Unkind

 

I had a movie review, of sorts, ready to go. Then, I went to Thanksgiving with the very very very red-hatted, MAGA relatives. It was fine. It was okay. Except for this odd twenty minutes or so. When this young woman, who had a year-old baby, went on and on about how homeless people are the real villains of American society.

When I hear how the young people of ‘murica are woke as fuck, I just start laughing. Not in Idaho, honey!

I mean, it was textbook Fox News talking points. Right down to my aunt sneering how those homeless people parked their expensive cars around the block after panhandling all day.

How this one homeless woman had a million in the bank. No name, no details, not a name or a state or even the name of the bank this alleged homeless millionaire lady had her money stashed away in.

Just this vague, urban legends, sort of riff. The welfare queen, which has always more or less been with us. The shifty beggar who’s scamming us. The panhandler who’s raking in big dough! How dare they?! They spend all that money they get on drugs and liquor! They just throw away the food you give them!

There was also a brisk discussion of public parks, what homeless people do to the porta-potties and bathrooms. How guards have to chase them off. Because the homeless sorts are doing drug deals and probably having sex with each other.

In the porta-potties! I’m never using a porta-potty again, was, I believe, the conclusion drawn from all this. 

There was the groaning from the relatives and this young woman, who’s a relative by marriage to my relative, I think. I find this young woman forgettable. A baby factory for the upcoming civil war, frankly. Yes, I am awful. Yes, I am.

Now, me breaking in with how full of shit that all was. No. Me breaking in with name names, what are your sources. Nope.

Because the relatives and relatives of my relatives don’t fact check anything. Why should they? It’s far more sexy to believe there’s a legion of homeless scammers doing lots of drugs, eating steak and lobster every night from their food stamps wrangling, and driving about in a Mercedes after spending all day in smelly rags pretending how poor they were. You don’t have to feel guilty about them folks, after all. Not if they’re all drug addicts, thieves and the worst of the worst. The beggars now are not the virtuous sorts they had in their days, no sir!

Yeah.

I think of my self-preservation during these absurd sneerings about the truly down and out. I also think I have to avoid Christmas, because I really don’t enjoy these people anymore. Nor do I wish to sit there doing a slow burn, with my fingernails dug into my leg to stop me from smacking the holy living verbal shit out of these clusterfuckers. Sure, it will feel so good, it would make a great moment in a play or a movie,. But. Real life, you have to deal with the consequences of turning into a rabid hyena and chewing up your racist, awful relatives.

Which marks me as a coward. A silent one.

Which claws at me far more than anything ‘those people’ can sneer out about this group or that one. That I kept my head down, rather than risk being flayed alive by the entire crew. As I have spoken up before, I have. I know what will happen, right down to the last eye roll.

That I kept silent so my own failures and lack of anything resembling a life or career would not be thrown at my head. I have not been writing. I have not felt bold lately at all. The rejections roll in in a thick, steady stream. My few submissions sent out net me zero results. Which is standard writer crap, but still.

That old crud of why bother, you’re a loser drifts into my head like a stinking poisoned fog. That old music playing and playing. And the realization. That I think every day of ending it. Every day.

Every day.

I dread what they will say at any funeral services held for me. I dread hearing it. If I hear anything at all. But perhaps no one will notice that much. Be relieved I am gone. Or tell stories of how I panhandled, and parked my spendy ride around the block to fool everyone. Perhaps I will join the parade of unkind myths about such people as me. The next generation of babies will be trained to spew the talking points. Beggars bad, rich people angels.

The bungled and the botched, I believe, is what will be written in the dirt. Then carelessly smudged by passing feet. Spare change will remain in pockets as people virtuously ignore the scammers holding out dented old tin cups. My little world has turned into some sort of absurd Dickens-like tale. Like Miss Havisham, I seem frozen in time. 

Happy Thanksgiving

I do actually have a long post, about not much at all, scheduled for release into the wild. But. Have a great day if you celebrate Thanksgiving. Have a great day if you don’t. I think that covers everyone?

 

 

Little Ornaments

Half-painted!

I’m not writing. I have maybe two words rattling around in my writer jar. Those two words seem to be slurgatt and fzzutrty. I can’t really do anything with those two. No stories seem to form, not even bad poetry slinks off into the wastelands where bad poems go to die.

Instead, I’m obsessed over making little ornaments for Christmas presents. I got some paints, some brushes, made that salt clay. The kind you used to make at school or maybe even at home. Salt, flour, water. You work it into some sort of shape or get the cookie cutters out. It dries, you paint it! DIY!

