Josh Hilden's Blog, page 14
June 27, 2015
Thanking The Ones Who Paved The Way
“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
– Harvey Milk
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
I’m still gob smacked by what happened today. I never believed I’d live to see this day. If you’d have told eighteen year old me there’d be marriage equality and LGBTQ people serving openly in the military before I was forty I’d have laughed in your face. I realize there was really no real doubt how the high court was going to rule, but it’s still all so damn surreal. The United States of America has taken another step toward true marriage equality. I don’t say we HAVE achieved marriage equality because I still think the issue of Polyamorous marriages is on the horizon. However, that little chestnut is another fight and right now I’m still riding the high of legalized same sex marriage.
Of course the decision wasn’t even close to unanimous. Five of the nine Supreme Court Justices voted in favor of marriage equality. The dissenting votes came from Justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and Scalia all of whom filled the internet and news outlets with their sturm and drang pounding their breasts in righteous indignation. So only five Justices did the right thing, but that was enough to make same sex marriage the law of the land. The only way it can now be struck down is through a constitutional amendment. And as if on cue the various Republican talking heads have started talking about it with Koch Brother butt puppet Wisconsin Governor and Republican Presidential front runner Scott Walker being the most direct.
I’d LOVE to see him try.
No, I’m serious. The man is already going to be formidable in the campaign with the billion dollar Koch/Adelson war chest behind him. I think he’ll be the one to win the primaries and be left to square off with Hillary. I WANT Bernie Sanders as President but I think she’s going to crush him with her own corporate and banker funded stockpile… fucking politicians. So it’ll be Scott Walker and Hillary Clinton two jackasses who seem to fuck everything up. But if Walker makes a REAL push for a hate based constitutional amendment during the campaign, then boils and ghouls the shit is on.
But enough politics, I’m happy today and I want to stay that way. Also I need to thank some people. Don’t worry it won’t take long and I think it’s worth it.
When I was in junior high school in Ohio I became a fanatic on the subject of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King is one of my personal heroes, yes I know there are some unflattering truths about him, but those make me love and respect him even more. HE was an American in every definition of the word and we should all try to be a little more like him. When I really started getting interested and involved in the LGBTQ rights movement I bemoaned the lack of a serious leader in the vein of Dr. King.
I am ashamed to admit in the years before the internet I’d never heard of Harvey Milk.
In the end I realized this was a different time and what was needed was a different tactic. We didn’t need one lightening rod leader, yes I know there were dozens of leaders in the first movement. We didn’t need a polarizing general on the battlefield. What we needed was a wave of individuals. We needed a swarm of people attacking the problem from every direction using every medium available to us until we smashed the walls down and ground them to dust.
When Dr. King and the other leaders of the movement went into action, it was a very different time and a different America. In the fifties and sixties the battle wasn’t in the courts or on the media outlets, there was no internet and therefore no way for everyone to get their message out. The fight for equal rights started in churches, in restaurants, in schools, and on buses. Courageous men and women were beaten, jailed, and killed by the very people who were supposed to protect them with most Americans none the wiser… until they were.
I can’t imagine the terror of the times. Books and recordings only convey so much.
I’m not in ANY WAY dismissing the struggles of the early LGBTQ activists. They also suffered their share of beatings, arrests, and murders. This isn’t a comparison of struggles because I think they are the same struggle, the struggle never went away it just quieted down for a generation. Yes, the fight to gain equality in the LGBTQ community went on longer but maybe we should take a second to look back at the men and women of the last civil rights surge and say thank you.
Maybe those men and women wouldn’t have approved of the court’s decision today for their own reasons, and let’s be honest a lot of them wouldn’t approve of this, but they laid a foundation. Because of them, the people who came after had a platform to start on. That doesn’t mean the struggle was easy or that there weren’t losses, but today we won a major victory for EVERY American.
There’s still a lot left to be done for all Americans, but right now I’m enjoying the afterglow. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the struggle because one day we will all be seen and treated equal under the law.
– Josh
LINKS:·
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Josh-Hilden/e/B... ·
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/josh-hi... ·
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/10836796214340... ·
GWS Press Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/gwspress ·
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Twitter: http://twitter.com/josh_hilden ·
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YouTube: http://youtube.com/user/marsbear22
– Harvey Milk
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
I’m still gob smacked by what happened today. I never believed I’d live to see this day. If you’d have told eighteen year old me there’d be marriage equality and LGBTQ people serving openly in the military before I was forty I’d have laughed in your face. I realize there was really no real doubt how the high court was going to rule, but it’s still all so damn surreal. The United States of America has taken another step toward true marriage equality. I don’t say we HAVE achieved marriage equality because I still think the issue of Polyamorous marriages is on the horizon. However, that little chestnut is another fight and right now I’m still riding the high of legalized same sex marriage.
