#tim barrus new york times

[timbarrus]

Take notes. People demand to know if Shawn is gay. These are the people who will make him pay for it. His fan base is mainly composed of fifteen-year-old girls. There's a lot of anecdotals attached to Shawn. I hear a lot of: No One Cares If He's Gay. That is not true. Those young girls care a lot. The problem is that Shawn is writing about intimacy. And so are they. It's a double-edged sword. Everybody wants to be a Normal. Let's be very clear here. There are rules and acuterment to being a heterosexual. The red truck would be one. Teenage boys see Shawn as a threat. They stand in the background grimly. They tolerate him but barely. They think he's gay and just isn't willing to pay the price for it. All of this translates to clicks and hits. The paparazzi are all over Shawn because those editors know clicks, hits, and give us the dirt. I know these guys. Identity is a witch. They are waiting for the pictures of Shawn with another guy. In fact, they're drooling for it. The media vampires will take him in and spit him out. They will take his career and drown it. It's lucrative. Shawn is not the problem. Being eye candy is always a problem. They are pouring him into the great big box of fun things to stereotype him because he's unavailable. Sexuality is just another whipping post. The term, Mental Health, is code for gay. This is all stuff Shawn has talked about. Here's the bottom line. People would like to make love to Shawn Mendes. To be a fantasy has never been a calling.

[lesmagnifiquessauvages]

tim barrus

[timbarrusart]

[timotheebarrus]

Tim Barrus and the New York Times

[timbarrus]

Take notes. I am a radical. Not a democrat. Not a republican. There are no independents. They employ the same political and cultural infrastructure -- how things work -- that the rest of us are compelled to use. Climate: Not a word. It's the Trump go to for climate change, a hoax. Americans are in denial. Why. Not a word about that. Save the American Dream. The American Dream is flat-out vanished. Is America is a corpse because it has a fetish for illusion. The American people still believe in the goodness of Gotham. Hollywood's Gotham is urban decay on steroids. Not one word about how Hollywood's cultural prostitution, carved from graves for advanced rot. Criminals rise to power. The word criminal is not to be found. There are metaphors for the word rapist. There are metaphors for the word crook. There are metaphors for the word deviant. You will not find the word deviant here because the republican (small d) party cannot bring itself to believe it's leader (ownership culture) is aberrational. Even the bad word sex is an economic negotiation. Or it's rape. You get to pick one. Not both. They take a deviant, and they normalize him as a leader who struggled. Another idea they avoid is based on the word individual. Individual is Americana. This is about the rise of Trump. And what did I learn. The word nothing has a metaphor, too. Vacuum. They are telling us America loves Trump. Genuflect. Now, the truth. Scratching heads. Suddenly, perplexed. More questions. No answers.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. "But voters still trust his positions more than his opponent’s."

Don't tell me. Show me.

I do not believe it. There's a different standard for showing, and clinging to a narrative that is dubious at best. How do we know that Americans trust Trump more. Where are the figures and whose data are we talking about. What did you know and when did you know it. Criminality is culture, too.

Americans will opt to grab at the simple solutions. They're busy. They live in terror of losing their jobs. They're hung over. Nervous. Their kids are failing. They're in debt. But they get to vote. Yet Americans want to be controlled.

They are already controlled. That is what advertising is. You being controlled. You being told there is a god and you must worship him the way we tell you to worship period. Let us away to art.

1969: They Shoot Horses, Don't They. Gig Young was Rocky Gravo, the evil ring master of ceremonies. Rocky can sell you anything. The Bob Barker of 1934. Just keep dancing. Just keep dancing. Just keep the people entertained with who dies first. Just keep the people on their toes with who dies last. Rocky Gravo has to prove that he is not ordinary. Rocky Gravo is ordinary. Look around the dance arena and you will see the people we never see at all. They blend into the walls. Rocky Gravo is dog eat dog. Complexity is not his problem.

