Political history

The history of the parties doesn’t mean anything when you are voting for their current positions. Moral purism is a red herring. What are the parties supporting right now? What affect are they having on this country right now?

Democrats do not currently advocate slave ownership, so miss me with your irrelevant history lesson.

Spatulas

I don’t know WHAT I was dreaming about last night, but at one point I was taking wooden spoons and spatulas out of people’s hands, like ‘No. You do not need this. You do not need to hit yourself with this as a punishment. Or anyone else. NOPE.’

And Another one Down

My dog died, so I don’t feel much like creating.

I cried a lot before he died. I was trying to figure out what was wrong with him. No one knew. They told me the tests came back fine. That he was doing well for his age (16).

I’m upset.

They did more tests, when he couldn’t get up and developed lumps all over his sides.

He was in advanced renal failure.

I’m incensed that no one caught it sooner.  Surely, someone should have noticed something. I repeated his symptoms over and over, to everyone I thought could help. He was throwing “randomly,” I told them. No, it doesn’t seem to be related to food. I tried so many different kinds–raw. Fresh. High quality kibble.

In the end, they prescribed a fresh diet, and a bunch of pills, along with liquid medicine.

It was too late.

I hope my parents got their money back.

They failed him. I failed him. I didn’t brush his teeth often enough. That leads to dental disease, which often leads to kidney failure.

He didn’t like his teeth brushed, and I couldn’t bring myself to do something he didn’t like. I can barely keep up with my own teeth. Hygiene tends to go first, when your self-esteem drops.

There are three other adults in the house, though, and I’m upset that they didn’t do it either. In spite of my repeated requests to help. I could have handled being one of three people trading off the duty of brushing his teeth. I couldn’t handle being the only one. I couldn’t handle being the dog girl anymore. I couldn’t handle everyone looking to me for answers.

I didn’t know what to do.

The most the vet ever told us, before his last days–and we took him to at least five different vets, because maybe this one could help where the last one couldn’t–was to give him Pepcid AC.

My dog was suffering from kidney disease, probably for a very long time, and they essentially told us to put a bandaid on it.

I knew what was coming. Remember Marley and Me? How the dog’s legs stopped working? How his owner had to carry him outside to go to the bathroom?

It was like that.

I’m glad the vet was closed, when we finally decided to euthanize him. I wanted to yell at them. They failed me. They failed my dog. They didn’t even try to guess at what was wrong with him until it was far, far too late. He could have been so much more comfortable if they’d just said, hey, this might be kidney disease.

I’m sorry I pushed to keep him alive until he had a seizure, but if I could have, I would have continued caring for him until he died naturally. I wanted to rip the needle out of the vet tech’s hand. We were sobbing.

I gave myself a week, before Bear died. I knew this was coming. I like to do things ahead of time. I’ve been grieving for a long time.

I’m ready to move on. I’m ready to feel happy again.

Maybe I’m not ready… but I want to be. I was so sad during his life. He’s at peace now. It’s time to be happy again.

I Will Wait for You

I said I could write an essay on ‘I Will Wait for You’ by Mumford and Sons… so, what the hell, I’m going to do it.

Well I came home
Like a stone
And I fell heavy into your arms
These days of dust
Which we’ve known
Will blow away with this new sun

 

Ok, I’ll admit that I don’t fully understand this stanza as of yet. I can identify with the feeling behind it, though–that feeling of heaviness. That feeling where you don’t sit, you don’t kneel, you don’t lower yourself–you just sort of lean towards the nearest accommodating piece of furniture and let gravity do the rest. That feeling where you feel like you’re falling into someone. There’s so much gravity in this stanza alone, and I’m sure I’ll parse it out later.

“These days of dust” is more comprehensible to me–our days are like dust. We’re only here for an instant, before we blow away. “[…]this new sun” indicates, to me, that this isn’t entirely a bad thing–suns can scorch, but they also bring life.

That’s a fairly minor bit though, so moving on…

But I’ll kneel down
Wait for now
And I’ll kneel down
Know my ground

This is where I proceed to begin bouncing up and down like a small child who’s just discovered a new favorite dessert.

