Zero

Holy fuckin’ shit! Did that just happen?

Ok so this friend who’s visiting from out of town, is en route to meet me at a coffee shop right now. I’m actually typing this as I wait thereat for her.

So here’s the thing. Aside from the last thing I just posted about it. We basically had no plan at all for this shit, which is usually how we do things. But we’re all usually a lot better off to wing it than we are now, especially me. I don’t really have a place where she can stay right now, and she’s staying here in town tonight before we go to Vegas tommorow. Luckily we have a mutual friend (kind of) in the area she can stay with. But he’s at work and she’s stuck in LA just waiting around for him and she doesn’t want to. So she asks me to call off work tonight so she can hang out with me.

Well, fuck. Because, where are we going to hang out anyway? And worse, I’m not really in a position at my job where I can afford to be calling off with no notice with a bs excuse. But what the fuck else am I going to do? Just leave her hanging? So I call off. But I don’t have a phone. Yay, every time I reveal an element of my circumstances it gets a little worse right? So I have to rush to find a payphone to call off, which I do. And that sucked. Because I really can’t afford to, and I really fucking hate defaulting on my responsibilities. But at the same time I feel kind of responsible to my friend as well so it’s like a lesser of two evils situation, and if I have to screw somebody, I’m telling you right now it will always be my bosses, superiors in any organization I’m a part of every time over friends. So I get to the payphone which was, in its self a fiasco. But once I get there, because I don’t have a phone and I never fucking call these people, I don’t know the number. So I guess and mixed up like two digits. Then I call 411 they give me the wrong number. So I guess again. Then I call 411 again and make sure I get the right number. Then I call, and by this time I’m pretty much supposed to fucking be there already. I make up some bullshit about my motorcycle breaking down, which is fucking preposturous because this thing fucking NEVER breaks down* but they don’t know that so whatever. Then I go to hop on my bike and head to the rendevous. I cycle the kickstart a few times to build the compression in the cylinder which you need to do to start it, and just as I’m about to mash on that kickstarter and start this thing up…

My goddamn co-worker shows up! Pulls into the parking lot. Parks right next to me! What the fuck? Now he’s a cool dude, I’m sure he’d understand. But I don’t know him that well just yet. So I don’t want to share this with him. So what the fuck am I going to do? I just pretend that my bike is broken down!

But I gotta act like this thing is actually not functioning. I’ve got a kick it over a few times so he can see that it’s not working. But this fucking thing is primed and ready to go. It starts on the first kick, every fucking time, unlike most engines this size on a kick starter.

Moment of brilliance: The engine has a compression release lever. Because it’s a large bore cylinder the compression inside it can resist enough that most people can’t kick it over at all, and if they do the kick back can be pretty brutal. So it has a compression release lever so you can manually decompress the cylinder when the pressure is too high. So I pull that lever and kick the thing like I’m really trying to get it started. With that valve open each kick just releases all the fuel/air in the cylinder and it can’t start and it looks like I’m trying really hard and it’s just not complying to anyone who doesn’t know/notice what that little lever is on the handlebars and why I’m holding it, which includes this guy. I sold that shit like car dealer and it worked. But then because my co-worker is a decent guy he wants to help me get it home. He’s with his girlfriend who’s driving a truck and she says we should just load it up, to which I give the excuse the bed’s probably not big enough, which it’s not, it’s one of those king cab things, and she probably doesn’t have tie down straps. But she does have tie down straps. Oh uh… then… it’s too heavy? Yes my co-worker agrees. It’s not. But if they think so great.

But now how the fuck am I going to get out of here? They want to give me a ride home! Fuck. I tell them I can’t leave it behind or it might not be here when I get back, because these things are entirely too easy to steal, which is true aside from the faulty premise that it’s broken down. I tell them I’m going to have to push it home, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’s fine, nothing I haven’t done before, over longer distances, uphill.”**
I figure I’ll start pushing it down the street ‘till I’m out of sight and then start it up and go around the area the long way to the coffee shop. But as I’m doing so I realize, Wait, what if they see my bike at the coffee shop? That shit’s like a block away! So that’s out, and then I realize, I can just walk there, come back for the bike after my friend gets there and we figure out what the fuck we’re doing. It’ll look like I really had to leave it behind. And if, God forbid, I run into anyone later I can just say I brought back some tools and fucking fixed it.

On the one hand, I kind of feel like Ferris Beuller and that feels kind of awesome. But on the other hand, how fucking old am I again?

