Happy New Year! - AKA Three Months of Terror! & Joy!

 Ah, there's nothing like the stress of waiting for your work visa to come in, like the proverbial ship. Except it wasn't a non-existent ship, it was an inevitability. I couldn't have know that the whole time though. In the words of the inimitable Philomena Cunk, it was as culturally significant an event as the release of Beyoncé's 'Single Ladies.' That was the kind of thing that I needed to preoccupy me, lest I go crazy with stress.

But seriously...

The past 9 1/2 months have been some of the most life-changing months.

And now, I'm here.

I have my own place, in Grey Lynn!

And tonight I experienced some genuine Kiwi Karenism. Right here in the neighborhood.

13 FISHERTON STREET, GREY LYNN, AUCKLAND 1021 NEW ZEALAND

Tell everyone you know - serious grade A assholes at this residence. Seriously, everyone should know. The kind of rich white entitled assholes that have surveillance cameras and study them often. The kind that will send out their gym-rat finest to go harass the poor schmuck--me!--that just wants to find the right address. Yes, for a fucking Grindr hookup. Are you happy? I'm not ashamed.

I'm sure the fact that I was white had something to do with this fucking Karen-man finally relenting when I told him I was just trying to find a different address. "Have a nice evening," he says. GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING PRICK! You don't your god-damned cameras because you're fucking FINE! You will always be fine, you fucking twat.

I really hate people like this. And he had his Karen wife backing him up, gaining up on me. Fucking cunts, all of them. I looked up this property. It's going for NZ $3.87 million--$2.36 million in USD--just the sort of wealth that makes certain people into certain kind of assholes. The kind I had to put up with.

This post was seriously supposed to be much cheerier.

I promise to be more upbeat next time.

2QON2Q

 Two years ago today New York State went into lockdown mode. I was looking to this date, March 15th, as my sort of "free at last" day for months, and yet I still feel unease. Omicron is still ravaging many parts of Asia and the Pacific, and U.S. average daily deaths remain above 1,000. I wanted to have said that because it's officially been 2 years that this pandemic has gone on in New York (city and state) that it's time to go out and be free, masks be damned.

Two nasty variants had their way with those plans.

Also, Ukraine is being destroyed, with no end in sight to this madness.

Some freakin' times we live in, eh? To parents with newly born kids, I'm like, why?

Thirty Thousand Five Hundred Seventy-Three Lies

...and over 450,000 people dead because of the shit stain that was vomited up from the bowels of humanity, Donald Trump.

This Terrorist Attack Was Brought To You By Amway*

We just have to remember this one thing so as to keep our rage in check, otherwise we'll all go insane. And that's all I want to say before I leave this platform for good, although I use it more as a journal:  It's The Corporations, Stupid! Corporations are what write our laws, full stop. Corporations are what own and control 99% of our politicians. Don't like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence and Donald Trump? Blame Raytheon. Corporate interests are what drive ratings-based journalism to get us to be enraged 24-7, all the while raking in trillions in profits for far-away executives who care NOTHING about the welfare of people. You might as well add, "This Domestic Terrorist Attack Was Brought To You By...Betsy DeVos and her Alliance for School Choice, AND by: Betsy DeVos' husband, Dick DeVos, CEO of Amway...ALSO by: General Electric's NBC - watch The Apprentice, airing Thursdays at 9!" These are the individuals and entities who would destroy minds, or at the very least keep the public as uneducated and dumb as possible so as to reel them in to buy their products (as in watch their programs to buy the products that are sponsoring these shit programs), all the better for their profits! What better recipe for promoting a demagogue proto-fascist narcissist, eh?

I mean it. The events of this week demand our eyeballs be glued to CNN or MSNBC, breathlessly demanding us to be outraged, and outraged again, and outraged even more--again! No mention of what might be coming down the legislative pike that actually benefits most Americans in material, real ways. Um, I don't know,  like Medicare For All, Universal Basic Income, Universal Free Public Tuition? OR, the basic problem that plagues us all: our devastating lack of Government Capacity--that is, the ability of government to act efficiently and competently, especially in the age of Covid? (Yeah, thanks a lot, Maggie and Ronnie!) These are boring, unsexy topics that you will never hear discussed at length by Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Brian Williams, Chris Cuomo, or Don Lemmon. Not to mention Fox News, which hogs up way more eyeballs than we care to admit. And, of course, Phayzbik. You think this platform with its insidious algorithms helps?

