While you were off having triplets, Aunty Christ had an idea

I am thinking that I will call off the job search and instead ask that employers line up to spit in my face. The effect would be, roughly speaking, the same thing.

Cancer? That’s hilarious! But Aunty Christ’s sad.

Rape victims? That’s so last week. I’m totally over rape victims now.

You’ll be psyched to hear that Aunty Christ does not have cancer. At least not that anyone’s detected yet. Whoopie! Take that public health option and stick it in your ear, Dems. Until the next time I think I might be ill. At which point I will promptly ask you to retrieve it from your ear and wipe it off with a moist towel and hand it to me. Oh, American Public. When will you ever learn?

Yesterday I took a test, and now the unemployment office is clear on my abilities to add two fractions together, given the assistance of a calculator, and do simple algebra and at least guess at what the volume of a sphere might be. I was lauded for being a very bright un(der)employed person, and that is all.

It seems like I should be able to tie these two themes together and make a blog post out of them. Something about how I currently find myself in a position where I would like the government to give me stuff, but it keeps not quite happening—either at all, or in the way that I would like.

Or about how easy it is to relax into the idea that the government owes you stuff. Just six months ago I was pretty unhappy with the concept of not receiving my very own paycheck that I had earned with the sweat and hard labor of my own two red-blooded American hands! Now I’m okay with it, as long as I don’t have to make any sacrifices or anything. The moment my cable TV gets cut off, I will have a big problem, but as long as the govmint’s paying my bills, I’m kind of uncomfortably okay with it.

I’m turning Old in two weeks. Old! I never thought I’d reach this age! It is half wonderful. On the one hand, I am no longer obsessed with looking exactly like [whichever teen starlet who, everyone agrees, anyone who isn’t her is repulsive]. Which is nice. I remember in high school thinking that I had it made because all of these popular girls were going to go crazy at some point because they had lost their looks, whereas I was never particularly good-looking, and thus wouldn’t suddenly become not-good-looking upon turning elderly or 30 or whatever. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop me from always wanting to be hot.

Not like that wish is entirely gone now. But I’ve come to terms with who I am, a little bit. I’m at least more all right with it than I used to be, and that makes me a little bit less unhappy all the fucking time.

On the other hand, there is in age this diminishment in choices that’s strangely unexpected to me. Not that long ago, I felt pretty okay with the idea that I could always do that later—“that” being whatever it was that I wasn’t 100% sure that I wanted to do right now. Popular culture loves these stories. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was in her 70s! Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa didn’t finish writing The Leopard until he was 60! There was this lady, right? And she graduated from college when she was, like, 80 or something! So all sorts of possibilities are open to the old, leaving the young with the freedom to piss away any number of years shacked up in the mountains working in careers that they don’t particularly enjoy, talking to people they don’t really know about topics that they find uninteresting.

At one time, it struck me that I was too old to start a modeling career, become a ballerina or a gymnast, or date someone who wasn’t old enough to go to bars. And none of that bothered me because, fuck. I wasn’t going to do that anyway.

But now I come to the realization that I’m too old to go to law school, and that one kind of hurts. Mind you, I never wanted to go to law school when I was 25. It’s only now that the opportunity’s gone that I kind of miss it.

All this to one side, however, what I’m thinking about lately is that trying to find a new job while on the brink of turning Old kind of sucks. I commented this earlier on another blog, but I think it may require further discussion: Women are always too young to be taken seriously, until they are too old to be taken seriously. I don’t think I was ever discriminated against, per se, for being too young, but I also don’t think I was ever seen as anyone who was ever actually going to do anything important, wield any sort of power, hold even the tiniest mote of authority over any of my officemates. If I’ve ever achieved any sort of supervisory role in a job, it’s been an accident: No one else wanted it, or I was the only one who had any idea what was going on.

Now, of course, I worry that potential employers look at me and see, along with the few grays and crap skin and weird thighs, someone who doesn’t have a lot more to give, and who expects a lot in return. It’s like when 40-year-old dudes only want to date 20-year-olds: They want someone who can still make a baby, someday (not right now, though), and won’t ask too many questions when they’re treated kind of shabbily. And also, I’m not exactly the eye candy some muckety muck wants at his front desk.

