Fucking Fuck XIII - I'm sorry but I've got a bit to say. July 21, 2018 7:53 AM   Subscribe

Really, it's all just a bit much isn't it? I mean, good fucking god. I tried to put it into words but it's just incoherent rage and swearing now. Fucking hell, you know? Fuck this fucking shit, honestly.
posted by h00py to Etiquette/Policy at 7:53 AM (138 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite

Michelle Obama Launches Voter Registration Campaign with Tom Hanks and Lin-Manuel Miranda

Can this just be the 2018 ticket? President, Vice President and Sec'y of Education respectively.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:03 AM on July 21, 2018 [13 favorites]


I guess I'll try. It's Dutton and Turnbull and Hanson and blatant racism and indefinite detention and endless fucking wars and demonisations and generalisations and Trump and May and Brexit and more blatant fucking white nationalism and hatred and intolerance and just watching all this shit and what in the actual fuck is going on because apparently it's not stopping any time soon.
posted by h00py at 8:04 AM on July 21, 2018 [16 favorites]


And I know I sound all naive, as if all this shit hasn't been happening all along, but I'm sure that people were hiding their teeth a little more not that long ago. It's outrageous that these fucking arsehole pieces of absolute shit are out there in the world dominating the discourse. Outfuckingrageous.
posted by h00py at 8:32 AM on July 21, 2018 [12 favorites]


Yeah, I know what you mean. I just wanted to outlive the B-43 regime, and 0-44 looked so good but did no so little, yet I was encouraged by the modest gains in humanity even if those assholes got to keep the money. Then that clown bus stopped at the WH gate and dumped allllllll those assholes out and I thought I was watching serial SNL episodes, but no, it was just Rachel, babbling in parallel clauses about shit that was too stupid to be real. But it's real. Maybe. Tell me it's my meds. Tell me I'll dreaming. My partner tells me we can work it from the precinct level. Right.

Yeah. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck shit fuck piss fuck.
posted by mule98J at 8:39 AM on July 21, 2018 [9 favorites]


Plus on a more personal level I hate my fucking grey eyebrows and the fact that I'm probably going to lose my job in January, 6 months fucking short of my 10 year long service entitlement. I feel like I've fucking whinged about this before but I don't care, I shall fucking whinge about it again because it will suck. That's over 200 hours that I'll fall short of being able to cash in if my work doesn't get the next fucking tender. And there's sooo much stupid fucking shit going on in the background that I can't talk about but needless to say, I'm very fucking annoyed. And I shall be very sad next year when I shall be in my early 50's, a woman without actual qualifications, looking for a new job with stupid eyebrows that have to be coloured in.
posted by h00py at 9:04 AM on July 21, 2018 [30 favorites]


I remember the days when the "Capitol Steps" people would make the joke about how depressed they were (faux crying on stage, etc.) because Dan Quayle was soon leaving office, and now they would lose all their rich material.

Today, the SNL folks stand up and just repeat verbatim what was said in real life, and nothing happens. It's scary.
posted by Melismata at 9:04 AM on July 21, 2018 [8 favorites]


What pisses me off is that our dumbass president is nothing at all like Zaphod Beeblebrox and I feel so ripped off both by the world for not being like the hitchhiker’s guide and by Douglas Adams for not better preparing me for the shitshow clusterfuck that real Zaphod Beeblebrox would be.
posted by nikaspark at 10:57 AM on July 21, 2018 [25 favorites]


(My comment is meant in jest)
posted by nikaspark at 10:58 AM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


I work nightshift as a charge nurse on a cancer unit. Last week patient told a bunch of Filipino RNs who were talking amongst themselves in Tagalog in the hall that they shouldn't speak some other language besides English because it's "bad for their brains." Is that going to be a thing now? And patient was eavesdropping they weren't doing anything with patient. Patient stated they needed to have nurses that didn't have accents, which had been code for "I want white blonde 20 something nurses" now I think it's code for "I'm racist and sexist." That's what I hear you say when you tell me that.

Then begins the 3AM Conversation of Complaints. They want to talk to the Charge Nurse! About nothing I can fix in the middle of the night. I have to ask can we turn down the fox news in order to talk. I silently wish we could ban all news from the hospital televisions. Let's make a list to discuss this with your doctor in the AM. No I'm not calling them about this at this time. Patient says, like our president Trump, patient gets things done and doesn't care what people think.

I am continually redirecting our conversation. In my head I'm digging deep for useful empathy. I ask myself, is this person angry and irritable for a medical change in which we need to intervene? Is their oxygenation ok? Is patient perfusing? Any signs of respiratory distress? Is this person symptomatic of neuro changes? Do they have neuro involvement? Are they on treatment modalities that cross the blood brain barrier? As I actively listen I am assessing.

And yeah no, nothing is physically emergent about them right now. They are just mad. They just want to say mean things. They want me to be there and listen. They don't want me to fix it. They don't want a solution. They don't want me to take away any excuse to rage.

A variation of this is almost every shift now. A co-worker who is former military said the other day, "this reminds me of Afghanistan no joke." They said this sucks for all of us. We just have to keep our heads down. Keep working. Adapt, overcome.

So many patients are so angry. It's different from any time before. It's hard being on the other end of that anger. It gets in the way of critical thinking. It makes all tasks harder. It prevents them from trusting our care.

One of the true gifts of nursing is that you often help people in despair and pain find and feel comfort and caring. It's the overwhelming beauty of our calling. But this anger is hard to work around. It makes it hard for the patients to see or feel anything else. I have to ground myself in my weird love of this job. I have to think about the times we obviously do help people. I remind myself that I often don't see the result of people getting better working inpatient. I have to remind the staff of this too and support them so they can feel valued and keep going. We cannot become infected with this anger. But we continue to be berated by it.


Sorry I'm such a downer. Thanks for listening I'm ok. These threads help. Metafilter helps. Y'all are all wonderful and I have my fingers crossed for everyone.
posted by dog food sugar at 11:29 AM on July 21, 2018 [119 favorites]


(Warning: Privileged white male venting ahead. Feel free to skip)

I am anxious, and tired, and worried, and run down.

Since moving to the Yucatán in March I have sorted out all the logistics of my life. Securing medication, finding where I can buy the daily necessities, hooking up with volunteer groups and, related, connecting with other expats are all solved problems. The think-on-your-feet-or-your-pelt-is-for-the-trapper phase is over and the remaining challenges, though many, are optional. I can feel the boredom growing and a bored Tim is a dangerous Tim, to himself if no one else.

Language takes time to learn. I'm tired of considering it a success when I am able to get the gist of something being said. I'm tired of nodding and saying "Yes" or "No" to get an interaction over with even though I have no idea what I'm being asked. I would consider it a major victory to understand what people are saying on the phone. I'm definitely tired of feeling humiliated by my inability to pass the time of day in full sentences. It would be different if I were working, but I'm not and it seems like I should be getting my linguistic shit together a whole lot faster than I am.

I bought a house, which may be a horrible idea financially. I'm trying to live on a fixed income here, and digging into capital kind of goes against that. Some very expensive things can happen to houses and I'm exposing myself to a lot risk that way. Also it's a fixer-upper and I'm worried that my fantasy of doing the cosmetic work myself will quickly devolve into "fuck it, it's fine".

I have a 2400 sqft house to furnish on a very limited budget, and my current belongings are a suitcase and a backpack. Normally I would furnish the place with extremely cheap furniture and slowly replace it with better pieces; this time I don't think I can afford to write off the cheaper stuff. I'm an unholy mix between rich and poor. Earlier in my life I would never have bought the house but hey, you know, you get used to owning shit.

For the first time since my arrival -- for the first time in many years -- I'm actually lonely. It's the furniture that's doing it. I want to take a friend and spend the day in used furniture shops rating our finds from "Hey, that's kind of nice" to "What kind of God would allow that to exist". I want someone I can share an adventure with, and bounce ideas off of, and maybe get a spot to eat at the end of the day with. I don't have a friend like that here yet; that happens on the same timescale as languages.

I'm worried about my body. Every time I stop to check my muscles are tight and I'm breathing shallow. I'm largely done exploring the city so my daily five mile walks are not happening any more. I'm consuming a lot of sugar and fat as comfort food, and despite the fact that my glucose is within reasonable ranges this can't be good for my diabetic self.

I'm worried that if my run down state continues much longer it will blossom into a full blown depressive episode. I have everything I need to weather one but still, those really suck.

But really, so much of this would be so much easier if I was fluent. For starters I just wouldn't be so emotionally drained from simple conversations. I could call shops to see if they have what I need, and chat with store owners while digging through piles of furniture. I could interview craftsmen directly rather than having to rely on an expensive English speaking contractor. And I could do all of the basics in life without skipping the "Please", "Thank You", etc. that often gets lost while searching for other words.

Yeah, it probably wouldn't help my eating or get me out there walking again. But that's more an issue to be worked through with a licensed therapist than a language teacher.

Right, that's about it. I feel better. We now return you to the issues facing people who aren't white guys who have retired to Mexico to live their lives in idle comfort.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:47 PM on July 21, 2018 [19 favorites]


Consider the scenario: I am stopped, waiting until two lanes of traffic clear so I can turn left. You are oncoming, in the lane closest to me, and you decided to stop and let me turn, to be "nice". YOU ARE NOT HELPING. You have created a dangerous situation, where I cannot see around you if the second lane is clear. Furthermore, the drivers piling up behind you are cutting around you into that lane, so that they can continue. I sit, even waving and honking my horn for you to go. Do you? No you do not. You continue to sit there, waving your hand as if you think I simply need encouragement. DO NOT DO THIS! JUST GO! I will turn left once I can see that there is no oncoming traffic. I WILL BE FINE.
posted by thelonius at 1:24 PM on July 21, 2018 [30 favorites]


I am just so fucking tired.
posted by fencerjimmy at 1:32 PM on July 21, 2018 [17 favorites]


Everything is so terrible that I am now the ostrich, with my head in the sand, because I straight up can't deal with all the fucking fuckery. Not my circus, not my monkeys, nothing I can do.

From within the sand, my actual current problem is that I am unemployed, I have to go to a wedding, and I am pretty sure that I have put on juuuust enough weight that none of my appropriate dresses are going to fit me any more. (It's my sister-in-law and we have to fly there and stay for four days and his whole family is lovely and I love them but... ugh. weddings.)
posted by stillnocturnal at 1:36 PM on July 21, 2018 [7 favorites]


I want to take a friend and spend the day in used furniture shops rating our finds from "Hey, that's kind of nice" to "What kind of God would allow that to exist". I want someone I can share an adventure with, and bounce ideas off of, and maybe get a spot to eat at the end of the day with.