Of course the decision wasn’t even close to unanimous. Five of the nine Supreme Court Justices voted in favor of marriage equality. The dissenting votes came from Justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and Scalia all of whom filled the internet and news outlets with their sturm and drang pounding their breasts in righteous indignation. So only five Justices did the right thing, but that was enough to make same sex marriage the law of the land. The only way it can now be struck down is through a constitutional amendment. And as if on cue the various Republican talking heads have started talking about it with Koch Brother butt puppet Wisconsin Governor and Republican Presidential front runner Scott Walker being the most direct.
I’d LOVE to see him try.
No, I’m serious. The man is already going to be formidable in the campaign with the billion dollar Koch/Adelson war chest behind him. I think he’ll be the one to win the primaries and be left to square off with Hillary. I WANT Bernie Sanders as President but I think she’s going to crush him with her own corporate and banker funded stockpile… fucking politicians. So it’ll be Scott Walker and Hillary Clinton two jackasses who seem to fuck everything up. But if Walker makes a REAL push for a hate based constitutional amendment during the campaign, then boils and ghouls the shit is on.
But enough politics, I’m happy today and I want to stay that way. Also I need to thank some people. Don’t worry it won’t take long and I think it’s worth it.
When I was in junior high school in Ohio I became a fanatic on the subject of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King is one of my personal heroes, yes I know there are some unflattering truths about him, but those make me love and respect him even more. HE was an American in every definition of the word and we should all try to be a little more like him. When I really started getting interested and involved in the LGBTQ rights movement I bemoaned the lack of a serious leader in the vein of Dr. King.
I am ashamed to admit in the years before the internet I’d never heard of Harvey Milk.
In the end I realized this was a different time and what was needed was a different tactic. We didn’t need one lightening rod leader, yes I know there were dozens of leaders in the first movement. We didn’t need a polarizing general on the battlefield. What we needed was a wave of individuals. We needed a swarm of people attacking the problem from every direction using every medium available to us until we smashed the walls down and ground them to dust.
When Dr. King and the other leaders of the movement went into action, it was a very different time and a different America. In the fifties and sixties the battle wasn’t in the courts or on the media outlets, there was no internet and therefore no way for everyone to get their message out. The fight for equal rights started in churches, in restaurants, in schools, and on buses. Courageous men and women were beaten, jailed, and killed by the very people who were supposed to protect them with most Americans none the wiser… until they were.
I can’t imagine the terror of the times. Books and recordings only convey so much.
I’m not in ANY WAY dismissing the struggles of the early LGBTQ activists. They also suffered their share of beatings, arrests, and murders. This isn’t a comparison of struggles because I think they are the same struggle, the struggle never went away it just quieted down for a generation. Yes, the fight to gain equality in the LGBTQ community went on longer but maybe we should take a second to look back at the men and women of the last civil rights surge and say thank you.
Maybe those men and women wouldn’t have approved of the court’s decision today for their own reasons, and let’s be honest a lot of them wouldn’t approve of this, but they laid a foundation. Because of them, the people who came after had a platform to start on. That doesn’t mean the struggle was easy or that there weren’t losses, but today we won a major victory for EVERY American.
There’s still a lot left to be done for all Americans, but right now I’m enjoying the afterglow. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the struggle because one day we will all be seen and treated equal under the law.
– Josh
LINKS:·
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Josh-Hilden/e/B... ·
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/josh-hi... ·
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/10836796214340... ·
GWS Press Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/gwspress ·
Mailing List: http://forms.aweber.com/form/03/11031... ·
Twitter: http://twitter.com/josh_hilden ·
Watt Pad: http://wattpad.com/JoshHilden ·
Website: http://www.joshhilden.com/ ·
YouTube: http://youtube.com/user/marsbear22
Published on June 27, 2015 06:33
June 25, 2015
I’m Not A Racist But…
I remember when I first learned about slavery in America. I bet if you asked many white people of my generation that question they would tell you it was the miniseries Roots and except for a single friendship I would have said the same thing. In elementary school, before we moved to Saline, I had a friend named Milton. There were a significant number of black kids in my school district so that wasn’t something I found odd at all. What was odd, at least in those days, was Milton was one of my best friends.
Remember this was 1980-1981 in Southeastern Michigan. These things did not happen.
