Facebook Compilation Nov/Dec 2021

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 an hour or more a day working on that writing, so it's high time I acknowledge the fact that it "counts."  

I'm way behind on posting these, but fortunately I wasn't writing much, so I can do two months at a time. By November, I knew I was sick, and the acceleration of the tests would lead to a cancer diagnosis by the end of the month. In December I had surgery (and a zillion tests and procedures leading up to it). I was really out of it both before and after the operation. So there were only a few gems, even across BOTH months.

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 Nov 1st-Dec 31st. (You're welcome to follow me there to see the not-quite-the-best ones, but read up in the Facebook FAQ [last question] if you want to send me a friend request.) 

Look, I love me some Holy Grail and spam skit as much as the next nerd, but now that fully half the cast of Monty Python has come out in support of TERFs, can we stop pretending they were boldly reimagining gender roles and admit that the entirety of many of their jokes amounted to: "A dude in a dress."

And once again, I'm going to NOT DIE because of the A.C.A. makes having insurance possible for me. If you're a leftist outside of a communist meet up, you might want to think hard about the optics of the message you're sending me (and millions like me) about the value of our lives by characterizing my reluctant but unswerving support of the Democratic Party as being "just as much a part of the problem."

"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life WERE fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."

-Marcus Cole, Babylon 5

I have cancer.

Looking up the first use of the expression of "a penny for your thoughts," an inflation calculator from 1535 (when it was first known to have been written), and a currency converter from pounds to USD, Rhapsody and I have determined that you now have to pay about $2.55 for someone's thoughts.

CN Weight loss…but not as a good thing.

Them: Oh my god, Chris. How much weight have you lost?

Me: About forty pounds.

T: Wow, you look great. 

M: I'm not.

T: What's your secret?

M: I have cancer.

T:…………….oh.

Best not to assume, folks.

I cannot post every picture of this photo shoot we did for the little one I was expecting, but I will give you the link. It's a public post, so you should be able to see it even if you're not on Facebook.  https://www.facebook.com/chris.brecheen/posts/10160462668096015

Today seems like a good day to kick cancer’s ass.

Let’s do that.

#evictionday

Hospital staff: Get as much rest as you can. Sleep is super important to your recovery.

Also hospital staff: ~wakes you up every 20 minutes ~

Anyone else get offended when the gmail predictive text accurately predicts what you were going to say and switch it out just to avoid being cliché?  

No? Just me then? Just a writer thing?

Carry on.

Facebook Compilation (Bottom of June)

I don't usually post these compilations weekly, but I want to catch up to the point where they're going up no more than a month after their "original air date," so I will have to do one MORE next week and then we should be able to go back to biweekly. 

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 the 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 June 16th through June 30th. (You're welcome to follow me there to see the not-quite-the-best ones but read up in the Facebook FAQ [last question] if you want to send me a friend request.) 

Reminder: If you are blocked on social media, that is a boundary. Contacting the person on another social medium is big boundary-violating energy.

Consent culture has ruined about 95% of romance plots for me.*

“Hey, dillhole. Ask before you do that shit.” “Wow, the passion. The spontaneity. The lack of asking.”

*Actually 95% of romance plots really need some consent culture.

Listen closely to what you DON'T hear. In almost zero criticism of critical race theory (and absolutely none from informed folks) has anyone ever said "It isn't true."

Chris's Pass/Agg theater of the day

Boyo....listen up. 

Never piss off someone who is unswervingly kind. That kindness is a deliberate choice and they probably work on it every day. And trust me—TRUST ME—when I tell you they have another side. 

First of all, you've never met the facing-down-a-bully version of me. That's the part of me I legit worry about getting killed or imprisoned one of these days. That's the peep that got into a fight with four muggers ten years my junior who wanted my iPad, the peep who still walked away still holding that iPad, the peep who took on a dude with a knife because fuck him in his entitled face, and the peep who caused an orbital fracture with a cell phone because you don't get what you want just because your bigger and a jerkwad. And I'm sure I would kick more ass if I were ripped and didn't love pizza, but there's about fifty things between here and muscle mass that matter more when it comes to scrapping.

Secondly, when I go to protests, I bring a first aid kit, a fistful of power bars and nuts, a couple of huge bottles of water, and ask if anyone wants me to buy them food. That's who I am. I'm the guy who is breathing heavy and trying not to let my fight or flight response yank me the way it ALWAYS does (hint: not flight). 

If I ever DECIDED I was going to fight before I even showed up, I'm not going to walk up with my "I <3 antifa" t-shirt and challenge someone to honorable fisticuffs, so you better calculate for a lot more than the fact that I don't look like I run 10k's every week. No one's head is going to be on a swivel looking for me, and that's JUST the way I like it.

