#There's so damn many. It's basically a month's wages for me. Not including this one. And I am trying so hard not to dip into my savings.

[bijoumikhawal]

should I just start a gofundme for all these car repairs....

[oh-my-may]

Hey there

Hi, this is my reintroduction to tumblr (kinda).

I go by May on the internet, it's some weird nickname I made of my real name and goes back to my first gamer tag on minecraft...

I'm currently 22 years of age, which sometimes makes me feel incredibly old on the internet? At the same time I seem to come across many other people my age who go through very similar struggles as me lol

I curretnly work fulltime as a waitress. I'm European so I get paid a proper wage there, and the work with my coworkers is very fun and comforting. I'm not always the biggest fan of other people, but being a people pleaser and having the ability to hide my true personality behind a "nice" facade makes my job possible and bearable. (jk aside, I really like my job)

Hobbies include:

reading (I always say that, but I barely ever pick up a book. Just spent most of my early teen years absolutely ramming through a shit ton of books. I still really enjoy reading, but I barely find the time to do it. My tbr list is endless)

gaming (I'll dip my toes into anything that's not an ego-shooter, my PS5 is one of my most treasured possessions)

watching movies (last year I dragges either my sister or one of my friends to the theaters at least once a month. Doesn't mean I'm a movie critic or anything, but I really like watching movies and I might just share some takes on it on here)

anime (just a select few, the most famous ones. Life's busy when you have a fulltime job and still have other hobbies, but I'm currently on my first watchthrough of One Piece! Will definitely post about this from time to time)

listening to music (realizing I have very basic hobbies bc my parents never urged me to pursue anything specific when I was a child, but anyway: I will listen to almost a bit of anything, but Taylor Swift and Ghost were amongst my most streamed artists on Spotify last year. Do with that info what you will)

writing. I did start with writing fanfiction, first harry potter, then boybands, then kpop, then anime. Most important to me was always my original idea though. I know many people have things like this. A few years ago I thought I'd actually go with trying to publish something. Now I have revised and rethought the whole thing. I barely write, but it's still in the back of my head all the damn time. I always think about writing, but doing the actual thing rn seems impossible.

As I'm writing this I realize how pathetic I feel doing this, beacuse I have this awful feeling no one is gonna respond and I'll end up regretting this so much that I'll delete it. Thank God the internet gives me the opportunity to be anonymous.

Anyway, the previously mentioned hobbies lead to my (current) interests that I'll most likely post about, so if you're into one or more of these things as well, let's chat!

in terms of games: Currently playing through Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and generally FF7 is probably a huge hyperfixation of mine and has been for years. I've just arrived in Gongaga on my playthrough and I'm loving all of it. The game caters to all the expectations and interests I have in games. It's just so insanely beautiful and makes me tear up every couple hours idk

on this note I'd like to mention that I dipped my toes into FF14 but since I only play on Playstaion now, all the commands are overwhelming to me. I'm definitely planning on playing FF15 and FF16

Kinda cringe but I swear I'm normal: Genshin Impact. Have been playing since early 2021, once had a pretty unhealthy relationship to this game, but I was mentally not doing well during that time. Having a fulltime job changed my perspective on the game. Now I'm a casual enjoyer bc I love the open world and characters, and I love to get into the lore, so I might post a few theories and stuff on here

On that note: Honkai Star Rail. Same company, but it took me way longer to get into the game. Really enjoying it now though, although I am struggling with a bunch of battles. Save to say, I am NOT playing the game for the meta lol

One Piece! As mentioned, I started my watch of it last year in summer just before the Netflix live action came out (work bestie talked me into it). I'm quite literally at episode 500 rn. Had to stop for a while at around Thriller Bark bc the first few episodes didn't quite do it for me. Now I try to watch a few episodes before sleep everyday :)

Other anime that I am different levels of unhinged about: Jujutsu Kaisen, Attack on Titan, Bungou Stray Dogs, Demon Slayer. The basics, I know. Just don't have the time to watch a lot while other life stuff happens, you know. OP is the main thing rn, and until I am kinda up-to-date with that, everything else will have to wait lol

In terms of book stuff I must admit I keep going back to communities and fandoms I was a part of when I was a teen lol. This largely refers to stuff like Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugho, The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater and All for the Game by Nora Sakavic

Right now though I am more interested in reading some classics and other stuff. Read Britney Spears' biography last year (within the span of one day, I wanna add), currently I'm reading a chapter of Crime and Punishment once in a blue moon. I'd like to read more stuff like that in the future, but everything at it's time ig

Other fictional universes I was once quite unhinged about: Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. Both communities are kinda dead atm though. I'm still in the process of reading the books (which means I last picked them up over a year ago. But believe me, I'll get there, eventually.... someday)

In terms of music as I said I listen to almost anything. Not a lot of rap and techno, though. I like stuff with lyrics I can sing along to and feel deep within my bones. I wouldn't call myself a "fan" of any particular artist, I was very unhinged about musicians as a teen and I have learned my lesson. Now I just listen to the music without caring too much about the artist themselves. I used to really like 5 Seconds of Summer as a teen, then I moved to Kpop. Now I barely keep up with either but just listen to the stuff I did back then

I think that's basically it for now? The most important parts about myself. Stuff I like to talk about, so if you like some of this too, maybe come talk to me? I wanna get to know people here after all, and I have learned this is probably the best way to start.

I don't have many conditions for friends tbh. I'm 22, so anything between like 19 and 26 or so is fine as long as the vibes are good :) I don't care about genders and all that, personally going by she/her. I'm a Taurus, in case someone wants to know. Last time i took the test I was an infp-t (still think it's pretty accurate but it's been a few years nd I heard that test isn't as accurate? idk)

Other things you should maybe know is that English is not my native language, so excuse any mistakes you might come across lol. I dropped out of university. My profile picture kinda captures my most basic features.

Anyway, feel free to hit me up, I love talking to people on the internet and I really look forward to this reinvention of my account here and actually talking about my interests and reposting stuff I like :)

If you have any questions, just ask!

Until then,

May

[mellometal]

Here we go again...Jesus tap-dancing Christ. This is a lot longer than I wanted it to be.

Hey.  I haven’t been able to make any posts related to Dhar Mann over the past several months.  I needed to make my mental health a priority over a guy whose presence literally makes my blood boil. (Also...side note: I have said this multiple times before, I don’t always want to discuss this individual or anyone associated with him. I don’t want to be restricted to talking about one topic. /notmad)  I’ve also been going through a lot, as a lot of you know.  You’re probably not here for me to tell you about why the posts about this individual and anyone related to him have halted, so I’m gonna cut to the chase.

This is an important topic, as almost every single actor who has worked under Dhar Mann is protesting against him due to him not paying them a liveable wage.  Y’know, despite racking in a shit ton of ad revenue that’s around $25k or something like that.  Hey, aren’t you a multimillionaire?  I know damn well you can afford to pay the actors a liveable wage for their time and ensure they can pay for essentials, like I don’t know, A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS! I’ll be linking as many videos talking about this subject from some of the actors themselves and through YouTube commentators as Tumblr will let me link. As I’ve mentioned in passing, I haven’t watched any videos Dhar Dhar Binks has made in the past few months because hate watching his videos will only line his pockets and hurt the actors. Especially now.

Dhar Mann has been firing people for speaking negatively about the conditions of the studio and the pay.  This has been through emails (a few people’s emails have been put up on social media, which is super unprofessional and can be dangerous for the people whose emails were posted online).  Instead of taking criticism and actually trying to make things right for the people who have made his channels successful, he doubles down on all the “positive” experiences that some of the actors have had with him.  One of them notably being Katherine Norland, which considering how problematic she is outside of working for Dhar Mann, I’m not at all surprised.  Two birds of the same feather flock together.  She talked about how her experience working with Dhar Mann has been great.  Hey, Katherine, not everyone has the same experience as you.  But I bet you like playing the bigoted Karen roles you get, huh?  Figures.  

Here’s a five minute clip of a FORTY-FIVE MINUTE VIDEO she made. I already have a headache listening to her spew typical Boomer/Boomer 2.0 (A LOT of Gen X...mainly elder Gen X) bullshit.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqHuvd/

All I gotta say is: Okay, Boomer. Lay off the Kool-aid. (She probably isn’t a Boomer, but she sure talks like one.)

Another actor I’ve seen speaking more on neutral ground, but still defending Dhar Mann low-key is Melvin.  To sum up what Melvin said, he basically said that Dhar Mann’s “a good guy (to him)”, DM “shouldn’t be canceled”, he saw where the actors who were protesting were coming from, and “everything’s gonna get solved”. The clip where he talks about this is below:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqD1pv/

According to Colin A. Borden, who has worked with Dhar Mann as an actor for the past few years, he stated on his social media platforms that a lot of the actors, himself included (most likely, I’m not sure), can’t even afford rent with how little Dhar Mann pays the actors.  This was when he was talking about why actors are protesting at the moment.  He’s not the only actor I’m going to be naming.  A few other notable actors protesting are Mair Mulroney, Rachel, and a couple others.  I linked a few of their videos below.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnVcm4A/ (Colin's video)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnVvEK5/ (One of Mair's videos)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnVGLaB/ (Nathan's video, where he talks about why the contracts and payments are bad.)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqNyPd/ (A compilation of actors protesting.) (TW: There are whistles being blown.)

According to other actors who have come forward with their experiences with this individual (Rachel being one of them), they would work twelve to fifteen hour days for the wage of eighteen dollars per hour (for non-speaking roles) or thirty-three to forty-four dollars per hour (for speaking roles).  To my understanding, this was a few times a week.  This kind of schedule is not sustainable.  These actors can’t even afford to pay their rent, like I have mentioned before.  Dhar Mann can lie his ass off about how he pays everyone fairly all he wants, but you know I’m going to believe the actors over him any day.   

Clip from a livestream where Rachel is talking about pay:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqBSrF/

“Eighteen dollars an hour for a non-speaking role?  Thirty-three to forty-four dollars an hour for a speaking role?  That sounds great!  What’s the problem with that?”

Getting paid eighteen dollars an hour (for non-speaking roles), or getting paid thirty-three dollars to forty-four dollars (for speaking roles) for twelve to fifteen hours a day a few times a week sounds like a lot of money, but that’s further from the truth.  Let me explain. 

If they’re only there for twelve to fifteen hours a few times a week, to paint a better picture, and they’re paid semi-monthly, the people with non-speaking roles would only get around $1,440 every two weeks, and the people with speaking roles would get around $2,640 - $3,520 every two weeks. (NOTE: These are only estimated amounts. I used 80 hours here in total for the two weeks, and used a tax calculator based in California, where they work. This is given that their hours actually equal forty hours per week. The hours are variable, as Nathan has said in his video talking about this subject. The actors could actually be getting paid less than the estimated amounts I put up.)  This is before taxes are taken out, hypothetically, if Dhar Mann or anyone who handles payroll is actually doing their job.  After taxes are taken out, the extras would only be getting $1,132 every two weeks, and actors in speaking roles would be getting $1,923 - $2,456 every two weeks.  He pays everyone out through PayPal…instead of at least giving them a pay card where he can put their paychecks onto or letting them use their banks through direct deposit, or giving them paper checks so they can deposit their earnings into their bank accounts.

The average person’s rent in all of California was around $1,818 back in 2021.  That’s not including utilities, insurance, and other bills.  They’re pretty much scraping by to survive if they’re living on their own.  Those are some “competitive wages”, huh?  Get over yourself, Dhar.  You’re fucking cheap and you can’t manage to pay the people who made your shitty channel huge fairly.  Just admit that.

Another thing that I need to mention is them painting a mural to honor an actor who passed away, then taking it down a few days later. The reason for this wasn’t really made clear. Something about the landlord saying to take it down, or they needed that space for a video. Whatever the reason is, it’s not cool to paint a mural dedicated to an actor that you’re not even gonna keep up. It gives off the impression that you only did it for clout. Just saying.

ETA: This is new information that I found from doing more research. Carl Judie, according to Riki (who was close to him), was actually planning on leaving before his death due to how he was being treated. His loved ones do not want Carl’s face to be anywhere in Dhar Mann’s studios. This is the video where Riki discussed Carl:

Another actor came forward to speak about how Dhar Mann was practicing a scene with her for a TikTok and he was chasing after her with a real knife instead of a prop knife. 

Clip from a livestream:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqPsCm/

A child actor (Brianni) talked about how she was fired because she has medical issues THAT DHAR MANN WAS WELL AWARE OF. Her video is below:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqmUTd/

Riki, one of the major actors in his shitty videos refused to do any more videos that have to do with race and she got less work as a result.  A black woman not wanting to do videos about race?  *gasp* How will Dhar Mann ever recover from this? /s Oh, I wonder…I will be linking her video where she explains why she stopped doing any more videos that have to do with race.  She explains it a lot better than I can. Her video is linked below:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqRnSn/

Actors are generally unionized to prevent this kind of thing from happening (i.e., paying dramatically low wages and an overall unhealthy work environment), but the way Dhar Mann runs shit, it’s not unionized.  Fearing that you will lose your job if you’re critical of the boss in any capacity or you speak out about work conditions is not a healthy work environment.  Nobody should be having to walk on eggshells and be afraid of losing their job if they say anything.  There’s a thing called the whistleblower act, which is there to protect employees from being attacked by their superiors for speaking out about what is wrong with the workplace. Dhar Mann has apparently been threatening actors who have spoken out against him with lawsuits on top of all this. So that’s cool. /s

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnVTBkV/ (A video of actors protesting that Mair recorded talking about what/why they're protesting.) (TW: There are whistles being blown.)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqPWbV/ (Protest video Nick recorded.) (TW: There are whistles being blown.)

I’ve seen people write off Dhar Mann literally breaking labor laws as his actions simply being ‘show business’, as well as invalidate the actors coming forward to talk about their experiences all because they’re independent contractors who Dhar Mann calls every now and then.  “Every now and then”, MORE LIKE EVERY DAY.  You do realize there aren’t just adult actors working in his studios, right?  There are child actors who are working under Dhar Mann too, and they should be getting paid fairly for their work.  Or else Dhar Mann’s gonna get into legal trouble again.  Either with a series of lawsuits involving the actors he fired suing his ass, the IRS coming after him, or he’s gonna serve jail time.  Either way, he’s in deep shit.  The reason why I say he’s breaking labor laws is because he’s (probably) not paying the kids who work for him fairly either. Quite a few of them appear to be elementary school age or middle school age, around maybe eight years old to possibly thirteen or fourteen years old. Maybe he shows the literal children working for him some mercy...because most of the people who watch his videos are children. I don’t know. Apparently they were supposed to stop casting actors who are minors (under eighteen years old), but there are QUITE a few kids working under this cringe ass nae-nae baby. So...that’s pretty fishy.

