Capitalism, that is. It’s rude and crude and as disgusting as chewing gum stuck to the bottom of a table.

(And btw, Oscar Wilde’s mum was an Irish Republican- the only good kind of Republican)

Maybe the gods on internet pic posting will smile on us now

I was too tired to bake you a cake, so I got you this
beefcake instead.

( trigger warnings all the fuck over)

 if you’re tired of state sanctioned murder

if you’re tired of state sanctioned murder

if you’re tired of state sanctioned murder

if you’re tired of state sanctioned murder

if you’re tired of state sanctioned murder

I could keep going, but I am upset enough over Troy Davis. I cried as soon as I got home last night. I kept crying till it was time to go to bed. I am sad and angry and disgusted.

I’ve been thinking about how best to explain to the dudely types just what it’s like when all media is filtered through a lens you don’t have.

Imagine that every single damn tv show was a show about monkeys. Ok, not every. But the shows that manged to show something other than monkeys all did so from a “stupid humans, look at them with their stupid, petty shallow ways” or you know, from the monkeys’ point of view. It’s the market, they are just making what people monkeys want.

And not just the tv shows, but the movies we all Monkeys in Space! Monkeys VS Giant Monsters! Monkeys, and the occasional bone thrown “relentlessly perky, young, single human must be humiliated and humbled in order to find perfect monkey love” aka, the romantic comedy. It’s still the market. They’re still making what the market wants.

But it doesn’t end there. The news is all made by monkeys, but under the guise of “journalism” the news is supposed to be the truth for everyone, monkey and non-monkey. The fact that most of the writers are literal chimps with typewriters shouldn’t make you question why most of the headlines are “stupid humans do something stupidly, again”.This is journalism and it is TRUTH!

And then there’s science, we all know that science is unbiased. I mean it’s all done by monkeys for monkeys. The idea that humans might have a different take on say the importance of the banana as currency or why flea picking feels so damn good or has no place in science. It’s TRUTH.

And we haven’t even gotten to literature, politics, education, workplace policies.We’re just talking about who gets to send out the messages that everybody hears. Sure, maybe there are a handful of token non-monkeys who get to say something, but by nature of being tokens they are usually just spouting the monkey line.

Now if you live in a world like that, wouldn’t you want to turn of the tv, stop reading the paper, and choose your movies really damn carefully. Wouldn’t you just want to puke because the new fall season is nothing but fucking nature shows.

(You can, as usual, substitute the humans in this little analogy for every single damn oppressed group. While how those oppressions color the world we see work differently in each group, how the oppressors control access to the message everyone receives is pretty damn universal.)

There are days (weeks, months) when being a lady writer of the political sphere is, well, less satisfying than being a 50’s housewife. Between the Nobody Gives A Fuck What You Have To Say On The Matter Little Lady and the “shut your mouth and spread your legs” comments, scrubbing floors in high heels and having a daily valium/cocktail habit seems downright peaceful. And that’s the point. So when I see that the fucking editor of (supposedly liberal) The New Republic saying that us ladies are less socialized to produce and consume opinion journalism, I wonder what the fuck have I been writing for the last 5 years, recipes (ok yeah, there are some recipes). What the fuck have you all been reading for the last 5 years? What the fuck? Perhaps if these douchenoodles (in publishing, which is suffering right now due to the interwebs) stopped with their self-fulfilling prophesy bullshit (if you only have men, writing for men, about men, why the fuck do I need to read your shit?) and tried remembering that there’s 51 percent of the population they are ignoring in their quest for the dudeliest of dollars, they might, I dunno, produce better media. Shit people actually want to read and watch and buy. But what do I know, I’m a lady who hasn’t been socialized to produce or consume opinion journalism.

h/t Feminist Philosophers

So they wouldn’t tank the economy and would keep the money flowing to the economy would remain dynamic and blah blah blah…..

Of course the biggest Bankster of all, Bank(sters) of America, is going to lay off 30,000 people rather than eat the cost of making bad loans. 

Lemme see if I remember Econ 101. Entrepreneurs get profit and interest because they take risk, while us little peons only get wages because we don’t take any risk (cough). I think it was the BofA employees who took the risk of  being employed by a shady fucking organized crime racket, not the organized crime racket itself.