Let's get real. There are no Celestial Hall Monitors Coming To Save Us, be it from the Democratic or Republican parties. We need to break up the too-big-to-fail banks, media companies and tech companies. We need to break up our corrupt two-party duopoly. We need to utterly destroy the fossil fuel industry or climate change will destroy us all. We need to focus like a laser on getting money out of politics. But we can't do that without an awareness that the corporate state is the one operating the strings of the Proud Boys, whether they even know or not. It is the corporate state that allows the manufacture of T-shirts that say 6MWE or display the Nazi Flag. Our First Amendment itself has been weaponized in the service of Neo-Nazis! Amend it fundamentally so that like in Germany, display of symbols of hate are banned.

*Editor's Note: This may be my last Facebook entry ever. Or it may not. Atlantic Magazine: hire me! Just tryin' to manifest:)

The Fake Ad-Taker-Downer Corporations That Created the Mob (aka My Farewell Facebook Post)

Reading about all this I'm rendered speechless, numb. It's enraging. But then I thought about what is shown interspersed throughout the article and it's s a symbol of something perhaps even far more sinister. It is the ads you see peddling crap you don't need or want, and the lie that somehow by clicking the 'stop seeing this ad' or 'report this ad' buttons that that will solve the problem, only it doesn't, and the ads appear again just as before. Corporations like Criteo who lie endlessly. It's corporations that are the root of our rot, selling people false hope, profiting off of their misery and setting up the conditions for resentment that vomit up a creature like Trump to come to power. That's why cretins like Betsy DeVos look at the events of yesterday and laugh all the way to their villas in far away places, gleefully aloof that she and her ghoul of a brother, war profiteer and nation destroyer Erik Prince, don't have to account for any of the misery they have caused. As with them, corporations have made themselves unaccountable co-conspirators to the violence on display, funding candidates like the snot-nosed Josh Hawley to be the frontmen in this grand scam. They fund endowments at Harvard, Yale and Stamford so scum like Hawley can go there and get cover for the bile they spew. Phaceboo* is another example of a vile corporation -- among the worst of the players on the planet stoking this violence through their algorithms which amplify hate and give it a convenient outlet. And we let it happen. And so this is why, after January 20th, I am deleting my Gacebück account and will be off it forever. Many of you I have already befriended in person and I have your contact information, and many of you I have become acquainted with online. I feel confident I will remain close with enough phazspook friends without having to rely on this garbage platform because I have made it a point to use the god-damned telephone or at the very least email and text to have real connections with you individually. And let us not be deluded that the statements we make so pompously, myself included, make a scintilla of a difference in effecting change. So, there we are. Bye, faysebouch, and bye, Barch Zukerbirgh, you evil fuck. May you also rest in hell.

If Wishes and Butts Were Clusters of Nuts...

 “It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”  - a “senior Republican official” to WaPo

Wish fulfillment is a funny thing: maybe a sort of corollary to the five stages of grief, some weird combination of denial and bargaining. That is, if what is happening right now will have been part of Trump's final act as putative democratically elected politician: a coup. I mean, why wouldn't this go his way, as all else horrible and terrible before it has?

I come to this post-election-called-for-Biden-but-pre-consession moment with great trepidation and just a sliver of hope--the media is, after all, consistently calling Joe Biden the president-elect. All that's left to fret about, I suppose, is, will the Secret Service do their job, if it comes to that, and physically drag him out of the White House come 01/20/2021? Or will the military not go along with orders to stop Biden's inauguration and thereby keep the Orange Menace installed? 

The legal/constitutional avenue is all but blocked, and with that comes the question of how hard and with what tools does he flail.

Or does it end with a sizzle, a no-show at the Inauguration, a fleeing out of the country of the smallest man in world history. Add another asterisk to our Great And Powerful History as the World's Greatest Nation. It was always a myth.

In Which We Are Attacked By Us(A) - a.k.a. I Can't Breathe, a.k.a. Can Biden Save US(a)?

So many crises, so little time. Will Fortress D.C. morph into troops on every corner? Trump's bible stunt showed cowardice if anything, yet it was still brazen. Bizarre. Yet all autocracies are marked by the bizarre, as Chris Hedges points out.

We look to Biden for our electoral salvation. It's all we have left. Once again, some of the old guard come out publicly for the Dem (presumptive) nominee. And none of the actual elected thug-lick-cans do a damn thing to stop the orange blob.

