Bathroom Liberation Front

Nearly a year ago, on my 27th birthday, I wrote a post celebrating the Supreme Court decision to essentially legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. I used the event to remind myself, in the haze of my annual birthday depression, that even in fucked up little Amerikkka, good things come to those who wait. After decades of discrimination, humiliation, violence, disease and repression, the queer community in this country that I've come to see as a kind of extended family of proud misfits finally had a bright, shining victory to celebrate for all the heartache and backbreaking hard work and it felt like a victory for the whole fucking country. One that gave me hope when I needed it most. We had witnessed true radical change in this country for the first time in a very long time and it felt good, damn good. The people had come together and together we were heavy.

Unfortunately, like most great moments of cataclysmic change in this country, it came with a price. One step forward and two steps back. And those steps were to be taken on the backs of the queer communities most vulnerable minority and the one nearest to my heart. Those fine folks at fag-basher's INC. set there sights on the trans+ community and set there phasers to kill. What transpired and sadly continues to transpire is not legislation or even a backlash. It's revenge. Our happiness angered the gods of hate and they demanded blood.

They got it over the last year as a slew of states across the Bible Belt got busy creating legislation that targeted queer people under the guise of defending small business' and civil servant's right to discriminate as long as they invoked the name of god to do so (they always do) giving everyone from bakers to pissed off crazy cat ladies like that bitch Kim Davis the ability to deny services to gay couples. But that was just the proverbial lubricant. The real dick in the ass came with the anti-trans+ bathroom laws.

They differ slightly from state to state but they all follow a similar line of thought, if you can call it that. In order to protect the delicate sensibilities of our precious daughters from the off possibility of seeing a wiener (GASP!) women's bathrooms had to be policed by laws that barred anyone born with a prick from entering them. Now, aside from the fact that these laws are totally unenforceable, which I'll get to shortly, they seem designed and marketed to humiliate, dehumanize and demonize a minority that already suffers from more gruesome brutality then any other. The vile commercials for these campaigns routinely go out of there way to paint transgender people and trans-women in particular as depraved sexual predators only interested in using public restrooms as a hunting ground to prey on young children. They did everything but invoke the name of Buffalo Bill.

These laws weren't designed to be effective. As stated above, there totally unenforceable unless your going to put an armed state trooper at every fucking rest stop to check peoples birth certificates at the door like a goddamn bouncer. No, these laws are designed with only one purpose in mind and that is to unleash a witch-hunt style wave of persecution against transgender and genderqueer individuals which can only end in violence. I'm not being hyperbolic here. The letter of these laws is written word for word by "faith" based, designated hate groups like the Liberty Council. These laws are about hate, pure and simple. There is no room to mince words on this. There is yet to be a single, solitary recorded case of a trans+ person assaulting anyone in a public restroom. Yet over 70% of polled transgender people report having experienced traumatizing encounters in public restrooms. Many of those incidents include violence and even rape. Many of these victims are trans+ kids who also experience record shattering rates of suicide, largely because campaigns like this make them feel like loveless monsters. But I guess those precious daughters don't fucking matter to all the fine Christian folk at the Liberty Council. Well, they fucking matter to me. To quote Throwing Muses- They can no longer move and I can no longer be still.

To be clear, I may be some yet to be defined variant of genderqueer (still figuring that out) but I'm lucky enough to be able to say that these laws don't effect me directly. However frustratingly complicated it may be, my predominant gender identity still matches my biology. I have no problem using a men's room aside from the fact that there fucking repulsive. Even if the prototypical jarhead fag-basher pissing next to me knew I was genderqueer, one look at my mountain man beard and my Haystacks Calhoun physique and he would probably just assume that a guy like me being genderqueer just meant that I liked to wear women's lingerie while I slaughtered my victims with a fire-ax (I actually prefer kimonos and chainsaws.) Long, hypothetical story short, Johnny Fag-Basher would probably sooner piss sitting down then risk a bloody death in my basement choreographed to the tune of "Goodbye Horses". What can I say, even the most hideous stereotypes can be fun sometimes. My point is, I have the luxury of being able to blend in with the straight world. Even my feminine side is pretty butch. But most gender non-conforming folks aren't so lucky. And since I can't be in every men's room from Kansas to Mississippi with my kimono and chainsaw to protect my people, I have no other choice but to once again fall back on the sadly limited power of my mighty little blog.

My solution, aside from castrating the Johnny Fag-Basher's of this universe, is actually pretty simple. Down right obvious in my opinion. Desegregate the bathrooms. Seriously, why the fuck not. I don't think even the most heavily chromosomed mongoloids out here in cousin-fucker country suffer under the delusion that not everybody poops. The very premise of gender segregated bathrooms is actually relatively recent. About 127 years to be exact. Which in the scheme of human existence is equivalent to a fucking pin drop. Furthermore, it's a relic of an antiquated and sexist era.

During the burgeoning Industrial Revolution of the late 1880's, the mustache twirling patriarchy of Victorian America jumped at ways to protect or rather control the growing population of female factory workers. What they came up with in there infinite, manly, Caucasian wisdom was that good old stand by of segregation. They figured, shit, it worked on those troublesome colored folk down south, so fuck it, why not? And thus we had ladies reading rooms in libraries, ladies parlors in department stores, ladies train cars (in back, naturally) and ladies restrooms. Most of these brilliant, paternalistic advances fell by the wayside of progress. So why hold on to the last vestige of a stupid era. Especially when it oppresses and violates peoples basic dignity. Privacy would simply be a matter of locking the stall door. Urinals and open showers would have to go but I'd hardly call that a tragedy. And I know what you ladies out there are thinking. Men are fucking animals in the bathroom. My OCD has made me painfully aware of this fact. But ask any straight married man if his bathroom habits have become more human since cohabitating with a member of the opposite sex and they will promptly give you a defeated sigh and concur. The more women in a house, the more cleanly the bathroom. Never underestimate the power of a good example. We can fucking do this people. It's not fucking rocket science. All we have to do is grow the fuck up and evolve. Segregation of any kind is bullshit. Lets liberate the bathroom, NOW!!!

Putin's Last Laugh Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great Chess Game

It was a beautiful dream. A dream of blood and guts and conquest. A dream of sword swinging Mujaheddin. A dream of transcontinental pipelines. A dream of an ethnically cleansed, Wahhabi quisling state, a hatchets throw from Russia's jugular. It was a hideous, ghastly wet dream straight out of Churchill's musty spank bank. It was a nightmare about secular Syria in chains, splay legged and prepped for Yankee rape. And it almost came true. They would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling Russians.

Yes, dearest motherfuckers, on March 14, Vladimir Putin, that most wily of Kremlin bastards, announced before a shocked global audience on the eve of the Geneva Ceasefire that Russia had achieved its goals in Syria and would be pulling the majority of its combat forces out of the country less then six months after they had arrived. In other words, checkmate.

But to fully understand and appreciate the gravity of Putin's victory speech you have to look at how we got here and start at the very beginning of this Syrian mess.

It all started with a pipeline. In the year of our lord, two-thousand-and-nine, Qatar, one of America's finest little oil-rich terror state-lets, offered the secular regime of Bashar Al-Assad the opportunity of a lifetime. You see, Qatar, with the full support of its American handlers, had cooked up a grand scheme to funnel its plentiful oil stash directly into the EU by way of a pipeline that was to run through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and hopefully Syria. Thus cutting a huge chunk out of Russia and Iran's own Euro driven oil profits and further isolating two of America's final targets in its century long quest for global domination. Syria was the last state necessary to make this scheme come true.

Naturally, Assad said no. Which only came as a surprise if you've spent the last fifty years up your own asshole (AKA the US State Department). Syria wasn't about to fuck over two of its oldest and most loyal allies just to hop in bed with a nest of serpents who would (and have) gladly devour there own young just to see there stock value rise half a point. As if that weren't enough to finally due in this little anti-imperialist pariah state, Assad then went ahead and signed on to a counter deal to start a similar pipeline with Iran in 2010. That was the point of no return. As far as Uncle Sam and his Wahhabi quislings were concerned, Assad's ass was as good as grass.

