persephonbee

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I love old union songs because it's like this fucking asshole was a scab so we fucking threw him in the river and he broke his spine and when he went to heaven he was scabbing on the angels so they fired him down to heaven and the devil was like you have to work in hell for being a dirty scab

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i betcha carlos luna was having a fucking BLAST being tabby. which, good for him. he deserves it.

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vampires always like “i could kill you if I wanted” like? yeah? so could another human being. so could a dog. so could a dedicated duck. you arent special

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One of my favorite/least favorite parts of being a case manager is going with people to their appointments with their shitty psychiatrists and helping them advocate to be taken seriously and have their side effects be addressed and be given accurate information and appropriate options. And tomorrow I have 3 appointments in a row where I'm going to the psychiatrist with people and it's all the same shitty psychiatrist and they're all newer clients so he doesn't know yet that they're all my clients and I can't WAIT for the look on his face when he realizes he's going to have to actually do his job for 3 consecutive hours

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Networking/Knowing A Guy: A Guide

This is the autism website. Now, as an extension of the power of love and friendship, there are few things more useful than Knowing A Guy. Knowing A Guy means you have a support network. Knowing a plumber, or a tax accountant, or just that one dude that's really fucking good at finding the information you need when you're really overwhelmed, can be the difference between being able to pay rent and having a fun party with friends to fix your shit.

How does one end up Knowing A Guy? It's a skill you can develop called Networking and it is one of the foundations of society. Unfortunately making those connections with people is fucking hard and nobody makes a tutorial for it. So, here you go:

The golden rule is you scratch my back and I scratch yours

It is necessary for survival to seek out useful people

Great news! Everyone is useful in some form or fashion - including you! When given the opportunity to learn about someone, do it! Extroversion does not come naturally to some people and that's okay. Just take whatever falls in your lap.

Types of usefulness: trade skills, connections of their own, personality you jive with, pleasant to talk to, niche interest in shared hobby, security - the list is pretty much endless. I know a guy that lives in the metro area - no job, no major hobbies, inoffensively annoying to me personally, kinda ignorant, not attractive to me, but you know what? He knows how the fuck to get around the city by foot. My rural-raised ass APPRECIATES the guide.

Remember important information: general personality, background, skillset, likes and dislikes. You can find this information by making smalltalk about their life. There is no such thing as pointless conversation. (Yes, even the annoying smalltalk)

The more people you know, the higher the likelihood that one of them will be useful in a given situation - or will know someone who is.

It is overwhelming. In a given clique/community/workspace/whatever, there is A Guy Who Knows The Other Guys. This Guy is a shortcut. Find them. They're often elderly, extroverted, a little bit annoying, a secretary or in some otherwise forward-facing position. Look for people that are gossipy/talk about other people a lot but not in negative ways. If they constantly talk shit, they'll talk shit about you too. They're still useful but be careful with the information you share

You do not have to like someone for them to be useful.

You do not have to like someone for them to be useful.*

If you have low self esteem, you're going to feel like you're using people. You're not. That's the devil talking. People like feeling valued and the connections you are making are the threads holding community together. Recognize people for their talents. It's only a problem when you're taking advantage of people

So: don't feel scummy about it. You're an animal. You have to claw out your right to survive and people will respect you more for it.

Luckily mutualism is the name of the game in the animal kingdom. Offer something back. The foundation of a Know A Guy relationship is Mutual Benefit

Sometimes that Mutual Benefit is just spreading news of the The Guy far and wide. My plumber friend is my actual friend and I love her to death, but I'm maintaining our backscratch relationship by pimping out her plumbing business to anyone that'll listen

Food is a good Mutual Benefit. People across cultures for all of human history have bonded over food. I have good success asking people for a favor and then offering to buy them lunch in return **

General compensation is also good. Offer a service in return and always do your best to offer financial compensation as appropriate. Having your plumber friend take a look at your drain: doable with a case of beer. Having your plumber friend redo the pipes in your entire house? You need to pay for that.