All of the above, however, kind of sounds like an excuse to me. Even though I also think it’s true. It’s like that guy who complains that he can’t get a girlfriend because girls don’t like nice guys. His problem is that he’s too nice! Not that he’s kind of creepy and doesn’t know how to talk to women without being kind of insulting and staring at their boobs all the time! (I love this subject of conversation, but it’s apparently been nigh on exhausted by this point.) Anyway, yes. Saying I’m too old for anyone to want to hire me is maybe keeping me from addressing my real faults. Like how I’m too smart for anyone to want to hire me.

Kidding! Oh say, this all reminds me of my favorite comic square.

Always having someone to blame your misery on.

OMG. Babies!

Aunty Christ and the unhealed present

In case you were wondering, I am painfully aware that this blog has suddenly turned into the electronic equivalent of an Applebee’s appetizer: the quality is bad, but at least there’s a lot of it. I apologize for that. I’m sure that very soon I’ll be feeling less traumatized about my new volunteer position, and I can shut up about it and retreat into golden, blissful silence again.

Aunty is feeling better about her second call, though, given the space of a day. The thing is—and I’m sorry that I’ll have to be vague here—that my volunteer job is kind of like Dinner: Impossible meets Law and Order: SVU. I’m trying to make Christmas dinner here, and my producer chopped off my fucking hands, and all I’ve got’s a whisk, a bag of rubber bands, and a turnip. I know part of the problem is that I’m now not only part of a system, with all the problems that entails—I’m part of The System. And that’s not good. Ask anyone. The System sucks.

So, I go into the call expecting to make a turkey dinner for the entire family, and instead I only have time to microwave a hotdog. And the hotdog was made of cat poop. And also, I ate half of it.

Figuratively, I mean.

After each of my calls, I end up feeling awful, like I said in my last post, because I wanted to do a good job, and I’ve failed. Which is bad not only because I always want to do a good job, and I always feel awful when I fail, but because part of the reason I’m volunteering is as part of an admittedly futile effort to perfect my own rape experience.

I was a dumb 19-year-old when I was raped. The spring before, I had created a shame-based Ecstasy drama in my life, in which I dropped all my classes, ran away to the East Coast for the weekend, and checked myself into the mental ward of my school’s hospital. After that, I hid from all my old friends, and the guy who became my new best friend was someone I had recently met and who was a great deal older than I was. Over 21, in any case, and a full-fledged adult, with an apartment and a job. We talked endlessly on the phone over that summer, and I drove up to the city to see him when I could. I knew he liked me. He told me as much. But I didn’t feel the same way, and I told him as much, and it was cool.

One Friday not long after my second year of classes started, my friend invited me to his cousin’s hotel room for a party. It was a party to celebrate the last day of the CPA test, and the cousin had rented the hotel room in order to study for the CPA test. Lots of CPA-wannabes had rented rooms in this hotel, my friend explained, and they’d all be ready to party. When I got to the hotel room, my friend and his cousin were the only ones there. But it was early. We started drinking and quickly drained the bottle of vodka. Then we went to the hotel bar and bought another bottle to take back to the room. We switched from mixers to shots. “I’ll drink after you, Aunty,” my friend said, and at some point everything went blurry. Which was, coincidentally, around the same time that the porn channel was turned on. I tried to put myself down on the folding couch in the front room of the suite, but my friend started unfolding the couch, as his cousin held me upright. Which I mistook for kindness, until my friend started undressing me, as his cousin held me down, and I started crying. No, no, no.

So, there’s a good deal wrong with this story, if you’re looking for a sympathetic victim. I had drunk myself into a stupor. I had put myself, willingly, in a hotel room with two men—one of whom I didn’t even know very well. I didn’t leave immediately afterward. (I passed out until morning.) I didn’t fight back, beyond the crying and the saying no. (Too drunk.) I even called the guy one last time, afterwards, just to see if he would apologize.

That was naïve of me. He didn’t even acknowledge what had happened.

What I did have going for me was: (1) there were two of them, and (2) they were black*. Number one there was what made the crisis line employee decide that I had been raped adequately enough for her to listen to me. Number two caused me no end of racial guilt and complicated feelings about race and race relations. And it was, ultimately, what tipped the balance in favor of not filing a police report. Given all my failings as a victim, I decided (rightly or wrongly) that the only reason my assailants could be convicted was because of their race and mine. And then, once I started thinking about it, wouldn’t it be wrong of me to try to prosecute two successful black men? I mean, wouldn’t it? Kind of?

