Posted on

Eat the Rich

I reposted an article about Elon Musk on FB the other day that rendered a friend (who worships Musk unto a God) apoplectic with rage. A scuffle ensued and I deleted the whole thing. BUT I think I want to write about it here because I have my own issues with Musk and the rest of the rich cunts who pay no taxes and generally tra-la-la their way through life without so much as a hint of trouble or disaster.

The FB post was referring to the lawsuit currently working against Tesla for racist policies, segregated facilities and harassment.

I asserted that Musk was a rich asshole from a rich family, who wouldn’t have shit without the advantages he had growing up. Of course, the friend denied all that and insists that Musk is a great guy and the Lord and Saviour of Humanity™. Sigh.

Musk’s family was very well off in S Africa and did, indeed, own part of an emerald mine. Here is part of a Forbes article from 2014 (cached on wayback, since it’s been scrubbed from the active internet) where Musk talks about the emerald mine. So that is TRUE. It is not clear how much money they actually had or how much was from the mine, but they were well off by all measures.

It is difficult to find articles of value about Musk, since his media team is good at their jobs and have erased any and all evidence of Musk’s privilege from the internet. There’s a lot of chatter on Quora, but that is far from trustworthy. Here is a quora discussion of whether Musk was born into wealth that is pretty coherent.

So, let’s just say OK, he was upper middle class. Fine. BUT he is still white and he grew up in Apartheid S Africa, which greatly enhances his privilege beyond just money. He also got very fucking lucky with the dot com boom, which is how he went from a broke student to millionaire.

I stand by my contempt of Musk and all the other .1% who hoard the world’s money. I don’t give a single damn if they had a typical college experience or not, or were raised rich or not, they are still hoarding money that could do a helluva lot more good than electric cars and sending rich fucks into space.

Bezos, Musk and the rest pay practically no taxes, while we struggle to keep the bills paid and pay 30% of our meager income to taxes. It is NOT RIGHT. Have a look at this ProPublica article that shows the taxes the rich cunts DON’T PAY. Musk has averaged 3.x% up until this year, where he’s paying full taxes – and is crowing about it. The only reason he’s paying now is because he’s been called out for NOT PAYING. And, again, his media team has made sure to keep the facts about his tax avoidance buried so he can present himself as a nice guy and an everyman. He is not, that is PR bullshit.



Musk and Bezos are rich fucks who honestly could not possibly care less about the rest of humanity. They care about MONEY. They don’t pay taxes because they own the politicians who ensure that they don’t and never will. After all, the politicians are ALSO RICH FUCKS who like money.



I have nothing but contempt for all these fuckers. It’s real fucking easy to live a life where there are small, if any consequences. Lose a million? Eh, no biggie. Bankrupt out your busted ass company? No biggie. No consequences when you’re rich. I’d like to see any of these cunts live on $40k. JUST TRY IT. They’ve never known the struggle and they never will. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. When rich people run things, that’s when all the things that make a first world country start getting cut in the name of capitalism. Why do we need daycare? Why do we need arts in schools? Why do we need unemployment benefits? Why should we take care of the old and infirm? All those things do is “waste” money!! WE LIKE MONEY. All that stuff is CLEARLY socialism! We don’t want THAT. Paying taxes??? NOOOOO! We don’t want THAT. You peons pay the taxes, not US.

When the government feels that the peons need to pay taxes on unemployment and other government assistance, you know things have gone awry.

Our tax bill was almost $6k last year. We are still paying it off. We make about $45-50k for two of us. And we had to PAY an additional $6k because I got unemployment. THAT IS FUCKED UP.

And that is why we need to depose our rich masters and divvy up the spoils. Just a fraction of their hoarded wealth could end hunger for the whole goddam Earth!! MAKE THEM PAY THEIR SHARE. Or set up the guillotines. Whichever. I wouldn’t shed a tear for any of the super rich. They certainly shed no tears for US as we struggle along, nearing “retirement” age, knowing that we’ll never retire, nor will we ever get to travel and see the world like we’d planned. Nope, the closest we get to seeing the world is the Apple TV screen saver – and that, my bitches, is the true cost of these assholes hoarding money. We will NEVER get the life we wanted. None of us will. The American dream is a LIE and working more won’t help shit. The system is rigged and we will stay in the caste in which we ended up. People like Musk or even Zuckerberg, who got really lucky in the dot com era are just that: LUCKY. You can’t plan your life on LUCK. We are middle aged with shitty income. We’ve had only bad luck when it came to trying to have our own business(es). No one backed us up and we had no golden parachute to ease the pain of losing most of our money. Nope, we had to start over with shitty jobs and less than half the income we had. I promise you, none of the super rich have ever had that experience.

Since these people have never struggled, they simply can’t understand why they need to step up. No, it’s the rest of us that need to work harder, right? This attitude is pervasive in America.