Oh. I don't have that either. I've only ever had that with my sister and she's just come back from abroad and is now moving away to a city several hours away. I am deeply sad about it.
posted by stillnocturnal at 1:38 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


Too tired to write about how shitty everything is.
posted by bongo_x at 2:42 PM on July 21, 2018 [10 favorites]


I'm so fucking sick of drivers. Nearly every time I venture outside there's some malicious/ignorant/both asshole doing stupid aggressive shit because the sight of someone on a bicycle makes their brains shut off. If they have any empathy for anyone under other circumstances, it's never employed when they're behind the wheel.

Fuck everybody who can't be bothered to learn the traffic laws of the state they've moved to, and fuck this state for not bothering to do a goddamn thing to instruct drivers about what those laws are. I just renewed my driver's license online. $27 for another five years without even a fucking checkbox to acknowledge something like "I understand it's illegal to text while driving" or "stop at the fucking stop line, not in the middle of the crosswalk, if you bother at all" or "do not pass a person riding a bicycle with less than three feet of space between you, and oh right, that's three feet from where they actually are, not three feet from where your ignorant ass thinks they should be." $5.20/year with no test, and every story about the death of a person biking includes some bullshit comments about how if people want bicycle infrastructure, they should pay for licensing and testing. You first, assholes.

Seriously, ban cars already, I am so fucking tired of the implicit and explicit death threats on my way to work every fucking day. I've resorted to running front and rear cameras on every trip to work or the grocery store or whatever, and I still don't always get the plates and local police still don't really give a shit anyway, they won't even send a letter to educate somebody unless I've got an additional witness not related to me and the ability to identify the driver. Can't identify any drivers when so many of them have their windshield and all windows tinted well beyond what the law allows, and fuck that, too.

The only thing that keeps me at it instead of giving up and buying a car is that driving everywhere makes me feel even worse, and there's never the upside of one of those wonderful days where everything goes right. Biking offers those days, while driving is meh at its best. Besides, I can't afford that if I want to have anything left over for anything else, and my quality of life and mental well-being go straight to hell without enforced daily physical activity. Fuck everything about the people who want to arrange the world so that it's difficult to go anywhere or do anything without a car.

I, uh, might have been bottling this up a bit. Oh wait no this is my life and there is no short path to a better world with safe mobility for everyone. FUCK.
posted by asperity at 3:07 PM on July 21, 2018 [19 favorites]


Five unrelated segments in no particular order:

I could eliminate my own job in a matter of hours. This is a secret. I could, but I won't.

I haven't heard back about the biopsy yet.

I took an outrage break from social media but there has not been an outrage-free moment in which to hop back on.

I generally don't mind it when people complain, but I do mind if the complaint takes the form of "it would be better if they would..." or "why don't they..." or "they should..." because that is a meaningless waste of breath and time.

I've had just about enough of good people getting struck down by various diseases, conditions, and accidents, and bad people (THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE) just keep on going.
posted by scratch at 4:11 PM on July 21, 2018 [13 favorites]


This week, we've

taken the dog to the emergency vet (but he's okay and the antibiotics are doing their thing and the vet said that if we hadn't brought him in when he did, it might have gotten bad; damn small dogs and their tiny intestines and no room for error)
had my wife got into a fender bender (no, other driver, YOU CAN'T TURN LEFT FROM THE RIGHT HAND LANE) (but we have insurance, she's okay, the airbags didn't even deploy)
had my wife's father moved to the camp that doesn't do contact visits (but it's because he's gotten his shunt and he's going to get dialysis so there will at least be more visits)
I signed a financial aid appeal for a favorite student whose dad died 6 weeks after getting diagnosed with liver cancer this summer, and student thought they could go ahead and do summer anyhow (with predictable results) because we keep telling people that they can just keep doing anything if they want hard enough, just keep being resilient, it's fine, it's just your dad, just keep trucking.

I'm tired, y'all.
posted by joycehealy at 4:12 PM on July 21, 2018 [16 favorites]


I'm afraid to even name everything that's terribly wrong in my life right now, for fear it's even worse than I think.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:18 PM on July 21, 2018 [7 favorites]


DO NOT DO THIS! JUST GO! I will turn left once I can see that there is no oncoming traffic. I WILL BE FINE.

I have this, but it's while walking. Sometimes drivers will stop right in the middle of traffic to let me cross the street. They must think it's being helpful. But they are not helping. Please, don't worry about me. I know how to cross a street. I will cross when both sides are clear. I'll cross when I'm ready to cross. 'Just go', I say (or mouth, while looking right at them, indicating with my body language that I'm not going to cross). But they sit there for some reason, waving me across (frantically) holding up traffic making all the cars behind them angry so that people start honking and zooming around them. Then they honk at me or speed away and what just happened? I didn't look like I was going to cross. I was waiting. I wasn't suffering or crying or anything. If they had just kept going I would be across the street by then. But they held everything up and now traffic is coming from the other direction again, and why can't they just worry about driving, and I'll worry about walking and everyone will be ok?
posted by marimeko at 4:31 PM on July 21, 2018 [15 favorites]


Don't talk and it's a problem, talk and you get nitpicked about the way you say anything. Continue to hold everything in as usual. Wonder how other people make it past thirty. End of the year can't come soon enough. I'm tired.
posted by Freeze Peach at 4:34 PM on July 21, 2018 [13 favorites]


I have chronic fatigue issues and feel like crap much of the time. I'm not making a living and haven't been for years. No matter how I scrimp and pinch I don't have enough to live comfortably on, and I'm getting deeply in debt. I will eventually be forced to sell my house, and without an income I won't be able to either get another mortgage on another place or rent a place. I can't find work and haven't got the energy to keep fruitlessly banging my head on that wall. I've got horrible tenants who are physically abusive towards each other, who routinely lie and act in bad faith and scream harassment to get their way, who have spent the last three years racking up my utility bills while enjoying a remarkably sweet deal on rent from me, and with whom I'm going to be stuck living in the same damn house indefinitely. I'm alone all the time. So far in 2018, I've seen people socially just five times, and have attended six committee meetings that I volunteer on, and otherwise have spent the entire year alone -- I live alone and work at home. I have spent the past six years in near total isolation, since losing my last office job in March 2012. I have no one to spend time with on a regular basis -- I haven't had that since my late twenties. I've been on exactly two dates in the last ten years. I've had to go without companionship and physical intimacy so long that I've given up hope of ever having any again. I'm 44 and I'll never have children now and I don't know how I can live through the coming decades with the grief of that.

Often at night I get so upset and agitated that I can't sleep and I get up and pace the floor, shaking and crying in such a way that I take a maximum dose of ibuprofen, because I read it can be good for emotional pain just as it is for physical. (It does seem to help.)

The world is a dumpster fire and Doug Fucking Ford is my fucking premier.
posted by orange swan at 5:16 PM on July 21, 2018 [30 favorites]


My sister in singlehood *hugs Orange Swan*
posted by Melismata at 6:46 PM on July 21, 2018 [5 favorites]


I’m working, and it’s good, I’m with my boss from HFA, and that is a huge blessing and he might actually be my best friend.

But this year has taken a lot out of me. A lot. I know I’m good at this when I have the fire, but the fire is decidedly banked some. I can’t look much at the news, and I most definitely cannot talk about it with anyone who isn’t in the game. I don’t have the bandwidth if I have to keep going. And I have to keep going. But I am tired. I haven’t had a day off since I took this job five weeks ago. Sick days, but not a day off. I’ll get one of those on Monday and all I am doing is sitting in the park and reading a Stephen King novel and Not Looking.

I have a good team. I have my boss. I’ll be okay, but I wish I could sleep more, and I wish I felt like I had time to eat. I just haven’t ever felt this worn down, doing this.

Thank you for being here, Metafilter. It means a lot.
posted by dogheart at 8:27 PM on July 21, 2018 [7 favorites]


Orange Swan...glad to have dinner or drinks (my treat) whenever you want in Toronto.
posted by PinkMoose at 9:05 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


Warning: Really Gross Things Ahead

Okay, I have some anger.

For almost five years I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. None of the incredibly expensive medications worked, and I was in pain all the time, and shitting blood, lots of blood, on a near-daily basis. And my doctors kept telling me I was in remission, and they couldn't find signs of inflammation, and maybe it was anxiety. Like, anxiety caused by hitting a 7 on my pain scale every morning after defecating, then being faced with a toilet that looked like a serial killing, except grosser.

I went through four gastroenterologists and four primary care physicians, being treated like I was a hypochondriac. I was put on medications that messed with my head and my body, my sleep and my sanity. I was diagnosed with hypochondriasis by a first-year resident the first time he saw me, and prescribed an SSRI.

I finally got to a GI doc who actually listened to me, though he didn't know how much he could help. He examined me thoroughly and respectfully, and mentioned in an offhand way that the location of my pain was inguinal, rather than further up where Crohn's disease tended to manifest.

I'd had an inguinal hernia found on a CT scan back in 2014, but multiple doctors assured me that a hernia that small couldn't be causing any of my symptoms.

Well, I consulted with Google and it turns out that rectal bleeding was sometimes associated with inguinal hernias. And that, in rare cases, these hernias can mimic the inflammatory symptoms associated with IBD.

So I got more imaging done, and now I had bilateral inguinal hernias (as well as an old umbilical hernia that I'd had repaired and was now back). I got a referral to a surgeon. And the surgeon poked his finger into me, and asked, "Is that it?"

It was. I almost passed out from the pain.

I was in surgery three days later. The surgeon repaired the hernia with mesh, and removed a large cord lipoma. The incarcerated hernia had been causing ischemic damage to my intestines. The pain I'd been experiencing every day was gone, and the post-surgical pain paled in comparison. Within a few weeks, I was up for a second surgery. As soon as I'm ready, there's a third in my future.

I've still got some symptoms, and I'm still really weak, and I don't know how much better I'm going to get, but I'm feeling better than I have in years. Once I get this other surgery out of the way, I think I may even get to have some sort of a life again, and not spend most of each day hunched over in pain.

I've consulted with a few law firms, and apparently the settlement I could expect from all of this wouldn't be worth pursuing. I'm reduced to writing stern, formal letters to the doctors involved. And I'm refraining from using profanity in them, focusing instead on the reasons that they're awful doctors and should be ashamed that they're allowed to practice medicine.

But here, I get to say... fuck you. Fuck you, Doctor T, you ignorant, conceited, arrogant prick. You showed more interest in my financial situation than you ever did in my symptoms, and your assumptions about my case were entirely incorrect. You had me doubting my own sanity, not for months, but for years. Fuck you for taking my recommendation that you co-ordinate with my primary care physician as an opportunity to tell her I'm a hypochondriac. And Fuck Doctor S, the shithead who diagnosed me on Christmas Fucking Eve, and sent me home with a diagnosis but no treatment plan. You literally shrugged and said, "Well, if the Remicaide isn't working, I don't know what to tell you." When you had a report listing the hernia in it right in front of you, you absolute waste of genetic material. Fuck Doctor J, too, you self-righteous smug little fuckface, for not even pretending to give a shit and harping on about my weight. Yes, I picked up 30 pounds because I was hurting too badly to walk and I couldn't eat anything with fiber and I was on medications that cause weight gain, and I begged you to try to figure out what was wrong, and you didn't care enough to even read my fucking file.

