Reluctant Activist

There's a march I want to go to tomorrow, the Justice for All March, starting at 10 a.m. at 15th and Market. I'm a little afraid they're going to close down the bus lines going there. My foot being swollen, I'll be walking with a cane.

Despite my poison pen and big mouth against racism and for civil rights, I'm really a lazy coward. I have all kinds of anxieties just leaving my place. That's why I plan my schedule to the minute. Nothing kills me like empty time.

Then being in a crowd is an anxiety inducer. Then I add in the more rational fears, of arrest, teargassing, brutality or harassment. Fear of being in jail for days, of not getting to write, of having my picture taken, of missing my medication doses, and of missing my cat. Those are the only ones I could think of.

It seems that after decades of therapy and psychiatric drugs, my recovery has left a lot of loose ends. Tonight I'm just sad and tired. The writing didn't go as well today as it should have. I go to bed hoping that the night's dreams reset my mood for tomorrow.   

Racism in St. Louis

Michael Brown, The outrage

Racist outrage: Michael Brown's memorial burns

I remember last decade arguing with conservatives that minorities bringing up race were "picking at a scab," according to one of them. We were in a post-racial society, Blacks and other minorities were holding themselves back by not keeping themselves to the discipline and morality (prevalent in so many Whites) and then blaming it all on White racism, which magically disappeared when all those racist laws that, accidentally, crept to our state and city statutes came down.

Poor and not exactly cured.

I had another really busy day today. I didn't get to my writing until 10:30 tonight, and I've quit after an hour; the well just ran dry. I do already have a full amount of material written for my writers' group next (though it has to be rewritten to some degree).

Because today was laundry day, which wasn't as busy as grocery day was. The laundromat is nine blocks away, and I had three loads of clothes. Without a car, I put it all in a cart and take it over. The choice is either to take a bus and transfer, but the weather was good and I missed the bus anyway, so I walked.

I filled my waiting time there by reading a fellow writers' memoir for critique later today. So, for getting my real work done, it wasn't a total loss. Then I wheeled it all back and folded it. I didn't loaf doing any of it, but the whole operation took about five hours. Then I sat down and did my budgeting.

When I got done, I could see bad news. I wanted to spend some money on the Ginger Snaps comics. Yes, finally people are releasing a comic based on the movie. It's a two part comic, though to cover the movie. First part is $10, second is $10.50.

I just determined that I can only buy one this month. Part 2 has to wait until November. Again, it's only like $10.50 but I don't feel like I can afford it. That's how pathetic my finances are now.

Ferguson October starts Friday. I want to participate. I want to show my support for justice and against the racism that poisons this region and nation. (See my political blog AnArch Liberal (to be posted on soon) for upcoming details.

But here's where I know I'm not actually cured: I'm scared shitless of meeting people. A few weeks ago I was supposed to do canvassing. I backed out. I feel the same panic growing with Ferguson October. That, and a fear, of course of our injustice system. Most of all, I'm afraid of being seen, of having my picture taken (and worse, being shown it). If ever I think something like 30 years of therapy has "cured" me, these anxieties remind me that it hasn't.

I'm so damn sleepy, now. I'm giving up the ghost and going to bed.

The Monthly Grocery Adventure

I got tired of going to the grocery store every other day, especially with mass transit, so I arranged it so I only need to go once (or twice) a month. Yesterday was the day. I had my grocery list(s) made out. Monday night, I looked at every bargain at every store and chose all the best deals I could. I planned my every move like it was D-Day.

I took the bus, the Metro, and another bus to my sister's and borrowed her truck. She works graveyard shift and definitely was not going to miss it. Then I raided the stores, seven of them in all. It was like a great heist, except without the excitement and illegality.

On the Chainsawed Edge of Medicine

Obamacare barely scratched the surface of what's gone wrong with medicine in the US. I'm not going to complain about my health problems here, but about the system set up to ignore them.

I get most of my medical care from a community clinic. Today was that awful time to refill my prescriptions. I needed to have a refills called into the local pharmacy. This procedure has always been an ordeal with this clinic. There seemed to be no easy way to do this. The clinic has an in-house pharmacy, which isn't in my cheap Medicare part D insurance network. The clinic's voice mail gives an option for refilling your prescription with the in-house, but not anywhere else. Is this like, a monopolistic practice, or is it just stupid as it looks. I presumed the place to talk to about a refill then, would have to be adult medicine, but they were unreachable by clinic's phone system (I think the garbled option was the one I needed) and I waited a half-hour to speak with the "operator" before I gave up and decided to walk in.

I arrived and found the waiting area full. It was Monday morning, a lot of sick people waited for Monday. The receptionist gave me a paper to fill out explaining what medicines I needed to be refilled. Luckily, I brought the number to my pharmacy. While I was completing the form, a man walked up and asked if he could get an appointment. Judging by his accent, dark complexion, and the lost look in his eye, he seemed to be an immigrant. He asked the receptionist if he could make an appointment. She told him appointments were filled for the next two months. He shrank away. I was busy filling out my request so I only thought afterward that I should have directed down the hall to Urgent Care, which doesn't need an appointment. For some reason, the woman at the desk, who was in the care industry, didn't advise of this, either. He was gone before I looked.


That was a man who glanced at our health care system and recoiled in dread, and he wasn't given the least amount of information that he needed. If he's sick in some way, now he's going to get even sicker. He's from the third world. Industrialized countries, the civilized ones, look at our health care system with revulsion and disgust. I can see why. Even with a community clinic, there wasn't much in the way of care. This isn't health care, it's health bureaucracy.

Yes, it's true. It also takes me two months to get in to see my primary care. The last health problem I tried to get treated cost me three hundred dollars total, which I'm still paying. I still have the problem, they never found out what it was, didn't treat it, they merely ruled out it being life-threatening or (too) degenerative and sent me home. In other words, they ruled out the possibility of a lawsuit. Three hundred dollars for nothing.

I went through all these sorts of troubles before Obamacare, so it isn't the source of the problem, no. This is for-profit health care, where even the charities are drawn into standard industry BS. This is the health care that the wealthy have judge as adequate for the rest of us. 

    

Blog changes coming.

Okay, I've made a decision. First, I'm going to stop publishing on this one, because its labels have become unwieldy to be practical to search a niche blog. So, I'm starting a new one up. This one will simply be vacated, but the posts will remain up.

I will run three blogs. The first is about my personal life, Life After Shocks, which is a reference to the ECT that changed my life track.

I'll also have one which will be named AnArch Liberal, which will be my social/political blog. The name says it all. Really, once I came up that, nothing else comes close. This will also be the default blog. Like if I want to write about math or science, it will probably end up on AnArch Liberal, unless I write on them a lot, in which case I'll have to set up yet another one. 

And for the literary/story/poetry/review/pop culture commentary, I'm calling it Singing Stars & Shrieking Shadows. This one's already reserved on Wordpress, so it might take a bit longer to launch. I don't know for sure.

I'll make nightly postings to warn my readers (all two dozen of you) of the change.

California's new rape law (and an announcement)

First the announcement: I'm making some big changes to my blogging soon. After putting up the excerpt to my novel, I realized the format was not best suited to reading a longer passage like that. White on gray looks pretty cool, but it's not the most readable text. (White on black looks cooler, but it's even less readable.) Moreover, transferring my writing from my ODF file manuscript to blogger was a headache. Then it occurred to me I could perhaps attract more readership by aiming for several niches rather than just a catch-all blog.

So, I've decided to use three blogs. One will be at Wordpress, and it will have stories, poetry, reviews, and discussions about writing and creativity in general. This will also include science, since SF is one of my reading and writing interests.  This one will be called, "Singing Stars and Shrieking Shadows." Or just "Stars and Shadows." It will have a format conducive to longer reading.

The second will be a political and social commentary blog, it's going to be called "Further Out Left." The title should say everything about its political orientation, and mine.

This blog will be both the personal one and the catch-all for any other subject. I might change the title of it, though I don't yet know to what else. I'm brainstorming.

After the jump, to my commentary about California's new affirmative consent rape law.

Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond, A fan-fic novel, Chapter 1

A pact made with blood

Hi, I know I haven't posted in a long time. I've finished with the final version of the first chapter of my first novel, which happens to be a fan fiction using Ginger Snaps as its reference.

It's called Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. It's an alternate sequel to the first film that keeps the setup (the first five minutes) to the sequel Ginger Snaps: Unleashed, but takes it in a totally different direction.

Unlike the version of the book that's up on fanfiction.net, this now starts with Ginger.


So, you'll find the first chapter right after the jump.

Ferguson

From the response of most Whites, I bet we're going to be seeing this a lot.

Now that I'm not completely down on my back depressed, I'll write about current depressing events.

Depression, Despair

This about describes it.

I got back home from Flashback Weekend in Chicago, a happy time where I got to meet Katharine Isabelle and the Soska Twins, Jen and Sylvia.

Jen, Katie and Sylvia. Not one of my pictures from Flashback, but you get the idea.