Playtime!

A long long time ago (over two years! it's like a lifetime! random punctuation is fun!) my sweetie and I...weren't. We were flirting around the edges of the idea, but I was gun shy from too many bad situations, and he...well, he was in Australia.  That's a pretty big obstacle to surmount.

Still, the chemistry and connection we had was undeniable.

I often wonder if he'd be surprised to know how much one playful remix swung open the door for us. When I think of our relationship starting, I don't trace it back to our first Skype call or our constant chats, but right here, to this series of comics.

He made the first two panels, then challenged his friends to remix them and finish the story. It was interesting to see our dynamic reflected back at us through the eyes of our friends. It was even more interesting to see how he reacted to the types of comics his friends came up with, especially since he never seemed to come out on top.

And the nurse one...*shudder* Hands down, Natasha won that round.

This was mine, and he took it like a trooper. Any man who can take this joke is one to keep.

In the basement.
Now where did Winnifred go?

*wanders off, cackling evily*

Welcoming the New Indentured Servitude

 So, there's a new crowdfunding idea that seems brilliant on the surface, utterly brilliant. Basically, those with more money would pay off part or all of the the soaring student debts of college grads in return for a cut of their paychecks for a contractual length of time. And right now, it's a fair system. The amount taken is based on what you make--meaning if your paycheck drops so does the payment you make--and nothing I see says that a contractee is required to work for the person they're contracted to, though there does seem to be a potential mentor/mentee relationship depending on the plan. This could be a real, workable solution until something better comes along, one of those touchy-feely, pay it forward sort of things.

Ideally this would be wonderful.

Ideally.

But before students start celebrating in the streets, lets have a long hard think about this. Imagine it, not now, with well meaning people who simply want to give others a hand, but five years down the road, or ten. Imagine it after it's become a successful and profitable venture, successful and profitable enough to be sold to a larger company, or for a larger company to notice and start cashing into the same business model. Because if it turns out to pay well and turn a nice profit, the big boys will get in on it, and do you honestly think they'll play fair with young grads who are just desperate to eat and keep a roof over their heads? We already have full blown slavery in this country (and have had, for a while), do we need to totally relive the sins of the past by opening the door again for the possibility of indentured servants?

Plus, if it does work it will detract from the real discussion we should be having, which is how to get affordable education to everyone. And if it becomes a viable business model, then no one will WANT to make education affordable because doing so would mean shutting down an industry and getting rid of jobs.

Plus, what we're really saying is we're getting rid of even the flimsiest of excuses that the rich are robbing from the poor. This will be an insanely easy game plan to wealth, no work required:

1) Set education too high to afford
2) Swoop in like a white knight to back struggling students
3) For no more reason than the fact you are ALREADY rich, dip your hand into their pocket, stealing part of the earnings that they worked and worked hard for and that you only have access to because you could give them charity when they were down
4) Continue to rig the deck to set even more people on an educational course into debt, back them with the money you made stealing from the last set of students, and continue to grow the debt pot indefinitely, as well as increase the amount of workers who are contractually unable to leave your influence until you choose to let them go

Appendix: Lobby Congress for laws in your favor and against students, and use the money you have to block any reforms to education or any individual or group challenges to the increasingly cutthroat and unmanageable contracts you place on the heads of young people. While you're at it, be sure to put in arbitration clauses that take away their right to sue and other flim-flamery that takes away their rights as workers and sometimes their constitutional rights--all things you can do as a private business. Then sit back and enjoy your slaves-in-all-but-name.

Yes, this is a fantastic idea at first glance. But ONLY at first glance. You have to think a year ahead, two years, five, ten. Think what a single mom would agree to in order to feed her kids. What a foolish, undertaught student may agree to, or a person on the edge of ruin and desperate to keep from becoming homeless.

