Monthly Archives: March 2025

Uber Tales – Another Underwhelming Anniversary, Edition

Leave a reply

Today is the eighth anniversary of my official sign-on date with Uber. And as the title of today’s Uber Tale says, so far it’s been a rather underwhelming anniversary. No congratulatory email even like they did on previous anniversaries (all before 2020, by the way), and no extra goodies or anything like that. I’m not complaining here but since it seems I’m not getting a congratulatory email or a chintzy trinket, I’ll give myself one here.

First, some stats and stuff:

Total number of rides (as of this morning): 24,093

Total number of deliveries: 701 (I haven’t done a delivery in at least two years but did most of those in 2020)

Badge of Honor: 10,000 Five-Star Trips

As of my third anniversary I had people from thirty-nine different countries in my vehicle(s) though I have a feeling that number may be higher in the five years since that stat.

Passenger from the farthest distance from San Antoino: I don’t have exact numbers on this but I think my passenger from New Zealand might hold that record (he was in town for a concert and was able to stay with his friend here in San Antonio so all he had to do was come up with airfare and the concert ticket)

Longest Trip: From here in San Antonio to just a few miles south of Waco, about a hundred and fifty miles one way, three hours of drive-time one way (was able to shave half an hour off the drive-time courtesy of Wurzbach Parkway in San Antonio and the toll road around Austin).

I was thinking back to eight years ago and I don’t really remember my first ride in any detail. I think it was a short hop, as I call short rides and I was grateful I could figure out the app (there were no instructions or videos available back then so yes, you just downloaded the app and prayed for the best). But I’d been doing delivery for almost a year at that point in time so I knew how to drive and navigate though in the early days, the app was super-glitchy.

Then a couple of months after I started, the city of Austin kicked Uber out and all their drivers came to San Antoino and yes, that depressed demand and I seriously questioned my choice of paying gig. But nothing else came to me and eventually the city of Austin and Uber kissed and made up.

Then came 2020, driving around an empty and deserted city. I felt like I was in a post-apocalyptic zombie movie minus the zombies and nuclear fallout. But the memories and feelings of loneliness and fear while driving on empty streets and highways will always stay with me and I hope and pray that I never see that again.

2020 also gave me my scariest moment behind the wheel when I was downtown boxed in on all sides by vehicle traffic on a very narrow street, with a huge group of San Antonio police officers in full riot gear, a group of right-wing assholes openly-carrying guns that did not accurately represent the size of their dicks being escorted around by the cops, and groups of peaceful protestors, not to mention the broken and boarded-up windows on Houston street. The reason I was scared was the guns I saw in plain sight and the huge potential for violence and nowhere to go to get out of the line of fire. (And if you think that wasn’t scary, or if you’ve never been in a situation like that and think I shouldn’t have been so scared, go fuck yourself.)

In the years since 2020, I’ve seen this city slowly come up off the deck, with a lot of growth laying bare the decades of poverty and wealth inequality. I’ve seen the effects of climate change, and the drive to try and save the city from that with all the solar panels and other green projects. I’ve seen houses spring up where there were just fields not too long ago, and old neighborhoods where the only thing that changed was the make and model of the cars in the driveway.

This gig has been a lifeline at times, something to hold on to as I fought to tread water and not go under completely. In time, the road began to call me with a siren song I have fully embraced as my own. Because once I get behind the wheel, I go into driver-mode as I call it, and years of experience and memory kick in and my mind begins to go calm and focus. And yes, it’s where I’ve done some of my best thinking and learned a lot of things about myself.

And yes, there will be a book of my experiences, stories, conversations, and thoughts from eight years on the road. It’s my story and the story of a growing, vibrant, slightly-shabby, major American city, and a country with a history and a story without an ending. It’s a story where anything is possible, where things defy any explanation of logic, where sometimes all you can do is laugh, and where if people were any smarter we’d be in real trouble, as my late father would say.

In the end, I’m grateful for the opportunity I’ve been given to do this job. I’m grateful for the miles, the sights, the thoughts, the conversations, and most of all, the hope and kindness I’ve always found and been able to hold on to with from all the good people I’ve had in the car with me.

To quote the great Joe Ely, “The road goes on forever, and the party never ends.”

Conversations From the Road – What Will It Take to Break the Conservative Cult?

Leave a reply
Berlin Wall

Yesterday, the editor-in-chief of ‘The Atlantic’ magazine posted a Signal (an open-source, commercially-available messaging app) chat that he’d been added to in which the Secretary of Defense, the Vice President, and other key members of the Regime were discussing plans to bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Yes, a group chat on an open-source app was being used to conduct what should have been highly-classified and highly-secured operations.

Has anyone from this chat offered their resignations?

No.

Has anyone from this chat along with other leaders in the Regime admitted this was a huge fuck-up concerning national security?

