it to exclaim that women will have tons of babies, so that they can "get rich" off having them. We already, for instance, see gigantic echoes of this, in the current welfare system we have at work, where many lower class single mothers, we are told (ususally stereotyped as blacks) are "milking the system of Uncle Sam to get rich off welfare money". The way the milking works, the conservatives tell us, is that the poor girls spit out 5 babies, and with each baby they have, they just get richer. Because they collect Uncle Sams welfare money and spend it on literally everything except what the 5 kids they have need. Usually we are underhandedly told that these women spend it on drugs, and that they don't care for their children.
There are a few reasons, of course, that this idea of anyone getting rich and being able to luxuriate on a welfare "wage" is pretty stupid and deeply flawed thinking. In the first place, there is the very basic design of what wage work even is. Wage work is not designed to help anyone get rich. It is designed to help people stay alive just long enough to come to work for the next round of wages. If wage work -- or welfare "wages" paid to single mommas -- was designed to get people rich, then you would see that all the menial jobs of our society were vacant very fast, because everyone would be able to escape the jobs within just one month, or one year etc, of working them. But we all know very well, unless we are lyign to ourselves, that escaping wage work is not that easy. One needs to be clever to figure out how to escape wage work, becuase it is a system, as i say, literally designed to make sure you only ever have enough to show up to work again, and nothing more. This is especially the case for someone who has children, whether 1 or 5 of them. For the most part, next to no one escapes wage work all that easily. The common person never will.
As a result of this simple fact, we are able to see that, even if we take a step beyond welfare, and we pay all women money to raise their children, it will not be a system that helps them get "rich". It will just be a system that helps women be able to have children and not slip into dangerous poverty as a result of it.
You see, the basic fact about having children in our current society, is that it seems we have arrived at a very curious and interesting pass. What's happening now is that many middle class women, who work careers, who graduate college, and who actually have a lot of money, are opting out of having children. The birth rate has been steadily declining since the 70s, mostly as a result of this exact thing. It is now, in fact, at the point where the birth rate has dipped below the replacement level.
At first, of course, keeping the standard argument in mind, this fact about the birth rate being so low and below replacement level, sounds absolutely confounding. After all, how could this possibly be the truth, when we are told, over and over, that all those "low class womens" are spitting out 500 babies a year, day after day, that they can't afford? Surely those people are able to help keep the birth rate steady. Look how many babies they have, right? We've all seen "them" wandering around at Wal-Mart or something, tons of babies in tow, all of them screaming and looking like future criminals...
This is not the truth, however. What is the truth is that, yes, those women often do have a lot of babies, that they cannot afford, and yes, they do keep us close to the replacement level, but even with their help, we are still not able to adequately replace the numbers of one generation for the next. This is actually a major problem, and the other major problem is this: Since so many of the women who are having children now are often the exact women who can't afford them, it's actually the case that many of the adults we are sending out as "the replacements" are malfunctioning. This fact about these children malfunctioning once they are adults is something that is frequently said by Republicans and conservatives . We have essentially been being told for 40 years now, for example, that the disintegration of the nuclear family, the divorce rate, and "single mothers" especially, are the cause of all the criminal issues our society experiences. This, of course, isn't necessarily wrong: the statistics do indeed show that an incredible nmber of criminals and felons are those who were raised in single mother households, with no father ever around.
The conservatives solution, however, is also not a very good one. Whats his solution? Well it is the same age old answer he always has: If only everything was again as it once was in 1945, when women didn't work outside of the home, and when divorce was illegal, everything would be great again, because then we would have no single mothers. You see, what the conservative basically does is he uses the wonderful manner in which our society has uplifted women since a decade like the 1940s, and he uses the legalization of divorce, to tell us that we have destroyed society.
Oddly enough, however, what the conservative never wants to do is express just how unusually expensive child bearing now is, in this modern age. He never, for example, seems to want to accept the fact that all those nice, educated middle class women with money don't want to have kids and help us with the sinking birth rate because... gues what? They know they wouldn't have any money anymore, if they did. He never wants to take a second to wonder just why the divorce rate is so high, or just wy so many mothers wind up single. Could it perhaps be connected to the fact that child raising is absurdly expensive? The men try to do it, but quickly realize they hardly can stay afloat, so they flee. As for the responsible people, as I say, many of them are just opting out of child raisin' altogether. Cause they are realizing beforehand, just how much of a struggle it is, under this current regime...
As a result, the responsibility of the replacements isb eing left up to people who are, in many ways, entirely unaware of just how expensive child bearing is, until its too late and they already have them, at which point they sit in disbelief at how dysfunctional and unfair this all is. Unfortunately for us, most of their kids are never given a chance to see what has happened to them: They instead go storming out into society, after being thrown into it at a young age, and probably rob us at knifepoint, and turn entire cities and towns into no-go danger zones. We then have to play a game of cat and mouse with them, paying cops money to chase them in circles all around teh city, lock them up so they won't kill us to get some food in their bellies, and then of course we pay incredibly exorbitant fees, to keep them locked up.
It's this part about how much we are paying to keep the prisoners locked in chains that is really the most interesting of all. Why? It is simple: Often, when the discussion about welfare comes up at the 'round table', the first card everyone wants to pull is how they are responsible hard workers, and they don't want to spend their tax dollars, on people who aren't. "I ain't helping to raise someone elses kids." is what they say. "They shouldn't have been such fools. They should have waited to have kids til they could afford them!"
The flaw in this argument, however, is that it's basically just sweeping the problem under the rug, until a later date. In other words, since we absolutely refuse to help raise the needy children in our society, we then just wind up paying for it all anyways, when we have to keep the insanely aggravated adult versions of them, locked up in prisons, for 40-50 years. We also pay for it in other ways beyond prison, too: After all, I would vey much liek to go take some walks around my city, but my city is one so particularly hard hit by crime , that a good three quarters of it has now been rendered insecure, especially for women. Keep in mind at this point that the USA has the highest incarceration rate out of any nation on Earth. We also have some of the longest prison sentences, too. No where on Earth is a citizen more likely to go to prison for an unusually long time, than in the USA. It's an incredibly dark and scary fact-- but the reason it happened is all because of this ridiculous idea. The Americans don't seem to be realizing that you're going to end up paying for all these children, whethe you like it or not. Its literally inevitable. They exist in the same socieyt as all the rest of us. They're our problem.
And all of this could be solved , if we just examined the womens issue, of them not being paid for work that is just as good and just as necessary, as all the other work in our society. Because having children isn't just some "fun thing" that people do for their own self fulfillment. Having children is not a hobby. It is not a pastime. Having children is a literal necessity for our society, and without the women raising them, we would have no society. We pay people for literally every other thing necessary in our culture, from cleaning up garbage to street sweeping to wiping down a table in a restauraunt. Why then should we not pay them to do the thing that is literally the starting point of it all?
You see, what I personally find so fascinating about this concept of women being compensated for this supreme duty of having children to keep the wheels turning, is that, at first glance, many people often take offense to it, as I wrote earlier, and they seem to think that, by involving wages in the raising of ones own child, we are demeaning it and making it "not sacred". It is almost as though people see bearing children as so spiritual and so holy that, to involve money with it, would make it disgusting and impure. It's like they see it as an art form, really, and they don't want to believe that the Creator Artists in question here -- i.e. the mommas -- should need money for this thing. Somewhere in the back of 'societys head', its like we all just think that women will endlessly keep creating these babies, with or without money, with or without means. Yet, as the plummeting birth rate shows, particularly with the middle and upper class women, we are seeing now that this isn't the case. The truth, again and again, must be stressed, that the artists have ceased to sing us their song. Women are opting out of childbirth because they know theres no money in it,and we are living in a society that depends only on money. Women are opting out of childbirth because they've been educated now, and gotten wise to the stacked deck of cards this society is playing with now. And it is for this reason, again, that it needs to be compensated, recognized, and appreciated. We show appreciation to men who sweep streets and who clean sewers, by paying them. We show appreciation and pay farmers who grow food, food which would grow -- just like children -- with or without a civilization surrounding it.
So why the hell shouldn't we pay women who grow children, too?
Saturday, May 26, 2018
1. The Dead Weather - Die by the Drop
2. Misfits - Halloween
3. Hole - Violet
4. Patti Smith - Ghost Dance
5. The Kills - Black Balloon
6. Concrete BLonde -- Bloodletting
7. Dorothy -- Wicked Ones
8. Blondie -- Call me
9. Joan Jett --- Cherry Bomb , Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
10. Pink --- White Rabbit
11. Madonna -- Gang Bang (JNS PRoject)
2. Misfits - Halloween
3. Hole - Violet
4. Patti Smith - Ghost Dance
5. The Kills - Black Balloon
6. Concrete BLonde -- Bloodletting
7. Dorothy -- Wicked Ones
8. Blondie -- Call me
9. Joan Jett --- Cherry Bomb , Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
10. Pink --- White Rabbit
11. Madonna -- Gang Bang (JNS PRoject)
Thursday, May 24, 2018
the 200,000 word novel Goal of the summer
So I think it's time i have to make a vow for myself.
I don't know if I'll be able to keep it --- but I really fucking want to.
The vow is that, even if i get dead sick of this curret vampire story I'm writing, I'm not going to stop writing in it, until I reach --bare minimum -- 200,000 words. Yes, you read that right. 200,000 words. I'm going for the big kahuna here. The longest story I've ever written was, if i remember correctly, about 70-80,000 words. I think I have managed to successfully get to 70-80k about 5-6 times... I don't really remember. They're all just sitting on my hard drive somewhere. Normally, as many of my readers on this blog will know, I tend to just write short stories, and then I always tend to set out to write longer stories, but get halted around 20-30,000 words. I have many stories currently halted around that point.
But for some reason now, it's nearly June 2018, and I want to torture myself, and set out for the big kahuna. I want a 200,000 word book, and maybe I just don't give a god damn if I start to lose the plot or if it gets all muddied and confusing and I go crazy. I'm going to shoot for it anyways.
