Post-Election Blues

You’d think I’d post a big rant right now, but some things go without saying. I ranted plenty back in 2016, and if I were to mouth off now, I’d be covering a lot of well-worn ground. There’s just not much left to say. A while back I even wrote a short story about you-know-who getting elected the first time. It’s called “Think Tank” and you can find it in the collection “Geek Cutes.” My point is, I’m ranted out.

That said, my community is really suffering right now. The Republicans are acting like their favorite basketball team just won a game. For them it’s nice to have a win, but it was just a game - the stakes weren’t really that high. But the people I follow are worried for their lives. Some of them are contemplating suicide, while others are looking into moving to another country.

It’s seriously insane, the difference in the amount of danger involved. If the Republicans had lost, they’d have been angry, but their lives wouldn’t have been upended this way.

That’s the concept I wish people would get – sometimes the stakes are higher for one group than another.

A scenario: If your next door neighbors – people you like even if you don’t always agree with them – were about to be unfairly executed, but you could pay five dollars to set them free, would you? I know it’s not your problem, and I know you were hoping to spend that $5 on a root beer float or something, but are you really willing to let them die?

Because that’s what’s going on here. Republicans are angry that eggs cost more than they used to (something Trump isn’t likely to fix), and they don’t like that their children are learning actual history in school.

Meanwhile, Democrats are angry because women are dying from ectopic pregnancies while doctors wring their hands, worried they’ll go to jail if they help. Democrats are angry because the new anti-trans laws could force people to detransition. And of course Democrats are angry about the usual issues, such as climate change, wealth inequity, police brutality, and the cost of medicine. Very real issues, and much more important than the price of your goddamn eggs.

Yeah, maybe if Kamala had been elected, your groceries would have gone up another $20 a month. But some of your medicines might have gone down by more than $1,000, so… and I say this with a dollop of sarcasm… “it evens out.”

The point is, Republicans lack empathy. I’d say that’s the biggest difference between the two parties. One side wants to make the world a better place for everyone, and the other says “I got mine, screw everyone else.”

Republicans probably think I’m overreacting. And I hope they’re right. Nothing would please me more than to be wrong on this one. I mean that. This is one time when I’d rather say “you were right” than “I told you so.”

But I predict I will be saying “I told you so” a lot in the next four years.

Moving Woes

I’ll be losing my job at the end of the year. Don’t worry about me, I’ve got a pretty decent severance package, and I was looking for an excuse to move to another state anyway. But jeez this whole process is about as stressful as things get. It’s hard to move and change jobs at the same time, especially over such a long distance.

The issue boils down to this:

My realtor can’t show me any more homes until I bring a preapproval letter from a lender. The lenders don’t want to preapprove anything because I won’t have a job then. It doesn’t matter that my severance payments will be the same as my regular paycheck, because it’s not forever.

The order of things is making it difficult. My current house is worth a good deal more than I have left on the mortgage, so I should be making a profit. But I don’t get that until after I sell it, which is after I move, when I could really use that money for the move itself.

I could go ahead and apply for a job up there, but I wouldn’t be able to start until mid-January. So basically I need to get hired for a job I can’t work at yet, just so I can say I have a job.

I could temporarily move into an apartment in the new state, until I get a job. But the problem with that, besides having to move twice, is that we’re unlikely to get one large enough for all our stuff. One of the reasons we’re moving is to get more square feet for all our stuff. It would suck to have to sell half our stuff just so we can move into a temporary apartment. And that’s if we can even find an apartment that allows three cats.

And yeah, we can rent a storage unit for some of our stuff, but that’s just more money on top of everything else.

I can’t be the first person to move to a new state between jobs. Seriously, how do people do this?

Anyway, the usual self-promotion: If you're reading this and want to help, buy my books or buy me a coffee.

Dream: The Bed

I dreamed I saw a movie that was a bit like Misery with touches of Gerald’s Game. The main character spent most of the story tied to a bed. His kidnapper was a woman, and she spent the movie taking care of him, feeding him, and so on. The woman was really bubbly and doting, and talked to him as if he was there by choice. (Despite the theme, it was not a sex dream.)

The woman kept him docile by drugging him, and the drugs gave him hallucinations. He kept seeing the woman as different women he’d known throughout his life. Different actresses played the woman every few minutes, but they all had the same mannerisms and crazed personality, since their appearance was just a hallucination.

The man believed that he was being punished for something, so the movie kept showing flashbacks, memories of women he'd wronged. Each time the woman had a new face, he'd remember the worst thing he'd ever done to that woman.

In the end, the hallucinations wore off, and he saw the woman for who she really was. She was a stranger to him. He'd seen her a couple of times in a crowd, but he'd never interacted with her. The woman, however, was obsessed with him, and had been stalking him for a while.

He did manage to escape in the end.