If days are dust, there’s no time to waste–but the author is willing to wait. Time is short–but it’s worth saving for someone you love. Life is barely here before it’s gone–so it’s a huge sacrifice to spend a large portion of that time waiting for someone else.

So break my step
And relent
You forgave and I won’t forget

This, ladies and gentlemen, is probably the stanza that means more to me than any other stanza in any other song in the entire universe.

….or, well, of the ones I’ve heard, at least.

“Break my step”…. holy cow. So much power in those words–because it’s a willing release of power. “Break my step”…. in other words, trip me up. Ruin my plans. Stop me from doing what I was planning to do. Break apart my next move.

It’s amazing. It’s only one line. And so much is packed into it.

“You forgave and I won’t forget” is especially meaningful to me, because I’ve needed to forgive and be forgiven so, so many times. The long-lasting, deep friendships I have only exist because of forgiveness. This line is saying, “You gave me a precious gift, and I will hold onto that for as long as my memory holds out.”

It’s one of the best lines I’ve ever heard.

 

 

Noah

Mad Max asks, “Who killed the world?” Noah answer, “We did. We killed the world.” And Noah’s conscience suffers greatly because of this.

Therein lies my main problem with this movie.

Deviances from the story, I expect–not everyone believes in the Bible. That’s fine. The creators chose to weave in different beliefs from Jewish gnosticism. That’s actually quite interesting, and I’ll try to mention it again later, but I rather enjoyed that part. It didn’t bother me the way it bothered my more conservative friends.

What bothered me was how Noah-centric they made this film.

That may seem odd, but Noah had a wife and three sons–who, by the way, were already married when the floodwaters came.

Because he thought he was carrying out God’s will, this Noah not only kept his sons from even meeting women outside their family (because “oh no everyone else is immoral and no one’s worth saving now we’re all doomed to judgment”), but he also let Ham’s love interest die because he thought God wanted the human race to die out completely.

That is so far off base i cannot even

Ham became jealous and bitter. He wanted someone. His older brother, Shem, had a love interest. His father had his mother. Every animal had a partner–remind me to touch on that again later.

But because of his father’s self-assured decisiveness, Ham couldn’t even bring home an innocent victim who was trying to escape from the atrocities being committed by the army who came against Noah.

That’s another thing–this movie pretty much makes everything surround Noah. Everything that happens, it’s Noah’s doing, it’s Noah’s fault. People were abused and dying because Tubal-Cain got mad a Noah and decided to only feed those who could fight. Which, well, they were already eating animals before that–which was painted as a horrible terrible awful thing to do–but the story acts as though everything went to heck and back because of a grudge match, more than because humankind was already evil.

This post is already pretty long and I’ve barely even started.

It’s funny– last night, battlebat35 was telling me about Berserk. How this one guy was so consumed with revenge that he relentlessly pursued a girl who was just trying to run away. How he shrugged aside everyone and everything that got in his way, no matter how badly they tried to hurt him.

That’s essentially what Noah did when Ila gave birth to two daughters. He was convinced that God was telling him to kill them. He was convinced that mankind was so irredeemable that they should all die out. He was convinced that, since women can bear children, any girl children should die by his hand.

As you might have guessed, he would have let a male child live.

Of course he doesn’t actually kill them, so the story arc itself has some redeeming qualities. It’s about hope, and redemption, and how humans can be good even though they’re also bad.

But I loathe the middle. I hate how his wife could only beg and plead for him to change his mind, how the most “powerful” thing she did was tell him that if he killed those children, he would die alone and hated (and that that would be justice). I hated that they set up Noah to believe, without any solid proof, that he was solely responsible for the redemption of the earth.

Noah had three sons. His sons had three wives. The story could have avoided being misogynistic. Instead, it leaped right into misogyny’s arms and embraced it like a long-lost lover.

See, the thing about the Bible is that you can say it’s centered around the men if you want–but it always acknowledges that the women are still powerful.