Thankfully the villains of our story had just figured out how to hijack the once troublesome Arab Spring vis-a-vis the magic of social media and use it for there own evil plots. This reckless formula had already (pseudo)successfully brought down Gaddafi in Libya. All part of then Secretary Killary's new wave of American imperialism, ironically deemed Soft Power. Now it was time for a sequel in Syria. And Killary, in her perma-infinite wisdom, decided to use the war-booty of Muammar's massive weapons cache to do it. Soon literal shiploads of Libyan weaponry began to find its way to rebels on the shores of Syria. But after this pipeline got hit by Killary's own once loyal freedom fighters in Benghazi, slaughtering Ambassador Steven and his entourage in the process, Obama got spooked and rejected Killary's plot to directly arm what was essentially Al-Qaeda with the emphasis on directly. This wouldn't do. Madame Killary, not accustomed to hearing no from someone who, as her charming hubby once mused, would have been getting her coffee a few years ago, left in protest. This didn't stop Obama from getting a little help from his friends.

With Madame Killary out and the post-Benghazi arms tide too toxic to touch with American fingers, the job of moving Gaddafi's deadly loot to our latest proxy jihad was outsourced to Turkey who dutifully began to flood the Syrian deserts with a searing hot ocean of high-powered weaponry. Meanwhile Qatar and Saudi Arabia did what they do best and gathered the disaffected maniacs of the world and sent them into another poor secular nation in dire need of destabilization. All while Obama and his cabal of little Eichmann's in the State Department went to work pumping the compliant western media-sphere full of propagandist tall tales of brave Syrian rebels being violently repressed by big badman Assad, infringing upon there there god given right to slaughter infidels and sell there daughters like cattle. Naturally, the bright, wholesome folks of the fifth estate, entrusted to educate the American people, ate this devil's dung like fine chocolate and spit it back out into the gaping mouths of there already thoroughly debased audience.

Not that this was nearly enough. The reality on the ground in Syria was that the manufactured rebellion never had the support of more than thirty percent of the local population and that number plummeted once it became undeniable that this supposedly homegrown uprising was in fact comprised largely of foreign mercenaries who couldn't give two shits about democracy or even humanity itself for that matter. The Syrian people did the only sane thing they could and stood by the devil they knew. Russia did the same and continued to back there Baathist Allies against yet another uprising clearly aimed at weakening there presence in there own continent.

In spite of all the free guns and man power or more then likely because of it, America's latest mujaheddin loverboys quickly had there asses handed to them by the very people they claimed to be liberating. It rapidly became painfully clear to Obama that Killary was right about one thing. You couldn't have your imperialist pie and eat it too. He could have pulled a JFK and realized that he was in over his head with his dusty Bay of Pigs and pull the plug on it. But no, the Nobel Peace Prize winner decided to double down on his mess. It was time to pull a Dubya and go balls deep in this bloody bitch. The only problem was Obama didn't have the 911-style support he needed to commit such an act of imperial pasty rape with his dovish posterity in tact. Even with the waves of State Department approved propaganda being vomited at the American people, they still couldn't stomach another Middle Eastern quagmire. The corpses of Iraq and Libya weren't buried deep enough to stop reeking. Obama would have to get crafty with this one.

So the Commander in Chief came up with a plan, A wickedly ingenious plan. With Assad's boys enjoying the joyful sadist's end of a glorious ass whooping and with the full knowledge that the rebel's re-gifted Gaddafi arms stash included biological weaponry, Obama sent his whip-lashed errand boys a thinly coded message through the western mass media. The crafty young president made a series of public announcements the he would not interfere (directly) in the Syrian Fracas UNLESS, that is, someone (anyone?) crossed the "red line" and used chemical weapons (wink wink). The desperate Jihadi's heard the message loud and clear and launched a series of nerve gas false flag attacks against Syrian civilians. Obama and his NATO posse wasted zero time waiting for the bodies to get cold before declaring unequivocally that the then victorious Assad had inexplicably crossed the red line that insured his own doom. And of coarse, once again, Obama's devoted fanclub in the media joyfully jumped aboard another war bandwagon with the unblinking giddiness of kindergartner's on an Autumn hayride. It looked like Obama would finally have his war. But Putin had other plans.

As Obama began to circle the wagons and prep for a full blown Syrian invasion, complete with fleets of menacing gunboats gathering along the nation's coastline, even going so far as to fire a warning shot over the bow of a locally stationed Russian battleship (Gulf of Tonkin, much?), Vladimir Putin, ever the Russian chess master, carefully plotted his next move. A weaker leader, like Yeltsin, would have simply abandoned there embattled Allie. A dumber one, like (insert American president's name)
would have over reacted with military bombastics. Putin chose a third way and against all odds it fucking worked.

With a little help from a fellow anti-imperialist hell raiser in the Vatican, Putin brokered a peace deal with the Assad regime. Assad agreed to hand over his own antiquated chemical weapons stash, left-over from his feud with Yankee armed mustard gas enthusiast Saddam Hussein, to the Russians for disposal if the "free world" agreed to step off there throat. The lion share of the so called free world was pleased with this option. Obama was beside himself with frustration but what could he do? Putin caught him with his pants down, spanked him and called his bluff. Without the already played out specter of weapons of mass destruction, Obama didn't have the support he needed at home or abroad to engage in a "humanitarian" bloodbath. What was even better was that now Obama's Heroes(TM) in Al-Qaeda could no longer gas people without exposing the lie of the previous false flag attacks. In one fare swoop Putin managed to not only kill Obama's war but he also depleted him of an option in provoking another one. Obama, who had previously poo-pooed the constitutional necessity of congressional approval for war powers, was forced to send his plot against Syria to die in the Senate and anti-warriors such as myself welcomed the rise of Putin as an unlikely champion for peace.

Putin had humiliated Obama. He made a wanna-be warmonger look like a fucking pussy in front of the chicken-hawk set. The cruelty of cold, hard reality didn't stop Obama's liberal fanboys however from ludicrously giving there dear leader credit for preventing a war he carefully designed himself. It also didn't stop this wolf in doves clothing from seeking revenge. But he'd have to look north of Damascus to get it.

As the Russian people basked in the new found glory of there international leadership at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Obama's minions in the State Department busied themselves manufacturing an uprising in Russia's neighbor and former heartland Ukraine. By the Games closing ceremony the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych had been violently overthrown and replaced with an openly Russophobic, neofascist junta who wasted little time antagonizing the nations sizable Russian speaking population when the people of Crimea rose up and decided, democratically, to return to there motherland. Putin stepped up again and bravely accepted the will of the people followed immediately, of coarse, by another toxic campaign of slanderous vilification from the lemmings in the western media.

The point of the Maidan coup was to provoke Russia into a confrontation that would permanently alienate them from the European market they depended on for oil revenue. Putin recognized this right away and adamantly refused to take the bait. I myself, as a lifelong Russophile and history nerd was livid with what appeared to me to be Vlad's cowardly indecision on Eastern Ukraine. I was all to familiar with the long plight of the Novorussiyan people. I had read extensively on the grotesque horrors they had suffered and against all odds survived at the hands of the Nazi's and there Western Ukrainian henchmen. Millions of bullet riddled bodies in mass graves. Only now to face skinheads marching beneath the same treacherous flags there forefathers had died beneath. I supported there independence. I still do. And I was furious that Putin refused to do the same, especially after Crimea. I was wrong. Though I may possess a Russian soul, I lack a Russian mind. You see, Russians play the long game and Putin was no exception. Putin played for keeps.

While Vlad had little choice but to respect Crimea's wishes in order to maintain Russia's indispensable Black Sea fleet in Sebastipol, he wasn't about to be suckered into another Afghan trap like his Soviet forefathers before him. So he played it cool. He aloud NATO to go out of there way to harass him and he aloud the US to discredit itself and expose there own duplicity with there relentless and increasingly unhinged tall tales about fictional Russian invasions. Sure enough, it took less then a year for Europe to grow exasperated by the constant Yankee wolf crying. These cultured self righteous Euro-twats may have been ready and willing to indulge in there innate Slavophobia with sanctions and economic warfare but they weren't about let the US use them as a front for starting the third world war. So they cautiously decided to go against Obama's wishes and give Putin another opportunity to play peacemaker. And so it was that Putin brokered another peace deal that still stands strong today. Novorussiya has held on to there hard fought autonomy while the fascist American rump state of Banderastan has devolved into a colossal despotic money-pit, totally dependent on funds the US and the EU can barely afford to pay. Once again, Putin had shrewdly turned the tables on his foes.

