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In Which I Upbraid the New Years Naysayers

The simple turning of the year does not create some kind of clean slate that makes change or growth possible where it was not the day before.  There are some people who are interested in breaking out of patterns of stagnation and who take this to mean that they should begin immediately regardless of the hour and there are those who take this to mean that the magic of the new year is simply not for them and accept a continuation of the status quo.

Increasingly, I find myself disliking this second kind of person.  I understand full well that the new year creates a certain kind of unfair expectation, like a sort of annual high school reunion, especially now as we all see what one another are doing in the social media.  It’s the defeatist attitude that gets me, the notion that “new year same me” is simply the way that things are and if the magical new year cannot motivate one to grow then nothing can.

Truly, I have very seldom come upon a person who started with a new year’s resolution and followed it through entirely.  This doesn’t really surprise me because the kinds of fundamental things people try to change in their lives all at once demand some extremes in discipline that I have always found I had to sort of ease into, gradually.  If you cannot quit smoking cold-turkey, what leads you to conclude that getting suckered into the planet fitness bargain is going to stick?

I will touch on fitness goals (though not exclusively) in this discussion because it’s such a common pick that I have some experience with, but more because I feel that the Planet exploits this misled idea of the clean slate in order to profit from working people.  The average PF facility is designed to allow about 50 people to do cardio at once and has benches, ropes, dumbbells and so on to accommodate perhaps a further 30 or 40 to be training with the weights.  The average membership of a PF facility is expected to be between 800 and 1000 individuals.  If every one of you committed to lifting every day you’d be stumbling over each other and waiting 20 minutes for the lat pulldown.  Every gym has crowding problems at some time of day, but the PF solution is to set the membership fee so low that slacking off doesn’t feel like a wasted investment.  They hope you will forget about being slowly bled the same way you might forget about that recurring Spotify subscription you forgot to cancel.

Am I saying you ought to go invest 300 bucks a month at a crossfit gym to be successful in your resolution?  No, but if you make the investment in a proper gym you are going to be motivated to get your money’s worth even if all the right reasons to go to the gym fail you on some occasion.  If you want to succeed dear new years resolution devotee - and I want you to, I am rooting for you- take your time in choosing a facility that will provide you with all the things you need to get where you want to go.  Or, maybe you have no idea where to go but you know you want to start walking, in which case you should look for one that offers a knowledgeable staff that can introduce you to several disciplines or sports that catch your eye.  Another thing the Planet profits off is the idea that other gyms are not inviting or interested in your success, and this is filthy lie.

I reckon the new year where goals are concerned to start on the 1st of November, shortly after my birthday and after I have completed my offerings to the Halloween spirits. As the shadows grow and my birthday approaches in late October, my Hour approaches when I will look upon the goals I have set since last year and decide where next to go.  After a fashion, this is my new years resolution time.

These aren’t all necessarily fitness goals- I set out to become a homeowner in 2016 at roughly the same time I decided to miss no weeks at the gym, last year I made a decision to plan a salsa garden for the spring and pay off my car.  This past October I resolved to compete at bodybuilding next year, rearrange my finances to tighten up my spending, and go back to school to pick up some new job skills.

Which leads me to today, roughly two months after making those decisions.  Firstly, I have concluded that practicing the compulsory poses is the most boring work I have ever done in the gym, but I appreciate the precision of it.  Secondly, I have just made my first payment on my schooling for the spring term because the thirdly part of realigning my financial posture succeeded when my paycheck came through this morning and I paid down my credit balance, bringing an end to some 2 months of carefully moving money around and executing some deliberately planned transactions and payments instead of just mindlessly dumping money into the bank.  Reclaiming some 150 dollars a month.

Now the cash that I have reclaimed in this way is not disposable, it just is what is necessary to allow me to continue meeting with trainers and also pay for school at the same time.  The cash is not the end goal, it’s a tool to let me do the things I want, and it didn’t just miraculously happen on the first of January any more than did my school enrollment or my abs.  It was the result of meticulous planning and careful execution of that plan, with the guidance and input of many people in my support networks.  Proper investment of time, careful planning, and right guidance is needed to achieve the difficult things, so don’t be ashamed if you don’t see the fruits of your resolution until March.

Which brings me back to the “new year same me” crowd.  I could not accomplish all these things if I didn’t have a personal cheer squad in my friends and colleagues or without the guidance of my trainers and bosses.  Therefor, if you are looking to pursue some kind of transformation or change in your life (I refuse to use the very-quickly cliched concept of the fitness journey) there are two ways that these folks are hurting you that you need to take action about.

If you are one of these people but you long to change something, if you’ve decided that resolutions are too mainstream, that you’re too cool for the whole thing, or if you’re honest with yourself enough to say that these attitudes are just excuses for your fear of failure, then stop it.  Instead of focusing on how very far the distance is between where you are at 95 pounds squat or a shitty karaoke solo, think instead of what plan is going to get you to all the way to 225 in a few years, what singing opportunities you have to practice with.  You can do that thing you want, and you are not too old or whatever those other people say that has been holding you back.

You’re not just getting yourself down and robbing yourself of precious time to do something you are passionate about, you are affecting the people around you with that attitude of resigned passivity.  Your friends and colleagues who do want to make a change of some kind, even if you do not, aren’t looking down their nose at you, and you’d do well to stop looking down yours because it does have an impact when you try to impose on other people your excuses for why you aren’t trying that thing.  Don’t rob someone else of their chance to succeed at a personal commitment of some kind by infecting them with your tired, predictable and frankly quite gauche disdain for effort.

Merry X-Mas!

A selection of chilling imagery from ‘The Folio Book of Horror Stories’ and 'The Folio Book of Ghost Stories.’

Haunting New Illustrations for Classic Horror and Ghost Stories

TOLKIEN NINE-NINE [8/?]

The Festival in the Forest 2018

So I’ve completed my feedback survey, and I thought it the best way to sum up my experience attending this event as a player.

“I appreciate that you drew a note of frustration from expecting to be countered, and I deeply appreciate that you did not notice that all my islands were already tapped.”

Q: what did you love or hate about the festival?

This was a treat for me getting to see the game from the player side of the screen.  Exposure to other DM styles is healthy and any DM should spend time playing, to observe where others hit and miss in their styles and methods.

I think that the DM team concept was a strong offering this year, while still somewhat disjointed this did a good job of unifying the experience.

That being said, you Need to sack the NPCs.  Unprofessional, unattentive, unavailable, and clueless to put it mildly and succinctly.  I see no use in this collection of bumbling hangers on that failed to deliver any of my rumors when I DM'd this event and were absolutely useless and maddening to interact with as a player.  The wizard was on nap break more often than he was available to consult with and when I finally did get him he helplessly leafed through a sheaf of papers and explained that he had no helpful information on any subject I wanted to cover.  It became very clear that I was quizzing the student who had not done the reading.  My friend offered a similar remark regarding consulting with the ranger NPC about a magical beast they encountered.  This is a logical character to talk to about that, but he was completely unprepared.  I did a roleplay with the hand of the king type character and secured some extra coin for our party, as our group of mostly introductory players went three sessions with no treasure to speak of, only to find that the man who spoke with the voice of the king was in fact impotent to pay out sums in the name of the crown.  If they aren't even going to be allowed to solve player grievances I don't see what point this cast serves.  I can bring you a dozen nerds who will happily put on fake ears and makeup and who will deliver a better performance gratis.  I dunno if bringing back Pasha is just not an option or whatever but this NPC crowd lacks the rules knowledge, has not studied the story or game, and is unprepared to deliver more to the experience than passing out candy.

I perceived from all the arcane sacrifices going on that the DM teams have worked to try and claw back the treasures and riches given out in past years.  This plan was a disaster for first time players who walked away from the weekend nearly empty handed, and deeply frustrating for several of the returning players I played with.  This wasn't just a gold penalty to go regrow a limb or bring someone back to life, there was a lot of hard-won treasure that some of those guys physically winced to part with.  The difficulty should have been managed and more ways for people to voluntarily part with wealth should have been used instead of a story-mandated item tax.  Say what you will about the deadliness of my encounters, I've never stolen an item from a player by way of plot or taken any limb that wasn't earned in strictly legal adherence to the combat rules, and frankly killing some of these PCs would have been kinder than nerfing them in this way.

