Minor Annoyances

I just learned the hard way that there are USB A to micro USB cables that only charge without doing data transfer. And the older cables that I've had for a few months that were made to transfer data quit working, neither charging nor transferring: they don't stick in the device snugly, wiggling around, which is why I'd bought the cables that turn out to only charge. This happens all the time, cables just stop fitting right, I go through a dozen or so a year. (At first, years ago, I thought the port in the device was busted, but new cables work so that's probably not it.) So I had to order new cables that are specifically supposed to transfer data as well as charge, that'll be here on 3/20 i.e. Thursday, and until then I won't be able to transfer files between my computer and my micro-usb devices.

And to order them, because I'm fucking broke from paying my credit card bills, I had to use more credit. But first I had to check the balances on a couple cards to see which was safe to use, but when I went to log in the site told me I had to verify my identity by calling customer service. So first I entered the 16 digit number, them my Social Security number, then waited for a Customer Service Specialist with a lovely accent (is that racist?) to give me a numeric code to type into the appropriate space.

And now I have to register the Protection Plan I bought for the new Tablet I had to buy to replace the one that got scratched up in my shoulder bag because I didn't have the case on it. I don't usually do that, most things should be covered by the warranty, but the warranty on the scratched one had recently expired and anyway the warranty didn't specifically mention the customer scratching up the damn thing.

And I'm just getting over the headache I got from taking naltrexone after I'd had a couple shots of bourbon: one or the other, not both, and no I didn't need the bourbon anyway. (I know, I know.) Now I'm out of booze and I really can't afford to buy any more this month so I probably won't.

And earlier today I went downstairs to check my mail, but I forgot to turn around and transfer my I'm Not Dead tag into the box provided, so the poor guy at the desk had to come up after 4 PM to knock to check on me.

And I still have to finish wiping off my kitchen counter and cleaning the floor like I do when the exterminator is coming so they don't snitch to management about what a slob I am. (I'm not sure they do, but I wouldn't put it past them.) That'll need doing before I go to sleep or the paranoia will keep my awake.

This has been my Tuesday. It hasn't been a really bad day, like I don't have cancer nor am I in legal trouble, but it can't count as a good day because the only memorable events have been minor annoyances. One after another. I should "count my blessings," for example I have all my fingers and toes, but that's not how my brain wants to work: it's as if I'm hard-wired to be annoyed by trivial "tragedies" like these, and when several of them happen in one day that day will be ruined. Even so this is an improvement over my natural default: I actually had to train myself to endure days like this without breaking down into an over-emotional mess, so, instead of hiding under the covers rocking myself and whimpering for an hour or so, I'm able to sit up here and persist at these tasks. Because of this it's a good thing that I don't have to go out into the world for such annoyances to happen, especially not around people for example at a workplace; over the years I've noticed that when people sense I'm having a day like this they often decide it's a good time to give me trouble, and that when people just had to insist on making a bad day even worse I would get called "crazy" and "violent" for letting them get to me. As if it were perfectly fucking okay to aggravate me just because they can instead of helping me out or even just leaving me the hell alone. It's because I'm able to protect my vulnerable psyche by isolating myself that I've gone 62 years without "going postal" or becoming a suicide bomber. Having an apartment all my own with a lock on the door has been a great boon for Humanity, you see; it also helps that I keep my cell phone set on Do Not Disturb so those voices can't worm through that way. And in order to hide away so other people can be protected from the consequences of their need to be annoying I have to have my rent paid by Social Security, because for one thing if I were medicated strongly enough to insulate me from those assholes out there I'd be too damn sedated to do anything useful, which pretty much rules out trying to work for a living.

This is what I mean when I say that people like me should not have to happen. What I really mean is that people should learn to leave vulnerable people alone, but that would be asking too much of y'all cretinous assholes out there. Because there are always more assholes than anybody else, as if infuriating people gives y'all an evolutionary (and economic) advantage. (Or maybe it's supposed to work the other way: maybe pissing people off until you get yourself stabbed is an example of the herd auto-correcting, but our societies are set up to thwart that natural impulse.) So, because stupid assholes are always going to be so damn common among our species, whatever genetic arrangement that produces people like me should be bred out of the gene pool for the good of the herd. Because the Earth really needs many billions more infuriating morons than it needs people like me.

I found this out for sure back in third grade in 1971, when I was informed several times a day by several different people that my mother who had cerebral palsy was a "retarded monkey," and that my father who had a curved spine was "the hunchback of Notre Dame," and that it was perfectly normal for people to treat me that way -- and abnormal of me to not just shrug it off or better yet play along.

And the only way to avoid it was to hook school, to avoid going out in public, to hide in my room behind my locked door instead. And because when I cut school the Principal would summon my mother to school to scold her for not making me attend, which meant the other kids would see her, so they'd be sure to remember to jump around going "hoo-hoo hee-hee this is your mother the monkey" the next time they saw me. And again it was perfectly normal for children to torment me like that, because it's simply asking too much for patents and other adults to teach these kids some simple fucking manners. And my mother had to Be A Good Mother and show up to give these assholes ammunition, so the Principle could scold her for being a bad mother by not making sure I go to school every day. And a couple years of this got me involved with Social Services and the Juvenile Courts, again because it's perfectly normal for people to let their kids be fucking assholes instead of teaching them that some people have physical handicaps, that it just happens, and that you should leave them and their children alone about it.

