I write things
I came downstairs to write a blog post about what ungrateful douchebags birds are but Ben came down too and now we’re watching Better Call Saul. So this is just a post to say the post I WAS going to post is not this post and it’s actually Ben’s fault.
I’m 3 days away from being out of 30 days Facebook jail for the 3rd time in less than a year. One of those times it was actually my fault. I mean, it was a valid comment, I called a racist “white trash”, but it was pretty clear that it was a guidelines violation. I guess it wasn’t “nice” but I don’t actually produce the appropriate amount of daily fucks to waste one on being nice to a racist.
I hate to admit it but I do miss the social word dump. It takes a good 2 weeks before I remember right away that I can’t just instantly share my thought vomit with several hundred other people as soon as it pops into my head. I get sad. I think that the people on my feed probably sigh a little in relief when they realize that perhaps they’ll get to go an entire month without hearing about the current state of the dogs poop or what crazy craft idea I’ve become very temporarily obsessed with.
I decided one night while chatting with a few friends that there were definitely things I NEEDED to share but knew I would never remember so I started to use the Notes App to document them.
Then today, 3 days before I get to tell Facebook all the things I’ve kept bottled up FOR TWENTY SEVEN DAYS, I remembered that I have A FUCKING BLOG and I can write ANYTHING I WANT ON IT.
LIKE RACISTS ARE WHITE TRASH.
OR THAT I WANT TO LOVING PUNCH MY FRIEND’S FACE.
So here we go. Things I need the world to know about but really just need to put into words somewhere to get them out of my head:
When Cassidy was a baby in order to know if her diaper was wet I would smell it. I cannot count the number of times I buried my nose into the front of a diaper to see if I could smell her pee. And then the number of times I did not yet realize she had just also dropped a deuce and got a nose full of that instead. In my day, most mothers could identify which child in the room has peed in their pants by the smell because we had developed the nose of the most distinguished sommelier.
Oh that pee? *deep breath* That is the pee of a 1 year old who has just been introduced to nut butters fed to them on crispy tart apples. It has the chemical undertones of Kraft cheese squares and only Linda would feed her kid that trash so it must be little Lucy with the wet diaper.
In the next 5 years if a diaper doesn’t send mom and dad a text when the diaper is wet, please know it’s the Millennial’s fault.
I am not even making this up. Because of a loophole in the US Constitution and boundary issues which have not been fixed since whenever the hell Wyoming became a state, there is a long narrow strip of the park where state and federal law don’t play well together and even if you were caught doing something illegal, the mess of jurisdiction almost guarantees* that you won’t get prosecuted.
I’ve listened to enough True Crime podcasts to know that there is at least a dozen or more bodies out there waiting to be discovered. It’s probably where Jimmy Hoffa is. I’m not saying this is part of my Perfect Murder Plan, I’m just saying if I ever act like I’m really excited to go to Yellowstone, it’s not for the geyser or the wildlife.
Okay, there are more things but I just had a sudden intense craving for strawberry shortcakes so I need to cut this short and get my bake on.
I would have shared this intense craving on Facebook.
*THIS IS NOT AN ACTUAL GUARANTEE SO PLEASE BE SAFE AND HIDE THE EVIDENCE REALLY WELL.
When people tell me that I share too much online I send them a link to the photos from inside my colon. I get the oversharing seems to be a new topic still for a lot of people because they think that the internet started when Facebook was created but the archives from this blog go back 18 years. My blog is now legally allowed to vote.
It’s a fully year older than Facebook. A full two years older than YouTube. A full three years older than Twitter.
Where am I going with this? I don’t know. I seriously have no fucking idea. The other day Jem tweeted that she wanted to blog more this year and SAME. I just don’t know where to start or how to get back into it again. It was much easier when we weren’t living in the midst of a global pandemic and we actually, like, DID STUFF. But we weren’t in a pandemic when we went to Germany or Amsterdam or New Zealand or Mexico (many times) and I didn’t blog ANY of that so…
I feel like I lost my voice. People have told me how much they love reading my words and now my words just get stuck in my brain and when I try to get them to flow out my fingers they muddle and seem irrelevant and dumb nobody wants to read dumb words.
