Completely Zucked by the Surveilance Economy

I'll readily admit that my knowledge of American history (particularly when it comes to the oppression of BiPOC) is a little sketchy in places. So I conflated Juneteenth (the fact that certain places didn't emancipate slaves for 2.5 years after they should have) with the Tulsa massacre. However, I hope it counts for something (however small) that I at least knew it was something horrific to do with racist and oppressive BS, that noone in their right mind would be so callous or insensitive to wish anyone hapiness/celebration while remembering that. I wonder how many white Americans can honestly say the same. It seems that I am at least one step ahead of them. Most just take what they learned in K-12 and accept it as the whole truth. K-12, though? That strikes me as a class for advanced students. It seems to me that the average American isn't much more intelligent/educated than the average K-9. (It's one of the reasons why I'm proud to not be an American.)

Too Little, Too Late

Honestly, more white Americans know the history today than did a month ago, and more knew last summer than did the year before, which is definitely … something in the right direction?

Yeah, it's fucking sad, and infuriating, though. Your schools don't teach you this shit, or about Tulsa, or about Rosewood, or Rosa Parks, or about the legacy of lynching, or anything much beyond "slavery was really bad and then we fought a war to get rid of it and then it was mostly better and then Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech and made it all the way better". (Sometimes it's even worse. I know someone who had a friend who grew up in the South and though he admittedly didn't pay a ton of attention in history — with no serious repercussions because he's white — it was at least into his twenties before he realized that the Confederacy lost. He thought that they must have been fighting to end slavery instead of keep it! I mean, how problematic and appalling is that?!)

You don't teach kids about indigenous genocide, either. They don't learn about how their government has (sometimes quite literally) stabbed them (and the first nation's people) in the back over and over again. Growing up, I didn't learn about how Lincoln ordered the largest mass hanging in US history, executing 38 people who had fought because they were starving as a result of their lands being stolen (not just their original lands but part of what they had been forced onto, too) — and that a bunch of the names we saw everywhere like Ramsey and Sibley were dudes who were heavily involved in that "conflict", but I was taught the gist of the attrocities committed by men like Custer when the West was lost.

Your shit's fucked up from top to bottom and side to side.

Your whole education system is garbage, not just your History. Your countrymen (collectively) can't spell, have poor reading comprehension, struggle to identify their own country on a map (never mind anyone else's), are still stuck in the 1960 as far as race relations go, have no grasp of basic Physics or Biology, lobby against teaching evolution in schools (as opposed to Creationism), ad infinitum, ad tedium … Yet I, an individual from a Third World country, have a better education (Cambridge syllabus) than the average individual from what is allegedly The Greatest Country in The World™ Hmm … Something doesn't add up here (but then again, my country's Maths literacy is a known weakness). #JustSaying

Honestly, if my country of origin was one that once housed the thousands of minds that successfully worked out and executed the challenge of going from near-Earth orbit to manually landing a craft on the moon and getting it back to Earth without incident in less than a decade (using technology less powerful/accurate than the average pocket calculator, nog al); a feat so statistically improbable as to be practically impossible … to this sordid state of affairs, I would either retreat to the backwoods and whittle while seriously contemplating my ancestors' poor life choices or I would dilligently apply myself to getting a proper education through online courses. I certainly wouldn't run my mouth about how great my nation is when it's clearly appallingly and embarrassingly backward. Only an idiotic, ignorant, arrogant motherfucker does that. This is far beyond something rotten in the state of Denmark. So yeah, I'm very much anti-American and I'm definitely not ashamed of it.

Now, I realise, of course, that generalisations are generally wrong and not every American is an illiterate and poorly-educated backwoods hillbilly, but fuck me, the smart ones are needles in the haystack (and it's a very big haystack).

Perhaps if your government spent as much on mitigating its education, housing, medical aid (health insurance), unemployment and potable water shortage crises as it does on exploring the Universe and persecuting/murdering BIPOC (particularly non-Christian ones) around the world while claiming to be "liberating" them of anything other than natural resources (particularly gold, diamonds, oil and tungsten) and their lives while foisting cheap crap on them, I might not be such a harsh critic. But don't mind me; I'm just an anti-consumerism anarchist with no idea of how the world really works.

Having worked for some morally bankrupt organisations myself, I'm certainly in no position to criticise, but I do think it's at least a little hypocrytical for someone who worked for Baby Killers International to wish BIPOC a restive and peaceful Juneteenth.

