The pie metaphor is a favorite with economists. “The pie is only so big” they say.

They mean there is only so much of a resource. We can’t give away something that doesn’t exist.

But that metaphor fails to answer some super key questions.

1) Who made the damn pie? Certainly it wasn’t economists or bankers or rich folks or professors or politicians out there breaking their backs to harvest the wheat that made the crust or the fruit that makes the filing. They’ve never gotten their hands dirty making the actual fucking pie, now have they? Sure, they’ve pushed around papers. But that is the pie eating equivalent of tucking their napkin into their shirt, not making the pie.

2) Humans are remarkably good at making the pie bigger when they need to. In darwinian speak this is called adaptation. When we run out of one kind of pie, we make another kind. Oh look, it’s winter and there are no fricken berries for a pie, I guess I’ll make pumpkin instead. Adaptation is why we have things like clothing and houses and the internet and language after all. But we can’t make pies that feed everyone? We deserve extinction if we really are that stupid.

3) Why does the pie get divided unevenly to begin with? Who fucking cuts a pie like that? It is easier and way more efficient to cut the pie into equal sized pieces than it is to cut out a tiny slice for the poor folks and hand the rest of the pie over to the rich.

4) What if you hate pie? I hate pie. I am on team cake. You know the thing about cake- you can make way bigger than you can pies. At least I think so.

This ridiculous little exercise has been meant to show you that 1) economists are mostly self righteous asswipes who don’t understand the value of cake, 2) question everything, just because a bunch of douchenozzles has been saying the same thing for 300 years doesn’t make them right, 3) the longer I am away from the internet the less respect I have for the learned class.

Next time you might get a super bitchy screed on how the “creative class” is made up of a bunch of fauxgressive fucksticks who wouldn’t know how to creatively problem solve their way out of a paper bag.

unite and take a bow.

In honor of this post at StumpLane I was going to post a video of the fabulous Smith’s song.

But the fricken rural library thinks Youtube is the work of the devil and has blocked access. They also hate chat programs and small kittens, so I am told.

So here’s a link instead. Go get the song stuck in your head and then head out to your nearest big box store and steal me something useful. Like internet access that doesn’t suck or an easy to use commenting platform or a laptop that I don’t have to liberate (i/e steal) from an equally poverty ridden relative. Or even just dinner. I am dying to make my world famous chicken wings, or tuna salad, or something.

We have always been at war with east no west no all of Asia. And now we are bombing Yemen and independent reports say that there is no way to get out of Afghanistan in 18 months.

A dude without a passport, whose own dad has warned the authorities that his son is a danger, tries to blow up a plane over Detroit (really- like the Motor city doesn’t have enough problems)and only fails because of dumb fucking luck. Seriously folks?

I won’t even get into the debacle that is health care reform, except to say that every word in “health care reform” is a misnomer.

I did read a really good mystery novel called “Origin”. And I had a good dream last night for the first time in forever. Of course then I got up and trekked with Wonder to the Anti-social Insecurity office at the crack of ass after Other Cousin used ALL the fricken hot water for her shower. 80 gallon hot water tank, people, and I’m taking a cold shower.

So I stole Other Cousin’s lappy and made for the free library wi-fi to figure out this
whole comment change over bruhahah. And fuckles my friends.

First- Echo won’t even open comments on the library wifi. So I can’t really go installing a platform that I- blog mistress extrodinaire, cannot use.

So maybe Disqus or IntenseDebate will work? But both require a serious commitment to internet time (like an entire days worth) and some code monkeying in order to import comments from haloscan.

And I have like 2 days to figure out wtf I am going to do now. Seriously- I need a code monkey. Usually I crunch through this shit on my own but I simply do not have the kind of computer access I need to be doing major blog overhauls at the moment. Help me code monkeys, you’re my only hope?

Feckles.

So my little chicadees, what’s news with you?