I lost years of my life. I had to quit my job. I drained my retirement savings. I lost all my friends but one. I lost what was probably my best shot at a relationship ever. And it was all because you couldn't be bothered to do your fucking jobs, you invertebrate assholes.

But now I've got one more surgery to get through, and a few more weeks of recovery. It won't be a walk in the park, but it's a whole hell of a lot better than never-ending agony with no hope of relief. I'm better now than I have been in years, and I'll be better still by the fall, and I will have emerged from all of this fucking victorious. I survied. I learned new skills. I know myself a lot better now. And I've been through hell, and it has refined me.

I'm going to go do something wonderful. I'm going to make the world a better place. And I'm going to leave you to wallow in your dismal little offices, making your petty judgments about your unfortunate patients in your narrow little lives, and I hope that someday you realize what a disservice you do to humanity by claiming to be human. Because being human means you have the ability to care, and the level to which you simply don't give a shit is just alien to me.

Fuck you, you heaps of shit. I figured out my own goddamned diagnosis when you couldn't be bothered. I hope that someday you find yourself dependent on someone who doesn't give a shit, so you'll know just how awful you really are. I hope that, in your weakest, most desperate moment, you realize what it means to need a doctor, and to have only incompetent, disinterested idiots dismiss you instead.

Sorry this got a bit long. I think I may still be working through a few things.
posted by MrVisible at 10:21 PM on July 21, 2018 [53 favorites]


My dad, who is dying, was part of Something Big his whole working life.

I just sent him the following email:
Hi Dad:

I don't know as much as I would like about the work you did at [Something Big], but one thing I know is that you were privileged to work with [Asshole], one of history's great assholes, the man who so famously "aimed for the level of the common man... and overshot."

You may be interested to learn that one of [Asshole]'s apostles, not content to nurture and develop the next generation of [Something Big] assholes, has brought His teachings to a wider audience of would-be assholes of all walks of life!

[Link to Lifehacker article]

Love,
[Me]
I was surprised to see someone currently working at Something Big invoke a guy whom my dad had often mentioned with disapprobation -- in a fucking Lifehacker article. The guy mentioned was the Lifehacker guy's mentor. My first thought was Ha! This is kinda funny. Maybe it will make my dad laugh.

But here are the thoughts I have been having since then. It won't make my dad laugh. It won't make him laugh because he is dying and he doesn't laugh anymore -- he cycles between different points on a single axis between pissy and enraged. I know that because my daughter and my stepmom tell me, not because I know firsthand. I haven't talked to him on the phone in weeks because he is hearing-impaired, and his caption-phone is in storage until he moves into his new place. I got him a headset to use in the meantime, which worked great for awhile until the battery died. I suggested he charge the headset, and he might've done that if only my stepmom hadn't unfortunately offered to plug it into the charger for him -- and now he will see us all in Hell before he ever charges that headset. So I am 3000 miles away, and I can't talk to him, even to take some of the heat off my poor stepmom by giving him someone else to be mad at. And how sweet his anger would be, how delightful to be yelled at like I was his enemy -- compared to the coming total silence, coming like a freight train, when he will be dead.

He will be dead, and no one will ever write a Lifehacker article about what a smart guy he was and all the contributions he made to Something Big. Something Big was and is one of humanity's great milestones. A thousand years from now if people are not extinct they will teach Something Big in their history classes. If I told you what it was you would say, "Oh! Your dad worked on that?!" "Yes," I would say, "My dad worked on that. He is.." -- or maybe at that time I will say "was" -- and I would start listing the things he is and has done. I would try to bring some human interest into it by telling you about the time he used the Something Big onsite printshop to make a fake parking pass for the department secretary so she could park in executive parking, and would have got away with it forever if he hadn't subsequently made fake parking passes for anyone at Something Big who asked him. I would tell you about the times he used to show up at my elementary school in the middle of the day, tell them I was was sick and take me away to go sailing or get ice cream or even just go back to Something Big corp and hang out with the people there -- and how it only happened a few times, but I never knew when it would. I would tell you many stories about the funny, kind and playful guy he has always been, his superhuman intelligence, his adventures in the service of humanity at Something Big.

My dad didn't invent the first stone tool, no, he just made a few minor refinements to the knapping process. He wasn't Anne Frank, no, just a joy to everyone who knew him -- except assholes, to whom he was a formidable adversary. But who remembers the pioneers of process engineering? And we know the assholes always win in the end. The are the ones who attract true believers, they are the ones who are mentioned in Lifehacker articles after they are dead. But like assholes, like kids with cancer, like your mother and everyone you love, my dad has to die too -- whether humanity can really take the loss or not.

I can't. I don't want to, am not ready to, I won't and I refuse.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 10:27 PM on July 21, 2018 [40 favorites]


Your dad sounds rad. Your dad played an important role in humanity. I know it hurts to know all these things about how awesome and important your dad is and not have the world with you celebrating who he is and what he gave humanity, but I feel you 💯 in this moment.
posted by nikaspark at 10:42 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


Yikes, MrVisible; that pisses me off so much. I've been in similar situations, one of which left me visually impaired.
I know doctors aren't perfect, but man, some of them are just too damn casual with other people's lives.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:20 PM on July 21, 2018 [3 favorites]


I got right up in a dude's face on the bus the other day. I knew I was putting myself in danger, but I am so. very. much. done. with. men. I was just like, if he punches me, it'll totally be worth telling him to fuck right off.

So this dude--let's call him King Asshole--is sitting in the stroller/wheelchair/handicapped seating area on the bus, and two women get on the bus with two babies--one toddler and one in a stroller. They put up one of the side-seat bench pairs to fit the stroller, and the toddler gets one of the seats facing the stroller and one of the women sits in the seat beside the toddler.

The other woman takes the seat across the aisle, which is the seat next to King Asshole. There were plenty of other free seats on the bus, sure, but not directly in line of sight/reach of the babies, so that was where she needed to sit.

I'm sitting a few rows back.

So King Asshole IMMEDIATELY puts his arm over the back of her seat and starts in on her, what's your name, give me your number, you're eyes are so pretty, etc. And she's like, "Do I look like I want to talk to you? Stop talking to me!" And he immediately switches from "whatcha reading" to shouting that she's a fucking bitch who led him on and why else would she sit next to him if she wasn't looking to get fucked? And the shouting escalates on both sides until she stands up and is like, ready to throw down.

At this point I yelled at him to leave her the fuck alone, that it was obvious she sat down in the seat next to him in order to be near her children, not because she had any interest in him at all.

So he stands up and starts toward me, shouting "SHUT UP BITCH WHO ASKED YOU??"

Now, I have terrible anxiety, and decades of conditioning to be afraid of men--especially shouting men (thanks, Dad!). But apparently, on that day, there were no Fucks left. Fresh out. I didn't feel afraid, even though I knew he might physically attack me. I knew I shouldn't provoke him further, because that would be extremely, extremely counterproductive and possibly endanger my physical well-being.

But I saw him coming down the aisle toward me, and... no anxiety. No adrenaline. My whole body was saying "yeah, I'm beyond done with men." And I said, "Dude, shut the fuck up and get off the bus."

And THEN

King Asshole says, LITERALLY out of nowhere, "I'M A JEWISH MAN! YOU DON'T GET TO TALK TO ME LIKE THAT"

And I said, "And I'm a Jewish woman? What the fuck? Who gives a shit? Get the fuck off the bus."

At this point, one of the SEVERAL MEN present on the bus, who up until this point were just fine watching two tiny ladies being threatened by King Asshole and not bothering to help/interfere/do fuck-all, says "Maaaaan get off the bus!"

At which point the bus driver has pulled over, and he tells King Asshole to get off the bus or he's calling the police.

And King Asshole... King Asshole somehow expects solidarity from the man who told him to get off the bus and from the bus driver. He's looking back and forth between them, shouting, "You don't treat a man like that, right? You don't treat a man like that! No bitch gets to talk to a MAN like that, right? I'm a MAN!" But all he gets back is "GET OFF THE FUCKING BUS, YOU ASSHOLE," and the bus driver standing up to usher him out.

So King Asshole, having realized that the MEN aren't taking his side, is on the verge of tears. He goes back to shouting at the woman that she shouldn't have sat next to him if she didn't want him to fuck her.

As the bus driver herded him to the open door, I yelled "SORRY YOUR DICK IS SO SMALL HAVE A NICE DAY."

Which I probably shouldn't have done, but I swear none of my self-preservation systems were kicking in. Like, terror adrenaline was all "Nah, you've exhausted your supply for the year already so the next six months should be HILARIOUS." I felt nothing. I mean, rage, yes, but all the other shit that's supposed to happen during fight-or-flight-or-yelling-threatening-man just wasn't happening.

King Asshole turned around and started fighting the driver to get past him and come for me. Luckily one of the other men got up and made his way down the aisle to stand behind the bus driver. Finally, King Asshole got off the bus.

Hooray, right?

Here's the thing, though.

I will put money down that he's our next gunman in a mass shooting. He is the ARCHETYPE: single white male, clearly hasn't achieved much, turned down by every woman he approaches, and generally pissed off that just being a straight white male no longer means he wins. I saw That Person in action. Even when I chose to engage, which I was under no obligation to do other than because Fuck That Guy, I was thinking, "This is a mass shooter. This guy is gonna shoot up a movie theater or a school or something. I'm looking at one. He's here."

I'm so tired.
posted by tzikeh at 12:48 AM on July 22, 2018 [111 favorites]


Wow, tzikeh. You're awesome. I'm in awe.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:33 AM on July 22, 2018 [5 favorites]


Wow, tzikeh. You're awesome. I'm in awe.

I don't feel awesome. I mean, yes, I get what you're saying objectively, but my experience of the situation was almost dull? I don't know how to explain it. Like nothing mattered, so I might as well take my frustration at the massive injustices currently playing in our public arena out on King Asshole. When he was coming down the aisle toward me, shouting at me, it was very much a John Mulaney moment, you know? Like "I guess this is happening now."

Another day, another bus, another guy, I would have been shrinking down in my seat, terrified. There's really no logical explanation for what happened.
posted by tzikeh at 2:01 AM on July 22, 2018 [14 favorites]


Moms with kids are especially vulnerable to big angry men, in case they lash out at the kids, and the creeps know it. Whatever part of you caused you to stand up for them, tzikeh, I applaud it.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 3:34 AM on July 22, 2018 [21 favorites]


I am sick once again of people and companies who swear up and down they’re progressive but then engage in union busting because it’s different when it’s their bottom line that might be affected. So instead they’re firing people and not letting them work and refusing to pay them even when it’s the law, because they know their minimum wage employees can’t afford to sue. Fuck them all.
posted by corb at 7:32 AM on July 22, 2018 [12 favorites]


tzikeh —

There is a tradition in Japanese warrior culture of accepting death before going into battle. It allows one to do anything at all because the outcome doesn’t matter. It sounds like you found yourself in that place and used it to great advantage.