We'd need laws in place to protect them, but our laws aren't doing so well these days. Florida just passed a law that basically says not only can the state's workers not have sick days, it's against the law to even broach the topic for future discussion. They outlawed even talking about the possibility of reversing the law. And even if that is unconstitutional (which it might not be), what took less than a month to do could take a decade or even two to undo, and a lot of money. Arbitration clauses take away a worker's right to sue, or really even have their grievances looked at and fairly judged. We have defunded OSHA to the point factories are exploding all over the US, and yet there is no discussion of correcting the deficiency. Instead, there's a push to defund the FDA, EPA, and any other protective agency, as well. Filming what happens on factory farms has been outlawed, and violators may even be labeled as terrorists. And who can forget that we still haven't lifted a finger to put a single meaningful restriction on Wall Street, even after they have repeatedly been caught doing the same crooked shit that nearly crashed the world economy.

Laws are being judged in favor of businesses left and right, so if this business model takes off, realistically speaking, in whose favor do you think any conflicts will be decided? College students without two pennies to rub together? Or the guys with the big bucks?

Someone pointed out there is precedent for this, as it's very similar to the way high stakes poker players get their funding. However, poker is a one shot deal. Those who back poker players are gambling just as much as the player himself is. If they pick the wrong "horse," they lose everything, and they know it. College kids are a steady stream of unlimited income, as long as you keep them impoverished and desperate enough to keep them signing those contracts. So if you're going to make a for-profit business model to "help the poor," would it really be in your best interest to actually help them? Really?

I think, until things become more equalized, this is opening a very ugly door, one that, if it swings wide, we may never be able to shut again. This should not be looked at in the short term or in one-off situations, but long tern and in context to our society as a whole. The whole changes the picture, and not for the better.

Everybody Here's a Label, Not a Name

Know what? I'm going to give up on labels. These day there are far too many of them.

Once upon a time bisexual meant "attracted to pretty much everybody," which was fine by me, as it pretty much covered where I stood. But someone moved the goalposts and now it means "attracted only to those born male or born female and who have not altered their base gender aspect in any way."

Which is, by the by, a crock of utter shit. I don't think there is a biological urge on the planet that stops to ask what gender a person was born when it first kicks you in the hormones and directs you to ogle another human being from afar. If the attraction ceases after finding out, then that is not a biological imperative, but a psychological one. It means the person in question has Issues that clouds their ability to truly enjoy sex or feel comfortable in their sexuality, which is worlds divorced from base biological urges.

So this splitting hairs finer and finer as to some sort of "attraction flow chart," seems to me to be further confusing the issues of sexual attraction instead of shining light on them. Especially when it comes to understanding and embracing self acceptance, self honesty, and figuring out where our hangups lie and why they exist. Plus, it gives a sort of "status boost" to those who are the most "inclusive" about their attraction, as if these people were somehow better than all the folks still working through a lifetime of sexual issues, some of which can be pretty intense depending on what culture you come out of (evangelical is a good example) or what you've been through (abuse, rape, etc.).

Fuck that shit, man, sexuality is NOT a status symbol and should never be used as such.

I don't like the game, so I'm not playing. From now on, I'm introducing myself as "Weird-Sexual." Or maybe "Sexually Fluid," that works too, as long as those of a twelve year old mentality don't get hold of it.

It basically means whatever label you try to put on me, I don't fit. Chances are, I'm gonna do something that doesn't jive with your little pigeonholes, and I'm okay with that. In fact, better than okay. I get enough judgement from mainstream society about my sexuality; I don't need it from the non-mainstream folks as well. My sexuality is only one small aspect of who I am, and not the most important one, at that, so get over it already!
 
Unless, of course, you really, really need everything neatly dissected and tidily put away in order to function. In which case, have fun with your masses of self labeling. Whatever turns you on, dude*.


*Dude is used in this context as gender neutral and does not imply the user's gender in any way. It is being used this way because the author is too damned lazy to list dude, dudette, cis-dude, queer-dude, pan-dude, and whatever the bloody hell else is floating around out there. Yes, the author is a lazy bitch. And, you'll note, she also does not call herself an authoress because she also considered the word "author" to be gender neutral. She's weird like that.

Statistics, Word Semantics, and Gun "Control"

Just because it's infuriating me at the moment, let me take an instant to talk about the paranoid causality people like to make of gun death statistics.

Every time the subject of guns comes up, people like to wave around statistics that show the more gun ownership there is, the more gun-related deaths there are. You know what I say to that?

WELL, DUH.