At the moment, I'm at the dreaded 22,000 words, and I woke up about 5 hours ago, and I Have not yet written a word. The sensation of being stalled is coming upon me, but I'm going to throw it out of the way and keep trodding on. I'll tell you something: Normally I don't even like to set the goal--especially to get all the way to 200,000 words -- because it can wind up depressing me, and then making me feel shitty, and writing even less words than normal (because i will start to refuse to try a new short story). I'm making the goal now, however, cus I think the vampire story set in Texas -- this is what im writing now -- is just easy enough for me to write, that I'll be able to actually pull thru and get that sum of words. I'm not sure how long it'll take. Could be the case that I seriously sit here and try to write just this one story for the entire duration of the summer. (OF course i find this idea incredibly daunting). It could also be the case that I can spit 200,000 words faster than I think. After all, I started this story on May 20th, and I managed to get 22K words in just 4 days. That means 5.5 thousand words a day. At that rate, I can maybe look forward to hitting the goal in just 36 days. Sounds insane. Sounds not likely. But who the hell knows. I need a book with that many words. I don't know why. I just need it.
Here's the lil trick I'm using though, in order to get that far: I am writing in the George Martin Game of Thrones style, which means every few chapters, or sometime just every few pages, I switch out to a new characters point of view. In George's book A Storm of Swords, which is 973 pages (414,000 words) he tells the tale from the perspective of literally 12 different characters. In my book so far, I have inserted 6. I have 6 more to go until 12 that means and...honestly, though it sounds a bit absurd, I'm even going to allow myself to insert more points of view and more characters , if I start to feel I need to. It'll be confusing --- fuck yes it will -- but i don't really care. Like I say, I'm determined to get to the 200,000 word finish line by any means necessary. At this point, I don't even care what happens to the story. I cannot back out. I can't do it. I must fight tooth and nail to get there...and I'm going to live by the mantra of "insert new characters when necessary" as well as "bad writing is better than no writing" as well.
Oftentimes a major problem when you're writing -- i say this to folks all the time --- is that you'll get far along in a tale you really dig, and then you get scared of ruining it. You know that the first 100 pages you wrote are good, but then the ideas start to dry out a bit, and the characters start doing things you don't expect, and you get afraid to "ruin it". Normally I try to take a breather and think things through at that point. This time, no. I'm literally just storming straight ahead. Whatever idea comes ,thats the idea I'll write. Even if it starts making little to no sense. Honestly, you'd be surprised how many ideas that seem to make no sense initially often wind up making perfect sense the next day, when you read them back, anyways......
Oh, theres also the other method I'm using now, which I feel I never really used before. I call it the episodic method, and basically this means that, instead of thinking this all like a book now, I'm trying to think of it more like a television show. The reason why is simple: Unlike novels, which tend to generally obsess over one specific event that must come to a climax at the end, TV shows tend to introduce a whole new problem every episode, and often the new problems in each episode are wildly different than the last one. There is also the fact that TV shows love to repeat certain things in every episode, in order to make you feel at home with the character. I.e. When we all watched True Blood, we often hung out and took a breather with Sookie Stackhouse in her kitchen, in episode after episode, no matter what was happening. Then we also occasionally hung out with her at job, doing the same thing, over and over. In books this usually isn't the case. Especially in old books. But I'm now realizing that one big secret to the 400,000 word novels is that they're writing in episodic form, instead of a more traditional novel form. So, fuck it, I'm going to try it and see what happens. There's no ultimate climax here. There's just episode by episode.
So there you have it. This will be my first journal entry, i guess, where i discuss this new goal. Hopefuly I'll keep up with it. Now its time to pour the black coffe and get started. 5.5 thousand words must be written today! I think I'm going to insert a new character right away. A vampire who plays rock and roll. Nicolai, we're ging to call him.
How many words can I squeeze out of Nicolai? And just how will he be involved with Franny (who is the main character, for teh most part). Yesterday, for instance, at a scene when i almost stalled, i had Franny fight a weird 4 legged monster on the side of a highway in Texas. The monster ate her little cousin. The scene was absurd, but i liked it. What should happen with Nicolai now? Should he turn Fran into a vampire?
---notes on writing
I don't know if I'll be able to keep it --- but I really fucking want to.
The vow is that, even if i get dead sick of this curret vampire story I'm writing, I'm not going to stop writing in it, until I reach --bare minimum -- 200,000 words. Yes, you read that right. 200,000 words. I'm going for the big kahuna here. The longest story I've ever written was, if i remember correctly, about 70-80,000 words. I think I have managed to successfully get to 70-80k about 5-6 times... I don't really remember. They're all just sitting on my hard drive somewhere. Normally, as many of my readers on this blog will know, I tend to just write short stories, and then I always tend to set out to write longer stories, but get halted around 20-30,000 words. I have many stories currently halted around that point.
But for some reason now, it's nearly June 2018, and I want to torture myself, and set out for the big kahuna. I want a 200,000 word book, and maybe I just don't give a god damn if I start to lose the plot or if it gets all muddied and confusing and I go crazy. I'm going to shoot for it anyways.
At the moment, I'm at the dreaded 22,000 words, and I woke up about 5 hours ago, and I Have not yet written a word. The sensation of being stalled is coming upon me, but I'm going to throw it out of the way and keep trodding on. I'll tell you something: Normally I don't even like to set the goal--especially to get all the way to 200,000 words -- because it can wind up depressing me, and then making me feel shitty, and writing even less words than normal (because i will start to refuse to try a new short story). I'm making the goal now, however, cus I think the vampire story set in Texas -- this is what im writing now -- is just easy enough for me to write, that I'll be able to actually pull thru and get that sum of words. I'm not sure how long it'll take. Could be the case that I seriously sit here and try to write just this one story for the entire duration of the summer. (OF course i find this idea incredibly daunting). It could also be the case that I can spit 200,000 words faster than I think. After all, I started this story on May 20th, and I managed to get 22K words in just 4 days. That means 5.5 thousand words a day. At that rate, I can maybe look forward to hitting the goal in just 36 days. Sounds insane. Sounds not likely. But who the hell knows. I need a book with that many words. I don't know why. I just need it.
Here's the lil trick I'm using though, in order to get that far: I am writing in the George Martin Game of Thrones style, which means every few chapters, or sometime just every few pages, I switch out to a new characters point of view. In George's book A Storm of Swords, which is 973 pages (414,000 words) he tells the tale from the perspective of literally 12 different characters. In my book so far, I have inserted 6. I have 6 more to go until 12 that means and...honestly, though it sounds a bit absurd, I'm even going to allow myself to insert more points of view and more characters , if I start to feel I need to. It'll be confusing --- fuck yes it will -- but i don't really care. Like I say, I'm determined to get to the 200,000 word finish line by any means necessary. At this point, I don't even care what happens to the story. I cannot back out. I can't do it. I must fight tooth and nail to get there...and I'm going to live by the mantra of "insert new characters when necessary" as well as "bad writing is better than no writing" as well.
Oftentimes a major problem when you're writing -- i say this to folks all the time --- is that you'll get far along in a tale you really dig, and then you get scared of ruining it. You know that the first 100 pages you wrote are good, but then the ideas start to dry out a bit, and the characters start doing things you don't expect, and you get afraid to "ruin it". Normally I try to take a breather and think things through at that point. This time, no. I'm literally just storming straight ahead. Whatever idea comes ,thats the idea I'll write. Even if it starts making little to no sense. Honestly, you'd be surprised how many ideas that seem to make no sense initially often wind up making perfect sense the next day, when you read them back, anyways......
Oh, theres also the other method I'm using now, which I feel I never really used before. I call it the episodic method, and basically this means that, instead of thinking this all like a book now, I'm trying to think of it more like a television show. The reason why is simple: Unlike novels, which tend to generally obsess over one specific event that must come to a climax at the end, TV shows tend to introduce a whole new problem every episode, and often the new problems in each episode are wildly different than the last one. There is also the fact that TV shows love to repeat certain things in every episode, in order to make you feel at home with the character. I.e. When we all watched True Blood, we often hung out and took a breather with Sookie Stackhouse in her kitchen, in episode after episode, no matter what was happening. Then we also occasionally hung out with her at job, doing the same thing, over and over. In books this usually isn't the case. Especially in old books. But I'm now realizing that one big secret to the 400,000 word novels is that they're writing in episodic form, instead of a more traditional novel form. So, fuck it, I'm going to try it and see what happens. There's no ultimate climax here. There's just episode by episode.
So there you have it. This will be my first journal entry, i guess, where i discuss this new goal. Hopefuly I'll keep up with it. Now its time to pour the black coffe and get started. 5.5 thousand words must be written today! I think I'm going to insert a new character right away. A vampire who plays rock and roll. Nicolai, we're ging to call him.
How many words can I squeeze out of Nicolai? And just how will he be involved with Franny (who is the main character, for teh most part). Yesterday, for instance, at a scene when i almost stalled, i had Franny fight a weird 4 legged monster on the side of a highway in Texas. The monster ate her little cousin. The scene was absurd, but i liked it. What should happen with Nicolai now? Should he turn Fran into a vampire?
---notes on writing
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Reading Charlaine Harris now
Watching Midnight, Texas recently and quite liking it. On episode 7 now, of 10. The first season. I have tried looking and they said there will be a second season, but it is not listed when it'll start. There is an inter-racial romance in the show which I quite enjoy, between a white woman and a black man.
It was fun and shocking to see. I always said i was surprised that True Blood never had an interracial romance .. at least not for the white women. They had an interracial gay romance in the later seasons, between Lafayette (a black gay man) and some white dude, and in fact, the actor who had signed on for this role, the white one, actually dropped out of it because he was so angry once the writers told him he would be in a gay romance w/ a black man. Sad.
So anyways, i started writing my own story a bit, and i put a white woman who was hooking up with ablack dude immediately into the story. My story has vampires and stuff. Personally, i love the way Charlaine Harris writes (she's the one behind both Midnight, Texas, and True BLood) but i almost think i could do the vampires better. Witches too. I wrote a post last week about how i was upset i haven't written hard fantasy in awhile, and how i've just been doing straight realist stories, mostly with women who like sleeping around a great deal. It is now occurring to me that writing stories like Charlaine Harris does might be my best hope yet, cause all her stories are a cross between reality and fantasy. I mean, I always loved True Blood, and I even watched Witches of East End a few years ago, and loved it, but i almost wasn't identifying any of this as fantasy because, much of the time, the shows themselves aren't respected in "real" fantasy circles.
