Head of Vile Temptressing

[HERE IS A PLAYLIST WITH ALL 12 EPISODES] 

has given thier child

an airhorn.

Lovely family.

Around this time last year thier grandmother came to visit and gave them honest-to-goodness home-made black-powder Cherry bombs direct from Texas, which the boys immediately took to the most flammable patch of chaparral in the neighborhood and set off six of them at once, resulting in a small wildfire, seven emergency response units and a helicopter, a Long Stern talk from the fire department and Karen getting in a screaming match with Child Protective Services and a sizeable crater in the middle of the field.

At least according to Olivia the ER nurse and neighborhood gossip. I was out of town at the time and believe about 80% of that becuase I saw the crater where there had not been a crater a week before, and becuase karen threw a shoe at me the one time I asked if she was alright when she was having her weekly drunk-cry on the porch.

But I Digress.

1. It’s been pointed out to me that Golden State is an NBA franchise and not an institution of higher learning. To be fair, Diane is 84 and in an Alzheimer’s unit, and I know fuck all about sportsball. Perhaps her grandson lives in San Francisco.  Regardless, we all had a good time and I was sent home with leftover bean dip.

2. I sometimes misspell things becuase I have multiple learning/reading disorders and Public Education in the US is terrible. I’m funny anyway.

3. Last I heard, Richard had gone to live with the other, less pyrotastic set of grandparents, so maybe there is hope for them yet.

(As always, all names have been changed to protect people’s privacy):

The neighborhood consists of a 206 pallette-swapped versions of the same three houses surrounding the largest hospital in the next six counties in any direction, surrounded immediately by three ranches on one side and roughly 100 miles of uninterrupted rocky mountain wildreness on the other.  It’s seperated from the main city (If you can call a city with only the bars and Denny’s open after 9PM a city.  Which you can’t) by a large mountain ridge and connected via a small canyon highway.  Hence, the neighborhood consists primarily of:

Middle-Class Suburban White People ™

People who’d be too poor to afford this neighborhood normally, but are subsidized by the hospital.  Olivia the ER nurse, for instance.  They’re terrific.

People with Major Medical Conditions and Their familes, who live nearby, also subsidized by The Hospital.  

Old Rural People who remember when Durango had only the train track and no paved roads and was mostly populated by cattle and will tell you they were present at the Alamo if you let them keep talking.

Wildlife that was here first and has no intention of moving.

This is a story about the first learning about the last. 

Staci-With-An-I-From-Ventura-California introduced herself to me as that while I was walking the dog by the playground, as I tried to keep her preschooler twins (there are SO MANY goddamn twins in the neighborhood.  I mean, we’re right next door to an IVF clinic BUT STILL) from jamming thier fingers up Charlie’s nose but fortunately he thinks children are hilarous and decided to lick what I sincerely hoped was jam off thier faces.

“Hi I’m [Gallus]. Hey, kids, be gentle with dogs-”

“Do you live here?”  She asks in what I would find out later is her normal interrogative voice, but sounded to my untrained ear like a member of the spanish inquisition had reccived operatic training then took up chain smoking.

“Yeah?”

another fact is that 500 calories isn’t even enough for a new born.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/17/bush-torture-memos-commer_n_188190.html

In a footnote to a May 10, 2005, memorandum from the Office of Legal Council, the Bush attorney general’s office argued that restricting the caloric intake of terrorist suspects to 1000 calories a day was medically safe because people in the United States were dieting along those lines voluntarily.

“While detainees subject to dietary manipulation are obviously situated differently from individuals who voluntarily engage in commercial weight-loss programs, we note that widely available commercial weight-loss programs in the United States employ diets of 1000 kcal/day for sustain periods of weeks or longer without requiring medical supervision,” read the footnote. “While we do not equate commercial weight loss programs and this interrogation technique, the fact that these calorie levels are used in the weight-loss programs, in our view, is instructive in evaluating the medical safety of the interrogation technique.”

Another another friendly reminder that the Minnesota Starvation Experiment subjected adult men who were VOLUNTEERS to 1,560 calorie diets and the psychological effects were so profound that one volunteer cut three of his own fingers off and could not remember why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment

These men were volunteers who knew exactly what they would be going through and when it would end, and who believed they were doing it for a good and moral reason (the research was used to help rehabilitate victims of starvation and famine at the end of WWII).

And these are the things we are expected to engage in FOREVER to stay at a “healthy” weight.

Reading about the Minnesota Starvation experiment was my wake-up call.  It was what kicked me out of my eating disorder.  The guy missing three fingers, whatever his name was, he was the last straw for me.

I know it’s easier to be like ~boo hooo the world is so evil and there’s nothing I can dooo~ but it’s statistically and experientially understood, just by fucking 3rd grade logic, that a bigot will be less amenable towards the subject of their bigotry.

Bigots don’t just ~not like~ minorities- they don’t think we’re human. It’s not about whether they agree with you or not in the moment. Like, pause.

Understand this:

Calls to action for white people to oppose bigotry are calls for white people to position themselves as opposition. THEY ARE NOT CALLS FOR ~SUCCESSFUL DEBATE~

Do not think you are expected nor are you likely to just go around arguing with bigots and they’ll go ‘I agree with you because you’re white!’. 

Your job is to be sandpaper.

Every time they open their mouths to make a bigoted joke, or a bigoted remark, or post their shitty bigoted opinion online, you grate against them.

Your job is to make it hard to be a bigot or a fascist. Your job is to ostracize them. Your job is to speak over them the way they love to speak over minorities. Your job is to make it difficult, lonely, annoying, stressful and unwelcome to be a bigot.

When you are white and silent, You are making it easy. You are just letting it happen.

When minorities speak up for themselves, they are in danger, and the bigot just writes off our arguments as the chattering of ‘lessers’.

You, white people, whether you think so or not, are their peers.

Specifically those of you who look and talk like, to an outside observation, your average white american.

Bigots think you all think like them, but are too scared to say it. That, or you’re too much of a coward to stop them.

YOUR JOB IS TO PUSH BACK AND PROVE THEM WRONG.

YOUR JOB IS TO SEPARATE THEM FROM THEIR OWN COMMUNITY AT LARGE.

Crowns

I Love My Crown on Etsy

And by that I don’t mean I want him and Kevin to adopt. 

I mean I want it to be an average day at the precinct when Holt walks out of his office with a young woman. They shake hands, bid goodbye and Jake walks over to ask who she is. 

“Who’s that? Someone from city hall?”

And Holt just casually replies. “No that’s my daughter.” 

And everyone in the bullpen just stops, stunned. Because he’s never mentioned it before, ever, even in passing. 

“You have a daughter?” 

“Yes, her name is Claire, she is 24 years of age and studying at Jon Hopkins.” 

Jake: Yeah, I thought you investigated everyone that’s breathed the same air as the captain in an effort to bond with him. 

Amy: I thought she was his notary! 

*cut away*

Holt: Here is your certificate confirming you completed volume one of my mentorship program. 

Amy: Thank you Captain!  So official, it’s even notarized!

Holt: Yes.  Here is a photograph of the notary, Claire. 

Amy: Oh, I saw her in a photo with you and Kevin, I was wondering what your relationship was.  Did she notarize your marriage certificate?

Holt: *looks at watch* Given that it is 30 seconds after official work hours I will permit this single personal question.  Yes she did. 

*cut back*