late thirties . small time artist & baker . if you look like a bot I will block you . there be much vulgarity and nudity on this blog, lads…but also cute animals, so…
daily reminder that ‘camp damascus’ is not my first 'real’ book. erotica books ARE 'real’ books. also i am not doing a 'character’. chuck has had to say this with every surge of popularity over last decade and here comes another wave. i am so THANKFUL for this timeline regardless
I dislike dogs, I think they’re annoying and I generally dislike their personalities unless they’re a) working (in which case I shouldn’t interfere with them) or b) basically cats (in which case, just get a cat, they’re far more physically pleasant to touch). I’m not afraid of them and I don’t hate or resent their existence, they’re important animals, I just don’t want them around me.
But if a dog comes over and wants pets or play then I WILL pretend I love it and I will pet it so much because it’s not the dog’s fault that I don’t like them. It wouldn’t understand my rejection and I don’t want to make it sad. Just because it’s an unpleasant animal doesn’t mean it deserves to be sad.
There seems to be a deeper philosophy one could derive from this but as it is its solid.
Behaving with basic compassion for other living things regardless of whether they fulfil your own emotional and aesthetic preferences. The world makes me happy but the amount of happiness I bring others isn’t contingent on them making me happy first. It’s not a serotonin transaction.
if you defense for why eugenics bad is “ maybe our disabilities helpful actually ” you part of problem
those of us who not able do anything “ helpful ” still deserve live we not next step of evolution we just people stop worry if people disable could be good in future and just help keep alive in present
Pensions sound so fake as a zillennial. You work for one place for decades (already sounds fake) and then afterwards you leave and they just. keep paying you. the same amount of money. to do nothing. for the rest of your life. if i wasn’t already aware that this was something that readily and commonly existed during my grandparent’s days then it would sound like some kind of socialist pipe dream
constantly devastated by the world we lost due to aids
The battles that rose out of the AIDs epidemic were access to marriage and military service. When once the Queer community was focused on creating the best art and living lives worth telling stories about, the 1990’s brought on a new goal: How to best fit in.
As the brilliant Fran Bebowitz has said many times, the first people who died of AIDS were the interesting ones. The artists. There’s a reason that arts became Ghostbusters and Cats in the 1990s. Because all of the really talented artists were dying. The rule-breakers. The ones who weren’t afraid to shake things up. And the audience died with them.
“Now we don’t have any kind of discerning audience. When that audience died- and that audience died in five minutes. Literally people didn’t die faster in war. And it allowed of course, like the second, third, fourth tier to rise up to the front. Because of course, the first people who died of AIDS were the people who… I don’t know how top put this… got laid a lot. OK. Now imagine who didn’t get AIDS. That’s who was then lauded as like - the great artists.” - Fran Lebowitz
So many of the gays left alive once the Clinton Administration came into being were, to be frank, the boring ones. Gays who knew nobody and who nobody knew, and they rose to the top of the community and therefore their priorities rose to the top of the community as well. And what did they want? Apparently, they wanted to join the army and have big gay weddings.
General employment non-discrimination wasn’t all that important to them. Making sexuality and gender identity a protected class, along with sex, race, and religion, wasn’t that important to them. They wanted marriage and military. Because they were the good gays. Not the naughty gays who were sleeping around and dying of AIDS. Not the poor gays who couldn’t make political contributions.
They were the gays with families and commitment ceremonies and office jobs and houses. They were the good ones. The ones who would look fantastic and incredibily marketable when they were interviewed by CNN. They were the gays who straight people would look at and say to themselves: “Maybe they’re not so bad after all. I still don’t want my kid to be gay. But maybe it’s okay if Bob and Henry got married.”
The gay rights movement shifted from ‘Accept us for who we are’ to 'We’ll be whatever you want us to be if you accept us.’ And it’s kind of remained that way over the last thirty years.
