Wed Aug 23 19:48:43 UTC 2023 *Why do I bother? Why do I bother?* I have real people who I can talk to. People with who I can share my heart and soul, people who know and trust me, who make me feel like we share essential humanity. And I am infinitely grateful for that. But no man is an island, the aging and physically unimposing still more so. This simple, basic human contact, this *caring*, has made me despair far less than I would have without it. Maybe that's enough to compensate for the fact that almost all of my current "communities" are about as welcoming as a slaughterhouse to a chicken. That most of the world, as I noted in my last post, has turned into an Emo Philips joke about religion. But it doesn't ease the pain of those I've lost, and those with whom my relationship has been permanently and irrevocably tainted. "I'd like to care, but I've been priced out of the market." I'm tired of explaining. Tired of being put on the defensive, constantly forced to justify my every opinion however subjective the subject. Tired of being treated like a dangerous lunatic and a ticking bomb by people who have known me for decades, even for my entire life. Tired of having my carefully forumulated and diplomatically phrased concerns dismissed as so much petty whinging and hateful raving. Tired of the childish games from people my age and older, games that are now so much more destructive than when we were toddlers. Tired of being lectured and commanded and shrieked at by moral midgets I wouldn't trust to clean a toilet, let alone preach to me about right and wrong. And really fucking tired of all these people who thirty years ago were chanting NO BLOOD FOR OIL, who after 9/11 couldn't possibly scream any louder about those fuckin' Republicans, but now they live and die by the Holy Creed of Bush: You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists. No bad tactics, only bad targets. Everything's a binary for them, except the constant and unending stream of exceptions that are just too complex and nuanced for my primitive binary caveman mind to comprehend. Beyond the virtue of self-control, the only reason to hold my tongue with my remaining family is to avoid ruining the precious little I have left. It could be worse, could be the living death of those who implicitly or explicitly ghosted me, who referred to me in vile terms, who showed no apparent concern or desire to contact me during my period of grief, choosing instead to send armed agents of the state to my door who thankfully were far more sane than the one who summoned them. So there you are, SDF; my confession that I'm one of Those Bad People, that I'm stupid and evil, you may now all gasp and boo and throw rotten produce at the designated two minute Hitler as I set ablaze the few rickety boards I'd put down that haven't even formed a single step let alone a bridge. Fun times. If only we'd known in the eighties that someday we'd yearn for the simplicity and containment of the bulletin board flame wars. "Got no need to beat you. Just want to go my way." Have fun with that.