…but someone just offered me $140 cash (they started at $100, and went up when I said “oh HELL naw”) just to put a paid “guest editorial” on this site.
I refused it, despite being in a way financially where I could really use that kinda dough for nothin’.
(To be clear, the person who contacted me was very polite, professional, not pushy even when they raised their offer and just doing their job, so thank you, if you’re reading this, for that.)
I’ve got some small, legacy examples of referral things on this site that I just haven’t killed yet. I killed a couple that were on the Help A Brother Out page just now, along with finally changing the donation button over to WePay. I do have a Dreamhost referral link on that page, but Dreamhost have put up with me for ages and done so with a smile, so I don’t have a problem with that as long as their usual service continues on par with what I’ve experienced so far. If it ever changes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it did in this merger-crazy world, I’ll adjust my sails accordingly and let you all know, loudly.
I swore off full-on ads on my sites (not just this one) a ways back, and it feels good. When you accept ads, you’re basically staking your name and reputation on someone else’s bullshit, and a lot can go wrong there. It also puts you in a position where you may need to self-censor, and I don’t even have to tell you how I feel about that.
A somewhat related story I don’t mind sharing (and may have told before at some point, so forgive me if I’m repeating myself), just because of the ridiculousness and sheer hypocrisy of it: as some astute hairy-palmed readers of this site may remember, I was using AdBrite as an ad provider for a while many years ago. Suddenly, one day, they replaced all of the non-adult ads they were serving me with porn ads. I didn’t want that. I wanted a mix of adult and non-adult content, since not everyone who reads my site does so because they’ve come here looking for smut. Well, in conversation with Philip Kaplan, the founder of AdBrite, he told me that he was unwilling to do that anymore, since it put his non-adult customers at risk of being seen as advertising on adult sites (apparently, his database programmers hadn’t wrapped their head around the idea of a non-binary solution to ad serving; I don’t know if they have yet…), and some of these clients were very big-money. Disney were namedropped at this point. Continuing on, Mr. Kaplan actually suggested to me that, if I wanted to use AdBrite’s services the way I wanted to, changing my site’s name might be a good idea. Now, I’m not sure if Philip Kaplan’s name rings a bell to any of you, but outside of programming circles and Web insider circles, he’s perhaps best known by his pseudonym, Pud, as the founder of the web site FuckedCompany. Yes, if you’re keeping score, the FuckedCompany guy, a guy who made his bones on a dirty word and actually had to fight for it himself if memory serves, told the My Big, Black Cock guy to change his site’s name, because it wasn’t Disney-friendly enough. I’ll leave you all to draw your own conclusions there, and Pud, if you’re reading this, I do still have the messages saved, so don’t even try to front.
Some may ask how donations differ from advertising payments and I say this: in the case of a donation, people are giving me money to continue not giving a fuck, because that’s what I do and their support suggests that they want me to continue doing it. That’s implied to be part of the transaction, just by the nature of the site (and its operator) that they’re donating toward. I may actually make that explicit on the donation page at some point soon.
Beyond that, I’ve actually got a lot of work to do on this site soon. Many things need to be cleaned up, upgraded and so forth. I don’t think I’m changing the very old web site theme I’ve used for the past decade (just because I’m as amused as all get-out that I use the same theme that both The Ultimate Warrior and the sadly-gone-but-not-forgotten Way To Suck That Dick used at various points), but a lot about this site needs to be upgraded.
Then, of course there’s that small matter of me actually writing anything of substance on it, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone else tell my story for me, and use that story explicitly to sell stuff I don’t use and you probably don’t need.
As I do every year, and have for over a decade now, I’d like to provide you with the information necessary to tell those cocksuckers what you really think of their fucking holiday.
Here’s their email contact form. They also have live chat available via their home page, Mon-Fri 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM ET and Sat-Sun 12:00 PM to 9:00 PM ET. I bet that could be a real hoot.
If you have suggestions for customer service emails/phone numbers of companies that belong in my annual announcement (I actually like florists and flowers, so I usually give them a pass), let me know.
Have fun!
P.S. Yes, I’m still fucking alive. No, I haven’t updated this site since November. Shame on me. I will have to give myself spankies for it. Starting to brainstorm on what the Cock means in ’13. Stay tuned.
“The fear-mongering is out in full force for this storm next week. The science is worth paying attention to here, though. Time to get ready.”
-Me, 10/26/2012
The following is a compilation of my more relevant Facebook status updates (well, as relevant as those get, anyway) during the time period since Hurricane Sandy first hit weather radar. It’s presented in chronological order from oldest to newest. There will be editorial comments next to some entries. I hop back and forth from dead serious to completely off-color and ridiculous, because that’s just what I do. Viewer discretion is advised.
For more information on the storm, or to figure out where you can help out with the aftermath, go here.
10/28/2012:
“OK, there’s a storm a-comin’. Who wants to come over and cuddle with a motherfucker?”
“In other fun news, a reporter asks Bloomberg about prisoner safety at Riker’s: “Don’t worry about them getting out.” Nice guy.”