Things That Only Happen To Old People

This morning my wife had a doctor’s appointment downtown. I set my alarm with the intention of leaving an hour before the appointment. When I got up, I checked Google Maps on my phone, and it said it would take an hour and a half to get to the doctor. Figuring traffic was unusually bad, we left an additional half hour early.

We noticed pretty quickly that traffic wasn’t particularly bad. For every ten minutes we drove, we got twenty minutes closer according to the app. When we were about halfway there, the app started having us turn onto back roads. Some of these weren’t even roads, but more like alleys and parking lots. The app showed our route as a stairstep pattern, going from alley to alley to get to our destination. At one point it had us go through a road with a “No Access” sign.

Eventually we realized that this couldn’t possibly be right, so we stopped so I could figure out the problem. It turned out the app was set to “bicycle” instead of “car.” I don’t know how that happened, I’ve never used the bicycle setting, I don’t even own a bike. My finger must have brushed it or something.

Anyway, long story short, we got to the doctor 45 minutes early.

Dreams: Robocop 4

I dreamed they had just released Robocop 4 in the theaters. (Is there already a Robocop 4? I have no idea.) R4 had a different tone than the rest of the series. His partner this time was played by Sarah Michelle Gellar (my wife and I are currently rewatching Buffy), and it had a comedic "buddy cop" feel like the Lethal Weapon movies.

However, Dan O'Herlihy, who played the CEO in the original Robocop, was angry that he hadn't been cast in R4. (Note, in real life, this actor died in 2005.) O'Herlihy started killing off the rest of the cast.

I was Gellar in the dream, though I was probably closer to Buffy, and I was investigating the murders. I explored a movie theater where Robocop 4 was playing. The theater complex had a river running through it, and customers had to take gondolas to reach the different theaters. 

O'Herlihy, which is difficult to type, fled the scene of the crime in a gondola. He had the rest of the board members from Robocop in a gondola with him. I tried to follow by walking in the waist-deep water, but then he poured something in the water that made it acidic. So I had to climb up to a short ledge that lined the flooded hallways.

I still managed to keep up for a while, but there were gaps in the ledge which slowed me down. Then one of the board members (played by Ralph Bellamy in the dream, though he wasn't in Robocop IRL) betrayed O'Herlihy and somehow helped me get a boat of my own. The details get a little blurry at that point, but Bellamy and I did manage to capture O'Herlihy and bring him to justice.

Now Available: Geek Cutes

My latest book is now available on Amazon and Other E-Retailers. Only 99 cents!

Geek Cutes is a collection of eight light-hearted short stories, spanning a variety of genres, with a focus on lesbians (both cis and trans).

Stories included in this anthology:

Dungeon Therapy: Two women meet over an online tabletop RPG.

Gilded Cage: A young tech expert is locked in her room by her homophobic parents.

Mother's Day: A cop teams up with an occult expert to track down an otherworldly monster.

Fairy Dust: In a war between fairies and dragons, one pixie must embrace her destiny.

Hero Worship: A woman goes on a blind date with a superhero, but is it safer to stay single?

Think Tank: A team of scholars struggle to break a divine code, racing against the most serious of all deadlines.

Strangers in the Void: When the power goes out on a space station, two strangers work together to find the cause.

Vigilante: In a neighborhood riddled with violent crime, a masked hero protects women from the local gangs.

Republican Boogeymen

Have politics always been this dumb?

When Obama was elected, I thought the nation had come really far, and we were headed into a new era of enlightenment and acceptance. And then Trump came along, and undid four years of progress within his first couple of months. And I’m not even talking about specific policies he put into place (though I could), but rather the “If I don’t want to believe it, it’s fake news” mindset he put out into the universe.

We have one side that believes in science, and research, and observable facts and data. Then we have another side who just says, “They’re the enemy, so whatever they say, do the opposite.” It is amazing how predictable they are. Just this morning, a notable Republican spoke out against NYC citizens wearing masks as protection from wildfire smoke, simply because the Democrats suggested it.

And I have to wonder, has it always been this bad, or do I just pay more attention to politics than I used to? To put it bluntly, it’s hard for me to believe that Republicans were this stupid my entire life. I just don’t believe the party would have survived if, say, Ronald Reagan had told people not to wear condoms during the AIDS pandemic. Or if Bush (either one) had told schools, “Stop teaching about World War II, it makes Nazis feel bad.”

There’s always been boogeymen, I know that much. Mountains are made out of molehills, to distract voters from the actual, important issues. Right now, Republicans would have you believe that all of the world’s ills stem from drag queens and trans children. They’ve blown the issues extremely out of proportion, because with all the bad press the party has received lately, it’s one of the few issues they can count on to get votes. The bigot demographic is very important to the Republican party.