Immigration is code for Let's Make Them Dance. Come on down.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. It was Armageddon. I am still clawing out of it. Even as my neighbors are just beginning to deal with the trauma of losing everything. The tourists are pouring in. A steady stream of tourism -- disaster porn -- didn't even flinch at another opportunity to see us struggle. I have not seen any evidence there even is a government. I have always known that the government doesn't really want to help us. So we become as self-reliant as we can. We cut our own trees. We dig the graves. When some power was restored last night, I am told they are still finding bodies in trees. I can't think of whatever else we might do to entertain the tourists. They do not arrive with chainsaws. No government. No food. No water. No hospital. Nothing. Do not show your tourist face to us. The humans hit hardest are babies. And they will be the ones who decide who gets to live where, and who will not live through storms like Helene. Because, it's all gone political. Remember what our fearless leader said: Global warming is a hoax. Homo sapiens are not going to care until some devil of a storm blows the doors off their hinges. I am now unhinged. Some door. Now guns. I am hundreds of miles from any ocean. You can only take care of yourselves. Where is FEMA. Even as the hurricane was furious, it had been decided by the business community to keep the T-shirt shops open. Someone might need a cocktail and a T-shirt. The videos are a pornography. In Appalachia, we are ruined. -- Tim Barrus

[timbarrus]

Charleen lives down the dirt road from me. I will not dwell on trailer stereotypes. Charleen is poor. We read a lot about the poor poor. Charleen and her babies lived in the car that now sits at the side of the trailer in the thick nettle weeds. Charleen gets rides. Charleen is my entire poll. I want her opinion. She's pretty free with it. "I think I should be Vice President." I take her to Denny's and we talk. Charleen would be horrible as Vice President. Charleen has goings on back in that woods. Charleen has only been twenty-five miles from where she was born. Right here. Her mother sneaks them food. Her mother will babysit. Charleen does not approve of local politicians. "More crooked than a barrel of fishhooks." Charleen reads all the wrong things. The poor have no face in the media. You do not know how we live. We are not a novel. We are not a film. No one sees us. We're just the poor. We don't vote. We don't matter. We do not care because every day, we are just the bottom feeders. Trying to survive by the skin of our teeth. Charleen has a few teeth left. No one takes Charleen to Denny's. I explained that she cannot be President. "Why." I gave her my best Because You Are Nineteen Look. Oh. I get a bad case of sensory overload from too much East Coast Political Handwringing. Charleen likes Kelly because he went to the moon. I refuse to discuss that one. Charleen hides pregnancy. I have delivered her to the clinic on my dirt bike. She does not own her own body. Men do.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. It's Christmas. The billionaire class gets to tuck us in and read us fables and myths. He is entitled to have access to the New York Times. Enormous wealth counts. It's all one needs. We must give our readers what they want and this is what they want because this is what they always want. Fluff. This is called a total lack of imagination. This piece attempts to normalize a psychosis that has infected the brains of homo sapiens who beg at the feet of the rapist. Oh, a big new box of fun things. This piece offends me to my core because it is disguised by a plea by a billionaire that we must all work together for the sake of community. The naïveté would be shocking but it's not naïveté. I want the hard, deep truth not because I am developmentally depraved, but because I am filled with fear. It's unmanly to say that, yet I think many of us are in the Afraid Boat. The writer has access. Front page. Because he's rich. Period. It is not uncivil to tell that tough truth. Shirley Temple tap dances with the salves. Quid Pro Quo died in November. Just drop a ton of happy pills from a plane. There is no god. There was no Jesus. Religion is the boot shoved against your neck. Religion is the icon of undistributed vast wealth. The little people love our billionaire stories about how lucky we are to have them because patriarchal culture has won the blood fight. A billionaire tells us the Christmas story of the bad stuff is our fault and the billionaires are misunderstood.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. Appalachia is not cheap. Nevertheless, the endemic poverty of Appalachia is so fundamental, so ingrained, so intransigent, that even I cannot articulate what a waste of lives, resources, no vision that can make it better. Families with dirt floors. No hope. America is done. Suicide rates for Appalachia are more than 20 per 1k. It just shot up. Please do not move here. There is nowhere to put you. Hurricane Helene came at us with a #5 when it hit (with virtually no warning). We were not prepared. New people here will be a disaster. But we realize what is coming, and we do not want you here at all. You will be a huge problem. More that a few families are existing in their cars. Nowhere to live. We are all very bitter. Pitching tents in the cold. No water for a month. Some of us are bathing in the river. People are living in their cars. Do. Not. Move. Here. It's treachery. Democrat or republican. Frankly, we do not care. Building back here will take a decade. Go move somewhere else. Democrat or republican. It doesn't matter here. You will be in our way. Go home. We will not put a piece of chocolate on your upper middle class pillow. The rich just move away. Wherever they go, they will still be rich. Wherever we go, we will still be excluded. There is no housing for us anywhere. It's political, yes. Our republican congress guy was videotaped having sex with another guy. We endure. We hurt. We are disconnected. From your culture. The electoral college is the real pornography.