The French Revolution was born of the people being sick of royalty hoarding all the money while they starved. Cobblestones flew, heads rolled. AND IT WORKED. I think America needs to figure out how to achieve getting rid of the rich in government and making them pay their share in general.

I just don’t think we have the stomach for it. Americans are being goaded into the Republican “we hate everyone who is not an ignorant hillbilly” camp, the Progressive “rich people will save us” camp or the Democrat “OMG I can’t deal with this shit” camp. The country is fracturing as we speak.

I don’t know what to expect, but I’m pretty sure it ain’t good. So we just keep swimming. We endure. And that is no way to live. :(

Posted on

FB Fallout

It is a huge disappointment – but not a shock – that my site stats have dropped since my logging out of FB for the duration of the jailing.

This makes me hate FB even more.

I am going to double my efforts to drive traffic HERE rather than the other sites. I am going to manually crosspost my blog to Substack, to see what happens with that.

I’m also going to manually crosspost to Twitter. I’ve actually been enjoying Twitter during my ban from FB. I’ve curated a nice mix of things and my timeline is interesting.

I am trying to find more to write about, but it’s difficult with my level of apathy and depression. But I will try.

Do me a favour and tell me how you got here to read this. Comments are open for a month. TIA

Posted on

FB Harassment

It is real. FB has jailed me again for saying “Remind me to punch you in the arm next time I see you” in response to a friend’s horrible dad joke. Oh, yes, I’m “inciting violence”. Yup, definitely. But those right wing nutjobs who want to overthrow the country? Eh, that’s just a little joking FUN!! Cuz the FB AI is all about overthrowing democracy, burning books, medical misinformation and other right wing bullshit. THAT is just FINE. Stonekettle has been banned yet again for posting a photo with the label “macro lens of water drop”. YUP. Facebook is TRASH.

Facebook’s AI has run amok. That is why people are fleeing right and left and that’s why their stock fell 23%. Because letting AI run your goddam platform is stupid. I sincerely hope that we are nearing the end of Facebook’s reign of terror over the internet. Those of us who remember The Before Times™, when blogs ruled, WE are taking our content back to our blogs and posting elsewhere.

I also found out that my backup account has been linked, without my knowledge or permission, to my main account, so the sanctions affect that acct, too. Which means it serves no purpose at all. The whole point was to have a backup for all the pages I manage in case FB did exactly this and jailed me or outright banned my account. I am going to have to give admin privileges to Nick for all my pages as backup, which is not optimal, but at least it’s something. So far, FB hasn’t lumped our accounts together despite a shared IP.

I’d just not go back to FB at all if it weren’t for the pages and the constant stream of moronic questions that comes through one client’s page. Daily drivel from Teh Stoopid™ that must be managed. I’ve set up autoresponses, but OF COURSE they only work part of the time.

Instagram is still working, but who knows how long that will last. It is inevitable that the AI will be put in charge of IG, since FB, ‘scuse, META, clearly cannot afford real people. Poor Zuck, how can he possibly be held accountable for his bullshit platform? He’s too busy counting his billions and not paying taxes.

And speaking of Meta, who does Zuck think he’s kidding? He has clearly stolen the idea of a fully immersive internet experience from Ernest Cline, who created the Oasis in Ready Player One. Zuckerberg should pay Cline for the idea. It is not original.

The harassment of users will be the downfall of Facebook. Or, it will become a right wing conspiracy nutter farm, which is fine with me, I am only going to use it for page management henceforth.

Now, I need to get friends to use Signal or Apple Messages rather than FB messenger to chat with me. I really do NOT want to use any Meta products if I can avoid them. SO, for those of you reading this, please know I’ll be transitioning to Signal for chats, or you can text me. Apple Messages is encrypted and I can use it on my desktop, so PLEASE use that if you have an iPhone. Of course, since this will not post to FB, no one will see it. LOL

PEOPLE, we need to stop relying on FB. Period. ANYTHING is better at this point. But I know I’m talking to myself here, because I can’t even convince people to not play the hacker driven personal info gathering games on FB. Sigh.

I am stepping back from FB. I’ve logged out, and I’ll remain logged out for a week, then when I can use the account(s) again, I am taking care of the pages and that’s it. I’ve been only doing memes and bullshit on there for a couple of months, so this is more of that.

Posted on

2022 Reading List

Welcome to the 2022 Reading List! I read 35 books last year! I hope to beat that this year. :)  I am also happy to add that my voracious reading has inspired Nick to read more, as well! This pleases me! I’ve not beaten 35, but I’m at 31 on Dec 20, and I’m happy with that! 

Random additions: 

Fairy Tale, Stephen King.  This is an excellent story! I mean, of course, it’s King, but really, it is quite good. It’s a new realm with little to tie it to the bigger King Universe. I hope he will revisit this world again in the future! This story is about a kid who gets involved with an old dying man who has been keeping a secret world SECRET for his whole life. Good stuff! 