The idea that it's made a holiday is all well and good, but the government still allows cops to murder minorities. It's a consolation prize and a hollow one at that. Not teaching why it's even a holiday in the first place is all sorts of problematic, but only in America. The government has been scared to death of its people (all of them) since the 60s (which is a good thing). Now, they're seeing a lot more whites side with BIPOC than did back then. The only thing keeping them safe is their brainwashed right-wing. This is beyond disturbing.

The Greatest Country in the World

"We're The Greatest Country in the World™", you cry? Maybe sixty years ago you could broadly claim it was heading there and maintain a straight face (if you ignore a lot of problematic shit like abusing Oppenheimer's genius in order to commit war crimes). It certainly isn't any more. Why; what the fuck happened to a nation that used to be an inspiration? Well, you didn't just rest on your laurels; you destroyed them. Meanwhile, the rest of the world struggled and persevered to become what you once were. Unfortunately, we bought into the nightmare of consumerism and greed you packaged and sold to us as The American Dream™.

So, in short: Fuck you very much! Enjoy your fucked-up holiday. Coke (which used to containe cocaine), nutrient-devoid cardboard "food" and heart-attack-inducing "energy" drinks white America!

There lives a certain man in Russia around now. He is big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow. Most people look at him with terror and with fear, But to Moscow chicks he is such an anti-queer! He can read the law like a bigot, Full of ecstasy and fire, But he also is the kind of 'tator Against whom women conspire.

[Chorus]

Vla, Vla, Vlad Putin, Punisher of Russian "sins". There is a cat who really is gone! Vla, Vla, Vlad Putin, Russia's greatest hate machine. It is a shame how he carries on!

He rules the Russian land and thinks he is the Tsar, And the kazachok he dances really wunderbar! In all affairs of state, he is the man to please, But he is real bad when he has a band to jail. For Don Trump, he was no wheeler dealer, Though he'd heard the things he'd done. He believed he was a fine ally, Who would help him win.

[Chorus]

[Spoken] But when his drinking and lusting and his hunger For power became known to more and more people The demands to do something about this outrageous Man became louder and louder.

"This man's just got to go!", declared his enemies, And the LGBTQ begged, "Just you to do it, please!" No doubt this Vlad Putin had lots of hidden charms. Through police brutality, they just fell into jail cells.

[Chorus]

[Spoken] Oh, those Russians!

Mentally and spiritually, I have been homeless for nearly two decades. I have once again been threatened with eviction because I don't have enough money in my bank account to pay my rent or meet my car repayment and other loans. Each time it happens, things get worse and there's no negotiating.

This time around, though, I might call their bluff, because I was already being driven mad (quite literally) by the restrictions, manipulating and gass-lighting (being called a cold, uncaring self-centred, irrational, illogical, lazy, stupid, narcissistic and paranoid sociopath — enough to make a guy with self-esteem and motivation issues suicidal). What's changed is that now I've been banned from using, cleaning and/or performing any maintenance on any room in the house except my bedroom (including bathrooms and toilets), which was previously one of my responsibilities. I have to use outdoor ones/the old servants' quarters, which doesn't have a door on the bathroom. )I live in the southern hemisphere; it's winter here.) I'm not allowed to hang a curtain or take material to make one, so I use an old chlorine bucket in the passageway/corridor outside as an indicator that I'm in there. I'm not allowed to be out there past 21:00 and am not allowed to move my stuff to the servants' quarters or garage because they are being used as storage space for tools and, occasionally, as a home gym by/for my landlord. I'm also not allowed to use any tools or appliances (including vacuum, cleaners, brushes, brooms, dustpans and cloths), because no maintenance. Everything of mine that I don't keep hidden and locked away has been confiscated. Of that, everything that I bought myself has been discarded or claimed as belonging to my landlord and landlady. (My soap, of all things, was the first casualty, which is what tipped me off and prompted my buying locks for those things I could lock away.) I am also not financially able nor permitted to buy more tools, containers or locks (and replacements for those) since my finances are being scrutinised and my choices, decisions and purchases criticised.

My broom is a paintbrush, my dustpan a plastic shopping bag and my duster a roll of paper towel. My vacuum cleaner is a cardboard tube glued to a Pringles can with a PC fan inside. ... And they wonder why I've taken to doing DIY projects that repurpose recyclable household items ; how irrational of me ... Le sigh.