No.

Has any MAGA ‘influencer’ broken free from the Regime to criticize this?

No.

Has any right-wing media outlet spoken out against this, such as Fox News?

No.

Now, you should see a pattern here. If this had happened in the past, the people in that chat would probably be sitting in a jail on charges of violating national security and potentially committing espionage against the United States. But alas, we live in the Upside-Down and this shit doesn’t get anybody fired (though rumors are someone might have to take the fall for this), and no one admits to any wrongdoing. Also, they’re just lying, denying, and deflecting like they always do.

In addition to this, Social Security is experiencing problems with service and there are fears that this could affect payments to beneficiaries. Also, there are even more layoffs happening, people are still being detained and deported without any due process of law, and the beat goes on, as my daddy would say.

But why does the Conservative MAGA-Republican cult put up with this?

First, they have been well-trained in denial, gaslighting, and trying to spin chicken-shit into chicken-salad. They will believe what the Regime says first even as it’s disproven in real-time. They will not believe any other sources as they’ve been so well-trained to distrust anything other than what their Regime tells them to believe.

Second, they would have to begin to think about what they’ve voted for, what they’ve said, and what they believe. This would cause tremendous pain for them as it could lead to an avalanche of shame, guilt, and remorse. And they’ve been well-trained to avoid that even if it means turning themselves inside-out-mean as my daddy used to say.

Third, if they began to think and maybe even begin to change how they think and feel, they would be terrified to do so as they know people around them would turn on them. They would be subject to hate, terror, alienation, and rejection. And, they wouldn’t be too welcomed by the people they hurt. So they would have to deal with all their newfound shame and guilt and shit pretty much on their own. And again, they’ve been trained to avoid this by any means necessary.

Fourth, I think they know now that if they respond by freaking the fuck out, by throwing up their hands and doing some ‘woe is me’ bullshit, like carrying on loudly saying they’re a terrible person and trying to blame the person they hurt for that instead, that the people they hurt are just going to say one thing now, “Pathetic.” And then they know people are going to walk away from them and not listen to that ‘woe is me’ bullshit-act.

Finally, they’ll have to realize they need to learn how to regulate their emotions and not lose their fucking shit every damn time something doesn’t go the way they want it to. And most of all, they’ll have to realize that they can’t live their lives wanting to hurt people because sooner or later, Karma collects on that shit.

So right now as I write this, in reply to my question as to what will cause a mass exodus from the conservative Republican MAGA-cult?

Nothing.

Because if I do see it in the future, I’m going to treat it like the Berlin Wall: something I always thought would be standing long after I was gone from this world… but eventually did come down. But not without one hell of a lot more damage and pain and suffering.

FUCK MAGA

The Slightly-Dubious Honor of Being on ‘The List’

Leave a reply

In 2002, the United States Congress passed the Patriot Act, which gave the US government broad powers to perform surveillance on all American citizens in the same of national security including surveillance of people’s internet activity and what books they checked out of their local libraries (Librarians really rose up and fought that provision in the law). This law was passed in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Now, in the years since, it’s been challenged and some parts of it were de-fanged but the apparatus was set up and it’s been running ever since. Back then though, the Republican Party hadn’t climbed into bed with Vladimir Putin and his war machine because ‘ol Vladdie was just coming into power and he hadn’t built the Russian war machine yet.

Now because of this power to surveil all American citizens by any means, especially electronic ones including the good old internet, my friends and I used to say because we would research history and such colorful topics as weaponry and whatnot (a lot of us were writing romantic suspense at the time, which involves learning a lot about weapons and how to take down bad guys), that we were on a government shit-list somewhere.

Back then, it was something said in an attempt at humor but in reality, it was true. But since the vast majority of American citizens were small potatoes online and without any links to the Taliban and Al-Queda and other assorted terrorist groups, the list was mostly just a boring old internet file.

In 2002 the shit-list was used mainly to find people in direct opposition to the Bush Administration’s attempt to sell the ‘shit sandwich’ of going to war in Iraq. I call it a ‘shit sandwich’ because they were trying to sell the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and would give them to any terrorist who came knocking on their door. Back then, the Bush administration just wanted ‘permission’ to go kick Sadaam Husein’s ass to show the world how big and bad we were. Eventually, they rolled into Iraq, killed Sadaam, and left behind a huge mess and over two-hundred thousand Iraqis dead, and hundreds of thousands more displaced and a very unstable government currently running the show there.

And back then, the conservative media apparatus was just comprised of Fox News and right-wing talk radio shit-heads like the late Rush Limbaugh. But they had enough of a cult behind them to go after three ladies from Texas who at the time were on top of the all-American musical form called country music. The Chicks, as they’re now called, were in direct opposition to the Bush administration’s shit-sandwich and said so. Well, they were de-throned from atop the country music charts and made out to be three witches from the bowels of Hell for calling out Bush and company’s bullshit.

