For my Pacific Northwesterners who can’t remember what the sun is.

For Pido, with a get big smoochy kiss of thanks

Remember kids- I drink therefore I am.

As I was attempting to drown myself in a bathtub full of tea tree oil (mosquitos people, they think I am an all you can eat buffet) I had this little thought.

MRAs are to child support* as red state conservatives are to taxes** as misogynists are to women*** as legacy graduates of Ivy league universities are to affirmative action****.

What is the common theme? These are all groups of people who contribute less to society than they get out of it, and whine the whole fucking time about what little they do have to put in.

All oppression has the same goal. Anyone who tells you to shut up about it, or that fighting against it is useless or futile, is probably one of the big, whiny, squeaky wheels getting more out of the system than they put in.

So what are your examples of big whiners getting more and paying less and complaining all the time about it? It can be racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia. Take your pick.

*for all their whining, 70 percent of child support cases are in arrears and in some states more than 50 percent of cases haven’t seen a single payment in the last year. Yes I harp on this fact. It’s important and ignored.

**red states almost universally get more money from the federal government than they pay in taxes. The opposite is true for blue states.

*** Seriously, do I need to explain how misogynists benefit from sexism? It was just national pay equality day for starters.

****Yes, I have actually had an argument with about with someone about how their legacy admission was soooooooo earned while affirmative action promotes the undeserving.

Can i write a longer post on my phone if i send it via email instead of text message or will it still break it down into tiny bits? I guess the way to test it is by writing one long boring message on my phone. Arent you all thrilled to watch the blog sausage making in action?

As the internet bill is past due and I am liberating a weak ass wifi signal from somewhere else because comcast has cut me off.

Whoopee.

“hard choices” are always made on the backs of people like me(and just about everyone reading this here bloggity blog). How come “hard choices” never come at the expense of people who the cost doesn’t matter much to?

How come it’s not the banksters sacrificing their bonuses? how come it’s not the health insurance parasites sacrificing their profits? How come it’s not the people who make over $106,800 a year who have to pay for the “hard choices”. How come it’s not military contractors or oil companies or giant agribusiness who has to pay for the “hard choices”.

How come those who benefited most from the extravagance of the last 10 30 years aren’t the ones paying for the hard choices?

You know, sometimes it’s hard to figure out just why certain oppressions exist. Sometimes it’s easy- sexism exists because it creates a huge group of unpaid workers willing to do the shitty work of raising kids and cooking meals for no pay. But with the gay marriage thing, it’s hard to figure out just why the powers that be are so reluctant to let people marry.

Until you look at the money.

The state stole everything they owned and auctioned it off. Everything. Gone.

And even when the state isn’t straight up thieving, it’s more expensive to be gay.

That’s the point of oppression. It is always the point of oppression. It is not a side effect, or a bug. It is the reason oppression exists.

h/t to chicago dyke

One of my biggest pet peeves is the pervasive and willful misunderstanding of Adam Smith and his theories on capitalism. It is from Mr. Smith that we have such ideas as the invisible hand that guides all markets to equilibrium. So perhaps this my little attempt to get you all to read (or re-read) a classic.

To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.

Wait, what? That isn’t the virtue of selfishness espoused by those sadly misguided Randian Objectivists. That sounds damn near like something super-socialist Jesus would say.

As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.

bolds mine

Why Mr. Smith, I do believe you are saying that men will always, given the opportunity, take what they haven’t earned. This does not sound like a push for a completely “free” and unregulated market. Quite the opposite, actually.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.

Would you please rise from the grave Mr. Smith, and explain that to the illustrious Chicago school economists who’s theories are increasing the poverty rate just as fast as they can? Pretty please. I’ll even hold the seance.

I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

That one’s for the Health insurance parasites.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices

That one’s for the lobbyists.

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him.

Sacre Bleu! That sounds like a call for a minimum wage! Somebody call for the fainting couch for the libertarians!

Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

I do wonder what Mr. Smith would have to say about Wall Street bonuses. Actually, I don’t. I’m pretty sure he’d spit in a banskters eye rather than shake his hand.

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

That one’s for the Teabaggers and Rethuglikans alike.

I generally have very little problem laying out for you all those things that other people keep quiet about, like the depth of poverty, or my history of abortion. I’m not ashamed of those things. They happen. Ditto on domestic violence, etc.

But there is a part of me that I hide. It’s the hurty part, the sick part. That I am still a bit ashamed of, though why is silly. I don’t like to be considered weak, and the hurty part is a serious weakness to me. But……

In the last few days I’ve had a couple of “freak outs”. Freak outs happen when I’ve been over stimulated. Too much light, sound, strongs smells, touch, whatever, can send me into a kind of ragey place. Like the hulk. I jokingly refer to it as my adult onset autism. The other day, i got bit by a flea (and I am allergic to fleas, in a matter of seconds I was covered in ugly purple welts) and ran around like screaming a wee bit until I could drown myself in a bathtub. I keep my bedroom dark and cool. I don’t have a tv in here. It’s my safe place to hide out when there is too much world in the world. But the new cat has sprayed into the air vent and the whole room smells like boy cat, which gives me a migraine. And the temp rose and it got hot. And there is a giant yellow sulfur light outside my bedroom window that even with the blinds closed manages to keep me from sleeping, everytime I roll over its glare wakes me up. And I’m itchy because along with the fleas we got mosquitos. And I’ve always been a bit of the princess and the pea about my bed. Any lump in the sheet or crease in the pillow will bother me.

So trying to sleep went something like this. Try to get comfy, but my damn t-shirt has a seem that is in the wrong place and my pillows won’t fluff in the right way. Get the pillow fixed and now the fucking light is in my eyes and damn that frigging cat, my head hurts. Put pillow over head to shield from both light and smell. Try to scratch itchy bites without moving much. Fall asleep for about a minute, but head is too hot from being covered by pillow. Throw pillow off, blinded by light and cat smell. Turn over. Repeat entire process. Repeat entire process. Repeat entire process.

By 11am I was freaking the fuck out. This is like 3 or 4 days of not having a safe place to be or sleep. It was not pretty. I begged the Kid to “please, for god’s sake I’ve been asking you for days to do something about the cat smell, it’s killing me, my head arghhhhhhhh” There may have been tears at that point. Then there was valium. Sweet sweet valium. Thank gawd for the shrink who prescribed them , even if what is left of my prescription in now past its use by date. And then a very long nap.

It still smells, though now it smells like fabreeze and cat, which I don’t think is much better and my head still hurts. I draped a sheet over the offending window. I’m going back to sleeping au naturel, sorry family if you accidently see some boobage upon entering my room, but that’s one less layer of fabric to fight with. We’ll see how it goes.

A few years ago I would have just been angry and not known why. I’m sure there would have been some way that I would justify it. Angry is not weak. But being “overly sensitive” in the most literal of ways is.

This is part of why I just disappear sometimes. The light of the compy can be too much. I don’t like to admit that I can be thwarted by something as small as a bad light or an insect bite or the nasty smell of food stored in plastic containers*, when I’ve been hiking through jungles and climbed pyramids and been the bystander who jumps between bullies and their victims. I hate it because it makes me kinda high maint, and that is sooooo not the kind of person I ever wanted to be. So now you all know, if you ever want to bring me down, offer me a plastic glass of tap water in a brightly lit room full of insects. I could take waterboarding, but the florescent lights at interrogation would break me.

*Seriously, I can’t drink out of most plastic cups because they stink. I am a bit of a super-nose, which is good for cooking but means that I can smell other peoples earwax if the are close enough, and artificial orange flavors/scents like orange bubble gum send me over the edge into dizzy headache near seizure land. I hate it. In the middle of today’s freakout the kid brought me an icepack to help with the headache and I couldn’t use it because “ugh it smells like fridge” fridge meaning the pico de gallo I made a month ago.