The 35th Precinct

I claimed Table #2 for spn13, and here it is:

01	Risk.	02	Fear.	03	Agony.	04	Temptation.	05	Evil.
06	Desperation.	07	Broken.	08	Pain.	09	Tears.	10	Ruin.
11	Never.	12	Death.	13	Forbidden.

A fic responding to a prompt will be posted once every four weeks until all 13 are completed.

Slayer fans are being petulant assholes to the Louder Than Life organizers because Slayer opted not to stay to play Day 3 after Day 2 was canceled due to weather. They're clogging the IG feed with tantrums and sulking and demands for refunds. It's hilarious to watch so many self-proclaimed badasses devolve into shrieking toddlers because life happened. I can't tell if it's because they've never been disappointed before, or because this is one disappointment too many.

I get the frustration and anger. If Rammstein had canceled the MSG show after all the effort and money it took to get there, I would've had a nervous breakdown and been inconsolable all the way home and for days afterward, but screaming at the organizers and hurling childish insults at other bands and fans because Slayer had other commitments to its own tour and couldn't or wouldn't jeopardize them is embarrassing. You don't look like badasses, screaming your rage to the heavens; you look like pathetic children flinging poo at the big meanies because you didn't get what you wanted. Stew and sulk and bitch to your friends, but stop showing your asses in public. They weren't that attractive in your prime, and they are far less so now.

Watched Prince of Egypt today. The animation was beautiful, but the story was a hot mess that made Moses look like a crazy asshole. I know, I know, it's a sacred Biblical saga, blah, blah, blah, but the way they presented it made Moses look like a delusional jackoff. He spends his whole life as a cosseted Egyptian prince, and after one encounter with a crazy lady at a well, he accepts her ravings at face value and happily casts his lot with an enslaved people because she says he is a Hebrew? LOLnope. Nopity, nope, nope, nope. That's not how the human psyche works. Moses might, indeed, be ethnically Jewish, but he was raised and acculturated by Egyptians, and he's not going to give that up immediately just because some rando at a well says it's so. Even if he does believe her, such seismic attitudinal shifts don't happen overnight.

Frankly, to say that Moses, who has been raised as an Egyptian, suddenly feels an affinity for the Jews because he realizes he is Jewish smacks of genetic determinism, which is ten kinds of gross. If blood determines who you are, then there is no point in striving to improve or grow because in the end, everything you were meant to be is in your blood, and you will go no further than it allows. Adoptive familial bonds don't matter because you are, and forever will be, what your blood says you are, even if your genetically-determined culture had nothing to do with your upbringing and lived experience. It's all very skeevy.

And whether they intended it or not, they made Ramses highly sympathetic. Until he receives the dubious revelation from the crazy lady at the well, Moses and Ramses are best friends as well as brothers, but the second he's told he was adopted, everything changes. He pushes Ramses away and never tells him why. He just fucks off and leaves him in the dust to hang with "his people". You know, the people with whom he has no shared experience. But blood says he's Jewish, so surely he'll just naturally belong. Because that's how humans work.

And of course he does. Because both the Biblical farce and the plot need him to. Just as they need him to unquestionably need him to accept his divine mandate from a god to whom he has never been connected and in whom he has no previous belief. He just hears the voice from the burning bush and ups stakes to Egypt to order his brother to "Let his people go." Sure. Makes sense. A dude who's been a Jew for a week is going to deliver them from Egypt.

In fairness to this movie, the source material is whacked out. In the Biblical version, Moses settles down, marries, and fathers numerous children before getting his holy orders, and once he does, he leaves his wife and children behind and never sees them again. Swell, right? But Moses is the good guy because God says so, and fuck the collateral damage.

It doesn't get much better from there. Once Moses returns to Egypt, Ramses is overjoyed to see him, embraces him as his brother, and defies the priests when they remind him that Moses should be executed for his previous crimes. Ramses tells them to shove it and pardons him. You would think Moses would return the affection, maybe spend some time with a brother who clearly loves him, but nope. Moses just blows him off and starts issuing orders in the name of a god he's believed in for a bathroom break. This goes as well as you might expect.

All Ramses wanted was to be loved, but Moses spurns him again and again and then wonders why he's making no headway in convincing him to free the Israelites. Gee, Moses, I don't know, maybe if you hadn't come in rebuffing his joyful welcome and spewing orders, he might've listened. But who needs that when we can have displays of God's might? So things follow in their designated train.

The Biblical account of this showdown hardly drapes God in glory. In it, Ramses is on the verge of relenting to Moses' request several times, but God "hardens his heart against it." Why? Beats me, but it seems like God (this allegedly righteous God, mind) just wanted Pharaoh to hold out until the grand finale so that He could flex his almighty dick by slaughtering thousands while they slept for the crime of...being the firstborn. Whatever the true nature of God, the writers of the Bible make him a tool of the highest order.

The movie skips over all of this, of course, so Ramses just looks like a stubborn prick who gets his comeuppance in the end. Nor does it admit that after Moses obeyed all of God's commands for forty years, God (Mr. Lovingkindness, recall), forbids him from setting foot in the promised land after a single, small mistake. Guess that would end the movie on a bit of a downer, not to mention make people wonder why they'd want to serve a petty god like that in the first place.

( Dear Mr. Kruspe )

Guera

Who knew the vaunted system of checks and balances so revered by my history teachers in high school was such a flimsy and impotent tissue upon which to base a republic?