(Accepting death as a probable outcome is not necessarily a good thing as it led to kamikaze pilots and Japanese troops who were willing to fight to the death despite overwhelming odds. But I’ve always imagined it involves the sort of numbness you describe, a place of giving no shits at all)
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:39 AM on July 22, 2018 [7 favorites]


There is a tradition in Japanese warrior culture of accepting death before going into battle. It allows one to do anything at all because the outcome doesn’t matter.

I have no problem believing that the last three-ish years have managed to wear my survival instincts down to nothing due to ongoing heavy mental and emotional attacks every damned day, along with the non-stop witnessing of the destruction of everything good and the implementation of evil everywhere I look.

It's also possible that having watched Nanette about four times since it appeared on Netflix had something to do with my speaking up.
posted by tzikeh at 8:24 AM on July 22, 2018 [9 favorites]


Thanks, Nikaspark that was really kind of you to say.

I do know that, throughout history, people of extraordinary ability like my dad, have mostly made their marks in childcare, subsistence farming or slavery. Nowadays, most people of extraordinary ability work in maquiladoras or at Walmart, though some still contribute as slaves too.

It is true that my dad overcame tremendous odds to get to Something Big where he contributed so materially to human knowledge — first, by being born when and where and to whom he did, and then by working really, really hard. Now that he is dying, I feel like he should get a ticker-tape parade or something for having been who he was and having done what he did. I want everyone to know what we are losing.

But maybe his whole life WAS that parade. He learned everything he wanted to know, he knew he was giving his talents to something worthwhile, he had fun playing with sailboats, his children survived to adulthood, and (except in college) he always had enough to eat. He had a better run than almost anyone in the history of life on Earth. Maybe he doesn’t need a Lifehacker article too.

Sorry, MetaFilter. I’m having feelings today.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 8:51 AM on July 22, 2018 [16 favorites]


I feel like I'm starting to slip away. When my husband first left I was shattered but then started to feel like I was stronger than I thought and everything would be okay. Good, even. But the last few days I've been sinking lower and lower. I'm so confused about every single thing in my life--not just my current life but everything in the whole course of my life up until now, and especially everything in my marriage. I think at some point I might need an antidepressant but they've always caused me so many awful side effects that it's really a last resort for me. I don't even know what I'm trying to say here, other than yeah: Fuck.
posted by johannsebastianbachpuppet at 9:28 AM on July 22, 2018 [14 favorites]


I'm supposed to be moving to the US in two weeks one week oh shit, and am currently stuck in the special kind of bureaucratic hell where a number of things need to happen very promptly to ensure my continued well-being, and literally no one involved has any desire or indeed incentive to make any of those things happen anytime soon.

(and then there are the days where I check the news and wonder if I'd have been better off staying in the dead-end situation i'm in up here in Canada, but whoops too late)
posted by btfreek at 12:39 PM on July 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


"Like nothing mattered, so I might as well take my frustration at the massive injustices currently playing in our public arena out on King Asshole."

tzikeh, speaking as someone who has spent roughly the past ten years getting angrier and angrier, let me add my $.02 here:

Another view of the situation is that you weren't just taking out your frustrations, you were saying what everyone else was thinking but you were the only one with the ovarian fortitude to stand up and say it.

And yet another view is you were telling King Asshole what he needed to hear. I get what you're saying about him becoming America's Next Top Mass Murderer™, but it probably won't happen, and in any case, it won't be your fault.
posted by scratch at 3:49 PM on July 22, 2018 [5 favorites]


I have realized of late that my family keeps trying to contact me to get me to at least get in touch with my grandmother again before she dies, but I'm still so angry with all of them for being willing to even tolerate my mother's politics at this point that I've realized like--I can be wordy as fuck when I'm on Metafilter, I'm sure people have noticed this, I am nothing if not extremely verbose, and then I tell myself I ought to at least write a letter to my grandmother and like... there are no words. There are literally no words. I sometimes have fake arguments with my mom in my head, but for any of the others, the ones who don't actually hold awful and hateful things as core principles, I can't even figure out how to compose a sentence anymore.

So I don't block them because I'd feel bad about blocking them, and my grandmother could really go at any time, but there's just this gulf now between me and them, and I don't know how to build a bridge that far. I can't reply to them because I have nothing to say. Having nothing to say turns out to be the most unpleasant feeling I have ever had.
posted by Sequence at 4:10 PM on July 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


And here is a third thought, tzikeh:

Sometimes it is important to see another person, sometimes especially a small person, stand up to injustice to remind people that they too can do that. Sometimes it's better to be a small person who is furious, who is out of energy, who is vulnerable, and who is still willing to stand up and be vulnerable and furious and loud.

Being small in that position is to shame people who look on and think: I can't be that brave. Do you feel me? When no bystander comments, many of us tend to imagine that intervening is a job that only someone big, or someone wealthy, or someone powerful in some other way can do. Someone who can get away with being that rude, or that loud, or that bossy. I ask folks a lot, why didn't you say something?, and that's the answer I get every time: I was scared, because I saw the scary things that might happen if I intervened, and I was a lot smaller than King Asshole.

When someone who is objectively small stands up, it reminds people that you don't have to be someone to get involved. There is a certain amount of shame to seeing someone else who is physically weaker and smaller than you stand up like that, and sometimes that oblique shaming can motivate people who are perhaps... somewhere in the middle, shall we say, to get up off their asses and enforce the social norms you're pointing out.

But there always has to be someone to break that inertia first. That's the hardest thing to do, and it's hard because every time you do it, you run the risk: is anyone going to back me up here? am I going to come in for censure, or will I be thrown off the bus for fighting too, or what will happen to me if this man punches me? It's a brave thing to do, even if you only do it because you are bone tired and you don't care what happens to you anymore. Some people who are bone tired still don't intervene. You did.

You intervened. You reminded everyone on that goddamn bus that intervention was an option. And tzikeh, I am so incredibly glad you did that. I imagine those women and their kids are, too.
posted by sciatrix at 4:13 PM on July 22, 2018 [35 favorites]


I'm so FUCKING SICK of my local friends freaking out about RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA 24/7 when I'm begging them to come show up at local activist events about deregulation happening literally in our own backyards for regional pollution standards, and I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.

Everything about 2018 fucking sucks but the worst fucking part is the DC-ification of politics, where even supposedly woke motherfuckers care more about something happening hundreds of miles than what is happening MILES from their house.

FUCK!!!
posted by mostly vowels at 4:26 PM on July 22, 2018 [9 favorites]


H00py, this may be small comfort if you lose your job, but I believe you will get a pro rata amount for your long service leave. My husband was made redundant last year after 8 years service and received his entitlement (in case you look at my profile, I lived in Sydney until earlier this year). I had a quick look at the laws in QLD and it appears the same provisions apply there.
posted by Kris10_b at 6:30 PM on July 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Well, I'm fucking fucked.

I'm a US citizen; my husband of 10 years is a Canadian citizen. We live in the US; Mr. Ant is here as a trade national on a TN-1 (NAFTA) visa. You can't apply for LPR (Legal Permanent Residency, or a Green Card) while in the US on a TN-1; the two processes are separate and incompatible. He has never overstayed a visa or even let his driver's license expire. Mr. Ant recently received a very attractive job offer, working with a local VC firm that turns around struggling businesses. He accepted the offer, got all the required papers to update his visa to reflect his new employer, and headed to the border in order to present himself to CBP.

For no discernible reason, CBP has denied him entry to the US on Friday. There's nothing wrong with his paperwork, the job offer is legit and he has no criminal history. They just don't want to let him in, so they aren't going to.

We have little recourse. Once CBP says no, you don't get to go ask someone else. I'll spend tomorrow lawyering up but it is very likely that it will be several months or maybe a year or more before he can come back. Even then it's likely that he won't be legally allowed to work for a few years while his LPR is processed, which would be... problematic.

Shit's fucked at the borders, y'all.
posted by workerant at 6:51 PM on July 22, 2018 [46 favorites]


Well shit, I was feeling down about my own stupid shit and then I came in here and read about everyone else's shit and now I'm like, whatever dude, everybody else is dealing with way more serious shit than you are. So never mind my shit, today at least. A lot of you folks have way more going on and are handing it with far more strength and grace than I ever could.

Hugs or respectful nods or your own preferred acknowledgement of recognition and support to anyone who needs them, which I guess is to say, everybody.

Also I would feel remiss if I didn't come into the fucking fuck thread and not say fuck, so: fuck.

I just wish I wasn't so tired all the damn time now.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 7:10 PM on July 22, 2018 [9 favorites]


So a relative of mine waited on a group of men this weekend who had a bit of a weird vibe. I'll spare you the details of what they were doing, but after googling the name on the credit card it turned out the guy paying was a Certain Nationally Know Racist/White Supremacist/Nazi. Long story short, the entire group's tips have gone directly to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and he'll be getting a nice thank you from them as well.

I'm super proud of her - she's just kinda entering the world and I don't think has really been exposed to things like this before. She did an awesome job of taking a pretty unsettling experience and turning it around into something positive.

There's a lot of nonsense going on right now (and I've been off the grid for several days so I probably don't know the half of it), but sometimes there are some bright spots as well.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:48 PM on July 22, 2018 [28 favorites]


Shit fuck, workerant. I was in Toronto last week and this is literally the reason my spouse (whose city that was) didn't tag along after my conference for a little "hi hello city hi" vacation with me later on. They are a LPR from an IR-1 petition, only USCIS has gotten held way the fuck up on the ten-year green card, so all they have is a passport stamp. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Everyone has been acting like Canadians are fine, but mx. sciatrix is scared to leave the country anyway until that green card comes in--and honestly, they've been waiting more than a year and we hear the only way to get the damn things in any kind of reasonable speed is to apply for citizenship whether you want it or not so they expedite it.

They're not sure they want to be a citizen of this nation.