Not that I'm badass. I'm not. I don't feed that part of me, and frankly when it comes out, it's terrifying, and I don't like it very much. It's just maybe you shouldn't be talking about me like I'm already dead or that no one over 140 pounds of ripcord muscle could possibly sidle up to you and throw an elbow before you knew what was happening.

Kthxbai

Dear old person lecturing me on how how tough you had it. 

You're wrong. Literally….…You. Are. WRONG. Life was demonstrably easier by a number of metrics that various health organizations use to gauge quality of life. You had it easier, actually. Considerably easier. You are not a poster child for the meritocracy, you are just an asshole from the golden age lecturing folks trying their best to live in the wake of all this shit you fucked up.

Please don't confuse the fact that no one commented on the child abuse many children endured right out in public back in your day with young people having it actually better.

This is good, but we dug into some important nuance in the comments.
https://www.facebook.com/chris.brecharge/posts/4279897852030764

Facebook Compilation (Top of May)

I'm coming back from a vacation and still working more hours at my other job than I want to be. Plus if I don't get one of these up at least twice a month, I get behind pretty quickly.

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 the 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 May 1st through May 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.) 

This pandemic has thrown enough into sharp contrast to see THAT (and exactly how and why) capitalism requires an inexhaustible supply of exploitable labor. The SECOND people had options that weren't working shitty exploitative jobs just to survive, they took it, and now they don't want to go back and there's an "unskilled" labor shortage. 

If your entire economic system ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY depends on the (eventual) threat of death to get a sizeable chunk of your labor force to work for less than poverty wages….that's not "more natural," more "moral," or more efficient.

When I was in my writing program, one of my professors absolutely hated speculative fiction, but loved Six Feet Under.

One day I'd had enough of his shit, and I pointed out that at several moments in the series, when one of the main characters had an interaction with someone who was dead, it actually WASN'T ambiguous about whether or not they were talking to themselves or hallucinating or something. They ~often~ learned something that their characters couldn't possibly know, including knowledge of things that hadn't happened yet. So that made it speculative fiction. 

He did not like that. He did not like that at all. The next semester, he'd "phased out" his love of Six Feet Under and was on a total Toni Morrison run. "Good fiction doesn't have to have a spaceship or some fantasy speculative element!" 

So I pointed out that Beloved was a ghost story.

Some of the EXACT same people I watched scoffing the very concept that a fast food worker ought to make a living wage (and who always bloviated at length about the invisible hand on wages) are now going apoplectic that they're spending 25 minutes in a drive thru.

I came here to be attacked and honestly I'm having such a good time right now.

#OutOfContextDnD #FightingWeenies

Demand for vaccines is officially going down now. That means the battle royal with anti-vaxxers that I've been predicting would hit as soon as everyone who COULD get vaccinated HAD gotten vaccinated is probably only about 3-4 weeks out. It may take another month or two beyond that to really hit fever pitch, but T-rex footfalls are making the water ripple. 

It's going to be like nothing almost anyone in living memory has ever seen in our culture. Trump divisiveness and anti-science with a twist that it's not always going to be partisan (except, of course, when it is). And in a few scattershot places about the net, it's already beginning. With people absolutely unconcerned that their refusal means this all drags on longer and becomes a never-ending nightmare for folks who CAN'T vaccinate. 

Shields up.

Top of April (Facebook Compilation)

The new schedule is starting to take effect, although it's a bit of "two steps forward, one cliché back." My clients' cycle of payroll is still a thing (this is the ON week), and it will be some time before the other nanny is able to take on enough hours that we can fully be back to pre-covid schedules. 

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 April 1st through April-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.) 

This meme doesn't apply to me directly and my specific situation, so I will refuse to see its use to anyone ELSE or society at large, and will shit all over it in your comments without the slightest nuance, concession, or contextual allowance.

-The Code of the Rando (Precept 48)

A four-year-old memory referencing the outcry against the accent of Star Trek Discovery's Captain. 

Scotty: Scottish accent

Chekov: Russian accent

Troi: "Betazoid" accent

O'Brian: Irish accent

Bashir: British accent

Picard: Light English accent

Tripp: Southern Accent

I don't know what the problem with a Chinese/Malaysian accent might be, but I'm pretty sure it rhymes with shlacism.

The J&J blood clot pause (six/seven —depending on the source—cases out of 6.8 million administered) is why I don't believe any of these stories about terrible causal insta-deaths happening because of the vaccine. Especially not somehow observed by some single healthcare worker. ("Oh the things I've seen….") 