Being transactional is not necessarily a bad thing. I would advise against keeping an itemized list of things owed, but fish don't seek out cleaner shrimp just because they enjoy their company. Everyone gets something

Unfortunately being extroverted and generally personable is a huge benefit here, but that's the value of the Guy That Knows A Guy. There's someone out there that has consolidated All The Guys so you don't have to be the local expert. Always remember nobody can do everything and you don't need to master every skill

* This is the foundation of a functioning community. I have many acquaintances that I find incredibly annoying. They include doctors, welders, artists, social workers, lawyers, construction crew and random fuckers at the grocery store. I do not hang out with them. I do not have to in order to maintain a civil Know A Guy relationship. I can drop them useful tidbits and fuck right off so I don't have to spend any more time than necessary with them

** People may assume romantic intent. Be prepared for that. I generally denote that it's a friendly/work lunch by calling them bro at some point if they're my age. Otherwise my general demeanor is sufficient to show that I do this with everyone

Source: personal experience, mother's teachings of crime, booth vending and poverty

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How do they keep making later and later stages of late-capitalism

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Quite a bit of this could be solved with more funding. It's about waitlists.

Why have a strict curfew where you'll lose your bed if you don't come back? Because sometimes people end up not coming back that night for whatever reason, and if you hold the bed for that person, then there's someone on the wait list who is sleeping on the sidewalk instead of in that empty bed. Why have those curfews be at like 7 pm instead of midnight? Because finding out at 7 pm that no new beds opened up gives you longer to figure out where you're sleeping that night. If a bed at a shelter stays empty overnight, and there's a list of people who would gladly have slept in that bed but didn't get the opportunity because the bed was held for someone, it's hard to argue that you did the right thing.

Similarly, a lot of shelters have rules about taking all of your belongings with you when you leave for the day. It's very very hard to get a job, even a low-prestige job like McDonald's, if you show up to apply with a little suitcase if you're lucky or a garbage bag if you're unlucky. This sucks. At the same time, it costs money and space to store people's belongings, especially to store them safely. If you have a storage area, you're prioritizing property over people by deciding that space is for storage and not more beds. If you spend money on maintaining the storage area, you have less to spend on basics like beds, toilet paper, and the electric bill.

There are absolutely people who run shelters who are selfish and greedy and bigoted and think that anyone who doesn't worship them is unworthy of help. But a shelter doesn't have to be run by one of those people in order to end up with very similar policies, and it can be hard to argue that those policies are wrong without prioritizing some people over others.

Bottom line--we need more funding and more shelters. The current system sucks and it's stuck sucking.

One of the things which I think should be most shocking to people who have no experience with Homeless shelters is how often they have policies which *actively make it harder for their residents to find or keep a job*.

What happens if you have a strict curfew but the bus back from your new job only comes once every hour? Better hope you don't leave work even five minutes late, otherwise you ain't getting to sleep indoors tonight! Hope that doesn't impair you at work tomorrow!

Also, better not try to get any swing or night shift work!

This is so obviously stupid and counterproductive that I think those of us who have never had first-hand knowledge of being homeless can't imagine that this kind of stuff is *normal* in American shelters.

Like legitimately they seem designed to keep people homeless.

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Me when I see the word beaʃte

In my head: ah! The archaic form of the letter s! Being a casual scholar of linguistics myself I am well aware that though it resembles the letter f in modern typography in fact it is phonetically identical to s! How foolish it would be to stumble into such a simple lexiconical pitfall!

Me aloud to myself every time: beeft

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I’m turning into a cartoon wolf and making train whistle noises

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cats will be like oh you're walking somewhere? no WE'RE walking somewhere. and i will get there first. where is 'there' btw

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cast iron? yeah thats a pretty common spell to learn

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I love that Hugh Grant is an absolute maniac masquerading as an unassuming nebbishy posh kind of guy. If this was signed by anyone else I would say "that's a spoof, he didn't sponsor that" but it's Hugh Grant so I am 100% confident that it's genuine. This is the guy who talks about bdsm on the red carpet and payed a performance artist to blast yakkity sax on loudspeakers outside Westminster on the day Boris Johnson resigned. This is peak Hugh Grant.

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everything is a transgender allegory except being transgender which is about being alive

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