According to sources from commentators like AugustTheDuck and Jarvis Johnson, none of the actors who have worked under Dhar Mann have ever (allegedly) received a 1099 form for their tax returns from DM. 

Both videos AugustTheDuck made:

First one

Second one

The video Jarvis Johnson made:

A 1099 form, for anyone who has never heard of it before, is a form that independent contractors receive by the end of the year usually.  In this case, DM has (allegedly) not given any of his actors their 1099 forms, and it is mid-February (as I was typing this...it is now the end of February).  With independent contractors, which is what the actors who work under Dhar Mann are classified as, the maximum they can be paid without getting a 1099 form (1099-NEC, formerly known as 1099-MISC, and/or a 1099-K) is about six hundred dollars a year.  This was before the IRS changed the rules about that.  Clearly they are making WELL over $600 a year.  You know what Dhar Mann had to say about that?  PAYPAL should’ve given out 1099 forms to his actors, not HIM.  The payer (Dhar Mann, or anyone who handles payroll) is responsible for sending out 1099-NEC forms to his actors and the IRS.  PayPal is only responsible for sending out 1099-K forms to people using PayPal for business as well as the IRS if you made over $20,000 that year, or you made over 200 transactions.  Dhar Mann has made well over $20,000, and he has made well over 200 transactions. Clearly.  Please correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t the actors be getting both forms? I feel like they should be getting both of those forms.

Every time the actors would band together to try having a meeting with Dhar Mann to discuss their grievances with their work environment as well as their pay, he’s nowhere to be found and he tells them to forward their grievances with HR.  They have sent Dhar Mann letters through hard copies and emails directly to him, which were forwarded over to HR.  HR scheduled a meeting for the actors to discuss their grievances and they wanted Dhar Mann to be present, as he was the person they were having issues with.  The meeting kept being postponed multiple times.  By the time the meeting came, Dhar Mann was nowhere to be seen.  He was obviously not present for the meeting he was supposed to attend.  Why?  HE WAS CONVENIENTLY ON VACATION.  Wooooowwww.  Your company is not big enough to where you can’t realistically be reached.

You think you’re too good to show your face to people who have worked for you for years, listen to their grievances, and try to come up with a solution, don’t you, Dhar?  If you’re such a big, important man, why can’t you be an actual boss and show up to meetings that you’re supposed to attend?  Oh, is it because the vast majority of the actors (former and current) are understandably pissed about how little they’re being paid by you?  Is it because the vast majority of the actors are sick of your shit?  Sounds like you can’t handle any sort of criticism from people who have worked for you for so long.  You know, I had an inkling that this kind of thing was happening behind the scenes before ANY of the actors came forward.  Then to find out that inkling I had was right all along…that’s not a good thing, Dhar Mann!  I thought you learned your lesson from getting in trouble for committing fraud almost ten years ago!  GUESS NOT.  It’s all come full circle.  

You paint yourself as a good guy, but you treat the people who have made your sorry excuses for channels huge like shit.  How the fuck do you sleep at night?  How do you think this is okay to do to people?  Do they not deserve to have enough money to be able to live somewhat comfortably with the means to pay for essentials? Hmm…let’s talk more about how you fired one of your actors for having medical issues that you were made aware of.  That’s against the law, under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).  In California, the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) protects disabled workers.  But you’re all about supporting disabled people! That’s what you preach, right?  You know…until you have to work alongside them or you have to accommodate them in some way. Then disabled people are just a huge inconvenience for you. It’s too much to ask for you to properly accommodate anyone with medical issues, apparently. It’s such a hassle to check on anyone with medical issues that work under you and make sure they’re okay. Gotcha. /s

Summary:

Dhar Mann, multimillionaire, doesn’t pay his employees fairly!

Dhar Mann, Big Boss™️, gets all butthurt because his employees are speaking out against him! He fires everyone who speaks poorly about him and/or about the work environment instead of putting in the effort to come up with solutions! That’s just TOO MUCH to ask out of The Big Boss™️! /s

He will live to regret his decision.

[numetaljackdog]

what i'm listening to 7/6/2023 (song notes under cut)

spot. link//yt link

Laura Les - Haunted: haunted. by laura les.

Radiohead - Hunting Bears: have you guys noticed that i like amnesiac. links to this post. this is one of the best album interludes of all time

Tallah - No One Should Read This: HRHGGHRHGHHH. fucking crunchyyyy this is one of my favorite albums ever. it's corny as fuck but also really dark and heavy and just ahhhh i love it and this is such a good opener. despite any of the band's faults i will always be a shill for this album. i was talking to violet (hi violet heheh oops i dropped this) about the album a little bit and i decided i simply had to include this bc well frankly i'm jamming to it as i type this :3

Cypress Hill - I Ain't Goin' Out Like That: there's a lot of 90sishness going on in this list. lovvve cypress hill and this whole album. the hook is super catchy but also kind of ridiculous, and there's so many good lines. if you dig harder rap stuff definitely give black sunday a spin, i think it might have been one of the first rap albums i ever bought a physical copy of

Polaris - The Remedy: okay i've been going through my whole giant playlist on account of this business, so it's only fitting that i feature the song that's at the very tippity top of the thang. polaris is a damn solid progressive metalcore type band, and i remember when they broke out in 2017/18 with this album everybody in the scene was talking about them as rising stars. they didn't disappoint, imo, bc the album that came after that was pretty solid too. they did get a lot of comparisons to architects, who are much more seasoned in the scene, and i definitely hear it: the pitchy false chord screams, the djenty riffs, big but not poppy choruses. BUT i think two things worked out for them in that regard. one was that architects were white hot around that time because they put out holy hell, which was very well-regarded (because it good), so it wasn't too bad a thing to be compared to them. the other was that after holy hell dropped, wage war put out a single (low) that had basically the same riff as the architects' big single (doomsday). so they kinda caught all the shit on that one lol. ah the old days (<does not miss this time period)

Girls Rituals - Babe of the Abyss: ummmm.hi 😳

Bloodhound Gang - The Bad Touch: stupid dumb dumb dummy dumb stupid ass blppppt dumbass fuckin song. it's kinda awesome though. a large part of my interest in this one is to do with its pertinence to rap rock, or rather, its lack of pertinence. in my obsession with the timeline of rap rock, i like to be able to sort as much as possible into neat little categories. east coast hip hop, funk metal, nu metal, emo rap, etc. but what's also interesting is when something comes along that doesn't fit any trend at all. it's a total anomaly, a hit only on its own merits, whether those merits are musical strength or just being weird as fuck. in this case, it's definitely a bit of both. the bad touch isn't even really much of a rock song, it sounds more like dance beats, but the bloodhound gang are a rock band, and regardless you can tell just by listening to it which side of the music sphere they originate from. ughhh fascinating fascinating fascinating. and gross, if you listen to it. but mostly fascinating. 1999 babey. and that's the other thing - this was the age of nu metal. this isn't a nu metal song, but one has to wonder how much it was helped by the normalization of crossovers between rock and rap that nu metal was creating. okay moving on

Snoop Dogg - Gin and Juice: more 90s! but in this case? idk what you want me to say. it's fuckin gin and juice. no-one is immune to the d-o-double-g

Epic Rap Battles of History - Alexander the Great vs Ivan the Terrible: come onnnn you knew i was gonna put some erb on here i feel like i've been mentioning them all month. this is a real good battle, very catchy. the first two verses from pete and zach, respectively, are definitely my favorites, and indeed alexander the great might be my favorite zach sherwin performance on erb. but the flute on the beat for frederick the great's part is a lot of fun, and catherine the great's verse is catchy as well. just overall solid and easy to rewatch. please save me from epic rap battle hell i am trapped here and they won't let me out until i recite every erb bar in chronological order

Vylet Pony - Constellation Cradle: vylet pony good. reallll good. this was one of those songs that i had heard however many times and been like yeah cool song :) and then at some point recently heard again and for some reason it just like. hit right. it had the right crunch. i was feeling it. i was loving it. i was chewing on it. vylet pony good

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Is This Love: another simple case of "heard it on the radio, got stuck in my head." at the same time, it's representative of the fact that i want to know more about reggae, considering my current knowledge of it is effectively 0. so what better place to start than the name that most people outside the reggae sphere most associate with the genre? so many good hits from bob marley, as we likely all know

Pearl Jam - Even Flow: pearl jam good idc. not my favorite of their songs but probably the catchiest. moving swiftly onward

Twenty One Pilots - Implicit Demand For Proof: i was inspired to revisit some of my favorite tracks from a formerly beloved band to me. despite the many issues one could take with their first album, that's the one i would feel most confident in standing up for. and, since i'm an opening track kinda girl, this one hit for me the most. iiii knowwww you're not a liar, and i knowwww you could set fire this dayyyyy. idk. definitely a christian song but like, not in the sense that we all kind of agree is shit. like it's a christian song but it's still actually a SONG, that's. ABOUT THINGS. just give it a shot maybe, if you like kinda indie rock. or don't. i can't tell you what to do i'm just a bunch of text on a screen

Beastie Boys - Intergalactic: did you guys notice that i like the beastie boys. like with even flow, this isn't my favorite beasties song but it's the one that's stuck in my head this month. and it is a damn good hit! some classic lines in here. look at this post

Zombie Girl - Creepy Crawler: i don't know shit about this song or artist!! this was an everynoise.com find on uhhh industrial metal i think. it sounds good :)

Steve Miller Band - Take The Money And Run: i'm so obsessed with that trainwreckords episode on run-d.m.c. i literally have just absorbed every song that todd even mentions in the video. i won't put that episode in the youtube playlist like i did last week but if you haven't watched it you should still do that

Epic Rap Battles of History - Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton: i know. i know. i know. stop looking at me like that. i know. i know, okay? i do. i'm sorry. but it's true. there's a lot of good lines and (more importantly) very catchy parts in this one too and i find myself bopping my head to them while i'm in the shower or whatever. if you don't like it, you should have saved me from the pit when you had the chance

Vanilla Ice - Rollin' In My 5.0: the ice-man just dropped a live video for this a little while ago so it's been on my mind. it's mostly interesting for two reasons. number 1 is that it's our only real insight into what vanilla ice album two might have been like if not for the rapid shift of popular trends. number 2 is that it has been deemed significant enough to be counted in the handful of songs that keep vanilla's music alive, despite being unknown to most people. i'm initerested in the idea of like a vanilla ice canon of Songs That Matter, and it contains like, ice ice baby (obviously), play that funky music, ninja rap, i love you, cool as ice, and so on. but there are just some more odd additions to that, and 5.0 is one of those

rawr - If Peppa Pig was a RAPPER: can i ask you guys for a favor. like, i realize that this list has 19 songs on it one way or another, bc that's the number of songs i use for every WILT. but can we all agree that this time, there's only 18 songs that are *formally* in the WILT, and this youtube-exclusive is like. a bonus track? great thanks. love you. anyways, have you noticed how these days youtube seems to recommend random 10-view videos that have just been uploaded? idk what's up with that, but that's how i found rawr, and frankly i've been having a blast with their videos. weird, silly little songs about wanting to marry various cartoon fathers or popular characters as rappers. this one is the latter, but honestly all of the ones i've listened to have overcome me with a feverish humor. it's not very tumblr humor imo but ultimately idek if my enjoyment of these could be described as comparable to finding them "funny." i just think it's beautiful that a channel with very little attention on it is uploading these ridiculous songs just for fun. just something to do. we could all take a lesson from this. or maybe not idk. i need to post this now good god

[jimmythejiver]

For the first time in a long time I went to the movies in forever and then to Target. At Target I see some Godiva bars on discount yellow tags and I was ecstatic until I read 70% Cacao, Dark, Salted Caramel and was deflated.

Anyway that's how I felt about seeing The Green Knight. What you thought this was about chocolate?

No see since the pandemic I've been back on my perennial King Arthur kick. I've for a long time since I was a young preteen thought, someday I too will write my own King Arthur epic and it'll be gay, magical, gangster and culty too, but for now I'll make up my own stories for practice and then with every story I got attached too, it got too involved and convoluted to the point that when it came down to actually writing a novel, I threw it all away and made a space opera I only planned in two weeks and wrote in a month. Anyway...so now I've been writing this very gay, magical, gangster and culty take on Final Fantasy XV with my boyfriend and just fell in love with Somnus Lucis Caelum who nobody has any insight about him than to make him the Mordred to Ardyn's Arthur, which is a strange flex, but okay, I thought about what if I wrote a Dark Age prequel about Ardyn and Somnus, but Ardyn becomes king and Somnus his shogun and they play games of seduction and power because I'm twisted like that. Anyway...I was like I'm never going to write this and I have to keep making up characters based on FFXV characters and King Arthur tropes because there's not a lot of stories that take place during the Dark Ages, it's always some Roman Empire story, or High Middle Ages and FFXV gave no room for either society to happen after the fall of Solheim and the rise of King Somnus...so we left with Dark Ages, y'all, the King Arthur comparisons are obvious, but Ardyn is no Arthur and Somnus is no Mordred, Aera is only Guenevere if you make up an affair with Somnus, Gilgamesh is no Bedwyr/Bedivere, but uh...they both amputees and the oldest companions to their respective kings so...I guess. Anyway making an ancestor of Cor Leonis and deciding well he's Owain/Yvain, or am Ignis type as idk Sir Cai/Kay I guess, they both cook, but Cai's more like Seifer Almasy than any FF character... Anyway I'm losing people.

My plan was to just scrap the FFXV prequel, leave my Somnus ideas into Overtime (a gangster and gods story) and just plan an actual King Arthur adaptation. I'd have King Arthur the treasure hunter, leader of a warband turned founder of Camelot who fights giants, giant cats and dogheads, but also fights King Claudas of the Franks and King Aelle of the Saxons and Cerdic a Briton who puts in his lot with the Saxons, etc. It'd been a a glorified turf war, meanwhile Arthur's gotta make alliances with King Pelles, The Fisher King and his strange cult he's founded because, why yes I find the ends justifies the means prophecy of the Holy Grail Quest very culty because Christianity then does not resemble it now. Meanwhile you got the secondary plots of Mordred, Gawain, Lancelot, Percival, Tristam and other's going on because they matter and too many modern King Arthur stories sideline the knights.