I can't really argue, honestly.
posted by sciatrix at 7:53 PM on July 22, 2018 [12 favorites]


I can't really argue, honestly.
posted by sciatrix


We can take this to MeMail for more detail, but I wanted to point out that Mr. Ant is a white cishet man. He has an obviously French name but speaks unaccented English. So maybe this is the best possible scenario? I can't imagine it being easier for mx. sciatrix. I strongly urge your spouse not to leave the US until it is time to leave the US for good. Our timeline on 'leaving the US for good' just got moved up about ten years.
posted by workerant at 9:00 PM on July 22, 2018 [4 favorites]


@alplicable: To Iranian President Rouhani:
ISN’T THE FIRST CARDINAL RULE OF PERM MAINTENANCE THAT YOU’RE FORBIDDEN TO WET YOUR HAIR FOR AT LEAST 24 HOURS AFTER GETTING A PERM AT THE RISK OF DEACTIVATING THE IMMONIUM THYGOCOLATE? AND WOULDN'T SOMEBODY WHO HAD, SAY, 30 PERMS BEFORE IN THEIR LI

posted by Going To Maine at 10:27 PM on July 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Jesus fuck. I was out tonight. I got home and the President of the United States basically tweeted out the goddamn Navy Seal iamverybadass copypasta. I. Just fuck. I want off Mr Toads Wild Ride please.
posted by Justinian at 2:02 AM on July 23, 2018 [10 favorites]


"No, you can't have a baby this month. Take some more medicine and come back next month. Sorry about that..."
I'm not even sure I want a child, my husband is on the same page as me and has been completely awesome and supportive the whole time, if I never get pregnant it won't be the end of the world in any conceivable way, we're both healthy (knock wood) and solvent and assuming the world doesn't ACTUALLY end through events beyond our control we can look forward to a happy few decades together even, or especially, without children...
I'm just so damn tired of playing this stupid game of Snakes and Ladders where you just have to keep on rolling the dice but you always end up stepping on another damn snake.
Best wishes for strength and serenity to everyone in the thread (including the people reading but not commenting) always.
posted by huimangm at 2:09 AM on July 23, 2018 [8 favorites]


This border stuff has me really nervous. Are they going to outlaw dual citizenship next? Because, sorry everyone, I'm staying in Canada if they make me choose.

(I have a raging fire of personal agony right now but it cannot be told on the webz. I got to forget it for awhile yesterday while I spent time with someone I adore and then woke up this morning and someone shot a bunch of people and we don't DO this in Canada, stop it agghhh)
posted by wellred at 5:48 AM on July 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


mx. sci passes white and female, has my (Italian) last name and a sufficiently Anglo first name--aside from presenting as lesbians, we're not in any harder mode than y'all are. Not leaving the country until it's time to plan on not coming back is definitely our game plan, too.

fuck.

I'm really tired.
posted by sciatrix at 8:34 AM on July 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


Echoing "I'm really tired"...

I just... fuck. I don't know how to get my head together, today. In the last few months it's gotten to the point where I'm seriously considering whether my family could up and move to Europe. Even if I can somehow maintain the belief that this country can survive the current situation, it's hard to figure out how *I* can maintain some mental health in an environment of constant, crushing stress.

FUCK

God damn it
posted by bluemilker at 11:19 AM on July 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


Are they going to outlaw dual citizenship next?

*prepares free-from-FATCA festivities* Wooops, sorry, wrong thread.

As for the fucking fucks. I had been restricting my Trump-related news intake, but read this Guardian piece about 3D-printed guns today. I literally started crying in front of my computer. Really fucking glad I work with neat people who entirely understood.

You need (or not, if it would be too much) to read to the end for the full horror of it. You think the beginning is bad enough, and then you reach the middle, where it gets into what-the-everloving-fuck territory, and then it hits the end! Where you realize that doom can indeed be a very real physical sensation.
posted by fraula at 11:37 AM on July 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


I am so fucking tired of being disappointed by men in so many fucking ways.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 11:37 AM on July 23, 2018 [12 favorites]


My wife works for a union but is not able to unionize herself. She has been trying to negotiate her contract for the last year, and they came to her with cuts. Cutting her health and dental, cutting her retirement, cutting her salary, capping her salary lower than the entry-level wage at comparable institutions, all cuts. She may have to leave, which means we will have to move.

I work for a progressive person in the public eye, which means my day is filled with reading the most vile horrible emails a person could imagine. And then I walk around in my city and know just how many people hate women, queer people, trans people, POC, refugees, etc. I feel like I live in a garbage dumpster of humanity and I hate everyone.
posted by arcticwoman at 12:12 PM on July 23, 2018 [16 favorites]


Last night, I dreamed that voters had decided to vote for somebody better than Trump so, in my dream, I laid down to rest.

Then I heard a voice which, in my dream, I recognized as the voice of American voters saying excitedly "UNLESS SOMEONE WORSE?"

Immediately, my dreams produced a nightmare monster that was going to run for President and who I knew would win. I decided I had to get out of bed and stop this monster from running.

I put so much dream effort into getting out of bed that I literally threw myself out of bed in the waking world and woke up disoriented with bruises and marks all over the right side of my body. Our bed is about 3 feet off the ground so yikes.

On the plus side, the dream monster vanished when I woke up. On the negative, I can't help but think he won this encounter anyways.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:38 PM on July 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


The UK is in the middle of an extended heatwave. One which on a daily basis, breaks centuries old heat records.

Meanwhile those throwing the country under a bus are saying that normal people should be hoarding food now in anticipation of expected shortages due to Brexit.

Myself and friends of mine are *terrified* that regular medications we need are either going to become prohibitively expensive due to Brexit or worse just become unavailable.

Unlike my friends, my medication makes my life bearable, in their cases it is necessary for them to continue being alive.

If the heatwave continues the sociologist part of my brain keeps thinking that large scale social unrest (riots) are only a matter of time especially as the school summer holidays just started.

I suspect riots are what the govt wants, so it can declare martial law.
I hope I am being paranoid about.. well everything.

The heatwave means I can’t sleep and I am alternating between wanting to scream and wanting to cry.

I am so very, bone-crushingly, goddamn tired.
posted by Faintdreams at 4:47 PM on July 23, 2018 [14 favorites]


I got dumped out of the blue nearly two months ago and I think the enormity of it is hitting me now. I'm functioning okay and know I'll be fine with time, but fuck I forgot how much heartbreak hurts.

Sending love and your favorite dessert to everyone in this thread. I'm so thankful for Metafilter.
posted by Twicketface at 5:01 PM on July 23, 2018 [12 favorites]


So a neighbor, shopkeeper and local personality died this week which makes me sad that we lost a friend and our community lost such a pillar but then reading about his situation I see this:
These past several months, as Mr. Kennedy suffered from kidney stones and cancer without access to insurance, his ability to always look on the bright side had its off days.
I just can even. What the hell is wrong with us?
posted by octothorpe at 5:38 AM on July 24, 2018 [9 favorites]


I keep thinking about that total WANKER Rees- Mogg saying that we might not see the benefits of Brexit for 50 years. So... I guess I'll just look forward to when I'm EIGHTY-FUCKING-TWO then.
posted by threetwentytwo at 9:48 AM on July 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


"Ugh. Such fuckers..."
posted by Windopaene at 9:59 AM on July 24, 2018


I got fired from my new job by the VP of security after 11 days (I don't think I have been fired from a job since college) for "unprofessionalism" (possibly because I signed my NDA "ABOLISH ICE") and because I used a non-work laptop, which my manager said was ok. It was a temporary part time telecommuting job so I'm not crying over it, but after a long irritating onboarding process it was a little shocking to be let go in such a weird last-thing-on-a-Friday way. My boss was equally shocked, at least.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 10:44 AM on July 24, 2018 [18 favorites]


I dunno, you guys. I think I was doing relatively okay until I read the news yesterday about The Daily News firing half its newsroom staff. I just sat there with my head in the hands for a while and then got up and made dinner. Because, you know, what else can I do at this point?
posted by holborne at 11:05 AM on July 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


I am doing way better than many and I am grateful for all I have. That said, I am also tired. It is weird to be living in Sweden and feeling like I am back in California because the normally rainy and not-hot Swedish summer has been replaced this year with a hot and dry nightmare that makes my 6th floor room oven-like virtually 24 hours per day. I often work in my room but the heat is affecting my cognition and I am having to spend part of every day at a mall just to stay cool. It's a nightmare.

There are wildfires at least three places in the country last time I checked, but luckily no one has died yet, unlike the tragic loss of life in Greece that just happened. I have a friend who is a professor. Her specialty is climate-change refugees. She says we are about to see a lot more of them. I know this doesn't seem related but it feels related: While waiting for a bus I find myself scanning poles and notice boards for Nazi and white-fucker propaganda stickers, which are often backed with seriously hard-core glue. Now I carry a wide-point black permanent marker to deface anything I can't remove.

I have two young grandchildren, I have mental health issues, I was raised in an alcoholic household and it just never stops, the ongoing ripples from damaged people raising children who are, in turn, damaged. Ditto for the effects of poverty. Climate change. Health issues. Poverty. I have whiplash from trying to figure out what, if anything, I can do to try to keep the planet alive long enough for my grandkids to grow up. A wise MeFite told me to do anything, that anything would help. Like helping immigrant kids here (I'm an immigrant too!) with their homework. But that doesn't actually feel like what I should be doing when so many places are literally on fire.

Also, my kid has challenges so she needs my help, and my grandkids need my help, and I often forget to take my various medicines, thank you ADHD, and I am not eating enough because I don't like to cook but even if I did, it is too warm to cook and nearly too warm to eat. Also, my dad is dying.

Did I mention I'm tired? Everyone I know is exhausted. How could it be otherwise? Thanks, folks, for letting me share. Thank you, MetaFilter, for being here.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:34 PM on July 24, 2018 [9 favorites]


Bella Donna - dont try to remove Nazi stickers /posters, sometimes they have razor blades deliberately stuck underneath them. Deface as much as to can, or if you still want to remove them, invest in a dollor store car ice windcreen scraper to protect your fingers!
posted by Faintdreams at 1:51 PM on July 24, 2018 [5 favorites]


OMG Faintdreams, thanks for the warning! These are small stickers, so I guess the odds are more in my favour but yikes, that had not occurred to me. Will keep a look out now for sure.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:22 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Can you cite a source? This sounds like an urban legend.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 2:28 PM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


fluttering hellfire I've seen someone hands sliced trying to remove a nazi poster at a bus stop this year so yeah - the source is me. Not an urban legend. And even if it was an urban legend, how can using a scraper/tool instead of one's fingers be a bad thing?
posted by Faintdreams at 3:35 PM on July 24, 2018 [5 favorites]


well I got home from my travels and slowly plunged into a pit of depression the like of which I haven't seen for years. I hung up my show -- worked like a dog for six weeks, 81 images, printed and framed and hung on a huge wall - and invited a ton of people to the opening and went and .. . 10 people showed up over the course of those long 3 hours. I have lived in this town for almost 20 years and I got 10 people. Anyway then I started trying to fix up the house, empty it out, put things away, go into the mouse haunted garage, organize, clear, clean, clear the yard. it's a huge, huge job and I have no one to help me at all. I traveled alone for seven months and it was wonderful but being alone and lonely in a town where you have lived for so long hurts in a whole new special way. Then I developed an abscessed tooth, had to spend a fortune at the dentist, it's better but it will go bad again; I am just waiting. Then I got ripped off by some lawn people, and oh god it goes on and on.