Q: 3. How organized was the event? (Please provide examples of how you would like to see this improved)

The DM teams are on point, the management of facilities is solid, but while the Live NPCs remain integral to the story their continued underperformance will always hurt my assessment.  The DMs prepared for months to come to this event and put on a game, they deserve an NPC corps that knows the game, knows the rules, is knowledgeable about the story, and is behaving in a professional manner consistent with the expectations of a player attending a paid event.

Q How would you rate the DMs on your team?

Plane of Water - Clearly presented story, goals, and player expectations.  You knew what you were getting yourself into and you knew roughly what you'd be on about.  Your use of handcrafted terrain is clearly a joy and you should keep at it, your encounters are also planned in tactically interesting ways and you made use of survival mechanics which are a personal delight of my own.  I would caution you only that you weigh whether you're trying to entertain and present an interesting experience for your players or if you are over-accommodating in the fear that they might encounter difficulty and be turned off to the game.  Some players want that faceroll experience, personally when I play as a wizard or as a barbarian, I want to feel that the fights are genuinely dangerous and that I must make my choices with care.  In that fight with the big water demon at the beginning of the weekend, I felt that he went down like a bitch.  You can take off the kid gloves a little more, and I think that your players will get an adrenaline rush out of your style of play if you let loose a little and reduce someone to zero hp every once in a while.  I definitely felt the difficulty while steering the ship around the ice and managing our resources, if you can allow yourself the permission to hurt PCs and bring that kind of intensity to your combat encounters you'll have lightning in a bottle.

Plane of Air - Dealing with an evil PC in the party is not always easy when you have an expectation of heroism and your plot hooks are opportunities to be heroic.  I could see the "oh shit" moment when I decided that that mother and child in a burning building was not worth our time, and felt the relief when the warlock's familiar caught the slack.  That was an entertaining moment and also a good way to handle the situation in order to get to your critical encounter.  Your use of zombies delighted me, and I enjoyed using Magic Circle to simply shut them down as a combat threat.  PCs should get the opportunity to revel in their powers, but you also brought in non-zombie combatants that presented a new variable and that was a great move.  I don't know if they were planned or you were just sick of my shit, but it complicated a battle that would have otherwise been shooting fish in a barrel.  Well played either way.  I also appreciated the library and the way research was handled, doing those kinds of abstract tasks can be hard to adjudicate, especially when you are trying to create a sensation of limited time and the task is story-critical.  I would offer as constructive feedback that story-critical information and events are formatted more actively. Your mother and child for example were passively waiting for us to save them, and if I had had my way they would have burnt to death while I got the party to go about my business.  Instead, if they had come barreling out of an ally right into the party with a mob of zombies in pursuit, then, while a less interesting tactical experience, the party would have gotten the story critical NPC interaction regardless of where we decided to go.  If it really needs to happen, make it happen instead of expecting the players to stumble upon it, because some of us evil aligned players won't make the time to go looking for someone to do good to.

Plane of Earth - Oh Chip.  We disagree very widely regarding what makes good dnd.  This I need to just get off my chest, and I've already lambasted the NPCs elsewhere, but the first 40 minutes of our session in which no one in the party had a clue what we were supposed to be doing, why we were here, and how to go about finding out what to do were some of the worst minutes I've spent in the game.  I don't mean that to be harsh, I just need to clearly communicate to you that a 40 minute scavenger hunt at the beginning of the game was tiresome and should not have been necessary.  I should have to figure out where the thing I'm looking for is at the table, I should not spend a third of the time finding out what I'm supposed to be looking for in the first place.  Now I like investigation, I like intrigue- I enjoyed passing the dwarf off as a halfling, I got a kick out of breaking into the print shop, I had fun scrutinizing that fortune teller to check for fraud (for surely who knows fraud better than Evik-azul?) but interacting with the live NPCs was a waste of my time every single time I tried it, and while I appreciate the immersive experience you envisioned this cast of NPC actors is simply not up to snuff to fulfill your vision, and my enjoyment of your game suffered for it.  To a degree, I agree with you that combat should be fast paced and that people should not be deliberating where to center a fireball for 5 minutes.  We differ in that I expect them to know precisely which square when their turn comes or go to the bottom of initiative and i'll come back, where you have simply done away with the squares.  I don't disagree with you on technical grounds at all, I played theater for 15 years before I ever laid hands on my first grid, but the complexity of play available with it is a delight in my opinion.  I feel like you could have pulled fewer punches with that purple worm.  By the end of the session I still had significant spell slots and the warriors still had a lot of hit points, the combat could have been more exciting had it taxed our resources more heavily, but I did appreciate the coal collection task that added a good layer of complexity to an otherwise so-so boss encounter.  Apart from over reliance on these bumbling NPCs, the only feedback I have in terms of your story is that while I'm glad that the Shadow Lord is starting to appear in the game world, I found his cut scene at your table strange.  Why didn't he simply kill us all?  What's the point eliminating the forgemaster if you're not going to do something to track or tag the weapons that can kill you, or at least the fools that bear them?  The sensation felt very much like a video game cutscene where I neither had any agency nor did I feel that any truly relevant new information was gleaned.  Your portrayal of the be-grieved grandmother was a nice treat to take from it however, and you were the first DM of the weekend who actually paid out, which was a desperately needed thing for first years.

Plane of Fire - Ah now here was a dungeon after my own heart.  Clear goal and expectation, an instant death environment hazard out of the gate, swarms of ravening ghouls, a banshee that put half the party down, and horrible demon skulls that shoot fireballs at you.  I would have liked some chances to deal with the ghouls a little more, but your dungeon delivered the tactical experience I felt I was missing at the other tables.  Now, I don't know if you are aware, but towards the end of the altar encounter, the warlock and I had both gone through all our spell slots countering those fireballs.  You could have blown us all to hell and ended the session in fire and ruin.  I appreciate that you drew a note of frustration from expecting to be countered, and I deeply appreciate that you did not notice that all my islands were already tapped.  I enjoyed dropping a sailing ship on your hapless monsters, and look forward to future opportunities to match wits with you on the game board.

How well do you feel the DMs on your team were coordinated?

I'm only rating this so low because I got three differing answers regarding how to cure Blood Plague.  Now, I want to be clear, I loved the blood plague, and I absolutely loved contracting it.  My character was NE only because I wasn't allowed to submit one that was CE, and the blood plague gave me real motivation to solve the adventure for reasons relevant to my character.

That being said, when I went to water it was water elementals specifically infecting the people, then shadow on earth, and on air it was simply zombies.  Now these are not necessarily mutually exclusive answers, but there was no unified response or place where I could confirm my suspicions beyond the first session.  DMs seemed to be scrambling between themselves trying to decide what spells or methods other than Wish could be used to clear an infected individual, and there were no symptoms or further saving rolls I was required to endure.

The blood plague was a unifying element between tables, and everyone should have been closer to the same page on this, and fleshed out rules and ideas about what happens when a player is infected should have been worked out ahead of time.  When we get Contagion or Bestow Curse or even possessed in RAW 5E, the ways that a PC can get un-possessed or freed from a curse are clearly stated.  I'm not demanding that that should have been known off the bat, but I invested a significant amount of time in game (and out talking to those useless prosthetic-decked chumps) investigating the matter and should have been able to divine more than I was able to.  Again, the live NPC situation is a mess, and I'm willing to accept that you guys expected them to be on top of some information you gave them.

---------------

On the whole I had a good time, and i’m thinking of coming back to DM next year.

Newborn Prince Of Cambridge Begins Consolidating Power By Having Family Imprisoned In Tower Of London

LONDON—Ruthlessly moving to stake his claim to the British throne mere moments after his parturition this morning, the newborn Prince of Cambridge began consolidating power by having all other members of the royal family imprisoned in the Tower of London, those close to the Crown report. “In what can only be seen as an unusually audacious seizing of power, His Infant Majesty the Prince of Cambridge has systematically eliminated the entire sovereign line of succession by decreeing their bondage in durance vile,” said sources in Buckingham Palace, who detailed how the newborn prince moved to have Princess Charlotte, Prince George, and Charles the Prince of Wales taken into custody on suspicion of conspiracy against his royal person; stripped of their wealth, land, and titles; and left to rot in the bowels of the Bloody Tower. “As the prince’s—pardon us, His Majesty the King’s—scourging of the monarchy intensified, His Royal Highness has decreed in his mercy that his disgraced cousins, those princes and princesses who sought to oppose his ascension, will be allowed their lives, though their remaining years will be spent wallowing in the squalid Tower, subsisting on only gruel and what orts and leavings the ravens see fit to bring them; and, if they see their way to grace by confessing their crimes, they shall avert the torture of having their bodies stretched on the rack and excruciated with hot irons for their high treason against the Crown.” Acknowledging the popularity of the Queen among the British common folk, the as-yet unchristened king has decreed that Elizabeth II shall abide in the keep until her death, after which her head shall be set upon a pike as a warning to usurpers.