[timbarrus]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/opinion/trump-republican-party-cabinet.html#permid=138199476 Take notes. Some of us have descended into brooding, (I have). Then, I slap myself. I have to stop "doing" anxiety, and start asking better questions. I see it differently than most Americans. I am not allowed to say: Civil War. People write to me, and in no uncertain terms, I am being screamed at to put my advocacy for a Civil War away unless. Unless what. I am no advocate of anything. People tell me it's coming. I tell them, it's already here. No one wants to talk about class and caste. No one. This comment will never see the light of day. Therefore, I go for what is true. Not what is civil. I do not care about civility. This is the era of Donald Trump. Trump means one thing: fight. Fight to the death. This is about survival. I put my kids on a flight out of this psycho country. It is not about civility or recipes. American culture has decided to look at the ground and carry on. While you are carrying on, another big box of fun things has people contemplating what they can do. I do not know any of these people. I'm innocent. This is Appalachia. My friends and neighbors trace their roots to the Scottish Highlands in Western Scotland, 1652. Another civil war. They moved here. With their legends, myths, stories, music, food, sheep. We are all migrants. A hurricane took our homes. No one from authority has arrived to help us. Rebuilding begins with an updated version of the bomb shelter. You will not be able to see them. They're in the woods. Where we have always lived.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. We are ruled by criminals and one rapist criminal. It's the clown car and he is driving it. Our government is the mob and the mob has won. I wish you luck on keeping your vaunted democracy. Ordinary lament. The Supreme Court golf-cart assessment of how many things are all okay as long as we do not resist.

I will resist. Do you stand with me.

No. You desire certification. All wrapped up with an institutional blue ribbon. We need Johnny to help making widgets. The people want widgets and Johnny Boy is a compromised widget. The supply chain has a kink called New Jersey and all the widgets are on one big truck. All we need are more widgets so we don't have to pick sides yet. Choose. Now is the time to protect your personal agency. To not decide is to decide. I see a civil war waiting in the wings. There will be spies. The statue bearing Trump's name in Statuary Hall is the one with the loaded gun. That he is a rapist (I will get in trouble for writing this), doesn't seem to bother women who vote for whoever their boyfriends and husbands and brothers and the milk man tell her who to vote for. Thank you, women. To wit: Murder. I am not allowed to use that term. Murder. Let us spy on murder. This stuff is a Hollywood dream come true. Nicole Kidman must know Langley pretty well. This is where we formulate how the spy thing works on steroids. And you Americans think that all of it is real. All of it is real, and none of it is real. Civil war. They don't spy on that.Yet.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. Great piece. I appreciate the research, because it points out the lack of research. But. It goes to law, and I appreciate that, too. What I'm looking at these days is not based in gender issues. It's based in violence. I was teaching a group of adolescents with HIV. We met three times a day. Because you had to be on top of it. It can all change in the blink of an eye. At first, they talked mainly about trans issues. A few dressed accordingly. It was an announcement that they were here. They talk the talk, and they walk the walk. At night, they did sex work to survive. Some of the gay boys had problems with a lot of it. Face it. They were afraid of becoming them. The Other is the Other and so are you.

