SirPurpleSnail

by age 8 I had started to retort with "I'm listening, I just decided not to do it", which my dad (anti-establishment academic) loved and my mum (a cop in all ways except literal) hated.

fast-forward a few decades, and I now realise that when my ex-spouse started using "you're not listening to me" to mean "why aren't you doing what I told you", I should have ended things right then and there. looking back on it there was no coming back from that.

Anecdotally, my fellow cohort of gen-x'ers were convinced this was going to be the solution, the ticket, the fucking way. Inevitably, all we had to do was outlive these old mayonnaise white devils, because that's where the racism was societally stored - like a big racism appendix that would get removed someday.

We thought we knew what was up because we were cool white kids who listened to Public Enemy. And because we thought we were largely inoculated against racism, it was just a long cool slide into the Clinton years and we'd be set.

So we didn't question shit like South Park. We didn't question shitheads like 'ironic' (at the time) racists like Weev in our IRC channel. We had zero fucking awareness of how racism shifted, because the only examples of racism we were ever taught either wore a white robe & burned crosses, or sig-heil'd and lived in misery. We shamefully thought racism = southern*, and since we were alt-goth kids living on the west coast, we were fucking sorted out and safe.

It wasn't on our radar. We weren't ready. We hadn't listened to anyone, because we thought we'd learned enough to not be a problem, and wasn't that enough?

We didn't clock or understand the way racist language shifted into a new economic handwringing. We fell into stupid rhetorical traps that snuck racism into concerns about unhoused people and substance abuse. We refused to recognize and realize our own inherent racist attitudes because of the sunk cost fallacy of wanting to believe we really didn't have to do anything other than be cool and wait it out.

I watched some people absolutely lose their shit when called out on this and flounce directly into the arms of right wing philosophy (always some variation on "left wing politics has gone too far!" when it's pointed out how they're upholding inequality with a cherished attitude or anecdote they've leaned on for years to prop up the mythology of their self-worth).

No one was ready to realize they weren't good just by being alternative. And some of them cracked apart.

Racism has a full time advertising budget ready to repackage and rebadge it minute to minute, and you always have to do the work. It never ever fucking stops. And making sure you're always doing the work has the very valuable side-benefit of keeping you in touch with yourself and what you're about.

You gotta do the work. It never stops.

These are just a few of the reasons I LOVE the LGBTQIA+ community so much!

It's always important to remember what being a part of a community like this means. For me personally it means home, it means love, friendship and safety but for millions of people across the world right now it's the opposite, with everything going on in the world (especially with the recent rulings in the UK and USA) it's easy to forget that not everyone has a safe space in the world, they're being persecuted and hated for just being themselves!

Remember people, be there, be seen, be careful, be proud but above all be kind!

And on that note, if you need a friend, a place to vent or rant about anything that's going on in your life then my inbox and DMs are open to all who need a friendly face and listening ear.

If your family don't accept you then I'm your family now. Go eat, drink some water, and take your meds!

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

He’s operated on hundreds of cig smokers but no stoners

The average stoner doesn’t smoke nearly as many joints as a cig smoker smokes cigarettes. Many cig smokers will smoke 10+ cigs a day but the average stoner doesn’t smoke that many joints

Joints don’t have as many carcinogens

It is generally harder to quit nicotine than weed

People can have medicinal cannabis but no one has medicinal cigarettes

@buticaaba you are absolutely correct! My dad hates vapes. He says the lungs of cig smokers look black and kind of like asphalt, and that the lungs of vape smokers retain their pink color but are covered in burn like blisters. He participated in a double lung transplant on a 20 year old vape smoker and has done multiple drainings of vape smoker lungs that filled with fluids because they’re absolutely full of blisters.