I don’t even really know what I was thinking, to be honest with you. Race shouldn’t have been a factor, should it? Of course, when I got angry, my anger was parceled out along racial lines as well. Again, it makes no sense now, and I’m sorry.

The day after, I took a cab to campus and showered. I called the crisis line and was told that what I had just experienced did not sound like rape. I called my former roommate, and she (I’ll always love her for this) walked with me to the emergency room. I saw the uniformed officer, a hard-looking woman stationed at the hospital just to deal with people like me. I left. I went back to the hospital a few weeks later, and asked to be tested for chlamydia and gonorrhea and get a prescription for Valium. When the Valium ran out, I smoked a lot of pot.

And … life went on like that. Life does that, I guess, when you keep not dying. But what I keep coming back to is that night, and the next day. I want to be the person I wished had been there for me.

But I’m not. I’m still me.

*Not that anyone will read this old post at this late date, but just for my own peace of mind, I should explain why I wrote (2) and why I wrote it the way I wrote it. What I was trying to say here was that I realized, or thought I realized, anyway, that some people would be inclined to look at the situation and see that here was a white girl accusing black men of rape, and immediately, without any other evidence, believe me. Now, whether that was actually the case, or whether I was relying merely on To Kill a Mockingbird and other popular literature to come to such conclusion, I do not know. I would like to believe that people (juries, in particular) wouldn't be any more inclined to believe a white victim than a black one, or to suspect that a black perp is guilty any more than a white perp tried with the same evidence. And maybe they wouldn't.

At the time, however, I thought that race could be an issue that would weigh in my favor, without merit, and that bothered me.

Aunty Christ has miles to go

Two calls, five patients. And I’m exhausted.

It’s funny—so far a pattern has emerged. I get the call. I am in action. I will go! I will help!

I drive to the hospital. I tear up. How can I help? What will be asked of me? What if I can’t handle it?

I think of me, at the hospital, waiting for my kit, and then seeing the lady-cop sitting in her chair by the rape table, and changing my mind and leaving. I think of me, calling the crisis line and being told dismissively that what I was describing was not rape.

At a certain point in my story, though, the evidence was gauged to have piled up to the correct height, and the crisis-line lady allowed that perhaps I had been raped. I didn’t know which reaction was worse, frankly: her disbelief, or her reluctant admission that I had finally met her standard of what rape is.

Once I’m at the hospital, all of that fades away. I am no longer important. I have a patient (or many patients) to help. That’s the important thing.

And then, driving home: Guilt that I didn’t do more. Anger that I didn’t do more. Confusion, because I wanted to do more, but—what happened? I am sad about the rapes I heard about. I am sad that the patients went home alone. I am even sad, sometimes, that I don’t 100% believe these patients. I am sad that these cases will not go to trial. I am sad that there isn’t a better process for these patients—one with someone who is here who actually knows what she’s doing, who doesn’t offend the doctor, or become shy (still!) when saying “pelvic exam.”

I’ve been reading blogs about rape lately. I think it helps. Helps what, I don’t know. Maybe it helps me think of things to say to my patients. That everyone gets through their experience differently, but they will get through it. That they are brave. That it may feel that no one understands or cares, but people do. Some people, anyway.

I have to write about this later, once I’ve had a few minutes to process. And sleep. I’m exhausted.

Aunty Christ went on her first call

It’s a true statement, that headline there. (They seldom are.) Aunty did indeed get a call last night, very late—possibly more descriptively termed very early this morning—from dispatch, telling me to get on up to the hospital where there was, waiting for me, one bona fide rape victim. I can’t tell you about the experience, sadly. Sadly! I mean, who doesn’t want to hear a story about a rape victim? To go in the entirely opposite direction, I do know who does want to hear a story about a rape victim, and that is: All you fucking assholes who find this blog by googling “Aunty rape fukking boys” and “aunty rape piss stories”.

To all of you who did find this blog in such a manner? Shame. Shame on you. Go eat a bag of dicks and die, you vile, disgusting meatsack.

(To the two or three of my readers who didn’t come here looking for aunty rape porn: Not you. I’m sorry you had to hear that.)

