Oh Darling Ones,

My heart is shaky with rage. I am incandescent with fury. Bill Cosby raped, assaulted, or molested sixty women and has walked free on a technicality. I don’t know what angers me more, how much this country hate women or how there is no actual justice in the American legal system.

Every time something like this is in the news every woman you know is re-traumatized be the sexual assault/harassment/molestation she’s endured. All of them. Trust me, you don’t know a woman who has not been sexually mistreated by a man at least once in her life. She might not have mentioned it to you. Or she might not even recognized that it happened to her (it took me twenty years to reconcile what happened to me as sexual assault).

In happier news, yesterday Wendell and I welcomed Steven to the Sadness Garden.* Steven is a Majesty Palm I bought myself for my birthday, but ended up getting free due to several fuckups by the site I bought him from (for the record, all the fuckups were handled swiftly and gracefully by the company). So yay! Free birthday tree.

Not entirely sure where the name Steven came from, but as soon as I gazed upon his spiky-leaved wondrousness I was all, “Yep, that’s a Steven all right.”

In shocking news, I think I’ve reached my plant limit. Now that my heart finally has the bedroom tree it has desired for so long I feel kind of sated.

Don’t expect this feeling to last very long,
Jodi

 
*Other inhabitants of the Sadness Garden: Muriel, Cub, Hugh, Baby Huey, McNamara, Chandler, Duke, Benjamina, Peggy & Stan, Eleanor II and Eleanor III, Phil, ZZ Top, Unnamed Hoya, Beverly, Francine, Judy, Ponyboy Curtis, Travis, Trevour, Roger, Lawrence, Nancy, Janis, Joanie, Unnamed Lilac Twigs, Lucy, Julien, and Phoebe.

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We all do it. Talking in whispers because to say it out loud might make it true. It’s kind of like a #MeToo version of a celebrity death pool. Who would really surprise you if they were outed as a misogynistic, abusive, sexually predatory dirtbag?

I thought the revelations about and subsequent resignation of Al Franken threw me for a loop.

Then news broke today that Ryan Adams is also one of the worst kinds of power-abusing dirtbags. To put it lightly, I am shattered. I’ve written frequently and with much enthusiasm about my love of Ryan Adams’ music over the nineteen-year tenure of this blog.

I’m furious and sad and guilty and sick to my stomach.

Fuck you, Ryan Adams. Fuck you. None of your songs, no matter how much or how long I loved them is worth any of the things you did to that girl and those women. None of it. Not even “Dear Chicago,” which I have a very special relationship with and according to Last.fm is the song that I have listened to the most since I joined Last.fm in 2007.

I will now commence carving “Dear Chicago” out of my heart, which sounds like it would be easy since you broke my fucking heart, but it will not be easy. It will be very difficult and I will forever mourn the loss of something that once meant so much to me.

Extra special fuck you with fiery hot sauce for this: The lawyer added that “if, in fact, this woman was underage, Mr. Adams was unaware.” He pointed to her performances in clubs and provided photos of Ava from that time, saying she looked “approximately 20.”

I say this as a woman who has looked “approximately 20″ since she was a 5’10” ten-year-old girl. A GIRL. Thanks for reminding me of all the shit I’ve put up with from men at very young age because I looked “approximately 20.”

As I read about Phoebe Bridgers tears poured from my eyes. I lover her music so much and I think of just how close it came to not happening. How many women’s voices has he silenced beyond the ones brave enough to come forth in the article.

My rage is incandescent.

Whenever a man I once admired for some reason or another is revealed to be the absolute worst, a dirtbag of epic proportions I think of a passage from Catcher in the Rye.

That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose.

Goddamn you Ryan Adams for writing fuck you right under my nose.

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What were you doing when the freedom left your body as the motherfuckers in the Senate voted to confirm Judge Beer Bong Rapist?

I was probably eating breakfast. This isn’t much of a stretch as every meal I ate today was breakfast. I made a breakfast quesadilla at 9. I had a bagel & apples at 2. And just about an hour ago I had my favorite of all comfort breakfasts — eggs, potatoes, and sausage. If you know one thing about me, let it be that ya girl can cook an egg. It’s the one benefit of growing up the daughter of people who mostly worked in diners their whole lives.

I don’t quite have words for how devastated and full of despair I am. It feels like November 9, 2016 all over again, but with less disbelief and way more helplessness. I’m so angry I want to punch all the well-meaning do-gooders who keep imploring people to vote and continue fighting. I want change and I want it now. I want a new congress. I want everyone who voted yes to be tried for treason. I want everyone to stop pretending like this entire presidency isn’t a sham and like any of this counts.

The post Day 74 of 200: The 3 Breakfast Day appeared first on I Will Dare.

I am hollowed out by rage. My work has been trash. I’m exhausted every day. I spend so much time trying to understand what would make a sane, rational person think, “Brett Kavanaugh will be an excellent Supreme Court Justice.” What could be so important to me that I’d hire this dude who is clearly unfit for the job? Who would I be that loyal to over the millions and millions of crying women begging me to not hire this guy? Is Turnip-in-Chief holding all the Republican (and one Democrat) Senator’s loved ones for ransom? Is he gonna share some kind of kinky Chuck Grassley revenge porn?

Because I cannot puzzle out this problem my brain resorts to screaming. So much screaming and lots of angry ALL CAPS typing to everyone I know.

Where am I’m putting my rage? In this blanket (pictured above) I started making on Sunday. It’s about three-feet wide and six-inches high so far. That’s a lot of time spent doing the closest thing I can manage to meditating. It’s generally the only time in the last two weeks where I’ve felt at pace, or maybe it’s the only time I’ve not felt an all-consuming rage.

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Much like all of you my Facebook has been flooded with red, white, and blue profile pictures, an Eiffel-towered peace sign and many vague thoughts and prayers for those killed in the attacks on Paris Friday night.

I have stayed mum for the most part about this event. It is horrifying and my heart breaks for all who lost someone they loved and who now feel unsafe. Of course, I am not a monster.

However, it’s weird that I feel the need to say that. Like I have to issue some sort of official statement on this latest news lest someone think I don’t know or that I condone such things. Social media makes us weird.

Watching tragedies like the terrorist attack unfold on the Internet is tough to stomach. It takes roughly ten minutes to go from grief and collective mourning to pedantic lectures about what you should and should not post on social media in the wake of such tragedy. How dare you continue your life in any manner I deem unacceptable right now while I am upset.

And then there are, of course, the myriad people who think it is impossible to care about two issues at once, as though our hearts and brains are only capable of one thing at a time. I saw a lot of stuff like: Paris really puts the Mizzou stuff in context. Because on the Internet you can’t care about systemic racism and horrific acts of terror at the same time.

It’s a weird shaming I don’t quite understand. What is its purpose? Sure, sure you’re trying to point out how frivolous other people are and thus that makes you morally superior for caring about real issues?

I care a lot about the issue of walnuts in brownies and banana bread. I think it is an abomination upon treats. . . walnuts. I also care a lot about police violence against black people and how when we talk about the wage gap we’re always talking about white women and what they earn. Women of color earn far, far, less than men and white women. That’s an abomination too.

Somehow my heart and brain do not explode from caring about many things. And, fun fact, I care about way way more things than that. You should ask me some day about my stance on pie (disgusting baked fruit spooj) or capitalism (the root of all evil).

But shaming and weird-mourning groupthink is not what brought me here. What brought me here today was the weird amnesia that tragedy seems to induce in people.

As I mentioned Facebook is filled with the French red, white, and blue because suddenly we are all French, but I would bet you dollars to donuts that a pretty significant number of those people with their French profile pic were in favor of “Freedom Fries” not too long ago. But whatever, that’s just Facebook nonsense. It matters little.

What really surprised me were the number of Twitter people I follow were totally gobsmacked that such a horrific thing could happen at a concert venue. “They just wanted to go enjoy some music.”

Right? I agree. But, you know, we live in a country where a man can walk into an elementary school and kill six-year-olds and nothing at all changes. Nothing. To my brain, that is the most horrible thing that can happen. Men killing children because: reasons.

So yes, murdering concert-goers is awful, but is it shocking? Nope. I live in a country where six year olds die and nothing is done about it because the NRA pays Congress a lot of money. I live in a country where men often walk into theaters or college campuses or churches to open fire on innocent people. So, yeah, suicidal religious zealots doing the same in a faraway country? Not surprising.

And while I’m getting stuff off my chest. How about Saturday Night Live? Last week the Internet was calling for a boycott of SNL and passing out gifs of John Leguizamo talking about Donald Trump’s racism. The integrity of the institution was called into question. However, this week all is forgiven because they did something thoughtful for France.

Maybe it’s the same thing I’m complaining about, being able to hold two things in your heart. Maybe people can hate SNL for Donald Trump and laud them for last night at the same time.

I don’t fucking know. I am cranky and annoyed and I feel impotent with everything that plagues us so I just come here and whine about things that don’t matter.

Bleh. I am going to go crochet poop emojis for my nephews until I feel better about society.

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