“Whew, almost made a huge oversight in my storm prep! “Reign In Blood” on iPod now. Crisis averted.”
“So, what’s more likely to be left standing, New York after Sandy or San Francisco after the Giants win?” (San Francisco fared a *little* better on this front, I reckon.-Editor)
Tim Pool did and is still doing a great job of covering Sandy and its aftermath. He also shacked up with a group of people who did some great storm prep:
“Drinkers, drink whenever someone on the news or The Weather Channel says “unprecedented” and you’ll have alcohol poisoning in an hour!”
“Oh, Gary. As an aside, though I’d need to find someone who’s the perfect height and get the shot before Gary flips his shit, I really, really want to take a picture that looks like someone’s blowing The Hulk one of these days.”
The “SandysHurricane” Twitter account was short-lived, but lasted long enough for it to say “@MITTROMNEY YOU IS A BASIC BITCH.”
10/30/2012:
“I’m alive! House is OK, we’re all OK, shit is FUCKED UP in NJ, though. Pics in a minute. Internet still intermittent.”
Gary’s Hulk statue survived, too, and still stands:
Some of Keyport, NJ wasn’t so lucky, though, as I saw the morning after the storm…
This is the Steamboat Dock Museum, or about half of it, anyway. The gentleman we talked to who was associated with the museum estimated an 80-90% loss of their historical archives.
This is, or was the Bayside Grill, once the Bayside Tavern (or, to its regulars, “The Bucket”) in Keyport, NJ. It was the bar that my father more or less pissed his marriage and his family away in. While I feel for the people who own it now, as well as the current regulars, I will not miss driving past the place as it was, looking at it as it looked and thinking about it.
Interesting story about this one. This ’56 Chevy was in a garage across the street from where it was photographed, behind a house. It was picked up by the water, floated out of the garage backwards, up a long, narrow driveway, across the street, and parallel parked itself. Damn shame about the car, it was a beaut, but some of where things ended up after this storm, and how they got there is incredible.
10/31/2012:
“Morning report: hearing that power’s back in parts of Slayerville/Parlin and Tinton Falls so far. Nothin’ here, but I did see what looked like an unmarked power co. truck in my hood, sneaky fuckers. I’m on foot today, as my car battery decided to die overnight after I listened to the radio for a few before going in the house last night. Email, msg or text if you can jumpstart, as AAA said FU. Will try to get a few local pics today.”
(I took an impromptu 7 mile walk around my town this day. Took almost no pictures, because it was all downed trees and power lines, pretty run-of-the-mill storm damage. Saw lots of houses where people engaged in very poor generator etiquette, running in broad daylight to power their big screen TVs, that sorta jazz. Nothing was powered by the grid this day, and power wouldn’t begin to get restored to my area en masse until 6 days later.-Editor)
11/03/2012:
“Awful joke alert:
So, Tuesday, I was in Keyport with my mother, looking at storm damage and trying to gather info. At one point, looking out across the bay, it was quiet.
So, I leaned over to my mother, and, deadpan, in a shocked voice, I said…”Oh my god…”
“What?”, she replied.
“The World Trade Center is gone!”"
Took two pictures of an uprooted tree this day, to give people an idea of the force of the storm.
11/04/2012:
“In Staten Island with Allan. It is fucked here, but we’re doing what we can. Humbling doesn’t begin to cover it. If you know someone on the ground Near New Dorp Ave. who needs help, buzz me.”
“I didn’t take many pictures at all, didn’t feel it was my place to photograph a bunch of destroyed private residences, and I wanted to focus on the work. However, when I was taking a break after a few hours, this caught my attention. One picture is of the two bathrooms for volunteers at the end of New Dorp Ave. in Staten Island, where a great many of us were helping. The other fenced in, large assortment of bathrooms and the fancy, enclosed tent behind the Con Ed “No Trespassing” sign were for the bigwigs, as far as we could tell. I really wish I had a blind spot for inequity, but I can’t help but notice it these days.”
“I don’t wanna seem like the whole game is rigged, though. So many fantastic volunteers putting themselves in harm’s way for friends, family, neighbors and strangers. So many people who turned missing the marathon (maybe their only chance to run it) into a positive by helping us out. So many people cooking for the victims and volunteers alike. Even NYPD, exhausted as they all are, were a little nicer than usual today.”
“Throughout the affected areas, we’re gonna need so much help, for so long. Right now, more donations and volunteers than we know what to do with, but once this isn’t a headline anymore, it’s gonna be a long, tough struggle. Hearing 40,000 will need housing in NYC and Long Island alone, and that doesn’t get into NJ, CT, or anywhere else. A lot of people have nothing left. I helped an older man throw out practically his entire life today, and his was one house in a huge neighborhood full of the same story. Plan on helping, local charities if at all possible (even the cops spoke disparagingly about the Red Cross today) for a long time. People will need donations, sure, but they’re really going to need your time, effort and caring. Show the fuck up, or support the hell out of the people who do if you can’t.”