Now, you ask, what the fuck were you doing, Aunty? Ah, good question. I have signed myself up to be a volunteer advocate for the D.A.’s office. Whenever a person is raped, and goes to the hospital, and has made the very tough decision to press charges against his or her attacker, a volunteer—maybe me—is called to meet that person at the hospital, provide information about what’s going to happen, and so forth.

Anyway, I wish I could write something about the experience that wouldn’t be depressing as hell, but I can’t. And I wish I could write something about the experience that would help me process it, but I can’t. At least not here—for reasons of confidentiality. And, realistically, probably not at all. It’s just not possible. How does one process something like that? Something that shows people to be subhuman—forcefully taking from those who have the very least (the homeless, the mentally disabled, the poor, the very old, the very young), or shrugging their shoulders and refusing to offer help where they might. I feel like both these inclinations suggest very scary things about humanity, and yet they’re hardly new.

But mostly I just wanted to get that off my chest. The thing about eating that bag of dicks. Please do it, rape googlers. I mean it.

I hope you feel bad now about being a disgusting rape googler. You've made me, and this puppy, very sad.

Aunty Christ does a meme

On a Sunday morning, I usually like to warm up the old brain cells with a crossword. Today, however, I have been given the opportunity by Mssr. Georges Skookumchuck to talk about myself. And although Aunty Christ is usually both reticent and modest, she can be prodded into sharing under the right circumstances.

And the circumstances are right, right now. Picture, if you will, Aunty sitting down with her laptop next to a soft thug dog who is worn out from swimming and eating pork ribs. In the distance (hark!) there is the soft thrum of work and homework that needs to be done, and closer in, if you listen very carefully, a tiny voice saying, “Procrastinate for as long as you can, Aunty.”

Georges’ list of 25 Relevant Questions:

1. Greatest peak experience/s? (That is to say a positive or ecstatic experience/s that fundamentally influenced your life.)

I can’t think of one wonderful experience that totally eclipses everything else. Instead, there are several. Literally climbing peaks in Colorado. Ditching everything in Chicago and moving to Colorado. Ditching everything in Colorado and moving out to Saskatoon.

The act of ditching and moving really is quite ecstatic, if you’ve never tried it. It frees up your damn brain, for a moment or two at least.

2. Nadir experience/s? (That is, a negative experience/s that fundamentally influenced your life.)

In junior high, the group of three girls that I had been friends with previously turned on me viciously, and, I think, without reason, although it’s quite possible that the reason was that I was a big dork. I’d like to be able to say that the experience made me more flexible, more open to new friendships in unexpected places, or less dorky. Unfortunately, the outcome was that I realized that most people suck, and that the less they suck all over me, the better.

3. Had any paranormal experiences?

Never.

4. Biggest irrational fear?

That people think poorly of me. Which of course isn’t irrational in the sense that, “What? How could people ever think poorly of me!” but more in the sense that worrying about what people think of me has never made people think better of me. Except perhaps when it comes to not farting in public.

5. Biggest completely reasonable fear?

Death.

6. Biggest irrational aversion? (This is not the same as your biggest irrational fear.)

I have a hard time forcing myself to eat things that I’ve tried and don’t dislike, but also don’t like enough to overcome being afraid of them for most of my life. Things that fall into this category include eggplant, mushrooms, and avocado.

7. What are your core metaphysical belief/s? (N.B. By metaphysical belief I mean any principle that you think is true and live your life by but cannot be empirically or scientifically proven to others who don't believe it.)

That doing good will result in good things coming into my life. That dogs have feelings. That logic rules.

8. What do you think is the ultimate fate of humanity?

Have you seen Idiocracy? That, except without the happy ending.

9. What do you believe will happen to you after you die?

I hope my body is cremated.

I hope whatever is left does not: (a) live on for eternity, (b) get its own planet, (c) come down to Earth on Xmas Eve to help some poor sap better appreciate his life.

I kind of assume that whatever happens to us after death is a less literal interpretation of reincarnation or afterlife. Elements are recycled into new growth. Energy bounces around the universe. That kind of thing. It sounds pretty dippy to say it, though.

10. Which do you trust more, science or religion?

Science. Hands down.

11. Favorite book (fiction or non-fiction) written between 2500 BCE and 1 BCE?

I like Euripides’ Medea, but really, I like all those Greek plays about women going crazy with grief. Oh, women. Can’t live with them, can’t cheat on them without them running off and killing your kids, eh?

Also, I should mention that I like the idea of Medea, but have only read a really poor, probably very truncated version of it.

