The Pluck Stops Here

TMI and MYOFB

When the bad news hit last November, I focused on what I could control. This is a tried and true method of diverting from anxiety and panic. I began lifting three times a week with Arnold’s Pump Club¹ app and I’m in nearly as good shape as I was when I was boxing in my ‘30s. When the weather was nice, and sometimes when it wasn’t, I made sure to go outdoors and bike, even in the sub-freezing snow, where I photographed resilient Prickly Pear cactuses that had grown through the asphalt of an abandoned airstrip in the Pine Barrens. I know I shared this recently, but I’ll share it again. It’s time to be prickly.

Renewing my passport before the rush was another easy task. And yesterday, I made good on a decision made a long time ago, to put an end to the endless Thomases and Daniels in my grandfather’s bloodline, and get a vasectomy. I’ve never wanted children, and this is a form of birth control a fascist government beholden to Christian white nationalists can’t take away.²

Foxes are one of several creatures that use “aunts” as a survival strategy. In animals, it’s called alloparental behavior. Siblings sometimes do not choose a mate for themselves, but assist a vixen sib with her litter. I don’t know if they uncle as well, but genetically, I have hewn to the X Chromosome side of my family. (You can go back and read “Maggie,” by eulogy for my mother, if you care to learn why, but long story short, it’s for my mental and emotional health.) Like a sib fox, I’m helping my niece and nephew survive the uncertain future that feckless adults have foisted upon them.

“Childfree” has become an identity on the internet, and that is yet another club that you won’t find me anywhere near. When you scratch a conspiracy theorist, you often find a Nazi, and when you scratch childfree, you sometimes find a social Darwinist who says “don’t have kids you can’t afford, because I don’t wanna pay taxes.” Frankly, those people can go shit in their hat. I want good schools, even in districts my niece and nephew are not in, and it’s none of my business what someone’s finances or family plans are.

I wore my shirt from the International Phallological Museum to my appointment, and the urologist got a kick out of it. You can read about my trip here:

The International Phallological Museum

One of the least admirable qualities of Americans is the desire to know our neighbor’s business. Perhaps it began with Christians who ignore the parable, “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” but it seems to have taken a fierce hold in the 20th century once businessmen and their bootlickers wanted to overturn the New Deal. Their first move was to have citizens call themselves “taxpayers.” Saying the word “taxpayer” invents a class of non-taxpayers—who exist solely in the imagination—because nearly everyone pays taxes, directly or by proxy.³ By inventing this word, they set us against one another, and made us stop Minding Our Business, and consider whether our neighbors were “wasting” federal dollars to which we’d contributed. This was necessary to distract from the billions that disappear into the war machine every year.

The shirt, post-snip. I like the glasses because they hide my shark eyes.

Personally? I do not care if you smoke, have eighteen children, and buy lobster and drive Cadillacs, like that old racist trope that Reagan used. The last time I visited Mississippi, an affluent white former friend pointed at an old man sitting on his porch, and told me that “they” made more than both of us, on welfare, for doing nothing except having a bunch of kids. He had no evidence, of course; he’d been told this bullshit since childhood. It was Lee Atwater who perfected turning the Klan’s message into something palatable for broadcast television; it sold well all over, not just Mississippi. It certainly was believed in my home state of New Jersey, which remains highly segregated to this day.

It’s a scam by the rich to keep us fighting each other while they pick our pockets. Same as with anything that President Trump does publicly, while Elon Musk loots the treasury and all our personal data.

Don’t fall for it.

For every mile you scroll on social media, make yourself contact your Senators and Representatives to let them know what you think, and ask what they are doing to protect you. (I’m pretty sure mine have me blocked by now.)

You may find this helpful:

FOR THOSE OF YOU LOOKING TO TURN YOUR ANGER INTO ACTION, here's some advice from a high-level staffer for a Senator. Re-posting:

There are two things that we should be doing all the time right now, and they're by far the most important things.

You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing.

1. The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time — if they have town halls, go to them. Go to their local offices. If you're in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs. Go to the "mobile offices" that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson's website). When you go, ask questions. A lot of them. And push for answers. The louder and more vocal and present you can be at those the better.

2. But those in-person events don't happen every day. So, the absolute most important thing that people should be doing every day is calling.

YOU SHOULD MAKE 6 CALLS A DAY: 2 each (DC office and your local office) to your 2 Senators & your 1 Representative.

The staffer was very clear that any sort of online contact basically gets immediately ignored, and letters pretty much get thrown in the trash (unless you have a particularly strong emotional story — but even then it's not worth the time it took you to craft that letter).

Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to. Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the 3 most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics. They're also sorted by zip code and area code. She said that Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1, and when it's a particular issue that single-issue-voters pay attention to (like gun control, or planned parenthood funding, etc...), it's often closer to 11-1, and that's recently pushed Republican congressmen on the fence to vote with the Republicans. In the last 8 years, Republicans have called, and Democrats haven't.

So, when you call:

1. When calling the DC office, ask for the Staff member in charge of whatever you're calling about ("Hi, I'd like to speak with the staffer in charge of Healthcare, please") — local offices won't always have specific ones, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don't, that's ok — ask for that person's name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone. Don't leave a message (unless the office doesn't pick up at all — then you can — but it's better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic). Give them your zip code. They won't always ask for it, but make sure you give it to them, so they can mark it down. Extra points if you live in a zip code that traditionally votes for them, since they'll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.

2. If you can make it personal, make it personal. "I voted for you in the last election and I'm worried/happy/whatever" or "I'm a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos," or "as a single mother" or "as a white, middle class woman," or whatever.

3. Pick 1-2 specific things per day to focus on. Don't rattle off everything you're concerned about — they're figuring out what 1-2 topics to mark you down for on their lists. So, focus on 1-2 per day. Ideally something that will be voted on/taken up in the next few days, but it doesn't really matter — even if there's not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It's important that they just keep getting calls.

4. Be clear on what you want — "I'm disappointed that the Senator..." or "I want to thank the Senator for their vote on... " or "I want the Senator to know that voting in _____ way is the wrong decision for our state because... " Don't leave any ambiguity. F) They may get to know your voice/get sick of you — it doesn't matter. The people answering the phones generally turn over every 6 weeks anyway, so even if they're really sick of you, they'll be gone in 6 weeks.

From experience since the election: If you hate being on the phone & feel awkward (which is a lot of people) don't worry about it — there are a bunch of scripts (Indivisible has some, there are lots of others floating around these day). After a few days of calling, it starts to feel a lot more natural.

Their tsunami of shit is meant to overwhelm you and cause panic and despair. Not all of it will stick. Hold your breath between waves. And like Dory said, just keep swimming.

1. Not a masturbation club. It’s a workout app.

2. You can still buy Plan B at Costco for around six bucks, and pay in cash so they can’t trace you. It expires, so don’t hoard it.

3. I’m not going to argue rhetoric. Go find someone on Twitter who cares.