“It is also worth noting, however, that those of us helping really need to fucking pace ourselves. Allan and I did 3-4 hours of locating a person a friend was looking for (according to the neighbors, the whole family is fine, though we didn’t speak to them directly; left a message, though), clearing a playground with a whole bunch of marathoners, emptying a car full of supplies and clearing a house, with a whole lot of “wandering around looking to see where we were needed” in between”, and we’re both spent. I was totally willing to work myself down to a bloody stump, but Allan hurt his arm and honestly that was a wakeup call. I saw so many spent people who didn’t or couldn’t pace themselves, and we need to be in some shape to help them.”
We took one other picture on our way out of the neighborhood we went to in Staten Island…
Before I got there, I’d heard that Mile High Comics were offering to replace some comics for those who’d lost them in the storm, free of charge, and with free shipping. I saw these books on the curb of one family’s home and froze. They belonged to the father of the house, and he apparently loved them, but they got washed out. I gave his grown kids the address of Mile High’s site and told them about the deal. They’ve got a ton on their plates right now and who knows when or if they’ll get in touch, but they seemed happy to hear about the deal and thanked me. I also sent this picture to Mile High to give them some idea that this family’s claim would be legit. It seems like a trivial thing in the face of near-total loss of property, but something like a few funny books can get someone back on the road to feeling like a human being again.
“People of Earth: one more time, the Red Cross are hacks. I will get you the names of other charities that aren’t hacks. People have been posting them here and elsewhere today, too. When even NYPD, the most conventional motherfuckers in the room, talk shit about you in a disaster area that you’re actually present in, you’re doing it wrong. Do you not remember them doing an awful job after 9/11, Katrina, Haiti, etc.? Seriously, if you’re gonna send money to the Red Cross, you’d get better bang for your charity buck by buying Lindsay Lohan cocaine. I am not kidding.”
11/05/2012:
(Back in NJ, I voted early at the County Clerk’s office, since that was an option given to those who’d lost power in the storm as I had. To say that the setup in Middlesex County, NJ was some Jim Crow shit is a bit of an understatement. Ridiculously slow lines even on the third day of the office having time to refine the process, on the first day back to work for a lot of the people in it. Most of these folks on line had jobs that they could lose for being late, and couldn’t afford to lose, but most stuck it out while I was there, knowing how important this election was. People walking around with lists of polling places that were supposedly going to be open, knowing that we had a storm advisory in place that could’ve knocked the power out again at any minute, encouraging people who’d taken the time to show up to leave and go vote at their normal polling places. Really a sense that they were targeting people who were minorities or looked poor, too, and attitude from the employee who tried to convince me to leave despite my complex’s polling place being on generator power. It was not pretty, institutionalized racism and class war in action right before my very eyes. Back to the storm, though…)
“One more thing before I go wait on line to be disenfranchised: a lot of people said some very kind things about me yesterday and over the past few days. While it’s good to be appreciated, and while I don’t want to seem ungrateful, If you all can help it, please try to keep that to a minimum. I’m not doing anything special or great. I’m doing what we all should and can be doing every day, even when the whole fucking world isn’t falling apart. If you really want to show me gratitude for what I’m doing, don’t do it by typing compliments about me on Facebook, do it by helping other people. Ask your own friends lists, “Does anyone need anything?”, and keep asking. Thank you.”
(I stand by this. I haven’t really helped that much. I want to help much more, but there are limits to my resources and energy, limits that are below most people in a lot of ways. I’m doing what I can, though, and encouraging others to do the same, just as you should be doing.)
“Keansburg, NJ. I’m here. Melissa Joy Crawford is here. Governor Christie is about 20 feet away from me, for what it’s worth. There’s a lot of work to do here, though. Come help. I’m at the Joseph Bolger Middle School, 100 Palmer Place (off Palmer Ave./Main St.) and they have mountains of work to do. Back to it!”
(Bolger Middle School is still up and running. People were working in the cold and the dark the other day, and for the days before. They may have power now, but as we got a foot of snow dumped on us overnight, I can’t make it over there today. I had no idea that Governor Christie was going to be there until he walked onto the stage in the auditorium area where we’d been gathered about an hour into my volunteer time there. I’ve said plenty of bad things about the guy, meant them, and still mean them, but he’s working his ass off in this case, his heart’s in the right place, and he is one hell of a charismatic speaker when he wants to be and stays on a positive message.)
11/06/2012:
“OK, folks. I got 14 hours’ sleep overnight, and I feel just a little more human. I got some VERY bad news about my substation this morning, but potentially good news about the substations serving a few of my neighbor reading this (we may be on different grids, which is awesome for you, potentially, but not so much for me). I’ll try to track down hard facts on both today. I’ll also be devoting a lot of my day to getting you all up-to-date donation and volunteer info, particularly for those who want to make out of area donations to charities that aren’t royal clusterfucks. Oh, and one more thing for this update: VOTE! I did. You should too, if you haven’t yet, and even if you’re voting for who I didn’t vote for (all Dems except Menendez, who I don’t care for; voted Green in that race). This shit’s important. More in a few, still catching up on a day’s info.”