About two weeks ago I found out that my dog Django has cancer. It would cost $5000 to do the operation and remove the grapefruit sized tumor that is hanging from his back leg. So that is not going to happen and even though it doesn't seem to have spread he is probably going to die soon. We don't know when. He is 12 and a big dog and so, okay, he has had a good life and I don't have $5000 and even if I did I don't think I would put him through the surgery, the recovery, the chemo - but oh this is hurting. I have been to the vet and the veterinary oncologist, we are over $500 in now and we don't know much but the tumor is growing very fast and when/if it bursts it will probably be the end.

I went to the doctor and got antidepressants on Friday because the only thing in my brain is Sen from Spirited Away and she is yelling, but instead of yelling "I just want a job!" she's yelling "I just want to go to bed! Can't I go to bed yet? I have to go to bed!" I wish she would shut up. The antidepressants haven't kicked in yet and like some of y'all above, old friends, I haven't had a date in hmmmm eight years? ten years? I don't know but sometimes oh god I just wish somebody would touch my back for a second or even be there at all. But they won't and that's okay, most of the time I prefer it, most of the time I am strong and tough and fine alone but this summer, this cursed and unholy summer, not so much.

And late on Saturday night a bad bad heartbreaking family crisis situation that has been literally destroying me for a long time reached a whole new crescendo / nadir. Now I feel the way I did after my mother died, I am barely here, everything is slow motion and wrapped in glass, there's a huge lump in my throat that won't go away, and all I can really do is cry, I keep crying, and just keep going I guess. sorry to be such a downer.
posted by mygothlaundry at 4:57 PM on July 24, 2018 [19 favorites]


Also I think the fucking roof is leaking again, god damn it.
posted by mygothlaundry at 5:08 PM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


He's a good dog, flossvert.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:13 PM on July 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


only USCIS has gotten held way the fuck up on the ten-year green card, so all they have is a passport stamp

We are stuck in the same situation. (My wife filed i-751 in May 2017, current expected processing date is in 2019...). So far we've been OK, but every time we cross the border it's always a tiny bit unknown. And now, of course, USCIS can technically just deny/deport her with no RFE/etc. It's probably extremely unlikely --- if we got denied that way, it probably means everyone would be. We had to go get the stamp a couple months ago, and dealt with some rude staff with some made-up rules (claiming California requires you to have state ID, which is not true, and why would a federal officer care anyway), but at least we got the damn stamp.

Lack of card is definitely a PITA (airlines get confused, now that they are supposed to double as immigration officials, and you can't use the automated machines that everyone else uses, so there's a special line, etc). But at least so far it has not resulted in non-entry. We'll be testing it again in October.

The only reason we're not more worried is that she is only here because of me, and I no longer feel any attachment to the US. So worst case scenario, we find some other country (hers probably, but there are other options probably as well). Of course, this is only because I am lucky/priviledged enough that I can almost certainly find employment somewhere else.

Starting with the stuff in Jan 2017 (green card holders getting denied at the border), it's been clear that there is no real guarantee offered by any status except maybe citizenship (although that too can be revoked, as they are doing now). Citizenship is not on the table for us (mainly because her country doesn't allow dual citizenship, but also because she's not exactly excited about being a US citizen).
posted by thefoxgod at 6:26 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


I know the run-down exhausted snapping rage you're describing, mygothlaundry. I know it intimately. It sucks, and I wish I could say something to turn that around or like, make shit be better, but there's not anything good to say.

But I can sit here and listen. So that's what I'm trying to do--I see you, I see how unfair everything is and how fucking awful it is and how goddamn tired you are trying to manage it.

Anyway, this is the goddamn Fucking Fuck thread; if you can't come here to be an enraged shaking exhausted downer, where the hell can you go?

Fuck. I hope Django goes peacefully and in his own time. It sounds to me like you are making the right decision with what you have. I know it doesn't help, but. I'm sorry to hear it. I'm sorry it's all piling up on you. I'm so sorry you're facing all of this down on your own. I hope the antidepressants work for you and they help you splint your stress and that they help you be kind to yourself.
posted by sciatrix at 7:01 PM on July 24, 2018 [8 favorites]


This morning a dear friend of mine died of pancreatic cancer. It's hard to keep it together here at my cube.

She was the only person who had been in our a cappella group longer than me. Tomorrow night is rehearsal night, and we remaining 7 singers will be drinking and petting kitties.

Fuck cancer. It just keeps stealing people I love. Fuck it.
posted by blurker at 10:32 AM on July 25, 2018 [16 favorites]


Hugs to all of you.

I am determined to find a way to use Scratch's words "ovarian fortitude" in a sentence. Or maybe I'll start a band and name it that.
posted by sundrop at 7:44 PM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


At this point, I've decided that my body has decided to take up some hobbies. We haven't had any discussion of these hobbies and it's just doing them whenever it wants.

There is ringing in my ears, and/or a tightness in my throat, and/or tremors that can just be in my hands or can get so strong they are in my legs and I can barely walk, and/or vomiting for no apparent reason, and/or charlie horse lump type cramps at random places on my body (the ribcage is my favorite!), and/or wildly vacillating blood pressure despite being on an alpha inhibitor and a beta blocker.

That's the list at this point. I never know what's coming, in what combination, and to what intensity or duration. I just exist inside this fleshy thing that is doing things it decides to do, none of them helpful to me trying to exist.

Fucking fuck.
posted by hippybear at 9:18 PM on July 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Oh, and I've had both my GP and a neurologist tell me "you don't need to make any follow-up appointments about this unless you're having an emergency because we can't help you".
posted by hippybear at 9:19 PM on July 25, 2018


Ugh. I'm exhausted and burned out, I've been sick for several weeks, I'm moving across half a continent in days (not months) to start a postdoc and I haven't finished wrapping things up in my doctoral lab, and I have a fellowship app or two to submit right after moving. And then there's All This [gestures vaguely] going on in the world around me. I feel bad for complaining when so many others (you guys included) are struggling with worse things, but...

Fucking hell, I'm so tired.
posted by ubersturm at 9:40 PM on July 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Big hugs to all those who have lost or are losing friends and family, both human and otherwise.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:37 PM on July 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


hippybear, I remember your description of these issues from last winter and I wonder if you've considered going to Mayo or somewhere else where the care model involves having specialists from different disciplines collaborate about your diagnosis in real time. I'm no doctor, but your symptoms seem complex. Also, have you been checked for Lyme Disease? Your description matches this admittedly lengthy symptom list from the Partnership of Tick-Borne Diseases. I believe tremors, etc. are associated with "late stage" Lyme Disease. Anyway, good luck in your quest for a diagnosis.
posted by carmicha at 8:34 AM on July 26, 2018


TOO MANY THINGS.

TOO MANY THINGS ALL AT ONCE.

PLZ FEWER THINGS. NOT QUITE SO MANY THINGS. OR THE SAME AMOUNT OF THINGS SPACED OUT MORE.

EITHER WAY WORKS FOR ME.

ALSO SOME OF THE THINGS COULD BE BETTER.

THERE ARE TOO MANY THINGS AND THEY ARE NOT SPACED OUT ENOUGH AND MOST OF THE THINGS COULD BE BETTER.

TOO. MANY. THINGS.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:31 PM on July 26, 2018 [17 favorites]


and look here's the problem with having so many things all of them terrible all at once: I am starting to dislike things in general. Like, I see a thing? or a thing happens? I am now conditioned to see that thing as a problem and moreover as a problem that I am not as one small reclusive novelist capable of solving.

Which means my overall preference has become for nothing, or as close as possible to nothing as you can get in this world. meaning that all the time spent not doing things I am obligated to do (because there are SO MANY THINGS) I want to spend doing nothing at all, because if I do anything that means I'm introducing a whole nother thing into my life and as we've established there are TOO MANY THINGS.

It's a new and fascinating form of depression: I feel like I'm the target of a DDOS. Or I guess more accurately a distributed denial of capacity for pleasure. and I can't tell if this is the result of a neurochemical imbalance or an ordinary response to a series of acute stressors or just what passes for the human condition in these godforsaken times.

One thing I know for sure, though, is that IT HAS MADE ME A VERY UNPLEASANT PERSON TO BE AROUND.

TOO. MANY. THINGS.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:37 PM on July 26, 2018 [18 favorites]


Oh, Pynchon, I feel this so much. Like, I just got fired from my second job which I needed SO BADLY because I am a college professor and it is summer--so even though I'm teaching a class (where my students stare at me waiting for answers TO TESTS I DON'T GIVE gahhh) it's paying less than half my normal monthly and like now HOW WILL I PAY RENT oh shit--because I legit could NOT do the emotional labor of helping customers figure out what type of stupid fucking cupcake they wanted and snarled at them too much. Every person is starting to feel like a potential problem, every thing that needs doing is TOO MUCH TOO MUCH and I just want to lay down. BUT Now I have to go hoof around and try to find some other stupid job and hustle through interviews while wearing perma exhausted bitchface and who the fuck is going to hire someone in this mood? And for real, nobody deserves to be treated like they are a pain in the ass for existing but I CAN'T STOP everything is too goddamn much.

Everyone says to help other people but the person I was helping a lot (to secure housing, to mutually remember to eat food, to have emotional support systems) just totally went crazy at me (are these texts a threat to me? to himself? just wackadoodle?) and pseudo dumped me for like the 3rd time and I felt nothing at all except irritation. Which...like, that's good, because it was a super depressing borderline emotionally abusive not-even-really-a-relationship, but it makes me feel pretty shitty that I escaped from a broken situation because I ran out of fucks, am actually at negative fucks, for other people's shit. And also that I clung onto a shell of love based on bullshit because I am too fucking tired and grumpy to find some friends or work on dating or whatever the fuck because I just loathe everything right now.

and I havent paid my power bill for 3 months, and am in debt so bad that bankruptcy would be neato but I would have to talk to a human, and even fucking trying to clean up around this 350sqft apartment I can't afford is too much, let alone trying to figure out how I can turn $30 into like $2000 by the 5th and and and gahhhh everything has been getting shittier on the macro and micro level in my life and I'm too fucking grumpy to fix it

SO I AM ALSO A TOTAL GRUMP FUCK FUCK FUCK
posted by zinful at 5:38 PM on July 26, 2018 [12 favorites]


I need to go out and go grocery shopping, but I'm having a bad day and I'm going to blame it on the Zyrtec that has magically alleviated the Interstitial Cystitis pain that's been plaguing me for months. Unfortunately, zyrtec makes me stupid and agitated, which is why I stopped taking it, but at least right now the tradeoff is worth it.

It is weird that my pee is not blue.

I've been too busy and exhausted to keep up with the politics thread. Kind of dreading the slog to catch up, but I'll feel less disconnected from reality if I do. I think that not knowing might be part of why I'm feeling more anxious than usual.