The question will be how much this makes a difference. Plenty of mainstream Rs voted for Hillary but where did that go? I'm not going to be cynical here - Biden is NOT Clinton, and every election is different for obvious reasons. It's just that the old guard of the 'GOP' is a vanishingly small number of people who've been completely sidelined and whose credibility is shot to hell. Not unlike many old guard Dems, who seem to feel that not being Trump is enough to win. How'd that work out for us? No, if Biden's going to win it won't be because George Will, et. al. voted for him, it'll be because he managed to run a competent campaign that speaks to the actual things that ail us. Yes, and because Trump goes out of his way to be just such a monster, and that that speeding train has just started brakelessly down a steep hill with oil-slicked rails.

CoronAmerica (aka A Certain Kind Of Hell)

Day 52 of NYC lockdown.

Curve has flattened.
Curve's a-red.
How shallow the downslope?
How long until zed?
Math.

No Scruff.
No sex.
Self-imposed hand jobs will do.
Internet news rabbit holes
Take the place of glory holes.
What is a penis to do?

Of Tribes and Tribalism

We are humans and therefore we are tribal. There's no getting around that fact. All this pearl-clutching around tribalism in politics is just sad--so what? Nation-states are an aberration of humanity, and the idea that some type of salvation will come from being a "united" whole of 330 million people is pure fantasy. The ghosts of the slaughtered Cree, Iroquois, Shawnee, et. al. tell us this eternal truth. We were never meant to be a united states of anything, just a collection of tribes striving to keep peace between warring factions. That's it, man. So all you racist, royalist, death-embracing Republicans can go fuck the fuck off, and anyone who has a problem with me for saying that can do the same.

Thots:
T***p's toxic tin taking truculent, trash-talking trolls to terrible tornadoes - terrific!

Otty ins, anee mor thots?
Oh? Too busy sucking on the slithering Orange Teat to talk? Trying times are these.

Who are these people...In black treacle? -Thom Yorke 

At What Cost?

What more proof of a sham ideology does one need than in that of the Republican Party? The naked lies go unchallenged, the blatant corruption and lawbreaking unquestioned by these loathsome sycophants to power. But why? Simple logic would tell us that their ideology of unfettered capitalism and predatory neo-liberalism just doesn't hold up to the smell test when such reprehensible behavior is not just tolerated but strongly defended (fuck you, Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch McConnell) so that Dear Leader can be propped up to sign their odious, economic royalist bills into law.

So, then, Trump-support can then be seen as evidence of how truly indefensible their ideology is, when the cost of it is ending the Republic, no?

They have NO ONE after Trump. Absolutely no one. God save us all.

Kings of Kind

When I reflect on what it is I'm afraid of, where my vulnerabilities lie, what holds me back on life--all of it, I think, stems from fear of getting hurt. I strive now to be kind, always, but in the past that kind of thing got me burned on not a few occasions.

Watching Game of Thrones is teaching me the power of being kind to, well, just be kind. Of what love really is and entails. All my verbal barbs, my awkward attempts to be funny that end up sending arrows of unintended micro-aggressions into good people, are why I don't say a lot around a dinner table among family, among friends, among co-workers, lovers, strangers.

I see now the power of kindness for kindness' sake. Danaerys seeks not to be a queen of ashes, but a uniter of free and moral men. I want so desperately to be liked that in the process I miss that I'm loved and hence I miss out on life.

Next year's election could very well kill me if I'm not mindful of what it is we really should be seeking as a free society. Elections do not really change things, I know that. The "U.S." constitution was really written to protect property-owning white men's interests--property, slaves, patriarchy. It does not mete out law equitably nor has it really ever.

My hope for this year, 2019, is to be not just kind for kindness' sake but to engage in life more--in people, in my work to further my career, in love, relationships, even family.

I want to get beyond needing to be liked so that I miss being loved and loving.

Westeros and Essos may be unsaveable (we shall see!) but the attempt is awesome. Master Aemon, Samwell Tarley, Gilly, Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, Varys--in an imperfect sense, all kings of kindness. They strive for a better life for the most people despite being flawed humans themselves. I need to attempt something similar in my life.

I go on facebook to try and learn who people are that I have to meet and know--not to stalk. But it feels like stalking nonetheless. Fuck. I got to match everyone's face with a name this time on the Vermont retreat, and that's huge for me. I got to be vulnerable, even for a hot New York-Vermont minute! Then I retreated to binge-watch Game of Thrones. Why am I having this revelation now?

Feels good not to obsess about the news, at least.

On Horror

Not gonna pretend this post isn't inspired by my viewing of the just-released 'Suspiria' remake.

I've been thinking about what is meant by horror as such. It doesn't have to be that which scares us. Maybe it is just the realization of life how it actually is, and that's what scares us. Of the idea that death is inevitable and there ain't nothing we can do about it, babe. Of the contrast between what we'd like our lives to be and what is.