I think some of my best writing has been when I’m suffering from debilitating depression. Oddly being socially isolated from all my family, friends, coworkers, and ALL OTHER HUMANS hasn’t spiraled me into a dark hole of despair. YAY! I guess? Not really offering up much self deprecating blog material though.
Anyway, this was just a lot of nonsense words to say I guess I’m going to try more. In the meantime, you can go look at the other set of photos from inside my colon, only with more infection and sores. Quality content, in other words.
Look, I know I can be incendiary online. I have BIG OPINIONS and very little filter and I accept that. The people that love me accept that. The people I respect accept that and in an attempt to show that respect I try to reign it in when I’m having conversations with them.
Strangers however, I have no patience for. I had even less in the year 2020. I’m willing to put up with a lot of nonsense and there are some things I can just either reply with a inane quip or scroll past without bothering, and then there are the things that I will call out every time.
EVERY. TIME.
When Breonna Taylor was shot by a cop that never should have been in her house, then 12 days later a racist cop kneeled on the neck of George Floyd and strangled him to death while onlookers begged him to stop, the BLM movement rightly mobilized and peacefully protested across the country. A powerful and beautiful community of BIPOC people loudly speaking out against the centuries of oppression and hate that in the year 2020 was still on full violent display in the homes and streets of America.
All of this while a pandemic was starting the slow deadly burn across the states.
And my filter went from “little” to “nil”.
On May 30th somebody posted a video of white protesters trying to break the window of a store and Black people begging them to stop. “This is the problem. You can do this because you’re white but if a cop shows up here WE’LL be the ones they shoot,” said the Black man pleading with them to put down the rocks and leave. I left this comment on a thread about it.
I was banned for 12 hours.
This is not hate speech. White racism is a myth. It can not exist.
FULL STOP.
I didn’t contest the ban because it was stupid and I’m pretty sure I just went to sleep and shrugged it off.
The next day I posted this.
I was banned for 24 hours.
I don’t actually remember what I was commenting on here but I did think that writing “white scum” instead of “white trash” would get me around Facebook’s ridiculous white racism filter THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST. LIKE RACISM AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE DOESN’T EXIST.
By November, COVID-19 was raging all over the country. Tensions were high. Our racist potato president was calling an election rigged before it even happened. Over the course of the year, social discourse in many of the news organization’s comment threads had declined into full on tinfoil hat season and I was… tired. Tired of racists. Tired of COVID deniers. Tired of Trumpism.
Just tired.
So on November 2nd, 2020 I left this comment on an article about a 13-year-old CHILD that had died from COVID-19. This lady had commented to ask what the CHILD’S underlying health conditions were. Disease? Obesity? And then threw on a “condolences” to the family at the end. So sweet of her. When people tried to have a civil conversation with her explaining that she was being rude, she doubled down on the COVID conspiracies that I was JUST. SO. TIRED. of hearing.
I was banned for 3 days. Two days before the most important election in my lifetime.
I’d say that, although I feel a valid critique, this was the first time that I truly deserved a ban. This was definitely bullying. I contested this one just because I felt like why not? Two days later my ban was upheld. For the first time, Facebook actually did it’s job properly. And honestly, the internet was a mess in the aftermath of the election and my mental health was probably boosted by avoiding the site altogether since I didn’t feel the need to read if I couldn’t comment.
By the end of November we had a clear presidential winner, despite what the raving lunatic currently sitting at the Resolute Desk was vomiting daily onto Twitter would have you believe. It was around this time that another QAnon video was being suppressed on YouTube, AS IT SHOULD BE, and I had seen about 74 “Freedom of Speech” comments on Facebook in one day so I picked a random blockhead and was going to explain how the 1st amendment actually works but decided to use as few words as possible to get my point across.
I was banned for 7 days.