So the compy that i have been boring from my so gracious relatives is blue screening. I’ve reinstalled and reinstalled and reinstalled the evil operating system that shall not be named. Still I am thwarted.

So here I am, on the PUBLIC library computer with a big scary countdown clock telling me I have only 43 minutes remaining of compy time. I cannot write like this.

If I had been able to lug ye olde laptop of doom into the free wifi space – you all would have gotten a bit of writing about the importance of action over ideas and how we will never get meaningful reform of anything without serious threat of revolution. It just never happens without the PTB having the shit scared out of them by the rioting pitchforkers.

But I am not Jack Bowers. I do not do my best work with a fricken clock counting down the minutes to certain destruction.

So enjoy the holidays. Maybe the terrifying god Santa and his vicious Claws will see fit to grant me the ability to install the drivers and applications that are missing on ye old laptop. Maybe Windows will suddenly become sentient and realize that for it to survive it must keep it’s hosts (humans) from attacking it’s habitat with an axe?

Maybe.

Or maybe I am going to decide that coconut rum and coke slushies (yes- slushies) are the only way to get through anything.

and previously on Twitter*

People don’t like it when poor people write about poverty. We can’t possibly be the experts on our own lives.

It’s not the same thing, having poor people write about their condition, as it is having women write about feminism or POC writing about racism or PWD writing about abelism.

I think the reason for this is that everyone likes to think they KNOW what poverty feels like. Everyone except the highest ups has had that period where money was tight and Mac and Cheese was the only thing on the menu (or Top Ramen cause milk and butter for Mac and Cheese is expensive).

But this is generally a temporary situation while in school or between jobs or just after divorce. There is still hope of better things to come. There is a way out, sooner or later.

Real poverty is hopeless. It is the elimination of choices. It is being the stupid rat in a maze without a door to the cheese. It is a pit of despair with no way out.

So I ask myself, when reading other people who write about poverty, does this person know what the fuck they are talking about? Are they coming from a place of privilege, oblivious to the realities but trying desperately to sound like they care, or do they know, they way I do, what it feels like to have the Welfare office question your living arrangements to make sure you aren’t hiding a boyfriend with a paycheck so you can get food stamps for your kid?

This doesn’t mean the non-poor can’t be allies, but it does mean that they should sit down, shut up and listen real hard when an actual poor person tells them they’re wrong. Just like with all the other isms. It’s an oppression folks, and the people who understand it best are the oppressed.

*You trying writing several thousand posts over the course of many years and see if you don’t become a fricken broken record.

all that will be left of health care reform is a mandate to buy health insurance.

No single payer, no public option, no medicare expansion. No affordability, or price controls, or end to cherry picking.

Just a mandate to buy a flawed product from corrupt companies that have no interest in health or care.

There’s some change for ya. I never thought I’d say it, but at least Bushco didn’t want to charge those of us without health insurance for the privilege of not having to deal with the insurance companies.

So Haloscan is going away. I have 13 days to either pay the 10 bucks to keep my comments and transfer them to something called echo or find another free comment plugin that will let me import all the old haloscan comments. Not having internet access means I can’t spend the required hours searching the interwebs and reading reviews and playing with the template to find a new platform.

So peeps- advice, suggestions? Do you use a free commenting service that you like? Anyone using Echo? Is it worth the $10 (please remember that my income this month is about $100 – so $10 is ALOT of fricken money).

Things I like about haloscan- the power of the edit. I like being able to replace dickweed’s misogynist comments with songs about their tiny penii. I like that when the internet is gone away I can check haloscan comments on my phone (though i can’t comment back on my phone)so even when I’m lost in space I can see what you all are saying.

Things I don’t like- the totes anonymous nature of it. No screen name required, no email required.

18 months ago, had the same hullabaloo been made about Obama and the Dems lack of, well, Demmishness, I would have jumped for joy. Whoopee. People are paying attention. Finally.