So many have always sidelined Mordred as a final boss eldritch abomination in mortal flesh conceived of sin and give him no personality, or complex motives, or even just a relationship with Arthur. I also have noticed the general sidelining of Lancelot, or give him a chad villain upgrade if you must include him at all, and the villainizing of Gawain to the point that you don't even have to have Mordred, or Agravain as a catalyst shit stirrer in court, just slap Gawain's name on Liam Neeson in a top knot and you're good. Mordred can just be a child offscreen until last act...fuck that, while Morgan Le Fay can either be a villainess plotting her cabal through men, or a well-intentioned, ineffectual idiot. Fuck that.

Now Hollywood just be doing King Arthur first acts that suck ass, only for said director to get rewarded failing upwards by giving this same jerk the Aladdin remake. The tonally shitty, crammed in blockbuster mess of a cliche heroe's journey that sucks.

With that background I was excited for The Green Knight. I read an illustrative version as a kid, I read Tolkien's translation as a teenager, I read Simon Armitage's superior, but with liberties taken translation. I was prepped to go knowing that indie, or not they were going to make changes to weave the disjointed poem together. I'm excited that because this movie exists Project Guternberg's finally thrown Jessie Weston's prose rendition up on their website. I'll be reading that at some point when this blows over.

The movie adaptation makes a lot of...choices, many I wouldn't love, but would forgive had their been a payoff. There was none.

The journey was fine, the cinematography was a breath of fresh air after crappy slo mo, glossy action scenes ruined another. Guys, I don't think I want to see a Zack Snyder Excalibur, it'll marginally be better than Guy Ritchie, but that ain't saying anything. Leave Excalibur to the post-Star Wars 80s where it is impeccable for it's time. I liked Green Knight's breathable pacing, it's color palette's in the forests and mountains made up for the muddy grey of every Ridley Scott send up in the castles and villages in every other Dark Ages/Medieval story in the last I don’t know since the shitty 00′s. For all the dark tones when there was blues, greens, yellows or reds, they were vibrant in this movie to contrast the gloom of Britain. The soundtrack was good. This isn't all what makes a movie, but it enhances it so let's get to the story and what I did and didn't like.

Things I Liked: Gawain is still a novice in his career The Costume Dressing Everyone pronounces Gawain's name different. I pronounce it like Gwayne, or Guh Wayne, but here you got Gowen (like Owen), Gowan (like Rowan), or even Garlon who I'm pretty sure is the Fisher King's heir in some versions of that Arthurian story, so uh... The reference to Arthur slaying 960 men with his bare hands (Nennius for the win!) The Waste Land that is implied to be a site of a battle (an important aspect of the Arthurian landscape) The Fox companion No long grisly, drawn out hunting scenes. The Fox lives! No misogynist speeches

Things I'm Mixed: This being a dream, is the magic real? Are the giants? Is the Green Knight a figment of Gawain's imagination from a spell Morgan casted in him to hallucinate? Is Lord and Lady also figments? It's...a way to interpret the poem, but lazy and I don't see why it's got to all fantasy, or all dream...this movie makes it too vague you're stuck picking one camp than to accept it's a fantasy with dream and hallucinatory sequences.

Things I'm Meh: Morgan Le Fay as Gawain's mom. Look I fucking hate Morgause as a character and these two get merged and steal each other's aspects so much at this point the difference is who did they marry, King Urien or King Lot? Both are attributed to being Mordred's mom, Mordred is Gawain's brother...both practice magic depending on certain incarnations, both love and hate Arthur their brother and are in conflict with him. Saint Winifred. I actually liked this sequence, but I don't appreciate her as the tacked on wife in the later dream sequence as like...a contrast between the wife you should marry than the whore next door you don't respect anyway? I don't even know what lesson I'm supposed to get out of the damn dream sequence, or any of it? That Gawain should've married his girlfriend and then he'd be a just ruler? That he shouldn't be king? That he'd never have to make the same heartless, impartial choices? I don't know, he seemed like a king doing king shit because guess what? It never gets easier. Wars will be waged. The world didn't become better because he married the right woman, respected her and lived in obscurity. The world didn't become better because he made her his queen. We certainly don't know the world would be better Gawain had his head chopped off and dead XP They never reveal the Lord and the Green Knight as one and the same because of this shit.

Things I Hated: Arthur withdraws from the challenge because he's old. In poem he takes it on and Gawain takes it so he don't have to and he finds himself more disposable than the king. Gawain only takes the challenge because of arrogance. Arthur and Gawain had no prior personal relationship. I'd not have hated this so much if it wasn't compounded by it cancelling out the first two things. Gawain is portrayed as having no respect for his woman, or any woman, maybe his mother? He has to be pushed by Winifred to regain her head. Gawain is portrayed as arrogant, covetous and ready to pass the buck, or the bare minimum than have any honor or decency. It didn't matter the kid in the wasteland was shithead bandit, the way Gawain acted towards him, when he gets robbed, it almost feels like he deserved it and Gawain doesn't learn a damn lesson. I'll admit him taking the sword to cut his ropes and cutting his hands was a neat sequence, it shows him go from stupid, to almost clever and having will to survive...you know traits he had in the poem, but he stops showing these traits or growing. Basically Gawain has to be dragged kicking and screaming to help people and shows no fortitude when facing temptation, or when showing respect towards others, it's exhausting. You don't make this kind of journey story without character growth. Why are you skipping this? Also is it just me, or is this like when you take Frank Miller Batman and transport him onto a Bill Finger story? This is at best Thomas Malory Gawain (and this is charitable) transported on the earlier Pearl Poet's story. Stop it. It's not tonally correct and goes at odds with the story and the set up characterization you'd need to tell it. Speaking of which, you know how I get through the oof... of Liam Neeson Gawain in Excalibur? By pretending he Agravain instead. Here...I don't even think Gawain could pass as Mordred in spite of his covetous nature, lust and entitlement. Why? because I don't think even Mordred is this dumb to warrant this hubris. Essel being invented as a tacked on love interest just to be shit on utterly and for what? I don't think I have much commentary here as there is no Essel I'm aware of to compare, or stack up. I just notice this trope of like...usually if you include a sex worker in Hollywood she often has a heart of gold, she often has her own sense of values that goes at odds with society, but is more true and less hypocritical than a privileged lady’s. I thought that's what they would've done with the added trope of back at home sweetheart to contrast and pit her against the despicable femme fatale of Lady Bertilak and her adultery and her ladyship...and I'm glad they didn't...but you did nothing with Essel than to shit on her for existing when you made her exist, you know. Lady Bertilak being portrayed as the seductress devil incarnate. Look I know adultery is a touchy taboo, but uh her and Gawain hit it off in the poem, dammit! Her values and his values come to clash, but here it's played off as Gawain is stupid and covetous and Lady Bertilak wants to prove something because...? If my brother's theory that she's a figment of Morgan Le Fay's magic, then I'll take this as a lesson of Gawain is impulsive and covetous and his mom knows it, but he don't want to fuck his mom, but he wants her power, and Morgan wants to teach him a lesson... I guess. Hey we don't have misogynist speeches in this movie, but we'll make sure to have the movie drip with it with no point, or commentary. Pass. Lord guilting, extracting and initiating the same sex kiss and only once. Poem automatically better that Gawain don't have to keep being reminded to keep his part of the bargain and he does it willingly more than once. What he doesn't do is give up his belt...gods how did we get more homophobic as a society that the homoeroticism here is worse? Catholics of the middle ages officially had no issue doing same sex, passionate kissing until it lead to sex. The Ending: The gods damn ending. In the movie as is, Gawain waits to uphold his end of the bargain and get his head chopped off. He imagines, even though we don't get any fuzzy or distortion to indicate this is a dream, but I already knew this was coming, he runs away and comes home, is regarded a hero, he sees his lady, takes her from behind and if you saw Brokeback Mountain (I didn't, but DJ has) you know this is a sign of disrespect to women. He gets her knocked up, pays her off for the kid she wants to keep, he is crowned king, marries the ghostly saint lady he helped retrieve her head earlier from a lake in the movie (this right here is the damn tip off). There's no more dialogue by this point and everything is montaging, so you know by now it's a dream, though nothing is out of focus. He rules as a heartless king, his whore son dies from war he waged, he has a daughter, his wife dies. Gawain then takes off the belt that would've saved his life and his head falls off. This would've been the one good twist, except... In this sequence of events he never had his head cut off so uh... now we back in present day. He decides not to bitch out, Green Knight in a sexy way is like "now off with your head," movie cuts to credits with no resolve...uh what the fuck? What the fuck? This is not good. You wasted the one twist in your dream when idk, you could've...

How I'd fix it: No dream sequence at all. No Incident At Owl Creek twist. Gawain comes home a hero and survivor of this game and ordeal. He wears this belt of shame. He becomes a well-renowned knight, but he bears a shame. One day he goes to take off his belt and his head falls off because he cheated to get this belt and to survive this encounter. There. Done. Improved your high concept movie that couldn't play any of the lessons straight from the damn poem without making everyone an asshole for no reason! Ugh! But nope you had to end it on we don’t know if Gawain lives or dies...because...it's dream magic made from his momma's witchcraft...?

Last Thoughts So then post-credits scene because Marvel because Pirates Of The Caribbean existed. A white girl who looks nothing like Gawain's daughter we see who didn’t pay off, or any child I can remember through this whole movie picks up King Arthur's crown that dream Gawain inherited and puts it on her head. Who is this girl? Are we gonna have an indie equivalent of of the Marvel Movie Universe/Universal Horror Monsters thing with ancient British legends? We gonna get a Life Of Saint Patrick next that crosses over? I don't know. What is this?

[genuflectx]

Just wanna rant about my job a bit, will probably delete this later. But I think I may quit my job within the next month or so u_u’

Originally when I joined this job last year it was under originations- I helped people apply and get approved for loans, or offered general tech support when they needed help with the process online. I felt like I was helping these nice old people, they were rarely mean (save for the occasional grouchy old man after he gets rejected), and the work load was decent. Not too heavy, not too boring. 

Then the pandemic hit. My entire team, which had been hired only a few months before, were rushed in for “accelerated training” on the credit card support department. I believe it was just like 4 weeks of training for a tooootally different workflow. We worked in the servicing department for what, maybe a month? Then they furloughed a ton of people and managers and moved us AGAIN, this time to collections. So calling to collect debts on our credit card product. When I joined this company it was under the understanding I did NOT want to do collections because it makes me sad and feel shitty. But they promised us we would be transferred back to originations after a bit, so whatever.

Slowly things have gone downhill since. Just tiny things adding up. They implemented a internet speed minimum requirement, which is understandable working from home, but we lost another good chunk of people who got fired for that, some who I’d made friends with. Hell, I got THREATENED with firing due to this, forcing us to run an Ethernet cable through 2 stories of our house. And I was PISSED because I was the only one on the team making a 100% average on QA scores. Then a few people quit, leaving only 3 people from my original originations team. They hired a new manager to oversee work force management (WFM) and quality assurance (QA) around this point and I’m CONVINCED it got worse because of her changes...

They changed our outbound dialing system to a cheaper one, promising all these improvements, and who woulda guessed... the quality of work life barely improved with this piece of crap tech but hey, it cut costs. Next they dismantled the debt management company department (DMC) and trained us in it so we’re technically trained for and work in two departments. On top of the promise that in the far future that they will cross-train us with the loan department too, a totally different product. We also have to do the emails for our department as well.

Then things got bad. Non stop calls for a months. Likely related to the unfortunate weather disasters in our outsourced locations. The outbound dialer, which is an autodialer that WFM loads up with late people to auto-call, starting filling up with impossible amounts of people to call for our agent count. We started going from 5000 to call every few hours to 10,000. And it doesn’t matter if we don’t clear the queue, they will load more in at certain times of the day. So we’d get 10,000 at 1pm, we’d get it down to 3,000 by 5pm, and they’d just load it back up to 10,000 again. 

Then they added on the mandatory overtime. Everyone in our department either has to do a half shift extra on either saturday or sunday- with mine being on saturday. Another person quit (down to 2 from my original team). We’re understaffed as hell and they tell us that they’re FINALLY training a new class. And know what? They ONLY enacted the OT and got a new class because their service levels were down. Service levels are a mandatory legal level of how many agents per how many customers we have, they get in legal trouble when it drops too far for too long. They didn’t give a shit about our stress until their damn legal agreement dropped and then forced the OT on us. Wow. We feel so appreciated. 

And THEN the OT was supposed to go until Feb 14th- today. THEY EXTENDED IT ANOTHER WEEK. 

And and and a few days after they told us it was extended these dudes LAY OFF 3 managers, including our team’s manager, who I REALLY liked, and stuck us into the team of a manager who is notorious for giving out incorrect policy info! Why! >:( 

Some other small things they’ve done that have added up slowly: They sent me a “nice” alluminum mug for my high QA score. Stuck it in the washer once and the pretty gold lettering on the front melted. It also leaks. They do these “thank you” videos some time where the upper management (never faces you recognize save for 2 or 3). BUT they made us watch this 10 minute long “thank you” Christmas video BETWEEN CALLS instead of scheduling time for us to do it like usual. Due to the short staffing, they changed how our weekly meetings with our manager/team go. Instead of having the whole team go into a meeting with her twice per week, they made her split this into 3 smaller meetings once per week, so that 2 or 3 team members meet with her at a time (more people on the floor to take calls). It spread her thin- before they laid her off of course. After they enacted the OT a week or so into it one of the upper management people sent us all an email telling us we basically weren’t doing good enough because our collections numbers weren’t high enough.. KNOWING we’re under staffed, she still emailed that. Come on.