Now flash forward twenty-three years and the technology is more pervasive, and being used by major assholes with rapidly-dwindling financial resources (Russia is damn near flat-broke on its’ ass, which is why they’re just throwing shit at the Ukrainians but making NO gains on any territory). And with the Tesla Takedown gaining momentum every day, that house of cards will eventually fold. But in the meantime, the Regime, as I now call the current administration, is doing shock-and-awe because in reality, they’re scared shitless. Because like baddies throughout history, they never, ever think that people aren’t going to stand up to them. They just think people will fall into line with their bullshit like Germany in the 1930’s. Good readers here, this ain’t 1930’s Germany despite the efforts of the Russian disinformation machine and the red-hat MAGA cult to turn the United States of America into Nazi Germany 2.0.

I’m not minimizing the risks right now to all of us. But people risked their lives before, especially the Resistance against the Nazis in the 1930’s and 1940’s. And they were not only on shit-lists, but actively hunted down and tortured before execution. And despite the attack on teaching history by the right-wing assholes in this country, enough people know what to do. And most of all, people have just had enough of the MAGA Republican cult’s bullshit and are actively speaking out against it like I am here.

So yes, I’m definitely on a shit-list somewhere in the bowels of the Regime.

But the honor is all mine.

Conversations From the Road – Bettering Yourself

Leave a reply

To ‘better yourself’ means to do things to make yourself, and your life better than it is now, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Sounds good, right? Sounds like something we should all be doing, right? Yet how many people think this thought, take a few steps to move forward in life, then stop moving and shrink back in ourselves because someone mouths off at us with some bullshit?

I’m raising my hand in reply to that last question because that’s been me all my life wanting to do better, yet shrinking back whenever someone mouthed off at me. Why?

First, because I attracted attention I didn’t want to deal with, or thought I couldn’t push back on. Because if I tried to push back on that, that person in turn would say, “Oh, I’m only kidding. I didn’t mean anything bad by it.”

So, how do you know when someone is truly just joking around with you or trying to cut you down with a pathetic attempt at humor?

Well, if it feels like a real put-down, if it’s something that is said every freaking time you try to do something better for yourself, and in return if that person always says they’re just kidding or really didn’t mean it, then they did mean to hurt you but in all likelihood, they can’t put their own dumb-ass insecurities into words.

Guess what? You sure as hell don’t need someone’s ‘approval’, or ‘blessing’ if you’re just trying to do better in life. Because people that truly care about you won’t put you down every time you try to do something to better yourself. Instead, they’ll encourage you and support you. And yes, the assholes in your life will try to keep you away from that support and encouragement. Why? Because in some fucked up way, they feel like if you do something better, you’ll leave them behind in their mediocrity.

Boo-frickety-Hoo. They can wallow in their mediocrity and lack of ambition and ignorance all they damn well want to. All you have to do is say, ‘fuck off’ then walk away and keep bettering yourself.

But this isn’t easy to do and it takes a lot of practice to get to the point where your anxiety doesn’t kick in. But it can be done by doing the following:

Make your plan of action, write your lists, set your alarms, whatever it takes. Don’t tell anyone and if someone does find out and says some bullshit to you, again, tell them to ‘fuck off’, followed by ‘have a nice day’ (because sarcasm always works well in situations like this), then walk away. Don’t listen to their spluttering bullshit because that’s what ground you to a halt in the first place.

Take it one step at a time, one thing at a time, one day at a time. Life isn’t a race to the finish on some arbitrary deadline. There are no deadlines in life, just on paper but deadlines can go whooshing past you and trust me, you’ll be fine. Or as my favorite internet psychologist says, “It’s never too late.”

As a neurodivergent person, I ‘stim’ like my fellow neurodivergent people do. Stimming, as it’s called, is a type of repetitive action a neurodivergent person uses to calm their minds down and try to get their anxiety under control. Some of my ‘stimming’ is running numbers on a calculator, surfing social media, and checking things over and over. But in reality, most of these ‘stimming’ activities don’t accomplish much other than telling you the same thing over and over. I find that brief moment of calm from that familiarity not to be effective. Instead, I’m working on trying something else: deep breathing. If you can, just sit, close your eyes, and breathe deeply until you feel your mind calming down and your body’s tension loosening up along with your heartrate going down. Deep breathing exercises really work and if anyone says otherwise or it’s just woo-woo shit, they can fuck all the way off (yes, I’ve been told that shit in the past by morons)

For me, I’m also trying to take that ‘stimming’ energy and bang on the keyboard like I’m doing here. It’s a good physical activity that gets a lot of shit out of my head and if that works for you, or writing by hand works for you, then great. Again, keep it to yourself until you’re ready to say, ‘fuck off’.

