No AI was used in the development of this blog post.
Though, given that I keep taking 6+ month gaps between posts, maybe I should consider some clanker support.
This post finds me somewhat older, no wiser, accepting the reduced challenges on my mental capacity and the resultant understanding that I will never be as intelligent and informed as I was back in the day. I have five years in at my gub'mint job, and it's still five more years before any of my retirement vests. I don't think I'll be seeking any promotions and picking up any extra responsibility, but that means I know what little money I'll make and I know how meager my retirement will be. I no longer think about how soon I can retire, I now think about how long I can keep working to kick the can down the road.
I used to get sad when my dad told me in which order he hoped he and his wife would die. I guess I get it a little more now.
I've been going to twice-monthly therapy for a couple years now, which might inform the infrequency of these blog posts. If I can talk to a therapist, maybe I don't need to vent on this page. However, I just switched it to monthly therapy, and I'll be honest, I don't like it. On the one hand I should probably be making progress and being able to handle my own issues and anxiety and depression for two more weeks, and on the other hand I spend three weeks straight feeling like everything that happens might be the thing that makes me lose my shit and I will regret not having had a therapy session that week or the week before.
I'm taking a day off work and getting on a long ass Amtrak ride to visit some people I love for one day, 24 hours. I haven't been to see them in years and years and I feel like an ass for letting that happen.
I don't think anyone's reading this, but if you are, I hope you're doing well.
--6:54 PM EDT, Philadelphia, PA, The telecast's in Spanish, I can understand some / And I need justice in my life; here it comes
I was going to catch the $10 train to Atlantic City for gambling and salt water taffy, but Ingrid said she was going to cook dinner, and I didn't want to get caught under a mass of blackjack winnings or comped to free meals or rooms or something. I also didn’t want to spend 2-3 hours traveling to Atlantic City in order to lose $200 in forty seconds or something.
So instead, after I went out to get Ingrid breakfast, I took two buses and the subway to a casino in town. I brought my crochet so I could be the least threatening degenerate gambler there.
Transit is always weird. It’s wonderful that we’ve built a system to allow people to travel all over the city, but a system like that doesn’t get any appreciation or care in a capitalist environment. The subway station smells like piss, the buses are crowded and the drivers are trying to be on time and still be considerate of passengers’ needs.
The casino turned out to have been an error. Every person there was an 80 year old chain smoker with a mobility aid. The workers are all getting lung cancer and aren’t even allowed to smoke. Midday on a Monday everyone there is a degenerate gambler or waiting for God to take them home or both.
I walked the floor two times trying to find a spot I could play blackjack for a while, but every minute I spent in that place was increasingly depressing. I finally decided that leaving without gambling in any way was a win for the amount of money I got at the ATM, minus the transaction fee, which is $9 at the casino.
I took transit back home, stopped at the grocery store, and Ingrid texted me to tell me to get dessert if I wanted anything. I decided to continue on the bus up to a bakery we like, and get a little cake. I also had a coupon for a free big soda at Wawa. Unfortunately, this put me with two big bags and one big soda, and the bus I got to take me home was SRO.
I hate when people don’t act in a socially cooperative manner on our socially positive transit. I stood the whole time while the driver braked and turned too fast and generally made my last mile home miserable. When I gathered up my bags to disembark, I spilled my big soda all over the bus. I apologized and ran for it.
My back hurt and my dog was occupying my chair with the heating pad on it. Ingrid felt poorly and decided not to make dinner after all. We had cake, though.
And that was my birthday. Not great, but better than last year, I guess.
--7:49 AM, EST, 11.4.2025, Philadelphia, PA, "I'd make a deal with God / And get him to swap our places"
I don't feel good about much. I note that I haven't posted anything on this page since I suggested everyone get a rifle and provide for their retirement with violence against their fellow citizens. Not great. But I just autopaid the domain name fee for the site, so I may as well say something.
I'm over 50. I have 16 years before retirement. I have 27 years before the house is paid off. I will likely be dead before either of those things happens. I make very little money doing thankless work, in a society that increasingly wants the people doing necessary important work to make as little as possible. Teachers, public servants, artists, social workers, they all make so little money as to almost not be able to live in the society they are giving so much to.
A group of disaffected rural politicians is preventing the state's largest city and mostly lucrative source of tax income to running its transit system, because they are hateful and small-minded shitbirds.
Capitalism will pull the football away from you time after time, and then shit on you for trying so hard to kick it.
A search for meaning in this environment is absurd.
I think I'm going to search for birch beer and ice cream instead. Better, more reliable payoff.
