The Inconvenient Truths of Inconvenient People

 

This is a response to a post on Mary Kit Caelsto's blog about her decision to stop blogging about living with fibromyalgia.

https://marykitcaelsto.com/blog/2021/01/13/saying-goodbye-to-fibro-gone-wild/

I've mostly stopped blogging about mental health issues because I don't get much response. A friend pointed out that my honesty with difficult subjects probably makes most people uncomfortable. I doubt that you "complain" too much. It's sad that when we tell our truth we're made to feel like we're inconveniencing others.

Ornery Owl

She whose resting bitch face never rests

Free use image from Pixabay

Mes crazy expériences: WeWriWar 339: The House at the Crossing 45

Mes crazy expériences: WeWriWar 339: The House at the Crossing 45:    

I wonder what it would have been like to meet another version of myself at 15. Would my AU self have some insight that I didn't have, or would my attic have been an echo chamber?

Ornery Ramblings: Check Please

 

Image by Helena Jankovičová Kováčová from Pixabay

This post is, in part, a response to the following post:

https://therapybits.com/2021/01/17/jusjojan-prompt-17th-january-check/

It is also a response to the JusJoJan prompt, which I just found out about.

My mom is a prophet of doom. I had a cold last week. I was quite sure it was a run-of-the-mill cold. My mother went on and on about how it could be COVID. I had to resist the urge to say, "okay, it's COVID, and now we're all going to die." 

I took a lot of B vitamins, and today I'm fine. Now it's just run-of-the-mill allergies.

If I had to check for the plague every time I sniffled, I'd have to go around with a cotton swab up my nose for the rest of my life. Not a pleasant thought! 

And now some further thoughts. This part gets profane, so if you're sensitive about swearing, this is your warning to turn back and go someplace less salty. No bitching allowed, except by me. 

I haven't been posting much in the way of personal thoughts lately. I kind of consider it to be a damn waste of time, and nobody wants to hear that shit.

Then again, why should I give a fuck what anyone wants to hear?

Is it catharsis to puke out what's bothering me, or is it just self-indulgent fuckery when I could be doing something potentially lucrative?

I need to check myself before I wreck myself.

These days there aren't too many places I can go to wreck myself. This town doesn't even have a liquor store. I don't drink more than a literal sip or two of beer or cider these days if my son happens to be having a beer or cider, which he doesn't do very often either.

Since the wind's finally died down (it's been windy as fuck over the past four days) I'll probably break out my walker and meander over to the general store to pick up some sour cream and cheese.

When I was in my late teens or early twenties, I would have died a thousand deaths to think that one day I would be living in a literal ghost town that didn't even have a bar or liquor store so I could drink myself into oblivion or go out mindlessly partying, hoping my miserable existence would miraculously change if the music was loud enough and I was shitfaced enough. 

I didn't know at the time that my behavior was a manifestation of unresolved trauma. Nobody really took PTSD or sexual assault seriously. Anyway, I was "asking for it" because I went with the guys who did what they did of my own volition. It was my fault, not theirs. Boys will be boys. They can't help themselves. I should take it as a compliment that they found me so irresistible.

Yeah, those are all things that I heard.

Believe me, I hated myself for a lot of years.

It's not like I love myself now, but I've learned to put up with myself and to realize that nobody has a right to shit on me. Not because I'm middle-aged, not because I'm a woman, not because I'm fat, not because I'm someone that most people would consider tremendously unattractive, not for any reason whatsoever. Anyone who tries to shit on me will get a cork slammed up their ass, hard.

We have a few plagues going on these days.

COVID-19 is the sort of plague that will physically kill your ass outright if it can.

The plague of misogyny is one that people love to pretend no longer exists. But it does. We are not living in a post-misogynist world any more than we are living in a post-racist world. Both of these plagues are still running rampant, as is the plague of cruelty to people who don't measure up to certain arbitrary standards of beauty.

The plague of classism continues to run rampant. Many people still believe that those who live in poverty don't deserve to have their basic needs met and that they brought their lot on themselves by "being lazy." 

If the poor slobs just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, they too could live like Jeff Bezos in a mansion with more toilets than ten people require, all while denying adequate restroom facilities to their workers. Now, that's livin' large! What the fuck kind of billionaire are you if you aren't denying your serfs a place to piss?

COVID-19 is directly deadly. The other plagues destroy dreams, killing their victims slowly.

We need to hand all these plagues the check and kick them to the curb. We have not done nearly enough to address them.