(The substation news was just a rumor, and we got power early in the evening this day. I also found out a ton about our power grid and local substations from the out-of-state electrical workers brought in to help, who were great guys. Probably not the best energy security policy, telling residents what they did, but it put a lot of minds at ease.)
“To continue on our vague trajectory toward me answering the “where should I send money?” question in line with my beliefs, aside from Monmouth/Ocean Foodbank (go ahead there), start looking for people who help rebuild houses, infrastructure and public structures without getting all Jesusy.”
“Pro tip: if you’re going to a Starbucks or something to charge your devices during a power outage, ask before plugging it in, but bring a power strip so you’re not hogging that shit all to yourself.”
(I made a lot of people happy on Tuesday by bringing a surge bar with me.)
11/07/12:
“Apologies and happy birthday wishes to everyone whose birthdays I missed during the apocalypse.”
“Thoughts on digital concierge service at Sandy aid centers? Basically folks who can help victims cover their online needs. Is this a thing?”
“The Inkwell Coffee House and their staff are OK, and (this storm permitting) they’re planning on re-opening on Friday! FINALLY, word from them!”
“Chris Christie just gave the locusts a shout-out. Stop trying to get on my good side, bro.”
“I don’t wanna ever hear anyone say that Occupy “have no direction”/”don’t do anything” EVER AGAIN. They’re saving lives. What’s Mike doing?”
“Seriously, Mike Bloomberg, are you playing cards in the “undisclosed location” with Dick Cheney or something?”
“Through the magic of Google Maps and photo-editing software so I could rotate the grid in the image 60 degrees clockwise to a coherent position, here’s the area of Staten Island I was in on Sunday. We were parked in the lot just below where it says New Dorp High School. The person we checked on for a friend lived roughly a half mile from the high school. The playground we worked on is just below the corner of Cedar Grove and New Dorp and the Con Ed tent was just east of that in the picture (east of New Dorp, north of Cedar Grove near the roadway). If my brain’s working, the house we helped clean out was not too far from the corner of Marine and Finley. And, if I’m correct, every house from the water up to at least Mill Rd. sustained interior flood damage, most of it total or near-total on the “personal property” side. The personal lives of virtually every person in every house west of New Dorp Lane and south of Mill Road was on the curb, if they had found a team of people to help them put it there. The actual structures were hit and miss.”
11/08/12:
“Hey, everyone! There’s a bunch of snow on the ground! What the fuckin’ shit?”
Just read this, wasn’t awake to see it unfortunately and I haven’t watched a video yet to see what UN reaction was.
As for his comments on Obama and his administration, they’re right on fucking point, but I still believe that we live in such a scary world right now that the man and the administration he speaks of are actually our best chance of any kind of social progress.
If you still want to vote Green or Libertarian or Vermin Supreme or whatever, fine, it’s your right and I respect it, but if you find that Romney and Ryan (who are both on record as saying they’d continue many of the same anti-free expression policies and the drone strikes, in addition to the other scary shit they want to do) and their cronies are as fucking terrifying as I do, you think that a mentally and politically incompetent Commander-In-Chief was bad enough when his name was Bush, and if you feel that you’d still like some minute chance of being able to reason with the federal government while you’re rallying support for a BETTER federal government in 2016 (because, I’m sorry, but you’re just not gonna get Jill Stein elected in 6 weeks when most of America’s never heard of her unless she releases “Gangnam Style II” or something), then you’re probably going to want to vote for Obama.
With that said, this speech is a tale of two men who, despite some pretty glaring misgivings, some of us are putting an awful lot of faith in. I really hope that neither of them fuck that up any worse than they have already.
Edit: it’s also worth noting, if you hadn’t heard yet, that Julian Assange and Wikileaks are officially considered enemies of the United States of America as of today.
I thought it would be just a little different this year. Hoped, really.
I thought that, because I’d heard almost nothing about it in the days and even hours leading up to it, people might give it at least a bit of a rest. After all, it wasn’t a “big”, emotionally charged anniversary. That one, the 10th anniversary (Americans love round numbers), was last year, and even that was quieter than expected, maybe because people were finally 9/11ed out, maybe because the guy widely accepted as being the mastermind behind the attacks got shot in the face a few times a few months prior, or maybe because folks could start to see a new building poking up from the New York skyline. Maybe this would be the year that people would stop picking at the scab.
Don’t get me wrong, the scab is always tempting. It itches. It’s ugly. It’s an obstruction. It also always looks like it will heal sooner or better if you just give it that one last scratch. Learning to leave it alone has been a lifelong battle for me, and judging by the state of both my middle fingers right now (I’m a nervous picker), not one I’m winning.
We weren’t talking about my scabs, though. We were talking about AMERICA’S scab.
Did people leave it alone this year?
You know the answer to that already, if you were near a television or the Internet yesterday.
Of course they didn’t.