--11:50 AM, EDT, Philadelphia, PA, Everything dies baby that's a fact / But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
A guy recognized the injustice of a company making billions of dollars withholding medical care from paying customers and murdered the company's CEO.
This is adjacent to an idea I have had for some time, but haven't openly shared -- I think? I might have. This blog has existed for a couple decades -- because of how dark and cynical it seems. But I guess America went dark and cynical when I wasn't looking, because everyone is mainly in favor of this murderer. I cannot blame them.
So, the $800 retirement plan.
Jobs, broadly speaking, no longer offer retirement plans. You generally can't go to work for Big Jim's Widgets with the guarantee that you can retire to Big Jim's Retirement Village with your coworkers and their spouses. You aren't guaranteed a pension anywhere anymore. I work for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and our "pension" is just a fund that you spend on an annuity when you retire. Every worker is advised to also save into a IRA or 401K or some other instrument, which is not paid into by your employer. You don't get your pension at all if you don't last five years, and you don't get the full amount if you don't last ten. Folks are kinda on their own, so the generation that had to move back in with their parents may find their parents moving in with them in a few years.
It's bad, and there's no safety net. You can't rely on Social Security, Medicaid is a joke, and rich guys keep ruining New Deal-era retirement programs and protections.
One thing they haven't fucked up is the Second Amendment.
So this is my modest proposal. You retire, and you have X dollars. Budget out how long it will take you to spend all your money except for $800. Live how you want to live. Travel, give gifts, do the things you never could while you were struggling to pay rent, or medical bills, or student loans. Go ahead. You won't need the money by the end of this step. Use credit cards as well. Max them out as you approach the end of your cash on hand.
When you are down to $800, purchase an AR-15 rifle. (When I first imagined this retirement plan, a rifle and a box of ammunition was $800. Costs have risen since then, but the principle remains the same.) Go somewhere where the costs listed above - insurance, student loans, rent - are collected. Distribute some lead at people who deserve it. Post-Luigi Mangione, it will be difficult to get a shot at executives, policymakers, truly evil people. Try not to kill anyone who doesn't deserve it, but make sure you kill people who do. Don't be stupid and shoot working class people who have no control over your wage slavery. No one will support that.
If you have no desire to keep on living, kill the cops who respond first and the remainder will make sure you die. Retirement costs solved. If you want to keep on living (it helps to be a white man for this part), surrender yourself after promising not to hurt anyone else. You'll spend the rest of your life with three hots and a cot, medical care, and no concerns about how you'll pay for it all.
This is a horrific plan, and I hope it never becomes necessary for anyone. But the country is increasingly taking the options, backstops and buffers away from ordinary citizens. 'Murica loves their guns, though, and an American with no pension, no health plan and no community will still be able to purchase a weapon capable of killing 23 schoolchildren in the time it takes to sing "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt". The problem is a person without any of those benefits has nothing to lose, and is entirely likely to have $800 in spending capital, cash or charge.
Cory Doctorow wrote a short story adjacent to this, called Radicalized, about men whose loved ones are denied health care by unfeeling insurance companies, who proceed with terrorist actions against the insurance companies. Doctorow didn't foresee the broad support the terrorists would enjoy among the American citizenry, but then he's Canadian. He probably didn't want to be impolite.
William Gibson said that "People who feel safer with a gun than with guaranteed medical insurance don't yet have a fully adult concept of scary." Those people might not be able to afford the fully adult security blanket, but they can afford the one that ruins everyone else's security. We just have to hope they aim at the source of their misery.
7:30 PM, EST, Philadelphia, PA, That's not how it oughta be --REM, "Don't Go Back To Rockville"
My birthday weekend went as advertised.
My mom was stressed and anxious because we were all in town and she spent every minute worrying that she didn't have enough food or we would fight each other every minute. My sister turned every possible moment into a drama explosion and then whined about how we were all against her. My brother spent the weekend drunk and stoned until I asked him to send his college friend home so we could have some time with just the family, at which point he blew the fuck up and accused me of being selfish and not supporting Mom.
That was my birthday. I thought maybe we could stop and get birthday dinner somewhere after our flight home, but Ingrid felt sick so we had to race home.
I asked some folks to please celebrate my birthday instead of me, since I'd be otherwise occupied with funeral bullshit. I guess that looked weird in retrospect because no one got back to me with how they did it. Kristy did, but then she's awesome. I just wanted someone, or someones, to be having a nice time on November 3rd since I accurately predicted I would not be.
I've started therapy, which is nice, but it makes me question whether I'm really depressed or whether I'm just self-absorbed. I'm getting an ADHD assessment Wednesday, which one of my friends seems weirdly enthusiastic about. Like "yeah you too join the team", when I'm more like "I wasn't born at the right time for diagnoses like this and I want to know if I've been missing out for 45 years".