I find myself in a bit of an odd spot at the moment though. My old self would have been all over Violet’s Justice Party. Sign me up- I’ll hand out flyers.

Current me sees the whole idea of Politics (capital P)as a lose lose lose proposition, especially for people like me (bottom of the pyramid poor poor poor).

There is no magic lever. There is no good combination of shiny hair, bright smile, and proper thinking to make politicians and politics workable to me.

Politics is the way we distribute power. People like me never get power- ever, unless we take it ourselves with a loaded gun. Then we become the oppressors. Nice trick there- power is very protective of itself. It makes those who have it into monsters who will protect it at all costs, regardless of who they were before.

But bullets are expensive and I am

Sure, yeah, there are lots of proggy types who talk a good game about expanding access blah blah blah. They’re the same ones who want to dictate our shopping lists cause us poor dumb slobs don’t know how to choose our own food. If we can’t be trusted with lunch, we surely can’t be trusted with power.

You darling peeps and your vote clicking got me the 3rd highest number o’votes in the 3 Quarks Daily best political writing contest.

And fan girl me is all “OMG- Tariq Ali is gonna read my post!” (Well maybe- 3Quarks Daily is picking 6 to 9 posts of the top 20 to forward to him, but I gotta hope that the voting influences it a wee bit.)

You peeps rock the casbah. Many many many thanks.

So here in the land of no internet I have had to resort to such old fashioned methods as newspaper reading and talking head watching to get the news.

In the local paper the there were 2 stories recently.

Story 1: (not local) a man lies in an emergency room waiting room for 90 minutes. During that time 3 homeless people steal his watch. The man dies.

Story 2: (local) A police car pulls up to a a car wash late one night to find 3 kids (a 15 year old boy, a 13 year old boy, and a 12 year old girl) trying to rip off a vending machine. The police officer chases them, and tries to TASER the 15 year old and the girl runs to where her mom is parked.

The mom is single.

The family is black.

They are poor and the mom is unemployed.

The entire family is arrested and charged with grand larceny, including the mother. Yes, they are charging a 12 year old with grand larceny.

What is the purpose of these stories? It is to reinforce the idea that stealing is bad. Common sense right- stealing bad, not stealing good.

Common sense for who though?

For the 3 homeless people who stole the watch, common sense is finding a way to eat that night. A dying man’s watch might provide it.

For the family? I can think of several reasons those kids might have been out trying to steal from a vending machine, one not terribly noble but common one. I was a kid once, what kid hasn’t tried to rip off a vending machine or tried to shoplift a lipstick. Kids are kids because they don’t have the fully functional brains of adults.

The other reason is tragic.They are poor. Their mother isn’t working. They are hungry, or the lights have been shut off, or the rent is due, and the easy money from a vending machine seems like temporary relief.

But the spectacle says “Stealing is bad”.

What is stealing? Stealing is about property rights, ownership, control of resources. If you steal a little, common sense says you are bad, not deserving of human rights. You are a scared black teenager who deserves to be tasered for committing a horrible crime on an inanimate object.

Nature disagrees. Nature tells us to survive. However you can, you must survive.

We ignore the human issues. We ignore that a man lay dying in an emergency room for 90 minutes while havering a heart attack and being ignored by the doctors and nurses. We ignore that because his property rights are more important than his life. Should we ask him? Would you trade that watch sir, in exchange for life?

We ignore the poor hungry family, the violence of an officer of the state against a child committing a crime so small that most of us did something similar. A crime that hurt not a single living being. We ignore that those kids whose lives were awful before the vending machine incident have now lost each other, and their mother, and their freedom.

This is common sense. Stealing is bad. Well stealing small things like a watch, change from a vending machine, a couple hundred bucks from a convenience store is bad. Steal big, extort a couple hundred billion from the federal government or a pension plan, or electricity customers and you get bonuses. Property rights before human rights. Property rights for only those who own enough property.

This is the spectacle. This is not real.