Too old for this bullshit. That’s how fucking old I am. Then again I’m too old for most of the bullshit I do/have to put up with in my life right now… So I guess… might as well fucking embrace it?

This is all so goddamn stupid. It’s turning out to be a fucking hell of a day, and it’s going to get worse when my friend escapes the LA rush hour traffic and gets her ass here and we have to have the serious discussion I mentioned dreading in the last post. And I am so stressed out I could really fucking snap right now, and will if I go back to find my bike missing which I’m genuinely a little worried about now. But hopefully the weekend will be better and keep getting better from here on out.

*almost
**also true because of *almost and also because of the last bike I had which was far less reliable

newyorker:

There was another big win for gay marriage today, as the Defense of Marriage Act was ruled unconstitutional by a Federal appeals court: http://nyr.kr/LKJ8mS

So… over the past year I’ve, well… I guess you could say I’ve had a run of bad luck. At first I was unemployed, but that was alright. I had some GI money saved up and I was getting by for the time being, I just had to find a job within a few months. Well, I didn’t. It took me about six months to get a job, and then when I accomplished that I was, and am, still very underemployed plus I had exhausted my savings. So I fell on hard times, and had to fall back on my family for support.

Only when I did, they weren’t there to catch me. Because, truth be told, I don’t really have a family of my own. The people who did take me in years ago, when I was just a kid with nowhere to go, made that explicitly clear to me back then. And even though over the years a point was reached where everyone pretended that wasn’t the case (which I kind of resent, the pretending that I’ve been accepted when everyone knows I’m not, always felt more like it was to save face in public than it was to comfort me, even if that’s not the case it hardly matters as it was in fact only pretending), it remains as true today as it was the day it was said.

So I don’t really have that family support structure that most humans do, and that lack of support facilitated my getting further and further down on my luck over the last six months or so.

Anyway, the point of this post is as follows: A close friend of mine from out of town, is here to visit. Someone I haven’t spoken a word of any of this to. It’s just too embarrassing. I haven’t even mentioned it on Tumblr really and this shit is like 95% anonymous! But She’s here, and we’re going to Vegas apparently and I’m really hoping to unwind and breathe a sigh of relief over the weekend and just not have to worry about all this shit for a couple of days. But there’s a problem. A bit of a catch I guess.

She’s here. And I have to talk to her! Which is fine. Great in fact. Except that she’s asking questions now about where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. And it looks like I’m finally going to have to fess up to someone I know, the reality of my situation.

And that sucks.

Because she’s going to feel bad for me.

And all the embarrassment and bruised pride aside, I just really cannot cope with being pitied right now.

people who ask what my race is before my name

invisiblelad:

warriorsrise:

need to stop.

This has happened to me far more than once. I was just explaining this exact phenomenon to a co-worker of mine a few hours ago, freakily enough.

biaddiction:

lmao

Here is the thing, okay? Coming into a feminist conversation with, “Have you considered that sometimes women acquire free drinks at bars?” is like walking into graduate school during Philosophy finals and saying, “Have you considered that the color blue that I see may not be the color blue that you see?”

Imagine you are the guy who just walked into that Philosophy class and laid that shit down. Imagine the class full of students who have worked very hard and committed themselves and sacrificed to be here, students who have spent several years of their lives learning about this subject. Imagine now their feelings when you go to the head of the classroom with a smirk on your face and demand the professor give you an A for effort. Imagine now that they think you are a douchebag asshole, because they do, and because you are. You are a douchebag asshole because you are obviously so self-centered, arrogant, and completely ignorant of the world around you, that you thought you could walk into a high-level course with no background and no work and say something profoundly simplistic and totally unrelated and also everybody should congratulate you for having done this thing, so brave, so provocative.
[….]
You are not asking us a real question. You are simply illustrating, for all to see, your own ignorance. You are saying, “I have not considered the implications of the question I have just asked. I have not taken the time nor effort nor commitment to sit down and ask myself this question. Instead, I have come into your philosophy classroom/office/feminist blog and shat out my question with a smirk, because I believe that my two seconds of thought are worth more than your long-term analysis, because I believe I am worth more.”

“

—

Fugivitus: A few things to consider when you find a feminist blog (via absolutely-spiffing)

In my experience, the men who are most likely to come into feminist groups to criticise them are self proclaimed ‘intellectuals’ who turn up to demonstrate to people just how oh-so-clever they are, to masturbate over their ‘logical’ arguments, to incite ‘new and stimulating’ debate about subjects that have been done to death, to willfully ignore how they are erasing experiences and silencing people, just so that they can have a few moments of ‘thrilling’ discussion in their otherwise dull, highly privileged lives. And when this brief adrenalin rush is over? They can go home, safe in the knowledge that they have shown all these silly hysterical women exactly what’s what, safe in their privilege which means that they do not have to give this encounter more than a passing thought. Believing that they have made a difference. And this makes me sick.