This didn't mean he was out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. While Vlad was distracted up north, Obama's black budget henchmen devised a devilish new strategy to destabilize Assad. Two armies were built. One, the ironically titled Syrian Free Army, was built out in the open as a force of American armed and trained "good guys" ready to fight for mom, apple pie and democracy. The other army appeared just as suddenly but from the shadows. ISIS, as they called themselves, seemed to have mysteriously rose from the sands of Iraq like Ozy-fucking-mandias. It's leaders were all former Al-Qaeda fighters who met in the same American run prison and were summarily released for reasons still shrouded in mystery. The nucleus of there rank and file came directly from the Sunni death squads used by Petreaus during the Fox fabled surge. I think you get where I'm going with this.

While America had zero traceable ties to ISIS, our client states in Turkey and the Persian Gulf pulled out all the stops to bankroll these bastards. As did our own Free Syrian Army in there own weird way. While officially enemies of ISIS, our boys seemed to act mostly as a recruiting ground or even a conduit to the army of darkness. A common narrative unfolded. A Syrian rebel is vetted by the US. Trained by the US. Armed by the US. Sent back into Syria by the US. Then summarily joined ISIS the moment there boots hit the fucking sand. Obama puts up his hands and says oopsy-daisy. But it happened way too goddamn much to just be a coincidence. That tasty, cinnamon flavored neocon Marco Rubio was right about one thing. We need to dispel with the notion that Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. He's doing what right-wing chicken-hawks like Rubio only dream about and he gets away with it every fucking time.

After destabilizing the Iran-friendly Shiite government in Iraq, leading the once resistant Al-Maliki regime to get down on there knee's and beg us to re-occupy there country, ISIS turned there attention to Syria and quickly pushed Assad's back back up against the wall. After a Grand Guiginol-esque orgy of depravity on YouTube, Obama finally had the support he needed from the thoroughly terrified western populace to justify his presence in Syria. America, along with a coalition of other ISIS backers, began dropping bombs but unsurprisingly most of them seemed to be directed at Syrian infrastructure, while those sly little cretins in ISIS always managed to slink away with only minor damage. Meanwhile our presence in the Levant served another twisted purpose. Keeping Assad's allies and ISIS' real enemies like Iran and Hezbollah at bay. Brilliant, right? But as we all know, things quickly got completely out of hand.

Obama's Free Syrian Army rapidly devolved from winkingly unreliable to a total multi-billion dollar embarrassment that Obama could no longer just shrug off with a flippant "shit happens" pose and there predecessors fared even worse. All the while the Black Plague of the Islamic State had grown far too powerful to contain and swiftly spread across three continents. Yet our Frankenstein monster still couldn't manage to dislodge Assad quickly enough to make Obama's inaction look less then suspicious. Obama's plan B? Killarys Plan A. Arm Al-Qaeda directly and proclaim them to be newly minted "moderates". Shit was going to hell in a hand basket alright. That is, until Putin stepped up and stepped in to end this mad imperialist circus once and for all.

Flash forward some six months later. Al-Qaeda and it's other "moderate" Yankee Doodle head choppers are fucking decimated. In spite of it's cowardly attacks on civilians abroad, ISIS is on the run like scared rabbits caught in a surly old Russian's turnip garden. There territory shrinks day by day. As I type this Palmyra is being liberated and Raqqa appears to be next. The bullet-proof umbrella of the Russian air campaign has allowed the true enemies of jihad, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Rejova and Hezbollah to flourish and Russia's sudden removal of this umbrella has both empowered these forces reclaimed sense sovereignty and forced Assad to get serious about reform. The myth of a America, the great and mighty imperial peacekeeper has been shattered by Putin's mastery of the great chessboard and the people of the Middle East aren't the only ones to realize it. From England to Germany, America's quisling Allies in the EU establishment are fighting a losing battle against there own citizens, who are drowning in a deluge of the refugee's created by there own reckless support of America's war on Russia. An uprising of anti-establishment populist movements on both the left and the right now threaten the very fabric of the EU and NATO's existence. Similarly Obama's heir apparent and the architect of the Syrian conspiracy, Imperial Queen Killary is dodging a barrage of shit being flung by monkey's on both ends of the Bipartisan Washington Zoo while both major parties are beginning to lose control of there own constituents.

And somewhere in Russia, on the porch of a rustic old dacha in a birch tree grove an hour outside the Kremlin walls, Vladimir Putin watches the winter ice thaw with his dog Buffy at his feet, a glass of vodka in his hand and the wind at his back. On a distant television reports of Putin's unprecedented high approval ratings are interrupted by news of Donald Trump's victory in another Rustbelt primary. Vlad cracks a wry little smile and takes another sip of Stoli. Like a Screwdriver, revenge is best served orange with a splash of vodka. Drink up Vlad. You've earned it. But I'm still moving to Canada.


Nostrovia, dearest motherfuckers, Peace, Love and Nostrovia.

March Madness

I love March. Like October, it's a month of almost cosmic change. It's a month of rain and light and furious winds which seem to thrash the last dreary remnants of winter darkness into oblivion. It's a month of turbulence. A month of revolution. Only, this year, those winds, that turbulence, this revolution seems to be tainted with a foreboding sense of imminent doom that I find hard to shake. Like the ghouls of winter depression have fallowed me into this cherished month and are riding the winds of march like surfers on a tsunami. It seems sadly fitting that this should be the month when the already rusty levy of Trumpismo finally breaks and unleashes the flailing ginger Kracken of white rage in all its mighty ugliness. Oh, cruel irony! Thy name is melodramatic blog post.

I speak of coarse about this past weekends Trump rally riots in the Midwest. An event as inevitable as it is disturbing. After all, the Donald has been stoking his compliant audience for months with not so subtle suggestions of a return to the glory days of social unrest when a couple of hardworking pigs and other assorted salt of the earth thugs could drag a limp-wristed hippie such as myself by his long hair to nice, quiet, dimly lit alleyway and bash his fucking teeth in. Ah, yes, the good old days. Yes as dear Mr. Dylan once mused, it doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Grossly, that wind seems to be blowing right out of dear Mr. Trump's ass.

That foresight, however, didn't make it any less depressing for me to spend my weekend watching tryouts for a future race war. As angry black and white men traded punches, I couldn't help wondering aloud "Why the fuck are you beating on each other? You should be on the same damn side!" and shouldn't they be? After all, aren't Black Lives Matter and the lion share of Trump's blue collar supporters essentially fighting for the same thing? A world free or at least depleted of the tyranny of the status-quo's corporate bully state. What I saw in Chicago and elsewhere was one group of poor people beating on another and vice versa, all at the behest of one ego-sick billionaire. The Marxist in me weeps.

I get why some good if slightly ignorant people dig Trump's shit. Seriously, I do. He's the first candidate in years to take on the oft-untouched toxic legacy of bipartisan globalism. A sick pseudo-philosophy of crony capitalist internationalism with a grotesque legacy of mass layoffs, endless wars and third world wage slavery. Racism aside, many of the things he attempts to say make sense but to believe that Donald Trump is the white knight who will lead the working man back to the veritable nirvana of a descent days wage for a hard days work is nothing short of asinine.

Regardless of whether or not this man is or was indeed a secret agent of dear twisted Lady Killary. it takes little more then a cursory glance at the Donald's rap sheet to tell you he's not the fearless leader he currently presents himself to be. A spoiled rotten trust-fund baby handed his daddies already tainted legacy on a sterling silver platter, Donald made a name for himself by throwing people in his loyal followers tax bracket out into the fucking streets so he could turn there homes into gaudy casinos and luxury condos for the one percent. A few bankruptcies later Trump began cutting checks for corrupt globalist swine like Chuck Schumer, John McCain and of coarse the devil herself. Not one dime went to a single antiwar or anti-globalization candidate. Not one measly red cent. Our favorite populist Daddy Warbucks' coffers were welded shut for the likes of Ralph Nader and Ron Paul or any other real working class hero for that matter. If you like, you can choose to believe that the Donald experienced a sudden, miraculous conversion to paleolibertarianism just in time for election season. If you like, you can choose to believe that Santa Claus shot JFK from his flying sleigh. I personally prefer to live in the real world and in the real world, as any corporate crook will tell you, money talks, bullshit walks. And that is precisely what Donald Trump is, a walking, talking, steaming pile of bright orange caviar bullshit, doing what capitalist cretins like him have always done. Pitting one group of poor people against another like roosters in a cockfight. Divide and conquer.