And while we’re talking risk, I fucking called it a year ago when I said the securitization of life insurance policies would mean that the Kleptocrats would push for ways for us to die faster so they get better payoffs. Look for a great big life insurance marketing push in the same vein as the “ownership society”. Shit, I just got life insurance through work. This is not a coincidence. I am now officially worth way more dead than alive.

Fuck the rich. Fuck the kleptocracy. Fuck all them fuckers.

10 years a long time. Of course we’ve been engaged in perpetual war since then, so it’s even longer for the men and women who are keeping America “free” by being sent to occupy other countries. I find myself often asking if things are really as different now as they seem, or if it’s just that I’ve had the wool removed from my eyes. I am not sure of the answer to that. But regardless, the world that we find ourselves in now is, to put it bluntly, horrible. And, in very blatant ways, the terrorists won.

We now live in a world where the act of getting on an airplane is considered criminal enough that we forfeit our rights against involuntary search and seizure. Big ole trigger warning on the link, btw.

We live in a world of extraordinary rendition, though I am not sure we haven’t been doing things like that for a long time.

We live in a world where a Democratic (ha!) President renews and expands all the horrors of the Patriot Act.  And the rabid Obots ignore and ignore and ignore. Assassinating American citizens in the way we’ve always assassinated non-Americans is now considered solid anti-terrorism policy.

We live in a world where the cruelty done to the poorest and weakest of us by that same Democratic President and the Republicans who help him, make the Republican Revolution of 1995 look like a fucking cakewalk.

The list could go on and on. But the biggest take away is we now live in a world of unending fear. Fear of violence from the state. Fear of abject poverty. Fear or religious zealots (both Christian and Muslim and and and and and). All fear, all the time.

That’s how the terrorists won.

I feel like I’ve spent the last few weeks in a whirlwind of capitalist ecstasy. I have been shopping, y’all. And not a package of underwear here and a t-shirt there, but full fledged (well semi-full fledged. I’m still a poor person and I still love thrift stores) back to school shopping for the Kid. I haven’t been able to do that since 2007. I have had to do things in tiny pieces with crossed fingers that the Kid wasn’t going to have a growth spurt and suddenly not have any pants that fit. Kid needing new shoes would create a fiery pit of fear and worry in my belly. And then there was the incident just a few months ago when I asked the kid where he was going to store his socks and underwear in his new room and he said “you mean my 3 pairs of underwear?” Oh the heartbreak and guilt and shame of not being able to properly clothe a rapidly growing child is something I hope none of you all ever has to feel. But thanks to employment, the Kid is clothed. New(ish) pants and t-shirts and long sleeve t-shirts and button down shirts and jeans and hoodies! And a dozen new pairs of boxers! New school supplies, and books. Oh I might have gone a little crazy with the books. This year’s science is biology and because my favorite part of biology was making the cell drawings, I got El Nino the biology coloring book. And the Outsiders. He’s a good age for it and Hinton is a woman who wrote the book about teenage othering of poor kids while a teenager. Better than reading Catcher in the Rye, in my opinion. And then there are the many “how to write a paper” books, since that is definitely an area that the Kid hates but that must be done this year. And Howard Zinn’s illustrated book on empire and and and. Today was the end of it. Kid got new shoes and socks. Provided he doesn’t have a freakish growth spurt, he’s all set till spring. I don’t even. What. How. I.. Shit. The long running list of shit that MUST. BE. BOUGHT. is down to half a page of notebook paper, and except for a memory foam pad for my bed (hello fibro-fucking-myalgia! Thanks for making sleeping torture!) it’s all want and not too much need. Is this how normal people live? I can’t even remember. It’s been so long. Now I have to do some serious saving of the money for the most extravagant of luxuries- dental work. There will be root canals and crowns y’all. And cleanings. Think about that.

Cherrums- plum shaped and sized fruit that tastes like a plum-cherry hybrid. So fucking awesome I may eat a dozen right now (not really, that’s like drinking a week’s worth of prune juice in one go).

I have discovered, after years of subsisting on one meal a day plus copious amount of coke(a cola), that I actually function much better if I 1) drink coffee and tea 2) eat lots of little snacks like a cut up piece of fruit or a yogurt 3)eat an actual lunch, no eating the convenience store muffin I tossed in my bag just because it was easy and calling lunch, that I feel much better. And do my job better too (I get graded on job performance every. single. day. So I know when I am slipping).

Good lord, I hope I am not on the verge of becoming a virtuous foodie. Feel free to shame me if I do. But until then, try a Cherrum! They are way better than pluots!