So ya know what? My fiance and friends have encouraged me to just move on. This company isn’t what it was when I started a year ago, and idk if it’s legit just due to covid or if this WFM/QA overseer that they hired near the end of 2020 is fully to blame. I hate hearing customers tell me day in day out about their family dying, about being homeless/evicted. I hate old ladies screaming at me because they can’t comprehend that WE ARE IN A PANDEMIC and the MAIL WILL BE LATE, so their damn paper checks need to be mailed out at least 2-3 weeks in advanced- OR THEY COULD JUST CALL AND PAY LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE. Tired of people insulting me and calling me names because THEY’RE late and THEY missed a payment and they can’t accept responsibility- because they think screaming at someone making a few bucks over min wage will do anyone any good or make their shitty credit score any better.

All this mandatory OT and my nice manager being fired has put a lot of stress on me, if the other crap wasn’t enough. We’re really financially stable in this household even if I did quit, even if I’d feel guilty af. And it could be months before I found another job as safe and well-paying as this one, but at least my mental health would recover.

So I have about a day of sick time and 80 hours of PTO. My plan is to hopefully schedule out all 80 hours, or at least 85% of my PTO if I can, then when I come back to put in a 1 week notice. By then the new agents will be in full swing. I can get the money from the PTO I earned at this shit collections job and then try and move on to bigger and better things. And in the mean time while looking, I can work on art/writing and I can also possibly get a new car with all the money we’ve saved up. My mama and granny might end up disapproving and judge me but 2020 was such a shit year and I’m tired of this. I feel like this job is taking advantage of us and legit just doesn’t give a crap about their employees.

Okay! Well that’s outta my system! Bleck

[spell406]

So, a friend of mine basically forced me to watch at least one episode of Netflix Castlevania.

(Disc - I am new to tumblr and had a little problems with posting this thing correctly. Sorry for spam)

So I watched one. And then another. And another… When I finished it was 3 a.m., my eyes were burned out, my brain fried, and my soul forever forfeited, but whatever, who need it anyway.

I am new to the universe, and I know that I am something like 10 months late to the review party, so instead I decided to just share a bunch of thoughts of mine. [UPDATE – Because I am extremely heavy procrastinator and it took me almost two weeks to write this thing I am already at 50% of SoTN right now I’ve finished SoTN by now]

First of all – Castlevania looks like anime, but shares almost nothing common with it. It was a relief, to be honest, as I was a little afraid of show being just another shounen with specific set of clichés and similarities that might quite not bad (or even enjoyable), but I’ve seen them too many times before – better or worse executed – to watch without a mild nausea another Bleach/Naruto in a darker scenario.

I would never demand a fantasy world to be realistic. Like, who would do, fantasy world is supposed to be… fantasy, right? I am fine with lack of realism but I can’t say the same about lack of common sense, and there is a matter of logic that I personally find quite funny. When you are about to fight in close quarters with someone, with both of you lives on stake you’ll want to use every possible advantage. In general there are two kinds of battle armors – first one is focused on providing maximum protection (like typical medieval plate armor) and second one designed to grant freedom of movement especially critical in usually legwork-heavy duels. And here are our “battle” priests in gowns. Gowns, that manage to provide neither aforementioned advantage and downsides of both. Heh. It just bothers me too much, honestly.

I really love the flow of narration; the way that every character including antagonists has its own set of motives and reasons, even Carmilla has her own background that is convicting to justify her bitchery (Well, she has seen it before, right? And Dracula wasn’t even trying to hide his apathy, so why would she like to watch as dead man wages his hollow war)(Is it only me or Dracula shows typical signs of severe depression? Apathy, lack of strength to take any decision, not taking care of himself, loss of interest – even in his own war – well, to be honest he has a good reason to do so).

Animations. Ah, that one is unquestionably excellent, although you Powerhouse Animation guys could have make use of an additional 4-5 fps – from time to time I had a feeling that there is a cat sitting on my keyboard’s space bar, pausing and starting show over and over - it happened something like two or three times. If it comes to favorite scenes – for me, it would be first meeting and fight between Trevor and Alucard. The dialogue and music is so good at reflecting rising pressure and tension between those two – let put oneself in Trevor’s boots – just day before he was rather concerned about getting some food/drink and move on and now he is standing against something that he now considers to be last boss of his life, or perhaps not, he doesn’t even know how does Dracula looks like and he doesn’t seem to be openly aggressive, or perhaps yes, he is obviously vampire and he seems to doesn’t like Belmont name, on the other hand even lesser vampire might be not so easy foe and he is kinda out of practice, and Sypha doesn’t feel like helping out, at least for now… It is all just perfect, and the sound track alone is stuff of legends. (Season 2 OST on Spotify WHEN??”)

Second best would be first phase of Dracula fight – the way which they are team working fluently to not let eachother get killed pleases my inner maniac in best possible way, although the 1 vs 1 part is kinda downgrade - but still ok.

But there is one thing that really stands out in best possible way from things I’ve seen before and that’s utilization of facial expression and body language. Like seriously, this combined with really outstanding voice acting bring interactions between characters to another damned level. (Unfortunately, national translation and voice acting is so awful that I couldn’t bear myself to finish even first season). There are few thing I consider more important in creating credible character than combining overall expressiveness and voice acting, the ability to tell words without actually using any (Finding Ciri cinematic in Witcher 3 is perhaps best known to me example) - and Castlevania does it just soooo good.

Dracula generals. When they were shown for the first time I was like “oh boy he has summoned generals, (Generals! Master tactician, the artists of war!) the oldest, most cunning and powerful beasts from entire world, now things are going to get rough.” And how did it turned out? I can understand that Dracula tasked his forge masters with overseeing the war (Although his reasoning was kind of ok, good job Dracula for nominating for executives two people, that knew least about proceeding war) Did they were incompetent so much? Then how did they managed to get their titles, if they were just a bunch of endlessly whining mischief-makers? They were supposed to know how war looks like, and how to do one, but instead they did literally nothing for war effort! If you ask me, that is at least one risen eyebrow. Excluding Godbrand, the only member of council that did anything more than grate his teeth in silent anger, killed some civilians and got taken care of quite effortlessly. Also, Godbrand wasn’t made to be the sharpest knife in a closet, but he still was bright enough to ask himself “What will we do when we’ll win a war?” Also, he managed to notice that there were no real plan to follow... That is +1 to you Godbrand, I’ll miss you my vikingy boi. In the end, if they were meant to be just a background, they did get a little too much of screen time, and if they were not, they got faaaaaar from enough of it.

By the way – not sure if it’s only me but I personally think that Trevor might be keenest (or – at least – not dumbest) of protagonist trio. He might lack classic education, but he is careful watcher (he noticed fresh oil in torch and overall state of Alucard’s hideout), he correctly chosen and quite successfully executed strategy at Gresit square (isolate, divide and destroy) and quite steadfastly shrugged  off Alucard bickering (well, most of times). Also, his plan for battle with vampire generals was quite logical – avoid close quarter cause humans are in general more fragile than vampires, and Alucard as frontline. My inner maniac was most pleased.

As I said before, I really enjoy Castlevania’s overall character design but with an exception of bishop of Gresit. There is no reason for his work, I know that he is insane and reasoning usually does not apply to those like him but I feel like there is no reason in villainy (this entire talking about making a God’s own country – well, I don’t buy it), aside of being genuinely baaaaad, which kinda stands out in negative way in comparison to the rest of characters.

To highlight the issue, lets do some roleplaying here:

The night creatures are ravaging the land that you had sworn to protect in unholy war against humanity, killing women, men even your subordinates alike. The citizens are growing restless, and demand taking an action. How do you proceed?

a) Find the last descendant of family known for their prowess in fighting those beasts; but be wary – he doesn’t seem to like you very much after you branded him as heretic, exterminated his entire family and burned down his home (probably with some of aforementioned family still inside it). However, if you nicely ask for help, reverse the curse, apology for making mistake and return the estate it actually might work. (to be honest that could be quite interesting moral choice for Trevor, to help people of Wallachia and let bishop take all glory or decline the bishop proposition and screw people over in the process)

b) You can fight them, you are the Holy Church after all. You have access to unlimited supply of holy water, relics, you have enough money and authority to arm and train people’s militia properly. Your knowledge of those beasts might be as wide as Belmont family, but at least should be sufficient to minimalize the damage. Killing the Dracula, however, might be impossible for you.

c) You spent most of your time on biting, trashing, or looking for anyone to cast entire blame upon; it doesn’t matter who is that poor bastard as long as it is not you. In addition, you…

AAAAARGH I CAN’T CONTAIN MYSELF ANY LONGER! BROTHER, I DON’T FEEL LIKE I AM   WICKED ENOUGH! I REQUIRE TO SEE SOME SUFFERING OF INNOCENT TO FEAST UPON! WHAT DO YOU SAY, BROTHER? I CANT HEAR YOU OVER RAGE BOILING IN MY VEINS! WHAT, SPEAKERS? OF COURSE THEY WILL DO RAAAAAARRGARGAJGIOGJIHKBYIUOL

Oh well.

Well, looks like I am done here. By the way, sorry for my English, I am not a native speaker (If I’ve commited any spectacular crime against vocabulary/grammar let me know on priv).

Now I’m going back to rewatching show and torturing SoTN

No TL:DR, just read it if you want, it is not an entire book, you know.

[ltweekl-blog]

Theres so much free porn

Theres so much free porn that I feel webcamming is more of a personal one-on-one. You can go online and find any ol stuff, but webcamming is more personal; its tailored exactly to what you want and what youre looking for. Youre not sharing it with 100 thousand other people. This is your show. Most of the time you build up a relationship, I talk to you as a friend and I respect you as a person. How has your day been, what did you get from the shops, what are you cooking for dinner… its like an online relationship. The important thing is to keep a paying client online for as many minutes as possible.The webcam industry also does its best to entice young women into the business.Working an eight-hour day, she earns close to 4,000 euros (£3,600) per month - nearly 10 times the Romanian average wage. As Lana's employer, Studio 20 also makes 4,000 euros per month from her online sessions. And at the top of the video chat money-making pyramid, LiveJasmin - the online cam site that streams Studio 20's content and is responsible for collecting payment from the credit cards of clients - takes double that: 8,000 euros.

Eventually they came. My chat room began to fill up and I started talking to a few guys in the group chat. I only typed at first: At the time I lived in a sharehouse with only guys my age and really wasn’t interested in them finding out about my moonlit habits.When the clothes do come off, it can be damn lucrative: Domino estimates she hauls in around $US300 on a good day — although a bad day is zero dollars, and hours wasted. But it's enough for her to be completely self-sufficient, albeit weary of the whole thing sometimes. More concerning though are the handful of "true creeps" she runs into — the gents who aren't just pervs, but sexual threats. That's never OK, but the rest of the time, occasional criminals aside, the job sounds downright leisurely.It also gives Domino a chance to indulge in her geeky professionalism: "I like being able to network with people who aren't my strip club customers, [and] it's a way for me to see how good I am at SEO and social media. This is fun for her. Domino says she's "always been a very sexual person," so while camming is tiring, of course, on-camera kink isn't onerous, if you can put the monotony aside.To this end, Studio 20 employs trainers, a psychologist and an English teacher. Most of the clients are North American and European, so it is essential the models can communicate with them.

"I was alone in the room, and it felt like there were hundreds of people around me. And I couldn't keep up with what they were all saying, and what they were asking of me. It was quite shocking. But then I learned to be perceptive about which member was a potential paying customer and not to waste time with all of them in the free online space.Sometimes self-­regulation regarding finances is the best option for some people: Ive been treated better and more fairly as a Cam Girl and nude model than I was in my last retail job where I, no word of a lie, got fired for looking sad. Yet despite how much control one can have over their career as a Cam Girl there are certainly discrepancies within the industry, including safety issues and issues of future employability, as well as what is considered a fair payment and no guarantee on a basic minimum wage for hours put in. It leaves a lot up to chance.So as I sat there, in front of my laptop, I thought to myself, Why didnt I just respond the way that I normally do when somebody proclaims something which I dont agree with? Why didnt I just say, firmly but reasonably, you are wrong and these are the reasons why… Perhaps it was because it was so personal, that I felt like for once, I wasnt defending femininity as a whole, but just myself. Which on the surface would seem like a less daunting task, but for me it left me stumped. I knew that I was a feminist and it wasnt often that I had to justify myself to anybody. I was used to breaking down all the reasons that men used to justify their behavior.A little research at mega-message boards like Stripper Web is fruitful — you'll pick up "Best Way to Recieve Money from Guys" muse in "Are you always beautious on cam?" And, of course, share war stories. One user started a thread spilling the most obnoxious, bigoted lines she'd recently been fed by "customers". CONTINUED BELOW...

[actual-ongoing-dumpster-fire]

My family made a fucked up, unlovable person

Potential trigger warnings: abuse, self harm, suicide (can’t do a cut on mobile, sorry)

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about interactions with most of my family members growing up and how it’s affected me as a person.

My mom was emotionally absent, she seemed to get frustrated or annoyed by me. My dad had anger issues. He’s never physically abused me (besides spanking me a bit too forcefully). But he has raised his voice a lot, and while he’s yelling and throwing things around he’s also ranting and cussing. Obviously it made me fear him and all I could really do that when it happened was just stand there and try not to break down in fearful tears in front of him because I was afraid my “punishment” (his yelling) would be worse if I start crying. The important thing to remember in my family is crying is bad, it means you’re being difficult and nobody wants to hear it. Or my family wasn’t able to effectively deal with me being an overly sensitive child, because I have had an anxiety disorder my entire life and it doesn’t take much for me to cry. (Another important note: my dad was a truck driver and could be gone for a few days at a time. My mom worked and still works a flexible schedule, not a 9 to 5. This meant that if I wasn’t being watched by my babysitter, my grandmother or my sister would watch me as a kid.)

My brother has a temper like my dad does. One memory I have from when I was four I think, is I got excited about something and he screamed something at me and naturally, it made me cry because it scared me. I was never close with him. He basically doesn’t interact with me anymore, another long story. Our nonexistent relationship doesn’t really factor too much into my mental turmoil since we were never close, so maybe I’ll go in depth another time, I don’t know.

My sister and brother are several years older than me. This meant my sister had to babysit me a lot when I was a baby because she hadn’t graduated from high school yet. She carries resentment towards me because my parents had her babysit me, and several times she has complained about this to me whenever I’ve told her to stop treating me like a child (when I’m an adult). So, my sister sees me as a burden and as someone to do things she’s too lazy to do because she’s had to babysit me a lot, nothing I had any say over (?!) because nobody asks to exist, it just happens, right?