I don’t know if it was sense memory (identical weather near New York on a Tuesday) or what, but as soon as the clock struck 12, it started. America’s annual Halloween Spirit store of grief opened for business right on time. Honestly, in a lot of cases I saw, that’s what it felt like, and what it always feels like to me. Grief cosplay. It’s the one day on the American calendar where people can take their pain related to a particular event and make it a whole lot sluttier than usual.
This isn’t to say that some peoples’ grief isn’t real, not by a long shot. I know people who were there. I know people who lost family, friends and neighbors. I met one guy who took the morning of September 11th off to run errands, and as a result, is the only person still alive from an office of over 30 people. Within about a degree or two of my acquaintance, people attended a lot of fucking funerals.
As far as I am aware, I have not personally lost anyone as a result of the events of September 11th, not yet anyway. I’m sure this “disqualifies” me from speaking about this subject in the eyes of some people (there are rules, after all), but since those people already don’t think my opinion counts, then it also won’t count if I call them ridiculous, self-centered, and arrogant for acting at times like their losses give them a monopoly on grief, or on how people choose to grieve. I have lost people before, and I understand that it has this way of making you think your pain is bigger than the rest of the world’s, but it never excuses it.
So, back to that “not yet, anyway” from the last paragraph: I know one guy, nicest guy you’ll ever meet, who suffers like hell from diseases he got from being in lower Manhattan during and after the attack, and a bunch of other folks who are in the high-risk category to eventually develop illnesses (some of them terminal) due to their prolonged exposure to the toxins that were in the air after the World Trade Center fell. One of the people in that high-risk category is my sister, who I’m after pretty regularly to get checkups and stay on top of her health in light of this. Of course, plenty of those folks have had to fight tooth and nail to even have their illnesses acknowledged, never mind taken care of. You see, insurance companies don’t want to pay for them. Our government doesn’t really want to pay for them, either, and since insurance companies could be considered part owners of the U.S. government by this point…well, do the math. This happened on Monday, almost 11 years after the fact, and far too late for many of the people affected.
Why were many of these people exposed to these lethal toxins? Apparently, from what I saw, because “the terrorists would win” if the financial industry was disrupted for too long. Stocks and bonds were deemed to be worth substantially more than the lives and well-being of the people who trade them for a living. Man, even the Soviet-era Russians gave up the ghost on the status quo after a few days when Chernobyl happened, but no, we couldn’t do that. We had to keep the rich folks getting richer and show how tough we were by throwing more bodies on the pile, plenty of which weren’t dead yet.
Did we ever get the people behind the attacks (besides the ones who, you know, killed themselves actually making the attacks), though? Yes, Osama Bin Laden’s dead. Just about anyone who realistically had a goddamn thing to do with him, the hijackers, or anyone who knew them on that level is either dead or in a cell in Cuba eating cockmeat sandwiches. There are a few exceptions, but eventually, sooner than later, they’ll attend a wedding or a funeral and a drone airplane will open fire on it. That’s happened a bunch in recent years.
I wonder if the survivors of these wars and those attacks or their families have a day like 9/11 in their countries yet.
I wonder what their Facebook walls look like, if they have them.
Are we making progress in any other parts of “the healing process”? Yes, there’s a new, ugly building just about done being constructed in The Big Hole In The Ground. It looks like one of those buildings in Dubai that I’ve seen pictures of, where all the rich folks of the world (including our rich folks) go to party. Funny how that works.
See?
Just below that building, there’s a new memorial open to the public. Sort of. From what I gather, it’s actually easier to get into the Guantanamo Bay detention facility than it is to get into the 9/11 Memorial and make it through a visit without being harassed. You need to get “tickets to 9/11″ (as someone, sadly I forget who, overheard some tourists saying in New York recently). You need to provide all sorts of information to the people running it. You need to display “your papers” at all times while visiting it. I haven’t visited it yet (though I’m thinking of doing so soon, just so I can experience this on a firsthand basis), but from everything I’ve read about it, it sounds more like a shrine to a rising police state than to fallen Americans.
If you want a better look at that police state, without getting a “ticket to 9/11″, just watch news coverage (if you can find any) of the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street this coming Monday. You should see a lot of people from all walks of life getting the holy hell beaten out of them by the police officers who’ve taken the place of “the brave heroes who gave their lives on September 11th”, a few blocks away from the World Trade Center, just for the crime of asking for a fair, equitable society.
Well, it seems that we’ve come full circle to anniversaries. Can we talk about a few others in relatively recent history?
Pearl Harbor: foreign attack on what’s now considered American soil, nearly as high a body count as 9/11, and it also finally kicked our asses into a world war, which led to a much greater body count. Yet, I’ve been alive for 38 years out of the 71 since that attack, and I’ve never seen the entire country STOP to “honor America” for the survivors or their families on December 7th. Hell, we barely close stores on Veterans Day and Memorial Day anymore, even though we keep adding veterans and keep losing them in wars.
Jonestown, which I’d imagine ripped San Francisco apart in a way similar to what 9/11 did to New York? Nope. No national day of mourning and reflection there. Best we sweep that one under the rug. After all, a white guy was behind all that, and hey, he was a Reverend, too! How do we explain that to the kids we’re trying to indoctrinate?