Breakfast

I enjoy breakfast the most because it’s the meal of the day when I don’t feel like I’m eating as a chore.  More than that, it also has the best things to eat like ham and fried eggs and oatmeal and no one looks at you weird for eating fruit at breakfast like they do with pizza.

So lately I’ve had the weirdest run of interactions.  I slept with a dude a few times, told him I wasn’t into a long-distance monogamous relationship predicated on three hookups and a party, and his reaction to this was to go out buck wild and message me specifically to raise the subject of how much fun he was having fucking other people.  This person, who shall remain anonymous, reached out to me again regarding a minor STI he picked up along the way.

Following that rather tumultuous experience I decided on a focus on common interests.  Went well for a couple weeks, then he got invited to his ex’s grandmother’s funeral.  On the one hand I could be angry about “I am sufficiently close with my ex’s family that being a pall-bearer is a possibility” not having been said to me from the outset but I opted to be an adult and assume that I was dealing with an equally emotionally aware adult who could tell the difference between grief and romantic emotional connection.  Got dumped, reconnected with him friend-style last week, turns out gran didn’t take the old relationship problems to the grave with her.

Went on a couple dates lately, dude didn’t know what gentrification was when I mentioned the word on our first date.  “Okay” I thought “he’s from a rural community and has otherwise moved in white-collar gay circles so maybe he’s just not aware like that.”  I had a harder time justifying to myself how I was explaining to a 31 year old man what is bubble tea, and given that the shared interest was supposed to by lifting I was similarly scratching my head trying to figure out why things like volume vs. weight were alien to him.  I feel like in three encounters I should be on the other end of the learning at least once.  I’d also appreciate it if he made himself accessible in a predictable or at least transparent way.  He told me he wants another date, I don’t think he does and I don’t understand why those things are not consistent with one another.  I sense a pretty gay boy juggling dates with two or three dudes trying to decide which is the best investment of time.

I haven’t done as good a job as I ought to have done regarding holding others to standards.  On the one hand I’m cautious because I’m tired of being treated like a side dude or a plan B or an occasional sex partner.  On the other I’m adequately deliberative that I tend towards patience where I suspect it’s probably not deserved.  Certainly if we take my last three examples we can say that expecting adult behavior, being accommodating of strange circumstance, and giving the benefit of the doubt are not serving me well.

This is of course to say nothing of the yoga instructor who felt that not until after several sex encounters and two weeks of sexting was it appropriate to mention he already had a boyfriend.  This is of course horseshit.  If I have the time and courage to do an HIV disclosure the other dude can tell me honestly whether or not he’s single.

Then of course there was the man looking at the world through a wallet, who felt that telling me that he was an angry customer on the phone was a good way to open a date with a CSR.  Closing the date with an unsolicited ass-grab was also not the best choice, I laughed it off at the time but I was angry about it later on.  The laughing was the mistake I think.

I suppose the take-away here is that I’m tired.  I’m exhausted with first dates.  I’m worn out with introducing myself over and over and I’m completely burnt out on both analyzing behavior and guessing at intent.  I’m certainly over being the understanding and accommodating one in these affairs, and certainly I’m at the end of my patience with being the chaser.

I honestly have no clue about what I’m doing wrong.  I show up on time, I keep my commitments, I’m neither financially distressed or emotionally demanding I’m engaged in a diverse and active social life.  I’m skilled both at getting people out of the house to go be active and at showing up to offer some emotional nurture and fucking artisanal bread and I’m evidently pretty attractive.  I’m meeting and exceeding standards, and I don’t get why I’m still falling short in this dating game.

Meeting a guy tomorrow for a chest day, he’s actually pretty promising; immediately identified me as PC master race, was down with the star wars RPG books lying all over my house and he actually squats.  Also does social work for his studying, so he’s pretty exciting.  Or at least he should be.  I’m wiped out with all this to the point where I can only manage a wan smile and polite tilt of my head in response to the idea.  I should be excited about such a dude but I’m just exhausted with the idea of my 8th first date in 5 months.

Buuuut here’s to saturday lifting date #4, if the dude doesn’t work out then at least I’ll have a spot for bench presses ;)

How The Second Amendment Fails Us Regarding Tyranny

The argument that the second amendment is necessary to resist a tyrannical government is without practical merit, and I intend to demonstrate this by utility rather than arguing that the government is not out to get you or that it is morally wrong to kill people.  As such, this essay takes a somewhat dispassionate and analytic attitude towards murder.

Indeed, there are several cases we can document in which the government and its citizens have been at violent odds both locally and at a federal level.  The second amendment has not only failed to allow the citizens to overthrow the will of the government in these cases, it has in fact gotten them killed.  I will not therefore argue that violence is not the answer because I would like to have everyone join in a peace circle and sing Welcome Christmas, but rather I will argue that it is not the answer because it doesn’t work.  Then I will demonstrate the ways in which the second amendment enables and amplifies the curtailing of liberties for the American people.

The Waco Siege began with an initial FBI raid in which 4 agents and 6 Branch Davidians were killed.  Following this was a 51 day siege that ended with the Branch Davidian building burning down, killing 76 people inside.  Of the surviving Branch Davidians, of which there were eleven, all were arrested upon fleeing the flames.

The astonishing loss of life aside, the survivors still didn’t get their way.  For all their guns and the four FBI agents they killed, they either went to prison anyway or else died a horrifying death by fire.  The people stood up to the government for the sake of their (deviant) religious beliefs and they were prepared with violent means and they died or went to prison.  The second amendment failed to allow these people seeking religious freedom to resist the government.

More recently, the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge also failed.  In this case an armed militia seeking to assert land ownership rights over the government took possession by force of a national parks facility and engaged in a standoff with federal officers for a total of 40 days.  At the end of this time, seven of them, including Ammon and Ryan Bundy who led the expedition, were tried and acquitted of federal charges.  Most of the people they led into this crusade to enrich themselves did not fare so well.  Six were sentenced to 1-2 years of probation, some of those on house arrest.  Two were given 366 days in prison, with one of them given a further three years probation, another two were given 21 and 18 months in prison respectively.  One man got off with no sentencing and indeed no trial, for the perfectly sensible reason that he had already been shot to death.

Once again, a group of armed people in a relatively remote facility against the federal government purchased less than two months of resistance with their guns and paid toll in blood and prison time.  

And that’s just how it goes down if you’re white and dealing with the feds.

In 2016, we all watched a video with a good deal of tyranny in it.  Philando Castile was shot to death by a Minnesota officer who requested of him information about what arms he was carrying and asked him to present documentation for the weapon.  Mere possession of the firearm got Castile killed by the government, but the bloodletting did not end there.

Outraged as many of us were Mr. Micah Xavier Johnson decided to do something about his tyrannical government using his army training and some firearms.  To his credit (if one can credit a murderer), this is the case from my review in which the number of government agents killed exceeds the number of non-government citizens killed, perhaps owing to his training or perhaps the MOUT environment in which he fought.

Mr. Johnson succeeded in killing a total of 5 police officers and injuring a further nine officers.  Of all the anti-government combatants in my review, his is the only case in which there was not a person who believed that they were receiving instructions from God and also the only case in which claiming resources for himself in the form of child wives or land was not the goal.  To incite open armed rebellion against the government and overthrow it by force of arms and invert a longstanding system of racism, enabled by the second amendment, was his goal.

Mr. Johnson’s otherwise fairly successful attempt to injure if not destroy the government was brought to a historical end.  The local police force in Dallas killed Mr. Johnson by taping an explosive to a bomb removal robot and having the automaton hand-deliver the weapon to Mr. Johnson.  He is the first US citizen to be killed by police by robot.  It seems that anti-personnel assault rifles and MOUT tactics are not effective against a government killbot.

Bear in mind by the way that this was a local police force.  Had the same mentality been at play among federal agents a UAV missile strike would seem the scaled up analog.

What can we take from these case studies?  By taking up arms against the government you at a minimum ensure that you will be involved in a protracted legal battle, the chances of escaping that legal battle with your liberties intact are slim, and there is a very good chance that you will simply end up dead.