The other side, while certainly not the aggressor is far from squeaky clean themselves. It's easy to mock poor white trash for falling in love with such a shameless demagogue. It's equally easy to forget that many of these liberal know-it-all's fell into the same trap with Obama. The urban left (yes, black people) drank Obama's frothy, empty, hope-wash Kool-Aid without thinking twice to check for cyanide ( and no, that's not a black joke, it's a Jonestown joke. I'm an asshole, not a monster) and lets be real here, Barack's race and his delicate exploitation of civil rights era rhetoric had something to do with that undying loyalty. What's even worse is many more poor people of color are falling for the same line of horseshit from neoliberal Nazi Killary. Check your fingernails comrades, there only slightly cleaner then the Trumpster's.

That's not to say the Obamaites and the Trumpsters are necessarily equal. I'll take the passive, corny love-ins of 2008 over 2016's face-socking festivals any day of the fucking week. But delusion is delusion and both sides of the partisan fence suffer from similar strains of identity dementia (identia?). It's only worse now because of the Donald's introduction of Beer Hall Putsch style street fighter theater.

Identity politics are bullshit. Much like our rigged presidential elections, they only serve to distract and divide poor people in order to keep them from realizing that we outnumber the oligarchs, ninety-nine to one. I'm not saying race doesn't matter. Racism is still a very serious problem in this country but, and god help me for saying this out loud, it pales in comparison to this countries problem of with classicism. The true divider. The majority of people rotting in America's finest gulags today are people of color but nearly all American inmates are poor people. We have had a black president and we will likely soon have a female one but we have never had a poor one and we likely never will with our current economic apartheid state in tact. Hell, race itself is a classist invention. Devised to separate the haves from the have nots and to keep it that way. The western perception of race is no less backwards and anti-scientific then the Hindu caste system. That doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Quite the contrary. It means we have the power to destroy it. We just have to stop punching each other in the fucking face,

Poor people have every right to be pissed and we have every fucking right to revolution. But expecting it to be led by a member of the master class like Trump or Killary or even Bernie is just plain stupid. These partisan charlatans will only tear us apart. A true revolution would bring us together. A true revolution would see inner-city black folks and white ranchers marching arm in arm against the eminent domain laws which rob them both blind. A true revolution would see armed militiamen guarding unarmed Black Lives Matter protesters from violent police persecution in Ferguson. And a true revolution would see an elderly redneck holding a cunt like Trump's arms behind his back while a young cholo smashed his fucking face in. This country desperately needs a real revolution.

Dearest motherfuckers of America, unite and take over.

7 Reasons Not to Vote for President (Yet)

Well dearest motherfuckers, it's that time again. Time to talk about my least favorite subject. Yes folks it's time, once again, to talk about that shit clogged toilet bowl that is the 2016 Presidential Election. I have avoided this dreaded subject like the fucking plague for as long as I possibly could. I mean, shit, I even chose coming out of the fucking closet over this. But I can't ignore this depressing circus of shameless spectacle forever, so here we go.

All in all, my basic view on voting in the 2016 primaries can be put very simply in just one word. Don't. Opt out of this pseudo-democratic charade, stay home and do something more constructive with your time like jerk-off or draw dicks on a picture of Trumps face. Maybe this isn't the most politically correct position to take. "Vote or Die", right? Well I for one would rather fucking die than soil my conscience by voting for any of these trigger-happy rodeo clowns called candidates, so fucking bring it Diddy.

What? You wan't more? well hold your horses asshole, I'll give you more reasons to shirk your patriotic civic duty. In fact I'll give you fucking seven in no particular order. So here it is dearest motherfuckers. Seven reasons not to vote for president, at least not yet.


1.) MARCO RUBIO- I'm not gonna mince words on this one, so if your the sensitive sort I politely suggest you find another, gentler blog. I'm pretty sure they have Lou Ferrigno talking about his 13 favorite labradoodle Vine's on Huff-Po right now....    ....They gone? Cool. Too put it bluntly, Marco Rubio is the official cabana boy of the Military Industrial Complex. He's a charming, brown, scrumptiously fuckable mouthpiece, factory made by bitter old white chicken-hawks to fool America's war-sick heartland into falling in love with the neocon cult of perpetual warfare all over again. He's G.W. Bush for a younger, hipper, more ethnic American Empire. There's just one problem. They pushed the robot off the assembly line a little to early. He looks and sounds like a real boy until he's forced to actually defend his carefully memorized talking points and he begins to short-circuit like R2-D2 soaked in Dr. Pepper. If even a ham-fisted neanderthal like Chris Christie can jam this sexy moron up, how the hell is he supposed to get passed Sith Lord Killary. Oh well, so much for the New American Century. Better luck next time Bill Kristol.


2.) BERNIE SANDERS- Few people on earth piss me off more then this asshole and his mesmerized fan club. It's Obama fever all over again. I am a socialist. I am a lot of other things too but it all comes back to socialism. I have devoted my entire young, tortured existence to the cause of peace, equality and egalitarianism by any means necessary and to here this pathetic DNC whore bandy about the word socialism like the latest Twitter meme makes me want to fucking hurl. Jesus Christ is a socialist. Eugene Debs is a socialist. Noam Chomsky is a socialist. Bernie Sanders is a fucking disgrace. He supported the bombing of Kosovo (and the destruction of socialist Yugoslavia). He supported the Clinton era sanctions on Iraq that murdered half a million children. He supports drone strikes (and wants more of them). He supports the jihadist "rebels" destroying Syria and the neo-Nazi thugs in Ukraine. He called Hugo Chavez, the finest socialist leader of this generation, a fucking dictator and he calls that crooked wretch, Killary Clinton, who he's supposed to be running AGAINST, a good woman and a trustworthy politician as he rallies the wayward left youth into the DNC's filthy pockets. Fuck you, Bernie Sanders. Steal another fucking identity to hide behind because your no fucking socialist and I will never vote for you. Feel THAT Bern!


3.) TED CRUZ- One thing everyone but the most Bible-thumpingest fag-bashers seem to be able to agree on is that Texas Senator Ted Cruz is pure fucking scum incarnate. He certainly looks the part with all the reptilian good looks and charm of a Dick Nixon wax dummy left in the microwave a minute to long. Ted's a grade-A scuzz-bag all right, no arguments there, but if you ask me, he's also one big fucking lie too. Ted passed through two fucking Ivy League schools with flying colors but he denies basic grade school shit like evolution and global warming. Ted's a Tea Party "outsider" but he cut his teeth as a fed in the Department of Justice and worked on arch-insider George Dubya's 2000 campaign. Do I have to say it out loud again? He's a fake! A fraud. A con-man playing hayseed for the gee-shucks cousin-fucker vote and if Iowa's any indicator, it looks like the slime-ball's got it. Not that it's going to be enough to to mean anything other than a future career as a resident honky minstrel in the Huckabeeland of Fox News' Sunday evening slot. But hey, that's where the green cash grows, right? Dollar dollar bill, yo!


4.) BEN CARSON- Who the fuck are we kidding?....    ....NEXT!!!


5.) DONALD TRUMP- I pushed a theory a couple of posts ago that Donald Trump was in fact another foul agent of Killaries soft power plot to steal the White House by hook or by crook. Well folks IF that's true then the old bitch has shit the bed again with another regime change scheme gone horribly aerie. Only this time it's not Libya, Syria or Ukraine she's shitting on, it's the good old US of A and Trump is that shit. Straight from the tyrant's ass. Yes dearest motherfuckers, it appears the orange cunt's gone rogue and decided to make a legitimate go at the White House and we're all in big fucking trouble cause this dumb fuck might actually have a shot, however statistically remote it might be. If you think the Donald's obnoxious now, imagine the ginger Duce with nukes and drones. You just shit a little bit didn't you? It's OK. I did to.


6.) JOHN KASICH- Still can't pronounce that name right....    ....ANYWAY, The Ohio governor is a lot like the state he leads. Boring, polite and judging by that Chinese Kenny Rogers Botox job, fairly full of toxins. He's a former congressman and a Fox News host with all kinds of gross connections to Wall Street and a puke-y melange of other corporate criminals. John's probably best known for joining his mid-western Republican brethren in screwing fire fighters and paramedics out of there pensions in order to rebound from a financial holocaust dicks like them caused. AND he wants to re-invade Iraq because FUCK IT! why not? In other words he's your typical, run of the mill, Republican stuffed shirt. Which is why, ironically, I believe he might have the best shot against Killary. Nobody and I mean Nobody wants to vote for that cackling lunatic. Even her own staffers probably have wet dreams about drowning her in the fucking Reflecting Pool. People would rather vote for a shopping mall mannequin, which is perfect for Kasich, I'm pretty sure that was his minor in college. He's just bland and beige enough to be your average timid voters plan B. He'll never get the chance though, thanks to old Kill-dog's trusty Trumpasaurus Rex. Oh well, there's always Macy's.