Waco? With that piss-poor body count? Please. Not even the killing of that most sacred of being, the unborn child (2 pregnant women died in the assault on the compound), could make us care about 76 people being burned alive by our own government on live television, because we were told that they were bad people. Bill Hicks had some pretty strong opinions on this, but of course, he’s not around to campaign for round-the-clock coverage of the Waco anniversary, nor would he if he were, because Bill was sane and decent.
Oklahoma City? Man, that was 2 white guys. We can’t let people get upset about that over and over again! We gave the locals a basketball team to shut ‘em up. Moving on…
Seeing a pattern here? (I mean, aside from “the guy writing this is a jerk”. I’m willing to take that if what I write wakes a few people up.)
I think there are three forces at play where the rather gross overmemorialization of 9/11 is concerned:
2. Racism and other assorted forms of xenophobia. This event painted a target on the second biggest religion, in a country where most of the extremists practice the biggest religion. (No, not American football or money, at least not exclusively.) That “biggest religion” had a huge power grab in progress before this happened, but this was an event they could point to and say “See? Those people aren’t just practicing a different faith than ours, they’re THE ENEMY!” to people who’d probably never even met a Muslim.
3. The vanity and selfishness of rich, mostly white baby boomers, the group most heavily and directly affected by the attacks. Let’s face it, after World War II, a lot of soldiers settled in the Levittowns and such around New York City, and had kids that became the stockbrokers killed in the attacks and the media moguls who did business with them. A lot of the world’s power in both finance and news media is concentrated in a few square miles of Manhattan, as a result. Those kids grew up into adulthood with parents who’d just “won” a world war, parents who were referred to as “The Greatest Generation”. If you don’t think they’re going to tell *their* story, for better or worse, or that they grew up feeling at least a little more entitled than the average person, then you’re obviously not human or paying attention.
None of the other rather tragic events I named had the perfect storm of these three factors, and given how things have played out with them in play, I guess we can actually be sorta thankful for that.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m self-aware. I suppose it’s pretty vain of me to write a couple thousand words in the middle of the night, loosely about how 9/11 makes me feel (as a guy who has not yet lost anyone from the attacks), and to expect folks to read it or care. But, well, I have and I will tell you how I feel anyway. I’m mad as hell, but not for the reasons I’m “supposed to be”. I’m mad that, in the aftermath of these attacks, the country I live in has made a complete transformation into the country we were never supposed to be. We were fearless, and now we’re afraid. We weren’t free, but we were a freer place and now we’re profoundly less so. We kept telling ourselves that we were “the good guys” and occasionally we were right despite how we treated those who were on this land before us, otherAmericancitizens and people abroad. Even that, we’ve pretty much given up on, and have stopped even pretending to have anymoralhighground. These things are my “loss”, and why I grieve.
There is one more thing that makes me both angry and sad, though. The person I’m closest with that experienced the World Trade Center attacks? The one who was MIA for a few hours while her family waited to hear from her? The one who had to run from the collapse and the debris cloud, managed to get to the Staten Island Ferry, bum a ride across Staten Island from a co-worker, walk across the fucking Outerbridge because it was closed to car traffic and hitchhike the rest of the way home by 1 PM? The one who, at last count, still had her dust-covered shoes in a Ziploc in her closet? She’s told me that, every time she hears someone say “NEVER FORGET”, she kind of wants to punch them, because all she wants to do is forget that day, and no one, not even the people who were there and understand that no one should’ve had to experience and re-experience that day, will let her. (Hell, I’ll probably hear shit from her for making her “part of the story”, as it were.)
Folks, for the good of her and people like her, will you please accept that it’s OK for some people to “forget” certain things and live their lives?
Welcome to the 11th Annual Motherfucker Day, motherfuckers. For you motherfuckers who are late to the party, here is the story of Motherfucker Day, as it was written on this day in 2002:
“From this day forth, September 11th will be known to all people as “Motherfucker Day”. Motherfucker Day honors the word “motherfucker” as one of humanity’s greatest contributions to planet Earth.
To observe Motherfucker Day, all one needs to do is say “motherfucker” at the end of every sentence, or at least every sentence that you remember to end it with. For instance, “Can you please pass the salt, motherfucker?” Or, “I love you, motherfucker.”
You can also put up banners that say “motherfucker” at your home, workplace, school, or place of worship; write the word “motherfucker” on walls everywhere (if you get busted, simply tell the police “I’m no criminal, motherfucker!” They’re sure to understand, and let you go.); and, if you’re so inclined and they’re consenting, feel free to go ahead and fuck someone’s mother. Hell, they could probably use it. This is just a short list of ways to celebrate Motherfucker Day, and is by no means complete. If you can think of another way to celebrate Motherfucker Day, feel free to do it, and certainly feel free to tell us about it here!
That’s all for now. Hopefully, by issuing this decree to all of humanity, I’ve done something to make an otherwise ordinary day feel just a little more special and festive. Spread the word! Tell a friend! September 11th is Motherfucker Day! Enjoy your new holiday, motherfucker!”
