Beautiful Minds
It was fun at first. One day you were alone, and the next day you weren’t. One day the only people you knew were the people you met, and the next day you knew people you would never meet. It was fun. It was fun not being alone any more.
It wasn’t just that you knew people you would never meet, it was that you shared something with them, something important, something you couldn’t share with the people you knew. You shared your spirit. Sharing your spirit is fun.
And it was fun knowing that other people were sharing their spirits as well, people you never knew and would never meet, people who had also been alone and now who weren’t. It was fun knowing people were doing that while you were, all having fun, all sharing their spirits, all finding kindred spirits to share them with, all those spirits swirling around in a place that didn’t exist, a place that couldn’t exist, a space that could only be filled with imagination, a space full of spirit.
It was like that for awhile.
It was like that for a long time, really, twenty, twenty-five years, a generation’s worth of time, a time for brand-new people to grow up with a space where their spirits could roam freely, looking for other spirits, never knowing a world without that space that only existed in imagination, never living without it, never knowing what it was like to live in a world where you were alone. It was beautiful, really. It was really fucking beautiful.
And it didn’t last.
It’s still there, that space, this space, this space where spirits roam in search of kindred spirits. But it has turned ugly, and people are feeling that, feeling what happens when this beautiful space is soured by spirits who seek to dominate others, the same spirits who seek to dominate others in physical spaces, evil spirits who are no longer bound by the limits of who they meet, who can find kindred evil spirits of their own, and turn on the beautiful spirits who roam freely. We have brought our imaginations into a space that can only exist in imagination, and we have again discovered a lesson we have known forever, that we create the world we live in, real or cyber, and that world is always everything we are. We keep meeting the enemy, and they is always us.
And now we are living the consequence of our creation, a consequence we should have seen coming but didn’t, so intoxicating was the joy that was revealed when the space first opened up. We are now living in a world of sublime microtargeting, a world where our very souls can be harvested and collated and exchanged and attacked, a world where we all made our souls freely available because all we wanted was for other souls to find us, and never be alone.
It’s not that we can’t have nice things. It’s that we can’t keep them nice. Wherever we go, there we are. And now there’s nowhere else to turn.
Humans. Fucking things up since time immemorial.
@SanFranLefty: Dinosaurs had shit down. We’re not even bothering to wait for the meteor.
And now there’s nowhere else to turn.
Sure there is. I came here.
We’ve got our own private booth reserved in the matrix : )
@JNOV: Sorry, I’ve been forced to sell you all for medical experiments.
@nojo: Pish.
Keep me apprised of the HS mascot debate?
@JNOV: The actual decision was made more than a month ago, and the thread has pretty much died out, except for some occasional fogey dropping by to grouse that it’s not fair how life changes.
@nojo: Uh, is there something that you need to tell us?
I don’t know how I’d withstand the upcoming months of Prezinazi AntiChrist’s evil regime without our online coffee klatch.
Of course we could also set up shop on Google+, where no one will ever find us.
FSM knows that I’ve been marching and demonstrating for nearly two decades, but after seeing the crowds at the worldwide MFOL Saturday–combined with the history-smashing Womxn’s Marches over the past two years–it seems incontrovertible that a massive political and social change is in progress.
These are the largest mass protests in our lifetimes, and people seem acutely aware that they need to turn up at the ballot box to vote the malevolent GOP out of office everywhere. The Republinazis all have to go, and a much better future seems right around the corner. Seems Pollyanna-ish, I know, and yet the dream seems just in reach.
Well…I had my DNA tested, and it looks like my maternal grandmother, who was forced to give my mother up for adoption, might be alive. I’m sort of having a moment.
@¡Andrew!: Every sperm is sacred.
This is heartwarming on this dreary Monday:
Starkville, Mississippi Got Its Pride, and it was the City’s Largest Parade Ever
“I never expected to have this many people,” Spruill said. “Somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 people and this would never have happened if we didn’t have the controversy, so I’m almost grateful for the controversy in the sense it became something more than it ever would have been and it became something we can be very proud of, with no issues associated with it.”
My big fear at this point is that there will be no follow through in the voting booth this fall.
On the other hand, another fear is that all the republican retirements are to set up the democrats to take the blame for the tax reform bill. The middle class folks, even in fly over states, will feel the pain in their shorts starting in the spring of 2019. I can imagine the howling now.
@DElurker: Get these nazi fuckwads the hell outta office has to be priority numero uno, regardless. We’ll be dealing with the aftermath either way.
I’ve been wrestling with the most effective way to donate munnie. Up til now, I’ve been giving a little to each of various groups, like Act Blue, along with local WA orgs. However, would it be more effective to give a lump sum directly to a candidate, like Beto O’Rourke? Thoughts?
@¡Andrew!: I tend to donate directly to candidates in districts we have a chance of flipping.
By sheer coincidence, Josh at TPM just posted on this very pressing topic:
Where to put your campaign money?
The short answer is that there is no correct answer (bah, I say!), and the slightly longer answer is it depends.