Vampires, for example, are never really used in any Dungeons and Dragons-esque roleplaying games. So it was like it wasn't fantasy or something... i dunno. Now I'm doing it tho. I do remember about a year and a half ago I obsessed over Charmed for awhile and was writing stories about witches. Now i'm doing witches, vampires, werewolves, warlocks, all of it, in one story. A crock pot of combinations! This is what Charlaine Harris does every time.
It's a bit challenging knowing how to write the vampires. There are only so many ways to twist them. I'm coming up w/ some good ideas thoand having fun. What i find fascinating about Harris's stories, for example, is that the way she actually writes seems really tame --she's a 60+ year old Southern woman--- but then, you watch the show, and its all as risque as could be, in many respects. The sex on TB was very graphic and so was the violence. I loved it. In fact, in my story I'm writing now, I'm almost thinking i might have a particularly gruesome scene where, like, some group of vampires is out prowling the dark night and they come upon a pregnant woman and just rip the baby right out of her stomach and bite it. It turns into a baby vampire. Oh my god. Do you think that could work? Or is it too risque? It's always this fine line. Its the same with rape scenes. I always want some character to get raped -- becasue it adds drama!! -- but then im like, oh wait a second, would readers be offended? Stories that sell have the perfect ingredients. Can't be too tame, can't go too far. God damn challenging line to walk.
As usual i have no title for the story. I think i got enough ammo to get to the end tho. I'm a regular little Danielle Steele now tho i swear. Soon i'll release everything im working on. I'll get rich off the books, or at least comfortable, move to Nicaragua and change my sex. I might even take the name Charlaine because i like it, but my last name won't be Harris. I'll make it something like Rose. Oh, sexy! Charlaine Rose. A world with two Charlaine's in it who both write sexy vampire dramas doesnt sound like a bd one to me. How about you?
Anyways back to my story.
It was fun and shocking to see. I always said i was surprised that True Blood never had an interracial romance .. at least not for the white women. They had an interracial gay romance in the later seasons, between Lafayette (a black gay man) and some white dude, and in fact, the actor who had signed on for this role, the white one, actually dropped out of it because he was so angry once the writers told him he would be in a gay romance w/ a black man. Sad.So anyways, i started writing my own story a bit, and i put a white woman who was hooking up with ablack dude immediately into the story. My story has vampires and stuff. Personally, i love the way Charlaine Harris writes (she's the one behind both Midnight, Texas, and True BLood) but i almost think i could do the vampires better. Witches too. I wrote a post last week about how i was upset i haven't written hard fantasy in awhile, and how i've just been doing straight realist stories, mostly with women who like sleeping around a great deal. It is now occurring to me that writing stories like Charlaine Harris does might be my best hope yet, cause all her stories are a cross between reality and fantasy. I mean, I always loved True Blood, and I even watched Witches of East End a few years ago, and loved it, but i almost wasn't identifying any of this as fantasy because, much of the time, the shows themselves aren't respected in "real" fantasy circles.
Vampires, for example, are never really used in any Dungeons and Dragons-esque roleplaying games. So it was like it wasn't fantasy or something... i dunno. Now I'm doing it tho. I do remember about a year and a half ago I obsessed over Charmed for awhile and was writing stories about witches. Now i'm doing witches, vampires, werewolves, warlocks, all of it, in one story. A crock pot of combinations! This is what Charlaine Harris does every time.
It's a bit challenging knowing how to write the vampires. There are only so many ways to twist them. I'm coming up w/ some good ideas thoand having fun. What i find fascinating about Harris's stories, for example, is that the way she actually writes seems really tame --she's a 60+ year old Southern woman--- but then, you watch the show, and its all as risque as could be, in many respects. The sex on TB was very graphic and so was the violence. I loved it. In fact, in my story I'm writing now, I'm almost thinking i might have a particularly gruesome scene where, like, some group of vampires is out prowling the dark night and they come upon a pregnant woman and just rip the baby right out of her stomach and bite it. It turns into a baby vampire. Oh my god. Do you think that could work? Or is it too risque? It's always this fine line. Its the same with rape scenes. I always want some character to get raped -- becasue it adds drama!! -- but then im like, oh wait a second, would readers be offended? Stories that sell have the perfect ingredients. Can't be too tame, can't go too far. God damn challenging line to walk.
As usual i have no title for the story. I think i got enough ammo to get to the end tho. I'm a regular little Danielle Steele now tho i swear. Soon i'll release everything im working on. I'll get rich off the books, or at least comfortable, move to Nicaragua and change my sex. I might even take the name Charlaine because i like it, but my last name won't be Harris. I'll make it something like Rose. Oh, sexy! Charlaine Rose. A world with two Charlaine's in it who both write sexy vampire dramas doesnt sound like a bd one to me. How about you?
Anyways back to my story.
the modern myth of hard work
The modern concept of work, from the perspective of the past, is so laughable and deranged, that it's almost bizarre so many people are still using the term "work" to describe it. Especially the term "hard work" is one that I find particularly laughable, in many of the modern contexts in which I see it is used.
For example, imagine a family of 2 that has decided to have 5 children they can't afford. The woman is a stay at home mom and the father is a poor boy with no college degree, forced to take two jobs. One of the jobs he works full time at a Reebok shoe store in a mall hardly anyne goes to all week long, and the other is a part time job that he works in a Subway restauraunt making sandwiches for highway drivers, late at night. You can be certain, in our modern world, that everyone in this guys family will brag endlessly about what a "hard worker" he is, and how much he "struggles" for his family. In the dump of a city I live in, destroyed by Republican policies, a guy like this can and will be elevated to an almost "model citizen" slot of the community. He's seen as glorious. He has not left his baby momma. He has not joined a gang to earn "fast money". He is earning honest dough. At backyard barbeques, he never forgets to mention how one day he will go to night school, in addition to the two jobs, so he can maybe become educated, too. God this guy is so holy. He is such a hard worker! He is trying his best for his family...blah blah. He is doing what the Bible told him to do. He is working to eat. Working to live.
But what i find fascinating myself about the idea of how hard this guy works is that, more or less, what he actually does when he's at the two jobs, is hardly even discussed. In other words, the entire conversation about this mans hard workin' lifestyle begins and ends with the fact that he is employed, and he gets to enjoy that title "hard worker" thanks to being employed , regardless of what he does whilst on the job. In this case, for instance, he works at that shoe store in a mall hardly anyone goes to. Chances are he is literally just sitting in an air conditioned room all day, a room that smells rather nice, hardly even moving from his seat behind the counter. He is probably on his iPhone 3/4 of the day, and he might serve some customers...of course...but even then, what does he really do? He opens some shoe boxes, he goes to the back of the shop and gets the shoe they want, he rings them out at the check out line. He gets yelled at sometimes by his snobby boss. He has to wear a uniform. He has to deal with co-workers who are rude. Hard work.
Now, however, shoot yourself 5-600 years into the past, or even just a mere 100 years into the past, and bring to mind the type of job that an average fellow would have had to do then. Countless shoe stores and shopping malls didn't exist then. So what this guy would have done in 1905, or 1850, is that he would have probably been out in the hot sun all day, with no air conditioning, literally breaking back to earn his daily bread. He would have been doing the true definitino of hard work -- which to me, means you are working so hard, that you are breaking an actual sweat. Or that you may even actually be killed whilst on the job. A man who was forced to go out to sea to be a fisherman, for example, in the 1700s (a very common job a poor man would have taken if he was born in a coastal area) would be very likely to be killed whilst on the job.
Of course, some folks will gleefully shout, at this point, that many such jobs that are very hard and back breaking still exist. These folks are correct! However, the plain fact is that the majority of jobs these days aren't really back breaking jobs anymore, and they haven't been for awhile. Most jobs people have now aren't the sort where you might accidentally fall into an ocean and be ripped to shreds by a shark. You won't accidnetally stick your hand into a machine and have your arm torn off.
I have basically been poor my entire life...so has everyone I've known been poor. But I can count on one hand the number of people I know who have ever, even once in their life, done back breaking manual labor. Most people I know, I don't consider them "hard workers". I consider them merely employed --and i think there is a huge difference. They work at shoe stores, at clothing boutiques, as receptionists, as school teachers, at ice cream parlors, at gas stations, at Subway restauraunts. Some of them work as plumbers and fix toilets. Some fix furnaces. Some are firemen who run into houses and put out fires..a few times a year. But even the furnace fixers and the firemen -- which are considered pretty "dangerous" jobs in our modern time--aren't realy all that dangerous, in comparison to the average job of the deep past.
Does this mean, however, that jobs of nowadays are more pleasurable or something, since they are clearly so much easier than the back breaking manual labor of the 16-1700s etc? Yes and no.
You see, the real reason why many people still use the term "hard work", even when they're talking about a guy who sits in a single seat at a shoe store for 8 hours a day, in air conditioning, is because this work is still "hard" -- but not in the physical sense it used to be. The reality of work in the modern age is that its mentally challenging. Not because its difficult to sell shoes or be a receptionist. Quite to the contrary. The common work of today is actually so easy and so mundane that it is, in fact, maddening. Its so boring, in other words, and so mundane, that after about 5 days on the job, people start losing their minds doing it over and over and over. So they call it "hard work". But , like i say, this is a misnomer, and I do think its important to point out, because once you reveal that it isn't really hard work ... you also reveal something else.
Whats that? Its the basic fact that a lot of the work modern people have gotten stuck doing is largely useless work. Remember, for example, back in high school, when it was clear the teacher had nothing left to teach, and so she would hand out "busy work"? This is largely the sort of time period we find ourselves in right now. The work of the modern era is now largely without purpose. Even the jobs that so many would say have a grand purpose -- like someone who works as a psychologist and earns 85,000$ a year -- is actually pretty useless work, if you really dwell on it. After all, who are psychologists usually passing their time with all day? Hint: People who are deeply depressed over being forced to sit quietly in an air conditioned shoe store all the livelong day, for $12.00 an hour.