12. Favorite book (fiction or non-fiction) written between 1 BCE and 1000 AD?

Oh, Georges, you’re killing me.

Off the top of my head, I will say that I remember enjoying some of the apocryphal texts written about the boy Jesus, wherein he flies around and acts like a little scamp. But I think it had more to do with the shock value, and less to do with the actual writing.

Clearly, I need to read more old shit.

13. Favorite book (fiction or non-fiction) written between 1000 AD and 1800 AD? (There have been enough lists of favorite books that were composed mostly of things written between 1800 and the present so we'll skip that.)

Tristram Shandy sneaks in just before the cutoff, so I’ll say that. It’s one of the first modern novels, and the first, I think, post-modern novel. At the same time. It blows my freaking mind.

Plus, it’s about penises, and has a lot to say about obsessions, which is one of my own obsessions, oddly.

14. What is your philosophical grounding? (If this is the same as your metaphysical beliefs then give your core ethical principles.)

I think this is: Do no harm.

(Sounds pretty dippy to say it, though.)

15. What political opinion do you hold that is most inconsistent with your other political opinions?

My first reaction is that all of my opinions are consistent, since I find hypocrisy to be the worst personal failing a person can have.

I’m almost certainly wrong though. About my own beliefs being consistent, I mean. I’m probably just trying overly hard to justify them.

16. What makes a good person good?

Consistency. Sincerity. Kindness. Intelligence.

Intelligence seems kind of controversial, given the modern predilection to equate dumbness with baby-ness with pure-heartedness. I assume everyone reading this is smart, however, and won’t fall into that lazy-minded trap.

17. Aesthetically speaking which is more important, audience reception or creator satisfaction?

When I am the viewer, the former. When I am the creator, the latter.

Which is to say that everyone who participates in creation may gain something by the experience. But just because I enjoyed creating something hardly means that you, as the viewer, must or can learn something of equal value from it. This blog being a great example of something that gives me great pleasure but seems to have limited value to any audience.

18. Favorite painting/s? (If you can find pictures of them on line please post them on your pictures page. There is a website called artcyclopedia which has a huge amount of jpegs of great paintings.)

Well, there’s “The Sleeping Gypsy” by Henri Rousseau. There’s something about that lion, and the stiff, columnar form of the sleeping person. It’s dreamlike yet grounded.

Check the erect, turgid tail as the male lion attempts to wake the sleeping woman, who wants merely to lie with her woman-shaped lute!

As a kid, I loved this triptych of St. John the Baptist getting his head chopped off that used to hang in the Art Institute of Chicago. I think I liked the stream of blood that arced out of his neck-hole, and the round bone-and-nerve bundle in the center of said hole. I have no idea who created it, but I do know that it no longer lives in the Art Institute.

Less well-known artists I like include Brit ex-pats Robert Bissell and Ben Whitehouse.

Here's a lolling bunny with butterflies, from Bissell. He also paints a lot of bears and bees.

I lived down the hall from Ben in college, and let him jack off on my boobs once or twice. What we do for art, huh?

I do like his landscapes.

Here is one.

19. Favorite living hero/heroine?

There are people I like, and people I don’t like; people I’d be proud to know, and people I find repugnant. But to turn someone into a hero seems facile and thus wrong.

That said, I like Michelle Obama’s shoulders.

Michelle is my shoulder hero.

20. Favorite dead hero/heroine?

Keeping all of the above in mind, I will say Joe Orton. I’m working on a very important* project that uses his Edna Welthorpe letters as a guide and inspiration. And it’s an aim of mine to sex up many young Moroccan lads someday.

(*It’s not.)

21. Most important goal/s in life?

Growing old gracefully. Keeping all my teeth.

22. Details or big picture? (I know both are important. What I want to know is your overall leaning and if you consider that leaning a strength or a weakness.)

Details. I am a Virgo, after all.

It’s a strength, when marketing oneself in the paralegal field. It’s a weakness, when paired with my obsessive nature, and thrown into the mix of a relationship where details may not be as important as other things like affection, devotion, and trust.

23. Depressive or anxious?

Both.

24. Pick a super power, you only get one.

I’ve always thought that having the ability to give anyone in the world a debilitating charlie horse would be truly diabolical. No one would ever suspect.