That means no fridge, kettle, microwave or stove. I also don't get cooked meals. That would be fine on its own if I weren't subject to restrictions. I live off powdered milk, coffee, cereal, peanut butter, marmite, bread, orange squash concentrate, syrup, biscuits and bananas. Sometimes, I skim a couple of tablespoons of yoghurt out of the container when they're not around, or dilute fruit juice with water at a ratio of about 1:3, just to have some variety/luxury. I had some meal replacement shake powder too, just to keep me from starving, but that's gone and I can't afford to replace it. If I ask for more, I'll have to pay it back; they keep track of everything they buy for me (including a bottle of vitamins) that I'll have to pay back if/when I get a job again. I already owe about $220. It was, of course, a big deal when I bought myself twelve beers on special for $9 the day I got paid for the first lot of contract work I'd done in nearly six months since losing my job, despite the guy underpaying me by just over $100 because I hadn't insisted on a written agreement and was in no position to haggle/negotiate; the last time I do favours for friends, especially those who're religious. (The fact that I'm rationing out the beers at one a week and am only on my sixth one next weekend doesn't have any relevance to my landlady, who tried to confiscate a couple with intent to give them to my landlord and made an almighty fuss about how selfish I was being when I said I'd be fine with sacrificing them if either of them had just asked for one, how she'd noticed my ex always bought the wine despite our having agreed on certain divisions of costs when we were together, and a whole lot of other irrelevant bullshit.)

I need help getting out before the end of June, assuming I find a job and somewhere to go by then. Otherwise, I'm quite likely to end up on the street or attempting to off myself again. Currently, I have no job, nowhere to go and not even enough money to buy a cheap bicycle for $175. Even if I take my car to a dealer who'll settle the balance of my loan with the bank, I get nothing for it because it's an old model which I haven't been able to afford to take better care of and is pretty much a lemon four years after I drove it off the showroom floor. (I should have traded it in after two, before the new model came out). That's the best deal I've been offered. The alternative is to either trade it in for something else and extend my loan or take an amount that's less than it's worth and continue paying off a loan for a vehicle I no longer have. Hooray for death by a thousand cuts under Consumer capitalism.

Apparently, it's all my fault for not learning my life lessons, growing the fuck up, sorting my life out and GTFO of the family home a hell of a lot sooner (by at least a decade, nearly two), when the physical abuse by my peers first started in small and subtle ways. I thought that would all be behind me when I left high school, then varsity, then two corporate jobs. But no, I'm the kind of person who attracts bullies and toxic, abusive relationships.

The moral of the story

If I had known what I now know and the lessons I have learned when I was a padawan/young twenty-something, I would have taken my education seriously and applied myself to obtaining both CS and EE degrees instead of a crappy, near-worthless diploma, moved into my own two-room shoebox as a priority and bought a bicycle instead of a car. Anywhere I can't reach by bike probably isn't worth going and a car is an immovable liability/waste of money two years after purchase. At least I would have my own space (which I so desperately crave). At least then, I could be an allegedly horrible, reprehensible and repulsive degenerate of a person all by myself without anybody to hurt or hurt me. I'm fucking done with living with other people for a while. Fuck that noise; I want a thousand days of solitude, even if it's in a corrugated iron shack in an informal settlement. I'm prepared to cook my supper in a three-legged potjie over a wood fire and boil collected rainwater in a cast iron pot while I wait for my orchard and mielies to grow.

Honestly, at this stage, I'm prepared to live on a camp bed with a sleeping bag and a camp chair and folding table in somebody's garage, undercroft or old servants' quarters (as long as there's a plug point and running water) just to be able to get away from here. I just want some space of my own to be myself (horrible or otherwise) again and keep my interaction with people to a minimum while I figure out how to cope with/manage my shitty life situation, get back on my feet and out in the world again without being scrutinised, criticised, judged, condemned, restricted, rejected and ostracised. That shit is literally making me crazy and suicidal. It is not in any way conducive to me so much as thinking of an action plan/way forward, let alone pursuing it. Yet, somehow, I still manage to restrict the time I spend buggering around on social media (still too much), which I apparently need to succeed in the modern world, hunt for jobs, write, make music and try to flog my Patreon to disinterested parties. Oh, and I'm also writing a proposal for a social media site for someone who's attempting to gather funding.

Seeing my shrink for two hours a month (which costs me a month's wages from my part-time weekend job) and the afore-mentioned job is not enough, as much as I love animals.