I think that last one was just visible evidence of Modern World Fatigue. Things are very fragile and unstable in the world right now, and while they have the potential to be brilliant, they could also turn to complete and utter shit in a heartbeat. Maybe the world’s always been like this, I don’t know, but it feels more pronounced these days and it does get to me sometimes.
Anyway, I’m kind of not sure what to do with this site at the moment. I’m in a period of “I have several domains. What should I put where?”, so there hasn’t been a ton of activity at any of them lately. I don’t get a ton of comments here, but if you could, let me know what you think of when you think of things that I’d post on My Big, Black Cock. It might help me get a clearer picture of how this site’s perceived. I’m not huge on doing what the nice focus groups tell me to, but I am always grateful when people give me insight into how they look at what I do.
I’m lost, I’m tired and I’m broke. I’m far from giving up but I’m not even sure what I’m trying to succeed at doing. I’m simultaneously amazed and encouraged by the future happening before our eyes and totally horrified by actions and ideals of the cruel, ruthless bastards seeking to destroy it. I’m lonely, but I don’t know how to begin to explain who I am and what I’m about to new people, and I almost never meet people who I don’t have to explain it to. Really, I don’t have the energy to explain it. I also don’t actually know who I am and what I’m about anymore. I keep trying to figure out what the best use of my time, energy and imagination is, and keep falling well short of it. I don’t forget that being alive, and being able to sit in a relatively comfortable chair, in a quiet, relatively safe house with modern conveniences while I type this out makes me very fortunate, but I also feel like I could be doing much more, and don’t have very much peace of mind about what’s come before this moment or what the remaining moments of my life, however many there’ll be, will hold for me. I have been sober for 14 years and two days as of right now, but I still feel that need to numb myself from the pain and exasperation of day-to-day life all the time. I recognize it for what it is (a fairly common gut reaction to mental, physical and emotional stress) and never give into it, but I do still get nagged by it all the damn time. I sleep sometimes, not because I’m tired, but just because I don’t know what else to do.
Just a quick statement of the obvious, brought to you by an iced coffee a little too late in the evening:
We live in a world where, if we so desire, we can get up-to-the-minute Olympics coverage from Samuel L. Jackson, breaking news from The Iron Sheik and 24 hour a day live news video coverage from justaboutanyone, anywhere.
Most of us carry around some manner of Star Trek shit or another like it’s no big deal. It is a big deal. It’s going to sound trite, but I’ve owned an iPad for almost a year, and I’m still not jaded yet.
Yes, the 20th century is having one violent motherfucker of a death rattle and trying like hell to take the 21st with it, but it’s not going to work.
It never works.
We are going to win.
It’s just going to take a little more imagination and some hard work.
These are some early morning thoughts, so bear with me if they don’t all congeal properly.
It hasn’t happened overnight, and it’s not at all unexpected, but after a few years’ experience with it, I can tell you that it’s true that people treat you much differently when you’re openly dealing with mental illness than they do when you’re in the closet about it like everyone else. There’s this weird mixture of kid gloves, pity, distance. and this weird, almost funereal reverence for your potential as a human being on the “good” days. On the bad ones, which usually happen when you piss someone off by still being strong enough to speak your mind and stand behind it, you get hit with demeaning comments usually having to do with medication or your state of mind. There really isn’t much in between.
Again, not shocked. I was told by plenty of folks beforehand that this would be the score. This isn’t an indictment of anyone specific, either, just a general observation about people and how they treat me differently now. I’m also developing a little more empathy as a result of this, or trying like hell to develop it, anyway. I’m not always fantastic at not being impulsive, especially not in situations involving things I believe in passionately, and sometimes, my compassion is a casualty of that. Workin’ on it, and in the process, developing an understanding of how some other people I’ve known have probably felt in situations that resemble mine in some way.
Maybe it’s that, because I have very little else going on in my life aside from mental illness at the moment (at least relative to times past for me, and relative to the people I know), my discussion of it is dominating my narrative and creating something of a self-fulfilling prophecy in these areas. I won’t deny that I talk about these things a lot, because truthfully, I’m not exactly knee deep in anything else. I’m not working, I’m not going to school, I’m not creating or raising a family, nor am I in any kind of a romantic relationship. While I have some things in the works that I’m picking at very slowly, I’m not even really in the middle of creating art, music or literature.
I’ve found, over the course of my time as a adult or a dumb kid pretending to be one, that there’s a sort of conversational inertia that exists in social situations when you don’t have something to brag about. That’s basically all that most people want to hear or can handle in day-to-day, less than intimate discussion, stories of our conquests. Discussions of our belief systems are disasters waiting to happen, and the only thing that seems to be worse than bad news in light conversation is no news at all. I’m in a cycle (assuming that these things are cyclic) where real, lasting “conquests” are few and far between, and the other stuff (beliefs, bad news or no news at all) kinda dominates when people ask me how I am or what I’m doing. I spend a great deal of time inside my own head these days, more than usual, so that’s naturally what I end up talking about, even when I’d like to just talk to you about how awesome things are in my world. I’d love it if they were, consistently, but for now, I’ve gotta play the hand I’ve been dealt, and I’m doing the best I can..