Fuck, I'm just so tired.
posted by monopas at 7:11 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


are we still giving each other mugs of klonopin? or are we all too floppy to even be medicated now

because that was the best so, a mug and a hug for everyone here (who wants one; mostly because I now backhandedly get internet hugs too)

monopas, don't read it all. what i do is pick a date from a couple days ago and search for it on the page, scroll up just a tich from there to feel like time isn't the boss of you, and just catch up from like the 22nd or whenever. it's too fuckin much otherwise and it can just exhaust you worse as you procrastinate from life to stare at the past 2 weeks or whatever in dawning, exhausting horror.
posted by zinful at 10:28 PM on July 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Well, my laptop died, I am down to my last $300, and I have 5 days left of my antidepressant. Worst, I feel like it's my own damn fault for taking a risk and relocating without a job on the other side. (Which I did willingly and happily! Oh, hubris.)

My partner is a gem but it's not his job to take all this on and now I am humiliating myself by admitting all this in public. Fucking fuck.
posted by Space Kitty at 5:49 AM on July 27, 2018 [7 favorites]


My cubicle neighbor and I put leftover rum from the last company party in our Friday morning coffee and I gotta say that if you can pull off something similar, it makes the entire news day go down that much smoother.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:18 AM on July 27, 2018 [8 favorites]


Fuck, is it Friday? I have a show in three hours and my costume is in a ball in the corner.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:46 AM on July 27, 2018


So I'm broke, so broke I can't even buy my medications, much less my wife's. I have literally $20 to last me until my next paycheck two weeks from now unless I scarper some off the rent, which is its own special form of fucked-over.

My workplace lets me put money into a card for transit, so at least I can get to work. But they got me at a fucking bargain basement price for what I do, and I've done interviews and all sorts of things, and it doesn't seem to be helping. My wife is ill, physically and psychologically, and like I said, medications.

I had a half-thought about a way to fix it earlier and then squished it before I hit a really bad idea.

I'm so fucking tired of being alive. I can't do much else, though. But really, I am so fucking tired. And almost no one cares.
posted by mephron at 11:06 AM on July 27, 2018 [10 favorites]


I have a show in three hours and my costume is in a ball in the corner.

And it needs mending and destinking and there's no vodka in the house.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:13 AM on July 27, 2018


What about isopropyl alcohol? Dilute it a bit to get it to 50% water, spritz on costume.
posted by elsietheeel at 12:38 PM on July 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


AUAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAA
I have nothing coherent to say, maybe anymore.
posted by rodlymight at 9:40 PM on July 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


“deleted family units.”

This is not a good country.
posted by Rust Moranis at 3:33 PM on July 28, 2018 [3 favorites]


Someone stole my 16-channel mixer out of my car this week. Then I guy cut me off on the road and then hunted me down to pull alongside me and shake his head at me as though it was my fault he almost clipped the front of my car. When is karma going to kick in? Why do I have to keep eating shit while the asshole in chief sits in my White House? Something better start showing me some goodness real soon.
posted by scrowdid at 9:50 PM on July 28, 2018 [3 favorites]


Ever since Trump started campaigning we've been having these conversations about "oh they're just trying to distract us by saying horrible racist shit -- keep your eyes on the prize, they're over here dismantling the EPA!" "no actually, we can walk and chew gum at the same time." Like that precise conversation has happened on the megathread at least 1,792 times.

Anyway it turns out family separation is the issue where I cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. There's no number of times I can tell my rational brain that they've stopped the worst of what they were doing and now we're dealing with the aftermath -- I read interviews with these families about what they've gone through and there are alarm bells in my brain ringing so loud I can't function. I can't care about anything else even if it's, like, imminent nuclear war. And I can't figure out how to help anyone or how to stop them from doing something like this again.

I've never felt so powerless in my entire goddamn life.
posted by gerstle at 1:54 AM on July 29, 2018 [8 favorites]


I hope NYT Maggie gets redhenned.
posted by jointhedance at 4:21 AM on July 29, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don’t even fucking know anymore. Take care of yourselves, everyone.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 1:44 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


Nothing makes sense and everything is awful.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:52 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


One of my best friends left the United States for Germany back in 2016, during the summer before the election, and though he had been planning to emigrate for quite some time, the rise of a certain neonazi game show host played a major role in accelerating his move.

Said friend is trans; he just posted a story to facebook about the U.S. state department retroactively revoking the passports of trans people. His only comment on the story: "Run."

I trust his judgment on this sort of thing implicitly; he grew up trans and queer in the United States foster care system, and although the experience left him with a heap of trauma, it also gave him a preternaturally reliable sense for when people and systems are about to turn (more) vicious.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 7:24 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


Whenever I pop in to the Fucking Fuck threads to vent about my own tribulations in navigating this vale of tears, I'm immediately reminded that other MeFites have much bigger problems. Sympathies to all.

By the way, in the previous megathread, I posted a link to the insightful article Yale psychiatry professor Bandy X. Lee and Art of the Deal co-author Tony Schwartz wrote for Politico about Trump's mental state, Inside the Mind of Donald Trump: He’s grandiose, deceitful and paranoid—but don’t let him drive you crazy. I quoted from its first half there, but its conclusion applies here:
So how can we hold onto our own mental health in the face of the danger Trump poses? First, don’t use logic or rationality to try to understand or counter Trump’s statements and behaviors. He is driven not by reason but by negative emotions that are infectious. Trump thrives on creating fear and sowing confusion. He lies without guilt. Don’t match his emotion with your own.

Second, be clearer than ever about your core values, beliefs and principles, and rely on them for guidance and comfort, especially when you are feeling most triggered and fearful. Challenge every day the natural inclination to feel overwhelmed, fatigued or numb in the face of Trump’s behavior. This is what people with his psychological inclinations count on. Trump is aware that whatever he says repeatedly—no matter how outrageous—many people are more likely to believe, or at least to stop resisting.

Lastly, recognize that fear is your enemy. Holding onto the opposites of realism and optimism is the best antidote. James Stockdale, a Navy vice admiral, was imprisoned for eight years in North Vietnam and tortured repeatedly. What he said afterward about how he survived is relevant for anyone dealing with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:55 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


he just posted a story to facebook about the U.S. state department retroactively revoking the passports of trans people. His only comment on the story: "Run."

seriously I am tripping the fuck out
posted by nikaspark at 10:57 AM on July 30, 2018


That is straight-up supervillain fuckery is what that is.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:23 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


Here's the article about the passports in case people want more info about what RNTP is referring to.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 11:25 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


Catching up on the current megathread now, it occurs to me that Lionel Hutz -- created in 1991 for an animated comedy Fox TV show as a fictional parody of the worst exaggerations of legal hucksters -- currently remains a more competent, more likable, and more believable lawyer in 2018 than actual real-life Rudy Giuliani.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 5:50 PM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


I just... I can't believe this anymore. Every time I look at the news it's worse and worse. It's like, this is the sound of my anxiety in 2018, it can't possibly keep going up forever but it sure seems like it does, just up and up and up. [for the yt averse: shephard tone illusion]

My okay-fuck-it-everybody-out-of-the-pool moment for today is The Whelk's link to this WaPo article on steep increases in junk debt investment.

It's like... you stupid motherfuckers. You saw exactly what happened with exactly this kind of shit, ten years ago, and... this is what you do. You do the same goddamn shit again. Because you, the elite, the top 0.01%, you never really got burned last time, did you? No, you made out like goddamn bandits and you paid yourselves eight-figure bonuses even after you ruined the financial futures of millions and nearly destroyed the global economy. You beat that fucking piñata until it fell to the ground in tatters, we spent ten years trying to tape the pieces back together, and here you come again with your endless greed and your fucking baseball bats.

I don't know, man. Even if we make it out of this mess, days like this, I'm not sure we deserve to.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 6:20 PM on July 30, 2018 [11 favorites]


Yeah I knew we where going to be in trouble the instant i heard the phrase Student-loan backed securities, but I thought the bubble burster was gonna be auto loans.

I still fully think we're on track for a crisis that will make '08 look like previews in Hartford, so I've actually stopped making long term plans which is causing some stress in my life.

As for what's beyond that all I can say is .... Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite? Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight? For The union makes us strong.
posted by The Whelk at 9:20 PM on July 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


Catching up on the current megathread now, it occurs to me that Lionel Hutz -- created in 1991 for an animated comedy Fox TV show as a fictional parody of the worst exaggerations of legal hucksters -- currently remains a more competent, more likable, and more believable lawyer in 2018 than actual real-life Rudy Giuliani.

“No, money down!”
posted by Barack Spinoza at 12:05 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


mephron, I bought you some coffee. I don't know how much it will help, but I'm tired of feeling powerless.
posted by chainsofreedom at 12:16 PM on July 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


I sell books. And like many of us in the book biz, I pretty much sell any book to anybody; "information wants to be free" and all that. I've sold some really abominable shit. I've sold "Pick-Up Artist" crap, I've sold deranged conspiracy theory nonsense, and just yesterday I became irked upon hearing that a local thrift store just *threw away* a $$$ copy of The Satanic Bible because "Satan."
I've wondered to myself what book I would refuse to sell, because I could have an ethical debate with a paper bag and it's the sort of thing we lonely self-employed folks find entertaining.

Well, I figured it out today. I grabbed a book yesterday without more than enough of a glance to know it was scarce and probably worth some cash to me. The title was "Some Lions I have Met," and on the cover was a beautiful be-maned fellow. On little sleep early this morning, I sat down to list yesterday's finds. When my husband woke up, I was crying and he didn't know what I was on about when I said, "He didn't MEET lions, he SHOT them!" The book was full of dead lions with rich white assholes grinning with a foot on their dead heads.

Frankly, if our government had not made it legal again just this week for rich assholes to tote the heads of lions they shoot back into this country to hang on their walls, I might list this book.
Frankly, if this it had been given its correct title: "Killing Lions For Fun and Profit," and had the picture of the dead lion on the front cover rather than hidden inside, I would list this book. I could use the cash and the ROI is stellar. I threw it in the garbage. Fuck that guy and fuck our president.

"Some Lions I Have Met." FFS.
posted by thebrokedown at 1:47 PM on July 31, 2018 [12 favorites]


I'm pretty close to getting fucking fired from my job.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 2:03 PM on August 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Apparently colouring is good for one's sense of inner peace; this page from a colouring book will be useful for some of us.
posted by Rumple at 2:31 PM on August 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm pretty close to getting fucking fired from my job.

Ugh. Hang in there.

The trick is to try and never be worse than the second-shittiest employee. Companies generally fire people one at a time, so as long as there's always someone worse than you, you can hang on a loooong time.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:33 PM on August 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Holy cow we're a mess, you guys. I would like to send gobs of love and hugs and a warm home cooked meal to everyone. And even some special licks from our yellow lab pup.

