Imagine, gentle readers, this. (triggering for dog attacks, btw)

There is a dog, big, a mutt with a decided bit of some kind of bull dog in him. For the most part the dog is just large and friendly to family but scary to non-family. Dog’s been with the family for years and years. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly” they tell the woman. “You just have to respect his boundaries.”

And the woman is not afraid of dogs. This one is a little intimidating, sure. But he’s kept fenced up at a different house and so she doesn’t worry about it. Months go by and all is well.

Then the dog snips at the woman’s child. The Kid isn’t hurt, but she doesn’t trust the dog after that. But the dog is still at another house, and all is well. She tells the Kid to stay away from the dog.

Then the dog is brought to where the woman and the kid live. And to get to anything, like say the bedrooms or the kitchen or the bathroom, you must get by the dog. This makes the woman nervous. She has a horrible dream that the dog eats and kills the Kid. Her family tells her she is ridiculous. Treats her like an idiot for even suggesting such a thing. The woman tries to put it out of her head. It’s just a bad dream.

A week goes by. Everything seems okay. The woman is coming back from the bathroom one night and out of nowhere the dog lunges at her. Would have gone for her throat, but she screamed his name and he backed off. She’s shaken. Scared. Her family tells her she’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t hurt her. It’s her own fault anyways for showing fear. She asks that the dog be moved somewhere safer. She is told no.

In the middle of the night, she wakes up because she has to pee. She opens her bedroom door and there is the dog, blocking her doorway. She closes the door. Tries to hold it till her kidneys ache. Contemplates hanging her ass out of the window and peeing that way, but seriously she should just be able to use the fucking bathroom without being afraid of the dog.

So she cautiously steps over the dog. Success. She makes it to the bathroom. She pees. Her kidneys will live another day! She pokes her head out the bathroom door. The dog is just where she left it. Someone said that she might have startled the dog the last time, so she makes sure the dog sees and hears her. She’s fine till about half way when the dog pounces. This time he takes a couple of chunks out of her leg and she has to keep her kid from trying to come out and save her.

Afterwards, she’s still treated like an asshole because the dog bit her. It can’t be as bad as she says, though her left leg is bruised and oozing where the teeth tore through her skirt. She must have done something to set him off. He was just being a dog, can’t blame him for that.

And through this whole thing I am thinking that it sounds a whole fuck of a lot like the crap rape victims and domestic violence victims get. Not being believed when you say you’re scared. Not being believed even after you’re attacked. Must of done something to deserve it. Must have set it off. Worn a short skirt or burnt the dinner or shown fear. The rabid dog is a better analogy for rape than the mugging scenario that gets used so often.

(But bonus- after both attacks, even though what i wanted more than anything was a fucking cigarette to make myself stop shaking, I didn’t smoke).

Being able to edit crap after I’ve posted it is one of the sweetest joys of life.

That is all.

I am not anti-voting for the Democrats (and everybody else) because of the dems failure to get things past the rethuglikans. Oh no my friends. If you think it’s because they lose at getting crappy bipartisan bills passed you’d be so mistaken.

I’m not voting for the dems because the entire fucking party, including people I like (Kucinich) have sold us out. Now I get why Kucinich may have changed his tune on the health insurance solidarity bill, I mean healthcare reform. I’m sure someone in the party threatened his constituents. But why the fuckity fuck would the dems threaten Kucinich and not fucking Ben Nelson or Bart Stupak is why I’m not giving them my vote. Technically I am still registered in Seattle and could use my vote to help save Patty Murray, but it ain’t going to happen.

It is the shift from pro-labor to pro-business. The change from proven Keynesian tactics to softer, gentler trickle down ones. It’s Barak Obama declaring a spending freeze and a hiring freeze and not coming out in favor of a foreclosure freeze. It’s about the catfood commission and dems cutting food stamps to pay for Michelle Obama’s “I hate fat kids” campaign.It’s about DADT. This is why our country is broken. Not because republicans are douchebags (they’ve always been douchebags) but because the dems have seen fit to join them.
This is why we can’t have nice things like single payer healthcare or a jobs guarantee. Not because republicans don’t want it, but because democrats either don’t want it or won’t fight for it.

There is no party that represents the best interests of 80 percent of the population. And I’m not going to participate in democracy theater just so I can feel like I’ve fake orgasmed my way through bad governance. “Oh yeah baby hit me with your watered down bipartisan corporatism” just doesn’t do it for me.

I have not been able to see my little blog in many months. I post via email. So I did not know that mobile posts were formatted the way they are. They look almost like some weird poetry, sonnets to a dying political system. Funny.

Someone called me a post modernist today. It made me giggle inside. I may be turning into a postmodernist. Oh holy shit I may be Foucault-ish, a structuralist gone post-al.

But I still think I am a structuralist. I want to smash the structures after all. Lizzie smash.

Banksy, for those of you not in the know, is a seriously famous street artist.

