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

so i’ve stopped talking politics with my family 6 months ago. they are
the classic example of the ‘but the republicans are evil and we’ll all
die if you don’t vote straight blue’. tonight i was dragged into a
fight where my concientious voting objector position was compared to
the nazis, at least it was until i pionted out that the line being
used (the only thing needed for evil to flourish is for good men to do
nothing) is generally used when describing good germans. this whole
awful fight was because i don’t appreciate how hard dems have worked
but they are thwarted at every turn by republicans. i am just not
grateful enough and can’t do the simple math that 59 or 57 isn’t a
majority.
the entire time this fight is going on the cnn news scroll reads
‘white house comes out against moratorium on foreclosures’. but
everything is the republicans’ fault. uh huh.

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

now to getting internet access. at least now going to the coffee place
with the free wifi won’t be an exercise in torture. but we still don’t
have it at home (hence the poor spelling, punctuation and formatting
of the mobile phone posts). being rural leaves us only 2 broadband
choices, and i owe comcast money for their craptastic service while
other people owe the phone company. it’s still an uphill battle, but
it’s less steep now.
thank you godless whores and evilmart clerk who risked her job because
‘i know what it’s like to be just this short of being able to get what
you need’. the damn internet is my lifeline to people and what tiny
bits of income i get. not having proper access to it for this last
year has really kicked my ass.

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

whew. one whole year without my own compy or regular internet access.
having those things has become the equivalent of having a car. you
cannot function in society without them. can’t get a job, can’t go to
school, can’t check your bank account or pay your bills. can’t share
in a huge portion of modern social activities. it sucks and is
isolating, especially for those of with hermetic tendencies anyways.
so last night i was wondering in evil-mart. i had the 250 the godless
whores (bless them) and 100 for groceries. after having spent a year
searching, i was pretty sure all i was going to afford was some crappy
little 10′ netbook with a cell phone processor. but last night i found
a 15′ compaq with all the components to hackintosh it (provided i work
around the video card) for 348, still more than i had after tax, but
200 less than on newegg. the intensly kind clerk offered me her
employee discount and voila, i bought a compy. we’ll be eating ramen
for awhile and i feel like i’ve got an adderall snorting high

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

shows up in my email inbox, i wonder if i’m getting campaign spam or
another round of uninteligible rantings ala the 2008 prinaries.
at least the ranting was funny. this time she needs 375,000 bucks to
stop the tea partiers. uhmmmm, no. not gonna happen.

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

there’s been a round of charts and graphs making their way through the
interwebs showing wealth disparity and our lack of knowledge as to how
great the disparity is. hell, the other night my auntie even recorded
a talking head discussing the gini index. it’s not new, this
disparity, but it’s getting some press now. the important thing to
remember is that all of us, anyone reading this and nearly everone
they know, fall into the bottom 80%, and the haves keep us bottom
feeders fighting for scraps with each other while they do swan dives
into pools of cash ala scrooge mcduck. that is the point to hammer
home. not left or right, conservative or liberal, but bottom 80 versus
the thieving assholes at the top who are carefully protected by both
political parties. eat the rich and feed our families. it’s not a
political/ economic spectrum, it’s a pyramid scheme and us bottom 80
are the last ones in.

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

so it may not be a godless whores/ ‘good christians’ contest, but it
does strike me that we’re in the middle of election season getting
spammed by the gatekeepers of the kleptocracy for cash. and i write a
damn fine bitchy email. so from now till november, or whenever i have
enough cash to get a compy and internet, everyone who donates gets a
ranty email sent to the failing political thing of their choice. the
email will most likely conclude with the line ‘haha suckers – i got
your cash instead’.
so who do you all want me to bitch at?

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