7.) KILLARY CLINTON- And then of coarse there's the best reason not to vote, our likely next and quite possibly worst president, Killary Rodham Clinton, a corrupt, war hungry and downright evil fucking egomaniac who literally everyone seems to fucking hate but somehow everyone seems willing to vote for. Why? Well aside from the fact that we're living in the long prophesied decline of Western Civilization, because Killary gets things done.

Killary gets things done for black people by supporting her husband's policies to gut welfare and feed there children to the prison industrial complex in record numbers.

Killary gets things done for women by using her position as Secretary of State to pander to the worlds most sexist regimes in the Persian Gulf for campaign cash and helping to cover up Bill's long history of disgusting, sexually predatory behavior including accusations of sexual assault and even rape (but be careful who you vote for ladies lest Killary's gal-pals declare you a slut and condemn you to hell).

Killary gets things done for the poor by sending there jobs to the Third World and cutting backroom deals with her friends in Wall Street while they recklessly drive the economy into a fucking ditch. Not to mention sending there brave sons and daughters to die disproportionately in her latest "humanitarian" imperialist conquest.

But more then anything Killary gets things done for Killary. Gaming the system, hoodwinking the electorate, lying through her fucking teeth and generally doing everything and anything to be the first and inevitably worst female president in American history. #I'm with her? More like #I'm with Satan.


So there you have it dearest motherfuckers, seven good reasons not to waist your time on the primaries for this country's two most corrupt organized crime families. the Republicrats and the Dempublicans. I'm sure more then a few of these assholes will have probably dropped out by the time you even read this but that's irrelevant. The fact that ANY of these gutless human trashcans were even considered viable candidates to run this drowning country is all the proof you'll ever need that the two party system is hopelessly fucked beyond repair.

Truth be told so is so called representative democracy, an oxymoron if there ever was one. There is nothing democratic about getting to choose which despot gets to run your life for the next four years. It's kind of like choosing your kidnapper. At the end of the day your still going to get raped regardless of the cut of your captors jib. The only real democracy is direct democracy and to my knowledge there are only two political parties advocating such a revolution in this country, the Greens and the Libertarians. Personally, I'm sick of the whole damn left-right paradigm all together. An ideal campaign would unite socialists and libertarians alike. Fuck the parties. I'm thinking something along the lines of Ron Paul-Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky-Lew Rockwell. Marxist blasphemy, I know but we've tried the partisan/purist shtick and it just doesn't work. We need to start thinking dangerously otherwise we're gonna wake up in November to find either a psychopath (Killary) or a moron (Trump) in the White House. It's revolution, REAL revolution or my fat commie ass is moving to Nova Scotia.

PEACE OUT!

Diary of a Queer Heterosexual

I've always had a very complicated relationship with my gender and sexuality and the older I get the more complicated it seems to become. While I've long considered myself to be a heterosexual male I've never really been completely comfortable calling myself straight. Truth be told I feel anything but. Even if my road always ultimately leads me to pussy, it's a long jagged road with many detours along the way. Lets just say while I've never been an L, a G, a B or a T, I am most definitely a Q. I'm a Questioner in every sense of the word and I always have been. I question everything, religion, politics, philosophy, history and of coarse gender and sexuality. I've also come to see myself as another Q. You see dearest motherfuckers I identify as a queer heterosexual. Confused? Me too. Maybe I should start again at the beginning.

Growing up in a conservative Irish Catholic household and a small town parochial school, I more or less accepted from an early age that sin and sexuality were largely synonymous and homosexuality was the worst of them all. I never really gave much thought to the possibility that I myself could be anything but heterosexual. I've been attracted to females ever since little Maggie Marshal bloodied my shins with her tiny wooden clogs in the first grade (which may explain some of my sadomasochistic tendencies) and I had never experienced similar feelings towards a boy. Then OCD happened and just in time for puberty.

As I've discussed here before, my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder has always been wrapped in layers of self doubt and irrational fear. Imagine what terrifies you most in the world. Now multiply it by ten and imagine not being able to stop yourself from thinking about it over and over and over again and you've got the basic idea. And what's more terrifying to a twelve year old Catholic schoolboy then the prospect of being gay. A fate worse than death. During the early days of my OCD, I became obsessed by the fear that I might be gay which was simultaneously deeply intertwined with my greatest fears, isolation, loneliness and dying alone and unloved. You see in my community the basic theory on homosexuals was that while they were in fact born that way, there natural urges were a test from god. Leaving them with only two real choices, live a life of loveless chastity or a life of sinful, soulless evil topped off by an eternity in hell. So yeah I was pretty fucking terrified of being gay. It didn't take long for the OCD to all but convince me that I must be and was therefore thoroughly fucked beyond redemption. No one and nothing could convince me otherwise. Not my parents. Not even my shrinks. I spent months in panicked terror and self loathing until finally I stumbled across a rare moment of clarity. If god was truly the kind and loving god I was raised to believe and if I was made in his image then it shouldn't fucking matter who I loved as long as I was a good person. I came to the conclusion that I didn't give a fuck what my priests and teachers said. I was going to be happy and if that meant fucking dudes then fuck it, I was gonna fuck dudes and just like that the spell was broken.

It took accepting the possibility that I could plausibly be happily gay with open arms to convince me that I wasn't. But I did have a brand new appreciation for the horror that real gay kids go through every day. The fear. The agony. The terror. The self hatred. I came to the conclusion that no one should ever be made to feel that way just because they get a chubby in there own locker room. That was the day I became an outspoken straight allie but I became something more then that. After coming to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with being queer, I began exploring the subculture and quickly fell in love with the community. I was particularly smitten with the anti-assimilationist queer liberation movement of the sixties and seventies. I became fascinated with this underground world of leathermen, radical faeries, drag queens and glam rock gender renegades. It all spoke to me and my rebellious teenage spirit during a very formidable time in my young life and I'm proud to say it helped shape the man I am today.

My universe soon became dominated by queer culture, from movies (Gregg Araki and John Waters) to music (the Smiths, Lou Reed and the Hidden Cameras) to art (Andy Warhol and Tom of Finland) to literature (Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk). I adopted a rogues gallery of queer icons for role models- Allen Ginsberg, David Bowie, Gore Vidal, Kurt Cobain, Frida Kahlo, Harry Hay, Mikhail Bakunin, Emma Goldman. The hallways of my personality were permanently vandalized with rainbow graffiti and those colors wouldn't run but my journey wasn't over yet. I would have to undergo another mental crisis before I could fully come to terms with my complex identity.

As those who have read this blog before probably already know, my mental health took a major fucking nose-dive soon after high-school culminating in a series of devastating nervous breakdowns that left me and my sense of self totally shattered. While too terrified of the chaos of the outside world to even leave my fucking house, I did find myself with a great abundance of free time to devote to my favorite pass-time of researching obscure subcultures, which eventually led me to explore the often misunderstood phenomena of transexuality. I found the subject to be engrossingly fascinating but also oddly inspiring. Here was an entire class of people born into the wrong bodies who quite literally risk there lives everyday just by presenting themselves honestly as who they really are. Rather than hide in the dark safety of the closet and live a lie, they get up every morning, put on there make-up and there heels or there denim and there bulge, walk out the front door and fucking strut, knowing full well that every step could be there last. That any day could be the day that some confused, self loathing psychopath, threatened by there courage, decides to eviscerate them with a razor blade. Forget brave, it doesn't get anymore bad-ass then that. And these bad-asses quickly became my heroes and gave this terrified shut-in the courage and curiosity to escape the dark safety of my own closet and explore my own fractured identity. I began to read everything I could find on the subject of gender identity, discovering in the process that much like race, sex was as much or more a social construct as a biological one. In many cultures through out the world there are three or four or even more recognized genders who are not only accepted but often revered. I began to look critically at my own long-assumed gender and I found that a lot of things didn't quite fit into that tight little box of heteronormativity.