You know what else has a high body count? Automobiles. In fact, in places where governments allow more car ownership, there is a statistical increase in car related deaths. So where is our movement to get rid of cars?

Now, before any of my non-existent readers segue into the "but you don't use cars to run over a grade school full of kids" argument, please realize that my beef is with the often quoted statistic and the implications behind it. I will leave the broader issues of where and why I think we have a gun violence problem in this country to another post.

When you allow something dangerous into your life--drugs, needles, knives, cars, guns, prescription medications, ladders, etc.--you are increasing the possibility you will die from it. When you allow it on a wide spread basis, then that statistical probability goes up even more. YES, more people die from guns in countries that allow guns, YES, in countries where guns are sparse on the ground so are gun deaths. DUH. In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

An increased chance of being hurt by a dangerous item is the agreement you make when you take said dangerous item into your home. It is, in essence, the price of ownership. And the price we pay as a country to allow guns in our borders is the knowledge that, sooner or later, someone will misuse them.

The question we should be asking is not how to ban or control guns, because we've pretty much collectively agreed we either like the buggers, or just like the right to keep our options open. We don't want to ban or control guns, at all, ever, period. So be it.

What our question should be is: how do we respond to those who would use guns in a criminal manner?

Do you see the distinction? Our focus should not be guns, but people. Focusing on guns is simply a rehash of the same old question--do we want guns in this country and if so, to what capacity? The answers have been resounding after every crisis--yes we do, and in any capacity we damn well please. Asking the question again and again is not changing the answer, so it's time to start asking different questions. And it's time to start focusing our answers, not on the object, but on the person holding it.

How do we ensure that we can keep bad people/crazy people from getting guns? How do we regulate the use of our accepted tools (yes, a gun is a tool, ask any hunter) so that we can play with our toys in the safest manner possible, so that enthusiasts can collect, so that poor families can hunt, so that we can have home self defense without fear that that defense will blow up in our faces?

And to correct a rather widespread misconception, this isn't gun control. You'll notice we don't call getting a license or obeying speed limits "vehicular control." Why? Because it isn't. It's our way of making one of the tools we need to survive (cars/transportation) as safe for ourselves and others as possible. It's our way of controlling the people behind the wheel, not the vehicles themselves. Just like we have laws about proper road behavior, we should have laws about proper gun behavior, a series of laws that outlines the hows and whys of use so that we can drastically reduce the incidences of people harming other people using these items. People control.

So, if you want to see meaningful changes, stop buying into the spin by calling it gun control, and  by all the gods, stop using stupid statistics in trying to call for said "gun control." It really makes those of us who aim for responsible and safe gun ownership look like dumbasses, and that isn't helping our argument any.

Rant-o-matic complete.

As the Kitty Burns

I walk home, one knee high sagging around my ankle.

I'm thinking.

My cat needs her kidneys flushed. Something is wrong, but I have no idea what. The nice doctor explained it to me on the phone, but a combination of what I can only assume is medical-speak plus his heavy Indian accent turned the explanation to gibberish. I don't understand accents on the best of days because...well...I'm a terrible person (isn't this the sort of thing politically correct, caring, and sensitive white folk know how to do?), but it's even worse when the words are unfamiliar to me.

All I know is she needs them flushed. She needs an IV. She needs an extended vet stay, and in a couple days, she needs her blood tested. Oh, and antibiotics. We can never forget the fun of giving a kitty antibiotics.

And I'm seeing little cartoon dollar signs flitting around my head, making a pass or two before fluttering off into the wide blue sky. I have money. I can pay for this. But it'll hurt. And the solution they're giving...well the doctor isn't guaranteeing it's a solution. There could be more money, more tests if this doesn't work.

I'm thinking of my mom, a single mother in Florida--back when Florida was still something resembling sane--struggling to make ends meet.

We were the only white faces on the black side of town, but back then that didn't mean what it does now. The neighborhood was by no means safe, but crimes didn't happen in broad daylight. Neighbors still looked out for each other, even if it was just keeping a wary eye on what was going on around the homes next to them. My mother could go outside and walk down the street without fear of being raped. I could play in my yard--front or back, we had both--without fear of being kidnapped or harmed. In fact, we had more to fear from the boys who liked to drag race their cars down the street than any criminal danger.