We’ve been trained to be offended by queers who step too far out of the mainstream. Plenty, and I mean plenty, of gays online were on edge when Billy Porter started showing up to awards shows in dresses. Lots, and I mean lots, of gays were unnerved and worried when trans people started coming out of their own closets. Some going so far as to disavow the T from LGBT because they were worried people who don’t like trans people would lop in the gay men and women in with them. Who needs community when you’ve already got your house in the suburbs, right?
They didn’t want to sit through demeaning and bigoted religious services just for a place to sleep. (Church run food banks do this a lot too btw).
They were late and the shelter wouldn’t let them in and voided the rest of their allowed stay bc they didn’t call and tell the shelter they couldn’t make it in before closing.
One of the other people at the shelter got violent/threatened violence and the shelter refused to do anything about it.
One of the SHELTER EMPLOYEES/VOLUNTEERS got violent/threatened violence and the shelter refused to do anything about it.
The shelter refuses to disclose if allergens are in the food they’re providing saying, “This is all you’re getting, be glad for this much and thank god!”
Shelter refused to believe person is homeless saying, “You are FAR too clean and nicely dressed!”
Actually reblogging again because I have something to add to this.
I work as a case Aide in a shelter that provides wrap around services for unhoused clients. We are pretty decent providers overall. We provide accommodations, we have a huge variety of housing program options to reduce barriers to entry, we even try to take a housing first approach. We’re good enough compared to other local shelters that WE accept complaints from clients for THE OTHER PLACES because our standards are so much higher (i.e. we don’t serve clients expired food and we actually clean the showers and we don’t step on kids faces and shit).
All that being said: the services we provide are fucking restrictive as hell. Our unit inspection standards are so high that if I was in our housing program I’d be at risk of getting kicked out for clutter. Our employment standards and requirements are ableist and we’ve had multiple providers refuse to work with clients in finding remote work. Our staff have little to no understanding of autism and the way mental health impacts ability to adhere to program requirements, and it leads to a lot of staff shit talking clients for stuff they have little control over. Clients still have to Fight with management to pursue a genuinely client centered goal path.
We are the shelter that catches a lot of people that fall through the cracks and we still have no scope of service accomodations to provide for most moderate to severe disabilities, no way to accommodate pets or even family beyond mothers with fewer than 3 children. All clients are required to establish independent living and there are no options for assistance for clients who want to live with a roommate or in a community/family setting. There are so many people we can’t or our structure doesn’t allow us to serve.
THIS IS NOT A MORAL FAILING OF THE UNHOUSED INDIVODUALS. THIS IS A FAILING OF OUR SYSTEMS. UNTIL WE. CAN SERVE THE MOST VIOLENT, DISABLED, AND DISADVANTAGED INDIVIDUALS WE WILL ALWAYS FAIL.
when you’re out at a restaurant or a coffee shop or a target or whatever with your friends and you overhear/eavesdrop the same snippet of some stranger’s conversation, and you look at each other for a second to check that you both heard this stranger say the same weird/funny/baffling thing and just break out in knowing grins and quiet laughter… that’s a love language
I hope Robert and Barbara Wire are in a happy and committed relationship.
When lockdown happened in the UK it happened very suddenly. At the law firm I work at, our office building emptied overnight when everyone was told to work from home. No time to clear our desks, no time to bring office plants home.
Fast forward three and a half months - everyone assumes that their plants are dead.
But then! An email goes round! It’s turns out that one of our security guards is a florist, and -
-the security team has moved EVERY SINGLE PLANT from all 12 FLOORS of our office building into the cafeteria. It’s been turned into a temporary greenhouse. Cacti and succulents and spider plants and terrariums and potted ferns
AND! Each plant has been INDIVIDUALLY LABELLED by hand with post-it notes with name and desk location so the plants can go home after lockdown ends
To give some indication of the scale of the endeavour:
If you zoom into the centre right photo you can see one of our security team happily waving
The plants are being taken care of tenderly. They get sun and water and are spending happy times with other plant friends
Disabled people deserve government assistance and benefits. Even if they have incomes. Even if their spouses have incomes. Even if both they and their spouses have incomes.
Because being disabled is fucking expensive, even with affordable healthcare, even under the best circumstances and in the most accessible situations.