My grandmother also babysat me a lot. Or, I stayed at her house and had to occupy myself with whatever (note: anybody watching me, including my parents, never really interacted with me because they were always watching TV. Unless I wanted to watch whatever they were watching in the living room, then they wouldn’t be talking to me.) I was there, but she carried about her business and did her own thing and I did mine. (I’m not sure if this is super awful, I’m just getting everything out right now and in a mentally bad place).

My aunts were annoyed by me too.

Not only was I accepted in my family, I was often made fun of throughout school for my weight. No validation from my family, none from school. That means very low self esteem and self worth. I’m improving, but I still hate my appearance and don’t see myself as too lovable. Especially right now.

I know that so many other people have had it much worse than me growing up. I’ve never been beaten, I was just emotionally neglected for the most part and whenever I did something my dad didn’t like a few times he yelled and screamed at me for around a half hour or less and that was it. It’s just.... it still has obviously affected me.

It’s just a night where I’m feeling angry with my family and everybody else treating me shitty during my childhood because they’ve created an unlovable person. They’ve made a clingy, insecure, emotionally unstable woman. I had so many hopes and dreams as a child. Lawyer, doctor, vet, astronaut, I’ve always wanted to be all of those things at one point or another. (No encouragement from family. They said I’d have to go to school forever. More discouraging.) Now, I’m 23 years old and going to school for a second time and living with my parents because I literally cannot go to school and live alone at the same time. It’s why I dropped out of a state university and had to come back home and go to this podunk community college that miraculously offers bachelors degrees. I’ve only got around a year left if I can stick through it but god dammit, will it be hard if I’m going to have a breakdown about my life a few times a month and just feel an emotional rollercoaster each and every day. It’s going to be god damn hard feeling like I’m an outcast EVERYWHERE I am or go.

Why on earth do I think that having some good friends and a good partner will cure my mental turmoil? I don’t know. I should know better. I was still unwell when I had friends and a girlfriend. All I know is, I just want to fit in somewhere and I want to feel loved. I want to feel loved so bad. Whenever I think about this loneliness and isolation and how plain UNLOVED I fucking feel, it’s all I can do not to scream until my throat is raw and I can’t talk for several days. Or pull all of my hair out. Or slash up my arms. But I can’t do any of those things, because people will see and get freaked out and my family will pretend they care. If they really cared, though, they would see how sick and awful I can get. That I’m very good at hiding things for the most part.

I know it’s all on me to get better. Nobody else can. But I crave the affection, the love and the acceptance I missed out on from my childhood. I feel like I can’t find myself able to get better if I don’t have anybody encouraging me but myself. I really just crave someone to hold me and let me cry and just... comfort me. I’m trying to work on my issues but I can’t really hug and comfort myself, you know?

I just needed to get this out and indulge my usual craving for validation, attention, and coddling. If you read through all of this, congrats. If the more likely happens and nobody reads all of this shit, I at least have something to read to my therapist for if I forget how to articulate what the fuck is with me and my head, how I feel, etcetera. I’m going to try and stop crying and silently screaming and go to bed, I have to work my minimum wage job tomorrow (actually today, in less than eight hours). I hope I manage to stick this one out.

[donnerpartyofone]

sometime last september i had a bad cold with an ear infection. a bunch of fluid built up in my ear and never went away. i saw a doctor who suggested it would just disappear on its own, but that it could take three or four months. i took some antibiotics then, which didn’t help. he didn’t seem to consider it a problem. after a couple of months i came back, same deal. he gave me some anti-inflammatory nasal spray and some ear drops, which didn’t help. then i found a new gp and described the problem to her. she stuck her ear thing in my ear, wagged it around, and then just turned around and never discussed it with me in any way.

incidentally, i was seeing that second doctor because i was convinced i was dying from lung cancer. my mother was suddenly diagnosed with stage four lung cancer when she was my age and given a couple of months to live. (she surprised everybody by living for three or four years, which in my estimation was a lot worse than if she had just died right away) i found a gp who specialized in lung disease and explained that i have consistently restricted breathing in one lung that does not fluctuate in any way, and has been going on for a long time. well, my chest x-rays came back clear and i don’t have any other symptoms, so she just put me on some asthma inhalers. i had bad asthma as a kid, and this unceasing one-sided shortness of breath doesn’t resemble that in any way, but my doctor didn’t seem to give a shit about figuring out what was wrong with me as long as the inhalers seemed to be managing the symptoms. i felt like a theme was emerging when i told her about my ear, and she seemed to just look for whatever specific thing she would consider a problem, and when she didn’t see it, she just changed the subject.

so, naturally, i found a new gp. i went because my scripts for my inhalers were running out, and i didn’t want go back to the other doctor to get them renewed. mercifully (i guess although i’m really not dying to keep seeing more and more doctors), my new doctor is sending me for fresh x-rays and referring me to a pulmonologist. i also told her about my ear, and she checked me out and saw all this fluid behind my eardrum. she said this is very common, and might be there “forever”. it could be because of my naturally humongous tonsils, which is a pretty disgusting thing to hear about myself for some reason, or it could be allergy inflammation that’s contributing to the blockage. so the main thing i have to do is stop trying to pop my ear, which i want to do every second of every minute that i’m conscious, because it’s clearly, painfully wearing down my jaw. also, now i get to add an allergy pill to the 23 (24 depending on what’s going on) pills i need to take every day to manage other stuff. 

the “other stuff” is mostly one condition, which is that my system processes copper so poorly that the buildup of this psychoactive metal in my system makes me chronically depressed, anxious, fearful and angry. nutrient therapy is a lot better than being hooked on opiodes...i think? but the number of things i have to take to avoid that is exhausting, and means that i spend an hour or two a day feeling like i’m going to throw up while i digest everything, which isn’t exactly a mood booster.

anyway, my new gp has also referred me to an ENT, which appointment can’t happen soon enough because sometime around 3am yesterday, i developed a loud ringing in the affected ear that will not go away, and by all accounts, might never go away. this is not the first time this week that i was told one of my senses will be permanently impaired for no particularly good reason. a few years ago, i had to have surgery and localized chemotherapy to remove some pathological scar tissue growing across my corneas. it hasn’t come back (although it might), probably thanks in part to the chemo, but now i have a buildup of surgical scar tissue on one eye that is causing glare and spots, and according to my cornea specialist, that’s just the new normal. the few treatments options are considered high risk for little reward, i guess.

depression has a way of casting you as a problematic person in the public eye: someone who is oversensitive, looking for attention, being negative, and refusing to deal with their problems in a mature way (because according to people who don’t really have problems, all problems go away if you just adjust your bad attitude). now, i hate going to the doctor because my experience of autism makes me cry and panic like i’ve been raped if anyone touches me without my specific emotional invitation. also, it’s very hard for me to think of any experience i’ve ever had with a doctor where something was explained to me satisfyingly, or where i got treatment that really worked--as opposed to me just coming out the other end, terrorized and humiliated, sitting there in a puddle of my own various fear fluids thinking, “wait a minute, WHY THE FUCK did i let them do all that random shit to me??” to wit: a couple of years where i submitted myself to a doctor to have core samples regularly, painfully, frighteningly drilled out of my cervix because of some abnormal test results. whatever’s going on COULD be precancerous, i was told. well, what else “could” it be, i asked? they just shrugged, and one day they told me they weren’t seeing the abnormality anymore and they didn’t have to keep mutilating me. so...i could have just been sitting on the couch this whole time? why did i do this, when i don’t even have any particular faith in treatment anyway? but, i keep doing to the doctor(s), because i’ve had it drilled into my head that it’s the “responsible” thing to do, and it will prove to the world that i’m a “positive” person who tries to find “mature” solutions to my problems. that makes it extra frustrating when nothing comes of it, other than the damning confirmation that nothing about me is really working that well, and it’s not going to.

of course, on top of the fact that my problems are not really manageable in any substantial way, there’s the added psychological pressure that comes from people not seeing your problems as problems. exactly one half of my face is affected by rosacea, making it extra obvious that something is wrong with me. having tried everything else that is supposed to manage my symptoms--including two different treatments that are “magic bullets” for 99% of sufferers, both of which made me react so badly that i looked like i’d been attacked by wasps--i decided to take the plunge on my last option, an extremely expensive battery of painful and kind of scary laser treatments. i had the last one this month. i’m not seeing any difference at all, and in fact i’m not sure it didn’t make things worse. no insurance really covers treatment for rosacea because it’s considered a cosmetic problem, even though it results in broken blood vessels and progressive thickening of the skin that anybody would consider a medical problem if they saw it in action. i can already see what’s going on in the mirror, and trying not to notice is not an option.

i realize, as i’m sure many people will be quick to tell me, that i’m actually very lucky. i do not have any “real problems”. i’m performing the basic life problems of a human being just fine. but i have to say, just to stick up for myself, that there is something really special about just having a collection of unrelated problems that just amount to, like, a bunch of bullshit. i have friends who have had, or currently have, really major life challenges--horrifying circumstances or conditions with which they have had to wage a heroic battle. of course i don’t envy them, but at the risk of sounding really incredibly petty, at least they made some kind of sense. the dragon arrives at your door, and it’s cancer, or hiv, or a neurological disorder, or a flesh-and-bone-eating disease; you don your armor and fight the good fight, or prepare to die with dignity, or in the worst case scenario, you just regular-die, but everybody totally understands it as a tragedy. there’s some kind of logic to it all, even if it’s completely unfair and arbitrary in the outing. it’s different when you just have a bunch of bullshit, none of which anybody thinks is a problem individually, and there’s no reason for it. your eye is just kind of shitty and your skin is just kind of shitty and your lung is just kind of shitty and your ear is just kind of shitty and your ovaries are just kind of shitty and your mental health is just kind of shitty (for chronic physiological reasons). so therefore, looking at things is just kind of shitty and having people look at you is just kind of shitty and hearing things is just kind of shitty and really, just being awake and alive is just kind of shitty. and there’s no narrative here, it’s not you versus your virus or you versus your mutating cells or something. it’s just you versus the fact that you’re just, like, kind of a fucking lemon. if your body were a car, you’d get rid of it, and just take the bus from now on. or stop going anywhere altogether.

when i’m not fighting off a violent reaction to my mounting collection of bullshit problems, i’m usually trying to find some meaning to my life. it’s hard to do. i’m not brilliantly intelligent or talented in any way that would make my career into the point of my life. i’m also not going to start a family (which would be a huge challenge for me anyway because of problems with my reproductive system), so that’s out. because of my anhedonia, i can’t really live for pleasure either--a fact which is surely compacted by the way that all of my individual parts seem committed to making any and all sensory input at least sort-of annoying, if not infuriating and claustrophobia-inducing. when it’s just me and my depression, i often think, “god, i really wish i could just achieve something in this life, then all this agonizing would be worth it.” i usually wind up reaffirming that i’m just an ordinary person, i’m not even very good at my hobbies or very knowledgable about my passions, there’s no chance that doing something special with my time on earth is going to save me. but then, of course, there’s my shitty, shitty, shitty physical condition. the only thing i really ever accomplish is preventing myself from screaming.

i realize that many people might want to frame stopping yourself from screaming as an accomplishment in and of itself. when you’re really challenged in life, you have to remember your context. like, one guy might be climbing the corporate ladder, and he has to face the challenge of competition and seizing opportunities and stuff; but when you’re, say, me, not-screaming can be a legitimately equivalent effort that you should be proud of winning at. both my best shrink and my worst shrink have tried to warn me off of comparing myself to others--to noticing, constantly, that compared to pretty much everyone i know i’m really defective, and in fact i’m way behind my peers developmentally because i have to struggle so hard just to get through my fucking day without ruining anything or taking a break for pure suffering. part of the reason to avoid comparing yourself to others is what i was just getting at, that you want to have an authentic sense of your own suffering without using an irrelevant-to-you method of measurement. the other part of it is that you don’t want to delude yourself into thinking that you are the only person who suffers, or that your suffering is the most extreme. my first/worst shrink approached this in a pretty hilarious way: she suggested that maybe ALL of my friends have ALL the same problems as me, they just haven’t mentioned it. first of all, this just shows a real ignorance of how many great complainers i know. but secondly, it suggests a world in which my closest friends have stood by while scars grow over my eyeballs and half my face burns and swells and my ovaries constantly invite painful degrading examinations and threaten cancer and my lung never opens all the way and my ear rings deafeningly et at ad nauseam, and they just...don’t say anything to me. for some reason my dearest companions just don’t feel like offering me support or solidarity or advice from their supposed rich experience, or even venting their own frustrations to an ear they know for a fact is sympathetic, even if it doesn’t hear too well. it’s an extra bizarre idea that still makes me laugh, when i’m not screaming.

now i have to get ready for today’s doctor’s appointment, the fifth of what i think will turn out to be eight this month, not including psychiatric appointments. it’s not for my ear, but i’ll definitely be bringing that up again, because i think i need to add an anti-anxiety prescription to my armory of pills, because i don’t think i’m going to make it through this experience without altering my chemistry until i just don’t give a fuck about anything that happens to me. plus i need to find out if tinnitus is its own thing, or if it is definitely always a symptom of hearing loss (that is, a deteriorating ability to perceive sound, as opposed to an incredibly loud internal sound that you just naturally notice more than other external sounds that you are still technically capable of perceiving). a minute ago, my husband got up and started stalking around our tiny apartment suspiciously. i thought he must have seen a bug, but he’s looking for the source of a weird noise that must be coming from our large mac tower, a couple of feet away. i absolutely cannot hear it at all.

[ashencreature]

Important Update for partners across the board

This is long, and I’m sorry, but I just wanted everyone to know what’s going on. Honestly, I’m not expecting anyone to actually waste time reading through all this, but it’s just so I can try to ease my own anxiety in case the worst case scenario does come and I left some sort of explanation.

Ok, so, some of you know there’s been a lot going on for me at home in the last 3 or 4 years. But everything’s kind of getting worse by day and at this point, I’m not sure what to do anymore. 

When I was 14, I moved in with my dad. We moved quite a few times in the first few years I was with him. Hell, that first year alone, I was in 3 different schools. All for Freshman year. And the last house we were in that year, we stayed in for maybe 2? 