My new nukebox arrived right on time, and it's all sleek and shiny. We've yet to put it through its paces, however, because Roomie doesn't like our initial spot for it. It's too close to the sink, for one thing, and it takes away his prep space for another. So as soon as it strikes his fancy, we'll move it to the opposite side of the kitchen.

I bought myself a new microwave today. It should be here Tuesday. I say "should" because I very much doubt that it will even ship until then. I suspect the real arrival date will be Thursday or Friday. Here's hoping it's not obliterated in shipping.

I've always been reticent to shop for big-ticket items and electronic items online, lest they arrive mangled beyond repair and leave me bereft of my item and my money and saddled with the duty of returning the sad wreckage to sender, but as with so much else, COVID-19 has forced me to adapt or do without. I can't do without a microwave, so best to seize the bull by the horns and get it done.

I saw a few reviews sniping about the size of the microwave, but as long as it heats my soup, thaws my beef, nukes my ready-to-eat bacon, and pops my popcorn, I don't care.

15,300 cases in Florida in a single day. But sure, I should've come down there to ride out quarantine hell with the family, which would've meant being stuck in one place in the house for hours at a stretch and listening to Fox News. No, thank you. Quarantine here might be boring as hell, but at least I can choose my own misery instead of having it inflicted upon me.

I peeped my mother's Facebook in hopes that Trump's gross ineptitude and brazen indifference to the COVID-19 crisis had persuaded her that voting for him was a mistake, but no such luck. She's still ride or die for that "good Republican businessman" and his white classy family, and she's showing her racist ass all over with "Black Beans Matter" memes. It's disheartening when you confront the reality that the family who raised you are not just stupid, but terrible. I've never liked my mother very much, and I've always known she was prejudiced, but these past few years have exposed just hows deeply her racism runs. It's not just the reflexive parroting of the racist canards both my maternal grandparents embraced as inviolate truisms; it's active and malignant. She would clutch her pearls and hotly deny it, but I don't think she sees Black people as people, much less equals. Knowing your mother is a dumb asshole who will never forgive you for being disabled is one thing, but realizing she would likely volunteer to bring the green beans to a lynching shifts the foundations of your world.

Roomie has doddled off to pick up my hold from the library and grab some wings from my new favorite place. It's slated to rain later today, but right now, the sky is a brilliant, tranquil blue and the cicadas are in fine fettle, and I'm glad to be alive.

I ordered some cooling towels off Amazon. I'm not sure if they'll work, but I'll try anything to offset the smothering humidity and lack of an air conditioner.

Dragoncon officially pulled the plug today. I am sad for the fun that will not be, but utterly unsurprised, as this nightmare of plague and governmental incompetence shows no sign of slowing down. They're making game noises about a virtual con, but I have zero interest in paying to watch uninspired panels on my laptop, so I'll leave them to it and cancel my room reservation. My only regret is that that means no visit to the aquarium this year. I adore it, and I was so excited to see Shila, the baby beluga and the albino alligators.

And if I see one more dribbling Pollyanna offer me or any other disappointed soul the sad sop of, "Think how awesome next year is going to be!", I'm going to punch them in the throat. Stop lying to yourselves and to everybody else. COVID-19 isn't going to disappear in a puff of smoke and fairy dust at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2021. It can't be wished away by the power of positive thinking. Fun as we know it is over for a long time, and when it comes back, it won't be as we remember it. Accept this nasty nugget of turd crunch and let people be sad and angry about it.

The paper bill that arrived in the mail last week said XX.X5. The one I looked up online this morning said XX.X4. And you better believe I checked all the account details three times to be sure I wasn't pulling my second financial dumbass in a week and paying someone else's bill. Nope. All details were correct, but there was the one-cent discrepancy. So I paid the online amount, and I'll check back in a week or so to make sure it hasn't decided I now owe them a penny.

I'm going to foam at the mouth if I have to schlep down to their overbuilt pile outside of town just to give them a cent.

Roomie has doodled off to gather supplies for the weekend so we don't have to battle the hordes this weekend. Because fuck the pandemic, we've got America's birthday to celebrate! Americans are willful and deeply stupid people; the town is overrun with tourists, according to Roomie's dolorous call from the grocery store. It is stupid and dangerous, and there will be consequences this area is utterly unequipped to carry, but I'm not going to lay all the blame on the people. The country's leadership has been abysmal during this crisis, too busy trying to bury the stink of its own shit to provide consistent and meaningful guidance, and the CDC and the WHO have demolished their credibility here by lying about the utility of masks early on in a bid to conserve them for the frontline personnel. They lied and admitted it, and now the American public has tuned them out. They've decided to wring what joy they can out of this stifled, miserable existence that is pushing them deeper into rural isolation and poverty, and on a purely emotional level, I can't blame them. It's lonely and boring, and half the population in my neck of the woods has neither TV nor Internet to pass the time, and it's not going to get better any time soon. Best to make a little money and have a little fun before this indifferent government kills you.

Happy 4th.

Roomie has fetched his mask and gone to get the oil changed before we are inevitably forced back into total lockdown by a surge in COVID-19 cases. I am noodling aimlessly on the Internet until he returns, hopefully with a mess of wings.

My filled molar is very sore. It's not sensitive to hot or cold, and it doesn't hurt to chew even the hardest food, but there's a sense of it being too snug in the socket. I can't feel any swelling in the gum, but it just feels off. Maybe teeth with composite fillings are more sensitive to grinding? It's something to keep an eye on, I guess, but I feel like a total failure as a dental patient.