You cannot use the second amendment to beat the government and secure your liberties, no one ever has.  If you would argue that these case studies are not the same as the wave of citizen uprisings you think you could incite, let me remind you that the Bundys and Mr. Johnson intended to lead such uprisings themselves and failed to get them off the ground, and that further the only occasion of armed uprising on the scale you propose ended with the federal government on top on April 9th 1865 at Appomattox.

This isn’t a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of record.

Yet, there are more ways in which the second amendment inhibits our liberties.  As already mentioned, Philando Castile was killed because he possessed a firearm, but you don’t even need to possess one for the police to kill you.

Tamir Rice, 12, of Cleveland Ohio possessed a water pistol or the like and was shot by police twice, dying the following day.  The police officers suffered no penalty becuase the grand jury did not indict them because the video shown to them showed Tamir drawing his water pistol, which the officers involved believed to be real.

Because of the second amendment, there is a reasonable possibility that police officers will face armed assailants anytime and everywhere, and as such, the courts regularly give them the benefit of the doubt because officers are not necessarily wrong to fear for their lives when facing down a 12 year old boy.

The second amendment and the companies that benefit from it have flooded our country with firearms, and as such police can shoot people with impunity because of their reasonable concern of being shot themselves.  Who they are shooting largely comes down to a discussion of racism, but don’t imagine that fair skin will save you, as discovered by Australian Justine Damond.  It was in fact she that summoned the police to begin with, and she is now dead.  That her police killer was arrested is perhaps a matter of her being white, but there is also the possibility that it had to be done to attend to what was an international incident.  Australian citizens get more justice than American ones do in the matter of police shootings in our own country, it seems.

When a policeman can gun down a 12 year old boy and suffer no jail time, we are living in tyranny.  When a man can reach for his papers in his car and be gunned down we are living in a police state, and when we declare that the legal device by which these things are possible is critical to preserving our freedoms, we are wrong.

The Regeneration Episode

New teeth.  That’s weird.

Man October is just getting to the good parts and I already feel like I’ve been on a big adventure.  This is a landmark month for me because it marks the 12th month since my new doctor changed my medicine.  It’s also my birthday in just a week or so, it seems appropriate to take stock of how 33 has been.

Let’s start from the beginning, 32 was rubbish.  Relationship went sour, got toxic, ended with a precipitous sensation of discard.  Has been explored elsewhere laboriously.  Doesn’t need further analysis here.  Job was looking shaky.  Rent was reasonable but heavy once I turned single again.  Mind you I adore my landlord and i’ll always remember that apartment as the place where I showed that I was capable of long-haul and nurturing, but it had become ponderous.

Social life was badly- perhaps even dangerously- contracted.  Arms were weak, cardio was nonexistent, joints were beginning to act like old people joints.

And then I turned 33 and my doctor switched me to a drug that didn’t depress me.  This was possible only because the job that was starting to feel like a trap became a critically important source of stability.  I could wake up in the morning unburdened by the sensation that my efforts were futile.

So, waking up at 4am I did the only sensible thing and went in to do deadlifts, as one does.  So now I was getting out of bed without feeling like some kind of ghost and i was starting to be able to move heavy things like I used to do.  Then heavy things turned into drills with a sledgehammer, turned into the climbing wall, turned into the obstacle course, turned into even heavier deadlifts including a personal best.  At the end of this month it will be true that I have trained a full year with no more than one break and that no greater than 5 days.  51 weeks of commitment to my goal.

I took the energy from the gym to the office and many things were easier than before.  I didn’t feel belabored so often.  My restlessness could be easily converted into the energy to pursue new work projects.  Turned my performance record (which was not awful but needed work) into one of the better ones on my team.

Brought that energy back home and made some plans for the future.  Engaged a realtor.  Toured lots of houses.  Learned many things about property and location.  Bought a house.  I planted a garden full of yellow and orange flowers and tomatoes and herbs and it was wonderful.  I built a garage gym so no snow drift may stay me from my goal.

I had already begun and now began accelerating a project to make one new friend in each month.  I reconstituted a new and reliable D&D group.  I had tea with friends.  I attended events and participated in things new that I hadn’t tried.  I saved a room full of people from a zombie using my karaoke portfolio.  I remembered that booze was useless to people who can sing in public without shame and discarding it has been immensely helpful in controlling costs and freeing up more money to spend on things like protein shakes.

And here we are looking at 34.  I’ve made a commitment to do a fitness competition sometime when i’m 35, because you really do have to lay such plans in terms of years.  I’m looking forward to new house improvement plans.  I’m pursuing exciting new opportunities at the office. My cat is happy, my house is secure and peaceful and comfortable.  I’m playing in a campaign as a player for the first time in years.  I visited with dear old friends in Florida and I went to a nude beach.  I promise, I’m not a woman in my 60s, I’m just experiencing the same relief because my brain is unclouded by a paralyzing mist of inertia and self-doubt for the first time in years.

I was out at the park training with the sledgehammer on the tires and I got invited to the rugby practice.  I decided that i’d spent enough time exercising largely on my own and that it was time to stop hiding myself away and get back out among other gay people so I joined up.  I might as well check off the one-friend-per-month rule because I figure that once I get over my social anxiety this will be a healthy thing for me as a means to rejoin gay society on terms I can relate to comfortably.  Aggressive, invigorating terms.

I think that depression, if it is chemically induced like mine or if it’s a normal thing for a person is just awful because it claims our time, it slows everything down.  I don’t think one can overstate the radical differences in a person, so to reiterate the difference between healthcare that gives access to modern drugs for me was the difference between being a self-defeating slave willing to put aside his own goals to be ‘supportive’ of someone who didn’t really see me as anything more than an accessory in his own saga and a reinvigorated man who hasn’t either felt so driven or felt as though so many goals were in reach in nearly a decade.  Sixteen inch arms seemed like a big deal back at 14.5 but now that i’m here it’s clear that I need to take a look at 17 or 18 and see how I feel about those.

I’ve spent the year practicing self-love and it’s a pretty wonderful thing.  I’m excited for 34 as the Year I Got Big and The Year I Stopped Living Like Some Kind of Pariah.

33 has treated me really well.  Apart from the new kidneys.  I don’t like the color.

Weregild

“I’m disgusted by another shooting.”  I feel like that’s an easy thing to say and that it doesn’t accomplish much, but it’s all our leaders are able to say or do.

I feel like I need to say it though because it’s so distressingly easy to let it just fade in the background as another mass murder.

I’m disgusted by preventable loss of life, doubly so because a 65 year old casino rat did the deed.  Similar to how disgusted I was that a little gollum like Dylan Roof could manage to murder anyone.  With these damned machines it’s possible.

This is not the cost of freedom.  No one is more free because these people have died or are dying.  The federal government is no less capable of crushing you because you have even weapons such as these.  Even the shooter knew that.

While we’re in shock or grieving others are preparing.  The stock values of arms manufacturers have already climbed as much as 7% because wall street is still as cold and calculating as ever when there is a bargain to be had.  The appropriate lobbyist snakes are already making the appropriate inquiries with the appropriate members of congress.

The murders of little children who can barely put on their own pants weren’t enough.  Shootings year after year worse than the one before it is not enough.  Even a congressman himself being shot was not enough.

I wonder if now that it’s white rural-culturally-identifying people if it will be enough.  I wonder if this constituency that values this amendment really is ready to bleed for it.  This is the nightmare that they have made, they just thought it would never be visited upon them.  The congress most certainly won’t act without the support of the people, and here are the people who swore when it was an abstraction that this was a risk they were willing to take.

I don’t think anyone has this kind of thing coming to them.  Maybe now these people might agree instead of saying things like “it’s a pity he couldn’t have shot more gays.”  It would be nice but it wouldn’t matter.

What the people want in terms of gun control is not relevant because they do not have power anymore, because the gun lobby, flush with cash from the stock jump associated with this horror, will pay a plump collection of campaign donations to the GOP and business will continue at a brisk pace for the people making the guns.

Those dead people’s lives don’t matter because they have been commodified and calculated as overhead.  The occasional infusion of political and PR blood price is built into the arms manufacturer’s business model.

Those lives are already bought and paid for by the time I post this.

Manhood, Flags, and Football

Football is a complicated sport.  Not in terms of what happens on the field, that part is distressingly dull in my opinion.  As a cultural phenomenon however it has so many fascinating interactions with masculine identity and matters of race that it bears consideration.