I wonder about why so many of my dreams haunt me. Why some are so damn vivid, and lead me to no clear--solutions? closure?--I don't know. I just know I wake up feeling relieved it was a dream, and somehow move on. But then I am left to wonder what my mind is telling me, or trying to tell me, that I'm not getting. Is getting even the point?

We're now in this limbo period of waiting to see what a Democratic House will do to stop the madness going on all around. Maybe it's a pointless exercise, this waiting. Maybe that's horror enough, the waiting. With T***p we are primed for the 'I see there's a problem here, how can I make it worse?' response to everything. And his FUCKING rallies.

White Supremacy is a horror. I've come to realize how so many things fall under its umbrella, and how insidiously it can reside in Those Who Are Not White (see West, Kanye). It manifests itself in racism, patriarchy, machismo, entitlement, and so, so much more, kids! See Sarah Huckabee Sanders over there lying daily. Oh, and there's plie-performing, microphone-grabbing White House intern woman claiming victimhood over there. Oh yeah, and over here is Kanye West dismissing the indignity of slavery and hugging the White Supremacist-in-Chief in one of the most grotesque photo ops you will ever see.

Two more fucking years.

#JuneSimmonsLivesOn

(W)Reckoning

That elusive national crisis will one day come. Whether it shatters illusions in the right places is key, however, one need only look at the events of 2005 and 2008 to see that it can happen.

The racist misanthropic orange shitbaby lovers--and at this point that's all the Republican Regime have left as 'constituents' other than their wealthy corporate overlords--will one day tire of the spectacle, if only because it is so relentlessly banal (where's the payout?). Rallies in nowheretown, USA, can only go so far.

But what then? Cancel elections? The right isn't doing their darnedest to set up America as Gilead, or even Shock Doctrine Chile for that matter.

I'm getting better and better with patience each passing day.

Just try coming for me, motherfuckers. You wouldn't know what to do with me.

#MyNameIsJuneOsborne

And I am free.

bRidge & TUnnel Motherfucking Punks

The Axis of Evil in 2018 is becoming clearer and clearer by the day: Republican Party----Trump----Putin----Russian Government. Why even waste time talking about other window dressing? Naomi Klein is spot on. The Shock Doctrine is alive and well with the orange shit-stained Re-Trumplican Party. True power rests in the economic sphere and they are symbols of the hording of that power. And their motherfucking racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic supporters eat this shit up daily.

First & Second Amendment Redos

The US needs to seriously consider amending the First Amendment so that hate speech is banned. If it can work in a liberal democracy such as Germany then it can work here. Clearly the intent of these marches is to stoke fear and hatred and NOT a civil debate -- why should good, civil communities have to allow them to begin with? There needs to be an investigation into how and why the city of Charlottesville ever even allowed these thugs to march with torches and guns to begin with.

The US must also reconsider the Second Amendment in light of the fact that so many of the right-wing groups were armed to the teeth because Virginia, like too many states, allows open carry of weapons for ages 18+. The intent of 2A was never to allow the private ownership of arms, but a "well regulated militia". Tell me where any regulation is these days, let alone well-regulated militias "necessary for the security of free States". The model for this type of society could be Australia where all firearms have to be registered and levels of violent crime are much lower.

Unfortunately the US is an armed, violent, and racist society where in too many states "free speech" is basically an excuse to incite riots. And now a woman is dead. And the Trump-supporting white supremacists are emboldened.

What kind of society do we want?

Amerikkka, 2017, aka I Hate Donna Joan Trump

Hate is a word I don't use lightly. It's ugly. It has a tendency to be overused. But it's necessary now.

I hate Donald Trump. Every molecule of me hates him. But I hate him humanely, such that my only prescription for ridding the world of him is for him to go away and never be seen or heard from again. Call it Twitter bizarro wold, some place where he has no access to any media whatsoever and never will. I hate him singularly, and with a ferocity I've never felt for any other American politician. No, his menace is such that hating him is the responsible--nay--patriotic thing to do.

He is the epitome of modern-day fascism now handed over the highest office in the land. He is a usurper of power with no idea what he is doing or talking about, an agent of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and a traitor. He is a rapist and a racist, a fire-breathing sociopath who cares nothing for anyone but himself, a coward who would sell his own family off if it got in his way. He is Sodom in Christian mythology, a demon sent from hell to turn whatever he touches to shit.