@Mistress Cynica: Yeah, former WA state senator Lisa Brown is running against Cathy McMorris Rogers, and this is our best bet to flip that district in ages. Also, Sheriff Hairspray/Notorious Dumbfuck Dave Reichert is “retiring” (hounded out of office + suffering from drain bammage, take your pick), so whomever wins the Dem survivor primary likely will take that one as well with enough $$$.
@Mistress Cynica: I do this as well. Connor Lamb, Doug Joes, The Montana Cowboy, that Ossoff (sp?) guy.
ETA: I will never give my measly duckets to the DNC.
@¡Andrew!: I scared him, and he ran away. He is a stupid fuck.
@DElurker: Drive people to the polls for me? Hatch Act sez I can’t even do that.
Oh, hey. I’m trying to get as close to zero waste as possible. I’m taking baby steps, and if I make it to 25% waste in 10 years, I’ll consider it a victory.
To that end, if it’s yellow, let it mellow. <- that takes some getting used to, and then I'm afraid the tp will clog the toilet, and I drink waaaaay too much coffee, but so far, so good.
I woke up at 4am. Maybe I've hit the age where I don't sleep anymore. Who knows? Anyway, I decided that since I was up, I might as well make my DIY Bokashi Bins, and I am bokashi-ing everything. I mean errrrrythin. I am going to bokashi Joy’s poop. Whole hog, yo. Whole hog. I’m also hanging out with the permaculture people. Sure, some are post-apocalyptic-doomsday-don’t-shoot-me,-bro folks, but some are just freaks like me with a little too much time because no FB.
ETA: I am the proud owner of Muck Boots! I am so rad.
@JNOV: Be sure to email your manifesto : >
@JNOV: PS I’ve been sufferin’ from early morning insomnia for a few years, it happens to a lot a people around the time they turn 40, I’m told. No matter how late I stay up, I pop awake around 4:30 am. And that’s how I became a 5 am gym rat : >
@¡Andrew!: I’ll email it to my white white white relatives I just found on Ancestry! DNA don’t lie, yaw! Surmotherfuckingprise!
What else? Um…no Native American on either side. The thing my paternal grandmother denied – ha! We are part Jewish. I can trace the white people back to 18th century Luxembourg. The black folk? Not quite so far. We meld into white (owner? ancestor?) in the 19th century. My father went to a bunch of plantations (I’m sorry, I will never), anyway, he went all over North Carolina looking through documents and searching cemeteries, and blech. I imagine those white folk will pop up in my YOU SHARE DNA sooner or later. This is so fucking freaky.
And I emailed my mother a picture of her birthmother. I can’t keep that to myself out of spite.
Now we know why Twitler’s Dr. Feel Good openly lied hiz zazz off at that press conference. Meet your new VA Secretary.
And now for something completely different: Happy political news!!!
The Republican Party is poised to lose its status as a qualified political party in DC
…the GOP is poised to lose its status as a “qualified political party” in Washington, D.C., because it has not recruited any candidates for citywide office in this spring’s June 19 primary elections.
If there are no Republican write-in candidates gaining at least 7,500 votes, then the GOP will cease to exist as a political party in the capital. That official demise would follow the more rhetorical assessments that the president has already destroyed the party.
@¡Andrew!: I know! Hahaha! OMG. The main issue is the argument over privatizing the hospitals. There’s a program (underfunded by this administration), called VA Choice for people who live x amount of miles away from a VAMC, are too sick to travel to a VAMC, or meet other criteria. They can be seen by local doctors without a problem. Except that the program isn’t funded right now. Go figure.
But take WA state. There are three VAMCs: Seattle, Spokane, and American Lake. WA is a big fucking state that has a shitton of bases which means a shitton of people stayed here when they retired. Think San Diego without the USMC bases. Three VAMCs is not enough. There are some Vet Centers, but those are usually office space for psych folks treating vets.
Soooo… IDK. You can’t turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. The VA is the like the United States 7th Fleet of healthcare.
FB Post:
In other news, my daughter (she’s started calling me “Mom”!!!) is going to Australia tomorrow. Her job is sending her for a month. I might meet her on her way back when she has a layover in Vancouver BC.
Bokashi bin going strong.
I accidentally hatched some mason bees in my living room. The cats alerted me to the fact that some were crawling around the carpet.
Dudes finished power washing the joint and scraping off old paint, and SURPRISE! There’s some rotten wood possibly keeping the roof from caving in.
Fin
@¡Andrew!: Oh my god, I forgot that was him because it was like 10 weeks ago, which feels like a year in Trump Time. Jesus H. Christ.
@¡Andrew!: Lololol. Not surprised in the least. Turnout for the 2016 Republican presidential primary was abysmal, and the top vote-getters were Rubio and Kasich, with Trump a distant third. At this point, pretty much the only way a Republican can get elected to citywide office is by running for the State* Board of Education as an “independent” like this twit.
@mellbell: Let’s pray to the FSM that this is some real life foreshadowing : )
In Seattle, statues of Lenin outnumber Republinazis one to zero.
/Nu Yawk, Nu Yawk/
I’m totally adding Unqualified Lesbian to my bizniss cards.
Wow. Mnuchin thought the line item veto was a legit thing. The “best and smartest” don’t get the separation of powers/co-equal branch business.
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