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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Monday, July 3, 2017

Twelve Little Meta Things (Some Personal )

Come at me bro life.
Me holding a long-armed monkey wire holder thing.
A collection of a dozen miscellaneous meta bits (some personal) that were never going to fit neatly into a single post.


  1. This week is going to go very, very quickly. Tomorrow is one of the holidays where the staff refuses to come in because "fast food coupons aren't real compensation Chris, and we at least get bank holidays," or some shit like that. Slackers! Wednesday will be my regular day off. Thursday will be the same thing we've been posting on Thursdays (and will continue to post for four more weeks until I'm done teaching summer school).
  2. On Friday I will post the results from the Best Book (or series) Marketed to Young Women poll, as well as fire up the nomination process for our next poll. So this is absolutely your last call to vote in the final round.
  3. Saturday I'll try to get something meaty up. I may even say something like "Enjoy this meaty post of mine."  Because I am twelve.
  4. The spambots found me! I opened up the security on Friday's Mailbox Post to commenters everywhere, so that anyone could comment without even a captcha, but it didn't take long for the T-Rex of internet fuckery to be attracted to the movement and flood W.A.W. with spammy bullshit. ("This is so insightful. Thank you for your wise words. I especially like your second point. It reminds me of ESSAY WRITING SERVICE.") So I had to set that back to the default security setting.
  5. When I'm done with summer school I'll total up everything that I've made beyond bills over the course of summer. This includes some freelance work, pet sitting, and a couple of one-time donations. This will get thrown into a savings account. Then the countdown begins. The countdown to when the money runs out and the book has to be written and hopefully good enough to justify everyone's faith and generosity. Every pet sitting job, nanny shift, and Patreon will add a bit of time to that countdown.
  6. The NEXT three weeks of summer school should be a little easier. You see I've been writing curriculum and lesson plans for two classes as I go. Sometimes it was desperately trying to finish on time like one of those movies where they're trying to outrun the ground collapsing behind them. But the second session is three weeks just like the first, so that part will already be done. I still have to go and teach, but that'll give me probably 6-10 extra hours a week and a bit more bandwidth for writing.
  7. Pet sitting and house sitting are great, but I've slept in my own bed only once in the last three weeks. I think I'm missing that a bit. I think I sleep just a little bit better there.
  8. There was a meme that went around my friend's list on Facebook a few days ago about the object to your left being what you had to defend yourself if you were in the hallway with Darth Vader. As you can see from the picture I added to this post, I am in deep, deep trouble. Unless Vader needs a vallet. In which case sleep tight, Chris, he'll most likely force choke me in the morning.  ("Twas the monkey that caught my attention...")
  9. Maybe in 2012, heading into the hardcore election cycle of Obama's second term, you could have really shamed me for not feeling star spangled awesome at least one day a year about a revolutionary experiment in self-governance. I was more of a read-Sotomayor's-scathing-dissent, bring back the 90% tax bracket, "you DO know that Thomas Jefferson was a rapist," railing against the prison industrial complex kind of patriot, but, you know, I still had some shred of hope in that arc of history thing.           
    • But then the Harvard report came out that we were an oligarchy, not a democracy, and the reports of just how many votes got disenfranchised through computer gerrymandering showed up, the transparently racist voter ID laws exploded, the candidate that won the popular vote lost for the second time in my life (this time by four million votes) because of a system put into place so that slavers wouldn't lose the humans they owned, and the a guy who brags about sexual assault and can't move his lips without lying got elected on a transparent campaign of hating the parts of America I thought were the best bits, who then proceeded to use an unprecedented number of executive orders (which suddenly were not so executively-overreachy to the GOP) to kick over every Obama sandcastle he could see, and then we found out that our greatest geopolitical enemy influenced our (very, very close) election deliberately, but try getting the people who won to even furrow their brow and press their lips together like they've been done a heckin concern. Now there's a sustained telegraphing of further voter suppression coming, and the Republican lawmakers are trying to pass legislation that could take health care from 34 million Americans and give it to the rich in the form of tax breaks within a smoke filled room that eschews the debate that they were apoplectic they only got eight months of with the A.C.A.. White nationalism and literal nazisim is on the rise and are using jingoism as their camouflage.
    • And at every step of the way, these concerns about the fundamental threats to our democracy were not just dismissed by those whose agendas were benefitting from them, they were MOCKED. By the same group that has wrapped itself in the flag and wondered why I hate America every time I deign to so much as complain about right-wing governance since 9/11. By the same group that falls down screaming like a men's soccer player and suddenly becomes a bunch of constitutional scholars when they think a judge is "legislating from the bench" or a law gets passed that they don't like. By the same group insisting that I build a bridge to them if they so much as feel bad when it is pointed out that they empowered naked bigotry.
    • Can you even conceive of how apeshit the right would be going if it were seeing this from the left? You don't have to think hard. The mere hint of impropriety or overreach in any outcome that didn't go exactly their way in the last quarter century would be a fine example. 
    • The fact is I don't think we're a "center right" country. I think WHITE PEOPLE are center right, and if there were free and fair elections like are supposed to be the foundation of our entire society, this bullshit ideology that the Republican leadership is trying to cram down even its moderate base's throats would get its ass kicked up one side of the beltway and down the other. And the reason they have to come up with more and more deplorable ways to cheat, and act like we're out of line every single fucking time we point it out, is because they bloody well fucking KNOW it.
    • So I'm not too impressed with the ol' Stars and Stripes this year, and I'm sorry if even my normal subversive patriotism is running tepid. I kind of like what America's framework is supposed to be (even though an overhaul of every institution that has been built to support inequality is desperately needed across the board), but more and more we're making a beeline in the wrong direction because white men felt their power dwindling and have begun to cheat en mass. That proud feeling burbling up unbidden feels more like like an uncle who is using "the way things were when I was young" to be a misogynistic racist. And I just want to take it's cheeseburger away mid-bite, kick it out of the barbecue, and tell it not to come back until it can do better.
  10. I am, however, looking forward to the day off! 
  11. I plan on playing Final Fantasy IX which a friend bought me when she found out that despite the huge discounts, I couldn't really afford to avail myself of the many wonderful titles available during the Steam Summer Sale event. 
  12. It's nine PM and I want to watch Supernatural reruns and do the dishes, and I can't think of a twelfth thing. 

3 comments:

  1. #8 - to my left sits a 1950 model Smith-Corona Sterling typewriter. Heavy enough to cause serious damage, but light enough to be wielded with a two-hand grip. When the revolution comes, I will leave twelve point Courier on the cheeks of the enemy as I grip the metal frame of my typewriter of doom, Tyrping, forged by the dwarves in ages long passed.

    #9 - Nothing I could add to this but a "hell yes." And that it's MY damned Constitution being warped and destroyed, written by liberals in another age, and I'm going to fight and claw to wrest it back from the alt-right numb nuts who are twisting it into a crumpled, bloody mess.

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  2. #8 - to my left sits a gas stove. Trouble is, I can't cook worth a damn. We are in trouble, folks...

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