If you’re a Republican and you’ve read this far, let me clear a few things up for you. You’re not going to believe me, and you’re going to claim I’m “brainwashed by the Liberal media” or whatever, but I’m going to say it anyway. I have a close relationship with the groups in question, so my first-hand knowledge isn’t filtered through the bias of the news programs.

1. Drag is an umbrella term. Saying, “all drag shows are adult” is like saying “all video games are about Mario.” Stop accusing events like “Drag Story Time Hour” of being adult content.

2. Unless, of course, you think “man in woman’s clothing” automatically makes something adult, in which case, you’re a fucking idiot. Do you honestly think Mrs. Doubtfire should have an X rating? Or MASH? Some Like It Hot? Bosom Buddies? Bugs frikken' Bunny? If you can’t see a man in a dress without thinking impure thoughts, that’s your fetish, but don't assume everyone else shares your kink.

3. There is no sudden surge of trans kids. There was a time when kids weren’t allowed to be left handed. Parents and teachers taught all kids to use their right hands, because they didn’t know better. Once they realized that it was healthier for kids to write with their dominant hand, left-handedness went on the rise. If you look at the graph, it looks like people just suddenly started being left-handed starting at a certain year. But, obviously, left-handedness didn’t start then, that’s just when it started being accepted. Same with trans kids. They’ve always been here, but now we’re better at identifying it and understanding it. Well, some of us, anyway.

4. No one is “transing” their kids. I can’t believe that I even have to say that, but apparently you really are that stupid. No one wants their kids to be trans. Nobody is saying, “I wanted a girl instead of a boy. That’s okay, I’ll make my boy a girl.” This is real life, not Sleepaway Camp. These kids were already trans, whether you want to believe it or not. We don’t want to make kids trans, we just want the kids who are trans to live safe, happy lives.

5. Yes, kids know they’re trans from a pretty early age. Stop acting like you suddenly gained all the knowledge of the universe the day you turned eighteen. Admit it, you knew early on that you liked your gender. When I was in third grade, every boy I knew bragged about how boys were better than girls. I knew guys who were against the existence of female GI Joe characters. One guy refused to play as Lizzie in the video game “Rampage,” because the monster was really a woman. Another friend told me he’d kill himself if his penis ever got cut ever off. But what if you’d had all those same feelings, but for the opposite sex? Because some kids do.

6. No one is rushing their little boy to the gender therapist just because he tried on mommy’s bra that one time. I see this so often from transphobes. “So what if he wants to be a girl? When I was his age, I wanted to be a fire engine.” I’m sure you did. For like, a day. But your child’s passion for painting sure lasted a long time, didn’t it? So much so that they grew up to be a professional artist. Attentive parents will recognize the difference between passing whims and core aspects of their child’s personality.

7. No one is performing genital surgery on kids. If you watch Fox News (and shame on you), they’d have you believe it’s being done on a daily basis, but even adults have to jump through 1,000 hoops to get gender affirmation surgery. The only thing they’re doing to trans kids is putting them on puberty blockers, which postpone puberty until the child is old enough to make an adult decision. Puberty blockers have been in use for decades (and not just for trans issues), and they’ve been proven to be safe.

Okay, a quick side note – when I say “no one” is doing something, I’m not saying it’s never happened in the history of the planet. There’s 8 billion people in the world. If something is possible, it’s probably happened at some point or another. But none of this is happening on a regular basis in America. Don’t dig up an article about some nutjob who performed amateur surgery on their kid, and present it like it’s proof of a widespread epidemic. The only genital mutilation that regularly happens to kids in America is circumcision.

And yes, I know, there were a couple of cases in the news where 16-year-old trans boys had mastectomies. But those were rare events, there’s more to those stories than the headlines, and you’re moving the goalposts. A handful of teenagers getting breast surgery isn’t proof of “widespread underage genital mutilation.” You do know the difference between breasts and genitals, right? And I’d be hesitant to call 16-year-olds “children” in this case. I’m not saying 16 is old enough to transition, but it’s disingenuous to lump them in with eight year olds when making your case.

8. We Liberals actually do agree with you. We don’t want people performing genital surgery on children either. We don’t want parents brainwashing cis children into thinking they’re trans. We don’t want kids attending shows with explicit content. But none of that is actually happening. Your crusade against “the enemy” keeps you from acknowledging the world that’s right in front of you.

Please, please, please start showing a bit of critical thinking skills. Your beliefs aren’t just harmful, they’re illogical. And you know it. Some part of you has to see that A+B isn’t adding up to C. If those “drag queen story time” events involved nudity, you’d have actually heard of a specific instance by now. If boys were fully transitiong into girls, you’d be able to name at least one by name. It would be such a scandal, it would be on every news program. You’ve known who Christine Jorgenson was since you were a kid, but can you name one trans child? Your “news” programs make nebulous claims, telling you these things happen all the time without ever revealing specific cases.

Because they’re lying.

Do better.