Writing About Writing (And Occasionally Some Writing): FB Compilation (Top of March)

Thank you for your patience while I skipped a couple of days due to my second vaccine. I cleared my schedule, got my second shot, and it turned out not to be so bad past the first day. (First shot was worse—possibly because I HAD covid last year and that was my second exposure.) But I took the time off anyway since I haven't had any from BOTH jobs since the pandemic began.

For years, I didn't count all the bite-sized chunks of writing I was doing on Facebook as "writing." But it's a post here and a post there, and sometimes I spend hours a day working on that writing, so it's high time I acknowledge that fact that it "counts."

Here is a collection of the best statuses (and a few of the most popular memes) from my public Facebook page over the period of March-1st through March-15th. (You're welcome to follow me there but read up in the Facebook FAQ [last question] if you want to send me a friend request.)

We have finally (mostly) caught up, so this will be the last Wednesday of a special post for these. We're going to go back to taking Wednesday off. (These posts will show up every two weeks but on some other day.) Of course, it's not TOO much longer before some of this pandemic chaos starts to ebb and I add Wednesdays right back into the mix, but at that time we're likely to have a whole different update schedule.

The idea that free speech cannot include the decision to STOP saying something is ridiculous. Not printing new books is NOT the same as burning the old ones, and books are taken out of print all the time for FAR more frivolous reasons. It's not like you can't see those images. It's not like those were the most popular of Seuss's books. Shit, I hadn't even ever heard of any of them. They're not Green Eggs and Ham and The Lorax.

And this is all pretty rich from the people who literally burn books, boycott artists, refuse to bake a GD cake, and cancel just fucking everything they don't like.

Some people don't realize that they're really just flat out, transparently, openly, not-fooling-anyone BEGGING to keep their racism.

Abuse experts: "Predators can be incredibly charming—especially to everyone around their victims. They may groom those around them to believe they are faultless. They will fool everyone. That is how they move among their prey."

People: "Not me. No predator is going to fool me. I will trust and verify like a pro when someone speaks out. And I know credible when I see it!”

Victim: "X happened. I have receipts."

People: "Couldn't be. He's way too nice."

Conservatives: "Free market. Capitalism. Invisible hand. Most natural system. Free market. Star-spangled freedom. Unfettered capitalism. Best. Country. Evah!"

Typically marginalized groups: "Okay, but the problem with relying on market forces—"

Conservatives: "MARKET FORCES! DON'T LIKE IT? VOTE WITH MONEY! INVISIBLE HAND! ~sings the national anthem at top volume~ OH SAY CAN YOU SEEEEEEEE……"

Companies: "Market research shows it's no longer profitable for us to produce bigotry. We're going to adjust to market forces by doing the absolute minimum to establish goodwill."

Conservatives: ~NAZGUL SCREAM~

I used to think the mayor/governor who wouldn’t listen to the science because it was “tourist season” was so hopelessly overdone and contrived.

Medicine/Science: "Numbers are down. Our efforts are working. We're getting things under control. Just a little further."

Government: "Numbers are down? Huzzah! REOPEN IMMEDIATELY!"

Medicine/Science: "That'll fuck up everything we've done. The numbers will go right back up. You must understand that if we can just get them all the way down and keep them down ONCE, this thing starts to die out because it has nowhere to go. Only a very few people will have it. And we will have entirely new tools to fight it besides opening and then grudgingly closing again a month later when cases spike. You can't take your parachute off halfway down because you're not going at terminal velocity anymore. Do you want vaccine-resistant strains? Because this is exactly how you get vaccine-resistant strains."

Government: "Numbers down! Huzzah! REOPEN IMMEDIATELY! The vaccine will save us all."

Science (to a sobbing Medicine): "At least the days of bleach and UV injections are over."

As a writer, my income is considered freelancer, so my stimulus check is going to be probably somewhere around 1/2 to 1/3 of the taxes I owe.

Not very sexy, literally giving it RIGHT back, but I don't really like a lot of THINGS anyway.

Note: If you'd like to help me with my tax burden (or just to help keep the show going and getting better), you can make a one time donation through Paypal, through Venmo at chris.brecheen@gmail.com, or—my personal favorite—sign up to be a patron for a dollar or few a month and even get some rewards like selfies or newsletters.

Listen, I'm totally here for your accountability and "Great, now for the next step towards socialism" rants, but if you act like the Child Tax Credit, extension of unemployment benefits, and direct stimulus with a 100% GOP (and even some DINO) opposition are NBD, this is my stop. And if you can look at that and say there's no difference between the two parties….I won't be waving fondly as you pull away.

A few of my meatspace friends and a couple of other folks on here [my Facebook page] are pretty liberal themselves, but maintain friend lists with lots of folks from their lives of broad interests, so I get a sense of how the "ground campaign" talking points are shaping off from the right.

One thing I've noticed over the last four years is that the variation in these folks' arguments has narrowed. Almost as if they were getting their boilerplate comebacks from the same few places.

Recently they're all talking about how awful the stimulus package is, and….I shit you not, they are using the exact same strings of words. Like THE EXACT SAME PHRASING even. It's like when the GOP whips the party to stay on message and you can't ask about a senator's dog barking in the background without a ham-fisted segue into Benghazi. Except it's just regular people doing it.

In places with open carry laws, people who walk around with weapons are not surprised to have a certain number of folks avoid them or move their kids to safety, especially if they're just sort of pointing a rifle at the ground and it's not a pistol in a holster. It has nothing to do with that person (not really). People just don't feel safe around someone who can unintentionally or casually kill them, and they really don't want those they love exposed to that risk.

So maybe don't act so fucking surprised-Pikachu-faced if your refusal to get a Covid vaccine affects your social life. You're putting people in danger. More danger than they would be in if they avoided you. So that's what they're going to do.

Men: "So I looked this up on six different peer-reviewed websites ranging from academia to the dark web, and what I found was that according to the most recent theories of particle physics, which I brushed up on so I could understand this, and two interviews I conducted of particle physicists, if the quantum flow is high enough, which it would be by being focused through a crystal, the velocity to impact ratio should be enough for a lightsaber to cut through vibranium according to the established canonical properties of each—which I have listed in the attached spreadsheet from all official sources—and so clearly my Jedi should have advantage when fighting Captain America…."

Also men: "Why isn't there an International Men's Day*?"

(*There is. It's November 19th. It's literally in bold and big font as the first result of a Google search.)