Finally, don’t ask why people are insecure morons who act like they don’t want anyone to ‘better themselves’. Unless you’re someone’s licensed therapist, you don’t need to know or care. Take care of yourself first, and don’t listen to anyone’s bullshit about that being selfish, or self-centered because yet again, I’ve heard that shit before but I will not sit and listen to it anymore.

Better yourself, take care of yourself because in the long run, that’s all that any of us can really do. But it’s worth it in more ways than you can ever imagine.

Conversations From the Road – Differences In Morality

Leave a reply

In the last few years, people have said it’s not a difference in opinions anymore, but a difference in morality. For the longest time, I have struggled to define this in words but now I have the words to define what a difference in morality means:

It’s how you want to treat people and be treated in return.

First, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m a strong believer in the principles of non-violence, non-violent protest, and non-violent resistance as taught by Jesus Christ, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Nhan Hanh, and the Dalai Lama to name a few.

Second, hurting people will NOT change them for the better. Because as I like to say it, my job in life is not to pull someone’s head out of their ass, nor is it anyone else’s. You can’t change people no matter how much you want to or how hard you try. People have to make the changes and decide how to live, and deal with the consequences.

Third, just because I don’t want to hurt people or change them, doesn’t mean I want to be hurt in return, or be forced to change by anyone. Non-violence means standing up for yourself as a human being and to be treated with respect for your fundamental human right to exist as your true authentic self. In plain English, no one has the right to treat you like shit because you give a damn about the world and the people in it, but aren’t perfect every single moment of every single day.

To me, the main differences between conservative and liberal ideology, or morality in this case here, are these:

Conservative morality is the following: cruelty, conformity, hypocrisy, and ignorance.

Cruelty is justified as inflicting pain and suffering on people for any reason deemed necessary, mainly due to a lack of conformity. Conformity is a very rigid standard that means any deviation from that, no matter how small, is met with cruelty. The hypocrisy is decrying cruelty and hatred while practicing it, and worse, trying to justify it and rationalize it. And ignorance is knowingly and willingly refusing to learn anything that deviates from a very narrow point of view about people and the world we live in.

Liberal morality is the following: empathy, compassion, conscience, kindness.

Empathy is the core of liberal morality because it means you try your best every day not to hurt anyone in any way possible. Compassion is wanting to alleviate pain and suffering and make the world a better place for all people. Conscience is thinking before speaking and acting as much as possible and learning how to manage emotions in order to learn how to listen and act with kindness. Kindness is accepting people as they are and not making them change in any way, and working to help others.

Conservative morality has been the bedrock of human horror since the beginning of time and in the twentieth century drove the engines of fascism, Nazism, Communism, and now illiberalism. The first thing the leaders of all these movements past and present did was attack the principles of empathy and compassion and call them ‘weak’. The absence of empathy and compassion is at the heart of evil and why evil can be done by people. It catches on like a plague because a person doesn’t have to think about what they say or do when they don’t have compassion or empathy for anyone at all.

Liberal morality not only acknowledges suffering, but it says that suffering is not acceptable and that people have a moral duty to try and alleviate it whenever they can. This in turn means people care about others, even if those people are suffering. Pain is not only acknowledged, but comforted in any way possible. Most of all, there is no expectation of reciprocation in return for help and comfort. In fact, I would say liberal morality wants people to help others in need after they have been helped and comforted themselves.

To me, conservative morality is throwing your hands up in frustration when you encounter difficulties in solving problems. It’s when you have to ask for acknowledgment or recognition in return for helping people. Or better put, conservative morality always asks, ‘What’s in it for me?”

Liberal morality in turn approaches problems with the thought of “failure is not an option.’ It’s a determination to see things through to the end, to never give up hope and never leave anyone behind. It’s believing in basic human kindness, and not asking for anything in return. It’s like John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Finally, you can break it down like this: do you want to just live with hate, or live with hope through the good times and the bad times?

Conversations From the Road – The Healing Power of Kindness

Leave a reply

I just wrote almost nine-hundred words on my book ‘Breaking Radio Silence’. It’s an introduction to Chapter One in which I will tell how a simple act of kindness to myself, just one single sentence, changed my life for the better. What was that sentence?

“You’re not doing so bad.”

I said this almost eleven years ago, right around the time I turned forty. I was in a contemplative state at that time as I looked at my life told myself that. I had a nice little apartment, a paid-off car (I can’t quite remember if it was paid for or not, but I think it was), my dog and my cat, a job I hadn’t learned how to hate, so on the surface anyway, I thought I was doing pretty good. But that simple sentence was an act of kindness I didn’t realize I needed at that time.