This afternoon, I had my car valued. The auto salesman gave me two offers:

He takes my car, settles with the bank and I walk away with nothing more than my debt settled. Offer valid today only.

I trade it in for something else, he gives me 3 575 USD off the price of that and leaves me to pull 1 290 USD out of thin air in order to pay off the bank.

I liked neither deal and drove away in a car that's got a slow puncture in one of the tires, minor scrapes and scratches on the paintwork and is apparently a lemon I should have traded in for something cheaper and newer a year after I bought it. I should have taken offer #1. This damn thing is a goddamn millstone around my neck and one of the worst life decisions I ever made (the other three being not attempting to off myself as a teenager, not keeping my damn trap shut under fire and not gapping it to the UK while I had a chance).

Once you're in the system, you're in it until death. There's no getting out. Try and The Man will use one of the thousand Sudden Death moves at his disposal to keep you in and down.

I guess it's back to working nine hour shifts by day, job hunting for eight by night, sleeping for six and trying to get everything else done in between (all while hoping to somehow make ends meet). Yay for me!

Dear friends, followers and other good people of the Web,

I am once again in a situation where I am short of money and humbly request your help (but I am not begging for a handout; you get something in return).

Although I have been doing freelance work on a Website project, I have unfortunately potentially lost income due to extensive power outages over the last two weeks (some as long as thirteen hours) as a result of municipal infrastructure upgrades; time for which I cannot claim. Consequentially, I may be potentially short as much as 85 USD this month. To recoup this loss, I am asking that just six good people find it in their hearts to subscribe to the 15 USD tier (or three to the 27 USD) of my Patreon account for the next three months only. For this, you will get the following:

Access to me via Discord

Access to my writings and artwork

Access to the audio tracks I've already uploaded (including a selection of my previous/earlier songs)

Access to the fourteen track demo album I'm going to release some time in the coming week

Please remember that, like so many holidays and remembrance days (St. Valentine's Day, All Hallows' Eve, Christmas and Easter), today has been co-opted by American Consumer Capitalism and turned into an occasion for profligate and ostentatious displays of unnecessarily wasteful expenditure and flexing as a supposedly sufficient surrogate for genuine affection towards one's supposedly nearest and dearest. Should one be able to express such affection in overwhelming amounts, all should be good (in theory).

However, since many have been indoctrinated/poisoned by Americanisation, they are likely to go in for that sort of behaviour, which I personally find distasteful. Then again, I do get manipulated/coerced/extorted into it by a family member who falsely accuses me of being a selfish, narcissistic Socialist and threatens to send me to North Korea if I don't comply. So what's a hundred bucks here and there?

Sometimes, one has to do things one doesn't like and/or with which one doesn't agree, for the sake of appeasing the other people in one's life.

I cannot live on my own terms. Neither can I die on them (and I've tried, twice). It looks like I'm going to have to try harder, and soon. However, before I do that, I would like to go out dept-free.That means I have the rest of the week to figure out how to effectively beg for, make or steal $72 USD, so that my bank balance goes to zero and not into overdraft by the time I've returned my car to the dealership so they can auction it off and recoup the cost, swallowed almost a month's worth of sleeping pills and hopefully not woken up or been revived.

I've been job hunting, to no avail (three job interviews that went nowhere). I have a part-time job that pays me $7 USD for a day's work. I've tried freelancing on at least three sites. I've secured two once-off jobs that paid me maybe $45 USD. I have maybe two Patrons on Patreon, which nets me about $35 a month. The most effective thing I've done is beg for money or try fundraising. I've received about $135 USD from that.

I'm really not comfortable with asking for help, especially financially, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

A few years ago, the motherboard in my main computer's tower gave up the ghost, leaving me with a twelve year old laptop to work on. Because the tower is equally as old, if not more so, motherboards with the same socket type/pin configuration are no longer being sold. Consequentially, replacing the motherboard means replacing the CPU and RAM cards as well. When I was earning a salary, I was not able to put aside much more than 25 USD a month after other expenses. A large amount of that would go towards tax every six months. Now that I'm unemployed, that money has gone elsewhere and run out.

The PC isn't only for personal use; it's also used for freelance work. The laptop is fine for audio editing, but isn't able to cope with video capture at the same time. I'd like to be able to use the tower for that, but I'll need some components with more oomph.

If you are able, please will you help me fund a replacement motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card, via GoGetFunding? I do not have a GoFundMe account as I am not a US citizen.