I hate Donald Trump because I love. Because I cherish all that is good in the world and want to keep it that way.

Resist with all you can and when you can, Trump's racism, misogyny, religious bigotry, and outright plunder. Only sustained protest will drive the beast out.

The Big Fuckhead That Is Thomas Friedman

His quote to Charlie Rose, NEVER to be forgotten by historians of Horrible Rotten People:

"There was what I would call the terrorism bubble... And what we needed to do was go over to that part of the world, I'm afraid, and burst that bubble. We needed to go over there basically, um, and, um, uh, take out a very big stick, um right in the heart of, of that world, and, um, and burst that bubble. And there was only one way to do it... And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think, you know we care, uh, about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy we're just gonna let it grow? Well, suck on this. Ok. That, Charlie, was what this war was about."

Thomas Friedman: one of world history's biggest fuckheads. Know this as he goes all out #NeverTrump and uses it as a shield from which to hide his grotesque worldview.

When Prosecutors Act Like Defense Attorneys (aka "I Can't Breathe!")

No matter how many times I demonize Daniel Pantaleo, there will be more like him to come in the NYPD and in police forces across Amerikkka, if nothing is done. This asshole motherfucker of a cop just got away with killing a man for selling loose fucking cigarettes on the street. Yes, cop is white, victim is black, yet again.

The fact that a "Grand Jury" can act like this is most disturbing if not completely incomprehensible. The fact that the "prosecutor" basically orchestrated it all so that this human scum can escape with no trial is just breathtaking - yeah, I couldn't breathe either after hearing the awful news. I wanted to punch/pummel/obliterate the screen on which I read that there will be no charges brought against a homicidal sociopath caught -- ON CAMERA! -- killing an unarmed, non-threatening human being in cold blood.

This is Amerikkka, folks - we've arrived. Congrats to the racist sociopath motherfuckers we call our police forces that "protect" us. This is their "duty," after all. Protect the white wealthy 1% and no one else. They can kill without impunity now.

No moar wurdz.

Scum Zombies

The House Republican-Teapublican alliance is at it again. They are just about the lowest form of deformed human you can get, and they don't care a rat's ass about good ol' USA. They claim they represent their "districts" although their districts are nothing more than gerrymandered geographical long-fingered hydra-shaped messes containing more human scum. These proto-fascist zombies have managed to bring the world economy to its knees, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

The Conundrum of Sochi

I can't quit the feeling that the Sochi Olympics happening as planned is just such an impossibility. There he is, Vladimir Putin, presiding over the Opening Ceremonies, all smug, that cold, soul-less look in his eyes that makes Dick Cheney seem warm -- all this happening while Russia's gay citizens are being rounded up, Nazi-style, Putin's own "Pink Ghetto" realized in our time.

And nothing happens? No acts of protest, not a single rainbow flag, even a pin? Just business as usual, Bob Costas commenting on some peculiar factoid of country X.

Too many gay voices arguing against a boycott (namely Johnny Weir, but soon to be followed by many more) would seem to doom that possibility, although world events should sort that out (I still say unlikely to happen).

Moving the Olympics to another venue seems a pipe dream, for many reasons. George Takei has taken up this mantle, along with MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. Takei says it is still "possible". Rhetoric like that usually means pipe dream.

So that leaves Sochi 2014 Winter Games, fill in the blank. I can't fathom a total IOC-censored event, given the European representation.

And -- Figure Frickin' Skating! Johnny Weir! The IOC may warn athletes against openly political symbols during the OCs, but that doesn't prevent the commentators, friends and former athletes from showing up and displaying same. And exactly where does Bob Costas stand on this?

This is such a big deal, the huge, gigantic Elephant in the Stadium that can't be ignored. Tilda Swinton said it all in that rainbow flag-waving act of defiance in Red Square.

An ego-maniacal madman such as Putin couldn't stand the embarrassment that's about to descend on him, could he? Will All Of It be whitewashed? Or will all these laws just magically go away -- never happened, just a typo, sorry for the confusion?

Because somehow or other there will be a showdown on gay rights for all the world to see. And gay people in lots of countries are indeed persecuted, jailed, tortured and killed. And frankly Putin can't afford the unavoidable embarrassment resulting from the havoc his laws would wreak upon hundreds of influential foreigners. Putin is nothing but a pathetic Joseph Stalin-wannabe coward. He doesn't have the guts to stand this down, nor frankly the religious conviction of, say, an Ayatollah. He will be forced to squirm like the 12-year-old bully he is.

What an unexpected turn of events these Olympics have spawned. And it's about time.