And as I would later learn, kindness is where healing begins. And it’s because kindness doesn’t cause pain, but instead provides comfort, support, and encouragement. In the past, I’ve said that kindness can feel like an act of defiance and that’s because I did have people hurt me whenever I tried to be kind to myself. Why would people do that? Well, ask them because I don’t give a shit about why people were mean, or are still mean. Don’t be mean to yourself, or as my father used to say, don’t get into a one-legged ass kicking contest with yourself because you’ll always win.

Now in the past, I used to think that I had to put up with people’s shit because I didn’t want to be ‘mean’ them if I pushed back on them or walked away from them. I was told that I was mean if I did muster up the courage to push back on their shit or try to walk away from it because mean people don’t like being called out on that shit. In my definitely not so humble opinion here, people who are mean can’t handle being called out on that shitty behavior because they’ve rationalized it and pushing back on that makes them feel shame, guilt, or remorse. Well, if you don’t want to feel those emotions, don’t be mean to other people or give people shit for not being perfect because you don’t want to deal with your emotionally-immature bullshit.

What I’ve learned in the last decade or so is that being mean to yourself won’t keep people off your ass forever nor will it stop them from being shitty to you and anyone else they chose to be shitty to. As I’ve said before, we’ve tried decorum and tolerance and it didn’t work. So don’t be mean to yourself. Ever. If you fuck up and make a mistake just own your mistake, apologize for it, repair all the damage you can, and learn from it. Don’t let someone beat you up over it after all that’s said and done.

Right now, with the steady stream of shit coming out of Washington DC and all the awful shit some people feel empowered to embrace and heap onto other people, it may feel like kindness is overrated and useless. Wrong. Kindness is the greatest weapon against streams of shit and shitty behavior, not necessarily to the people spewing all that crap, but to yourself and others like you who aren’t being shitty nor spewing that crap. And no, standing up to that shit and calling people out on it is NOT being mean. Because I also think being kind to yourself is about standing up for yourself and others, standing up for what’s right and calling out what’s wrong and pushing back against that in a non-violent way.

Kindness is like mental and emotional wound-care for yourself and others. Right now, so many people feel like walking wounded, feel helpless and scared, and to those people I say this: be kind to yourself. If you’re just fighting to survive, just to get through each day hour by hour, or even minute by minute, you’re doing good. Tell yourself you’re doing good enough times and your mind will adapt to it and start believing it. And if anyone says otherwise they can go fuck themselves.

Kindness is why I think good always triumphs over evil because good people embrace kindness to themselves and to others. They seek to heal, not hurt, and because of that, they believe in the goodness of people. Or as my father always used to say, most people are good people, don’t let the jerks in this world ruin things for you.

And in my book, ‘Breaking Radio Silence’, you’ll learn how one simple thought of kindness led to others, and in turn, led me to break my silence and heal. Because when I broke my silence, I knew it was the right thing to do and that I couldn’t be silent anymore. Most of all, I learned how to be kind to myself, and to stand up for myself, too. Kindness gave me the courage to stand up for myself, to find my words, and not just survive, but to heal, and truly live.

Dear Readers, kindness and healing are how we’ll get through the dark times so be kind to yourself. Always.

Conversations From the Road – One From the Political Road

Leave a reply

Late yesterday afternoon, I picked up a passenger and he asked me what my thoughts were on the vote in the Senate on the Continuing Resolution budget bill. I told him it was a shitty deal (then I apologized immediately for the profanity and switched to ‘crappy’ instead). I also said it was a ‘damn if you do, damn if you don’t’ situation because if it passed it puts a shitty resolution into play, and if it didn’t pass and the government shut down then the Regime (as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich now refers to the current Presidential administration) would just run the clock down to the thirty-day mark when they could legally lay off federal employees instead of just wholesale firing them like they’re doing now. (By the way, it passed with ten Democrat Senators voting for it, and who are now catching a shit-ton of flack for that.)

First, if I was a Senator I would have voted against it out of sheer spite and also to put the fight squarely in the Regime’s corner.

Then I said right now, I think the Regime is trying to fast-track cases to the Supreme Court to see if the Court will rubber-stamp their bullshit. But here’s the thing, the Court already ruled against the Regime with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barret ruling alongside the liberal wing of the court (Justice Sotomayor, Justice Brown Jackson, and Justice Kagan). If Roberts and Coney Barrett go against the Regime, then the Regime could lose the Supreme Court and that would really put a kink in their efforts to destroy the government of the United States of America and take the rest of the world with it down the shitter.

Another thing I brought up with my passenger is there are three special elections for three seats in the House of Representatives. Now turning these seats Democrat is a long shot at best but every so often, long shots do win their races. If by some miracle all three seats were won by Democrats, it would give the Democrats the majority in the House and with that majority they could take over leadership. If that happened, then the Regime would lose the House and if they lose the Supreme Court… then that leaves just the Senate but losing two out of three would be some vicious blows to the Regime.

