*looks at incredibly unwindy outside* I just really wanted widespread power outages so I didn’t have to go o to work on Monday. :(
Things are still moving FAST at high altitude, towards Seattle. But nothing’s picked up here yet.
You know I went to all the bother of moving the car charger inside the garage… and now I’ll have to move it back outside tomorrow. Feh.
you shut your mouth
(I’ve been through too many multi-day power outages to be anything but an anxious mess about this weather. ESPECIALLY when I’m supposed to be in a wedding tomorrow, and have to go to rehearsal tonight in the middle of the worst of it!)
I’m sorry you’re anxious, and the wedding thing would SUCK. I really do enjoy it, though, despite also having been through lots of multi-day power outages (nine days was the record, which was in much colder weather – I admit I’d rather not do THAT again).
I also have a gas fireplace and gas stove, which makes it all much for exciting and much less anxious-making.
Coming from Europe, the concept that a power cut might last more than a few hours (unless it’s the 1970s – and there’s strikes going on) is completely alien. I actually can’t remember the last time we had a powercut in the UK that lasted more than a few hours.
In fact, I’m pretty certain we never had one in Bristol and certainly not more than one in Slough.
in fifteen minutes I’m going to tell you the story about how my dumb lesbian ass willingly went into a dorm with four bros
it’s been more than fifteen minutes I know but you will get the full scoop on this (also I’m okay)
Okay STORY TIME
so I was walking back from work around nineish and my neighbor/seminar classmate is in the hallway talking to his girlfriend. he sees me and he’s like “hey!! hey classmate whose name I don’t know” so I turned around and was like “it’s Hayley.”
and he apologized for not knowing (I didn’t know his name either so I wasn’t mad) and asked if I’d started my first paper for seminar. he asked me what it was on so I told him and he was like “I’m so stuck I have no idea what to do,” so clearly the natural response for my stupid ass to make is to offer him help – I told him to knock on our door and ask for me if he needed help.
maybe I did this because I was still in tutor mode from work. maybe I did it because no one takes those offers up anyway, right?
wrong! a half an hour later, as I’m getting ready to shower, he knocks for the door and asks for me, and all my roommates don’t believe him bc he’s this dude bro who clearly works out and is wearing a johnny cash tshirt. like how fake deep is that. i would never associate with a dude bro
so he invites me back to his place and as I’m walking there I’m like “this could very possibly be a bad idea,” but I go anyway bc I’m a dumbass with no sense of self preservation.
he lets me into his apartment and I’m immediately hit with the bro-ness of it all: a sports illustrated poster on the wall, protein powder EVERYWHERE, posters of beer, snap backs, flasks, and a guitar because of course there is.
his room is no better, and alarm bells are just fucking going off and I’m trying to think of a quick exit. then he tries to close his damn door to his own room and I’m like “hold up that stays open” and he was like “oh yeah I’m sorry I didn’t think about that,” which was….considerate.
two hours, two cigarette breaks later, one opening paragraph later, and one of his roommates trying to hit on me later, he starts talking about intersectionality and my mind goes ?????????????? and we legit talked about rape culture and trump and how fucked we all are. eventually we started talking about the law and feminism so then I tell him I’m gay and his immediate response is “do you get those stupid microagressions from guys who say they can turn you straight?” and it took me a minute to respond bc the fact he even knew that word was so bizarre it was like worlds colliding.
he then tells me he thinks his little sister might be gay because he thinks she told him while he was drunk one night but he couldn’t remember so he asks for advice because he doesn’t want to upset her because, in his words, “I’m not gay so you know I don’t understand it like you do.”
then, because the night of course could get weirder, he tells me he writes poetry but doesn’t tell anyone because he’ll get shit for it bc he’s supposed to be a “tough guy” and masculine and shit and I just feel Jesus sending me a message through this kid that I shouldn’t judge all dude bros by the bro-ness of their looks but I also wanna stay sexy and not get murdered so I’m gonna keep doing that. sorry jesus.
finally I left because I was tired and also I had to wash the smell of bad cologne off of me but guys this was an experience please believe me. i was standing in the shower before just letting the water wash over me as the whole two hour ordeal played over in my head because we laughed, we talked. he told me something about himself no one else knows, we exchanged political ideas and fist bumps. we bonded over the stress of a seminar paper and now we are forever changed by this event.
so that was how my dumb lesbian ass willingly walked into a room with four dudebros in it.
I was so scared this was gonna go badly but turns out it’s about making new friends in unexpected places
Y’know what really pisses me off abou the rise of Farage in the UK and Trump in America and other assorted demagogues around the world? It’s the way the “traditional” right shakes their head and tuts at these figures as if to say “this is nothing to do with us.”
Farage and Trump are a logical continuation of 30+ years of neoliberal capitalism, white supremacist language cloaked in slightly more polite terms and a general contempt for the working class and marginalised communities. When politicians allowed migrants to be blamed for the worst excesses of unrestrained markets, what did they think would happen? When politicians started villifying single mothers and did nothing about soaring rape figures, where did they think it would lead? If you hold up wealthy people as role models, regardless of their ability or merit, how can you be surprised when wealth alone gives someone a viable shot at being president of the United States?
Some of the sentiments muttered by Farage actually aren’t a million miles away from the kind of shit that the Thatcher government used to come out with (concentration camps for people with HIV, anyone?). Trump seems pretty fucking ridiculous from where we’re standing now, but so did Reagan back in the day.
This is where that path has led us. And what prominent right-wingers really don’t like is that Farage and Trump are up-front about the prejudices and misconceptions that inform their views. Unlike some of the right, they don’t even bother to cloak their vicious fucking lies in good intentions.
And unless we get rid of this economic model, in 30 years from now, we’ll probably look at the politicians we’re dealing with then and think “man Farage and Trump don’t seem all that bad now.”