In retrospect, I should have know better than to try and circumvent the rules by using a different word. If “white scum” wasn’t enough of a change from “white trash”, I should have known that “twat” was not going to work instead of “cunt”.
Well played Facebook, I’d say I deserve this one too. Although again, a valid and truthful comment.
After the 7 day ban I really started to be more measured in posting. I rewrote comments to respond to the poor fragile white people while not using any slang from our country or the UK or referring to the garbage pile I assume they were born from. I realized there was no winning with the COVIDiots and mostly left them alone unless I saw really blatant lies being spread.
I was tired. But also tired of being tired. You know?
Then today happened.
Today a bunch of backwoods jackboot crybabies stormed the US Capitol building in an attempt to… well, I don’t actually know what they were trying to do and I doubt they had any clue what they were trying to do either after watching them stumble around to find a coherent sentence to string together in an interview.
And, of course, ever single conservative keyboard warrior in existence tried to play this off as a bunch of Antifa “actors” trying to make them look bad. This amused me mostly because what people were admitting when they said that was that THIS WAS A BAD LOOK. Thank you for making our point for us!
This photo of known Trump sycophant Jake Angeli in his horned outfit as an “Antifa actor” started making the rounds which is cute because after about 20 seconds of Googling I found an article about him, read an interview he gave in October, then found his Parler profile. As always, rather than do the same miniscule amount of research it would have taken to understand that that this tweet is a FAKE NEWS, conservatives started to paste the photo in every single thread on ever single post on the internet as “proof” that he is Antifa.
When it landed in the comment section of my hometown’s news site I commented on it. I left a link to both news articles and his Parler profile to read for herself to understand who this man is. The woman, of course, tried to use a 2 hour old Craigslist ad for actors to storm the US Capitol building which happened 8 hours before the ad was posted because of course she did.
So I commented again.
I was banned for 7 more day.
I disputed the ban because calling somebody ignorant for spreading misinformation is NOT harassment or bullying or hate speech.
Now I’m banned for 30 days.
I’m banned from Facebook for calling willful ignorance for what it is but Char is free to continue to spread lies about the terrorism the entire country watched unfold live in front of our very eyes.
Make it make sense.
Whatever. During my 7 day ban I read 3 books and lost 5 pounds. It’s amazing what you can accomplish while not doomscrolling past the droves of hateful, brainwashed, racist, what trash cunts in Facebook comment sections.
So far I’ve written a blog post for the first time since August so in a way I’m already winning.
I spent all day 10 seconds away from crying.
That sharp lump lingering in my throat, eyes watering but not enough to let tears fall. Deep breath, eyes closed. Hold it. Release. Move forward.
It’s weird to feel heartbreaking sadness when you’re used to Depression Sadness. With Depression Sadness you can’t put your finger on the Why. It just… IS. Your person will ask you why you’re sad and you will answer for the 100th time that you don’t know why you’re sad.
You just are.
This is hard for a lot of people in support positions to hear, especially when your support people are fixers. With Depression Sadness there is no fix. It’s just there one day and then some unpredictable number of minutes or hours or days or months later it’s gone.
POOF.
I think this kind of sadness is better. I feel it and I know why. And I know that crying will help. I’ve felt Depression Sadness enough times to know that familiar calming release of endorphins and the temporary numbness that follows.
But today I wanted to feel it. So I didn’t cry.
Tomorrow will be better. Routine will start back up. I’ll let myself cry if I need to. Life will go on.
I’ll be able to remind myself that Cassidy is with family. She is loved. She is cared about. She is learning. She is back to focusing on her passion. We’ll make plans for the next time we get to be together. We’ll Facetime and she’ll tell me I’m over-dramatic and ridiculous and we’ll laugh.
But this morning she woke up in my house and now she is 187 miles away in her bed probably playing Animal Crossing and I can’t just walk into her room to loudly burp.
So today I was sad.
And that’s okay.
One of my absolute biggest pet peeves is when people use old idioms that have been bastardized into meaning the exact opposite of what they are actually supposed to mean. I know what you’re thinking and fuck you, get off my lawn.
