First thing’s first! This site hasn’t been updated in quite a while. Which is, of course, rather unfortunate. So many of you have been deprived of my musings! You poor, lost souls! Whatever have you done without me?
Besides weather the fucking plague, I suppose.
When I put this site together, I was expecting to use it as a hub for my renewed career as an indie author. Then, of course, I barely sold any copies at all of my newest novella, These Shadows are Mine. When you’re not expecting much, and still underperform… whew. That’s a… that’s a kick to the balls of ye olde ego right there, let me tell you.
So I kinda fucked off and tried a whole host of other things for a while. Music. Visual arts. Filmmaking. Livestreaming. Getting a real job. (Ghastly, I know. Worst decision I ever made. Never again, if I can help it. But alas! Capitalism!)
Where was? I swear, I had a fucking point here, somewhere–
Ah! Yes!
Life got a bit weary for me, and I retreated. I’m trying to be better about that, but there it is. It didn’t help, of course, that we’re still living in the midst of the aforementioned plague. And as someone with cerebral palsy, I’m considered high risk. Being overweight and asthmatic doesn’t help much, either, so. I’ve barely left the house in the last year or so.
The pandemic has been such a bizarre experience for me.
On the one hand, it’s shifted me into hardcore Leftist territory. I’ve started reading Marx unironically, and am further convinced every day that we should be hunting CEOs and landlords for sport. My simmering rage at classism, racial injustice, and income inequality– to say nothing of the horror that is the American political landscape itself– has left me in this place where I am very much preoccupied with the suffering of my fellow human beings, and also perpetually frustrated with a deep despairing notion that there’s nothing I can really do about it.
But, on the other hand, while I do feel more energized than possibly ever before to care about other people, invest in them, believe in them– I also find myself utterly dismayed at the utter fucking dearth of empathy consistently on display, both in the news, and on social media platforms.
We’ve lost 350,000 people to Covid, and we’re going to lose more. Countless more are going to suffer long-term effects from the virus, even if they survive. To say nothing of those facing other medical emergencies, put at further risk as our medical facilities overflow.
I could bitch about Donald fucking Trump all day– and inevitably, there will be no shortage of “Fuck Trump, fuck Biden, fuck the whole lot of them” throughout the future of this blog, if not necessarily this entry– but he’s just one man. An evil, spiteful, ugly, stupid man, given far more power than he should’ve ever been allowed to even contemplate in the first place– but one man, nonetheless.
He bears no shortage of responsibility for the way things are in America, but how many yee-haw “y’all-Queda” jackass doorstops-for-brains refused to wear a fucking mask, in spite of rapidly-mounting evidence of their effectiveness, pleas from medical professionals, and those death-tolls on the rise?
Do you know how many fucking idiots I’ve had to contend with saying things like, “it only affects the sick or the elderly!”
First of all, you’re wrong. Second of all, how the fuck could you be so callous as the consider such people to be “only”?
In a country where Jeff Bezos sits atop of a massive horde of riches akin to that of a dragon, (which I’m not entirely convinced is only figurative in nature) and refuses to do anything except pad his profits– where our elected officials fought tooth and nail over the mere prospect of providing financial aid to the people– and the most vulnerable among us are considered to be a footnote by so many…
What the fuck is even left for us?
As I finish writing this, the contest for two seats in the Senate draws to a close. Georgia has become a battleground, on top of everything else going on. Who would’ve thought? But, here we are.
And yet, even if the Democrats take control of the Senate– my own cynicism regarding how much change they’ll actually bring about notwithstanding– I find myself drawn to thoughts on empathy, that pesky little thing which so many American conservatives online have now deemed to be a “buzzword”.
If we’re so short on empathy in this fucking country, such that we can’t even be bothered to wear masks or forego social gatherings, just so that other people won’t fucking die…
We probably have for more work to do in this country than just that of the electoral variety.