And all those black faces around us were in exactly the same boat.

We adopted a dog when I was four or five and named her Lassie. She wasn't a collie. She was, in fact, probably the spawn of several generations of sleazy back-alley encounters between breeds looking to kink it up with members outside their genetically exclusive gene pool. She was a small, enthusiastic mop of nervous love, her big brown eyes hidden behind bangs so long my mother often clipped them.

She was a pound dog, and that meant something different then than it does now. Anything from a pound had a fifty-fifty chance of having contracted some sort of disease or ailment, usually from the close quarters with other dogs or the merely adequate hygienic conditions. They weren't checked, and pounds didn't apologize. It was simply known, like you knew the sun was going to rise, that you took your chances.

Lassie, when she came to us, had problems. She wasn't fixed, for one thing; that was on our dime. I remember looking at her stitches, mom trying to explain to me what they were for. I also know she was ill, but I was little and it's been years. Ask me to tell you with what and I couldn't answer. I know it was two or three things, probably ears, fur/skin, and some bacteria or virus she needed medicine for. The moment we got that dog we had a money pit.

But my mother stretched her budget and that lovely little dog lived with us for nearly twenty years.

Keep in mind, my mom was a single mother--that's difficult in any day and age. She had only a high school degree, so she wasn't exactly raking in the bucks. And yet, in many ways she was better off then than I am now.

We owned our own home. Sure, it was dirt cheap and on the wrong side of town, and sure we only afforded it because of a special program hosted by the city (lowering crime by making prices affordable for families who weren't criminals to move in--it worked), but hey, we owned it. How many people could do that now, even if offered similar help?

Mom owned her own car. Not making payments, owned. And when a wreck wiped it out, she bought a new one. Sure it was old and not very fancy, and sure it wasn't speedy or pretty or really anything desirable. But it was reliable, not a junker, and was bought with money she saved.

We got a dog, and while the budget was tight while we nursed her back to health, we managed it.
She had one job, one, and it paid all the bills plus some left over. Very little, but some.
And, I can't stress this enough, she was raising a child all on her own.

And my mother, then, made less than I do now, even adjusting for inflation.

Fast forward ten years.

After her divorce and after discovering that her ex had found a legal loophole through which he didn't have to pay his court mandated child support--ever--she was essentially a single mom again, but this time with two kids. Still, she was also senior in her field, having the know how and experience to have moved up considerably in rank, and now made more than she did when I was a preschooler.

My grandparents bought her a trailer on a tiny piece of land nearly an hour outside town--if they hadn't we'd have been homeless. My grandparents bought her a car--if they hadn't, mom would be jobless. And to keep us afloat my mother maxed every credit card she owned, worked long hours, and when that didn't cover it she took on so many odd jobs they essentially became a second job in their own right. Money was so tight we didn't even have a dollar to spare for a candy bar.

Fast forward again another fifteenish years, give or take.

I'm single and childless. I make more now than my mother ever did--even adjusted for inflation--but I own nothing permanent. No car. No college, because I can't afford it and my credit is too bad to get loans--education is apparently NOT an equal opportunity offer. No home; I rent with a roommate, in fact. I own nothing but my books, my clothes, and my cats. Most of my money goes to bills, and I mean basic bills. Aside from internet what I pay falls under necessary--phone, food, electricity, water, sewer, gas. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy some modest pastimes, like going to the movies or out with friends, but even these things are done pretty rarely.

And sudden disasters like my precious cat being sick? A nightmare.

Like most of my generation I live hand-to-mouth. I don't have credit cards (by choice) so I can't even pretend things are better than they are, that I am somehow wealthier than I really am.

And as I walk home, my knee high around my ankle, exhausted from too much work and too little sleep and hallucinating dollar signs hemorrhaging into the open sky, I wonder how we got here from where we started, not even a full lifetime ago.

I wonder if we'll ever have the energy to get mad or whether everyone else, like me, is so exhausted merely from the daily struggle to survive that they just can't rouse the energy to fight back. Or even to care.

And then I walk in the door.

All Hallows Revenge

Happy Two Years, Babe