Let’s hit the masculine identity angle.  I know lots of people whose exercise or physical activity pattern could be described as “utterly sedate” or “ recreational in the best of times.”  Even in this new era where the fitness craze of the 80s and early aughts is back in force- each of which by the way interacted with masculine identity in its own way- there are yet many who are yet content to subscribe to athleticism by fandom.

Several years ago I was in the bathroom at work and overheard an exchange that gave me great concern for the state of masculinity as a virtue.

“Standing in front of the urinal talking about baseball, how much more manly can you get than that” the young many pondered.

My immediate reaction was “You could spear a boar in the forest, alone and bearing only your spear and your wits.  My but we’ve come down a long way in terms of rites of passage.”

But we really have come down further in terms of masculine virtue haven’t we.  Somehow athleticism (defined either literally or as a cultural construction whereby one appropriates it by wearing clothing that declares fandom and knowing things about the people who actually do it) and ability to get laid are the celebrated virtues until such time as the more classical ones are needed in an argument.

Consider this kneeling business.  I honestly cannot conceive of a more innocuous way to make a political statement.  I write letters to Rob Portman more aggressive that this.  They are football players.  I cannot think of a more celebrated class of athletes.  I cannot think of a more clear standard for the modern masculinity than the singing of their praises.  They’re both perfectly positioned to make such statements and have chosen a method so tame that the backlash they’re being subjected to is disgusting to me.

I’ve read about a restaurant some 45 minutes north of my hometown where they have decided to boycott the NFL “out of patriotism” and there is a restaurant here in town where if you stand for the anthem and remove your hat, your meal is half-off.  If you are a veteran it is free.

I posed to them the question of how this policy would be reconciled if I, a veteran, felt compelled to take a knee myself.  I’m still waiting for an answer.

Again, masculinity is in play, here as a bludgeon.  The erstwhile exemplars of masculinity that this lazy coward’s culture so idolized when they were merely spendthrift wife beaters and gamblers, adulterers and cheats are now cast aside as false idols since they have taken up the cause of fighting racism.  In a patriarchal system in which degree of masculinity, which these men exemplar, is a means to escape reproach, to what else can you turn to trump their man cards except with those who actually fight wars?

I take the greatest possible exception with being recruited against my will and without my consent to a cause that I detest.  Nevermind my disgust at some penny-ante diner trying to use jingoism as a means to rope people into sampling their shitty two dollar cheese sticks.  If you’re stupid enough to go in for that kind of thing and wave a flag that you don’t believe in in any meaningful way then that shame is on you.  That your “patriotism” needs an all-you-can-eat bargain platter to get you to stand for the anthem is your own filthy truth.

This offer attempts to steal my voice and the voices of all veterans who actively oppose or at the least disapprove of racism and find these protests to be morally praiseworthy.  Indeed in my opinion it may be the only morally praiseworthy thing the NFL has accomplished in my lifetime.  Lord knows it’s not going to be treating players well regarding concussions- which by the way also has interesting racial overtones regarding the ownership of one’s body and the responsibility of people who are literally called Owners.

Further, I’m disgusted by it because it’s just another appropriation by the unworthy.  You weren’t capable of playing football in any decent degree when you idolized them, you’re not patriotic enough or warrior enough to actually enlist now that you turn to us.  Your gratitude for my service is based in your assumption that I was fighting not for our country that we share with black people and transexuals and the puerto ricans an outrageous half of you have casually forgotten are citizens in their time of greatest need, you thanked me because you believed I was fighting for your country, in which my marriage rights do not exist and my friends are subhuman.

For the record, I wasn’t, and if you succeed in sparking the civil war you’re so gay for I won’t be on your side, and I would gladly kill you.  Maybe it’s better to just stick to unsubscribing from the NFL and posting to whatever Dark Web address you have to go to for Stormfront, maybe that’s more your speed.

Hell for my queerness I would be subhuman to you as well except that my whiteness, maleness, and my veterancy silence your disrespectful coward’s tongue.  You will of course appropriate some even more manly identity in your effort to respond to me.  Perhaps you have a friend who was infantry, maybe bringing him up and speaking on his behalf will make you seem like you have anything to say worthy of my ears.

The fact of the matter is that it is not who takes up the cause that gives a cause value but the righteousness of that cause that attract men and women of quality to it.

If I occasionally speak of civilians with disgust, it’s because of this.  More than anything, it’s because the standards of masculinity my life has established for me call for more than last night’s score or the ability to pass out after a progressively larger number of pints.  Because my standards for patriotism call for consistent voting attendance, kindness towards other citizens, and the willingness to put country and people before a quick buck, distaste for other citizens, or moral vanity.

I speak with disgust because you grasp at the shadows of patriotism and masculine virtue and put on the airs of it in order to prop up worldviews and systems that are consistently cowardly and greedy.  You’re not manly and you’re certainly not American to decry the peaceful protest of others, or to accept a form of our union that is less free and equitable than it could be.

Here’s a way to man up with true patriotism.  Make some personal sacrifice for something other than your filthy coward’s vanity.  Forgo some of your beer and shitty half-priced pizzas and instead invest in your fellow citizens who suffer in the Caribbean.

https://www.redcross.org/donate/hurricane-irma-donations

Because Rob Portman is Evidently My Pen Pal

Senator,

I think that most Americans aren’t racists in the purest sense.  I need that to be true right now more than ever.

Every white person in America of conscience has to have a moment where you realize that you just used a racially charged word or grammatical flourish in some awkward way or you avoided the black dude walking down the street and not because he seemed angry or aggressive or you passed over the immigrant in favor of someone who looks more like you for dating, despite equally astonishing muscles.

All of us apart from innocent children at some point have to have this slimy moment when we realize that we’ve also been infected, that some of the pervasive racism that is the hallmark of our society has seeped its way into our own behavior despite the best intentions.

What is going on in the Presidency is not this “ambient racism” for which we might be tempted to forgive ourselves.  These people do not have good intentions.  This is a president who cannot unequivocally condemn nazis.

I mean you’re a politician, you tell me, what red-blooded american politician wouldn’t absolutely revel in the opportunity to literally be up against nazis.  It’s basically a chance to frame oneself as opposed to the devil.  Even for the most cold-blooded conservative, condemning literal, swastika waving nazis should be easy as pie because of all the benefits one could reap politically with sound bytes and media coverage.  “Sure I voted against healthcare for millions of people but I was there when we needed to stand up to nazis.”  Even the most bare-faced, opportunistic snake should be able to seize this.

It’s the easiest kind of statement a person could make in politics, “I don’t like nazis” is a no-brainer- which this president has made into an international incident that has scandalized our allies.

This isn’t a question of being politically adroit or even one of incompetence from a famously incompetent man.  He’s not condemning white supremacists and literal nazis because he is in league with them.  It is known that Bannon specifically instructed him not to criticize the nazis too heavily to avoid alienating them.  And he listened to that advice.

Equivocation and waffling and malignant moral ambivalence clothed as an anemic respect for the first amendment, that’s what we’re getting.  This White House isn’t just influenced by the ambient racism of America, it’s an active agent in the causes of xenophobia, oppression, and white supremacy.

Frankly I think that the only cure for our country is Mr. Mueller’s work to remove the infected organ.  However, you are in a position to provide our country with treatment to ease the symptoms.

You must strongly and publicly call for the removal of Mr. Bannon from this White House.  

It won’t cure the sickness that has infected our highest office because the entire tumor must be excised, but the removal of this man and his cadre of jingoistic racists would go a long way to creating a White House wherein more moderate or at least sane voices influence the presidency unopposed by the vile rhetoric of a nazi propagandist.

Make no mistake: Donald Trump has thrown in with the nazis and should be impeached at the soonest opportunity.  However, I have long held that he is basically incompetent and that any political position he appears to take is an accident of circumstance or the result of advice from others.

Bannon’s ouster is needed now.