Yep, that’s what I’ve been doing instead of writing. So, still being creative, just not writing. I got two submissions done this week, so that’s, um, good. I feel guilty. That I’m not writing. I survived the midterms, and took up painting clumsy little hand-cut clay ornaments.

Ah, survived the midterms. There it is. What a…mm. The blue wave did show up. It took a bit to notice that, but it did show up. Cutting through the babble exhausts me. So I watch old cooking show contests and jab Christmas hues on dried flour lumps. I like the sparkle of silver, the luster of antique gold. I wonder how to make the red look less flat. Maybe I can just paint everything blue? I love glitter and glue, but now there’s glitter from one end of the house to the other! Can you paint something orange or is that too Halloween? I don’t even have orange! What do I have for string?

I love painting. I love coloring, too. It’s very soothing. I have something finished at the end. Look, I finished this, it looks okay. I used to love painting anything for a stage production as well. Detail work on something meant to look like a wall. A floor that needs something to make it seem not a stage floor. A costume that needs hand-painted flowers on it…oh yes. I haven’t done any work like that for ages. I can write bad plays, then slap paint on flat backgrounds for them! I rock and roll this planet, ya’ll! Sarcasm aside, I do like seeing something blank turned into something. Yeah, it’s that simple.

Little ornaments, before I wander off into some other subject entirely. That’s the other thing. I find it very hard to concentrate on writing anything right now. I’ll open a file, then just close it back up, with a notion that. That. Yeah. See what I mean?

Finished!

But the owls call at night again. I open the door, it’s dark yet. Coyotes squabble nearby. The corn fields have been mostly cut around here, the deer run about, the pheasants scoot here and there. The two dogs want to hunt mice, though it’s cold out. No snow or rain forecast here. It’s just cold. Nothing profound here but the turning of the season toward winter’s thrall. Great writers have surely exhausted that seasonal change. Perhaps nothing is left to write about. Maybe that’s why my brain shut off, went into drift mode.

Maybe I should take up a career in tentacle porn fanfiction. Take various famous figures, have them encounter…mmm. What other color combos are used for holiday decorations?

Further examples!

Our fall foliage is either this rather eye-watering yellow or sickly dead leaf brown. See? No snow or rain for quite some time. That’s the Malheur Butte!

The Cracks Do Show

Jake waiting for me to throw the stick. Behind him is a sugar beet field. 

I am making salt clay ornaments for presents. Or just to give myself a much-needed project to help me start focusing again. As my brain seems made of fog and cotton candy right now. I made up the clay mixture– salt, water, flour. I used cookie cutters for the shapes. Tree, star, circle, candy cane, snowflake. Other odd vague holiday shapes. I dried them a bit in the oven, but the dough puffs up. So, I let them air dry, figure the puffy parts are ‘artistic’.

I got some sparkly gold and silver paint, some actual glitter. As the paint, when it dries, is rather dull.

I noticed that the Democrats took back the House of Representatives, but the GOP, somehow, held on to the Senate.

It seems there was a lot of cheating, voter suppression, voter intimidation, etc, etc. See Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Dakotas, etc.

I also noted that the orange stain forced Sessions into resigning, then propped up some fanboy to oversee the Mueller investigation…all of this within hours of election results on Tuesday night. Mm.

There’s also the latest mass shooting , in Thousand Oaks, CA. Suspect is dead. Lots of others, dead. Dead, death, dying. Tots and pears offered. Mm.

I have lots of little ornaments to paint. If I can make them look presentable or as if painted by a Kandinsky or a Matisse, then I will give them as modest little presents. A little something to hang on a tree a few days a year. 

Writing? What’s that? I can’t match the absurdity that is American politics right now anyway. I can’t rise to the level of sheer jaw-dropping WTF twists and turns that play out minute to minute anymore.

My imagination grabbed at its chest, muttered something about they’re not even trying to hide how corrupt and awful they are…then slumped to the floor of my skull. The EMT’s are trying to revive it. Waiting. Waiting. Mm.

The cracks show now in America. We can usually pretend here, real hard, that we’re nice and civil. That we’re not the biggest bag of racist assholes on the planet. Our elections say otherwise, these days. Hopefully THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT. This time unicorns will show up and stab the bad guys! Whee. Mm. Maybe? What? Recount? There’s recounts galore goin’ on?? Whiskey, whiskey would taste nice right now.

I can’t wait to get out my paints, work on beautifying dried out flour, water, salt. As Christmas fare plays nearby. Or something equally innocuous and soothing. I might also go for a walk today, if the wind isn’t blowing. That cold wind that says

Hi there, it’s November, here’s an icy blast, you idiot wanderer of dirt ways and weedy hollows.

