That choosing a relationship with someone who is monkeybranching into the relationship with you directly from another relationship is you allowing someone in your life who is fundamentally dishonest and manipulative. It’s one thing to be casually dating in general, and just finding someone you click with and ending it with the people you are casually dating, but entering a relationship with someone who pursues you even though they’re in an ostensibly committed relationship is choosing to accept someone who is really not a good person, because they will just do whatever they want and eventually hurt you without a qualm too. Tolerating any of this means you are tolerating abuse, really.

Unfortunately he didn’t tell me this fact until 18 months into it, but that should have been what made me realize that he wasn’t trustworthy and leave then.

Also committing from the get go and falling in love? That’s just also not valuing yourself. You’re just looking for someone to fit into your life because you don’t love yourself enough to wait and take your time and get to know someone, and you’re afraid to be alone and have nobody to care for you. And I did all of that, because I was immature, completely without any idea of how to make it in life alone or cope alone, and I thought that was all I deserved and was the only way to be safe. And it was all wrong.

Omigod. Do you still talk?

I realized every time my mom worked in the evenings it was always a great day for me.

Also we were brought up Catholic, BUT also to love accept queer and trans people (and I’m 50 so back then trans people weren’t really part of the conversation hardly at all), but also my brother is gay, and when it became clear that was a fact, my mother launched an underground campaign to try and pretend he wasn’t, including inviting a beard date for him to go with on my destination wedding.

Finally realized how absolutely nasty and manipulative she is, and how she just regards me as a reflection of her. I can’t be around her because I feel like she’s constantly scrutinizing every inch of me and criticizing my appearance, because that’s what she values and nothing else, and how she likes to drop bombs into the middle of family gatherings just to get negative attention, like deciding to make fun of my father over a chubby girl he had dated 40 years before, which my spouse honestly came close to clocking her in the teeth for.

Borderlines are nasty the older and more entrenched and untreated they are, they get really malignant behaviour. Just last fall my aunt who she is mostly estranged from had surgery for bowel cancer, which she didn’t share with her since she drinks drama like it’s her poisonous life blood, and yet despite this she got her friend who works in the OR to tell her the date and time, showed up at the last minute while she was waiting on a stretcher to go in for surgery, shoved her face in my aunt’s face and yelled “HI!”, and immediately my aunt was rolled down to the OR, and never visited or did anything else. The whole point was to let my aunt know she KNEW and that my aunt couldn’t keep it from her. She violated her confidentiality and I’m pursuing it through the hospital privacy office…

Amanda Palmer. I’ve always thought she was a narcissistic asshole who uses people like she’s rearranging furniture. And that has turned out to be extremely true.

I really am kind of messy but it’s because I work so much I don’t have time to do anything properly at all. I always feel frantic.

The human centipede of social media.

I especially hate that Reddit sold out so hard, because it really is the only search result worth anything anymore. I quit Instagram and Twitter as well, can’t quite give up Facebook because of my Livejournal friends. Would give my kidney for Livejournal to make a comeback.

Thank you for saying this. I genuinely would never not take someone’s cultural practices and religion seriously. I just really like what it symbolizes to me.

Thank you. I just felt a little silly.

My tattoo is very well designed, but it is a lotus flower with the Om symbol in it because at the time I was practicing a lot of yoga, and I didn’t realize it looks kind of… culturally foolish, shall we say, especially now that I live in a city with a lot of South Asian folks, and some have asked me about it, I am white as the driven snow. I did not intend it in any cultural appropriation way and it isn’t offensive or anything, they all seem to like it, but it was a bit thoughtless ultimately.

I hadn’t listened to him be interviewed before until yesterday, and I was pleased to hear that he’s quick on his feet and confident and sounds very knowledgeable. My ex said about him that nobody wants a policy wonk for PM, but so far it works.

Excellent point. I agree, it can’t be considered safe. Think of what viruses are going to rip through livestock populations there now.

One thing I hope this government does is go after weaponized disinformation. Force these shitty social media CEOs to moderate their content. Fuck Zuckface and Space Karen so hard.

When I lived in a townhouse condo property the conservatives used to just come and stick a bunch of their signs on the edge of the property without anyone asking for them to put them there. My spouse used to go yank them out and put them in the garbage.

Best wishes to you wherever you are headed. I imagine soon the sane countries will offer queer people asylum.

Why did you do it? Let’s start there. Please unpack.

That was HILARIOUS. I think he tried to be funny once and sing a Doris Day song in response. 22 Minutes is absolutely brilliant.

I met Stockwell once. He just ordered a coffee from me at work, I had an urge to do what that other protestor did with the chocolate milk.

This is sad. He has his flaws but he seems like a really peace loving guy with a genuine commitment to making a difference in the world.