Furthermore I could not get this through my mother's head, that instead of agreeing with Those People that I'm a Bad Boy she might try sticking up for herself and trying to get Those People to teach their kids to leave me alone about her cerebral palsy. She didn't get that part, no matter how many times I tried to explain it, because she was too damn weak to stand up for herself to Those People and/or too damn stupid to understand the reason why I kept getting in trouble with the school. No, all she got was that "They think I'm a Bad Mother because of YOU. Because you keep getting in trouble. YOU are a Bad Bad Boy!"

And the few people who did get it were either unable or unwilling to stand up for me (and by extension my crippled parents) because That's Just How It Is. There zillions of idiotic assholes out there who just have to persecute people for one stupid reason or another, because their parents are physically disabled -- or because they're a different "race"* -- and that's perfectly okay. It's entirely natural, and there's nothing you can do about it. You just have to learn to suffer in silence, or grow such a thick skin that empathy is impossible (or was when I tried that), or you have to hide yourself away where Those People can't get to you.

Because there are always so many more of Those People out there, who either cannot or will not learn to leave people alone, and because it's not legal, for example, to take an AR 15 to school and get rid of several of them. The wonder is not that such "crimes" happen but that there aren't more of them. Because if it's perfectly natural to persecute people for some "flaw" then it's also perfectly natural to decide you're just not going to take it any more. One reason such "shooting sprees" are getting more common, one that your brilliant pundits keep missing, is that the more people there are the more bullies there are. Because y'all have decided that it's perfectly okay for people to act like that, and it's somehow "abnormal" to object when it happens to you. You people not only allow it, you encourage it. Generation after generation. Because, even if you are a Nice Person, you think that everybody has a right to reproduce, even if they're unable and/or unwilling to teach their kids to have some fucking manners. This is why I go for what for lack of a better word is called eugenics: this has gone on all over the world for at least all of recorded history, so there might just be a genetic basis for it. That can be isolated and bred out. In fact I got the idea years ago from a bumper sticker I'd see every now and then: STUPID PEOPLE SHOULDN'T BREED.

I concentrate on stupid people not because smart people never persecute The Other, but because smart people can learn how not to. And there are proportionately so few smart people that there must be far fewer of them than there are people who are somehow Different. One thing I noticed in school is that almost all of the kids who followed me around going "hoo-hoo hee-hee your mother is a monkey" were the kind who did not do well in school because they just weren't very smart. (That's an argument against universal education: if you must let stupid people breed you should at least not force your kids to put up with their stupid kids day after day.) And I have no idea what the kids who weren't pestiferously stupid thought of my parents' handicaps because they didn't mention it. If they did think that "people like that shouldn't go out it public" they were at least smart enough to not bother me with it. Perhaps because they had better things to do, like learn the material and get good grades. Smart people can do such things. They can either learn that "some people are handicapped but they're sill people," or at least they can learn that it's rude to bother people about it. Mind you some smart people have criticized me over this, for letting it get to me, as if it's my fault. I posit that those smart people do this because the pattern is an easy one to exploit for their personal gain: it's so much easier to enable people to "smear the queer" than to teach them manners, and there seems to be no political or personal benefit to it. Why stand up for me in public, why even bother to comfort me in private, when there's nothing in it for you? Why not learn to exploit that phenomenon instead? Go into politics! Run for office, start a blog, organize a committee. Make perstiferous idiocy work for you. I'm not sure how many smart bully-enablers are pestiferous themselves and how many just exploit Those People. Put it this way, very few smart kids ever told me my mother's a retarded monkey. Most simply avoided me. Perhaps, as I was told privately several times, they avoided me because they didn't want to be lumped with me and get bullied themselves. (And also, as I must admit, I can be a bit of a dick sometimes.)

Anyway. As I see it the problem is that not enough smart people want to breed out stupidity. That is they don't have enough basic human decency to want fix an obvious problem, or they're too cowardly to buck the ongoing trend. They just don't understand that we have a responsibility to improve the species, that we must favor quality over quantity. No, they "respect human rights." They'd rather try to educate Those People. But listen: Trump 2.0 shows that that's the wrong way to go. "You can't fix stupid." And we should not have to put up with it. Okay, we shouldn't have to put up with babbling crazies either. But I never reproduced because I am smart enough to avoid perpetuating a problem. And because I have some compassion for y'all out there. I practice what I preach. Because I know what I'm talking about. I can't be all scholarly about it here because I've concentrated too much on avoiding the outside world to get much formal education, and I've also been too lazy to teach myself things that don't come naturally, but there have to be a few people out there who've read this so far who think to themselves "this guy has a point." Maybe it's time to wise up, maybe it's time you admitted that to yourself. And maybe it's time to consider doing something about it. Spread the word. Find each other and organize. Write for a blog, go into teaching, run for office. Preach. JUST DO SOMETHING. How many generations of idiots is enough?

*And yes I did just equate kids whose parents happen to be crippled with people who happen to be Black (for example), and vice versa. It does not matter WHY you pick on people who are different, only that you do.