That's just antivax nonsense trying to hide behind the social contract that you don't call people liars to their faces, and that health care workers have the inside scoop. You'd do well to ignore such stories as the manipulative lies they are. 

It would be the headline for ten news cycles if anything even LIKE that happened. It wouldn't come off the front page for a fortnight unless we went to war. One in a million and it's news. And there's a pause. And people are worried about confidence. And people are going to check to be SURE. 

No way these other stories are even PLAUSIBLE.

Abuse comes in a lot of forms and 31 flavors, and sometimes it's not even abuse—it's just a trauma response of one person that perfectly hits the abuse trigger of the other, and they will just be toxic to each other through no fault of either.

But 

but

BUUUUUUT

The first thing an abuser will do—the very first thing—is make sure their behavior looks like ANYTHING other than abuse.

Me vs. Supernatural ghosts.

"So now you know why I carry around these lengthwise halved hula-hoops. Just stick those suckers down OVER the salt ring, and tape them down, and it won't matter how windy the ghost makes it. Saves a bundle on being-thrown-into-walls medical bills, lemmie tell ya. But just in case, you'll notice I am wearing pads and protective gear, especially along my back. Too many baddies with telekinesis running around. 

Oh, and this little bungie cord keeps my iron weapon (that I keep with me instead of looking around for only once I've been attacked even though I know I'm hunting a ghost) from being yanked telekinetically out of my hand. LIFE SAVER.

"You have to be smart about these things."

Protip: Being SO odious and repugnant that no one wants to talk to you and they leave isn't actually the same thing as "winning" arguments.

Based on a close read of a Duran Duran song, I have determined the following about Wild Boys:

• They have no free will. 
• They sleep with their eyes open.
• They have unfathomably sophisticated emotional regulation.
• They may cover themselves in bioluminescent materials or at least some kind of oil.

Me: "I have a hangnail."

Web MD: "Stage four eponychium cancer. Get your affairs in order."

Facebook Compilation (Bottom of March)

Though it's going to be a few weeks—for reasons both emotional and logistical—until the new schedule has really "seeped in," I made it to May! We're here! Vaccines in the arm. Side effects weathered. Peeps starting to hit their efficacy date. Options opening up. A second nanny to tag in on some of the hours. Schedules relaxing their vise grip. 

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-16th through March-31st. (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.) 

Y'all literally stopped in MID SENTENCE about the horrors of cancel culture to run and try to cancel Lil Nas X.

In case you're, like, wondering why NO ONE takes your fucking bullshit faux outrage seriously.

Righty roo. 

I'm not going to go on walkabout on a quest to shit in other people's sandcastles about their any-excuse-to-drink-to-excess holiday attached to sort of vague secular celebrations of Lotsa-things-that-aren't-actually-other-cultures-mixed-in-with-a-couple-that-are™. Maybe this is just Irish-culture appreciation day to you, and you want some corned beef and cabbage. 

You do you.

But here in my space, let me just remind you that it wasn't actually SNAKES that ol' "saint" Patrick removed from Ireland with a jaunty beat on his happy, harmless drum. Also, while Patrick lived at a time where he wouldn't have had the might to coerce or harm pagans, and may have mostly just done some slick-ass appropriation of pagan rituals in some proto-colonialism moves to make Catholicism easier to swallow, and was personally responsible for no terrible incident greater than "spreading Christianity," it's not like things stayed innocuous between those two groups. 

Animals in green hats are cute tho.

Dear cishet white Christian dudes,

You are confusing not being in hegemonic control of absolutely every possible narrative, space, conversation, perspective, social hierarchy, political outcome, economic fortune, and media representation with persecution. But trust me that some hurty-wurty fee-fees on Twitter, a movie or three starring people who don't look like you, a person who has a different truth that you can't silence, and you being down to like hegemonic control of only 90% of that stuff, isn't actually persecution.

Me watching some other content generator or artist take a day off: 

"Good! They deserve it."

Me watching some other content generator take a sick day:

"Absolutely understandable. Hope they feel better soon."

Me watching some other content generator take a day off or cancel something because they're getting a vaccine or working on another project: 

"That makes total sense. They have more than just this one thing going on. They get to have lives."

Me cancelling a blog post for literally ANY reason at all:

"I am the worst sort of imposter, and my readers hate me."

"Millennials blew up this. Millennials killed that industry. Millennials needed trophies. Millennials are too soft. Millennials aren't buying enough of X. Millennials didn't have enough kids. Millennials are ruining everything."

~crickets chirping in the otherwise silent night~

"Boomers sure are hard on Millennials. Maybe they should think about their culpability in what their kids/grandkids are doing."