I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this, exactly (remember, early morning thoughts), but I’m going to extend an invitation while I’m thinking out loud. If you are someone who, in talking to me, dealing with me on any kind of a regular basis, or just in reading things like I’ve just written, finds yourself frustrated, disappointed, angry, sad, or just plain uncomfortable with any facet of who I am and what I’m going through, let’s talk about it, privately or publicly, whatever’s most comfortable for you. This offer is doubly extended to anyone reading this who has a strong gut feeling that I’ve control over these circumstances that I’m just not exercising. (I wish that I shared your confidence in my ability to do so, but we can discuss that further when we talk.) I know that I’m a pain in the ass sometimes, and have been for the entire time I’ve known any of you, whether I’ve been open about my mental illness, in denial about it, sober, drunk, high, clean, whatever. I’ve just felt lately that it’s all been very “elephant in the room”, even if the elephant isn’t my mental illness but rather an increasing discomfort with the amount of time I spend and detail I go into about it. If you feel that way, or if you’re leaving anything else unsaid because you don’t think anything good will come from telling me how you feel, I’d love for you to talk to me about it. Thanks in advance.
If I start using this space more regularly to discuss how I feel about the issues facing humanity, rather than just giving you a once-every-few-months update on my mental health, would you give a rat’s ass?
By “give a rat’s ass”, I mean “read what I write, participate in the discussions, and even throw a few much-needed bucks in the donation jar from time to time so I can buy suppositories, Zagnut bars and a few Archie comics when I’m gettin’ low”.
My corner of the world, at least the part of it that I’m aware of, and even the part of it that thinks I’m completely full of shit, seems to think there’s a market for this sort of high-octane, bully pulpit kinda business. I’m not entirely convinced that I’d bang some serious Nielsens or Alexas (come to think of it, I’ve never banged anyone named Alexa; any volunteers?), but what the fuck else am I doing besides playing iPad solitaire, rummaging through old pieces of paper that I’ve hoarded for decades in search of My Story, and yelling at people on Facebook for spitting in the face of reason? I might as well at least move that back to the home office and stop making Zuckerberg so much goddamn money.
You probably don’t know, either. I mean, you might, but chances are, you don’t.
I do get the vibe (from most widely-circulated accounts, which I freely admit can be faulty) like he’s, at the least, kind of a jerkoff to women, which sucks and which I totally can’t get behind. That’s not illegal, but it does suck and I hope he changes things up moving forward, if this has been the case in the past.
This doesn’t even get into the damage he’s done to legitimate causes by giving them this kind of ammunition (“The people who challenge our government are BAD GUYS!”), if there is, in fact, any truth whatsoever to the accusations being levelled at him, and even if he knowingly put himself into situations that could be leveraged against him and Wikileaks despite not doing any of what he’s being accused of. When you’re taking on the world, you can’t be careless.
Regardless of all of this (and because I’m a reasonable person, “all of this” is a big hurdle for me to get past), I just can’t get behind the worldwide dump that’s being taken on Julian Assange’s right to fair legal treatment, and on due process in the name of protecting the ugly, corrupt, paid-for status quo, which really doesn’t like the idea of a guy airing out their dirty laundry. They’re doing this to Assange (and to Bradley Manning) to scare off the next person who’s thinking about blowing the whistle.
They don’t give a fuck about the 2 women who’ve made the claims they have, or about any other women who might not have come forward.
From what I can tell, the people behind this whole deal don’t much give a fuck about women in general.
They just want to shut up the “troublemakers” who are hurting their bottom line, and keep doing whatever disgusting shit they were doing before Collateral Murder or any of the other leaks happened.
That’s what this is about, in case you’re just waking up from a medically induced coma or something.
And that’s why I’m against what’s happening to Julian Assange right now and support him in his continued battle against several of the world’s governments, even if I’m really not so sure what kind of dude he is otherwise.
If he did bad shit in Sweden, fuck him for doing it, and he should absolutely, 100%, you bet your ass be punished for it, in Sweden.
He should not, however, be subject to extradition to the U.S. for trumped up, bullshit charges that everyone’s admitted couldn’t stick in a legitimate court of law. None of this NDAA, PATRIOT Act “enemy combatant” shit like they’re doing to Bradley Manning. One set of charges, which he faces without threat of extradition for kangaroo court scumbaggery, and that’s it.
So, world, how about actually following the laws of several different lands, transparently, in the course of exploring whether or not he did anything illegal?
I think that’d be a refreshing change from how you usually do business.
My Big, Black Cock is the story of Scott Crawford, the funniest man alive. (They killed the last one.) It's been some other stuff, too. Look around, you'll find it. The site confuses, disappoints and alienates a lot of people who come here via Google searches for "black cock", but let's face it, these folks are no strangers to confusion, disappointment and alienation. Anyway, enjoy.
