Unicorns and Dark Platoons
Dec. 6th, 2017 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraWe’re veering into our fourth day of grey skies with nary a flicker of sunlight. This whole nine-hours-of-daylight thing is very hard on me, but the absence of sunlight makes it even worse. All I want to do is sleep.
I had to decline a festive weekend invitation because the party is in Hudson, and I don’t drive at night.
I suspect I may be up to driving at night once I (a) have my eye operation and (b) get a newer car, so why I am dragging my feet on those two projects, I don’t know.
I suspect it’s my antipathy for breaking everything I have to do into small manageable parts and hopping on the conveyor belt.
My eyesight should just magically cure itself! Someone should give me a car! That’s how life should happen!
You know I’m right.
###
The political news just gets worse and worse and worse.
While liberals were allowing themselves to be distracted by unicorns – I mean, 25-year-old sex scandals! What the fuck do you think you can do about these things now? – the dark platoons were massing. The current team of scam artists and grifters managed to pass one of the worse tax laws on record. Not content with unbundling the Obama legacy, they’re also going after the LBJ and FDR legacies. Medicare and Social Security are both in the crosshairs. It won’t affect me, but if you’re reading this and you’re under 40, it will affect you – because despite what you think, you will be old some day.
Why there were not massive protests against this tax bill clogging every major and mid-sized city in the U.S. is beyond me because this legislation is out and out class warfare. But again – liberals and progressives allowed themselves to be distracted. Yes, of course, sexual harassment in the workplace is an objectionable thing. But Garrison Keiller getting fired for touching a woman’s bare back one fucking time by mistake? That woman getting enraged by John Hockenberry because he sent her mash notes by email? I wouldn’t call either of those incidents sexual harassment, and yet they commanded headlines for days.
Cases involving forcible rape need to be dealt with as criminal offenses.
The big boss who makes remarks about employee vaginas? He needs to get fired.
But the rest of it?
Signals do get crossed in the workplace. People who work under highly tense conditions do let out steam by acting in questionably appropriate ways – particularly in a culture that’s as two-faced about sex as ours is. When you commodify sex, when you use it as an ingredient in the secret sauce that’s driving marketing and consumer demand, you can hardly be surprised when it bubbles up into the workplace.
I see no evidence that anyone’s planning to change the ingredients in the secret sauce.
###
It was interesting staying in Max’s house for a few days. A Boomer spy in the House of Millennials! His housemates are all very politically correct. And I have to say, pretty fucking boring, too.
Like one morning I heard one of the earnest vegan girls talk about the benefits of oatmeal for half an hour to an earnest vegetarian boy. Half an hour! In response to the question, “How are you?”
I think she was trying to convert him to veganism.
They’re nice.
Very nice.
But it does make me wonder. In order to be nice, do you really have to be dull?
I had to decline a festive weekend invitation because the party is in Hudson, and I don’t drive at night.
I suspect I may be up to driving at night once I (a) have my eye operation and (b) get a newer car, so why I am dragging my feet on those two projects, I don’t know.
I suspect it’s my antipathy for breaking everything I have to do into small manageable parts and hopping on the conveyor belt.
My eyesight should just magically cure itself! Someone should give me a car! That’s how life should happen!
You know I’m right.
###
The political news just gets worse and worse and worse.
While liberals were allowing themselves to be distracted by unicorns – I mean, 25-year-old sex scandals! What the fuck do you think you can do about these things now? – the dark platoons were massing. The current team of scam artists and grifters managed to pass one of the worse tax laws on record. Not content with unbundling the Obama legacy, they’re also going after the LBJ and FDR legacies. Medicare and Social Security are both in the crosshairs. It won’t affect me, but if you’re reading this and you’re under 40, it will affect you – because despite what you think, you will be old some day.
Why there were not massive protests against this tax bill clogging every major and mid-sized city in the U.S. is beyond me because this legislation is out and out class warfare. But again – liberals and progressives allowed themselves to be distracted. Yes, of course, sexual harassment in the workplace is an objectionable thing. But Garrison Keiller getting fired for touching a woman’s bare back one fucking time by mistake? That woman getting enraged by John Hockenberry because he sent her mash notes by email? I wouldn’t call either of those incidents sexual harassment, and yet they commanded headlines for days.
Cases involving forcible rape need to be dealt with as criminal offenses.
The big boss who makes remarks about employee vaginas? He needs to get fired.
But the rest of it?
Signals do get crossed in the workplace. People who work under highly tense conditions do let out steam by acting in questionably appropriate ways – particularly in a culture that’s as two-faced about sex as ours is. When you commodify sex, when you use it as an ingredient in the secret sauce that’s driving marketing and consumer demand, you can hardly be surprised when it bubbles up into the workplace.
I see no evidence that anyone’s planning to change the ingredients in the secret sauce.
###
It was interesting staying in Max’s house for a few days. A Boomer spy in the House of Millennials! His housemates are all very politically correct. And I have to say, pretty fucking boring, too.
Like one morning I heard one of the earnest vegan girls talk about the benefits of oatmeal for half an hour to an earnest vegetarian boy. Half an hour! In response to the question, “How are you?”
I think she was trying to convert him to veganism.
They’re nice.
Very nice.
But it does make me wonder. In order to be nice, do you really have to be dull?
