Emchap's Shit from the Internet 06/3/20 🍠
Over the weekend, presumably as a physical manifestation of my blood cortisol levels, my gums became inflamed around one of my back molars. (Sexy and fun.) So, I made an appointment for Monday to have my dentist look at it, because though I fear COVID-19, I fear dental abscesses more.
I had, of course, forgotten that Pershing Square (where LA's demonstrations had been starting) is two blocks from my dentist. (I am generally unmoored in space; it took me a year to realize four different life experiences I'd had had all happened on different sides of Union Square.)
The bottom floor of the building was boarded up. So was the Starbucks next door. So was every window and door up and down the block. It was dystopian looking. (This was, from what I could see, all pre-emptive—nothing had actually been broken.)
Later in the day, footage of the National Guard doing fuckall except scaring people would make its way to my corner of the internet; they were wandering back and forth two blocks from where I'd been that morning.
Between the coronavirus and the murder hornets and the ongoing rampant, horrific police violence and the horrible city leadership and horrible state leadership and horrible federal leadership and the tiny little fucking earthquake I felt while on my porch this afternoon, it's hard to feel like 2020 is anything other than Too On The Nose, though of course saying that feels facile and pointless; what really happened is a public health crisis was the catalyst for mass unemployment and pre-existing fury at the racist, useless cops.
I sat on the LAPD commission call for a little while yesterday; it was nice to hear hour after hour of my smart and kind fellow citizens tell the chief of police that he could go fuck himself. (With varying degrees of literality, truly props to the guy who said he'd see them in hell.)
I think wife beaters and rapists shouldn't have guns; consequently, I think the police should be disarmed before being defunded, dissolved, and encouraged to do something useful with their lives. Various people push back on this by saying that if we do that, who will catch rapists and murderers, but the answer is that the rapists and murderers are generally your boyfriend or husband if you're past puberty and your male relative if you're not. They're in a frat or a male sport team if you're in your first six weeks of college. Your murderer is going to be (statistically) a cop, but if it's not that it's your relative or your friend or (again) your boyfriend or husband with a gun. It's more likely if they've hit you, which, again, the cops do with truly astounding frequency. If the your rapist or your murderer is a stranger, the cops almost certainly will not find them.
It's not a calling; it's a job, and it's one that is no longer serving anyone. They can find new jobs where they have to learn some self control if teenagers are mean to them for murdering.
Defund the police. Abolish prisons. Goodbye Earl your rapist. Give that money to mutual aid networks and social networks and restorative justice processes.
My tooth is fine. Black lives matter. Fuck the LAPD.
Shit to read
This list, if you are (as I believe the majority of the subscribers here are) a white lady.
And for the boys.
Join me in setting up a monthly donation to your hometown bail fund (or to mine).
Donate to this homeless kid who was valedictorian of his high school (in 2020! when he couldn't even walk!) and needs some help.
Donate to my internet friend's employer's emergency relief fund (mark it as such in the notes section). It goes to vulnerable kids whose families are in a shitty fucking position right now.
The guy who people said stole a police horse didn't; he's a Black cowboy bopping around in Chicago and he's cool as hell. Give him some money to show kids what horses are like.
Help this Black trans man who got fucked over by the collapse of the performance market.
Give some money to this trans person who the cops shot during the protests.
Give money to incarcerated survivors of domestic violence, who are the only people in the abuse cycle this stupid fucking system winds up actually punishing.
Find someone asking for money on Twitter and just fucking cashapp it to them. Just give people your money, if you have some.
I'm putting my money where my mouth is and the above have all gotten some of my money. Please join me in tossing some their way.
Shit to eat
Get a little bit baked.
Order pizza at 2 in the afternoon.
There will be a dessert option that says s'mores pie. You will assume it's like a pie pie, because it says "crust" and you're like "pie crust, checks out, good"
A nice man will bring you the pizza.
(Tip well.)
You will be charmed to discover that it's not a pie, but is a small dessert pizza covered in marshmallow fluff, melty chocolate chips, and graham cracker niblets.
Eat it while watching Love Island and giving your money to the organizations above.
Shit to listen to
Shit to buy
These chocolate banana chips are absolutely fucking phenomenal.
Chillbo Schwaggins is exactly what the frolf-loving REI dudes who decide to go into inflatable couch manufacture would name their fucking thing.