For those of us born in the post 1960 era, we were born into a world where so much of the really hard work was either already done (i.e. buildng massive highways, countless houses, laying down roads,and so forth) and where the remaining hard work was starting to be done by ever more complex machines. One must keep in mind, for example, that when Ancient Romans laid down the first roads of Rome 2,000 + years ago, they had no machnes to do the work for them. They laid those stones with their own hands, brick by brick, stone by stone, individually. When a highway is built now, even a massive one, workers are naturally involved---but so too are dozens of machines. The workers control the machines. Thats pretty much the extent of their hard work now. They control machines. It is almost laughable to think ofit as hard work, as i say, in comparison to what the Ancient Roman laying the stone road 2,000 yeras ago would have had to do.
Now there are a few very key reasons why this is all desperately important to point out, especially for the Republican crowd of Christians who literally never shut up about the values of "hard workin' folk". Here are the main reasons: In the first place, because so much work has already been done, and is now being done by machines, there actually have not been enough jobs -- even these boring dumbie jobs --- to go around for a very long while now. This is a curious little fact that it seems many Republicans out there, and also some DEmocrats I suppose, simply can't wrap their heads around. In the eyes of the conservatives, the only reason unemployed people are unemployed is always the same reason, whether you're talking about one person or an actual large number of people, like 10 million: They are unemployed because they want to be, and because they are bad and lazy. They are unemployed because they are stupid and cannot find work. Mostly, because something is wrong with them, and not with society. Certainly, the Republican screams at us all, nothing could be wrong with our society, because God loves us and he has arranged all things perfectly...
But once you come to understand the fact about the machines we have invented, and about how so much important work, as i write, is already completed (again, the highways, the buildings, the skyscrapers, the houses, the roads etc) you immediately should be able to see the reality of the situation: Huge masses of people are unemployed and it has nothing to do with them being lazy, and everything to do with them not being ableto find a job because so many jobs that once existed no longer existed--and were never adequately replaced.
If you don't believe that much of the work is already done, and you seriously believe that the concept of work is still as it was in a year like 1935, (i..e in 1935 it was all very urgent) take a moment to realize that, following a perod like the Great Depression, President Roosevelt, in an effort to save our country from devastating unemployment, created a thing called the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. This was a wildly liberal idea at the time, because he was using government money to fund it and conservatives hated it. The result of it, however, was a glorious thing, and the long and short of what this thing President Roosevelt created was that it employed ass numbers of people with a basically guaranteed job.
What wer the jobs? Essentially they were the jobs that saw the United States finally receive an acrtual foundation. Millions upon millions of strong armed men set to work building the interstates that had not existed previously, and then after they built the interstates, they started work on the suburbs and the houses within them. This went on for a very long while and built an entire country and kept folks wondrously employed. But then it was eventually another period of history that ended, and a new period started, a new period where, as i say, even more intelligent machines existed, that could do many more jobs for us. It is said, for example, that for every machine created, 6-7 people are immediately out ofa job. For instance, when the Internet age of Amazon and online shopping began to bloom, it is said that basically 10 retail workers lost their jobs for every online store. This is because we have now significantly less people shopping retail. So why do we need as many retail workers in the stores? Machines are now helping us buy things online. And now imagine when Amazon finally figures out how to get, say, the drones to work, so that the drones can deliver packages, instead of the UPS trucks. Now the UPS guys will be out of work.
The machines took the jobs!
Many people read a sentence like this and automatically find it scary and bad. "Its so awful!" they say, "that machines are stealing our jobs! Its A NIGHTMARE!"
This, however, could not be any further from the truth. For the fact is that, accusing a machine of stealing your job would be like accusing an air conditioning of stealing the job that a little fan you hold in your hand used to do. No one would ever say that, because everyone instinctively understands that holding the fan yourself was annoying, and not nearly as efficient, as having an air conditioning. So why don't we view so many jobs the same way? Why don't we rejoice when the machine takes them, instead of grieve?
The reason is simple: It is because our society, mostly thanks to religious books like the Bible, is still very much refusing to admit that there is life beyond hard work and suffering. It's almost as though its simply unfathomable to people to think that life could actually be largely enjoyable, in a world that is mostly powered almost entirely by machines, instead of suffering hard workers. Imagine, for example, that you are on the Titanic for a second. Assuming you've seen the film, you might remember the shots of Rose and Jack running through the boiler rooms, where men with faces full of black grease and oil, shoveled coal to make sure the engines of the mighty ship kept turning. In fact, go even further back in time, to a previous age of the ship, like the famous age of the pirates. Probably you are aware of how enormous pirate and sailing crews used to have to be, in order to keep a sailing ship afloat and moving. Now, imagine a modern boat. The crew is unusually tiny in comparison to the crew of 100+ men (some big sailing ships needed 500+ men in the 1700s). Why aren't 500 plus men necessary now to sail a ship. Because the ships are essentially intelligent machines that are almost sailing themselves....
And conservatives, at this point in time, are basically asking us to cry for the fact that machines can now save men from ever having to do that job. They're asking us to cry over it because...well, what is life without hard work? God only loves hard workers. Its written in the Bible. We can't possibly give peolpe something like a Universal Basic Income, as Elon Musk proposes, the Republicans tell us, because ... the Bible says we must all EARN our daily bread, by the sweat of our brow! We must work HARD For our money, doing whatever hard work is available. If no hard wrk is available, like we are seeing now, then people just have to die in the streets, i guess. Its what God wants.
Yet, like i say, once you realize that the very definition of hard work has been being used in a pretty phony way for the past 60-70 years anyways, you start to see that a world where machines do all the dirty work, and where human beings get to sit back and relax, isn't really that hard to imagine anyways. In so many ways, we are already almost there. After all, if God is really judging us by the idea that you have to work hard and suffer by the sweat of your brow each day to get into Heaven, I can't imagine that too many conservative politicians, many of whom seem to have had a desk job in an air conditoned office for all their lives, are going to get in.
--- Hard work in the modern age is a myth, nothing more..
Sally Two Bones
For example, imagine a family of 2 that has decided to have 5 children they can't afford. The woman is a stay at home mom and the father is a poor boy with no college degree, forced to take two jobs. One of the jobs he works full time at a Reebok shoe store in a mall hardly anyne goes to all week long, and the other is a part time job that he works in a Subway restauraunt making sandwiches for highway drivers, late at night. You can be certain, in our modern world, that everyone in this guys family will brag endlessly about what a "hard worker" he is, and how much he "struggles" for his family. In the dump of a city I live in, destroyed by Republican policies, a guy like this can and will be elevated to an almost "model citizen" slot of the community. He's seen as glorious. He has not left his baby momma. He has not joined a gang to earn "fast money". He is earning honest dough. At backyard barbeques, he never forgets to mention how one day he will go to night school, in addition to the two jobs, so he can maybe become educated, too. God this guy is so holy. He is such a hard worker! He is trying his best for his family...blah blah. He is doing what the Bible told him to do. He is working to eat. Working to live.
But what i find fascinating myself about the idea of how hard this guy works is that, more or less, what he actually does when he's at the two jobs, is hardly even discussed. In other words, the entire conversation about this mans hard workin' lifestyle begins and ends with the fact that he is employed, and he gets to enjoy that title "hard worker" thanks to being employed , regardless of what he does whilst on the job. In this case, for instance, he works at that shoe store in a mall hardly anyone goes to. Chances are he is literally just sitting in an air conditioned room all day, a room that smells rather nice, hardly even moving from his seat behind the counter. He is probably on his iPhone 3/4 of the day, and he might serve some customers...of course...but even then, what does he really do? He opens some shoe boxes, he goes to the back of the shop and gets the shoe they want, he rings them out at the check out line. He gets yelled at sometimes by his snobby boss. He has to wear a uniform. He has to deal with co-workers who are rude. Hard work.
Now, however, shoot yourself 5-600 years into the past, or even just a mere 100 years into the past, and bring to mind the type of job that an average fellow would have had to do then. Countless shoe stores and shopping malls didn't exist then. So what this guy would have done in 1905, or 1850, is that he would have probably been out in the hot sun all day, with no air conditioning, literally breaking back to earn his daily bread. He would have been doing the true definitino of hard work -- which to me, means you are working so hard, that you are breaking an actual sweat. Or that you may even actually be killed whilst on the job. A man who was forced to go out to sea to be a fisherman, for example, in the 1700s (a very common job a poor man would have taken if he was born in a coastal area) would be very likely to be killed whilst on the job.
Of course, some folks will gleefully shout, at this point, that many such jobs that are very hard and back breaking still exist. These folks are correct! However, the plain fact is that the majority of jobs these days aren't really back breaking jobs anymore, and they haven't been for awhile. Most jobs people have now aren't the sort where you might accidentally fall into an ocean and be ripped to shreds by a shark. You won't accidnetally stick your hand into a machine and have your arm torn off.
I have basically been poor my entire life...so has everyone I've known been poor. But I can count on one hand the number of people I know who have ever, even once in their life, done back breaking manual labor. Most people I know, I don't consider them "hard workers". I consider them merely employed --and i think there is a huge difference. They work at shoe stores, at clothing boutiques, as receptionists, as school teachers, at ice cream parlors, at gas stations, at Subway restauraunts. Some of them work as plumbers and fix toilets. Some fix furnaces. Some are firemen who run into houses and put out fires..a few times a year. But even the furnace fixers and the firemen -- which are considered pretty "dangerous" jobs in our modern time--aren't realy all that dangerous, in comparison to the average job of the deep past.
Does this mean, however, that jobs of nowadays are more pleasurable or something, since they are clearly so much easier than the back breaking manual labor of the 16-1700s etc? Yes and no.