But when I was 16, the factory my dad worked at closed and he lost his job. That’s kind of where all this starts. Instead of getting a new job, he decided he wanted to spend all day drinking with his new friends and occasionally doing odd jobs for them or things with them. We had to move out of that house, take my dog to the shelter, and move into a trailer. It was only supposed to be for a year. But nearly 14 years later, and we’re still here. 

Now the landlord here is a real prick. More like a slumlord if you ask me. He jacks the rent up for the dumbest reasons and acts like he’s god’s gift to humanity or some shit. He told us himself, and had the park manager tell us, that we couldn’t fix our roof to stop the leaking because the walls would collapse of we tried to move it. So literally the entire 14 years we’ve been here, the roof has been leaking. My dad tried everything he could think of, short of tearing it out and redoing it, to fix it. Nothing worked. 

And in that time, the entire back half of the house got destroyed by mold. My bedroom, being the very last room, was the first to go. I think I slept in it for a year? And ever since, I’ve had to sleep in the living room because the walls had to be torn out due to the mold. It’s right down to the studs and the scant insulation. It’s been like that for over 10 years. Well, now the mold is spreading and getting worse. The bathroom is destroyed pretty much. The back hallway is the same. The floor’s rotting away, and the toilet is falling through the floor; again. 

Now, I think my dad went to the garage he was at for the first time when I was maybe 18? I don’t remember exactly. I do remember being in junior year and my friends either having to buy me lunch, share theirs with me, or pray that we actually were cooking in cooking class; which happened a lot less than you’d think. Other than that, I didn’t eat. Senior year was a little better because I at least would get money dropped off to eat. Not that the cafeteria had a lot of choices for me to pick from. I pretty much ate nothing but gross excuse for pizza and occasionally pretzels, fries, or Belgian waffles. 

Anyway, so senior year rolls around and we’re all prepping for college. At the time, I wanted to go to AMDA for musical theater, and managed to get an audition there for that March. I had to force my dad to go to the meeting about FAFSA and to fill out the paperwork. Which he said he did, but I don’t believe it because he says they denied me. And I’ve never heard of FAFSA being denied. Not that it mattered anyway, because I bombed the audition and didn’t get in. So graduation rolls around and all my friends go off to college. I haven’t seen or spoken to most of them since. They never stop to visit when they come home and they never try to reach out on Facebook. Eventually, I got sick of being the one to initiate and maintain all conversations, so I just gave up. 

The 2 friends I still had at that time helped me to get jobs when I was 20/21 and living with them, in 2011/2012. This was because 2 of us and their mom were in a car accident on the way to my friend’s college at the time. We all nearly died. My friend had a concussion, their mom needed surgery, and I nearly got impaled by a fake Christmas tree. I ended up going to the hospital a lot later than they did with a copy of the report in the doctor’s hand and got told I wasn’t in an accident I had the flu, go home. Anyway, so after my friend’s mom’s surgery, I moved in to help around the house and look after my friend’s youngest sister. These jobs weren’t the best; Wendy’s and the deli department of one of the local grocery stores. But it was money. 

For all the good it did. Because by that time, my dad had quit working at the garage. So here I was, paying for rent, bills, gas, food, and child support for my brother. All on $200 a week. My anxiety was driving me insane. And I came to find out that my dad was going in and threatening one of the store managers, which was probably why the guy was such a scumbag to me. But I digress. So I was in the store for a month shy of 2 years. I started at maybe $7.45 or $7.50. an hour when I started. It was slightly over the minimum wage at the time. By the time I left, 2 years later mind you, I wasn’t even making $8, and I was working full time hours while only being part time. Everything that went wrong got blamed on me, even when it was my day off and I wasn’t anywhere near the store. I liked most of the people that I worked with, even if I hated the job, and the assistant department manager became a really good friend. She was 2 years older than me, and we hung out a lot. I’d spend the night at her house, I was at her wedding, I’ve been to her daughter’s birthday parties and so on. 

At one point, I was supposed to get training to be an assistant specialty cheese shop lead. They sent me to one class, told me about another, but never gave me any more details about it, even when I asked. Then they said they were going to train me over there, but never did. That was just the first of a long list of grievances. The culmination of which was on a Sunday night, our busiest day of the week. There was just me and 1 other guy in the department. Then 1 lady in the hot food section, 1 lady in the beer store, and no one in the bakery. But they expected me to take care of all 4 departments and still wait on the 20+ people that were at the counter the whole night. And I had an order to make and put away for the assistant department manager. Needless to said, I had a panic attack. I told my partner, and both of the other people nearby. They told the assistant store manager, and he didn’t care. They made me work for 3 and a half hours, through a panic attack, without a break. I couldn’t breathe and was on the verge of fainting. I finally had enough and told one of the ladies that I didn’t care what the store manager said, I was going to get my inhaler in the break room and get a drink at the water fountain, or I was going to faint. 

A few days later, I got called to the main office to speak to the store manager, who I usually didn’t have a problem with. And unfortunately, since my anger receptors are evidently attached to my tear ducts, I broke down in tears when I wanted to be furious. He basically told me that I was going to the bakery or I was getting fired. So the next day, I quit. There was a lot of other stuff too but that doesn’t really matter. Including being so sick that I couldn’t eat for over a week, fainting in the back room because they wouldn’t let me take a day off, and not being able to talk for over a month. The assistant department manager almost called the ambulance when I fainted, but you know, I’m clearly the problem here. 

So there we were, I didn’t have a job. My dad didn’t have a job. I was 23, and feeling just as helpless as I did at 16. I spent a year filling out job applications for a bunch of different things from craft stores to fast food to jewelry stores, but never heard back from any of them. The only interview I got was for Chipotle. But they wouldn’t even hire me. Naturally, cue the anxiety and depression getting worse. And around this time, our electric got shut off. This was in May I believe because it was just before my birthday. 

At that time I started thinking about going back to school. So I looked at schools and degrees you could do all online, because I knew I could never afford to go on campus. And, as most of you know, I started at CTU in July of that year. Now the program I did was an accelerated one, which meant I could finish gen ed classes faster, be done faster, and lower my tuition. I did as many as I could, but only my admission adviser was any help. My actual student adviser was never around, never responded to my emails, never called me back. But whatever. 

So for 3 years I spent pretty much all day, every god damn day doing schoolwork. I’d be at my local Dunkin from 3 in the afternoon until they closed at 11. Sometimes I’d be working even later next door because I still had stuff to do. The first year and a half I was fine. It didn’t bother mine, just like working didn’t bother me at first. But then, a year and a half after I started, I got sick. I couldn’t eat anything without my stomach cramping up and getting the worst migraines. It got so bad that one day at Dunkin, I felt like I was going to puke, and got up to go to the bathroom and almost fainted. Personally, I think it’s a combination of anxiety, depression, Celiac/gluten intolerance, anemia, and asthma. But I don’t know for sure because I haven’t had a doctor since I was going to the pediatrician. And even if I did, can’t afford it. 

So I’ve just been getting sicker and sicker. I was 125 pounds in January of this year. 11 months later, and I’m down to 108.5 the last time I checked. I think the lowest I hit was 107, and that was all 6 months after the weight loss started. There’s times it’ll go back up, but I can’t get past 110 or 111 tops. Neighbors who used to live down the road came to visit earlier this week, and all the lady could say was how skinny I got. I’m like yeah, malnourishment’ll do that to you. 

And to make things worse, my dad at some point went back to the garage and was working again, so things were slightly better. I say slightly in the loosest way possible. But, just after Christmas last year, my dad quit again. I’ve seen him apply to 1 job and go to 1 interview in the year since. Other than that, he’s been collecting scrap and doing shit for people who refuse to pay, including the landlord. In the last 7 or 8 months, despite how many times I’ve told him that my refund checks from the school aren’t free money I can spend however I want, my dad’s made me spend it. The $5,000 I had that was supposed to set me ahead for my student loans are gone. And I’m $5,000 deeper in the hole than I should be. Which means instead of being like $45 or 50 grand in debt I’m about $55 grand. 

Then, because we haven’t had electricity in almost 4 years, and with the mold problem, everything in the house is ruined. We had only cold water, and I took cold showers for as long as I could. But last winter, the shower pipes froze and burst. So even if I wanted to, I can’t do that. Plus, because we can’t use the washer and dryer, or hook up a generator thanks to the scumbag landlord, or afford a laundromat, our clothes have gone unwashed for over a year. Most of mine were sitting in the tub, which got filled with mold and bugs. I have practically no clothes left, with no way to wash them, and no way to shower unless I go to someone else’s house. And even when I do, I still don’t feel clean. Even after washing my hair 4 times or more. 

We were supposed to move into the place next door and tear this one down. But the landlord and my dad made a deal that he’d give it to us for the cost of the title transfer. Then suddenly, he wanted $600, then like $800 or $1,000. But he won’t stop asking about it, no matter how many times we tell him no. Him and his wife keep trying to say we’re $5,000 behind on rent which isn’t possible because with what rent is now, you can’t even get $5,000 as a total for a whole year, and this last year is the only time we fell behind because everything else was caught up. He gave us a bill full or errors. Payments that were made aren’t marked. Payments that weren’t made are. There’s random charges after the monthly rent cycle. Which I think are from when he was bitching about us paying the taxes for a place we didn’t even own and was still in his name. He told us we can’t run the generator for power because it was too loud. Though the noise ordinance here is 11, and it was always off by then. And when one of the neighbors asked how we were supposed to live, he told them it “Wasn’t his problem”. 

So when I started getting really sick, and unable to leave the house to go to Dunkin for school because I was too gross, the neighbors next door let us run an extension cord over to their place. Not a lot. Just enough for the light in the living room, the fan, a mini fridge, and to plug in my phone and computer. OH WANNA HEAR A GOOD ONE. THE LANDLORD TOLD MY DAD 3 SEPARATE TIMES IF I NEED TO PLUG IN MY COMPUTER TO GET A LANTERN. YES THE OLD FASHIONED OIL OR CANDLE TYPE LANTERN. WHICH YOU CAN TOTALLY PLUG AN ELECTRONIC COMPUTER INTO. So because of that, I was able to finish school and graduate in June. 

But, because I still can’t bathe or do laundry and have no clothes, I still can’t go to interviews. If I walked in with my arms, face, neck, and legs literally black from dirt, and reeking to high heaven, I’d fucking get laughed out of the place. My dad still refuses to get a real job and insists on hauling scrap or doing shit for people who won’t pay at all, or want to pay less than it’s worth. And guess what’s due this week? You got it, my first loan payment. 

I can’t figure out how much I have to pay, work on getting it lowered or delayed, or even access my account info because there’s an issue with my birthday apparently, and they can’t find it even though they have my name and social and keep emailing me. I’ve been telling him this for months, and he still won’t come with me to try and sort it out. Because what he needs has to taken care of then and there and everything else can fuck all. He blew up at me the other day about it, blaming me for going, leaving him with payments, for my mother walking out 20 years ago even though they hated each other, and pretty much for being born. Because he resents having to take care of kids he made the choice to have. Not like I asked to be born, and I’ve been wishing I was dead since I was 9, but whatever. 

Anyway. 

So, the neighbor’s dad was diagnosed with lung cancer over the summer. Like 2 weeks later, he was dead. And she’s struggling just as much. We’ve been trying to help her and she’s been trying to help us. But her ex was paying her rent and some of the other bills until she found a job because they have a young son. But he started refusing to do that, which I honestly wouldn’t be surprised it if was the landlord’s doing cause they were talking. And he was telling her to “pull the plug” on us. And his wife started harassing her about rent like 2 weeks after her father died. Then, she went to Domestic relations earlier this week and then like the day after she goes, her ex somehow gets an emergency custody on the little guy. They came for him yesterday. 

She’s most likely going to have to move, which means that we’ll be losing power and internet unless we can figure something out to get our power back on. But even then, the bill’s supposedly at least $1300, and that won’t fix the internet problem. 

So... Needless to say, if I disappear suddenly in the near future, that’s why. I don’t want to go. I’ve spent too much time here, made too many friends, and put too much work into my muses. But everything is going to shit all at once. It’s just been building and building for the last 3 years, especially the last year, but my dad refuses to see and do anything about it. Instead, he’d rather blame everything on me and expect me to fix it. As if my mental health wasn’t bad enough from childhood abuse and being sick and stressed all the time. Now I’m too fucking scared to leave the house. I haven’t been outside since the midterms when I went to vote. But I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen now. And I just wanted everyone to know that I love them. And even if I do disappear, I still plan on keeping my muses and coming back when I can. Granted Tumblr doesn’t die before then. In which case the only blog i’m worried about losing is Elizabeth’s because of all the worldbuilding, metas, and headcanons I’ve done.

[beyoncesfursona]

I know no one is really active on here anymore — most of my mutuals and followers have left, I think — but I figured it couldn’t hurt to post this here.

I’m about to have a major, major surgery, and although the GoFundMe Story goes into a lot of detail (like, a lot of detail), here’s a tl;dr, since the original is 9,000ish words, and includes a lot of info on Donation Rewards.

I have a skin disease that causes painful lesions. It’s not leprosy, but someone, at some point in history, had to have gotten the two mixed up. One of these lesions came up in a terrible place at one point (Late Nov/Early Dec 2017) and didn’t go away — I didn’t have health insurance at the time, so I ignored it as long as I could. At my breaking point, two weeks (!) before I regained insurance, I went to the emergency room, got knocked out with Ketamine, and had it taken care of. They told me I needed immediate surgery, because since I had waited too long and tried to put it off for, like, a month, it had tunneled a hole several inches deep into my skin, almost down to the bone. I put it on hold due to not having insurance, then classes started, I dismissed it, and nothing happened for a year.

Fast forward to November 2018, I’ve long been insured again by that point. Another one comes up in the same area, and I know what’s coming this time. I get through a week of work and school, sitting on my hip and getting funny looks but not missing anything because of pain. Friday night, the week is over, my fiance takes me to the hospital, they cut it (with me awake this time) and promise me a referral to a surgeon, now that I was insured. I did not get a referral, but I did get several thousands of dollars in bills.

