i only heard about this 2 months ago. its been 3 years????
Remember this started because Snyder switched Flint from a freshwater mountain lake to the polluted Flint River simply to allow his wife’s company to use the lake for bottling instead. This is a manufactured crisis of corruption and capitalism.
Also remember that the pipes corroded because they refused to pay for the chemical used to make the water less acidic.
Remember that when the first E. coli outbreak from the water popped up, the city hall was given water coolers by the state, free of charge, all while denying that the water could be unsafe to drink.
Remember that, despite having a huge budget surplus and a “rainy day fund,” set aside that could easily cover the cost of relocating the residents by buying their houses/paying their debt, or could cover a large chunk of the cost of replacing the pipes, the state has decided to continue to only put in the minimal amount of effort.
Remember that flint is majority POC, majority impoverished, and is still being faced with crippling water bills from the Detroit water supply company, where they are often charged $50 a month just to use the service, on top of the cost of their water bill.
Remember that there will now be an entire generation of children who will now be damaged by lead poisoning and damage from the multitude of neurotoxins.
Remember that this is what privatized natural resources looks like. Remember that these people are being punished for having the audacity to dare to be poor in an economy that won’t let them be anything but.
At every level, this has not been a mistake.
The State and City are most upset that people know its happening and are resisting nation-wide.
But if we lose focus they lose even the small amount of aid they’ve managed to get.
This is how they do it. It’s a siege on the public empathy. Eventually we become numb to the problem and despair. Or something bigger happens.
i saw this movie with my friend tonight. from the beginning it didn’t seem like the type of movie that i’d like, sorta crude/dirty jokes. i assumed it’d be kinda like how family guy is. but it was my friends birthday and it had gotten pretty good reviews on rotten tomato so we figured why not.
this movie is absolutely disgusting. being a new release the theater was initially pretty crowded, but well over half the audience had left by the end of the movie (which lasts only 90 minutes). from the beginning there was a whole lot of unnecessary profanity (trying to be funny but not succeeding) and also a lot of sexual innuendos, both of which i expected. everything got worse and worse over the course of the movie.
i’ve been trying to figure out how to word this but there’s just so much that happened i’m going to make a list of all the things this 90 minute animation about talking food included:
? a violent rape scene (multiple).
? drug abuse (various types of drugs, and lots of them)
? gore (not the food type, there was also bloody human gore)
? racism / sexism / homophobia
? towards the end of the movie there is a huge sex scene. i can’t say that it’s graphic because it’s animated food but i honestly can’t believe it’s not X rated.
? • about half of the remaining audience left the theatre during this scene
? needless to say, everything was also very violent
by the end of the movie there was less than ¼ of the original audience left. i’m pretty sure those of us that remained were only there out of either stubbornness or that (as in my case) they were just too horrified to move. if you still want to see this movie after reading this, i wish you the best of luck, and i’m sure some people out there will enjoy it. for the rest of us, if you’re triggered or upset by anything in the above list, i would highly discourage you from seeing this movie.
~ please message me for any specifics bc i’m keeping this post spoiler-free ~
The last few months have continued the stressful theme, with us moving to an apartment/cottage/small place having concluded that the amount of building that we’re going to get done this year is – well – less than we’d hoped. We’re still hoping to get the septic, well and possibly the foundations and drive / access road in. However, any building of the house is conclusively off until next year.
When we realised that we decided to move, and the last month has been a fairly urgently toned attempt to get our apartment to somewhere comfortable and relaxing. We trekked down to Portland to order our sofa*, and we found a book safe, which is beautiful and turn of the (last) century, and is filling up with our books, and looking delightful.
It’s facing our 1896 piano, which seems appropriate, albeit a little odd in what is clearly most commonly a student/bachelor pad.
Anyhow.
So last weekend we decided to say stuff the world and spend some time looking after ourselves. We had a massage, we used our gift tokens to go and buy tea and spices (we’ve had only salt and pepper since we moved in here), we had lunch at Darby’s, played board games, we watched Ghostbusters (2016)**, we went swimming in a lake, and we went and sat in a park eating icecream, reading the paper and enjoying the view of the inlet. It was pretty much awesome and wonderful and really necessary because Kathryn and I have seen each other only in passing so far this month – and will for the rest of the month because of my working hours.
And at the weekend we got a call to say that our sofa was ready. Up until now we’ve been using camping chairs, which are reasonably comfy but have no snuggling capacity. And then today, thanks to our lovely friends lending us their minivan, I made the run to Portland and back to get it. Sadly I couldn’t drop in on friends down there although traffic was so bad coming into and out-of Portland, I probably could have done without actually impacting the journey back substantially.
We even managed, after some trepidation and somewhat inept failure, to get the sofa into our house (it just fits through the door). And now we’re sat on a delightful modern take on mid-century and it’s suuuuper comfortable.
And y’know what? It’s starting to feel more like home.
I still have internal conflict about leaving the UK, or leaving the UK for the US (and not somewhere more liberal and lefty – and that would be more challenging for us both linguistically and culturally – like, say, Iceland****), especially as the debate continues to rage around Trump (you won’t be able to unsee that link) and I worry that the US will follow the UK’s deathspiral into rightwing insanity. But, at this point, I’m sat on the sofa, with a cup of one of my favourite teas, and I’m with the person I love, and y’know what, it feels pretty good to be in this moment.
* 4 to 6 weeks for delivery… being as it was handmade in Oregon – just a block or two from the store in which we saw one design and said “we like that, but we prefer the fabric on that one”….
** Which was awesome.***
*** I’m really disappointed to find that Kate McKinnon seems to have some significant transmisogyny in her recent past, because I was busy adoring her and her character.
**** Which I’ve never been to but is, I’m given to understand, very pretty