"THAT'S AGEISM!"

The Alt Right doesn't really believe the election was stolen, and you can tell that when you listen to them speak. (They make linguistic "slips" that someone with post-structuralist attention to language finds it piss easy to notice.)

What they are really doing is claiming to believe in whatever would need to be true in order to score points against the left. It's classic postmodern conservatism. It's basically an ongoing game of "Own the libs." They legitimately DO NOT CARE if this is true, but like most of their racist, sexist, homophobic, and transantagonistic opinions, it is simply useful to them not to really unpack their own beliefs about why they hate what they hate.

The Patriarchy Playbook (Page 2)

Step 1- Convert all negative emotions into anger. (Grief? Anger. Envy? Anger. Sadness? Anger.)

Step 2- Deny that men's anger even IS an emotion. (It's always "a justified response.") 

Step 3- Call women "hysterical" for having the slightest anger at their own mistreatment and "emotional" for acknowledging they have emotions at all.

Step 4- Now they can all be dismissed as overly emotional/hysterical/out of control. And you control the narrative!

Step 5 (Very important)- Use feminizing language on any man who threatens this hegemony by acknowledging emotions, processing, seeking therapy, etc… Call them cuck, simp, girls names, whatever it takes to try to emasculate them. They are a threat to your power.

Pro-Tip/Step 6- Repeat as necessary for other intersections (race, sexuality, gender identity beyond the binary, etc…)

In Billy Crystal's voice:

Turns out your bigotry is only MOSTLY hidden by your plausibly deniable "adjacent concerns," demonstrably false claims, and cognitive dissonance to facts.

And ~mostly~ hidden…..is slightly piss obvious. 

Switches to regular voice:

See, what I'm saying is, you aren't really fooling anyone. If we blew you up with a bellow and pushed on your chest, you would tell us the part you know you're not supposed to say out loud.

Can Shrimp-in-my-cereal guy be a milkshake duck AND General Mills is probably pushing any story (ANY story) to get the national focus off of what was—even if it wasn’t a true story—a gaslighting, abysmal response?

Can the world have enough nuance for TWO assholes?

Chris's Pass/Agg theater of the day:

Oh, Sweetpea……I'm not talking about THIS mass shooting. I'm talking about the one that is juuuuuuuuuust on the other side of whatever imaginary "How-can-you-talk-about-this-so-SOON?" Rubicon that is in your head. Is it a day? A week? A month? It doesn't matter! Whatever the time table is, there was a mass shooting just before the most recent one. 

THAT'S the one I'm talking about. 

Obviously.

I'm a theoretically-radical leftist. I don't have a problem with "guns." But maybe the best day to have the conversation about how easy they are to procure and where might be an actually reasonable line between colonial era muskets and civilian-owned rocket launchers was actually last week.

When someone says, "Sharks attacked me so now I'm profoundly hydrophobic," you seem to understand that you don't need to jump up and say, "not ALL water!"

You don't interrupt someone telling you about how the birds at the beach stole their fries with "Not ALL birds act like that!" 

If I say, "I love ice cream," you don't feel a need to point out that because I've never tried pickle garlic nutmeg licorice horseradish flavor, and would likely hate it that ~clearly~ "Not ALL ice cream!" 

Perhaps most telling, when I say, "Men can be wonderful parents," you do not jump up and say "Not ALL men!" Though that would certainly be an actually appropriate place to do so. But in this moment, you seem already to understand that ALL men everywhere are not what’s being discussed.

What I'm saying is that your sudden inability to tell the difference between metonymy and synecdoche when talking about ubiquitous and cultural problems caused by gender inequality versus an actual hasty generalization that gets applied to marginalized groups to villainize them isn't nearly as slick as you think it is.

Facebook Compilation (Bottom of February)

For years, I didn't count all the bite-sized chunks of writing I was doing on Facebook (particularly during "interesting times) 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 Feb-15th through Feb-28th. (You're welcome to follow me there but read up in the Facebook FAQ [last question] before you send me a friend request.) Once we've caught up, these will only land once every two weeks or possibly even less often if it's a slow month.

A status to the people who were shaming folks happy to see that Rush Limbaugh died

Look, you don't get to pioneer the proto-Trump conservative ideology of saying whatever you want and thinking that the more upset liberals get, the better you're obviously doing, including advancing conspiracy theories, cheering the idea of rising up against the government, naked racism, misogyny, and other types of bigotry and even making fun of HIV/AIDS deaths, and then get some sort of "speak ill of the dead" pass. You just don't.

And if you're one of the ones trying trying to tone police that shit, I would strongly consider you find something more useful to do…like rearrange your sock drawer.