This piece does not go to violence. That was not the theme. No one talks about the violence, or if they do, it's academic. You give social work names to it. You give sociology names to it. If you are grasping at that data, the odds of you belonging to the caste of us untouchables is obvious. You have never suffered a concussion from a fist. Or a baseball bat. I have seen teachers beat them up. To go home to change clothes or be suspended. I have seen cops look the other way when a child is being raped by the men who attacked her in cold blood. The murder rate applies every time they walk out the door. The media thinks it's colloquial. It's not. It's everywhere. My teens in that classroom had to process. Three times a day. Just to discuss what went on an hour ago.

Poor kids do not get the surgery stage. Caste and poverty are what they are. Dehumanizing humiliation. Rich kids from suburban families who have health insurance can get the surgery. No one is coming home from school with a different gender. That, too, is a self-created (homo sapiens are so kind to each other) vibe constructed to immobilize and freeze you back to 1949. The media only finds them a curious fetish for the non-conforming. They are fodder for the 24 hour news cycle. We hate these children because we hate ourselves.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. Tilda Swinton gives the New York Times an edge. An edge they frequently cover up with the contradiction between the fact that no one even knows what art is, and the fact that outreach as art for the sake of art even finds its tiny way to advertising. Let's not upset the horses. Tilda Swinton reminds me that if she wanted, she would ride those horses like Lady Godiva, everything or nothing. I'm autistic, and I am always dazzled by this woman, and what did it all mean. "We Need To Talk about Kevin was physically stunning as we witnessed a terrified and masked woman in way over her head with a child more than a little challenging. Challenging as a word is ephemeral as a talk about Kevin grinds into we need to find what is going on in this kid's head. The whole film is a head trip. Art was the only option, and as an actor, she knew it. Tilda Swinton is riveting. Writing. Acting. Modeling. She turns all of these things into art itself. Other writers like Swinton struggle for years to find that voice. Art transcends. Even as the bad guy, she transcends. She isn't standing there for a portrait. What can I do to not just stand here. My arms. My arms. Tilda is the camera. The New York Times offers us art as an aside. Marginalization is not art. A big box of fun things. Yet Swinton moves fluidly through it, challenging portraiture in her arms. But catch the eyes because she's immediately your art teacher and seduction. She doesn't play seduction. She is seduction.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. Baring witness is important. I do not know why. But the idea that you can talk armed soldiers out of using Rape as a weapon of war is patently absurd and beneath contempt. Who do you think will be shot in the face next. You. Will be shot in the face next. Baring witness is stupid. These are criminals. Imprison them. Or don't imprison them. Use force. Not tired little words like: "Talking about sexual violence is difficult." No shit. The talking part is ephemeral. The gun part gets it done. Throw them in prison, and then rape them. And then, rape them again. Make it a daily event. Invite the community to watch them being raped. There's a plan. Trump rapes. Trump rapes. Trump rapes. It's war. It's a civil war. It's here. It will be ugly. As ugly as that fat drug-addled RAPIST. Whose special fetish is raping women. Feed them cow shit and nothing else. Cut off their heads. Cut off their balls. Cut off their cocks and take video so that video could be played in villages. That. Is bearing witness. Baring witness is not academic. It isn't always nice. It's dark. It's war. You are surrounded by fire, screaming, guns and guns, all the animals are dead. This article is lame. NYT published it because the Red Cross gives NYT agency and institutional certification. The New York Times does not interview African victims. They do not interview men who rape. I want to hear from them. I have questions before they are beheaded and set on fire. Fuck'em. Fight back.