You see, the real reason why many people still use the term "hard work", even when they're talking about a guy who sits in a single seat at a shoe store for 8 hours a day, in air conditioning, is because this work is still "hard" -- but not in the physical sense it used to be. The reality of work in the modern age is that its mentally challenging. Not because its difficult to sell shoes or be a receptionist. Quite to the contrary. The common work of today is actually so easy and so mundane that it is, in fact, maddening. Its so boring, in other words, and so mundane, that after about 5 days on the job, people start losing their minds doing it over and over and over. So they call it "hard work". But , like i say, this is a misnomer, and I do think its important to point out, because once you reveal that it isn't really hard work ... you also reveal something else.
Whats that? Its the basic fact that a lot of the work modern people have gotten stuck doing is largely useless work. Remember, for example, back in high school, when it was clear the teacher had nothing left to teach, and so she would hand out "busy work"? This is largely the sort of time period we find ourselves in right now. The work of the modern era is now largely without purpose. Even the jobs that so many would say have a grand purpose -- like someone who works as a psychologist and earns 85,000$ a year -- is actually pretty useless work, if you really dwell on it. After all, who are psychologists usually passing their time with all day? Hint: People who are deeply depressed over being forced to sit quietly in an air conditioned shoe store all the livelong day, for $12.00 an hour.
For those of us born in the post 1960 era, we were born into a world where so much of the really hard work was either already done (i.e. buildng massive highways, countless houses, laying down roads,and so forth) and where the remaining hard work was starting to be done by ever more complex machines. One must keep in mind, for example, that when Ancient Romans laid down the first roads of Rome 2,000 + years ago, they had no machnes to do the work for them. They laid those stones with their own hands, brick by brick, stone by stone, individually. When a highway is built now, even a massive one, workers are naturally involved---but so too are dozens of machines. The workers control the machines. Thats pretty much the extent of their hard work now. They control machines. It is almost laughable to think ofit as hard work, as i say, in comparison to what the Ancient Roman laying the stone road 2,000 yeras ago would have had to do.
Now there are a few very key reasons why this is all desperately important to point out, especially for the Republican crowd of Christians who literally never shut up about the values of "hard workin' folk". Here are the main reasons: In the first place, because so much work has already been done, and is now being done by machines, there actually have not been enough jobs -- even these boring dumbie jobs --- to go around for a very long while now. This is a curious little fact that it seems many Republicans out there, and also some DEmocrats I suppose, simply can't wrap their heads around. In the eyes of the conservatives, the only reason unemployed people are unemployed is always the same reason, whether you're talking about one person or an actual large number of people, like 10 million: They are unemployed because they want to be, and because they are bad and lazy. They are unemployed because they are stupid and cannot find work. Mostly, because something is wrong with them, and not with society. Certainly, the Republican screams at us all, nothing could be wrong with our society, because God loves us and he has arranged all things perfectly...
But once you come to understand the fact about the machines we have invented, and about how so much important work, as i write, is already completed (again, the highways, the buildings, the skyscrapers, the houses, the roads etc) you immediately should be able to see the reality of the situation: Huge masses of people are unemployed and it has nothing to do with them being lazy, and everything to do with them not being ableto find a job because so many jobs that once existed no longer existed--and were never adequately replaced.
If you don't believe that much of the work is already done, and you seriously believe that the concept of work is still as it was in a year like 1935, (i..e in 1935 it was all very urgent) take a moment to realize that, following a perod like the Great Depression, President Roosevelt, in an effort to save our country from devastating unemployment, created a thing called the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. This was a wildly liberal idea at the time, because he was using government money to fund it and conservatives hated it. The result of it, however, was a glorious thing, and the long and short of what this thing President Roosevelt created was that it employed ass numbers of people with a basically guaranteed job.
What wer the jobs? Essentially they were the jobs that saw the United States finally receive an acrtual foundation. Millions upon millions of strong armed men set to work building the interstates that had not existed previously, and then after they built the interstates, they started work on the suburbs and the houses within them. This went on for a very long while and built an entire country and kept folks wondrously employed. But then it was eventually another period of history that ended, and a new period started, a new period where, as i say, even more intelligent machines existed, that could do many more jobs for us. It is said, for example, that for every machine created, 6-7 people are immediately out ofa job. For instance, when the Internet age of Amazon and online shopping began to bloom, it is said that basically 10 retail workers lost their jobs for every online store. This is because we have now significantly less people shopping retail. So why do we need as many retail workers in the stores? Machines are now helping us buy things online. And now imagine when Amazon finally figures out how to get, say, the drones to work, so that the drones can deliver packages, instead of the UPS trucks. Now the UPS guys will be out of work.
The machines took the jobs!
Many people read a sentence like this and automatically find it scary and bad. "Its so awful!" they say, "that machines are stealing our jobs! Its A NIGHTMARE!"
This, however, could not be any further from the truth. For the fact is that, accusing a machine of stealing your job would be like accusing an air conditioning of stealing the job that a little fan you hold in your hand used to do. No one would ever say that, because everyone instinctively understands that holding the fan yourself was annoying, and not nearly as efficient, as having an air conditioning. So why don't we view so many jobs the same way? Why don't we rejoice when the machine takes them, instead of grieve?
The reason is simple: It is because our society, mostly thanks to religious books like the Bible, is still very much refusing to admit that there is life beyond hard work and suffering. It's almost as though its simply unfathomable to people to think that life could actually be largely enjoyable, in a world that is mostly powered almost entirely by machines, instead of suffering hard workers. Imagine, for example, that you are on the Titanic for a second. Assuming you've seen the film, you might remember the shots of Rose and Jack running through the boiler rooms, where men with faces full of black grease and oil, shoveled coal to make sure the engines of the mighty ship kept turning. In fact, go even further back in time, to a previous age of the ship, like the famous age of the pirates. Probably you are aware of how enormous pirate and sailing crews used to have to be, in order to keep a sailing ship afloat and moving. Now, imagine a modern boat. The crew is unusually tiny in comparison to the crew of 100+ men (some big sailing ships needed 500+ men in the 1700s). Why aren't 500 plus men necessary now to sail a ship. Because the ships are essentially intelligent machines that are almost sailing themselves....
And conservatives, at this point in time, are basically asking us to cry for the fact that machines can now save men from ever having to do that job. They're asking us to cry over it because...well, what is life without hard work? God only loves hard workers. Its written in the Bible. We can't possibly give peolpe something like a Universal Basic Income, as Elon Musk proposes, the Republicans tell us, because ... the Bible says we must all EARN our daily bread, by the sweat of our brow! We must work HARD For our money, doing whatever hard work is available. If no hard wrk is available, like we are seeing now, then people just have to die in the streets, i guess. Its what God wants.
Yet, like i say, once you realize that the very definition of hard work has been being used in a pretty phony way for the past 60-70 years anyways, you start to see that a world where machines do all the dirty work, and where human beings get to sit back and relax, isn't really that hard to imagine anyways. In so many ways, we are already almost there. After all, if God is really judging us by the idea that you have to work hard and suffer by the sweat of your brow each day to get into Heaven, I can't imagine that too many conservative politicians, many of whom seem to have had a desk job in an air conditoned office for all their lives, are going to get in.
--- Hard work in the modern age is a myth, nothing more..
Sally Two Bones
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
School shootings are pathetic
Every time another school shooting or something similar to it happens, I always inevitably wind up asking the same question: Who exactly are these people -- and why do they so terribly waste their crime ticket?
It sounds a little strange, I know -- for starters, whats a crime ticket?--- but basically, the way my thinking goes is like this: These folks who commit the school shootings seem pretty aggravated, left out, and are usually seeking notoriety. They obviously don't care how they gain the notoriety and they're also pretty "fearless" -- like a Japanese kamikaze-- in a very real way. Therefore, my opinion is, if they're gonna commit some big ol' crime, why not commit one that actually has some potential reward? Take, for example, robbing a bank for a million dollars, or even just for $100,000.
It's stupid as hell is what it is. Oddly enough, what it really reminds me of is a recent Morgan Freeman movie like Going In Style. The plot of this film is about three desperate senior citizens whose pension plans have just been robbed. They decide to take matters into their own hands and rob a bank. After all, what do they really have to lose? They're old and grey, and even if they get caught, they'll be dead soon anyways. Why not take the risk?
But these school shooters, what a bunch of absolute idiots. Their crimes will never be mythologized the way the crimes of someone like, say, John Gotti or Jesse James, have been mythologized. John Gotti and Jesse James are the types of criminals that people will probably still be reading about even 6-7 centuries from now. In truth, they're such different types of criminals from these shitty school shooters, that I almost feel sad to put their names in an article that discusses the school shooters. They committed wildly different types of crime, is the reason why. Sure they were violent -- but at least the violence of Gotti and James had some ultimate reward...that being MONEY. All the news outlets say the school shooters do it for notoriety. They don't get any notoriety, however, if you really think about it. They are all forgotten one after the other and no one is ever going to make a movie about them, like we've made dozens about Jesse James, and recently a feature film w/ Travolta about Gotti. These kids are the swine of the human race....and like i say....they're so pathetically wasting their crime ticket! God think of all the effort they put into this all. You could probably take a bank for a quarter of a million dollars w/ all the effort these assholes put in.
Personally, i think the media needs to discuss how they're wasting their one crime ticket, the way I'm doing. It might actually help deter future shooters. No joke! "Listen, kids, try to rob a bank instead next time...you'll get notoriety..."
It sounds a little strange, I know -- for starters, whats a crime ticket?--- but basically, the way my thinking goes is like this: These folks who commit the school shootings seem pretty aggravated, left out, and are usually seeking notoriety. They obviously don't care how they gain the notoriety and they're also pretty "fearless" -- like a Japanese kamikaze-- in a very real way. Therefore, my opinion is, if they're gonna commit some big ol' crime, why not commit one that actually has some potential reward? Take, for example, robbing a bank for a million dollars, or even just for $100,000.
It's stupid as hell is what it is. Oddly enough, what it really reminds me of is a recent Morgan Freeman movie like Going In Style. The plot of this film is about three desperate senior citizens whose pension plans have just been robbed. They decide to take matters into their own hands and rob a bank. After all, what do they really have to lose? They're old and grey, and even if they get caught, they'll be dead soon anyways. Why not take the risk?