Don't Call It a Man

I’ve had a couple presidents in my adult life. Not a lot of them, really just the two. Today, I have an incompetent lower life form wearing the mantle of men. It’s clear that we have some kind of pond amphibian running the country, clear by its circus of an administration, its continued legislative failures and in its continuing efforts to dismantle the federal government from the inside out. Some of these things have been conservative wishlist items for a great many years, and yet now that they are being brought to fruition, conservatives still have very little to cheer about. Those who understand anything about how the economy or healthcare works at any rate. Well, today they can claim themselves a victory. An ugly, hateful victory the likes of which they’ve been excited about for years. Some of them might even be convinced that this’ll get the country moving in the right direction again. It will not. You will gain nothing from this. Today, the bulbous fool, this overgrown bullforg that finds itself, unaccountably, the commander in chief of our military, has announced, by a fucking tweet no less, that transgender blood is not worthy to be spilled for our nation. It’s an old refrain for the right, and a tactic that long predates them. It’s especially true in America, but everywhere there have been people in settlements, valor and honor have been there for the taking in the military profession. The Athenians limited it to citizens of the polis, the Romans limited it in the same fashion. There were times when only Catholics could serve in Crusade and times where you couldn’t be considered if you were not born noble. In this country, we forbade black people from service and of course every one of the cases above have until only very recently forbidden women from service. It has never been the case that a woman can’t swing a sword or a black man cannot aim a rifle or a gay man can’t do a pushup. Trust bitch, I can do pushups. This is not about the cost of paying for transition surgery or because of a “lack of good order and discipline” that these people would impose. I can think of no person with a greater degree of discipline than one who spends their entire day taking painstaking steps in dress and manner, a strict regimen of injections, and bearing the burden of society’s scorn in order to defy an unfortunate mistake of RNA transcription. And some of them do it in heels. If that absurd, pencil-dicked goblin had half the discipline and attention to detail of a trans person it wouldn’t look like a copy of the Bert muppet with too much stuffing pushed in. It can’t even present the male gender correctly by the 1980s standards it has chosen. All it offers up is some kind of misogynistic, NYC chauvinist pumpkin-creature crammed into a poorly fitting pair of slacks. Danny DeVito’s Penguin was more recognizably masculine. Again, this is not about discipline or tax dollars. This is about power and repression. This is about choosing who gets to claim the lionization of military service in this country where it is a pathway to economic and political power. It’s about saying that a round, pasty Hutt is fit to claim that more than someone who’s actually getting ready to volunteer for the job and be turned away because despite being able to max his PT test by the male standard and shoot the wings off a fly he’s “unfit” for service because he happens to have a vagina. That painted old whore has remarked “I always felt like I was in the military. More training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” It was discussing its time at military school, where it was sent for being a bad kid. Because that is what we do with bad kids, they get shipped off to military schools for intensive discipline because they are not capable of functioning with the rest of us. That is a far cry from a person who’s discovering themselves and has chosen along the way to commit years of their adult life, their wellbeing, and their freedoms to the ongoing enterprise of keeping us all safe. Remedial training in middle school prior to a career as a slumlord does not make a soldier out of a frog. “Oh but Obama didn’t serve either,” cry the little froglings. True indeed, he did not; but where this petulant, talking ass-boil restricts the rights of Americans to fight for their country, Obama expended them. He wasn’t presumptuous enough to declare who could and could not serve on the basis of who they are or who they are becoming. So drop your coy bullshit you pathetic little tadpoles. Oh, and if any of you find it offensive that I’ve deliberately misgendered the lard-ridden amphibian you’ve unduly elevated to the office of the presidency, good. I want you to feel a taste of what trans people feel when we fuck up. I want you to see why it matters. More importantly than anything else though, I want you to bear in mind that this spineless toad is not fit to be called man or woman, and certainly not President.

in case you’re wondering, colin baker’s being wonderful on twitter

Rage

So, here I am, almost a year since my ex dumped me, still yelling at him in my head at least once a week and often more. It’s not a daily thing anymore, thank god for that. Point is that in spite of the healing I’ve done I’m in a place where I need to be honest with my anger. I’ve made a serious effort at focusing this around forgiveness and addressing myself to what I then perceived to be legitimate criticism and to make this year be about growth and regeneration and all that. I’ve demonstrated that I’m not just a loser who can’t make plans for himself with career, I’ve shown that my body isn’t inevitably doomed to smallness and weakness, and I’ve shown that I’m not afraid of responsibility or unable to plan for retirement. I’m a homeowner now, and as of this week my equity has officially increased by 1,000 bucks or so due to my payments, which means that I now own roughly 1% more of my house than I did when I bought it (as I understand this anyway). I have a garden filled with beautiful and fruitful growing things and my cat is healthy and warm and safe. It’s not the home together I thought we were building but I have made a home and a little family of my own, and I’m proud to look after it all. I’ve done a really good job reconnecting with people I lost track of during the relationship or who I alienated in order to meet Chris’s demands of my time or his paranoid jealousy. I was so isolated in the end, I didn’t feel like I could reach out to anyone. I’ve either made one new friend or reconnected with an old one each month since he left, and my life is again a fleshed-out, robust social experience. In the past year I’ve turned to my medical concerns, and by changing the meds I take to manage HIV, my doctor has freed me from what I did not understand was chronic, chemically induced depression. The results in my life have been transformative, literally. He dumped me at 187 pounds with 33% body fat. I wasn’t even a big drinker or anything but I looked like a goddammed gollum. Managing my own endless sadness from the drug and also serving as a buttress for Chris’s anger about his parents or his work or whatever was on the menu that given day withered me. I cannot overemphasize this. When you wake up in the morning and stare at the ceiling and wonder what in the world you’re gonna do to get your feet over the side of the bed the last thing you need is a high-maintenance boyfriend angry about god knows what today. You know you can’t get out of bed because of the eggshells but you also know that if you stay there you will wither and die, so what are you supposed to do? It’s not even breakfast yet and you’re already in crisis. Today, I weighed in at 188 pounds. After having gone down to 170 to lose the fat I’ve eaten like a horse and applied the discipline and added all the weight back as muscle. I could never have done it in so little time on my old medicine, with it’s bone deletion on top of the depression. It would have taken twice as long to do this. My last body fat check put me around 14.5 percent. Not because I need to prove anything to him about my worthiness, but because I’m getting back to the goal and hobby I loved before he turned it into a terrible chore I needed to do in order to be loved. I’ve adopted the view that I and no one else am the most important person in my life and that my time and hobbies should focus around goals that ensure my comfort and happiness. So, while I do indeed remain hung up on this anger, it’s not without reason. I need to acknowledge that constantly accusing me of cheating, demanding that my body be better without giving me the freedom to go to bed, wake up, or go to the gym when I needed to, constantly bombing me with one emotional crisis or another and forbidding me to discuss the relationship with my confidants even as he had lengthy discussions with his about it were not just the childish insecurities of a younger lover. I was stupid to wait around for him to grow out of these behaviors. I should have known that making allowances and giving the excuses and even excising my friendships to satisfy his demands were unhealthy things to do, and that doing them just surrendered more of my autonomy. I was involved in a controlling relationship and I need to say that publicly and without apology or equivocation. I was involved in a controlling relationship with a person who saw me as an accessory, and I need to say that publicly because I can’t go on just quietly being angry about it and waiting for that sensation to subside, because it hasn’t in a year. I need to acknowledge- honestly and publicly- that I am pissed. I’m pissed off about how I was treated, I’m pissed off that I was dumped with the excuse that pursuing career goals and being with me were incompatible after I was specifcally told that he couldn’t handle my taking a career in archaeology because he “couldn’t handle” me being out of town for weeks on end at digs. The irony of that excuse and the truth that he simply wanted to chase dick in bars fills me with fury. I’m pissed off that I was so weak that every one of his misbehaviors I put on other people or apologized for, I’m pissed that I made him so central that I was willing to explain away any stupid way he treated me or other people. I’m pissed off that he had the gall to say “I’m also living with HIV” and make my health concerns and arguably the biggest tragedy in my life into something that was entirely about him. I wasted so much time with psychologists because he told me to talk to them about depression, I was silent about my status around his friends and relatives in order to avoid embarrassing him while he discussed my status with who he wanted and then sought my permission retroactively. I’m angry that I didn’t have the good sense to make my health be about me. I’m most pissed off about the remark because living with HIV doesn’t end when you dump someone. Being in a discordant relationship doesn’t equate to a diagnosis, and if we had discussed my condition honestly then it wouldn’t have been a mystery to his crass, judgmental friend that I needed to disappear every night at 10 because the old drug stopped me being able to drive after dosing. The matter of my survival should not have been made into a discussion about etiquette so that a droning old queen could feign offense. I should never have to apologize for attending to my health. Fuck I might have not even been on the same fucking drug if we’d approached my depression as a drug side effect (it was) and not made it into a counseling mental health issue. But in a relationship in which my judgements and opinions were not relevant, where only his life experiences mattered, the routines and remedies that worked for him- in the gym or in the counseling chair- were the only ones worth considering. Finally, I don’t care if it was in anger over mariokart or if it was because he didn’t wanna horseplay anymore. It was not okay to hit me in anger, not even if I wasn’t meaningfully injured, not even if the stinging went away in a minute or so. It was not okay to go on shouting fits of rage and beat on walls and slam his fists on steering wheels or scream into pillows demonstratively in front of me or stamp his feet when things didn’t go as planned in his work or when there was a disagreement about house work. I am not responsible for his anger issues, and the people who are have not been able to substantially hurt him in years. It’s not about little boy Chris who was treated badly by his parents anymore, it’s about a 220 pound man who can’t control his temper in adulthood. Regardless, it is not about me and it is not my fault. PTSD is not an excuse to lose control with people. Control with people is a litmus for how well one handles PTSD, the ability to get on with other people without fits of rage should be the standard against which one rates recovery for PTSD, not just an expected PTSD thing that the rest of us are responsible for quietly tolerating. I need to say all these things, and I apologize if this posting seems dramatic or demonizing or attention seeking or whatever, but I need to say these things and give voice to my anger because being privately angry has just left me more and more progressively angry and I need to release this in some way. I’ve taken back every other aspect of my life, and yelling at no one during my commutes to work instead of enjoying music or listening to an audiobook is not who I want to be. I want to let this go so that I can be a good boyfriend to whoever I get serious with next, I want to let it go so I’m content in my life. I can’t do that silently on my own like dark clouds that clear, and so I am here to make some noise and just let a storm be a storm.