The dogs enjoy it so. I let them take off in whatever direction, then just follow behind. Harvest is done about the house so it’s far safer for them. Giant farm trucks whizzing by at a thousand miles an hour trying to get the contents they carry to the appropriate place before it closes for the night kill many an unwary pet, wild animal and confused bird.

Getting the paints out. I don’t want to write but I do want to paint, be all crafty. I find others are also not producing the Next Great Only Read By Ten People American Novel. They’re crafting. Knitting. Sewing. Baking. Usually while curled in a fetal position. It’s really hard to make cream puffs with an orange blossom cream filling, topped with bitter Swiss chocolate curls, from a fetal position.

Maybe I’ll make myself write for at least ten minutes– which is usually open a file, stare at the words which seem jumbled abstracts of a language I don’t speak–then set up for PAINTING. Or maybe go redo the resume…ha ha ha ha. I just made myself giggle. Now I’m sobbing. How long can you keep telling yourself things will turn around? What’s the expiration date on that one?

Cracks are showing all over. Mm, yes.

On Mid-term Election Day, Nov. 6th, 2018

 

Molly and Jake in the shorn corn field across the way. 

Hi, ya’ll. I’m doing laundry. I’m watching the Food Networks Halloween Baking Challenge shows. They’re so much meaner in spirit than the Great British Baking ones. But the challenges. Turn a common nightmare into a cake! WT…?! Petite Fours for a monster wedding shower! Animals caught in a spider web design– cockroaches, frogs, dragonfly. A dessert that oozes. Oozes!

Yes, I’m keeping calm, hoping the GIGANTIC VOTER TURNOUT BEING REPORTED is, like, actually going to reflect some stuff. And that those voting will have their votes counted, as the GOP side of things has been tossing ballots due to someone didn’t check the Miss, Ms. or Mrs. box. Or a signature didn’t quite look exactly the same– here I’d have trouble, as my signature is a sloppy mess. My handwriting is awful! Or someone left out a period after something in their address. No foolin’. Or suddenly, like in the Dakotas, those that live on reservations suddenly can’t vote because they have a P.O. Box instead of a street address…which has been fine until about two weeks ago. Yeah. Yet it’s the left that’s importing bazillions of illegals to vote for them so they can lose elections like cray cray. Uh huh. 

But social media has been riding that ups and down of ACTUAL GODDAMN VOTER SUPPRESSION with how to vote if you get denied at your polling place. With what numbers to call if you get harassed. Orange Shitstain Supremas actually threatened voters…Anyway! Oh. Lyft and Uber are offering discounts to free rides to get people to vote. There’s people willing to drive people to and fro if they need a ride…it’s kinda awesome to read and hear about what companies and citizens alike are doing to GET PEOPLE TO CAST A VOTE.

I have ‘friends’ who write, in total disdain for those not in their cozy little circle of purity and shining single-purpose issues, who opine that voting doesn’t matter. Only fools vote. Only sheeple cast a ballot. I just…want to punch them in the face with my actual naked fist. I know, violence isn’t the answer but not voting because of the global corporatist blah blah blah…Punch. They sound rather like those on the Alt-Right. And then these far far far lefties complain that no one gets them and look at the state of the world…while writing reams of WORDS ABOUT HOW BAD THE WORLD IS. I just! Fuhhhhhhhh!!!

All right! Back to the little trove of Halloween baking challenges. Everything’s raspberry, chocolate something or other or burned cinnamon orange blossom water sesame seed basil-infused…I am seriously loving the rando ingredient the host throws at the bakers in the middle of them trying to get their projects done in the time allotted. Wheeeee!!! It also makes me want to try some of their flavor combos. I did buy myself some sesame seeds yesterday.

I do have high hopes for a blue wave indeed. I do. I think a mass of first time, pissed off as hell, voters will make something of a real difference. I don’t trust the polls as people below fifty don’t answer them. I saw that discussed. Where anyone of the younger generations doesn’t answer a number they don’t know. They text, they don’t talk on the phone. Old people answer strange numbers they don’t know. Mm. [Read that as Fox viewers]

So, these polls that say there’s a red wave about to hit…eh. Red wave. Like a heavy day during your menstrual cycle, kiddos? Where you are soaking through pads and tampons, bent over with cramps, wishing you were dead so you’d never have to have such a goddamn red wave again hit you? Kinda like that? Yeah.

Baking shows seem to be my choice of drug today. I do have vodka and tamarind soda pop for later. Take that as you will, fellow babies.