Then my passenger and I talked about Justice Coney Barrett and I told him I thought of her as an Aunt Lydia (the baddie-bitch in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale) but he said first and foremost she’s a woman. Then he also mentioned how she taught at Notre Dame University, which is a Catholic institution. And he said he’d been educated in Catholic schools from kindergarten to high school then gone to a Catholic University himself and he said that what the Regime is doing is seen as wrong according to the way he was taught by the monks. I didn’t get to ask him about the extremist right-wing parts of the Catholic Church but in reality, mainline religious denominations like the Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, etc. are surprisingly liberal in some respects (a lot of these old mainline denominations have a lot of outreach programs to the community in the form of food banks and social workers and the churches themselves are usually pretty old and not all shiny and fancy like evangelical right-wing Christian hypocritical churches are). And at the State of the Union address, Justice Coney Barrett did look at the felon-in-chief like he was Jabba the Hut about so slobber all over her.

Another thing to consider is the ‘wealth’ of the Regime and its’ tech-bro oligarchs is getting hammered by all the bullshit with the tariffs and very unpopular move of throwing thousands of people out of work all at once and going after immigrant labor and of course, not doing jack-shit about bird flu and the price of eggs. And outside of the felon-in-chief’s pathetic cult, they can’t sell this set of shit-sandwiches to the American people. Gee, I wonder why?

Basically, I told my passenger this DOGE-tech bro asshole contingent (I didn’t use that exact phrase with him) is doing a smash-and-grab and that doesn’t work out well. Tech bros think they can just smash something to pieces then sell off the valuable pieces, put the reminder back together, and let AI do the rest. Problem is, they’re the dumbest assholes in the room most of the time and don’t really know how to put things together in the first place or how to run something truly well. Hopefully, someday enough people will figure this out and send these idiots to the basement instead of promoting them.

Finally, I told my passenger when I look to the future, I see an enormous blank. I don’t feel anything in my gut about anything because there are too many pieces on the board and if any one of them goes into play, that will change things. To me, things are just too damn unpredictable right now because since 2020, strange shit has happened and will continue to happen. Yes, bad shit will happen, too but seeing people yelling at Republican members of Congress trying to sell shit-sandwiches to them gives me a shred of hope.

So if the Regime can’t sell shit-sandwiches, then we need to serve up some of Minnie’s shit-pies (see the movie ‘The Help’ if you don’t get this reference).

Conversations From the Road – Letting It Rip At What (hopefully) Won’t Be My Last Stand

Leave a reply

Today, I wrote a brand-new introduction to my ‘political book’ as I first called it years ago when I came up with the idea, and now call ‘Stand or Fall’. Like its’ sister book, ‘Breaking Radio Silence’, I’ve struggled with writing it though in different ways from its’ sister. The main way I’ve struggled with is the voice of the book and trying to stay on topic. But I will warn readers, ‘Stand or Fall’ will be the epitome of the warning I put at the top of my blog and in my non-fiction books:

Warning: My writing can be sarcastic, profane, irreverent, wise-cracking, and somewhat serious, sometimes all in the same paragraph.

The main thing about Stand or Fall’ is that I don’t want it to be boring. I’m not a scholar or pundit or anything like that so I’m writing from a sort of unique perspective. And I know I’m going to need a ton of footnotes to reference all the stuff I refer to because I know I could have readers from different generations reading the book so I don’t want them to be too lost.

Like its’ sister book, ‘Breaking Radio Silence’, I’ve been trying to figure out how to write ‘Stand or Fall’ and the particular challenge with this book is that it’s still a story without an ending. I held off in 2020 because of the pandemic and election then I held off again till now because I needed to see how the 2024 Presidential election would play out. And for me, it’s been difficult to write from day one because although I wanted Hillary Clinton to win so much in 2016, I had a bad feeling she wasn’t going to and I had a really bad feeling again in 2024 that Kamala Harris wasn’t going to be able to win either simply because of one thing: the Trump cult as I call it. And yes, I’ve been a bit fearful of that cult but that fear is gone now and not just because I’m still a little piss-ant writer in the grand scheme of things, but because I can truly stand up to the bullies that they are and not back down one little bit.

I know with ‘Stand or Fall’ I’m going to disappoint people at best with my very colorful and irreverent tone and healthy doses of sarcasm. But I also know I’m going to piss a lot of people off, too and not just on the right-wing Nazi side of the aisle, but on the leftist side of the aisle because two parties came to Washington then over time diverged but not before a shit-ton of damage was done. Or as I’ll also say, we tried decorum and tolerance and look where that got us (the mess we’re in now).