Eve. Sara. Rachel. Esther. Mary. Martha. They all had agency. They all lived in male-dominated worlds and they still were treated as capable human beings. They were allowed to be vipers, to be tricksters, like Salome and Delilah. And I really feel this movie did women an injustice. They could have given us relatable characters. They could have expanded on what little we know of those ladies in the ark. Instead, they focused on Noah–and Japheth disappeared from the narrative almost entirely.

The rock monsters were actually interesting–there are beings like that in Dragon Age, specifically Dragon Age 2. If you look at the lore, I’d wager a guess that they even have similar stories.

What’s even more intriguing to me is that Noah’s grandfather, Methuselah, uses a hand motion to put Shem to sleep–the same hand motion used in The Legend of Korra to take away bending. As far as I know, none of the stories I’ve mentioned are related in any way–the creators may have drawn inspiration from similar sources, but they weren’t telling the same stories. So it’s interesting to me that the elements within those stories are so similar.

It’s not like dwarves and elves–these aren’t things commonly seen in fantasy. Golems, sure–but this is a specific type of golem, with disjointed limbs and light peeking out from the cracks in its structure. Why now? Why are all of these similar things coming out now? I don’t think the creators talked to each other. I don’t think they collaborated. Why would they produce the same things?

I think it’s incredibly meaningful. I’m going to sit back and wait to find out why.

It’s time to play, “which mental illness is it this time?”

I’m autistic. That comes with a side of ADHD. It’s also led to anxiety, paranoia, and slight scophobia, which is the fear of being looked at.

I hate feeling watched.

I’m getting better. I can now walk down the street with my dogs during daylight hours. I stopped because so many people in my neighborhood would tell me they saw me walking all the time. The comments themselves were harmless–but when I walk, I think. I like to be alone, because it feels personal. So when so many people told me that they are watching during my private moments, even if those “private” moments are held in public, well…

I felt exposed. I felt vulnerable. So I started walking my dogs at night.

When I realized that lot of people like to stay in their cars and talk, I started walking later and later. Walking at 1 am means I won’t run into the people who come home at 9  or 10 or 11 pm, and I won’t have worry about whether the owner of the car with its lights beaming down the street is staring at me. Walking at 1 am means I have the entire street to myself, and I don’t have to worry about what anyone else thinks of me. Walking at 1 am gives me the chance to be alone.

I guess it was a natural progression, to go from walking later and later to not walking at all. I used to walk every day. Now I probably walk a few times a week.

As I said, I’m getting better. But now I have to change my habits. And that’s tough. Tougher than building a habit that doesn’t mean overriding one that already exists.

I haven’t been posting because it feels useless. That’s the depression talking–or is it anxiety? I think it’s depression. That’s one of the symptoms, right? That nothing you do matters.

I can still post on my private tumblr account, but that feels useless too. No one wants to read my words. They want to reblog the gifs about a show that someone else made. My most popular post is about someone else. I’m very proud of that legacy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel ignored.

I used to think this wasn’t an issue for me. That I’m an introvert, so I don’t need people.

I was wrong. Apparently, feedback is very important to me. And, also apparently, I like feedback best when it’s coming from my preferred persons. And those preferred persons don’t always want to give the kind of feedback I’m looking for. So I guess I’m a bit more extroverted than originally planned.

This contributes to thoughts of worthlessness, which contributes to a depressive funk, which contributes to my anxiety because I feel I’m not good enough, which leads me to cut people out of my life, which leads to reduced opportunites for jobs and friends, which means I feel even more like a failure at life, and no one wants to hear my whining anyway. It’s like a merry-go-round of doom, and some people don’t make it off the playground alive.

I never thought that I’d consistently want to check up on my friends to see if they’re still alive.

I’m trying to get back to this blog, because I like to write. It’s fun for me. It’s an outlet for emotions, and I enjoy critiquing things. I treasure every follow, every like. It’s just hard to summon the energy when you feel like a small pathetic blob so gross that no one wants to come close.