At the same time I began to actively engage my long dormant feminine side and with a little help from my own personal fairy bitch-mother Courtney Love and the indispensable wisdom of gender-sage Judith Butler I managed to tap into reservoirs of inner strength I didn't even know existed. In a lot of ways this self-discovery gave me the fire to fuel my busted engine and push my way out of my agoraphobic ditch. My nervous breakdowns left my sense of masculinity totally ravaged. I was only able to put myself back together with the glue of my untapped femininity, leaving me forever altered. I had awaken my inner bitch and like a werewolf, once she had tasted freedom there was know way to put her back in that cage even if I wanted to and I didn't.

So what the hell does that make me exactly? Through my studies I discovered a seemingly endless list of gender identities that fell outside of the traditional gender binary- genderqueer, gender fluid, gender neutral, bigender, trigender, pan gender, third gender, two spirit, hijra. It's enough to make your fucking head spin. But none of them really seemed to fit. Ultimately all the books and websites in the world couldn't tell me who I am. Only I could do that. So who exactly is Nick Reid.

While I've never felt the need to present my feminine side visually, I've never really felt much need to present my masculine side either. With the blaring example of my beard (which I do love), my presentation is largely slacker-neutral. Baggy all-black sweats and t-shirts. I consciously developed this uniform in my late teens in an attempt to reject all social labels but is it possible that subconsciously I was attempting to reject gender labels as well?

While I've always maintained strong friendships with males throughout my life, I've also always felt a much deeper and more meaningful kinship with my female friends. I could feel closer to a girl in a single conversation then I could with a male I had known for a decade. Truth be told, I've always found your garden variety heterosexual male to be a bland and shallow bore. They never fucking listen and they rarely have anything remotely meaningful to say. I've never felt more alien then I did in my high school gym locker room and I've never felt more comfortable then I did skipping class with just a few girlfriends at my side. It's these brief moments of rebellious female companionship that I found myself reliving over and over again during my self imposed exile and it's these memories that kept me warm during some of the darkest and coldest nights of my life.

While I've always been exclusively attracted to females this attraction has been anything but conventional. Aside from the fact that I seem biologically incapable of getting down to hetero-porn, my sexual appetites have always ran towards the kinkier end of the spectrum. I'll spare you the graphic details but lets just say my libido has long been governed by lifelong fixations with corporal punishment, bodily functions and parts of the female anatomy often overlooked by your traditional mainstream skin mags. My ideal woman is someone like Yoko Ono, Bjork or Frida Kahlo. Tiny, ethnic, feisty and a little bit nuts. At the same time I'm also a strong believer that no one is completely straight. While I personally have never seen or met a man I was willing to fuck, that doesn't mean one doesn't exist and I'd like to believe if we ever crossed paths I would be man or whatever enough to embrace those feelings. My point is that even my heterosexuality seems to express itself in uniquely queer ways.

So what the fuck am I exactly? Mostly male? Lesbian in spirit? Gender curious? A bearded bull-dyke with a dick? While all those labels are probably somewhat accurate, it's also probably equally accurate to say that I'm just an extremely abnormal heterosexual cis-male but I prefer to identify as queer.

During the halcyon days of the post-Stonewall gay liberation movement, a loose collection of brave, radical gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals made the decision to reclaim the pejorative slur queer as a label of pride in there rejection of heterosexist tyranny that they could rally around in solidarity. It became a hallowed term of endearment under which all the beautiful, jagged puzzle pieces that didn't quite fit into the straight world could find a place to belong, a place to fit. So I say why not me? I would never in a million years try to take credit for someone else's struggle. Whatever I am, I haven't had to suffer the way most LGBTQ people have and I own that but does that mean I should be forced to be prisoner to an identity that strangles me. That keeps me from fully exploring who I really am. I want to be free. I want to love who I wanna love, how I wanna love. And I wanna be whoever and whatever the fuck I wanna be. And fuck anyone who stands in the way of my emancipation from the heteronormative gulag. Only I have the right to define who I am.

The word queer has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people. To me it means freedom. Anyone can be queer. We all have it in us somewhere. Human sexuality and gender are too goddamn complicated for tiny little boxes with neat little labels. If I hadn't suffered the way did with my mental anguish I may have grown old and grey without fully realizing how beautifully complex I really am. You see, what separates the queer from the straight is the courage and conviction to embrace these messy unknowns with an open mind and an open heart and to carry them with pride. So I'll say it loud and proud, I'm here, I'm hetero AND I'm queer and your all gonna have to get fucking use to it because wild horses couldn't drag me back in that goddamn closet.

Now if I can only find a good woman mad enough to love this mess I'll be sitting pretty.



P.S. This post is dedicated in loving memory to the late David Bowie, another straight man who gave many queer people of all stripes the courage to be themselves and love themselves for the wonderful creatures they are, myself included. He taught us all how to be heroes for far longer then just one day and I will miss him and love him dearly until the day I join him among the stars.

Fuck Winter

I fucking hate Winter. That single, solitary sentence probably sums this entire post up right there but I need to bitch and your presumably here to listen so I'll continue with my seasonal tirade. I FUCKING HATE WINTER! I hate everything about it. I hate the cold. I hate the snow. I hate the bare dead fucking trees but more then anything I hate the dark. I hate, hate, hate the goddamn dark. Those smug pricks in the shrink community have coined a cute, nifty little term for my affliction. Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. Oh how clever you little Sigmunds are- "I'm not depressed, I'm SAD" - Fuck you, you malignant motherfuckers, fuck you oh so very much.

Any-who, I have long suffered from more mental issues then I can fucking count but they all seem to get worse on the first Sunday of November, my second least favorite day of the year, when the clocks are turned back and the kinetic magic of October gives way to the dull ache of late autumn. The days grow short and grey and everything hurts just a little more. The regrets of my squandered youth. The fading memory of girls loved and lost. The sick hatred of all the things I fail to be. The roaring rage at the perseverance of the pathologically normal. It all just hurts so damn much, too damn much. There are days when the very idea of leaving my bed, let alone my house, feels like an unbearably heavy cross to carry. But November is nothing. November is pussy shit compared to the frozen hellscape of January and March.

You see the very worst day of the year, for me at least, is the first Monday of January. The day Christmas is officially pronounced dead. December is like a weird little oasis in the frozen desert of my seasonal depression. It's still fucking there but the pain is muted by the warm morphine drip of the Christmas season with it's twinkling lights and fresh baked cookies and shimmering evergreen majesty. It's like falling to the bottom of the deep dark sea only to discover a hidden civilization of glowing, luminescent sea monsters dancing about the abyss. It's the one month of the year that I truly believe in god until it's all over and the lights come down and the cookies go stale and god dies and the magic beasts scatter, leaving me alone again on the ocean floor.

This year's post-noel ocean floor seems even bleaker then usual. January began with a rusty harpoon right to my aching heart, when one of this wretched planet's brightest and most beautiful sea monsters, David Bowie, lost his long secret war with cancer and departed to a celestial plain more befitting a Star-God. I spent a solid week listening to "Heroes" over and over again and writing DAVID LIVES in all caps on the back of my right hand in black ink. Melodramatic I know, but I didn't know what else to do. I still don't.

As if the death of my heroes weren't enough, I'm also subjected daily to the garish spectacle of the most depressingly hopeless and depraved Presidential Election in recent memory, with the GOP's demonic clown car and the rise of the Killary juggernaut. In past election seasons, though still soul-crushing, I usually at least had an underdog or two on the fringe to root for. In 2004 there was Dennis Kucinich. 2008 gave me the rare double-barrel gift of Kucinich and Dr. Ron Paul.The latter hung around to offer a fleeting glimmer of hope in 2012. But in the cruel winter of 2016, even my beloved fringe has been infected by the gangrenous scuzz of Washington and Wall Street. On the right we have reactionary racist  attention whores like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, not to mention the Greek Tragedy that has become of the good Dr. Paul's sell out, fortunate son, Rand. On the left we have Bernie Sanders. Another trigger-happy Fabian fraud who the cheery little, cell phone-sick millennial sheep have once again convinced themselves will save them from the purgatory of there own party. The whole sick, stupid fucking circus makes me so ill I could literally puke my fucking guts out. I just want to scream in these peoples stupid little faces "YOUR NOT MAKING A FUCKING DIFFERENCE MORON! IT'S A RIGGED GAME!!!". Even the second Sunday of March can't save me from this darkness. It might as well be Winter until November. Then it will be Hell-arry.

& believe it or not, that's not even the worst thing about Winter. The fucking cherry atop my frosty sundae of misery is that satanic little greeting card boondoggle known as Valentines Day. A holiday that seems to be tailor fucking made to exploit my crippling fear of dying alone in my own arms with nothing to show for my lonely existence but a pair of swollen, royal blue balls and a crumbling pile of saccharine poetry devoted to girls who could barely remember my name a decade ago. Fuck Valentines Day.