Writing about politics isn’t easy and there is still a lot of throttling going on, but also because there are people who are avoiding it altogether. If they’re avoiding it for mental health reasons, I’m totally in agreement with that. If they’re avoiding it because they think both sides are the same and there’s no reason to give a shit at all one way or the other, then I’m pissed off at that.

Right now, my gut really isn’t giving off any vibes about the future. It’s like I look towards the future and see one ginormous blank wall. I feel like anything is possible but with a shit-ton more suffering because so many government contracts have been canceled and so many people laid off. And the Courts are holding the line but that’s not enough to stop this shit from getting worse before it gets better. Most of all, I hate the fact that so damn many people need to suffer shit themselves before they’ll feel any need to speak out against it and fight back.

Another thing that has made trying to write ‘Stand or Fall’ hard for me is that I have wondered if I would reach people, and I realize now that I’m going for the ninety million people who didn’t bother to vote at all in the last election. These are the people who say both parties are the same and have way too much nihilism that just really rubs me like sandpaper on my ass. If we can just get a smidgen of those voters to get up off their lazy nihilistic asses that could make a difference. But how do you break through nihilism? Suffering? If so, we’re fucked.

Writing ‘Stand or Fall’ is like breaking my silence, too in its’ own unique way. Because although my political beliefs have been well-known to my way of thinking, I know I haven’t really stood up for them nowhere near as well as I could have. But I’m getting pretty good at talking politics now in real-life but on paper, my voice will be more sarcastic, but sharp and focused, too.

I think with writing about politics you have to be prepared to piss people off no matter how well you write or articulate your point. And you have to put up with the pearl-clutching hand-wringing ‘concerned’ ones who make me want to go ‘barfaroni’ (new internet term I just saw a few days ago) or in the terms of my generation, “Barf out, gag me with a spoon.”

I just hope there is a world where this book is just look back at a very crazy time in human history, and not some dusty book on a shelf in a burned-out library.

Conversations From the Road – The Confidence of Broken Silence

Leave a reply

Almost nine years ago, in the fall of 2016, I sat down with an idea: to use writing to try and figure out how I thought and felt in order to learn how to make better decisions in my life.

At that time, if you had asked me if I felt I could gain confidence and self-esteem, I would have flat-out told you no. I would have said those two things were not on the table as I thought I had lost them forever. But I will tell you this right here and now:

Breaking your silence will give you self-confidence and restore your self-esteem in a way that no one will ever be able to destroy again.

I’ve thought long and hard as to why I felt like my self-confidence and self-esteem was slowly and painfully ripped out of me. And here are some insights into that:

As a neurodivergent child, I was sensitive to the world around me, much more than most people. I was sensitive not only to sights and sounds, smells and tastes, but most of all, to people’s emotions and tone of voice. In plain English, people being loud, rude, obnoxious, or angry scared the crap of little roly-poly me and anytime I showed that I was scared or hurt by their rude and cruel words and behavior, well they turned the volume up and drowned me into silence with their terrible noise.

Looking back, I realized I should have outgrown this fear of drowning and learned how to stand up to loud-mouth assholes and tell them to shut up. But a flaw of my parents was their desire to keep the peace and to be the ‘better person’ and not engage with bullying-bullshit behavior. This was how they were raised, to either avoid conflict altogether or try and walk away from it like my dad wanted me to because in his own fucked up way, he thought I couldn’t handle myself in an argument very well.

In my twenties and thirties, which was the most stressful and tumultuous time in my life, I should have been able to tell people to go fuck themselves when they made demands on me they had no right to make in the first place. And most of all, I should have told people to go fuck themselves when they told me no one wanted to hear what I had to say or gave a shit about what I was feeling. I should have been able to stand up to people who were being cruel, insensitive assholes and knock them on their proverbial asses like the bullies they were.

But because I didn’t want to rock the boat too much, I just sat there and took that shit. In the process, that near-constant barrage of shit and totally-uncalled for and unnecessary criticism shredded my self-confidence and destroyed my self-esteem to the point where I thought I must be such a terrible person to have so much shit directed at me when I was just trying to take care of everything and everyone.

One way I started to recover my confidence and self-esteem was to realize that I wasn’t a bad person. I wasn’t perfect, but then neither is anyone else, especially if they say or act like their shit doesn’t stink at all. That in turn began to heal me because I stopped beating the shit out of myself thinking I’d done something wrong when I hadn’t. I stopped holding myself to an impossible standard that no one could ever meet, even the people that tried to hold me to that in the first place. Most of all, I realized my purpose in life is NOT to pull someone’s head out of their ass for them, nor is it anyone else’s job.

That in turn led me to learn how to take care of myself better mentally and emotionally. Now, have I made better decisions in my life because of that? I’ve walked away from things I needed to walk away from, and stuck with things worth sticking with. The results haven’t been the best but then the last nine years have been a major shit-show sometimes, and I’ve had to survive that on next-to-nothing.