So, this is actually a pretty good example to use. Perhaps these men will read it and we can get it through their pseudo-intellectual heads that this is not ok. This is harmful behaviour and contributes absolutely nothing of worth to anything at all. Feminism has enough flaws as it is. Feminism is, by and large, racist, transphobic, ableist, homophobic, and classist. We do not have time to pander to these individuals too. If men really want to help? Commit to being a good ally and give us the opportunity to solve these problems without this almost constant hindrance.

Omg this is perfect.

(via angrybanette)

So much about this, so true. People think they’re throwing you some curve ball when it’s really like they’re still in the early pre-cambrian bacterial stages of earth’s global evolution yet they’re convinced they’re multicellular organisms. And you’re like “no dude, it’s really clear that you’re not.”

Anyhow, just to add my own to the first example, it’s so complicated indeed and it’s come up twice for me in the past week. I went on a date last night and I was so, so relieved that they did not hassle me at all about buying my own drink. It was in contrast to two nights before, when I was trying to pay for my drink and another guy at the table really wanted to pay for it to me. So many things go through your head- my friends are always all like, “You might as well accept it if they’re offering,” and if I don’t accept the offer in most cases the guys are not like “cool, you must be upholding your internal, personal feminist values,” they’re often offended and feeling like I made a big deal out of nothing and feel it is a slight (and these guys aren’t assholes, to be clear, they’re just accustomed to what this action normally signals). And I myself feel like I’m being unnecessarily argumentative over what is basically just a generous offer, yet I feel really conflicted about accepting a drink from someone if I’m not actually interested in them (but they are in me), and just about the whole… situation. Anyhow. Yeah, it’s complicated, and there is often no win/win solution.

(via feministdisney)

Perfect. Too often, people don’t analyze exactly the message that they’re sending beyond the simplistic question they’ve asked—the message that lies below the sentence they spit out, the one that asserts their superiority and expectation to be given priority and more consideration than anybody else.

(via angrywomenoftumblr)

lacigreen:

body language (nonverbal cues) is a huge part of our communication in face to face settings!

God's Gentle People: Pastor Defends Call For Government To Execute All Gays »

pragmatichominid:

experimentalmadness:

pragmatichominid:

invisiblelad:

Two things are ~~infuriating~~ problematic about this clip:

1.) CNN let this “Man of God” (tm) go on the air and advance his convictions that its okay - because of “the bihbul” to advocate the Government executing a group of people without counterpoint or commentary to the contrary.

2.) The funny thing. When anyone says any other group “should be rounded up by the government and executed” or even IMPLIES it, there would and should be an uproar. The fact that people shrug off suggested institutional genocide based on the idea its got a scriptural justification is an incredibly glaring flaw in how we view “the other”. Its fair game to imply its cool to round up groups an ancient text disparages. Simply because a lot of people have read it and subscribe to its teachings we can culturally learn to tolerate prejudice against groups that were referenced in a few spots in the Old Testament.

This is where I would put a gif of that “tell me I’m wrong, Charles” scene with Erik, if I had such a gif.

An even better choice.

And no, no it isn’t.

The only people who imagine that it’s possible to make peace with bigots, fascists and oppressors in generally are either A.) Hopelessly naive and ignorant of reality, B.) So secure in their own privilege that they can’t imagine personally being a victim of the violence these people advocate and engage in, and thus disinclined to take it seriously, or C.) too eaten up by false consciousnesses to recognize that a threat to one oppressed individual or group is a threat to all.

invisiblelad:

firstfamily:

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Do we have your attention?

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That means Rove and the Kochs could determine the outcome of November’s elections. As MSNBC’s Steve Benen notes, “Obama, in other words, is going to face a far-right wall of at least $1.8 billion between now and Election Day. To say this is without precedent in a major democracy is a dramatic understatement.”

And that is why May 31’s fundraising deadline is so important. If you donate today, you can help level the playing field for President Obama and Democrats up and down the ticket.

But more than that, a strong showing of grassroots Democratic donors sends the message to Republicans that Rove, the Koch brothers, and their ilk can’t just buy their way to victory on November 6.

Make a contribution in any amount today.

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