Nickel and Dimed, On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich. This author is an investigative reporter with a long list of books about various subjects (that I need to read!). This book is about her experience doing bottom rung, minimum wage jobs in various cities in America and the undeniable truth that these jobs are not only mind numbingly horrible, but you cannot live on just ONE of them. A very good read and as we know from personal experience, VERY TRUE. Every rich American should read this. 

Goodwill Hurl! June 2022

Cruising Attitude, Heather Poole. Picked this up for light reading – and it certainly was! LOL This is a collection of anecdotal essays about being a flight attendant. This girl is pretty dumb and overall, she doesn’t really raise the perception of flight attendants. My fave sentence went something like this: …and the motel I was in was in view of a big white building in DC. The White House? I don’t know. Wow. So, yeah, a lightweight trying-too-hard to be a tell-all, this book is strictly a palate cleanser between better reads.

The Light Between Oceans, M.L. Stedman. This was an excellent read! Set in SW Australia, it is a lovely story set at a lighthouse far from anything. Stedman’s descriptions of the SW Australia coast is exemplary. I did get pulled out of the story occasionally by the comments of a “blistering January” or a “chilly June”. It is really odd to think of the seasons as opposites! But the characters are pretty well written and the story, while sometimes slow, is compelling. I have the movie version of this book that I’ll watch once I’ve digested the book. I like to have space between reading a story and seeing it redone in visual form. If you run across this book, it is worth the read.

The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls. I just read Half Broke Horses, and it was EXCELLENT. This is Walls’s memoir of growing up with two mentally ill parents. It’s not as chilling as The Sound of Gravel (see below), but still pretty damned harsh. Her mother was bipolar and a hoarder and her father was an alcoholic (and probably bipolar, too). They drug their children all over the place in their car and regularly did not feed them. The parents ended up homeless in NYC – and liked it that way. There was a movie done in 2017 with the same name that starred Naomi Watts, Woody Harrelson and Brie Larson as Jeannette. It was pretty good, but of course, the book is better. The movie portrayed her parents – particularly her father – very sympathetically, which I don’t think they really deserved. The book is well written with a strong voice.

Fifth Chinese Daughter, Wong. This book was actually written in 1945!! I have a 2002 edition, with an updated intro from 1989. The author died in 2006 and was known for her ceramics work. The story is written in third person, which is a Chinese tradition, but makes it read a little dry. But still an interesting look into turn of the century Chinese immigrants.

A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean. Yep, the movie was made from this. This is a short story collection with the title story being the first. Maclean has a very distinctive voice and a lovely, lyrical way of writing.

Half Price Books hurl!

ALL these are from the memoirs section. I’m on a memoir tear!
Ruined By Reading, Lynn S Schwartz. This is a short tome, which is to its benefit. It is a memoir of a life of reading and musing on various authors. The book was published in 1996, pre-internet as we know it. Which is why this quote is prescient:

“If those of us who live by language become superfluous in years to come, it will not be because of the advance of technology, but the loss of coherent discourse.” – p.24, Ruined by Reading.

OH, YES. She is right on the money. She is of the Silent Generation (b. 1939), so many references are a bit dated, but she certainly has a handle on being well read and dealing with morons who are not. Good read!

MORE BEHIND CUT!
Continue reading “2022 Reading List”

Posted on

Welcome to 2020 Too

Ugh. This year has started out ROUGH, my bitches. I am not pleased. I am foul.

We’ve got some fun things booked for this coming year – assuming the fucking plague eases off.

I’m of the opinion that EVERYONE will get the Omicron variant of C-19. It’s hella transmissible. The good news is that it is much milder than the original version(s). At this point, if you’re vaxxed, I think you’ll be OK, even if you get it. I think that this is the one that will actually give “herd immunity” for what that is worth. Or not. WHATEVER.

I’m tired of thinking about it. I’m tired of dealing with it. I’m just fucking TIRED.

I’ll be starting up the 2022 Reading List shortly. That is one thing that this fucking plague will NOT take from me: READING.

As for 2020 Too, it can SUCK A COCK. Here’s what’s gone wrong in less than a fucking week:
– insomnia is back (hopefully the Delta 8 gummies will help)
– GERD has kicked it up a notch
– Dept of Labor is trying to rescind my unemployment for catering
– a game rental client turned out to be a HUGE DICK; had to cut him loose (not bad overall, just stressful)
– FB has decided to fuck with me and DEMAND that I verify myself, but it will not send me a code. If I don’t comply within 2 wks, it will block me from my administrator duties on pages I manage. AWESOME. It also deleted my admin privileges from the secondary account. Of course, there is ZERO support offered. FUCKERS. I HATE FB. [Good news on this front: a friend told me to set up a Google Voice # and use that for FB, so I did and now the account is fine. But having to go through all that is some bullshit. -A]

And we’ve not even hit day 7. FML

Hope it’s going better for the rest of you. >:(