But these school shooters, what a bunch of absolute idiots. Their crimes will never be mythologized the way the crimes of someone like, say, John Gotti or Jesse James, have been mythologized. John Gotti and Jesse James are the types of criminals that people will probably still be reading about even 6-7 centuries from now. In truth, they're such different types of criminals from these shitty school shooters, that I almost feel sad to put their names in an article that discusses the school shooters. They committed wildly different types of crime, is the reason why. Sure they were violent -- but at least the violence of Gotti and James had some ultimate reward...that being MONEY. All the news outlets say the school shooters do it for notoriety. They don't get any notoriety, however, if you really think about it. They are all forgotten one after the other and no one is ever going to make a movie about them, like we've made dozens about Jesse James, and recently a feature film w/ Travolta about Gotti. These kids are the swine of the human race....and like i say....they're so pathetically wasting their crime ticket! God think of all the effort they put into this all. You could probably take a bank for a quarter of a million dollars w/ all the effort these assholes put in.
Personally, i think the media needs to discuss how they're wasting their one crime ticket, the way I'm doing. It might actually help deter future shooters. No joke! "Listen, kids, try to rob a bank instead next time...you'll get notoriety..."
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Further notes on Patriarchy, motherhood,fatherhood
The more I research feminism and what so many people have to say about the liberation of the female, whilst at the same time often studying the negative cycle of single motherhood and males going crazy and being abusive, the more it occurs to me that, as it stands right now, our society basically just seems to be in some very weird, uncomfortable "middle ground". Basically, the way I see it, there are an awful lot of folks out there, both male and female, who, as i always say, just don't seem to have totally realized that one of the biggest things "trapping us" for all these centuries hasn't just been weird laws, or something called a 'patriarchy', or even religion. What it has really been is the fact that creating children comes with a very particular set of problems that people who never have children will never have.
Here's the real facts about having children, that I think many people refuse to totally acknowledge outright. For example, most people I've noticed, even when discussing the negative aspects of having children, never seem to cover any ground beyond the idea that it is financially draining and time consuming. Many people seem to grasp those two details now, but one gigantic detail that it seems is never discussed is also how having children with a man tends to breed a very particular type of jealousy that, in my opinion, just doesn't exist between childless people. This is to say that, when I broke off with my ex-girlfriend years ago, I was wickedly jealous, and maybe I could have been led to do something really crazy, as a result of my jealousy, but ultimately I moved on simply enough, because I was able to easily locate another girl, and I didn't have a kid with the ex .
But imagine if I had a kid with her, how I might have felt, as a man, knowing that she left me -- or even might leave me -- and take my kid, to go live with another man. Personally, when i envision it, i think i would have damn near lost my mind. I would have been jealous in a way that I just don't think I've ever felt, in my childless existence. This jealousy to me is largely where a great deal of te toxic masculinity of our age is really coming from.
After all, i can't stress enough how rapidly people realyl do fade into the distance, once you split with them, if you never had any kids with them. All the girls of my past, and believe me, I did have quite a few of them (not just Jen), are essentially little more than non-existent ghosts for me, at this point. They're like songs I once caught on the radio and then faded out, never to be heard again. I don't have to worry about who they're hooking up with, or where they're living, or what they're doing. I literally don't care. Most of them, if i do chance to hear of them, appear now as people i could not even force myself to be interested in. They're so radically difference that i'm not even attracted to them! All the new people of my life seem much better to me, and much more suited to who I am now. This is especially the case if you don't much bother keeping contct with the specific friends you knew while you were with the lovers in question. They fade out like you wouldn't believe-- and trust me, once they finally do, it's seriously relieving. It's also liberating, not just for me, but also for the ex-girlfriends.
They don't have to constantly worry about me and what I might think, or maybe even do, once they start their lives over again. They know that I couldn't be less interested. Is it a little depressing? Maybe. But after awhile, it's more relievin than depressing, because modern life shouldn't be about trying to maintain a stranglehold on specific individuals for 80 years straight. Modern life is about information coming at you rapidly, about being able to meet new people all the time, hear new songs, see new cities, etcetc. Everything about the modern world screams rapid fire change: I can get from NYC to Rome in a 14 hour flight. I can switch music records with literally just a click. I can switch books on my iPhone without getting up.
Jen the Single Mom did not have this. She had trapped herself with literally the first two guys who came along into her life, and she basically seemed like she was at least slightly paranoid, all the time, that one of her ex-baby daddies might literally come back to hurt her or something, if she did something they didn't like -- even when she wasn't involved with them!
Do I think they will? Personally no, I don't. But th efact remains that, in Jens head somewhere, these baby daddies had never been able to disappear and just become pure ghostly memories. They were always there. She always had to wonder "what will they htink if i bring this man around their son, or this one?" She was really in a sort of prison and the baby daddies had very much become the prison guards. And though i think it turned her on and got her sexually aroused, once upon a long ago, to think of being "bound" by the chils father like this, it was very evident that it had gotten old, and fast. Jen hated being in that prison after awhile. She was like someone screaming the "code word", but the guards weren't gonna let her out. There was no code word, you understand. The game had long gone sour; but Jen was forced to keep playing it. She will still be playing it for another 20 years, more or less.
Beyond that, there was another thing she often had to think, which i couldn't help but notice, which was that she most definitely thought very often about her clothing style, and her self-expression in terms of things like that. As a result of being shamed and belittled over being a single mother at such a young age, Jen was extra careful to not dress in any manner that could be labeled provocative. She policed herself in terms of clothing, and even outward behavior, in a manner I haven't seen in many childfree girls--and personally, I found it almost grossly depressing.I can't tell you how many conversations where i tried to encourage Jen to wear some makeup or do her nails, if she felt like doing that, and where she would cry to me and basically express that she was afraid to wear makeup, because she felt it would mean she was a "whore". Every little thing was potentially going to rocket Jen into a "whoredom". She couldn't wear a skirt too short, she couldn't wear lipstick, she couldn't just have a new guy for a friend. Nothing. There was a cop in her head and he was always there....his laws were endless....
In addition to this, I also was always of the opinion that this policing of behavior also happened not just to her, but to the childrens fathers as well.
Oh, sure, it's true...they weren't as constricted as Jen, but I often couldn't help but think that their entire, rather pathetic "macho outlook" on life, had occurred as a direct result of Jen having their babies before they even reached their 25th birthday. With myself, for instance, I was always marginally interested in subcultures and things like that, when i was a teenager, and in my early 20s, but i was also very young, and it took me many yars to fully understand topics like the LGBT one, or the transgendered topic, and other such things. Hell, even the Arts in general, and teh wide range of expression that one can pursue with the arts, was basically mostly beyond me, until after or around my 25th birthday. In my early 20s, I very much limited my art and my self-expression to rather traditional forms: I played rock music, folk music, often wore suits and dreamed of being a cowboy. I didn't dare express myself like i often dream of doing now, in a David Bowie esque way, or as someone who would dance girlishly as I sing, etc. This was all stuff that, for my working class head, came later on, after literally half a decade of studying the arts intensely. Thats how serious the brainwashing is in the working class, in my opinion, and probably all the other social classes too. It took me years to bloom completly as an artist--and i'm probably still not done blooming yet. For a long time, i was just sort of locked in a box of self-expression that i now look at and see as rather pathetically limited. I expressed myself with traditional mediums and did not have many new ideas.
And i feel its important to stress all of this progress I had myself because, you see, it's very easy for me to imagine, again, that had my ex done to me what Jen did to these two, at age 20 or 22, and actually had the babies (for i had an ex who aborted one, and another who took the morning after pill), I think I would have also, by the time i was 25-26, been very similar to these two "lunatic baby daddies". In other words, I would have appeared, probably in the bckground of their lives as single mothers, as some sort of envious, macho asshole. A "prison guard" with short hair, a long beard, some muscles and tattoos. I woul have been the exact toxically masculine asshoel that the liberal part of this society is now railing against.
The reason why should really be very simple: Had someone like Jen turned me into a baby daddy before my 25th birthday, when i had no money, i would have beeni nstantly thrown on a path where, even if i contributed noting to the childs life and never saw them, I would still be wearing that title of "father". And this title changes absolutely everything. It's a very serious title, after all, and it's difficult for me to imagine that i would have been sitting here writing fantasy stories or writing novellas about women characters, had that title accidentally been placed upon me. Fortunately for me of course, the girls i was with agreed to abort, or to take the morning after pills, or were just so responsible with BC that they never got pregnant in the first place. They are thus off doing their own thing now, same as me. We wear no titles. We are liberated. I'm not worried that they're going to come around, for example, and harass my new girlfriend, like the Colombian girl i talk to, was telling me her boyfriends "baby momma" harasses her. See what i mean? These single parents basically become like cops or something. Prison guards.
So, long story short, the reason this is important to discuss is because, often when you hear people talk about toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and all this, they very frequently seem to paint the entire subject, as though it's not connected with something like having children, but more connected with just "old times". It's as though there is no real explanation for why the past was different in comparison to today, or why almost 95% of men in the past were obsessed with toxic masculinity, and yet I assure you, that this is the exact reason why. Essentially, you could look at it like this: The less younger people are having babies, and the less peple have babies in general, the less toxic masculinity there will be, and the less interest in patriarchy there will be. But so long as very young people, ages 16 to maybe even 30, are having children, the more toxic masclinity we will see, because these men don't have the ability to ever grow up and learn how to be any other way. Its hard to explain i guess... but tis basically like all these guys in this hood are eternally trapped in their pre-20 year old seslf, still trying to walk the high school hallways and prove how big their balls are. They've simply never grwon out of it. It's like they're locked in fr life, as who they are, all the way back then. It's absolutely pathetic and seems like one hell of an annoying life to live..