Seriously, it's just beyond overwhelmingly stupefying how shitty the greedy evil motherfuckers truly are, and how much fucking damage they are doing in so many ways. I'm 55, and I'm starting to think in terms of, well, not much time left, might as well go see some scenery while there still is some.

I haven't had health insurance in years. I desperately need some dental work done before I lose a bunch of molars. I have trouble finding motivation to be excited about anything.

I barely talk to anyone but my neighbors, we never go out anywhere, we keep to ourselves. And thank god we're both total introverts, so it isn't torture to us. We make all our own food here, and read/binge watch whatever.

I've been counting blessings daily. And even though we're both utterly burned out and feel like our jobs are meaningless (they are), we do still have blessings. Sometimes I think I'm practicing blessing counting because I have a horrible feeling shit's about to get a lot worse for all but the greediest motherfuckers. It's going to crash, and when it does, it may not recover in our lifetimes. Seriously.

When I asked mrs yoga what she thinks is going to happen, she said: "I really don't know. I'm down to just hoping there are more good people than bad people out there."

And there's another blessing: all you good people here on MetaFilter.
posted by yoga at 3:43 PM on August 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


Thank you for the venting thread, good people. Earlier today I was on the subway with my 2 grandkids and my kid. The toddler was being a huge PIA and the baby was crying (it happens, folks) and my kid eventually wrestled the toddler back into his stroller because he was being a menace to his younger sibling and when we got to our stop, a total stranger sitting nearby looked at my kid and said, "You need to take care of your kids. You're the worst parent I've ever seen."

My kid told me this on our way out and I dashed back on the train just long enough to learn over to the woman and say, "That was a horrible thing to say," and dash out again before the train left the station. The woman said something to me in response, I did not hear what she said, and that is probably a good thing.

I work hard at not taking things personally. My kid was in tears on the train platform afterward and kept asking, "I just don't know what else I could do," and I reminded my kid that this stranger doesn't know any of us, had no business being judgmental, etc. Like, some people have children who are well-behaved at all times but those children are the exception rather than the rule.

Later today my kid and I were at a cafe on a work date and someone came in with a baby who started crying and I leaned over and whispered, "Should I go over to explain what a terrible parent she is," and my kid laughed and that made me happy.

I get that this was a tiny tiny thing that happened. It still felt shitty to witness. But I am grateful it was such a small thing. It was not being fired or not having rent money or not being able to see a dentist. My heart goes out to everyone struggling with much bigger issues. Being human is hard. Love on yourselves if you possibly can. Sending y'all many hugs from Europe. Hang in there!
posted by Bella Donna at 5:35 AM on August 3, 2018 [11 favorites]


Rather than post this article in the current politics mega-thread, I thought it would be better here. NBC: Barnes & Noble Says Sales of Books Related to Anxiety Are Soaring. “Sales of books related to anxiety are up more than 25 percent through this past June from a year ago, according to Barnes & Noble. The bookseller said 'we may be living in an anxious nation.'”

So it's not just us MeFites. We're not projecting our anxieties on the zeitgeist—it is the zeitgeist.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:41 AM on August 3, 2018 [7 favorites]


I just went into today's company sales meeting and stepped forward as That Guy, asking how management could reconcile sending out a newsletter that bragged that revenues and profits are up substantially with a new comp plan that means commissions are down across the board.

So uh, if any of y'all work somewhere where they're hiring, maybe hit me up, m'kay?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:01 PM on August 3, 2018 [5 favorites]


You willing to move downstate?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:18 PM on August 3, 2018


The Onion reviewed the new film Christopher Robin and (as with the other videos in that series) the gag is that it's actually about the reviewer, "Peter Rosenthal" -- but this time, by extension, it's about all of us and what life feels like now. It hit me in the funny-ennui bone... I recommend it as a video equivalent of reading these threads. (also on YouTube)
posted by InTheYear2017 at 8:19 AM on August 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


The Onion reviewed the new film Christopher Robin

It's funny 'cos it's true!

Oh god
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:12 AM on August 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Oh my god. I'm laughing and crying and snot is running from my nose after watching that.
posted by octothorpe at 12:10 PM on August 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


"And... I guess Eeyore is the Democrats, because he's a donkey."

I snorted.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:39 PM on August 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


I’ve been stewing all week and I finally said it out loud to my wife on Friday: the QAnon lunacy and Trump supporters threatening the media stories originated in the Tampa Bay Area where I was born and currently reside. As a journalist, both stories make me want to scream and never stop. I literally got into a shouting match with a republican friend yesterday when he started in about “lying journalists” and I started screaming at him that IM A FUCKING JOURNALIST. Plans were put in motion this week to finally get the ever-loving fuck out of this shithole of a state where NOTHING is going to change come the midterms. Rick Scott will eke out a victory against Bill Nelson and Desantis will beat whatever cold-fish the Democrats run against him. Florida is a lost cause and I can’t wait to finally get the fuck out of here. Seriously people, do not come to FL for anything. Boycott this shithole.
posted by photoslob at 11:13 AM on August 5, 2018 [6 favorites]


So I'm thinking of starting a project mayhem style operation where we tag the shit out of Trump-branded properties with branding material for "Jimmy Carter's Peanut Butter." Anyone want in?
posted by es_de_bah at 12:57 PM on August 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


Y'all. I just keep coming back to how pointless all of this is.

Our current clusterfuck is largely a backlash against the rise of feminism, LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter, multiculturalism, secularism, science-based policy (on topics such as climate change), and progressivism in general.

All we ever said was "hey, maybe we should stop being shitty to people". We've never tried to take anything away from anyone.

And this notion is so intolerable, to so many people, that they staged a fucking coup, and have pushed the nation – and the world – to the brink of any number of possible disasters.

You'd think that "don't be shitty to people" would be an uncontroversial and common-sense position. But, no. Turns out that it's really fucking important, to millions of Americans, to be shitty to people.

Even before the rise of Trump, I regularly shook my head at how much energy we were forced to waste to push back against regressive nonsense. We were making some progress, but we could've been doing so much more.

But now: forget about making any progress at all; we're so swamped with regressive nonsense that it's all we can do to keep our heads above water.

All because we had the temerity to suggest that we should be decent to people (and acknowledge science).

The entire political platform of half the country has become "fuck you – because fuck you, that's why". And how do you reason with a seething mass of spite? How do you share a country with millions of people who hate you just because?

This whole situation could easily go much further south than it already has, and why? What's the fucking point? How can a civilization with such incredible technology and resources be wallowing in this bullshit, when we could be building a better world for everyone?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 8:22 AM on August 9, 2018 [16 favorites]


I recently came across the poem, "Sunlight on the Garden", written by the Irish poet Louis Macniece, in 1936. Macniece had recently been divorced and so the poem is imbued with loss and sadness, but he also reflects upon the times of joy of that now broken relationship. It was also written when the forces of Fascism were growing across Europe, and so inevitably I thought of our current times. It is a lovely, powerful poem and despite the grimness it foretold (And soon, my friend/We shall have no time for dances.), I found it strangely hopeful. Fascism is a terrible beast that kills and maims, yet this poem is a thing of beauty, a work of sublime art, and represents so much of what is good in the world. So, I found some succour in this poem.
The Sunlight on the Garden

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.
posted by vac2003 at 3:45 PM on August 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


Just a little bit that would not fit well in the main politics thread: is anyone else incredibly annoyed by how over-the-top Trump is in, well, every fucking thing he says?

He has to use superlatives, he is the best, the biggest, the most important, the least racist... it's so annoying for so many reasons, not the least of which is the total lack of perspective it shows. If I could make fiction real, I would put Trump into the Total Perspective Vortex and see what happens.

Gods, this tweet of his:".@MarkBurnettTV called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up. Look at her MANY recent quotes saying...." [real]
"I don't have that word in my vocabulary! I don't even speak English! in fact, I have no way of producing audible sound at all, being non-corporeal and made of pure thought energy! Many people say that English as a language does not exist! Really, other people do not exist, do not believe the Fake News, trust me, only me, the only thing that is real on all of creation!" [Fake, as of August 14, 2018]
posted by PontifexPrimus at 1:14 AM on August 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


This is all so exhausting. It feels like common sense and critical thought are an endangered species in the United States, and as if being wrong is the ultimate political sin. Probably the most potent example is the fact that the ethics of separating toddlers from their parents and locking them up was debated for even one fucking minute. Or to think that some people would actively argue against protecting the environment, when it seems so self-evident that the preservation of natural beauty and diversity of life is objectively a good thing.

"escape from the potato planet" said it better a few comments up. You can't come up with good solutions to improve people's lives when the political platform of either side is "fuck you, that's why". I thirst for a productive discourse in this country about...well, anything, really.
posted by aliasless at 7:00 AM on August 14, 2018


I am sick of poshlost.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 1:08 PM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


The Manafort jury deliberation along with a bunch of other things is getting me close to barfing in pure terror.

That is all.

Thanks and I'm sorry.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 8:55 AM on August 16, 2018


All we ever said was "hey, maybe we should stop being shitty to people". We've never tried to take anything away from anyone.

For some people suggesting any sort of regulation — even self-regulation on their part — is experienced as an attack on their autonomy. That’s a pattern that shows up around age 3; not everyone moves past it.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:46 PM on August 16, 2018


Feeling like a good way to celebrate Free-Press-is-Not-My-Enemy Day is to finally pony up for a reasonably priced subscription to my local paper instead of using workarounds when I exceed my article limit.

Feel free to steal this idea.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:51 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


Except that my local paper used Free-Press-is-Not-My-Enemy Day to attack the press. If you can't get past their pay-wall, here is the gist:
What the president really means, perhaps, is that the current press in the U.S., often, is his enemy. And he is right about that. Much of the press has been at war with Mr. Trump since his first day in office. In fact, some members of the press have acted as part of Mr. Trump’s political opposition, or the resistance. Some have agitated for the end of his time in office since that first day.

This, too, is unprecedented. And the loss of detachment, of professionalism and of perspective on the part of so much of the press, as regards Mr. Trump, has badly hurt the press.

The credibility of American journalism has suffered. Too many of us joined a side.
Annoyingly, I've just resubscribed to that that rag a few weeks ago. They do some really good local reporting but their editorial page is worse than the WSJ.
posted by octothorpe at 8:55 AM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


hey you know what is fun what is fun is when your landlord tries to illegally evict you from your rent-controlled apartment. it is a total blast. I would recommend it to anyone.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:40 AM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm housesitting right now at a house with a couple Alexas, and I just got her to say "1984 is knocking at your door."
posted by aniola at 10:30 AM on August 18, 2018


I want a pill that will allow me to temporarily exist as a consciousness-free entity, a philosophical zombie going about doing all of the incredibly stressful shit I have to deal with without actually experiencing it. Maybe turn off my consciousness for two months or so then let me check back in and see if I want to leave my consciousness on or turn it off again.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 7:21 PM on August 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


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