My back hurts, my dog is ingrateful, my girl doesn't have a libido, my brother is mad at me and I owe him a couple grand for funeral expenses, my job doesn't pay dick and public servant benefits are not what they once were. I've let my law license lapse, because $250 annually seems like a lot to pay to fool yourself into thinking you'll eventually have a career in law after twenty years of failing. America reelected a fascist, and even if he dies soon we get Fascist Jr.
Things are not great. My therapist gave me some breathing exercises. "Keep breathing" may be all we can hope for for a couple years.
--9:32 AM, EDT, Philadelphia, PA, often antisocial, always antifascist
I thought it had been a while since I posted anything, but not a whole year. Turns out I drafted a post and never hit "approve". I'm sorry, imaginary reader, if you spent too long wondering what was up with my life. Facebook was useful for providing this worthless proxy for personal connection; naturally I've deleted mine.
So, yeah, my dad died back in February. I'm kinda permanently sad about it. This is just part of getting old. I read something about boomers living longer, but spending those extra years suffering under American healthcare and end-stage capitalism. My mom just survived Hurricane Milton; I don't use "survived" lightly, it was a storm that was terrifying to meteorologists and she sent me a "here's what I want to happen if this storm kills me" message. She's okay. This is just part of living in climate catastrophe.
Next month I'm going to Florida for her husband's memorial service. He was a dick and I'm glad he's dead. I'm working on euphemisms and dodges for when I am asked about him. "Hopefully the people whose lives he's touched will awaken to a better day" is about as close to "he's dead and everyone is better off" as I can come up with off the top of my head.
Here's the kicker - the service is on November 2nd, so I have to fly down there the day before and fly home the day after. The day after is, of course, my fiftieth birthday. I was laughingly wondering if my family was going to do something for me; quite the opposite.
My state health benefits include six-a-year therapy appointments. I should pull the trigger on that benefit, because fuck, I'm angry and sad all the fuckin' time. I think I might have undiagnosed ADHD, but that's gravy. The main event is depression and living in an unjust end stage capitalist dystopia.
Ingrid left town for a couple days to see her family. I took the day off of work to mind the dog. Ingrid has been gone for less than 24 hours and the dog has peed in the house twice already. I would rather be cleaning up dog piss and listening to the Indigo Girls than commuting on a beautiful Friday. I'll take her to the dog park later today. Four day weekend when you add in Indigenous Peoples Day.
Because fuck Columbus.
--12:53 PM EDT, October 11th, 2024, just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone
I never write anymore. My days are the same, unbroken stretches of yesterday, today and tomorrow where each is indistinguishable from the last. It's probably worth it to record what those days are like, if only to assess what it is that's so banal that it's not worth noting.
I get up at 6 AM, shower, and walk the dog. If the dog is compliant, I can catch the 7:07 train to Center City. If not, I wait for the 7:37. I can take the bus from our new house, which is a nice fallback option. The early train gets me to work half an hour early, the late train gets me there right on time: usually 5 or 10 minutes late, given how reliable SEPTA is.
I work for the commonwealth, doing clerical work for the welfare office. Mailing forms, processing requests. The pay is shit and the neighborhood I work in is awful, but I'm doing work FOR people. I quit being a doc review lawyer because it was just helping billionaires sue each other, or get out of being sued by the government. I feel morally better about my current job, even though I look like an asshole for doing three years of school and six figures of student loan debt, followed by 15 years of work I hated.
I eat fast food or peanut butter crackers for lunch. I waver back and forth on soda -- either I'm only having one a week or one a month, or I'm having one or two a day and justifying it to myself as something I deserve because I'm sad.
I'm sad all the time, so this is not great reasoning.
I work 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM with an hour for lunch. My coworkers are good folks. I am in a union.
My commute to and from work is about an hour each way. I ride the regional rail train for thirty-five minutes, then change to the subway to get out to West Philadelphia. I walk about half a mile on each side of the commute, plus any steps I get at lunchtime or during breaks. I like to pretend this is enough exercise, so I can defend spending the rest of my free time in a recliner. I am conscious of my own bullshit.
At work I spend way too much time staring at my phone. My job requires me to stare at a computer monitor. When I get home, the only thing I like to do with my free time is to play computer games. I'm amazed my eyesight isn't completely fucked yet.