--- notes on patriarchy and motherhood
Here's the real facts about having children, that I think many people refuse to totally acknowledge outright. For example, most people I've noticed, even when discussing the negative aspects of having children, never seem to cover any ground beyond the idea that it is financially draining and time consuming. Many people seem to grasp those two details now, but one gigantic detail that it seems is never discussed is also how having children with a man tends to breed a very particular type of jealousy that, in my opinion, just doesn't exist between childless people. This is to say that, when I broke off with my ex-girlfriend years ago, I was wickedly jealous, and maybe I could have been led to do something really crazy, as a result of my jealousy, but ultimately I moved on simply enough, because I was able to easily locate another girl, and I didn't have a kid with the ex .
But imagine if I had a kid with her, how I might have felt, as a man, knowing that she left me -- or even might leave me -- and take my kid, to go live with another man. Personally, when i envision it, i think i would have damn near lost my mind. I would have been jealous in a way that I just don't think I've ever felt, in my childless existence. This jealousy to me is largely where a great deal of te toxic masculinity of our age is really coming from.
After all, i can't stress enough how rapidly people realyl do fade into the distance, once you split with them, if you never had any kids with them. All the girls of my past, and believe me, I did have quite a few of them (not just Jen), are essentially little more than non-existent ghosts for me, at this point. They're like songs I once caught on the radio and then faded out, never to be heard again. I don't have to worry about who they're hooking up with, or where they're living, or what they're doing. I literally don't care. Most of them, if i do chance to hear of them, appear now as people i could not even force myself to be interested in. They're so radically difference that i'm not even attracted to them! All the new people of my life seem much better to me, and much more suited to who I am now. This is especially the case if you don't much bother keeping contct with the specific friends you knew while you were with the lovers in question. They fade out like you wouldn't believe-- and trust me, once they finally do, it's seriously relieving. It's also liberating, not just for me, but also for the ex-girlfriends.
They don't have to constantly worry about me and what I might think, or maybe even do, once they start their lives over again. They know that I couldn't be less interested. Is it a little depressing? Maybe. But after awhile, it's more relievin than depressing, because modern life shouldn't be about trying to maintain a stranglehold on specific individuals for 80 years straight. Modern life is about information coming at you rapidly, about being able to meet new people all the time, hear new songs, see new cities, etcetc. Everything about the modern world screams rapid fire change: I can get from NYC to Rome in a 14 hour flight. I can switch music records with literally just a click. I can switch books on my iPhone without getting up.
Jen the Single Mom did not have this. She had trapped herself with literally the first two guys who came along into her life, and she basically seemed like she was at least slightly paranoid, all the time, that one of her ex-baby daddies might literally come back to hurt her or something, if she did something they didn't like -- even when she wasn't involved with them!
Do I think they will? Personally no, I don't. But th efact remains that, in Jens head somewhere, these baby daddies had never been able to disappear and just become pure ghostly memories. They were always there. She always had to wonder "what will they htink if i bring this man around their son, or this one?" She was really in a sort of prison and the baby daddies had very much become the prison guards. And though i think it turned her on and got her sexually aroused, once upon a long ago, to think of being "bound" by the chils father like this, it was very evident that it had gotten old, and fast. Jen hated being in that prison after awhile. She was like someone screaming the "code word", but the guards weren't gonna let her out. There was no code word, you understand. The game had long gone sour; but Jen was forced to keep playing it. She will still be playing it for another 20 years, more or less.
Beyond that, there was another thing she often had to think, which i couldn't help but notice, which was that she most definitely thought very often about her clothing style, and her self-expression in terms of things like that. As a result of being shamed and belittled over being a single mother at such a young age, Jen was extra careful to not dress in any manner that could be labeled provocative. She policed herself in terms of clothing, and even outward behavior, in a manner I haven't seen in many childfree girls--and personally, I found it almost grossly depressing.I can't tell you how many conversations where i tried to encourage Jen to wear some makeup or do her nails, if she felt like doing that, and where she would cry to me and basically express that she was afraid to wear makeup, because she felt it would mean she was a "whore". Every little thing was potentially going to rocket Jen into a "whoredom". She couldn't wear a skirt too short, she couldn't wear lipstick, she couldn't just have a new guy for a friend. Nothing. There was a cop in her head and he was always there....his laws were endless....
In addition to this, I also was always of the opinion that this policing of behavior also happened not just to her, but to the childrens fathers as well.
Oh, sure, it's true...they weren't as constricted as Jen, but I often couldn't help but think that their entire, rather pathetic "macho outlook" on life, had occurred as a direct result of Jen having their babies before they even reached their 25th birthday. With myself, for instance, I was always marginally interested in subcultures and things like that, when i was a teenager, and in my early 20s, but i was also very young, and it took me many yars to fully understand topics like the LGBT one, or the transgendered topic, and other such things. Hell, even the Arts in general, and teh wide range of expression that one can pursue with the arts, was basically mostly beyond me, until after or around my 25th birthday. In my early 20s, I very much limited my art and my self-expression to rather traditional forms: I played rock music, folk music, often wore suits and dreamed of being a cowboy. I didn't dare express myself like i often dream of doing now, in a David Bowie esque way, or as someone who would dance girlishly as I sing, etc. This was all stuff that, for my working class head, came later on, after literally half a decade of studying the arts intensely. Thats how serious the brainwashing is in the working class, in my opinion, and probably all the other social classes too. It took me years to bloom completly as an artist--and i'm probably still not done blooming yet. For a long time, i was just sort of locked in a box of self-expression that i now look at and see as rather pathetically limited. I expressed myself with traditional mediums and did not have many new ideas.
And i feel its important to stress all of this progress I had myself because, you see, it's very easy for me to imagine, again, that had my ex done to me what Jen did to these two, at age 20 or 22, and actually had the babies (for i had an ex who aborted one, and another who took the morning after pill), I think I would have also, by the time i was 25-26, been very similar to these two "lunatic baby daddies". In other words, I would have appeared, probably in the bckground of their lives as single mothers, as some sort of envious, macho asshole. A "prison guard" with short hair, a long beard, some muscles and tattoos. I woul have been the exact toxically masculine asshoel that the liberal part of this society is now railing against.
The reason why should really be very simple: Had someone like Jen turned me into a baby daddy before my 25th birthday, when i had no money, i would have beeni nstantly thrown on a path where, even if i contributed noting to the childs life and never saw them, I would still be wearing that title of "father". And this title changes absolutely everything. It's a very serious title, after all, and it's difficult for me to imagine that i would have been sitting here writing fantasy stories or writing novellas about women characters, had that title accidentally been placed upon me. Fortunately for me of course, the girls i was with agreed to abort, or to take the morning after pills, or were just so responsible with BC that they never got pregnant in the first place. They are thus off doing their own thing now, same as me. We wear no titles. We are liberated. I'm not worried that they're going to come around, for example, and harass my new girlfriend, like the Colombian girl i talk to, was telling me her boyfriends "baby momma" harasses her. See what i mean? These single parents basically become like cops or something. Prison guards.
So, long story short, the reason this is important to discuss is because, often when you hear people talk about toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and all this, they very frequently seem to paint the entire subject, as though it's not connected with something like having children, but more connected with just "old times". It's as though there is no real explanation for why the past was different in comparison to today, or why almost 95% of men in the past were obsessed with toxic masculinity, and yet I assure you, that this is the exact reason why. Essentially, you could look at it like this: The less younger people are having babies, and the less peple have babies in general, the less toxic masculinity there will be, and the less interest in patriarchy there will be. But so long as very young people, ages 16 to maybe even 30, are having children, the more toxic masclinity we will see, because these men don't have the ability to ever grow up and learn how to be any other way. Its hard to explain i guess... but tis basically like all these guys in this hood are eternally trapped in their pre-20 year old seslf, still trying to walk the high school hallways and prove how big their balls are. They've simply never grwon out of it. It's like they're locked in fr life, as who they are, all the way back then. It's absolutely pathetic and seems like one hell of an annoying life to live..
--- notes on patriarchy and motherhood
Once upon a Time: Anti-adoption
In my challenging but never-ending quest to find some piece of film that exists with females as main characters, and that is actually worth watching and not insufferable for me, I have recently come upon the show Once Upon a Time.
This is a cable TV show that airs on ABC and apparently has been airing since the year 2011. It is a fantasy show with two women characters as the main, and both the women are "queens" of a sort. I was very excited when first i glimpsed it, for this reason, but then of course I read the synopsis and i came to see it might not be as good as I'd hoped. Why? It is for a very simple reason: Not only is the show not allowing literally a single female character on it to not be a mother or interested in motherhood, but it is also completely shaming adoption and anyone who might ever want to do that.
I was not adopted, but one of my best friends from childhood was, and he basically lived and is still living a "better" life than me, assuming you are one of those people who rate how good a life is based on college degrees, education, and job prospects. Lol. If you are one of those, my old buddy has basically had a very good lifei n your eyes. His adoptive parents -- who adopted him from a 17 year old girl-- had enough money to send him to the college of his choosing, etc. He hasn't had any time for me, or any of his old cronies in this decimated hood, for years now. Because he moved up to better hoods. And he was adopted!
At any rate, in the show Once Upon a Time, I have essentially been being told now, for the past 3 episodes i've watched (and certainly many more) that adoption is the worse thing that can ever happen to any of us. I suppose i shouldn't be asking for much from a cable TV network like ABC, but i still can't help but feel -- especially after all my long and miserable story with depressed single mom Jennifer--- that finding this show, and its really stupid plot, is a bit depressing right now. Like, how could these people at a major network like this seriously think it's alright to write a script that shames adoption this fuckin badly? It's actually disgusting and I almsot didn't watch the show because of it. Then I decided to watch it because, as I say, I am starved of entertainment with women as leads, and this is especially the case with the fantasy genre. If I have to suffer through this truly asinine plot about shaming adoption, just to watch some sexy females strut around and pretend to be Evil Queens and so forth, I suppose i will do it. It is better than watching Lord of the Rings for the 90th time, where there are hardly any women at all, and where I have simply grown tired of seeing bearded Aragorn and stupid fat male hobbits. I can't stress how profondly i long for the day to see Mary-Anne Baggins take off on the journey to kill Saurona the Pink, instead of Frodo and Gandalf...blah blah blah...