Why am I ranting about this on a day when two Republican COVID deniers died of COVID and the President decided to write a tweet that amounted to using the Constitution to wipe his ass eating mouth? I’m glad you asked and we’ll get to it eventually. Kind of.
If you’re Facebook friends with me you’ve had to hear me rant about this first one annually when it pops up in my memories because I share it EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.
The ever popular quote by narcissists everywhere: “Blood is thicker than water.”
NOPE! This is the full text of the quote:
We like to tell ourselves for a wealth of reasons, mostly mental self preservation, that our family will love us no matter what. And more troublesome, we are taught from a very young age that you have to love and forgive your family of all sins.
YOU DO NOT.
In this saying they refer to the bonds of war, the covenant of loyalty in battle. Meaning that the people you choose to fight beside you, to fight FOR you, those people are the ones that matter. Sure, they can be your family, those who crawled out of the womb before of after you, but they don’t HAVE to be. And that is okay.
Ready for the next one?
Great!
I want to preface this by saying that I’m not going to get into all the reasons I’ve seen this saying tossed around for the last few months because you can figure that out and for awhile now I only blog when I’m in a mentally precarious state of mind and I don’t have it in me to embrace the rage right now.
SO!
In tweets, in Facebook comments, on news articles, on the radio, on TV: “Don’t judge based on one bad apple.”
Nope. This is the full text of the quote:
“One bad apple spoils the barrel.“
One bad apple isn’t a big deal till that apple infects all the apples around them and pretty soon you go to make a pie and you realize all the apples are rotten and then you have to make brownies instead. Brownies are better than apply pie anyway. FIGHT ME.
But what annoying idiom is the one that set me off at 5:00AM? The often quoted: “You catch more flies with honey.”
Technically it’s true but first I wanted to include the correct quote because all you assholes are saying it incorrectly.
While the original is technically true, flies do like honey more than vinegar, you know what they like more than vinegar? STEAMING PILES OF SHIT. And corpses.
I have no words of wisdom for this one, you guys. This is supposed to warn you that being nice gets you further in life but also honey is kind of boring. It’s just sweet bee food. There are 11 kinds of vinegar and with them you can cook thousands of dishes and clean and make things sweeter or more sour and you can pickle things and deter ants and condition your hair and even sooth the sting of a stupid honey bee.
So I don’t know, don’t be a dick but also be the vinegar?
ANYWAY, this post was brought to you by a brilliant meme posted by Jenny this morning on Facebook.
And my deteriorating quarantine induced mental health. But that’s another post for another day.
Hi! How are you all this evening? I have a fun rant for you. YAY!
Twice today I’ve seen uninformed people try and use HIPAA incorrectly as a privacy violation defense and I wanted to clear it up. Mostly because I’m in a mood today to piss people off (I’ve been banned from two local community groups today alone just for calling out fragile men on their white privilege) but also because I have to take a test on this stuff every single year in order to receive a paycheck and I always thought those tests would NEVER COME IN HANDY. I’m super stoked that after 14 years I’m finally getting to put this knowledge to good use!
The first example was a person saying that an employer asking if you have any medical condition is a HIPAA violation. This is not true. HIPAA has ABSOLUTELY no bearing on your employer asking you this question. The ADA does place restrictions on what your employer is allowed to ask you so it would be good to know what those laws allow both federally and at your state level, but this is NOT a HIPAA violation. It would be like a cop questioning you about why your homework isn’t done. Cops aren’t teachers and don’t give a shit about why your teacher assigned you 7 hours of math, Becky.
The second was Shelley Lewis from Dana Point California. I’m trying really hard not to be too divisive here but trust me when I say “lady” is not the term I want to use to describe her. So this lady didn’t want to wear a mask in the store saying, “I have a medical condition that I’m not allowed to wear a mask and I’m not required by HIPAA rules and regulations to disclose that.”