Feeling a little depressed yet? Welcome to my world asshole. But before you begin rifling through your sink cabinet for razor blades, listen to some of my tips on how to survive this ugly fucking season with your wrists in tact.

The best way I've found to cope with the Winter blues, aside from pharmaceuticals (which are excellent) is to try and focus on the little, seemingly insignificant things that keep you distracted from your misery and even give you something to look forward to. It sounds almost stupidly simplistic, I know, but take it from me, it can make the difference between a twelve gauge face-lift and making it to Spring. It's different for everyone but the main things that keep me going during the shit months are listed below in no particular order.


MUSIC- Music has saved my life quite literally and repeatedly through out the years. I doubt very much that I would even be here typing this right now if it weren't for artists like Kurt Cobain, Henry Rollins, Courtney Love, Morrissey and Lou Reed. Sometimes just one great anthem at the end of a terrible day can give you the strength to survive another one. My go to comfort music during these dreary months tends to be up-tempo but wistful stuff like Hole's Celebrity Skin, the Smiths' Louder Than Bombs and pretty much anything by the Velvet Underground, the Replacements, REM or Belle & Sebastian.

CANDLES- There is just something about that mix of Pyromania and Aroma Therapy that buoys my mood on a cold Winters night. Yankee Candles are the best and yes I'm well aware that that sentence makes me sound like a fucking limp-wristed pussy so fuck you. Candles are the tits.

PETS- The importance of human-animal companionship to mental health can't be stressed enough. I personally am a cat lover and my geriatric old tuxedo Killian has been my oldest and dearest friend for well over a decade, even if she does drive everyone else in my house berserk. She sleeps by my shoulder on the couch every night and there is something that is just so wonderfully uncomplicated about those quiet moments we spend together late at night, especially during the frozen heart of Winter when we're both driven by unseen forces to hibernate. All the petty bullshit of the outside world just evaporates into mid air.

CARTOONS & NATURE SHOWS- I know I'm sounding more and more like a crazy person here but ever since I was little, whenever I found myself trapped in my deepest, darkest moods, cartoons were always one of the few things that could lift my spirits and this has rang true through out my often dreadful existence. When I was a kid it was Hey Arnold, Daria, Doug and Recess. During my first nervous breakdown Futurama was the only thing that could get me out of bed. During my second it was Bob's Burgers and the Cleveland Show of all things. Lately it's been Archer and Rick & Morty. Nature shows also seem to do the trick, especially anything underwater. Planet Earth is the best.

FOOD- I can just here the food police creaming themselves over this one as we speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not healthy to use food as a coping mechanism. Shut the fuck up skinny people, I've heard your gripe before. But you try struggling with crippling depression without a fucking vice. It's either cake or heroin, pick your poison. When the world is a vampire, sometimes one good meal or even a midnight snack can keep you going and nobody and I mean nobody turns to fucking kale for comfort. My drugs of choice are Denny's and Trader Joe's Mac & Cheese. My Aunt Barbara's chocolate cake is also better than 90 percent of the smack on the streets today though I'm pretty sure she cuts that shit with Fentanyl too. When it's all said and done I'd rather be fat then sad any day of the week. It's the same reason I chose to stay on the anti-depressants. Atkins be damned.

FRIENDS & FAMILY- When life really hits the fucking skids having even just a few good people by your side can make all the difference. If it wasn't for my family I probably would have ended up chewing through a straight-jacket in some laughing academy decades ago. They've put up with all my bugshit weirdness for longer then any saint ever could and for that I couldn't be more great-full. People are a strange species. Just when you've all but given up on them in exasperated disgust, they do something amazing. They make quiet little miracles out of mid air.

The only thing that shocks me more then the human race's bottomless appetite for depravity is there divine ability to redeem themselves through random acts of kindness and it keeps me going, more than anything else, that keeps me going and so does this blog and all the beautiful, nameless, faceless motherfuckers who stop by to give it and me the time of day. It just goes to show even if you think you have no one and nothing, reach out, the results will surprise you. I guarantee it.

Hold on dearest motherfuckers. Together we're going to carry that weight until March.


PEACE, LOVE & EMPATHY.

Strange Rumblings From Oregon

There are strange rumblings emanating from the high deserts of South-Eastern Oregon. A tiny ex-lumber town called Burns has found itself in the icy grip of a slow-motion cold war between to warring tribes of heavily armed white men, each claiming to be fighting for the very soul of the community. All over the fate of two local ranchers named Dwight and Steven Hammond, sentenced to five years imprisonment for a slew of charges, most relating to two alleged acts of arson separated by half a decade. Now a modern day range war feels all but imminent with anti-government militia-men occupying the local Malheur Wildlife Refuge and a posse of federal agents and local lawmen biding there time until they can come up with a plan of attack but this has evolved into something far greater then a local cause-celebre. The entire country seems divided on there typical partisan lines with the right celebrating the occupation as a courageous act in defense of liberty and the left decrying it as a display of macho cosplay bordering on terrorism. As usual both sides are a little right but mostly wrong.

One thing that I've found hard to deny upon carefully inspecting the available evidence is that the Hammond's were fucking railroaded.

Ranchers have existed on the scrub lands surrounding Malheur lake for well over a century now, long before that darling mustachioed imperialist Teddy Roosevelt showed up with his pistol packing federales to claim the west as white mans conquest in the early 20th century. In fact, it was these very ranchers who's hard work transformed what was then swamplands into the verdant meadows they are today. All this history mattered little to the feds who established the Malheur National Forest in 1908. Rather then seeing the ranchers as possible allies in the thoroughly righteous cause of conservation they chose to view there new neighbors as antagonists to there efforts and summarily chose to make the total destruction of there way of life a prime objective.

Now, I know what your thinking, is an ardent and unapologetic Marxist really defending a bunch of private farmers over the federal government? My response to this is pretty basic. Your goddamn right I am. I may not be the biggest fan of the concept of private property, in my ideal world these ranchers would be given control of this land under the guise of a directly democratic autonomous council, but I am a very strong believer in the right for working people to control there means of production and self determination. After all, what is a family farm but a micro-collective. I personally can say that my first introduction to the notion of socialism came not from Marx or Engels but the local Amish farming communities I grew up around. It's not a coincidence that many Marxist insurrections begin in the farmlands.

I also find the idea of an entire community being forced off the land they've worked for generations just so it can be "preserved" for snot-nosed city dwellers to take selfies on to be despicably obnoxious. You see this same kind of shit in third world countries like Belize, Jamaica and Madagascar. A bunch of wealthy urban white people show up to declare someone else's land protected property reserved for first world tourists while the locals are left to put on costumes and play the role of the noble savage for pennies for there amusement. It's called Imperialism and it always fucking sucks.

Like it or lump it dearest motherfuckers but those ranchers are the embattled proletariat in this scenario and the well-meaning tree huggers are the privileged, silver spoon sucking bourgeoisie and this Marxist always stands with the proletariat, partisanship be damned.

With that being said, the Hammond family, led by there patriarch Dwight, joined this proud proletarian tradition in 1964 when they bought 6,000 acres of Malheur adjacent ranch land for there cattle to graze. Over the years they slowly saw there neighbors disappear one by one. Some were bought off while others were ran off, falling victim to the increasingly belligerent feds host of dirty tricks which included everything from shutting down vital country roads to diverting irrigation systems to literally drown out ranches in the fucking lake, Katrina style. By the 90's the Hammonds were essentially the last man standing with there ranch now completely surrounded by federal land. They could have gave up and took the feds dirty money. It would have been a lot easier but they were to damn proud and had worked to damn hard to just let the bastards win. So they stayed and fought the man like lions. Any self-respecting Bolshevik would have been proud to fight by there side.

The Hammond's ceaseless bravery and tenacity earned them two things. The hard won respect of there community and the spiteful ire of a federal government who had failed repeatedly to rid there Shangri-La of these peasants. The bitter rivalry had mutated into an ugly grudge match that could only end with the complete destruction of the Hammond family and by 2011 the bourgeois bastards finally got there wish.