Regarding Jeff Sessions

My letter to Senator Rob Portman- R. OH

Senator,

I’m deeply concerned about the conduct in your chamber.  I don’t care for Judge Sessions, but I expect that he will be confirmed.  That being said, the tactic employed by your colleagues to silence Senator Warren is unacceptable.

This process is intended to verify the character as well as the judiciary experience and credentials of a man who will spend the term defending the law of this land.

If we are to consider giving this man the power of membership in the highest department of legal defense authority in the land, whether a letter is condemning or praising cannot be considered as grounds to dismiss it.

It’s at once immaterial and highly pertinent that this letter was written thirty years ago.

On the one hand, you are, again, considering an appointment of great power.  If this man is to wield this power for possibly this entire presidency, then how he has wielded his power in the earlier part of his life must be considered.  It doesn’t matter if he persecuted the black community 5 years or 30 years or 50 years ago, it doesn’t matter if he was saying racially charged remarks in jest or in a court of law.  He’s being considered for a mighty appointment and the conduct of his entire lifetime should be open to scrutiny.

On the other hand, it is incredibly important that Mrs. King wrote this 30 years ago.  You and your colleagues by silencing Senator Warren have at once opened a discussion about the rights of women in the Senate compared with their male colleagues, but at the same time she has thrown into stark relief what it really is we are thinking about here.

Thirty years ago Mrs. King wrote these words and they evidently fell on deaf ears.  You and your colleagues are determining in these deliberations what progress has been made in that time.  

If you choose once again to turn a blind eye to these complaints, to indeed even forbid the suggestion that he behaved improperly, then you are not only failing to properly vet this man in the interests of the American people but you are also declaring that we have made no progress in these thirty years- that white people as a whole are still as rotten as ever, that if a white man obstructs the right of black people to vote it will go uninvestigated.

In the 80s he could still be nominated to a federal circuit with no serious questions asked about these matters.  Is that still true today?

I’m not telling you that you must reject this man, but I am telling you that you have no choice but to examine these allegations with the seriousness they call for.  It is absolutely unacceptable to once again sweep these charges under the rug.  This conversation needs to be had, and it is your duty to have it.  Indeed, even if you think that these matters were sufficiently addressed in 1986, it is time to re-examine them and see if he would pass muster under modern standards, to see if we really have become a better people.

Adam Locke

I’m glad you won’t be voting for Betsy Devos

My email to Rob Portman --------------------

Senator,

No wild-eyed rant today, so I apologize if you or the staffer reading this were looking for one of my philippics.  Well, okay it is a phillippic but I’m feeling in a more relaxed mood at the moment.

Let’s talk about Betsy Devos, for whom you will not be voting as secretary of education.

I really appreciate that you will not be voting for this woman because everything she says makes her a worse and worse candidate for this job.  Never mind of course that your colleagues grilled her to the point where she stammered out some nonsense about bear rifles, that’s window dressing.

I’m concerned more about how much money one of her organizations owes the State of Ohio.  I’m concerned about it because if I take her words at face value I come to two conclusions, neither of which is pretty.

In the one case, she chaired an organization that ripped off the tax payers by delivering poor education by the standards we put to them and therefor she would be a bad pick for Secretary because she’s incompetent.  If she cannot meet standards in Ohio, she is not fit to set standards for Ohio, or for the rest of the US for that matter.

If we then take her at her word, that she was on the board of that organization but that she had no day to day responsibilities there, and is therefore not liable to the taxpayers of Ohio, then instead of a bungling incompetent I begin to see a negligent, apathetic parasitic socialite getting herself jobs where she does no work in order to impress friends at the country club.

Given her inability to keep up with policy discussions about how the department of education works, what it does, and her complete unfamiliarity with it as even a private citizen either of these dispositions- as an incompetent or as a negligent- are unacceptable.

That’s why I’m so glad that you’ll not be voting in favor of this woman.  She’s not qualified, she’s not experienced in any meaningful way by her own words- a job where you do nothing does not belong on a resume- and she’s the wrong choice for this position, clearly chosen because of her views regarding voucher programs and other ideological approaches to education and devoid of any practical skills in administering it.

I hope you’ve found my arguments compelling regarding this rank amatuer for whom you will not be voting.  Send her back to wherever she came from and have the President select someone who knows what they’re doing as an administrator, not as an ideologue.

Adam Locke

My First Email to President Trump

Mr. President,

I’m not sure if you’ve gotten my cordial and rather more conciliatory letters or if you have read them or had them brought to your attention at all.  Indeed, your staff has not even seen fit to respond in any fashion so far.

Regrettably, that is why this letter will not feature such a tone.

I have given you time to become presidential during your transition period and you failed.  I have given you time to walk back some of your most absurd and incendiary social positions and you have failed.  I have been quite patient in waiting for this dull, disciplined presidential Donald to emerge and you have failed to deliver.  

I liked having a cool, collected president with a deliberate attitude and a calm demeanor.  It was reassuring.  Hell for all his bungling I even appreciated George Bush’s childlike charm- you could at least believe that he was acting in good faith, to whatever extent his intellectual capacity might allow anyway.

You have not failed in comparison with Barack Obama.  That would suggest that you’re fit to compare with him, and you’re not.  I desperately want you to be.  I want you to rival him at being good at your job because it matters so much.  I seriously want you to succeed because if you fail the way you have been for any time longer the results will be a disaster for our country.

You’re off the handle in the way you address yourself to others.  You’re undisciplined in your approach to every aspect of this process and you have chosen people both fundamentally unqualified to do the jobs for which they are chosen but also with views antithetical to the existence of the administrative duties to which they are being appointed.

Your relationship with the press is even more concerning.  You antagonize them for routine scrutiny for man in your position- and don’t worry I’m not going to waste time on a meaningless psychobabble about your narcissism or whatever because it doesn’t fucking matter.  It bears repeating, whatever your psychological issues are they do not fucking matter.  What matters is that YOU ARE FAILING.

What’s the result of all this?  A highly ranked official within the Chinese defense directorate is calling a war with our country a “practical reality” that they feel the need to concern themselves over during your presidency.  This alone is your biggest diplomatic fuckup.  Wait I’m not so sure anymore because at the same time that you’re antagonizing the Chinese, our biggest global influence rival, you are also antagonizing fucking Mexico, our number two trading partner and a perfectly placid neighbor for many years.  OH!  And it gets even better!  I’m glad there is an aide to read this to you because I’m pretty sure you can’t read a letter when Vladimir Putin is balls deep in your mouth.

Yeah there’s a weird relationship with that Mexican border and various legal situations, especially if you learn about Mexico from Robert Rodriguez films, but we have generally enjoyed a long friendship that did not include trying to shake each other down to pay for bullshit building projects.  Frankly you will never bully a machismo culture into paying for this wall with the whole world watching and I expect that all you have done is ensured that mexican border patrol efforts are going to become even more lax than they already are, just to spite us over this bullshit policy.  Fuck it, let’s just launch nukes at Canada and call it a day, then we’ll be about as thoroughly isolated from the rest of our own fucking continent as we can be.