My dad died last month. He hadn't been well, so it wasn't a surprise. You spend a lot of time telling yourself whatever reassures you or supports your course of action. Whenever I would suggest to family members that he might not have much time left, they were shocked. "He's not DYING," they'd say. "He's just got a problem with his foot / heart / circulatory system / etc." Dad reinforced that with his simultaneous "I'm fine, the doctor says" and "I don't know if Mary and I will get another Christmas" statements.
Funerals are expensive.
Earlier in the job-related part of this post, I mentioned that my pay is shit. When someone had to go to New York and sign with the funeral home, I tried to keep my brother and sister informed. They got mad over the cost, and I certainly didn't have $17,000 lying around. But it was what Dad wanted, so we did it. I didn't let myself get worked up over the cost because 1) credit cards exist, 2) my sister is basically a millionaire, and 3) we would eventually be paid back by Dad's estate.
No one wanted to pay the lump sum to the funeral home and there was a lot of "that guy gouged us, fuck him and his bill" talk. I asked Ingrid to put it on her credit card because mine wasn't large enough. As soon as my siblings heard that Ingrid paid it, they switched gears and got very generous and "oh money is no object." That made me madder than the initial $17,000 bill. If money was no object, why did I have to do all the decision making and heavy lifting while you all bitched and moaned?
It's over with now, and I hope we'll see that money back from the estate. It'll take time, and as stated earlier my time is just grinding along.
I feel like this was real whiny and self-pitying, but that's nothing new for this blog. I don't care much because no one's reading it. If you want to hear something nice, I've been buying computer parts and I'm building my first PC once I have the nerve to spend $500 on stuff I literally don't need. Again, credit cards exist (I got a new one so I could balance-transfer the funeral debt off Ingrid's card), and better to do something nice for yourself than wait for someone to do it for you.
Happy roll back the rock day, primitive hunter gatherers. If Jesus sees his shadow it's six more weeks of Lent.
--10:57 AM EDT, Philadelphia, PA, 3/31/2024, Whoa no, Guadalajara won't do
I'm still alive.
It's Christmas time in 2023. My dad's wife has dementia. It sucks. I spent half of Christmas day at the psych ward of Doylestown Hospital.
I still work for the Commonwealth. The job is trash but it is hard to get fired from and union benefits are not bad. (They're not perfect, though, and you can see where we got fucked by Republican bullshit at some point over the last X years.)
We got a pit - basset hound mix named Orla. That means "golden princess," but our golden princess farts and smears butt gland oils on my shirts. She's a pretty good girl and we like her.
Thank you to icculus for fixing this site. I know I don't use it much, and if he let it disappear into the internet's drain, nothing of value would be lost. I'm grateful regardless.
It's been 40-50 degrees all week. I'm losing my affinity for winter to global warming. You can't glory in subzero temps if there are no subzero temps.
I'm trying to convince Ingrid to marry me for tax reasons, procedural reasons and convenience. No dice so far. I'll let you know if anything changes.
--8:24 PM EST, December 26th, 2023, any major dude would tell you
It's been forever.
I got a job with a large governmental entity. It is a severe case of underemployment but it's a union job and includes a pension. If I decide that I can put up with being an office drone for nineteen more years I get a lifetime salary. I got the job just after my last post, so it'll be a year this September. I'm still waiting to hear if I get a raise or what. C'mon union!
Ingrid is shopping for houses, to buy instead of rent this time. She likes the neighborhood, likes her job, likes the city. I'm all for it, though I'm sure I'm going to catch flak from my privilege-bearing cohort for "you're just NOW buying a house?" and whatever other heteronormative judgments they want to levy.
Lennie died. It's a Tuesday morning as I write this, and she died Sunday morning. I'm still hurting over it. She was a bad dog, but such a good dog. We lucked out when the pound suggested we take a look at this little Chihuahua looking murderer, and she lucked out too. I don't know who would have put up with her the way we did. Rest easy, angry pooch. We love you.
I'm noticing that my post about complaining about my mom is two posts ago, in my infrequent chronicling. Lennie had the best day, that day. I was mad about it in the moment, but I bet she dreamed of that chicken cheesesteak forever after. "I had it, man, I had it in my JAWS."
Everyone deserves a win, once in a while.
I don't know if I'm posting because I have all this free time, or if I'm feeling introspective about the dog, or what. Some social scientist could probably tell you why based on the frequency and length and content of these things. I don't have an opinion. I just writes them.
Maybe more again sometime.
--6:25 AM, EDT, 8/16/2022, Philadelphia PA, you seemed so close but yet so cool
I never hit send on that last entry until just now.
It's likely because I didn't want anyone reading mean things about my mommy.
--7:57 PM, Sunday night, EDT, trois navires de ble
[ archives | front page ]