Now, here I am again, less than two months after my last one, and I’m in the same shape, with a third one. I’ve already been to the ER, and this time I actually got a referral. I was so thrilled! I met with the surgeon, and she burst my bubble really quick. I thought, you know, “oh, in and out, cut out the thing, send me home,” no. This surgery is going to be extremely complicated and, to be honest, since it’s so close to the base of my spine, kind of dangerous. There isn’t just the one sinus from the first cyst, no — the first cyst, then every cyst afterward made its own sinus, filled with scar tissue and infection. Three of them, total. They want to biopsy them when they come out to make sure nothing’s cancerous, or something else horrible.

This surgery will be so bad, and the recovery process so difficult, that I won’t even be able to sit for two months, minimum. I’ll have to go to my checkups in a vehicle I can lie flat in. No wheelchair or being driven anywhere — completely and totally horizontal. If I bend my back too much, I could rip staples and stitches and have to start completely over again. Not to mention that the blood flow to that area of the human back is already horrible, because why wouldn’t it be, and there is a high chance of flesh dying when stitched back together. Anyway, because of all of that, I can’t sit. For a long damn time. I work in an office, which means if I literally can’t sit at my desk for two months, the most basic function of my job, then I can’t work for two months. I may even lose my job because of this. I hope not (I mean, I really hope not), but I mean, of course they can’t just live without an office assistant for 2+ months, and I don’t know why they’d hold out for me just because I’m a good employee.

If I’m not working and earning money, I don’t know how I’m going to pay bills. I’m already making the minimum payments on almost everything because, even though I’m in a “cushy” office job, it’s more of an internship than anything and barely pays at all. I make less in this job than I have ever made in any retail or food job — I made more at Domino’s and quit there because I wasn’t making enough money. I’m paid fifty cents above minimum wage for my area, and I’m lucky to break $500 a month working my normal, scheduled hours. When that income is gone, I will have no money for groceries, no money for gas, and no money for my car insurance. Sure, I won’t be able to drive, but I still have to put gas in other people’s cars to take me wherever, and I still have to keep insurance on my car, otherwise when a tree inevitably falls on it, I’ll be up shit creek. I’ll have no money for my credit card bills I have to pay every month to keep them from going to collections on me. Or for the medical bills I’m already making the most miniature, tiny payments on. I’ll also have no money to keep refilling the several medications I have to take every day (most importantly my epilepsy medicine, my heart rhythm medicine, and my depression/anxiety medicines), all of which total about $90-$110 a month, depending on whether I have to fill the “as-needed” prescriptions that month.

Even though my house is paid for until May (thanks, student loans), I may have to move back home if I cannot come up with some money to support myself through this, and to pay back some of these massive medical bills. However, my mother is Borderline, a former addict, a thief, and can be extremely abusive — and my grandmother takes too many pills and starts fights. I lived with that for 18 years, and I didn’t move three counties away and start a good, peaceful life for myself just to have a disease ruin it.

To make a long story short, I really need help. If you can’t donate, please, please reblog this. Any of my mutuals that are still around and all of my followers still here know that this isn’t a typical post from me. This, in general, is not typical of me. But I don’t have a choice. I either have to ask for help or I’ll drown in these expenses. So, I’m asking.

Please reblog, and if you can spare a bit right now to donate, I will always be grateful. Also, I’m gay, so. Figured I’d throw that in the pot, too. 

If anyone would rather donate some other way than GoFundMe, please let me know. I’ll make a PayPal or something. Also, please ignore my real name on there. I try not to use that whenever possible, because I prefer to go by Micah.

[dwestfieldblog]

Q ONAN IN THE AEON OF HORUS

Insanity is contagious in the Aeon of Horus. Hope you all had a happy and healthy Sirius day on 23rd... I wasn’t going to write another screed until late September but I might well be trapped on the festering cesspool prison island of guinea pigs in three weeks time where the oven ready Boris variant runs wild, and will have very limited access, if any, to the matrix. And I needed to rant off as catharsis on current popular topics. Arf arf arf and fnord as well.

Climate report Doom...fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes on the rise, watch the Texans and Arabs and all those aligned with oil continue to deny global warming in the sweating face of the evidence.  The tyranny of the driller killers has been disabling those with clean solar power ideas and the mass use of limitless superconductive  energy for decades, while they work out how ‘to put a metre between us and the sun’. Blame greed. Perhaps they think Bezos will have enough rockets for them to plunder other worlds and leave the future desert of earth behind. Climate change deniers usually have the same mind set as those who are anti vaxxers, it seems to be a typical item on their lists of dislike. Right alongside all the other bollocks and twaddle they don’t believe in, despite the enduring and building testimonies of the majority of professionals.

‘To prevent yourselves doing and seeing and coming into contact with this, that and the other...lock yourselves up in a monastery where you’ll be safe. Immunity...it teaches us how not to be affected by the countless vicissitudes of life; not how to avoid them by running away...The philosopher adapts himself to the exigencies of life, not the exigencies of life to himself.’ The Initiate in the New World by his pupil. Book two of a fascinating trilogy. Hello Cecil Jones.

America...the gurning evil one (‘I love the poorly educated’)  doesn’t seem to be back in the White House quite yet, Q Onan and the boys can’t seem to get their insurrection up. Been there eh? White guys just take the blue tablet and avoid getting redpilled.  ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.’ Yuval Noah Harari-Sapiens.

However, the Onan boys have exported their rabid drivel abroad...A shameful group of wannabe prophets in London a couple of weeks ago were spewing dire craziness and waves of silliness dearly wishing to become important and individualised particles by being observed and applauded. One of their brilliant ideas is that the Great Reset, New World Order of children’s adrenochrome drinking liberal reptiles will be a QUOTE’ An authoritarian socialist government run by powerful capitalists.’ UNQUOTE. Howls of derisive laughter turning into the growl of a wolf with a curled top lip and my left eye twitching for a blackout minute. When sentience returned, I was fairly sure there is no way in this lifetime of me attaining Satori while consumed by this spite. Fear and self loathing in England part 23. To attempt to counter...

Putting the con into conspiracy theories... 1. IF the vaccine is; (A. A poison to cull the overpopulated millions, that would mean that every single decent doctor and nurse in the world is in on it and not one of them is spilling the beans. Neither scenario seems plausible in any way, therefore the first premise appears to be excrement. If Covid doesn’t exist and the x rays are ALL faked (showing the difference between pneumonia, cancer and covid lungs, that also aggressively suggests a high level of implausibility. If you truly believe medical professionals are mostly freemasons and/or serving the Illuminati in the name of genocide etc, you are just a MORON. A DUNGHEADED IDIOT.

As God tweeted last month; It’s always the really dumb who make life hard for the moderately dumb.’

Drug companies and politicians have always been deeply corrupt, some would say with great justification, evil.  Their foul business is as usual. But every nurse working a 16 hour shift in intensive care, do you honestly think they are doing it for the kicks to kill, for the (ha) money or to serve the Devil? Again, if Covid IS real but only the plebs are getting the bad vaccine and the here today gone tomorrow (unless they are Putin types) omnipotent holy world leaders are getting the good stuff...again this would be mighty hard to cover up. And it isn’t only the old, obese and those with ‘underlying health problems’ who are dying, teens and workers are too. No government wants to wreck its economy (apart from Brexit England) by murdering its workers, students and quarantining hundreds of thousands.

If the vaccine is a shot of death and the toll rises twice higher than it already is, governments will know that nobody will believe them the next time round when a new virus mutates...which is not good for mass control. (That said, I feel a deep grim certitude that step by blatant step, totalitarianism is coming to democracies as they realise the only way to dominate the drone masses is to do as China and Russia do.) But ‘why am I drifting into negativity’ eh?

And IF folk think the vaccine is a brain control agent by which we can be spied upon and controlled by our puppet masters via the ubiquitous spooky G5 masts, then the science of how the jab’s ingredients work (And could not possibly be activated with sound waves) should be explained in primary schools so the kids can go home and teach their elders with crayon. At the same time, the anti maskers need to watch videos (with their eyes held open (a la Clockwork Orange) of droplets in breath, the distance they travel without protection, the length of time they hang in the air and in what concentration. Humans react well to moving pictures, it might help. Yes that is dripping with rancid sarcasm. And as for those ranting that wearing masks causes illness, tell that to all the healthcare professionals of the last 100plus years who wore masks most of every bloody day, not just a couple of years. Did they all die of lung problems? I don’t have the actual statistics and I am damn sure you don’t either, so shut up and sit down. As Bill Hicks would say...

‘YOU SEE, IT MAKES NO SENSE’.

Beautiful to see so many holy men in the main religions, priests, rabbis, imans and pujari telling their flock to refuse the vaccine because it will (deep choking breath) make them impotent, gay and/or that it has cows blood and human foetuses in it. For the 23rd time, your shepherds will lead you to butchers again. Very spiritual blokes. Are any women as full of manure as this? Well actually...

One talking blonde cow on the London stage mooed about the vaccine being created by Bill ‘I think it makes sense to believe in God’ Gates, with the patent 060606, so was clearly ‘satanic’. Brilliant detective work and a rational conclusion. Except Bill didn’t formulate the vaccine and the patent was for an entirely different shot with an ACTUAL micro chip to measure if work had been completed and pay wages with Bitcoin. (Which, granted is creepy as fk, but nothing to do with Beelzebub or covid, unless you are going to bang on about none being able to buy or sell without the mark of the beast. So the antichrist is a protestant eh? I saw a video last year of an American ‘Christian’ woman blogger saying Bill was the devil, because of ‘the GATES of hell.’ That’s what we are up against and sidestepping the fk away from.

Those not vaccinated are walking time bomb laboratories of new variants.  Making their own beliefs real as they will be able to say ‘See, told you the vaccine doesn’t work’. Listen to the doctors and nurses begging you.

Once yet again with even more feeling...These demonstrations of hogwash moonshine bullshit theories, mixed in with a fine blend of ahem, ‘patriotism’ are ripping the country apart. On one side the increasingly corrupt English government and their lies and on the other, the deranged and deluded with their falsehoods. An empty vessel makes the most noise and both sides are ripening the fields for populism.

Using the enemy’s own strength against them, well known to Judo black belt KGB pretty boy Putin...widening and deepening internal divisions in democracies, using the basic mistrust of half the people against their governments and encouraging it...works like a charm in times of stress/ fear/ anger. Just let them do most of the work and their own momentum will destroy them...at very least weaken them for the kill. Britain, America, Europe  et al, you are being suckered and you bloody well deserve it for being so thick.

(Sidebar...By the way...Congratulations on 100 glorious years of Chinese communism and now all in the Middle Kingdom are being told, taught, trained, ORDERED to think just like Winnie the Pooh. Perfect unspoiled socialist paradise where millions wonder (as they do in most other places) ‘will there be any hunny for me?’ Unlikely...Communism doesn’t really work that way... another self righteous scam by those who seek power and to maintain their privilege. So the stick makes you keep plodding on for the promised carrot until all you believe in is the stick because it hurts and pain is real. (To greatly paraphrase Sir Terry Prachett, may he remain creative wherever he is.)  )       

Or...The Bilderbergers met a couple of years ago, discussed overpopulation and a threefold plan of how to deal with it...Release an airborne virus in several countries; allow it to spread for a year, Allow fear to rise. Use algorithms to predict the percentage of the obedient and those who will suspect conspiracy. When the vaccine is ‘found’ it will calm the believers for a while and enflame the rebels all the more who will look for ways to make it fit their own schemes of disbelief. This will cause a degree of expected demonstrations and rebellion...which will have the effect of enabling governments to create and quickly pass new laws on freedoms, including peaceful demonstration, to ‘protect’ the law abiding masses that need to believe all is for their own good.

The B boys talked about phased genocide, vaccines, drugs, supplies of medical equipment, government tenders to similar friends, knowing they will survive, and be well positioned to financially ride out the deaths and bankruptcies of lesser protected groups. Who they will then be able to buy out with ease and thus expand. The goldrush thrill of disaster capitalism! When all of this is (temporarily?) over, food and energy resources will be a little less stretched and/or  stricter controlling laws will be in place and democracies will be far easier to control . A sadistic lack of empathy from the richest sociopaths.

There doesn’t need to be anything weird in the vaccines now, people’s minds are doing the paranoid job in their imagination, either with fear or with anger. The rich will remain rich empowering themselves with their inhuman business as usual. Populists will appear to take the side of the people as long as they are rewarded with money and power...and are allowed to join the club. All ethics and morals sacrificed for the temporary glory of pretend immortality.

This was written very quickly over a period of a couple of nights but at least it is a page shorter than usual eh? J I have to concentrate on booking tests (150 pounds in England for a PCR test is RIP OFF. Bastards. The outrageous weight of my suitcase with all my cds and books plus some pants and socks, the forlorn hope of getting a free seat or at least cheap for one of my guitars. The fear I might not be allowed back in to where I am now because the UK still seems to be Boris covid red. And Brexit and being a tourist again. Love the way the brexiteers are pissed off they will have to pay a few Euros to enter Europe as a third country citizen. The Tories voted yes to this idea in 2016 and you voted to become a third country you idiots. So now, you get to stand for a looong time in a longer queue with all the brown people you so disparage. In your nostalgic pride for something which will never be again, you have relegated England to the status of a failed state and voted for the worst government in my lifetime. You should be ashamed but you will just double down.  Disgusting.

Anyway, late summer ‘holidays’ ahoy.  Stay sane and in rude health...hope to see you again, spreading my cosmic rays of great happiness, comfort and joy. Outside of the insanity, keep visualising...Female male left right brain...Yin and yang let’s do our thang...

Y=01=FIRE...WANDS...ADENINE

H=00=WATER...CUPS...THYMINE

V=11=AIR...SWORDS...CYSTOSINE

H=10=EARTH...DISCS...GUANINE

[honey-and-strawberry]

I had actually completely forgotten about that tax issue until I saw that post and 😤 it's so messed up and some men have the audacity to be like: uh its no that bad just deal with it*more Neanderthal mumbling* 🙄 like No! We shouldn't not have to be taxed over items that WE NEED!

I'm glad there are guys like your bf and my brother around though, ones that see the problem women deal with, including the lesser wages issues. Equality may have been enforced more since the 60s most notably but the same lazy men, or their sexist sons, are in charge and only allotting crumbs of it to show.

And this might be tmi but I actually switched to reusable pads a few years ago and after the initial cost of getting enough to last a full week it had already paid itself off in 3 months. I know its gross to some people, the idea of reusables but it is seriously so much better and way more hygienic. And bleached tampons? Let's not go there for now though 😅

Thinking about the components of a disposable is 😬 its basically a unbreathable trash bag with heavily bleached and inorganic material, that trapes bacteria and oders, near a very sensitive area of the body for hours a day, 3-7 days, or more or less in some cases, a month. How is that good for ones body?