All males. All annoying.
But, back to the show at hand: Think about how pathetic it is that a show that is, in fact, a FANTASY show, still can't think of a way to fantasize, that adoption could be a wildly positive experience, instead of a negative one. For example, it's very easy to imagine the plot of this show, which is that Henry's adoptive mother is a lunatic, and his real blood mama is his savior, being precisely the opposite. Why could it not have been that the adoptive mother was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and then the "real one" --who we could perhaps portray as a demented soul ravaged by fairy tale drugs -- tries to move in and steal him? Oddly enough, this idea is even hinted at in the very first episode, almost as a sort of shadow idea that no one at ABC wants to admit they had.
The show begins when young Henry, only 10 years old, somehow manages to escape from a small coastal town all the way in Maine, and hitch himself a long series of bus rides and taxi rides to Boston. He has stolen a credit card from his elementary school teachers pocketbook and used it to do this traveling to find the real mama, who requested a "sealed adoption", but whose plans have somehow been foiled. He knocks on her door just moments after she blows out the candles of her 28th birthday cake, and of course she is lonely, living in a gloriously large apartment that it seems a child would perfectly compliment. Henry marches in and announces immediately that she's his real mother, and that he knows she abandoned him 10 years earlier. He quickly explains he needs help, because the woman who adopted him is a psychotic abuser, etc. The real momma is not at all prepared to play the game. She refers to Henry solely as "kid" (my blood Uncle Gino calls me only kid to this very day) and she tells him she wants him out of her hair..."You need to return". Henry then says the 'shadow plotline' i referred to above. "If you call the cops on me and try to bring me back to the woman who adopted me, I'll tell them you kidnapped me!"
"And they'l believe your every word," says Emma, the lead character, "since i'm your real momma. Damn you, kid."
Shortly thereafter, we see them leaving her glorious apartment to take the ride to the small coastal town in Maine, which is apparently unusually close to Boston. Not long after, Emma quickly comes to realize that Gina, the Evil Queen and adoptive mother, needs to be done away with, or at least seriously investigated, and she starts doing cute motherly things like walking Henry to school, discussing his therapy sessions w/ him, telling him why she had to give him up, etcetc. I am sure by seasons end that she will basically be his complete mother, and Gina will be...well, "The Evil Queen to rule all Evil Queens!"
Alas, why is all of this worth discussing? I think the reason is simple: All the plot details of this show, like the anti-adoption rhetoric and the fact that every major female on the show seems obsessed with playing mommy, is precisely why so many people don't like fantasy or have simply lost interest in it. This is because the fantasy genre, strangely enough, seems to actually be one of the most consrevative genres out there, at this current point in time. At first, this seems sort of antithetical, since many of us associat fantasy with swallowing mushrooms, taking LSD, and smokin' reefer, and yet ... it's still the case because fantasy is often written off as childish, and as a result of that, it seems to constantly find itself trapped in TV shows like this, that have an intended audience of, say, a mother, watching with her kids. In this specific case, a "real" momma, watching with her "real" kids. Isn't it kind of bizarre how the word real should have such significance on a show that is making itself up in the costumes of fantasy land?
The solution to all of this, alas, is also just as simple as the problem: If you or someone you know is or wants to be a fantasy writer, encourage to write up fantasy plotlines that directly challenge our accepted social norms. Encourage them to include chracters who live fantasies that, in our own world, are so clearly outlawed. Fantasies like men turning into women, perhaps, or fantasies of young women who do not sit around convinced that the only way to be happy is to have children. The sad truth about fantasy is that, just like it can be used to push a conservative agenda as this show is doing,o n ABC, it can also be used to push new ways of living. It's just that it hardly ever is, because most people in this society still aren't really fantasizing too deeply about much of anything at all. Another popular show -- Game of Thrones -- is basically little more than a macho man fantasy , which displays our societal lack of imagination perfectly, in my opinion. Charles DIckens once said you can learn everything about a society by visiting its prisons. I would add to this statement that you can also learn a great deal by studying its fantasies. In America, ours are few and far between.
---- Notes on TV.
This is a cable TV show that airs on ABC and apparently has been airing since the year 2011. It is a fantasy show with two women characters as the main, and both the women are "queens" of a sort. I was very excited when first i glimpsed it, for this reason, but then of course I read the synopsis and i came to see it might not be as good as I'd hoped. Why? It is for a very simple reason: Not only is the show not allowing literally a single female character on it to not be a mother or interested in motherhood, but it is also completely shaming adoption and anyone who might ever want to do that.
I was not adopted, but one of my best friends from childhood was, and he basically lived and is still living a "better" life than me, assuming you are one of those people who rate how good a life is based on college degrees, education, and job prospects. Lol. If you are one of those, my old buddy has basically had a very good lifei n your eyes. His adoptive parents -- who adopted him from a 17 year old girl-- had enough money to send him to the college of his choosing, etc. He hasn't had any time for me, or any of his old cronies in this decimated hood, for years now. Because he moved up to better hoods. And he was adopted!
At any rate, in the show Once Upon a Time, I have essentially been being told now, for the past 3 episodes i've watched (and certainly many more) that adoption is the worse thing that can ever happen to any of us. I suppose i shouldn't be asking for much from a cable TV network like ABC, but i still can't help but feel -- especially after all my long and miserable story with depressed single mom Jennifer--- that finding this show, and its really stupid plot, is a bit depressing right now. Like, how could these people at a major network like this seriously think it's alright to write a script that shames adoption this fuckin badly? It's actually disgusting and I almsot didn't watch the show because of it. Then I decided to watch it because, as I say, I am starved of entertainment with women as leads, and this is especially the case with the fantasy genre. If I have to suffer through this truly asinine plot about shaming adoption, just to watch some sexy females strut around and pretend to be Evil Queens and so forth, I suppose i will do it. It is better than watching Lord of the Rings for the 90th time, where there are hardly any women at all, and where I have simply grown tired of seeing bearded Aragorn and stupid fat male hobbits. I can't stress how profondly i long for the day to see Mary-Anne Baggins take off on the journey to kill Saurona the Pink, instead of Frodo and Gandalf...blah blah blah...
All males. All annoying.
But, back to the show at hand: Think about how pathetic it is that a show that is, in fact, a FANTASY show, still can't think of a way to fantasize, that adoption could be a wildly positive experience, instead of a negative one. For example, it's very easy to imagine the plot of this show, which is that Henry's adoptive mother is a lunatic, and his real blood mama is his savior, being precisely the opposite. Why could it not have been that the adoptive mother was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and then the "real one" --who we could perhaps portray as a demented soul ravaged by fairy tale drugs -- tries to move in and steal him? Oddly enough, this idea is even hinted at in the very first episode, almost as a sort of shadow idea that no one at ABC wants to admit they had.
The show begins when young Henry, only 10 years old, somehow manages to escape from a small coastal town all the way in Maine, and hitch himself a long series of bus rides and taxi rides to Boston. He has stolen a credit card from his elementary school teachers pocketbook and used it to do this traveling to find the real mama, who requested a "sealed adoption", but whose plans have somehow been foiled. He knocks on her door just moments after she blows out the candles of her 28th birthday cake, and of course she is lonely, living in a gloriously large apartment that it seems a child would perfectly compliment. Henry marches in and announces immediately that she's his real mother, and that he knows she abandoned him 10 years earlier. He quickly explains he needs help, because the woman who adopted him is a psychotic abuser, etc. The real momma is not at all prepared to play the game. She refers to Henry solely as "kid" (my blood Uncle Gino calls me only kid to this very day) and she tells him she wants him out of her hair..."You need to return". Henry then says the 'shadow plotline' i referred to above. "If you call the cops on me and try to bring me back to the woman who adopted me, I'll tell them you kidnapped me!"
"And they'l believe your every word," says Emma, the lead character, "since i'm your real momma. Damn you, kid."
Shortly thereafter, we see them leaving her glorious apartment to take the ride to the small coastal town in Maine, which is apparently unusually close to Boston. Not long after, Emma quickly comes to realize that Gina, the Evil Queen and adoptive mother, needs to be done away with, or at least seriously investigated, and she starts doing cute motherly things like walking Henry to school, discussing his therapy sessions w/ him, telling him why she had to give him up, etcetc. I am sure by seasons end that she will basically be his complete mother, and Gina will be...well, "The Evil Queen to rule all Evil Queens!"
Alas, why is all of this worth discussing? I think the reason is simple: All the plot details of this show, like the anti-adoption rhetoric and the fact that every major female on the show seems obsessed with playing mommy, is precisely why so many people don't like fantasy or have simply lost interest in it. This is because the fantasy genre, strangely enough, seems to actually be one of the most consrevative genres out there, at this current point in time. At first, this seems sort of antithetical, since many of us associat fantasy with swallowing mushrooms, taking LSD, and smokin' reefer, and yet ... it's still the case because fantasy is often written off as childish, and as a result of that, it seems to constantly find itself trapped in TV shows like this, that have an intended audience of, say, a mother, watching with her kids. In this specific case, a "real" momma, watching with her "real" kids. Isn't it kind of bizarre how the word real should have such significance on a show that is making itself up in the costumes of fantasy land?
The solution to all of this, alas, is also just as simple as the problem: If you or someone you know is or wants to be a fantasy writer, encourage to write up fantasy plotlines that directly challenge our accepted social norms. Encourage them to include chracters who live fantasies that, in our own world, are so clearly outlawed. Fantasies like men turning into women, perhaps, or fantasies of young women who do not sit around convinced that the only way to be happy is to have children. The sad truth about fantasy is that, just like it can be used to push a conservative agenda as this show is doing,o n ABC, it can also be used to push new ways of living. It's just that it hardly ever is, because most people in this society still aren't really fantasizing too deeply about much of anything at all. Another popular show -- Game of Thrones -- is basically little more than a macho man fantasy , which displays our societal lack of imagination perfectly, in my opinion. Charles DIckens once said you can learn everything about a society by visiting its prisons. I would add to this statement that you can also learn a great deal by studying its fantasies. In America, ours are few and far between.
---- Notes on TV.
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