"Holding them accountable" is worthy and noble, and nothing a politician should evade because they have a (D) after their name. But I am so, so, so, so weary of leftists who use clickbait titles as their outrage porn and literally won't even read the article because it might be nuance.

So weary.

I'm not saying the initial wave wouldn't suck (especially the secondary effect from an initial collapse of infrastructure if more than 10% are killed right off), but most canon zombies are going to be roughly as dangerous as wild animals once humans sort of figure out what stymies them (any situation where a human can get roughly five feet up from a zombie using complex skills like tools or climbing, heavy metal doors with a bolt, wearing the only three-ish layers of clothing that would prevent a human bite from penetrating your skin—transmitting through bites is actually really ineffective, which is why we don't see a lot of rabies cases—having literally no defense against counterstrikes, not having the SLIGHTEST sense of self-preservation, and I'm sorry but the claw/bite-proof tanks and planes and body armor of the military are going to kick their undead asses when we fight back). Roughly as dangerous as a wild animal is not to say zero danger, especially if you live in the country, but a few precautions and most of us don't sit around thinking grizzly bears or crocodiles or venomous snakes or hippos are going to WIN.

I've got a story percolating where they only get that slow and animalistic as their body decays, but a fresh zombie that hasn't experienced muscular or brain decay can run, use tools, put on armor, hide, HUNT, reconsider, work with other zombies, hold basic conversations, and have flashes of the person they were, and even access their memories and skill sets. In fact, there's NO outward sign when they first turn, AND THEY WILL EVEN SHAME YOU FOR SUGGESTING IT.

Of course it's also steampunk and there are ninjas and pirates, but….we'll get there.

There's a lot to be said about zombies as an American genre monster. (Loss of individuality is one of our greatest fears.) And I think the creepier idea would be that that loss comes slowly instead of all at once. Like….being radicalized into a violent mob.

My views are pretty centrist in most of the western world. 

If you are an extremely conventionally attractive woman in your 20s with like twenty-five friends (all dudes) who just got on Facebook yesterday and wants to launch a burgeoning sex work career (which I have absolutely no problem with, and I will protect you from SWERFs in my space), but you also happen to want to be friends with me because, I guess, you think writers are awesome or something, I apologize for jumping to conclusions and rejecting your friend request.

HOWEVER….like everyone else who wants to be my friend, you should be tossing me a PM with that request and letting me know that you're an oxygen-loving human who isn't here just to pick a fight about social issues.

Tonight I had to come up with the name of an Inn on the fly, and the image that jumped into my head was a donkey chewing on grass. 

"The Inn of the Munching Ass," I said. And then, "Oh god!!! No! Wait!" 

But it was too late. The players refused to accept any other name. We settled on the fact that it was The Munching Donkey but it had a reputation and even some of the employees would say "Welcome to Ass Munchers" if the boss wasn't around.

This is why you don't ask a revision-dependent writer to come up with all that clever shit impromptu.

I am officially throwing a curse*.

May every one of you who bought up the PS5s to flip them and gouge people end up with a dozen sitting in your closet that you can't sell for any more than half what you paid for them. May Sony find wonk in their hardware and fix it, leaving you with obsolete, defective units. May your early returns turn to ash, and you take a BATH on your exploitative investments.

(*Please note that I do not actually have the ability to curse anything. Certainly not officially.)

The most unrealistic thing about the MCU is that the villains so rarely have multimillion-dollar P.R. departments that convince about half the world that it is they (the villains) who are right, and further convince the 90% of the other half that even though they're bad, physically attacking them is the real evil—thus making the heroes terrorists. 

I mean, that's definitely one of the trope plots for a single arc, but if you look around the world at who is LITERALLY being super villain evil by ratcheting up the price of things people need to survive like water and electricity and insulin, you see that actually ALL of them are basically engaged in these PR psyops and have state protection, and no "hero" who stopped them would get their reputation back by the end.

U.S.- destabilizes region, backs coup attempts, engages in psyops, sanctions the shit out of the place

Capitalists- "This is what happens when you have socialism. It’s why it can’t ever work. It’s just a bad system."

Leftists- point out problems inherent in capitalism

Conservatives, Moderates, Liberals- sitting in lotus pose My child…. What simple eyes you see the world with. This is not TRUE Capitalism™ you decry. No TRUE Capitalism™ would do this. Only by ascending to TRUE Capitalism™ can you see its perfection as an ideology is marred only by its imperfect earthly expressions, and thus is entirely above your feeble reproach.

[Removed]

People who insist that Gina Carrano got "punished" for having conservative believes are confessing to you exactly what they think are INTEGRAL parts of conservative beliefs.