Someone at the Simpsons let him do the opening animation and it’s bleak and awesome and it reminds me of Baraka

Sorry non USians, it’s only on Hulu. (insert sad face)

The last year or so has been a swirling miasma of thoughts, theories, realizations and epiphanies in my head. I don’t know everything. But I am trying to figure some shit out. Like the thing that I thought I wanted to do with my life (i/e write about politics) is crap. You aren’t considered legitimate if you don’t write about what everyone else is writing about, but if you write about what everyone else is writing about you are writing about crap. You are agenda setting for the elites.

So I am going to seriously co-opt a black power phrase, apologies in advance, but you can’t bring down the master’s house with the master’s tools. I get that. I always thought I got it. But the last year I hit me how entrenched those tools are. Voting is one of those tools. It gives us the illusion of choice and power when all we really do is rotate the elites. And I just don’t have it in me anymore to participate in Democracy Theater. We will never succeed in changing the system (or breaking and replacing the system) with the established tools of the ruling class. We keep voting gazillionaires into power, after all. When was the last time you saw a single mom on food stamps run for office, yet she would represent 17% of the population.

And I keep thinking about Marx and putting the means of production into the hands of the workers. I don’t think that it’s possible to do this in the old school socialist, central planning committee way. I think that we need to take a serious look at individual manufacture, at fab labs (OMG internet, I missed being able to put links in), at energy production and storage that are local to use. A world where information is shared while production is not.

I realize this could sound a bit libertarian, though I am not at all advocating an “I got mine suckers” attitude. More of a trickle up effect of resources.

I had a fav professor who was all kinds of political and brilliant, and didn’t vote. Or care about political parties. I thought for a long time that this was just an eccentric quirk. I don’t think that is true anymore. I understand.

I’ve never much cared about the minutia of politics as a game. I think who’s holding up what bill or what the latest poll numbers are, or the handringing over whatever flavor of middle class white voters is the new ‘it’ category (soccer moms, security dads, etc) distract us from the real questions and problems. Why are millionaires over-represented in government? Why are agenda setters so completely detached from the lives of the people?

I believed in voting. I mean how can you change things if you don’t participate, right? Vote! It’s the one thing you can do to change things. I’ve missed exactly one chance to vote since I turned 18. I was very pregnant and on bed rest, not allowed up for more than 5 minutes an hour for fear that my blood pressure would kill me. So voting was a low priority. That was 1994. You all remember 1994, right? Newt Gingrich, the contract (on)for America, poor single mothers have hungry alligator children destroying the very fabric of our country. Being that I was about to become a poor single mother, I made sure I voted consistently after that. Had to protect the alligator kid, after all.

But what if voting is the secret, the reason why amoral capitalism and greed are so terribly entrenched. What if the illusion that we have a choice in all this is why we can’t give it up for a better system? I have said for a long time that politics and religion are the structures that we put over things that people do perfectly well on their own so that we can corrupt those things. Voting, elections, the sham that we are participating in our own governance, keeps us from actually participating in our own governance.

Has your comment been sitting in moderation for oh say a month now. It’s been approved. Unless you’re creepy. Then no approvals for you. That includes you too creepy adoption lady. This is not the kind of blog where you can bleg for a babyyyyyyyyy. Cash yes. Babies no.

Oh fuckity fuck fuck. This thing is fucking fast. I can’t believe it. Intertubes. OMG I LOVE YOU INTERTUBES! I missed you. We shall never part again!!!!!!!!

I am trying to adjust to typing with all 10 fingers. And punctuation. And spell check (wait is spell check on in firefox?) Wevs. Just wevs.

I owe many many thanks to bloglandia. I also owe one generous godless whore a ranty email to Patty Murray. I am adjusting to looking at a screen larger than 2.5 inches square. I ended up going with the Virgin mobile unlimited wireless USB tool and it’s grand. I haven’t tried to watch any videos yet, but programs were downloading too fast for me to be able click through the install screens. So I am hopeful. And chipper. Fucking chipper. I may just jizz in my pants over internet access.

finish this sentence: republicans are to fearful zenophobes as
democrats are to fearful women. let’s see, take a large portion of
your base. terrify the base with horrible scenerios of what the other
guys will do if elected, brown people will run the streets speaking
not english, coat hanger manufacturers will experience exponential
growth. all your nightmares will come true if you don’t vote our
way!!!!!
after the election, all is forgotten we need undocumented workers to
keep citizens from asking for wages they can live on and health
insurance companies will be damned if their going to pay for special,
elective medicine for the ladies. so suck it voters, your fear is just
a tool to keep power where it belongs.
the only way to get off the hamster wheel is to get off the hamster
wheel. you’ll never out run the fearmongers while you’re on it.
*ftr- i don’t have any kind of problem with undocumented workers.
people go where the jobs are. it’s the legacy parties’ tactics that
are the same, not the voters.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning