The Welfare Gnome! It’s Like a Sock Gnome Except This One Can Actually Kill You. Ft. Joker (Again)

According to the internet, a “sock gnome” is a mythical creature that pilfers socks.  Presumably it lives in or around the dryer where you put an even number of socks in and get an odd number out.  Sometimes it gets tricksy and spits out an even number but the pairs don’t match (meaning it’s pilfered one from more than one pair) but the usual evidence that you’ve had a sock pilfered by a gnome is that there is one left over that doesn’t have a mate and the missing sock never reappears ever.  This is a real thing (if not a real gnome) and everyone knows what this means.

Well, there appears to be a similar creature that lives at Social Services and pilfers sick and poor people’s applications for welfare benefits.  Or something, idk.  I assume these creatures are related but maybe not since this gnome doesn’t play games: its goal seems to be to drive you insane before it literally kills you.  I wrote here before about an application for benefits that went missing, along with a half a dozen other boondoggles that have wasted my spoons and left me scrambling to repeat some administrative process I was barely able to complete survive the first time.

Because while a sick person’s literal inability to jump through bureaucratic hoops is actually the best evidence that someone is extremely ill, someone has decided that only those who are well enough to sing for their supper (or pursue benefits) deserve to eat, as it were.  The first application that went missing was for food stamps, while today I found out that my application to get on a 4 month waitlist to see a doctor went missing 2 months ago and has not been since heard from: although my disability advocate hand-delivered it, the application was never received.

Of All The Things I’ve Lost, I Miss My Mind The Most. Ft. Joker

I recently wrote on my Patreon about Dave, my new disability advocate who seemed like he was going to be helpful for once.  Where my previous advocate was good at bleating on endlessly about my alleged “rights” as a disabled person, wasting my time and energy listening to her while not actually helping me gain access to resources, my new advocate put on a seriously impressive show.  Because I don’t have a car and am generally too sick to walk or ride my bike more than a couple of blocks, and likely too sick to drive even if I had a car, he arranged to pick me up for our appointments and afterwards took me back home.

Because I no longer possess executive function and cannot consistently or reliably complete tasks that require it (read: the stuff corporate executives pay other people to do for them, particularly female people, namely secretaries, wives and others) this man filled out applications for me, doing some of them online, addressed and mailed the ones going out of town and hand-delivered the rest.  This was almost unbelievably (!) helpful and I felt cautiously optimistic that things might finally be on the right track: a track towards getting me the disability and need-based benefits I’m entitled to as a seriously ill person with a disabling incurable, progressive disease.

To wit, Social Security benefits, into which I have paid since I started working when I was 15 and which they will just give to me freely if I live long enough but for which I have to beg in order to receive now, and housing, food and cash assistance that will help me stay in my little apartment, run my small business and somewhat control my environment and my access to climate control/lights/running water/refrigeration/toilet etc. and privacy and relative peace in which to care for my 2 adopted shelter cats and manage the daily pain and indignities of my disabling autoimmune disease.

The online application for SSD was returned to me in hardcopy to review, sign and return.  lol.  Along with a notice that if I want to also apply for SSI, the “other” form of disability-based benefits that’s basically exactly the same as SSD and as far as I know requires mostly the same information sent to the same place, I had to do a separate application for that.  lol.  The application for food and cash assistance was “never received” by social services, according to social services, even though Dave hand-delivered it and watched them time/date stamp it himself.  lol.

Now That’s Some Serious Chronic Fatigue. Spoon Theory 2.0? (Patreon Link Within)

Many chronically ill people eventually learn about the “Spoon Theory” of chronic fatigue, which is basically a way to explain to healthy people what it’s like when you no longer possess (or never had) virtually unlimited mental and physical energy to do what you want.  Because it’s always the responsibility of the weakest and sickest to explain ourselves to healthy people innit.  A person’s spoons are a visual representation of their physical and mental energy reserves for the day, where a physical or mental activity “costs” one or more spoons to perform and when the spoons are gone the sick person has no choice but to stop acting and rest.  With adequate rest and recovery time, hopefully their spoon reserves will replenish by the next day but that is not always the case.  Many days, seriously ill people may have no spoons at all.

Spoon Theory was described and named by a chronically ill woman and it is pretty accurate in my own experience.  For the first time in my life, after putting myself through law school, studying for and passing the bar exam, and then working more than full time in a stressful and demanding career in addition to a lifetime of “adulting” meaning maintaining a household and nurturing various parasitic males I no longer have anywhere near the energy I once had and can now barely get anything done, regardless of urgency or import.  It’s not a matter of how important anything is anymore, nor how badly I need to or want to do it.  I am not in control of that now and it is debilitating and terrifying.

Healthy people have no idea that’s even possible and they often refuse to believe it.  And that’s an example of ableism, or discrimination in policy and practice against disabled people and in favor of healthy people.  Young people seem acutely aware of the concept of spoons, chronic illness and ableism while older people seem to have not a clue; the implications of that are terrifying but I will leave that for another day.

I recently attempted to describe my own limitations to my mother, and even though as a nurse who claims to have rigorously studied the issues and thinks she knows everything there is to know about health, wellness and chronic illness (LOL) she had never even heard of “spoons” or spoon theory.  Considering that that information is literally everywhere if one only cares to look, her research skills get an F.  Her practical knowledge gets an F.  Empathy F.  Effort F.  Fucks given on behalf of the chronically ill F.  Fucks given about me and my new normal F.  Decent human being D+.  Maybe.  Maybe there’s hope, I think to myself, and at least a D+ is better than an F in that department, although the D+ is likely generous.  It’s a pretty important department and I like to think it matters but maybe it really doesn’t.  Maybe there is just no way that healthy people will ever understand or care what it’s like to be seriously chronically ill no matter how decent they are but I decide to try.

Antiauthoritarianism: Illustration via Juxtaposition.

If the above vid is not the perfect illustration of concept I don’t know what is.  This is the most recent YouTube upload by Royalty Soaps, what used to be a one-woman soapmaking business that has grown over several years into something else.  The backstory here seems to be that at some point, the eldest yet still teenaged daughter in some freakishly large Quiverfull-type family consisting of a mother, a father and a dozen(ish) Irish twins* started making soap and with the help and support of that family has become very successful and has now delegated some of her substantial duties to others.

As described in this vid, this woman’s business recently experienced an unexpected and frightening setback and she relied heavily on her family to correct the situation and save the day, which they did in spades.  They also had the time, energy, material resources and desire to throw her an Insta-worthy backyard 25th birthday party in the midst of this family project.  The party was beautiful and the familial love and care given and received there, as documented in this vid…well watch it for yourself and see what you think.  For me, the experience of watching this was somewhat complicated.  I enjoyed it, was moved by it but it made me deeply uncomfortable and thinky…and hungry for salad, cake and sun tea.

What was so deeply disturbing to me about this footage was the backdrop against which it was shot and I’m not referring to her (albeit somewhat disturbing) home state of Texas, or a photo prop.  The backdrop here, as it is most everywhere, is the social context of capitalism and patriarchy and what that means is that, in order for this situation and this footage to exist, this woman has had to comply, comply, comply in order to reap what must be conditional rewards of love; affection; physical presence and caretaking; emotional care and concern; and finally, material things that, under the current system, really only money can buy.  Doesn’t it?  In her case, she has had to buy into the religious, political and social traditions of her family including the patriarchal authority of her parents, the heterosexual and mommy mandates and more in order to have what she has.  Of course, the traditions of her family mirror the traditions of her culture more or less exactly.

Luckily for her there does not seem to be any obvious conflict between her own values, conscience etc. and that of her family (or culture) but what if there was?  What would happen to her if she woke up one day with, say, environmental concerns implicating overpopulation and natalism, or economic concerns implicating capitalism and the money system and the ethics of making and selling soap (or doing anything) for profit?  What if, God forbid, this Quiverfull (or whatever) daughter woke up one day with feminist concerns which implicate all of that plus the destablization of the patriarchal authority of her father/parents, her husband, her church and the State?

Benefits Attorneys are Professional Gaslighters. Language Itself is Gaslighting. Discuss. Or Don’t, It Really Probably Doesn’t Even Matter.

I spent my entire brief career as an attorney trying to get income- and disability-based benefits for vulnerable people.  It was a grueling and traumatizing career track that I realize now (and kind of realized at the time at different times) was based not in actually helping people by understanding their circumstances and getting people what they desperately needed, but in cruelly gaslighting them and wasting their time and energy doing “intakes” and whatnot when they could least afford the expense.  I have written here before about one potential client that was referred to me by a medical provider because he said people were threatening and following him.  Turns out, this man was quite mentally ill and was having delusions and it was left not up to his doctors (who palmed him off on me) but to me, a young attorney, to put the pieces together for him and to figure out what was really going on, but not before wasting a significant amount of his time.

Of course, even if there were people following and threatening him there is little to nothing a lawyer could’ve done about it.  I told the man to call the police if he felt threatened, and as was the policy of the nonprofit I was working for at the time, got the man’s consent to speak with the referring medical providers about his “case” when what I really wanted to do was punch the lot of them in the mouth for failing their own patient so egregiously and palming him off on me like he was garbage and I was a can.  Don’t even get me started on how much I hated that job.  I wasn’t well liked either and after 10 months was invited to leave.  To be fair, if I hadn’t needed the money myself, having just quit a perfectly good job at a for-profit law firm (which I also hated) in order to take that one, I would’ve quit my dream job at this nonprofit after a couple of weeks once I realized what really went on there, and that “case” with the elderly Spanish-speaking mentally ill man is a decent example of what a day at the office looked like there.  Here’s another:

PSA: How To Report A Threat Of Violence to Increase Chances Of Arrest, Hold & Criminal Charges (Or, The One That Maybe Didn’t Get Away).

It really bothers me that I’m sitting on all this legal knowledge, experience and skill and there’s nothing I can do with or about it.  Because of the pain and symptoms of my disease I am definitely not physically or mentally able to practice law full time anymore, but as I learned early on, to my crushing dismay, there is really no such thing as a part-time attorney.  This profession is still a bros club which means that it requires long hours and plenty of so-called face time, exactly as much as you would expect in order to squeeze most women out of most of the best positions while simultaneously providing cover, excuse and alibi under which powerful men commit adultery, avoid emasculating and squikky domestic chores, and otherwise abuse their power at women’s and everyone’s expense.  Seriously, don’t let the relatively high rate of female law graduates fool you into thinking the law is a reliably safe, lucrative or accessible field for women because it’s definitely not.  Fuck me did I learn that one the hard way.

But you know what?  I’m not dead yet and I’m still breathing and conscious and pissed off enough to write this post so I’m going to write it.  Today, my upstairs neighbor had what was apparently a psychotic break and started throwing bottles of piss and garbage into my yard and threatened my life.  I called the cops and made a report.  He was arrested and removed based on my statement and that of other witnesses (crime victims are technically just witnesses ourselves) and my property manager cleaned and disinfected my yard at my request.  The cops, firemen, first responders and the whole damn town apparently turned up to watch the show.  What they didn’t get to see was the man who threatened and assaulted me get off with a warning or with no consequences at all.  Who knows what the second act will be but the first act saw my assaulter arrested and taken to the hospital first, then presumably to jail.

I am writing this post to give a practical, technical example of proper reporting behavior/content to victims who report threatening or violent behavior, which reporting will leave the cops with little choice but to arrest, hold and charge the perpetrator with a crime.  Little choice is not no choice of course and they could still let him out/off at any time.  That’s probably exactly what will happen in the end, but I gave them as little choice as possible and increased the chances of an arrest, hold and charge the best I could.  Here’s what I did.  The short answer is, you have to answer YES to both of the following questions if you want the incident to be taken as seriously as possible at the reporting stage, hopefully ensuring that your attacker is arrested and taken to jail, that he is held there, and that he is properly charged with a crime.

American Feminism Was (Is) a Psy-Op. Western Medicine Shored up Male Power. Discuss.

This post is about American feminism specifically since that’s the brand I know the most about and the one that affects me every day of my life.  I am not talking about other “feminisms” in other places but here in my own country where, after 100 years of feminist activating, including actual and/or perceived successes American women still face the following oppressive realities of living under American men’s particular brand of patriarchy:

1.  We are removed from natural food and water sources and rely on necrophilic men to supply us and our dependents with the material necessities of life including food, water and plant-based medicine;

2.  Our land including our soil, air, water and biomass (i.e. food, pets and ourselves) have been consistently poisoned since the 1940s (that we know about) with male-made nuclear radiation where this kind of ionizing radiation is known to be dangerous and not compatible with life or health;

3.  Physical and mental “health” have been medicalized where “health problems” are synonymous with “medical problems” meaning that in America, health and Western (capitalistic patriarchal) medicine are the same thing;

4.  All institutional power remains in men’s hands with only token female representation in positions of military, economic, academic, scientific, police, media, regulatory and all relevant political and social power in every area.  This includes 100% male control over Western medicine and therefore over sick and dying bodies.

This is a partial list and a specific progression but it will do for now.

What is a psy-op?  A psy-op or psychological operation appears to be a propaganda campaign including slogans aimed at a political enemy in order to get them to activate toward and achieve state interests.  For our purposes “state” interests is interchangeable with patriarchal interests and refers to male interests and male power achieved at women’s expense while “propaganda” refers to American media including representations of so-called feminist speech.  Working backwards, we can see that once feminists (of all people!) started activating towards and achieving patriarchal goals, there was indeed a propaganda/slogan campaign that preceded it.  Also for our purposes, we can presume both causation and intent where the result of this propaganda campaign — women activating towards male interests — was completely foreseeable and besides, if men didn’t like the result of women activating towards male and against female interests men could’ve stopped or changed it at any time.  Of course they never did.

Cannabis Refugee, Esq. One Year Later. (Meta Discussion)

As my readers may’ve seen or sensed from the recent comments and content on this blog, I have become disillusioned with the CRE writing project and may decide not to continue writing about my experience as a Crohn’s patient trying to survive outside the Western medical system that was not helping me and was only making me worse.  As far as I can tell, this project has not inspired any additional writing or critical thinking on this subject, my posts have not been widely shared or inspired much interesting feedback, and this work has not opened up any additional opportunities for me in the way of writing or activism.  Of course, those were not the reasons I started this blog in the first place but they are to be considered when looking into the future of this project and whether it is in my or anyone’s best interest that it continue.

My original intent in starting this project nearly one year ago was to document my experiences as a seriously ill woman for whom conventional medical treatments were not working including the social, financial and health-related fallout of this system that seems designed to control and punish sick people while we carry the blame and shame for Western medicine’s failures and even its lies.  At times my health and financial situation have been so precarious that I actually believed (and still do believe) that I am going to die here, alone and in the middle nowhere, and I wanted the truth about what happened to me to be known or at least knowable by those who would wonder what the hell could’ve possibly happened that led to that sad and lonely end.

The Absurdity of the Euthanasia Discussion in the Absence of Effective Medicine and Social Support for the Seriously Chronically Ill.

I cannot tell you how absurd it is to be seeking euthanasia as the final end to this awful Crohn’s journey when I’m not suicidal and I don’t want to die.  What I do want, all of which is illustrated brilliantly in this clip, is 1. effective medical treatment for my disease, or failing that, consistent access to effective pain and symptom relief, in my case medical marijuana which has been used successfully for thousands of years to ease specifically gut ailments and which use is supported in contemporary peer-reviewed medical literature particularly for Crohn’s; 2. social support with fulfilling basic tasks and the activities of daily living like shopping, cleaning, cooking and the like; and 3. to be relieved of external constraints that make existing as a chronically ill person a living fucking hell and a consistent nightmare, which constraints have nothing to do with being ill and everything to do with being an oppressed person and failed consumer/producer under capitalism and patriarchy.  Constraints like poverty.  Fear of (and actual) male violence.  Disability-based (and all) discrimination.  Things like that.

But I can’t have any of those things — effective medical treatment, social support, and freedom from oppression — because under the current system those things don’t actually exist so the easiest thing for everyone would be for me to simply disappear or to have never been born in the first place.  Failing that we have euthanasia otherwise known as assisted dying or medically assisted suicide.  Of course, poor and other unsupported “euthanasia candidates” — who likely don’t have $12,000 and the good health and social support needed to have their efforts rubber stamped/make it official — just know and experience this process as good old-fashioned suicide.  Who knows what Chris Rock really thinks about euthanasia for seriously ill and dying people but he’s not wrong to see the absurdity in it, at least under the current system.

Crohn’s Disease is a Terminal Illness. Coming to Terms.

After researching this disease for going on 6 years now, I believe I have come to a rational conclusion about Crohn’s disease which is that it is not a so-called incurable progressive disease but a fatal one: based on all the evidence including anecdotal evidence from patients themselves I now believe that Crohn’s disease is a terminal illness.  I have more or less concluded that before but for some reason I hadn’t yet come to terms with it.  It’s not easy to come to terms with something like that but not because I suffer from what is almost certainly going to cause my untimely death but because everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone is lying their asses off about Crohn’s disease including how “treatable” it is, what kind of quality of life Crohn’s patients can reasonably expect, how predictably disabling it is and why, and how it’s probably going to end.

But before we get to the end it’s important to start at the beginning and admit what Crohn’s disease is at base: Crohn’s patients, including myself, have to medicate in order to eat.  And that is serious, very serious indeed.  If there is anything that is any less compatible with life than a disease that prevents the sick person from eating I can’t think of it.  A disease that prevented the sick person from breathing wouldn’t be any less compatible with life than Crohn’s is, it would just be quicker.

Medically Futile Care as Ritual. Part II. The Political Intent and Effect of Flogging Corpses, Framing Zombification as “Life Support” Etc. What’s Going On?

In my last post I wrote about an article published in a British medical journal that admitted that medically futile care — care that is not expected to increase a sick or dying patient’s health or prolong their life — has ritualistic intent and effect on the population at large.  I did not pay to access the full article and the abstract did not detail the ritualistic intent/effect so I was left to surmise for myself what the intent and effects are on society as a whole when Western medicine in particular flogs corpses with no reasonable chance of being revived; prolongs the dying process with aggressive and violent transplants and surgeries, resuscitation attempts and so-called “life support” including intravenous nutrition and hydration, mechanical breathing and filtration and the like; artificially delivers and maintains genetically or congenitally nonviable infants instead of letting them die naturally and so on.

I have observed previously that Western medicine attempting to treat untreatable, incurable and progressive disease is also ritualistic and does not benefit the patient except to function as a means of compliance and confession where sick people, especially sick women, are expected to confess their sins of and accept a flogging for being failed producers/consumers under capitalism and patriarchy.  Thus I would include such ineffective care under the heading of ritualistic medically futile care although the article I was responding to did not address or include that type of futility.  As a radical feminist I reject patriarchal rituals on their face and refuse to participate in them at all where and when I have a choice.  I have resisted using the capitalistic patriarchal (Western) medical doctor’s office as confessional, and refused to accept the flogging of brutal treatments that will not increase my overall quality of life or even reliably delay my death, instead choosing to treat my otherwise intractable pain and symptoms with medical cannabis.

So the existence of medically futile care as (capitalistic, patriarchal) ritual does not seem to be at issue, being freely admitted to by researchers who frame these rituals as having a positive effect on society — an effect which transcends the abuse and pain suffered by individual patients who are subjected to it but do not themselves directly benefit from it in terms of an increased quality or even quantity/length of life.  So what exactly is the specific ritualistic intent and effect on society at large of flogging corpses, creating and maintaining zombified “undead” and/or profoundly impaired patients on so-called life support, artificially reducing natural levels of infant mortality and so on?

“Medically Futile Care” As Ritual. I Fucking Knew It. And People Are Okay With This?

I’ve been researching so-called “medically futile care” lately, or more accurately, it’s a rabbit hole I fell down while researching nursing and what nurses have to say about witnessing and participating in medically futile care, otherwise known as medicalized torture.  My own mother is a nurse and I know that she, after being a nurse for some 30 years, started to become disillusioned by Western medicine and the horrific procedures and treatments imposed on intractably and/or terminally ill and actively dying patients.  Of course, she didn’t start having a problem with it until after she had reaped the social and material rewards of being a disgusting handmaiden and middle class patriarchal enforcer for her entire adult life including subjecting her own children to medicalized torture: my own brother died from it and earlier this year she brutally criticised me for abandoning Western medicine after 2 years of conventional Crohn’s treatments that were not helping and only making me worse.  With a Western medical nurse as a mother who needs a firing squad (or torturer) amirite?

I have written here before about disillusioned Western medical doctors resisting their evil profession by leaving the field, including leaving via suicide.  Apparently there is currently a movement headed by Western medical doctors themselves to challenge abusive practices in their field including but not limited to hazing and domination rituals in medical school and medical residency; overwork, sleep deprivation and other conditions related to employment in the Western medical field; and cruel standards of care including those implicating medically futile care where doctors feel “forced” to literally torture sick, injured and otherwise vulnerable patients lest they lose their jobs or be sued for medical malpractice.  Doctors are actually feeling sorry for themselves because their jobs as patriarchal enforcers and medical torturers makes them feel bad, and while anyone who has ever worked before knows what it’s like to be coerced for money (and survival) those who literally, physically harm and torture other people in order to maintain their own standards of living will garner no sympathy from me.

The same goes for Western medical nurses who my research indicates suffer greatly from vicarious trauma and professional burnout from “having” to witness torturous medically futile care in their professions.  Examples of such care include flogging corpses which have no reasonable chance of being revived; continuing invasive so-called “life support” for those who are dead to the world and will probably never regain consciousness or if they do will be horrifically and permanently impaired; refusing to let extremely premature or terminally malformed or diseased infants die naturally, and so on.  Get a real fucking job, no matter how low it pays, is my response to all medical professionals who have a problem with physically harming and torturing people…yet continue to do it anyway because some man somewhere tells them they have to lest they lose their jobs if they want to continue to fund their own middle- to upper middle-class lifestyles.  Seriously fuck you a million times you poor, poor self-proclaimed victims of workplace abuse who continue to physically torture vulnerable people for money.  You absolute monsters.

If A Disease Is Untreatable, Incurable and Progressive, Is It A “Medical” Condition at All? Ft. Trans Criticism.

I have seen it pointed out elsewhere that some “conditions” for which the medical establishment offers consumerist goods and services are not actually bona fide medical conditions at all and are in fact money-making schemes advanced by wealthy investors and others who stand to make a fortune off of anyone stupid, naive or deranged enough to accept them.  The conversation I am most familiar with pertains to the medicalized transgender movement where people are persuaded that they can achieve the impossible through medicalized interventions, in that case, that “transgender” individuals can change their biological sex through consuming expensive and dangerous cross-sex hormones, puberty blocking drugs, and surgeries including castration, so-called “facial feminization” surgeries and others.

Whether anyone accepts the psychological or physical transgenderism of individuals or not, the issue remains that there are billions of dollars to be made globally on this phenomenon and thinking people are prone to thinking about such things.  “Follow the money” is a familiar admonition and politically-minded people understand what that means.  They generally accept the reality that where there is money to be made, there will be corruption and wealthy people and entities working in the shadows to further their own interests.  In the above-linked article by Jennifer Bilek entitled “Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology?” she asks and answers that question and names names.  She concludes that it is “Exceedingly rich, white men (and women) who invest in biomedical companies [who] are funding myriad transgender organizations whose agenda will make them gobs of money” including billionaire businessmen George Soros, “Jennifer” Pritzker and others. And it’s difficult to argue with that conclusion which is demonstrably true.  But let’s go further.

Storytime. That Time I Was Attacked by a Serial Predator (and The DA Called Me About it 20 Years Later).

Today I received a telephone call from an investigator with a California District Attorney’s office (I won’t say which one).  His message said that “no one is in trouble” and he just wants to speak with me about an old case.  When I Googled, I found the man’s name and number on a telephone list for the Sex Crimes investigation unit.  He was indeed an investigator with the DA and I figured I knew what he was on about — I was sexually assaulted in college by a serial offender and I deduced that my attacker had been arrested again.  It’s the only “old case” I could think of and certainly the only sex crime in which I was ever involved.  Of course, as an attorney, I kind of think investigators are shit/pure evil (of the little dick/huge ego persuasion) and I also know they lie.  So I didn’t care to take or return a cold call from one.

Instead of calling him back I called his supervisors and left voicemails introducing myself as an attorney and asking what the call was about.  Later, the investigator called me back and left a more detailed message, this time including my attacker’s name.  Obviously I recognized the name; what an unpleasant, unexpected and unwanted blast from the past that was (is there any other kind?).  The guy they were calling about had been a stranger to me — so much for the “strange men are totally safe because the men you know are worse” liberal feminist trope — and he had digitally penetrated me in a public place.  A Halloween party.  The police report and subsequent deposition for the case were a riot.  The Guy With the Knife In His Head did this.  Ace Ventura did that.  It was surreal, darkly funny and traumatic.

As I recall, by the time I was called in to do the deposition on my assault my attacker had been arrested again, this time for the rape and attempted murder of his common law wife.  They told me he was definitely going to jail on charges related to that and they planned to drop the charges related to my assault as part of a plea deal.  They asked me how I felt about that, explaining that if I wanted the prosecutor to pursue my case, as a victim, they would consider my wishes.  Since he was going to jail anyway I said that was fine with me.  I was busy trying to survive college and work, my attacker’s lawyer was a dick and had harassed me during the depo and I really didn’t care to have anything more to do with it.  I bowed out and as far as I know that’s exactly what happened: my case went away and my attacker went to jail.  The woman he had raped and tried to kill declined to cooperate at all, saying she would not “help white America put another black man in prison.”

Now, 20 years later I get a call from Little Dick/Big Ego who promised I wasn’t in trouble and said he just wanted to talk.  Is that any way to start a fucking conversation?  Jesus.  It was almost as if he didn’t want me to call him back at all.  Unsurprisingly, the guy who attacked me 20 years ago has been arrested again, this time for rape and sodomy.  I Googled his name and read the details of his latest violent femicidal crime.  Apparently, in California, the prosecutor can bring in victims from prior similar cases to show that the accused is a lifelong asshole (essentially) and the prosecutor is hoping, this time, “to put him away for life.”  My attacker had already been a lifelong asshole when he was arrested for what he did to me and the cops all knew him — long before that, they had given him a nickname that started with The.  You know, like The Hulk, The Terminator, The Situation, etc.  I won’t say what the nickname was but it was a shortened version of his last name and he had a history of prior offenses “as long as my arm” as the cops and prosecutors all told me at the time.  So now, 20 years and a hundred lifetimes later, I have yet another prosecutor wanting my perspective on “Mr. The” because apparently, trying to keep a serial woman abuser in prison is like trying to nail Jello to a wall.

Storytime + Open Thread. Why I Stopped Wearing a Suit to Practice Law.

I have been feeling quite uninspired to write on the topic of Crohn’s and chronic illness lately, but this has happened before and seems to come and go.  What is there really to talk about without being redundant when it’s all kind of been said before?  If anyone has any original, interesting and/or nagging thoughts on this or any topic I hope they will feel free to comment below.  It may or may not inspire me to write more.  In the meantime, my thoughts are again with the residents of the Big Island of Hawaii many of whom were already displaced by the ongoing 3-months long lava eruption there and who now find themselves staring down the barrel of a hurricane.  Of course, many of these evacuees and displaced residents are chronically ill on top of everything else.  I hate to think of the effects of torrential rains, high winds and widespread coastal flooding on an active lava flow.  Godzilla vs. Mothra comes to mind.

And many of the existing lava evacuees, including chronically and terminally ill evacuees, are still living in tents, in cars, or sleeping on the ground.  A lot of them have reportedly had it with existing in shelters and because of that will not be returning to one anytime soon, even if they do reopen them for the hurricane (most of the shelters that were opened for lava evacuees have closed by now even though thousands of people reportedly remain displaced and even though the lava is still actively taking homes).  I’ve heard that there have been evacuee suicides and I don’t doubt those reports.  The seriously chronically ill live increasingly diminished and unimaginably stressful lives on their best days and natural disasters make everything worse for them and everyone.  I know how they feel, having been left homeless and ill myself following Hurricane Sandy.  The physical, emotional, mental and financial strain of being displaced and ill at the same time is truly not to be believed.