I don’t measure success in dollars-and-cents or on a profit-and-loss statement like the average corporate shill or the average Republican voter. I measure my success from what I’ve gained that can’t be put on a balance sheet: confidence, self-esteem, and most of all, healing. I still battle anxiety spirals and I think I always will because of my lovely neurodivergent brain, but even those have gotten easier to manage.

In the last five years, I’ve been trying to write my book, ‘Breaking Radio Silence’, my self-help/memoire hybrid. I’ve scrapped countless drafts and scrapped another batch of files this morning. I sincerely hope this new draft becomes the book and for some crazy reason, I think this will be it. Why? Because it wasn’t about making better decisions, and it wasn’t just about breaking my silence, but about healing my severely-wounded self-confidence and self-esteem.

And someday soon, I hope readers will read my story and learn how to heal themselves, and find what was never taken from them in the first place.

Conversations From the Road – Be Bossy, Ladies

Leave a reply
From the Facebook page of Mark Richard Beaulieu

Today is International Women’s Day. Established in 1977 by a United Nations decree, today more than ever women are coming together to fight oppression, violence, discrimination, and making sure never again is now.

Now, with that being said, I have some thoughts here today on being a ‘bossy woman’, or in more modern parlance, a girl-boss.

First, conservative assholes both male and female do not like the term ‘girl boss’ nor the idea of women being ‘bossy’. They spout their bullshit about how women shouldn’t be ‘bossy’ or ‘ball busters’ or some stupid shit like that. Instead, they want women to be meek, submissive, and defer to men, and to the ladies auxiliary Republican Bitch Squad.

To that I say, “FUCK THAT SHIT!”, and “FUCK THEM ALL TO HELL!”

I put those lovely ‘fuck you’s’ in all-caps because I want to make a point and make them shit bricks big-time. Because there is NO need for a woman to be meek, submissive, and defer to men when in reality a good number of men are mediocre dumb-asses who can’t find their ass from a hole in the wall, nor can they wipe it very well, either. So why should a woman let a mediocre guy take the lead when he can’t find his way out of a toilet?

But sadly, women are still being raised to believe that being ‘bossy’ is a bad thing.

It’s not.

It’s good to be the boss, especially when you’re like the vast majority of women in the world and actually know what you’re doing. And why do the vast majority of women know what they’re doing? Because they have to work twice as hard and take twice the amount of shit for being competent and knowledgeable.

For example, there’s this story that’s gone around the internet about how this guy discovered why his female co-worker took longer to accomplish tasks. One day, he’s going back and forth with a client over email and the client is just giving him shit left and right and questioning everything he’s saying. Then this dude saw he was replying to the asshole-client with his female co-worker’s email signature, so the asshole-client thought he was working with the female co-worker. So said dude decided to do an experiment- he would use his female co-worker’s email signature and be her while she would use his email signature and be him.

You guessed correctly if you know that she got her work done very quickly and very efficiently while he struggled and fought through a mountain of bullshit. So this dude had to go through the shit his female co-worker had to because I’m sure if she’d said anything to him or showed him the amount shit she was getting, the dude would have said some bullshit to her about how she should communicate differently or not be so ‘bossy’.

Dudes, if you have to actually go through the amount of shit a woman takes instead of believing her and all the email evidence she shows you, you’re the asshole here. And this dude should have told those clients to straighten up or ship out. But we can’t piss off assholes and call them out now, can we? Yes, we can. And that, my dear readers, is why there is such a conservative backlash worldwide to put women back in their holes of silence and scare the shit out of them into being meek, submissive, and deferential.

NEVER AGAIN IS NOW

I put that in all caps to show that women are NOT going back to being meek, submissive, and deferential. And if any man accuses me of being a man-hater, I have the perfect reply to that:

I don’t hate men; I just hate the ones who think they’re the smartest people in the room when in reality they’re the dumbest assholes in the room.

But if a woman speaks with confidence, she’s called a ball-busting bitch. Dudes, you are so lucky physical ball busting is against the law because if it wasn’t, a lot of you would be eunuchs. A truly confident man listens to women, and also realizes that women work twice as hard and don’t give someone shit when that someone is trying to teach them something they need to know.

There’s a saying that we’ve spent the last fifty years or so teaching girls how to be confident, or trying to anyway, but haven’t taught boys how to accept girls with confidence. Right on that one, and the time to change that is NOW. But with the current crop of male assholes in power in Washington, Moscow, and elsewhere, that’s going to be one hell of an uphill battle.

Be bossy, ladies. Be confident and if some man calls you a ball-busting bitch or some shit like that, tell him he ain’t seen nothing yet.