Ironically, after working in production for over a decade, I’m hoping to go back to school for business management. Because it turns out that there’s zero career track and advancement potential if I stick with what I already know. Depressing shit.
If I drop that name, that gives people enough to figure out which school I went to, what years, and they can correlate that with my post history to figure out exactly who I am IRL.
I’ve probably posted enough already that someone with a large enough database could do that already, but dropping names would make it much easier for just about any schmuck with an internet connection and decent search skill.
(And believe me, I would love to tell people the name of the pretentious dick that was the head of the department, but… Aaargh.)
I went to school for fashion design. (Hence interacting with a famous designer in school. Come to think of it, the head of the department at the time was someone with a significant international reputation. And I still think he’s a pretentious dick.) These days I do industrial print media, because I burned out hard in school, due to a combination of raging, untreated ADHD and 48+ hour days working in studio.
I would not recommend fashion design to anyone that has any interest in a healthy work/life balance, and fast fashion has absolutely gutted anything domestic that’s of any interest at all.
I… Can’t do that without giving away far too much personal information. Unfortunately.
Fundraiser at a very expensive art school. I was a scholarship student at a cocktail mixer, and I was at the mixer because it was being held in the department I was majoring in. All of the people that were attending were fine arts patrons, the kind of people that drop tens of thousands on art without thinking twice about it. I was–literally–a punk kid with tattoos and shit tons of piercings, and I was supposed to be pleasant to people with millions more than I’ll ever have.
Got to piss off a world famous fashion designer that evening, so that was cool.
TLA agencies would have no problem with a cover identity to “prove” who they are. Your average citizen is going to have a hard time buying a slightly used social security number that they can use to get an ID that will pass KYC laws.
He is punching down and attacking a group of people who are suffering in “the new world” just like him, and a fucking bag of cookies is one of the few joys they can still aquire.
I know a lot of people that are quite overall politically liberal that feel this way. I know a lot of people that get upset at the idea of inmates being given “free” educations in prison because they still have student loans 20 years after school. People that support the ideas of helping people up, that are fully on board with LGBTQ+ rights across the board, think DEI is a good idea, think it’s critical that women have bodily autonomy, and so on, but still have a knee-jerk reaction to things that they don’t fully get, or haven’t had explained to them.
I don’t know if he meant the song that way, or what. I do know that the people coming into the White House in a few months aren’t likely to make things any better for people like him. Or people like you. Or people like me.
If you know anything about the history of punk music and east coast hardcore, Ian MacKaye was clearly one of the most principled people in the scene, and a genuinely good and decent person. So it’s really weird to hear that people ever got the weird idea that he was pro-racism or something.
Then again, The Dead Kennedys had to make “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” because they were sick of their shows being infiltrated by the wrong kind of skinheads.
An old soul in a new world… Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry
I think that’s an uncharitable reading. Which is understandable, but still.
I think that there are a lot of people–myself included–that would like to be able to make a living doing something that seems to matter, or where you make something. Like, factory work sucks in most ways, but it still feels like you’re doing something. Spreadsheets and order projections? Staring at a screen all day, sending polite emails to people you’ll never meet about ways to spend a lot of money electronically?
This “new world” of work and socializing ain’t great. I think it snuck up on a lot of people, and now a lot of people are feeling like they don’t know how to navigate the new reality of depersonalization.
If I had known when I was rather younger, I probably could have done much better in school, and would likely have been a bit more successful–in many ways–than I have been.
That I have moderately severe to severely severe ADHD and I’m on the autism spectrum.
Makes functioning as an adult quite difficult.
I’ve been using a Merkur Futur for nearly a decade now. I need to buy new blades about once a year, maybe, and they cost about $20. Shaving soap lasts nearly as long as a pack of blades, and a shaving stone (alum salts, for closing pores back up after shaving) is a couple bucks and lasts years.
Picking the right blades can be a challenge. I’m lucky that super sharp blades work well on me.
In the other hand, the copays for emergency room visit after you slice half your face off add up very quickly.
My grandfather used a straight razor for years, and every time he ended up with sticking plaster somewhere on his face. It’s just so easy to get an angle wrong somewhere, and so fast to slice–and incredibly aggressive compared to almost all safety razors–that it’s not worth it for most people.
That’s not why Costco is doing it though. The crowd they’re catering to buys things in advance of when they need it, rather than just-in-time, and usually well before the actual seasons for thing.
What you’re describing is textbook schizophrenia. You don’t have any specifics; everything is vague. You say as much in your question. This belief that you can see something that no one else can, and that everyone is part of a grand conspiracy, that’s classic paranoia.
Medication can relieve those fantastical fears.
If you really believe the things you’re saying, you need to check yourself into a hospital. The odds that this is rea–as opposed to being a delusion–are very, very low. Some of the things you’re talking about are mutually exclusive; for instance, Hell’s Angels don’t mix with Bloods, because Hell’s Angels is a white MC (or, has enough wildly racist members that no non-white person is likely to get patched in), and the Bloods are a black street gang. These are not groups that play together. Then you add in right wing militias, which have very nearly zero crossover with either of them. (And Freemasons? They’re just a fraternal order, not really any different than the Kiwanis Club.)
If your therapist didn’t believe you, and was trying to get you on medication, that’s a really, really strong indication that you need medication.
My spouse got to talk to the guy that owns the company that makes the World’s Best Cat Litter (it’s corn based, and edible; much more environmentally friendly than the bentonite clay that most cat litter uses). Apparently he used to show it at animal shows; he would have a box filled with corn-based cat litter, and he would have it filled with “cat turds” that were actually chocolate. He’d be demonstrating scooping the litter box for people, and would just pop one into his mouth.
He apparently stopped playing that prank after someone witnessing it threw up.
Eh. It’s Costco. They’re going to have shorts and swimsuits in store by the start of January.
There’s nothing I listen to regularly that I’d be too embarrassed to make other people listen to. OTOH, I know that a lot of people won’t like the music I listen to, so I usually just wear headphones.
The closest I have to a ‘guilty pleasure’ is HIM; the lyrics are pure goth-emo trash, but Vallo does some really good wordplay, has a very good range (…in the studio; he doesn’t sound nearly as good live), and the music has tons of pop-metal hooks.
When my ex- and I were going through a divorce, they didn’t want me to say anything publicly at all. They were insistent that it wasn’t anyone else’s business, and since I was trying to make the process as painless as possible, I assumed that this was a good-faith request.
I was wrong.
I was being silent, and they were telling everyone a load of horseshit about me, and bad-mouthing me in public to every single one of our mutual friends. I lost all but one of our mutual friends; my silence was assumed to be an admission of guilt.