The seeds to the Hammond's demise were sown in 2001 and 2006 with two seemingly standard acts of controlled burning. The first was done with the full consent of local authorities. The blaze, set to remove invasive juniper trees which posed a serious fire hazard to both the ranch and the refuge, inadvertently spread into federal land but the Hammond's put it out single-handedly while the feds sat by and twittled there thumbs. A judge would later rule that not only did the damages amount to a pittance of one-hundred measly dollars but the land had recovered completely and according to some conservationists may have even been improved. The feds, for there part, didn't even bother filling a complaint until they decided to add the "crime" to there mountain of charges in 2013, because fuck you, that's why.

The second burn in 2006 was a desperate act of self defense against the wages of mother nature. In the midst of a brutal lightning storm, the Hammond's found there humble homestead surrounded by a hellish lake of fire. They had two choices, take control of the situation with a controlled burn or be burned alive. They made the only sane choice but got burned anyway. The local heat picked up Dwight and his son the next day and charged them both with arson. Without a lick of proof that the burn had been the least bit criminal, however, they had no choice but to drop the charges. But that didn't stop the feds. They make there own goddamn rules because, fuck you, that's why.

Some five years later and over twelve years after the first burn the federal government charged Dwight and Steven Hammond with nine charges under Clinton's proto-Patriot Act, the Anti-Terrorism Effective Death Penalty Act, which carried with it a five year mandatory minimum sentence and the maximum option of the fucking Death Penalty because, fuck the constitution, that's why.

From day one of this kangaroo court the decks where stacked heavily against the Hammonds. All locals were barred from the jury pool insuring there was zero chance Dwight and Steve would by tried before a jury of there peers. While the defense was given a single fucking day to make there case, the prosecution was given unlimited time and even then the best piece of "evidence", for lack of a better word, they could wrangle up was the testimony of one Dusty Hammond, Dwight's long estranged and mentally disturbed grandson, who was only thirteen at the time of the "arson" he claimed to have witnessed. Even the judge himself declared this poor mixed-up bastard to be an unreliable witness but he was still aloud to take the stand and tell his ridiculous tall tale to the jury anyway because, fuck justice, that's why.

According to Dusty the first blaze was set by his giddy, match-happy kin in order to cover up acts of poaching. Now never mind the fact that this fruit loop and his federal handlers didn't present anything in the way of evidence to prove these claims, any rational human being with half a fucking brain in there skull can tell you that you don't need to burn down a goddamn forest to cover up acts of poaching. All you have to do is move the fucking bodies! & THIS was the prosecutions star fucking witness. There Kato. A half-wit black sheep with a story so shallow and one dimensional that it makes Little House On the Prairie look like No Country For Old Men. It's little fucking wonder that the jury chose to throw out all but two of the charges. Which was sadly just enough for the judge to rob the Hammonds blind. In spite of the nearly non-existent damages caused by the two controlled burns, Dwight and Steven were fined $400,000 and given a single year to pay off the ransom before there ranch would be stolen from beneath there feet, all but guaranteeing the complete ruin of a family who have never done anything to anyone because, fuck them, that's why.

Perhaps feeling guilty about fucking these poor people over so mercilessly, the judge did one half-way descent thing, at least by his primordial standards, and refused to enforce the despicable mandatory five year minimum. Instead Dwight was given three months and Steven was given a year and a day, which I'm sure was little consolation considering that there both fucking innocent. Never the less the Hammond's served out there time with little protest and struggled in vain to scrape together enough cash to save the farm. It looked like the relentless feds would finally get what they had lusted over for so many decades but stealing there land wasn't enough. The federal government wanted more. They wanted to make an example of the Hammonds so no other rancher would follow in David's footsteps and try to take on Goliath again. So the bastards appealed the sentence and sent the Hammond's back to jail to serve out the full five year sentence because, fuck you, that's why.

These people aren't factory farmers or Ponderosa land lords. There just normal, everyday, working class Americans struggling to get by. They payed all there taxes and followed all the rules only to get fucking obliterated by the federal juggernaut for being inconvenient to there Eco-tourism schemes. This Isn't about big government it's about bad government and you don't have to be a flag-waving, chest-beating, beef-eating conservative to recognize that these people didn't fucking deserve this.

But just try telling that to the mainstream left who have wasted little time jumping on the government bandwagon and writing the Hammonds and anyone who supports them off as a bunch backwoods hillbilly terrorists without even taking the time to study the fucking facts of the case.

Now I make more then my share of white-trash cousin-fucker jokes on this sight but that's my right as a lifelong hick, myself. But when I here a bunch of Manhattan trust fund babies shitting on fellow rural folk, that's where I draw the fucking line. These rednecks maybe cousin-fuckers but there MY cousin-fuckers and incest aside that doesn't automatically make them fucking terrorists so eat a bag of flaming dicks New York, you elitist bagel-munching bigots.

Perhaps most absurd of all is the mindbogglingly ludicrous argument that since Black Lives Matter protesters were wooped by the pigs in Ferguson, not subjecting the honkeys to the same treatment somehow amounts to racism. What fucking horse-shit. Can you imagine Huey Newton or Malcolm X making such a stupid ass-backward comment? Never! Whatever happened to fucking solidarity? An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere? Am I really the only one who remembers what the fucking sixties were about?

Sadly, the solidarity most environmentalists today seem to carry is for the trees alone, never mind the people living beneath them. This has become a pervasive problem with the earth first set. They conflate environmentalism with whole-sale anti-humanism. They forget that human beings are part of the ecosystem too and that farmers have peacefully coexisted with the environment for eons. But what do you expect from a bunch of sock-headed, latte-slurping hipsters who have never stepped a single foot outside of a major metropolitan area without a camp counselor. Unfortunately the rural right are also blinded by there own genre of ignorance.

In the days and weeks following the Hammond's re-sentencing, protests began to spring up around the Malheur Refuge, mostly attended by sympathetic locals who gathered peacefully to demand justice for people they had grown to love like family. Unfortunately a more insidious element had infiltrated this grassroots uprising. A small coalition of out of state, self-styled militiamen decided to use the opportunity to lead an armed occupation of several empty buildings on the Refuge. The leader of this little camera-ready coup? None other then Ammon Bundy, son of the infamous Cliven Bundy, one range-legend totally undeserving of his folk hero status. Old Cliven presided over an uncannily similar stand-off in his hometown of Bunkerville, Nevada over his refusal to pay grazing fees, not because they were too high but because he just didn't feel like it or as he put it because he didn't believe in them. Unlike the Hammond's, Cliven Bundy wasn't a victim of big government. He was just a dead-beat racist who took his own community hostage in one big armed hissy-fit.

As it turns out, Ammon is a regular chip off the old block only this time he was holding someone else's community hostage. Now, being the radical malcontent that I am, I have no problem with the tactic of armed occupation in theory, I mean, shit, it worked for the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement. But when you launch an occupation in some one else's neck of the woods without even seeking the approval of the local population, that's not activism, that's Bush-grade fucking interventionism. These bastards didn't even bother giving so much as a heads up to the local Paiute Indian Tribe, the original Hammonds, who have sacred land within the refuge that's currently being violated by another horde of pale face invaders claiming a divine right to there property.

& then there's the goal given for this invasion. After giving the necessary platitudes to the Hammonds, who played zero part in this charade, Ammon announced his real goal, calling for the privatization of the whole damn refuge leaving the land to be sold to the highest bidder. This comes as a surprise only if your unfamiliar with the Bundy's long standing ties to the Wise Use Movement, a nefarious collection of AstroTurf front groups run by the extraction industry who basically sought to hijack elements of the militia movement and turn them into there own private armies in a war to take all public land and pollute it to the point of being worthless to farmers and animals alike.

These people are no friends of rural folk and could give two shits about anyone's property but there own. I've learned this myself first hand in my home state of Pennsylvania were so called "libertarians" like the Koch brothers have shown no qualms about using big government vis-a-vis eminent domain to rob hard working farmers just like the Hammonds of there land so they can pollute many more by fracking the soil into poisonous sludge that couldn't sustain an ant farm and Pennsylvania isn't alone. Just ask ranchers in Oklahoma and North Dakota what they think of the fine patriots who line the Bundy's pockets. These bastards are know better then those jackbooted thugs in the Federal Government.

Yes indeed there are strange rumblings emanating from little Burns, Oregon. A town that has become a symbolic microcosm for the precarious position all of rural bucolic America has found itself in. Trapped between a rock and hard place. Between big business and bad government. At the end of the day it matters little which side fires the first shot when either way it's small town America caught in the crossfire. God help us dearest motherfuckers. Today Burns, Tomorrow Bellefonte.