25. What would your diet look like if there were no physical or nutritional consequences?

Bacon and beer, baby.

I’m basing my answer on the assumption that “no physical consequences” includes feeling generally okay as well as not weighing 650 pounds. If it doesn’t, I’ll throw a little broccoli into the mix too.

No one is tagged. All in Facebook-world or blogger-world are free to answer, however.

Aunty Christ is a Communist sympathizer

For the past four nights I’ve been dreaming about people I knew earlier in my life, who I haven’t seen in years. One night it was my best friend, who now lives in Japan—though even in the dream we were communicating only by phone, planning my (imagined) trip to Tokyo to see her. In another dream, I had run into my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend/wife, who I recognized because she was walking his dog, and found myself holed up in their hotel room, waiting for hours to speak to him, which I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do. When he arrived, he wouldn’t look me in the eye, instead kind of lumbering around the room with his back hunched, while his girlfriend/wife talked about how much they enjoy fishing.

What started this nightly journey into my past, I think—or in any case what happened four days ago—was that I was unkindly reminded that I never did really get a satisfactory ending to that whole nightmare with my lady parts last year. And now, I guess, it’s about time to start revisiting it, and start the whole unpleasant process with the letter about the abnormal cells, and the colposcopy appointment, etc. And, not that I want to get into it now, but just in case anyone from Planned Parenthood comes across this, I should point out that:

1. No one ever wants to come to your clinics, but
2. People have to because they need medical treatment and either
1. don’t know where else to go or
2. can’t afford to see a private practitioner, and
3. I think everyone can agree that the last thing anyone needs heaped upon them in addition to having to do this thing that is essentially
1. embarrassing
2. stressful and
3. painful
4. Is having their appointment canceled on them without anyone mentioning that the appointment has been canceled, or
5. Having a man tell us how “uncomfortable” a colposcopy is, or frankly
6. Having to deal with a nurse who doesn’t know how to use the colposcopy equipment,
   
7. All of which adds to the general unpleasantness of the trip to Planned Parenthood.

To sum up, Planned Parenthood sucks purple monkey ass. How much I appreciate it being available to a person is equaled only by how little I actually ever want to use its services again.

Anyway, the highlight of the trip down there (by which I mean “Planned Parenthood” and not the other “down there,” since the actual appointment was—unbeknownst to me—canceled [see Item D]) was being told by a large man in purple pajamas (see Item E) that I can probably look forward to another colposcopy this year, and another biopsy, and another magical trip through the wonderland that is my cervix. I had hoped to avoid all that by quitting smoking last year. Although, as I told the ladies at the colposcopy last year, I do not smoke through my vagina, as the colposcopy ladies told me, regardless of which orifice you use as your smoke-hole, the cervix likes to sop up toxins and then create a giant cancer on itself. Or whatever. I’m not currently licensed to practice medicine in this state, so I shouldn’t try to explain it.

So, I quit smoking, and now, until my next appointment (rescheduled for next month), I am going to eat nothing but fruit and vegetables* in an effort to turn this little cervix thing around. This is gonna be great, guys. I will have the best-looking cancerous cervix in three states after this.

Even more attractive than this! Think about it!

And I’d better be all right with that as the end goal because frankly, if I do have cancer, or if there’s any expensive medical treatment that needs to happen to prevent what I have from turning into cancer, I’m kind of shit out of luck, you know? With the being unemployed and all? And the no health insurance thingy?

Which is why I’m watching the health-care battle in the Senate with particular interest. And also why I’m pretty upset with how it appears to be turning out. Look, I know that a large segment of the population is firmly against socialism. This is why most people refuse to use the U.S. Postal System or drive on our government-funded system of highways. I know that most Republicans, if they were laid off, would choose not to collect unemployment. I know this. I’ve also heard things about how it’s your money (yours! yours! yours!) and you’re not going to let my lazy, Welfare-queening ass have any of it. That’s fine, really. I just kind of want to say that, from my perspective, it makes me a little sad to think that I’ll die** because some MBA-carrying diaperbag or other decided to save the company I work for a couple dollars, and current (and probably future) public policy neither prevents that kind of thing from happening nor provides a safety net for those affected.

And yes, I know that kind of thing happens all the time, and that makes me even sadder. Though the fact that it’s happening to me makes it especially poignant, I think.

*And bacon. And beer, goddammit.

**Not to be overly dramatic about it.