I know, in my head, that’s not true. I can’t help feeling that way, though. I can fight it with all I am, but I can’t always help it. It persists, like a gut issue that won’t go away no matter how many things you try.

I’m not asking for help, so don’t worry about it. I’m just trying to get something out there to kick myself into writing again. I tried to make another post about humans and the ethical ramifications of dog breeding, but who even cares? Who would even listen? Why even post something like that?

So I’m trying to jump a hurdle with a lame leg. Here’s my leap.

Arrow: Draw Back Your Bow

Stephen Amell thought the last episode of Arrow was great.

It featured:

  • a mentally ill woman killing people because she’s obsessed with the Arrow
  • The Arrow coercing her therapist to breach at least part of the doctor-patient confidentiality agreement via intimidation
  • the heroes neglecting to even mention “hey I don’t kill people anymore so could you please not do that because there are better ways to get me to like you” and going straight for the “you’re crazy. please stop.” option
  • Felicity being fabulous as always (although I didn’t know she was that into clothes)
  • Ray Palmer being endearingly creepy by renting Felicity an expensive couture dress and a ten million dollar diamond necklace (despite her protestations)
  • Ray Palmer ever so gently emotionally pressuring Felicity into feeling obligated to attend a business dinner (complete with mention of wrist slitting)
  • Diggle taking it upon himself to tell Felicity that she should just ignore Oliver’s stand-offishness and get back with him because “he’s not good at expressing his feelings” (valid issue but not a solid reason for staying with someone)
  • Felicity going “Um no he can talk to me if he has a problem you shouldn’t come for him” YOU GO GIRL. PREACH.
  • Oliver telling the “crazed cupid” that he must be alone it’s just so important to his lifestyle while Felicity was listening
  • Ray and Felicity kissed and then Ray just went “Oops that’s not platonic sorry” and left her standing in the office.
  • RAY YOU DO NOT JUST GET TO GO “OOPS, SORRY,” TAKE IT BACK, AND THEN LEAVE. BAD. BAD RAY. BAD BAD BAD RAY. BAD BOY. BAD DOG.
  • can you tell I’m a little upset about this episode

Are Big-Name Companies Trying to Take Advantage of You?

My brain is weird. It automatically tries to view every. single. situation. from every angle humanly possible.

Which is great, just frustrating.

Case in point: I just kinda chewed out Office Max on twitter because I feel taken advantage of by their customer survey. Why?

I’ve been a part of multiple focus groups.

Focus groups are market research meetings. This means that a company, specifically designed for this purpose, will hire people in that area to provide feedback for a specific company.

In other words you get paid at least $20-$30 for the same survey companies ask their customers to do for free. On a regular basis.

“But they’re offering me a discount!”

LET ME TELL YOU A THING

The discount they just offered me was $10 off a $50 purchase.

I don’t tend to make $50 purchases without a good windfall and/or a lot of prior planning.

So in other news they just used you for market research purposes and you have to PAY THEM FOR IT. Because you’re not making any money, just spending a little less the next time you shop.

Yeah, a penny saved is a penny earned, but a discount =/= getting money for an activity.

Maybe some companies offer better deals. I don’t know. I tend to ignore the surveys at the bottom of my receipts (partially because of the reasons I just mentioned). But I see companies do this a lot, and unless you’re offering me 50% you’re probably not worth my time.

For what it’s worth, I do understand the reason they do this.

They’re trying to save money.

See, companies have to pay the market research companies to conduct surveys for them, and it can be kinda hard to find people already doing focus groups who purchase the things from the places they’re trying to survey about, so it’s a lot easier for them to just stick a rote message at the bottom of all their receipts so that people will basically work for themfor free.

They’re BIG companies. The money they lose on your discount is probably practically negligible. I’ll bet they lose more on the extra ink they use to add the messages on the receipts. (I have nothing to back this up, but either way I would not be surprised at all.)

tl;dr: Big companies dangle fishbait in front of hapless customers like you and I in hopes of not having to pay for market research.

P.S. I would excuse this if the companies were, y’know, small. Not Wal-mart. Not Office Max. Not RadioShack.