And that is today's angry stream of consciousness from a perpetually pissed-off old bat whose resting bitch face never rests.

For more sporadically profane or profanely sporadic ramblings, bookmark this fucking site and check in with me at your leisure.

Fat, ornery, and sick of everyone's shyyyyyyyt.

Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

https://lindaghill.com/2021/01/17/jusjojan-prompt-the-17th-check/

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The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

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While Nero Tweets, the Elderly and Disabled Suffer

 

Free use image by John Hain on Pixabay

This post is a response to this post:

https://kalpanawrites.com/shadow

I can definitely relate to the feeling of being a shadow of my former self. In fairness, my former self was a workaholic who didn't take care of herself at all. I'm kind of surprised that I didn't end up in an early grave.

I have been waiting on a disability determination for almost a year now. That people are punished for becoming disabled is unconscionable to me. However, seeing as my country is figuratively burning while Nero tweets (or he would tweet if he hadn't been booted off Twitter at least temporarily) nobody gives a rat's hindquarters about handicapped and elderly people, I can assure you.

Ornery Owl Has Spoken

Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

IWSG 6 January 2021: Lazy Stereotypes

  

Free use image by Christian Dorn on Pixabay

This month's Insecure Writer's Support Group question:

Being a writer, when you're reading someone else's work, what stops you from finishing a book/throws you out of the story/frustrates you the most about other people's books?

The thing that will most quickly frustrate me about a book and cause me to either knock a star (or more) off the rating and/or stop reading the book entirely is the use of heavy people as mean-spirited comic relief or a story where every large person is miserable, slovenly, constantly shoveling food in his or her face, and/or is an unattractive (and often envious) prop used to enhance how hot the hero/heroine of the story is. This sort of writing is lazy, boring, and lacks nuance and insight. 

Back in 2019, I was listening to an audiobook by Nora Roberts. I initially liked the hardboiled female detective character, although I disliked the way the male love interest's overt sexual harassment of her was portrayed as sexy. I decided to keep listening to the story, writing this aspect off as an unfortunate and overused trope. 

I stopped listening to the book and immediately gave a one-star rating when Mr. Studly Detective stopped by a witness' apartment for an interview. The witness was a heavyset elderly woman described as "having two chins and working on a third." And, of course, her apartment was full of cats.

Fuck a whole lot of that shit.

I like to incorporate fat characters into my writing, not as the butt of jokes, not as the swooning sidekick, but as heroes and heroines in their own right. 

Robin Roberts and Little John Tamboli are a pair of Cockney ghouls. They were inspired by the great comedy team of Laurel and Hardy. Robin is a small, wiry fellow with a sharp wit. John is big and bucolic, a good-natured, sensitive soul. Of the two of them, Robin is the one who is more likely to be stuffing his face with gruesome foodstuff at any and every given moment.

While John's body type is mentioned to describe his appearance, it is never done so in a negative fashion. He is portly, stocky, sturdy, stout. He tends to have a rumpled appearance, but this is because he's a ghoul who came from a working-class background during his lifetime and the idea of being pressed and polished is foreign to him, not because he's fat. Comic relief moments involving John center around the fact that he is a bit naive, not to ridicule his appearance.

Being hateful towards heavy people is not funny. It is unkind and unnecessary, and it needs to stop. 

The illustration at the top of the post shows a slender young woman and a heavyset young woman. While such an illustration can be used to show how thin girls develop eating disorders because they see themselves as fatter than they really are, my point in using it is to pose this question.

Why do we insist that something is wrong with looking like the larger lady?

What if nothing is wrong with either of them? 

What can we tell by looking at these characters?

Can we tell how much they eat, how much they exercise, what medical conditions they have, or what medications they may be taking? Do we know what either of them eats? Do we know if either of them has an eating disorder?

We can't tell anything by a person's size except that the person is that size. 

Making assumptions about people based on their size is cruel, hurtful, and harmful. As authors, I feel that we have an obligation to stop promoting hateful stereotypes. 

Fat jokes are lazy as fuck anyway. 

Unless you're Gabriel Iglesias, your fat jokes aren't funny. Leave them out of your narrative.

The fat, ornery owl has spoken.

 

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

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http://www.naughtynetherworldpress.com

https://bit.ly/nnpLBRY

 

Dark Hearts Love Too: New Senryu

Dark Hearts Love Too: New Senryu:   the end of the year hope is ...

Blowing sunshine up people's asses isn't my style. 

I'm not going to bullshit myself or you either.

Like all of my poetry, this Senryu does not come with a sugar coating. Read at your own risk.