And now of course you’ve done just as you said you would, proving wrong every even-keeled conservative I’ve spoken to, and you’ve banned people from muslim majority countries from entering our borders.  I’m sure you have a bunch of lawyers and advisors and so on trying to come up with a way to make this make some kind of legal sense but let me help you out with something more succinct:

What you have done is in direct opposition to our first amendment- which you are required to uphold by the way- is vastly unpopular in this country as well as abroad, and is as a moral choice the most cowardly, disgusting thing for a US president to do since the japanese internment camps of the second world war.

I apologize for this becoming a longer letter than I had in mind but you’re fucking up at a rate of 1 dumbass fuckup per minute so I have a lot to address.

Let’s talk about nazis for a minute.  You’ve got nazis supporting you, openly, in the streets, celebrating in Washington.  Now you could have taken the time, in either a press conference or a video address or whatever to condemn them and formally, explicitly make it clear that they have no place among us.  Instead, you have pronounced a policy of brown-people-exclusion that they are jerkng off to right now as you read this.  Nazis jerk off to your ideas.

As if to ice a cake of fucking nazis, you have kicked the joint chiefs from the security council and replaced them with Steve Bannon, your propagandist.  If you were trying to not look like Hitler lately putting Joseph Goebbels in a position of this kind was another example of your failure.

I know, Bannon is not literally Joseph Goebbels.  Goebbels was nowhere near as fat and he had the good sense to blow his own brains out.  

I expect that for Bannon we will have to end out deposing you and put him through a lengthy trial on the taxpayer’s dime before we shell out even more money to have him executed in some infuriatingly humane chemical process after he’s done convincing your supporters that everyone has a sacred duty to burn down mosques or something.

Honestly the only thing that is missing is that you have not yet tried to annex anybody and you’ve yet to commit your first war crime.  I suppose I can at least say you’ve not made those fuckups yet.

I’ve tried to make this an entertaining if not flattering read because I know that you’re not one for reading more than 140 characters, so it’s my hope that one of your staffers with a sufficiently dry, deadpan delivery will perform a reading of this letter for you so that your attention can be kept long enough to get to the action points below.

1. Stop antagonizing the Chinese.  Seriously.  We are involved in a war in Afghanistan you need to clean up before starting any new ones.

2. Fire Bannon and immediately make an appearance at either a press conference or by direct video rolling back this absurd immigration policy and denouncing the nazis that are cheering for you.  I’m dead serious.  The longer you delay heeding this advice, the closer you come to going down in history are the nazi president.  I can’t believe I’m having to write these words.  It’s fucking surreal that you have not already nipped your nazi problem in the bud.

3. Veto any bill that comes to your desk repealing Obamacare that has not also in it an immediately prepared and budget office approved replacement plan.  I agree that there is room for healthcare reform.  There were good ideas and lousy ones in Obamacare, that’s why we review and change.  I happen to like seeing the calories on a menu for example.  You cannot afford to fail at this.  Your chances of reelection are already astonishingly slim- because you have been failing for a week- and you will not be up against an easily vilified Clinton next time.

4. You get your head on straight about Russia.  They do not want to be buddies with you, they want to see you squirm the way they squirmed in the 90s.  They want to be an ascendant superpower once again and their goals are consistently incompatible with ours, not to mention international law.

5. The TPP, imperfect though it was, was a vital part of our approach to China.  You get a replacement plan in the works and you get it to congress by the end of February.  Don’t worry, you’ll have the time because you’re dumping this wall bullshit to focus on it.  You cannot make the approach to China a military approach.  You need to do it with careful trade and building a support network in the Pacific and you need to do it deliberately and with a plan.

6. Review the  1st, 9th, and 14th amendments and make damn sure your supreme court nominee is very familiar with them.  I retain to myself the right to marry whoever the hell I damn well please, and I’ve got three amendments between me and whoever wants to argue otherwise.

7. You get on the horn with the pipeline companies and explain to them in no uncertain terms that they may indeed have their pipelines- but they will not run through these lands that are sacred and that mean so much to the people of our country.  You tell them they are, at their own expense, to reroute these pipes through areas that are not controversial.

8. Announce immediately that you are abandoning this absurd wall project and that instead you will be investing that 15 billion projected cost in a new project to construct homes for homeless veterans.  You will explain that this project will put to work many blue collar construction workers and that we will be bringing back into the housing market and therefor the workforce some of the most dedicated workers to be found anywhere by finally looking after the vets that we should be the most ashamed of letting go unattended.

Take care of these bullets.  Put up the twitter.  Quit fucking up.  You need to get this right or I guarantee you will not even run for reelection because you will get impeached and that impeachment will have you deposed.  This order you signed this weekend is already unconstitutional as per amendment 1 and frankly the American people are not going to need any further grounds.  The only reason I’m not looking to have you impeached already is that I hate instability and ruckus, and fixing your dumbass is better solution.  Like renovating a tenement for 85k instead of trying to build a new complex for 200.

Adam Locke

P.s. As you may note in the bullets, I’m really rather moderate and willing to compromise on a number of points.  Having a fuckup for a president is not one of them.  I know you’re new, I know you will stumble, but if you can keep it to one dumbass fuckup per quarter at least we can at least get back to Bush levels of incompetence.  Tighten it up or start revising your resume.

My letter to John Kasich

Governor,

I’m distressed by the new heartbeat legislation soon to be on your desk and expect your veto pen to spill ink on this matter.

Our government has no place in the private health decisions of citizens.  As for defining when a collection of reproductive materials coalesce into a person, it is unacceptable here too for the state to intervene.  The science is not settled, the discussion about this matter continues with strident debate on both sides.  As there is no overwhelming consensus on this matter, it is inappropriate at this time for the state to dictate to individuals contrary to their beliefs or the advice of their physicians.

As it is therefore appropriate to stay the hand of legislation at this time and await a more complete end to the ongoing discussion regarding abortion and the moment at which life begins, I urge you to veto this bill.  Until the medical community has given a well-reasoned consensus regarding when there is life, symbolic- perhaps even totemic- thinking about the importance of the heart should not and must not dictate policy in Ohio.

With Respect,

Adam Locke

My Second Letter to Pat McCrory

Governor,

I suppose the next time I write to the Governor of North Carolina be going to someone else.  I look forward to it really, after all I wrote you with plenty of lead time and you still didn’t do anything to correct course on your mistakes.  If you’ll recall, I’m the gay veteran who wrote to say that my boyfriend and I were skipping our NC vacation last year because you passed an absurd law in a spirit of haste and malice so obvious it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.

Well, here we are, at the inevitable result of this behavior.  I wonder if the irony is lost on you, when the question was “do transexuals get to pee and do North Carolinians get to keep their incomes and job opportunities due to the backlash making the wrong call will produce,” you and your legislature spent all of 12 hours reaching your decision.  Boy though, you sure did take your sweet time contemplating the question “Does Pat McCrory get to keep being Governor?”  You waited a full month on that one.

A pity the legislative process wasn’t slowed down, by, oh, say, a governor’s veto, maybe you could have declared victory and spent less time waffling over the election results.

Please share this and my last letter with your successor, Mr. Cooper should have the opportunity to consider the warnings that you did not heed.  During the transition, say to him what I wrote to you, that there’s nothing inefficient about your legislature when they want to screw people, and that it’s your job as governor to veto any bill that comes to your desk in the same 24 hour period in which it was conceived.

I don’t call you a bigot or a hatemonger or any of that nonsense Pat, those are for the chumps in your legislature who got you into this mess.  

You are however an incompetent.  You had a responsibility to put the brakes on this thing before it did the damage it did and you failed because where you spend a month considering election results you didn’t spend even a full day considering the rights of your constituents.  Look at Georgia, I know he was a Blue Dog before he went Republican, but Nathan Deal is a GOP governor who at least had the sense to call a spade a spade when a similar measure came to his desk and look at how much he’s not sweating.

I sincerely do hope that you take something away from all this regarding due consideration and taking the time to make good choices and wish you good luck as you seek future career opportunities.

Yours,

Adam Locke

P.S. If you have lost my previous letter, a possibility I consider as I deem you and incompetent, please don’t hesitate to reach out, I have a copy I can forward.