This Philip DeFranco video shows the lady speaking at 0:28 but watch the whole video to become a beautiful bastard.
So much to unpack here. First, the manager never asked what her medical condition is. Like, dude doesn’t care. Also, pretty sure he’s intelligent enough to know that it would violate the ADA, NOT FUCKING HIPAA. AGAIN, the ADA has guidelines for this situation that you should know if you feel like you’re too selfish to wear a required and life saving article of PPE.
Oh wait, no. Being a dick isn’t a valid disability so the ADA guidelines don’t actually apply to you either.
Second, in this situation if Shelley Lewis from Dana Point California did sue Gelson’s she’d have to prove in court that they violated her “disability” based on ADA laws, NOT FUCKING HIPAA LAW, so I’m like 95% certain this is the last we will hear from Shelley Lewis from Dana Point California in awhile. I mean, it’s going to be hard to track her down since she’s virtually erased her existence from the internet after trying to use her “disability” to become viral internet famous. Be careful what you ask for Shelley!
Anyway! In both situations the Karens claimed HIPAA law which does not apply to either case. Ada violations? Sure, I’ll give ya that one! You’re welcome!
And because I don’t want to leave you without some ACTUAL facts, here is a very dumb person’s guide to who HIPAA laws apply to. And by “dumb person’s” I mean I copied this off the HIPAA website after Googling “what even is HIPAA” which apparently these two internet/keyboard warriors forgot to do before word vomiting their temper tantrums.
As required by Congress in HIPAA, the Privacy Rule covers:
1) Health plans
2) Health care clearinghouses
3) Health care providers who conduct certain financial and administrative transactions electronically. These electronic transactions are those for which standards have been adopted by the Secretary under HIPAA, such as electronic billing and fund transfers.
HIPAA means that your healthcare provider is not allowed to give your protected health information to anybody EXCEPT those entities listed above (all used for billing purposes) without your prior consent. If Shelley Lewis’ psychologist walked up behind her while she was berating a man who is just trying to do his job and was like, “MY MAN! Let Shelley Lewis from Dana Point California in the store! She’s off her meds and I’ve diagnosed her with Raging Karen Syndrome.” THEN it becomes a HIPAA violation.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, lets do this again soon!
Edited to add: If you want to link people a less rage filled diatribe on why mask issues are not HIPAA violations, here is a better article:
Hi all! Hope you are all well! Are you finding ways to stay sane while stuck inside while the world burns around you? I hope so! Being in the Bay Area, we were the first place to lock down and while I’m very happy that we are healthy and safe, I AM GOING OUT OF MY MIND.
Every day I obsessively refresh stats pages and read news stories and worry about things that I have absolutely no control over. I’m still working because hospitals are pretty fucking important right now and they have to be funded to run. I’m very lucky and able to work part time from home and part time from our office but we only have about half (or less) of the staff there at any time so we are able to distance and I still get to talk to other humans which has MOSTLY kept me sane. My coworkers are really the best and I’m lucky they accept me and love me despite my constant need to purposely annoy them.
ANYWAY. I don’t want to be one of those annoying bloggers that makes you read my entire life story to get to the fucking point so here it is: I bought 2 of the Holo Taco Unicorn Skin Collections boxes and one of you gets one! YAY!
These photos are all of my personal box and polishes. The winner’s box is still wrapped in the factory packaged plastic and bubble wrap completely unopened, clean, and COVID-19 free!
You have to be in the US. Contest ends next Sunday at 8:00PM PST. GOOD LUCK!
Giveaway: Holo Taco Unicorn Skin CollectionI don’t know what it is about sitting in an airport bar that causes me to feel the need to write. This time it’s a coffee bar, but still. I sit and watch the people frantically walking by, making up back stories for all of them. That old couple is headed to see their grandkids for Spring Break. That hipster is on his way to an interview for a job he hates but will look good on LinkedIn. That family is clearly at the beginning of their vacation to someplace exciting because the kids are still behaving and the parents don’t have regret written all over their faces yet. That lady just really has to pee.