And this topic took a big turn, from economics to health 😅😬

It’s stupid how men react when women talk about bullshit things we deal with. I’m not even gonna mention harassment (either physical, verbal, and sexual, any) cause that’s a whole other topic and I don’t wanna deal with that right now. I’m glad there are a few men out there who understand and support with what they can but they still unknowingly benefit from the bad ones who don’t 😔 my sweet bf didn’t fully understand what a period was till he started dating me even tho he has younger sisters but I don’t blame him for not knowing, his dad was very much the type that is like “guys deal with guy things, girls deal with girl things” which.....ugh. There needs to be a whole reevaluation for education in this kind of stuff cause when I was little (like around 10) we watched the puberty video but we were split up (boys go to the library, the girls went to a classroom) and as I grew up I wanted to know what was in the male video cause it would help me understand how my partners body works. In high school my biology teacher showed us how to check for lumps not only for women but men too and it was really helpful to understand what goes on in our anatomy. It would greatly benefit people if we had an understanding on anatomies and changes (physical, mental, social), so we wouldn’t have god damn people who think women have control over their periods and fucking politicians who believe women have control over fertility.

This may also be tmi but since I got on birth control like 7ish years ago, I haven’t had a period since (had the depo shot then moved to pills but I still haven’t had one). I would get some spotting but nothing crazy (except earlier this year I had a period that lasted like 2+ months 🥲). Even tho I haven’t need to use pads or tampons, I fully support reusable products. Those washable period panties look so soft I wonder if they feel as soft as they look! I never used the cup thing but I heard good things about it from friends. Whatever works go for it! Disposable products are 😬😬😬 in general and what people do to make them last is terrifying (heard stories of girls keeping tampons in for hours and hours so they don’t have to use a new one and I’m like DEAR GOD STOP). Just seeing the word “bleach” and “tampons” in the same sentence.....let’s not get into that.

It’s good to talk about these things cause we’re human we need to talk about experiences cause that’s how we know if there’s something wrong or right. If something works for many people there’s no harm in trying it but if it doesn’t work out for you that’s ok too and that’s the beauty of trying.

[bigdreams2287]

"As dumb as they are.." Not a way to refer to toddlers you fat frumpy peice of shit. This is why daycares should require teachers to have early childhood education degrees. Anyone who's had proper education and has an immaturity level above a 10 year old knows how unethical it is to refer to young children as "dumb". You are not a teacher. You are a minimum wage employee unfourtunatley taking care of kids and a very shitty one at that.

BAAAHAAAHAHAHA!!!! Ok, I didnt see this on Friday when it was sent, but I'm going to reply cause this is funny.1) dear anon, this is my venting place. When the stress of my job gets too much, I vent here.2) hi, I'm licensed at my job with over 12 years experience. I've seen a ton of changes in both parenting styles and children's maturity. I don't need to explain my credentials to you or explain how well I know I am at my job. Just cause you saw one of my venting posts, doesn't make me a bad teacher.3) I'm also best friends with many of the other teachers in this school. If you think my "ethics" are bad, man you would hate our conversations!!4) thanks for calling me fat. I had totally forgotten I was so I appreciate the reminder!! 5) I work young kids that all 5 teachers they get (including me) have expectations for. At the end of the year, they should be able to identify all their colors, basic shapes, numbers 1-10, and most of the alphabet. So if I use the word dumb to describe how much my kids don't know, yeah, that's on me. Because my kids are not stupid. They are fucking awesome with great personalities. But yeah, the best way to describe them since the vast majority of them don't know the basics is dumb. When they don't know the difference between a circle and triangle, that's dumb. When they don't know how to cut when we've done it every day for 7 months, that's dumb.So don't bother me with your crap again. As much as you think I'm bad at my minimum wage job, I'm fucking awesome. Not the best, but I'm good. Also, shame on you for your assumptions. Next time why don't you get to know my job before you go on your soapbox to judge me. You wouldn't last a day in my shoes. So hun, I'm sorry you felt the need to treat me this way, but your the kid I spend my time showing love to and teach how to be respectful to others and will give a damn about when everyone else has given up on you.

[fuck-customers]

This is very much a "fuck co-workers". This is long, so sorry about that. So I work at a dry cleaners. And for over a year I was the opener and basically almost manager at the store I work at. I got to lose all of my hours and my checks get cut almost in half or less because my co-workers fucking suck. What we basically do where I work is tag in the dirty clothes customers bring in(so we know who it belongs too), and give people back their finished clothes orders. We don't clean any of the clothes where I work. We do pillows but those are easy to do. Tagging things in, keeping the store clean and doing the cash out at the end of the night. But the morning person has to handle repairs(such as button fixes), doing the pillows(the night people are lazy assholes and won't do them) assembling the clean clothes that come back(putting them on the right orders, crossing off finished orders, putting finished orders in the computer and then putting them away. and if dirty clothes get dropped off while i'm assembling, i have to finish assembling BEFORE tagging them in) along with tagging in things that come in during the day, along with delinting clothes(like sweaters and wool jackets and shit) and doing foamies(things on hangers that prevent the clothes from falling off. the people who clean the clothes are too lazy to do it themselves and make us do it).

For a while, everything was running smoothly. One of my co-workers, we'll name her Bob, would complain to our manager if she had more than five bags to do. One day she texts me on a Tuesday(which was one of our busiest fucking days cause it was discount day) and tells me "when there's a lot you should stay to help me". I had already been there for eight hours, and I had already done my job. Anything not done from the morning shift IS the night person's job to do. And I explain to her what our manager had told me. That I have to finish assembling, and if I finish I can tag shit in. (But normally when she comes in things aren't even put away and I'm not done) I explain this and tell her that anything from the morning shift is hers to do. Now Bob, she knows how to do pillows, how to fix buttons and how to delint. She worked there longer than I did and was taught these things before I worked there. She was just in high school and could only do nights/Saturdays. She she's never actually worked a morning shift in her life(at the dry cleaners) and has no idea what being the morning person is like. Also a lazy piece of shit. And she argues that it's not her job and becomes a bitch about it. So the next day I go to my manager, show her the conversation(because I wasn't in the wrong. I explained to her exactly what was explained to me) and our manager had the exact same conversation with her that I did. But she was telling Steve(we'll call the manager Steve) that I was leaving 10+ bags of clothes for her to tag in. (Even when there were that many, there weren't more than five pieces of clothes in more than have of the bags total) We finally "stopped fighting" and were civil at work. She used to claim I talked down to her when I would literally start everything with "Steve told me to tell you this". But she would come in and ignore me when I'm talking to her, and telling her what's done, what she needs to do or doesn't need to worry about and wouldn't hear a damn word I say. Then text me later about things I already told her about. But we eventually got things sorted. But it also turned out Bob wasn't the type to do things as they came in. Which is what we're suppose to do. She would wait until the end of the night to tag everything in. On the bottom of the invoice that details the order, there's a time that the order was done. I could tell she was doing this because orders that came in at about 3'o'clock would be written down under the orders that came in at 7 in the book we had(we had to write down orders tagged in to be crossed off later when they were done). Basically she'd sit there on her phone the whole time. There was also a time when my mother was picking my up and dropping me off. And granted she was never there right when I got off, but like 20 minutes or so afterwards. Bob would do this thing where she would text me 30 minutes before her shift and ask if she could stay at the school longer to work on homework. She'd do this knowing that her school was 45 minutes away and she'd be late regardless. I didn't feel like walking home from work so the answer was almost always no. So I had to explain to her that I need her to be on time, and I also told the manager this as well. On Wednesdays she KNEW she couldn't be on time, and I'd have to walk cause of her ass, and asked to work every Wednesday. She also started doing this thing where she claimed a bag or two she left was a last minute drop off, although you can check what time in the computer it came in(and they were almost always dropped off at about five, and we closed at eight).

Couple of months later, we get two knew people, we'll name them Oliver and Rick. Oliver was in college, Rick was in high school. Bob was pretty much tasked with training them. She didn't train them or shit. They were always doing things wrong because she wasn't watching them. Then when she would watch Rick do his job, he would do it right when someone else is around but then do whatever the fuck he wanted while he was alone. But Bob told the pair that I left bags for them to do in the afternoon on purpose, and to leave bags for me. Now, added on top of the shit I had to do every day already, spending the first two+ hours of my shift catching up on the multitude of bags left for me meant there was more work for the closers to do when they arrived. It wasn't until Oliver started working mornings and realized that Bob was a lying bitch. But they weren't tagging in clothes correctly. They were putting orders under the wrong name or under no name because they didn't get the customers name. At the same time, the location that the clothes got cleaned at went from getting only our dry cleaning to our laundry and our dry cleaning and for about two months were two weeks + behind on orders. Customers were not happy with us and at this point we were losing about five customers a week. 

And Rick wasn't making things any better by having to be told everything about his job AGAIN every time he came in. Where to put the tags on shirts, pants, suit jackets. And at night, we have to put all of the paper cash and rolled up coins in a bag to hide that gets taken back out the next time we open. We leave the loose change in the drawer so we don't have to fucking sort it. For a long time, Both Oliver and Rick emptied the entire drawer into said bag. Until Oliver started opening and realized how fucking stupid it was to do that. No matter how many times it was explained to Rick or physically shown to him he still didn't get it. But between all of the closers, (and the computer acting up because it's old) the cash out that tells us if the money is okay(we're not missing any or something) and how much goes in the deposit had been off. Every morning and night the drawer is suppose to be at $100 dollars. For about three months it was over or under every fucking morning. Another lovely headache I got to deal with. And when it came to me telling the manager about these things, Steve would always go "I'm stopping over there tomorrow to talk to him/her/them" and then when the driver would arrive to drop off the clean clothes, a note from the manager would be there for whoever she planned on talking too. She never came to deal with these issues and sent letters to said employees. When it came to me working Saturdays(which I shouldn't have been because I opened every week), I was also suppose to train Rick. Out of the at least five Saturdays tat Rick was suppose to see how to open or close on Saturdays, he only showed up once. 

To top it all off, I was the only person not making $9.50 an hour. Last August minimum wage went up, and everyone else(including Bob) got their raise. Didn't matter how many times I brought it up to Steve or the owners, until Almost February I didn't get the extra .50 cent raise I was suppose to get. They still refuse to pay me the back pay(of over $300 dollars). So I get to play manager because my manager refused to come around, and I was literally getting paid the least among everyone when I was the only one doing my job. 

Two months into Rick working, Bob told me that on Friday(when we get paid) she showed up to get her check at 7:30 PM, and again, we close at 8 PM, and the store was closed. The lights were off and Rick was no where to be found, with the front door also unlocked. When Bob asked Rick about it, his excuse was "he had to feed his dog". When asked about the front door, he said he left it unlocked for the night driver to easily get it. The thing about Fridays is that the clothes don't get picked up at night. There is no cleaning done weekends, so our clothes from Friday and Saturday aren't picked up until Sunday. And Rick, had been told every Friday he worked(by me) that the driver does not pick up on Fridays. So the door would have been unlocked Saturday morning. He didn't even turn on the security system we had. A couple of weeks after this, Bob tells me about it. Asks is she should tell the manager. (At this point I wanted to bash her head in with a blunt object. LIKE OF COURSE YOU TELL THE FUCKING MANAGER.) So we had a meeting that very week, and Bob told the manager(and of course Rick didn't even show up for said meeting) and Steve tells us that it wasn't even the first time he'd left early. (It's like, so tell me, why is his ass still here then?) Then came Valentines Day. I was working in the morning, Bob and Oliver requested the night off so Rick was scheduled to work. I had a date(plus we open at 7 AM and close at 8 PM, I don't care how much fucking money it gets me that's 13 hours with NO break, NO food and CONSTANT work.) I wasn't staying. Rick calls Steve about 11 AM and asks to have the night off to take his girlfriend out to eat. Again, we close at 8. He could have worked AND taken his girlfriend out as well. He was told no. He later calls me and asks me to work, I tell him no I have a date(it was actually my first date ever. at all. I wasn't missing it for his ass.) He gave Oliver and Bob the same call. The answer was the same. Finally at about 2, one hour before his ass had to come in, he calls Steve with this story that his friend tried to kill himself and he can't come in. (Now if it were actually true, that sucks. But considering he spent all day trying to get out of work, literally no one believed him, but he said he wasn't coming in so we were fucked). Oliver was forced to work and I was almost late for my date because of his ass. Steve, Bob, and Oliver and I all discussed that he was probably lying, but we had no way to prove it. Bob told him about it, blamed Oliver and I for suggesting he was lying(when everyone was agreeing on it) and refused to pay Oliver(he said he'd pay her what he would have made working plus what she was getting paid for, so double the money) because we were "talking shit". There was even one day he came in all pissy and ended up arguing with me over what is his job(just like with Bob), only I ended up telling him to shut the fuck up. I shouldn't have, cause that's bad. I shouldn't talk to my co-worker that way. But the little fucker pissed me off. To top it all off, the final night he worked, he left early again. But quit the next morning before he could be fired. When he should have been fired several months before then. 

Before Rick had quit, almost all of his hours had been taken away so he was only working one day a week. Bob had taken all of his hours cause she wanted money. She also had a second job. The week of said shifts she worked a lot, she last minute put all of her shifts on Oliver because I can't open and close, and for at least two months got out of working every Saturday she was scheduled. Oliver basically worked every Saturday for months. (She ended up not minding because she needed the money). Bob later then quit cause she wasn't getting enough hours. It was after she quit that Oliver told me Bob painted me as the bitch who just dumped all of my work on the closers.

But despite all of the hard work I was doing to fix everything that the closers fucked up, on a daily fucking basis, all of my morning hours were taken away from me in order for the manager to come back and fix what they did. And for months, I was only getting one or two days a week while Oliver and Joe(someone who worked with us for a while, quit then came back) got most of the hours, and yet couldn't do their fucking job right either. A major fuck you, double middle finger to me basically. Steve would tell me, "it's a circle, it goes around". No bitch it doesn't. I'm not to blame if they do their job wrong. They are. 

Also, sorry if things are all over the place.