Anyway, making up all these stories causes me to want to write. At this point I’d love to say that I want to write something profound and deep that you will love and then share with all your friends and be all, “Look at this amazing writer that I know!”
But instead I’m going to be real and give you the thought diarrhea that makes me question if it was a good idea to stop therapy.
Today on the way to work I saw a truck that had one of those “How’s my driving” sticker with a phone number you can call, I guess to tell them how they are driving. Does anybody actually call these numbers? Because I was thinking about making one and using a Google Voice number and then making the voicemail Dominic Toretto’s famous quote. Then never returning the calls.
I video’d myself making some soap not long ago. It was the one and only time that my soap actually accelerated and I was lucky just to get the shit into the mold and it’s the soap I like the least of all the soap I’ve ever made. I watch soapers on YouTube make beautiful creations that are perfectly crafted and shot from the perfect angle and of all the soap videos I’ve ever watched I’ve yet to hear a single soaper drop an F-bomb. I feel like I need to upload my video and title it “How To Do Everything Fucking Wrong When Making Soap: A Cautionary Tale”.
It annoys me that people think SSRIs contain serotonin. They don’t. Your body makes serotonin and taking an SSRI doesn’t give you more or make your body make more serotonin. It just blocks your body from reabsorbing the serotonin it makes, thus allowing the neurotransmitter to tell you brain that YOU DON’T WANT TO BE DEPRESSED BECAUSE DEPRESSION IS STUPID before being sucked back into oblivion and never getting that message across. Exercise HAS been shown to increase the amount your body produces though. So when people tell you to go out for a walk or to work out (if you can, I get that sometimes not enough serotonin makes this impossible) they aren’t just being a dick.
Okay I should get going. Hopefully my dad will be here soon to pick me up and I can’t wait to pull his finger.
I can not tell you the number of times I’ve sat in front of this very screen, typed a sentence, backspaced it, typed it again, closed the tab, then just greatly condensed what I wanted to say and posted it on Facebook instead.
So many times.
Over and over.
It’s not that I hate Facebook, it’s just that Facebook has made it very easy to be very lazy. Why tell a story in five paragraphs and know that maybe ten people will see it? I can tell the story in five sentences and get the instant gratification of likes and hearts and comments. I wrote my English 1A final paper on how social media grants us instant dopamine hits that keep us coming back for more. Refreshing, sharing, refreshing, sharing. Always in search of that high of validation. I wrote eight pages on this but I’m still I’m a slave to it. I know it’s happening and I don’t care. I want more. We all do. Maybe some of us are more self aware about it. Maybe that makes it worse.
But now, right this second, I’m sitting in an airport bar, I’m trying to forget about the anxiety I always feel before flying, drowning that fear in Moscow mules, and jumping between social media platforms hoping that other people out there have felt what I’m feeling. Looking for that validation that I’m not alone in feeling this way but painfully aware that “misery loves company” isn’t the best coping mechanism. Probably alcohol isn’t either but this is delicious so I’m ordering another one.
A few weeks ago somebody in one of the many groups I’m part of on Facebook said she wanted to start a blog and if anybody had one, if they had advice on how to grow her audience. She had started a few in the past but had not had a lot of luck growing a readership. My advice to her was to stop writing to grow her audience and to just write about what she really loved. That if she was passionate about something, people who were also passionate about the same things would find her and support her and tell all their passionate friends about it and THAT is the kind of audience she wanted.
And then I refreshed and waited for her to like my comment.
It wasn’t till later that night that I realize the irony in telling her what I did. As with most advice it was really easy to dispense it while ignoring the fact that I’ve basically been doing the exact opposite for almost two years now.
So I’m going to try and do better. I miss this so terribly. I miss just putting my words out into the world. I miss telling a story. Writing it down. Reading about it 3 years later and laughing about that thing that happened. I miss using my fingers to release the anxiety and the depression. I miss having a place to be brutally honest about where I am mentally and not having to feel like I need to hide it behind filters.
I miss it.