Milton and I bonded over television shows, our favorites were CHIPs, Starsky and Hutch, and Battlestar Galactica, and we’d spend countless half hour segments on the playground reenacting the shows. One day I brought up my new favorite show The Dukes of Hazard and our talks took a dark turn, he really didn’t like that show. For the rest of that day I was told everything he knew about the civil war, which I assume his parents told him.
I was upset and I think I even called him a liar. We were never friends after that day.
My mom’s entire side of the family is from the south, she was the first generation born in the north and we visited family in North Carolina, Virginia, and Arkansas regularly. That being said we never discussed the history of north and south, slavery, or the war. So that day I went home and asked my mom about it.
Mom has always believed in sharing everything. The good, the bad, and the ugly were laid out in an afternoon conversation punctuated by hotdogs with mac and cheese. When we were done I had a lot to digest but it was the first step in my journey to see race relations in America with as clear of a lens as possible. There were missteps and I have said things I am ashamed to think about in my youth.
Nobody’s point of view is ever unbiased but I keeping trying.
I grew up in Metro Detroit, Michigan, which if you are unfamiliar with, it is an area made up of a large immigrant population. And yes Greek, Middle Eastern, Polish, and other nationalities from all races make up a significant portion of the population. At the time I lived there it had one of the largest percentages of African Americans north of the old Mason Dixon. Add to it a massive transfer population of first generation southerners thanks to the auto industry and is it any wonder Detroit has historically been a hotbed of both innovation and racial tension?
Also kids the food in Detroit is amazeballs!
I like to think my life experiences have left me open to change. I’ve been through my ultra conservative phase, I’ve been through my flirtation with racism I think ALL people secretly go through, and I’ve done the whole angry, financially poor, white, moron thing. I admit to all of these not because I’m proud of them, but because I’m ashamed of them. I admit to them because even thought they are a dark and shameful part of my past, they ARE part of me. They are a darkness I fight against when things are scary and I feel small. I commit them to this page so I never forget and try to convince myself it never happened.
I say all of this in preamble to current events.
On the evening of June 17, 2015, nine good American men and women were massacred in a church for no other reason than they were black. Despite what a LOT of right wing pundits and corporate talking heads have said in their laughable attempts to paint it as an anti-Christian act, there is nothing to indicate a deeper motive. From the survivor statements, to the browser history of the shooter, to the very words from his mouth, and contents of his Neo Confederate website and manifesto—this was clearly a racially motivated act of terrorism.
The reaction to this atrocity has been unbelievable. On one hand I am in awe of the people of Charlotte. The little murdering bastard wanted to ignite a race war and instead the people of the capitol city of the first state to secede from the union have come together in forgiveness and together forced the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the capitol grounds, and state after state is pushing for removing of Confederate symbols from government grounds.
On the other hand, corporate media and all of the mouth-breathing talking-heads are doing their damndest to spin this as one racist asshole and not as indicative of race relations—and some people are actually buying it! Some people are ignoring the deaths, the history of racism, the continued marginalization of non whites, and the overt disenfranchisement going on in the courts and legislatures, and instead scream some variation of, “YOU AIN”T GONNA TAKE MY RACIST FLAG IT’S MY HERITAGE!”
Every day I become a little more ashamed of large segments of this country.
Right now my ultra right wing and libertarian friends are thinking I’m about to start swimming in a deep vat of white guilt brought on by decades of the namby-pamby media telling me the plight of minorities is my fault. Conversely, I’m sure many of my uber progressive liberal left wing comrades expect me to start ranting about the white man and modern racist patriarchal Caucasian society oppressing the poor ignorant and helpless masses. In other words both extremes of the spectrum are expecting me to react just like they would.
All of you can just shut the hell up.
Despite what the likes of O’Reily, Hannity, and Limbaugh scream into their cameras and microphones, we do not live in a post racial America. Are things better than they were 1980 when I found out my ancestors fought under a banner dedicated to keeping millions of men and women under chains? Of course they have, anyone who tells you they haven’t knows nothing about history… of course anyone who tells you we’ve moved past such things is either a blind idealist or a fucking moron.
There’s still a long way to go but if you’d told me in the 1980’s we’d have a two term African American President, that LGBTQ people would be on the cusp of marriage equality, and that we would be openly debating these issues (along with a plethora of others) with tangible results before I was forty I’d have laughed in your face.
So today I’m sad and ashamed… but for tomorrow I still have hope.
– Josh
Remember this was 1980-1981 in Southeastern Michigan. These things did not happen.
Milton and I bonded over television shows, our favorites were CHIPs, Starsky and Hutch, and Battlestar Galactica, and we’d spend countless half hour segments on the playground reenacting the shows. One day I brought up my new favorite show The Dukes of Hazard and our talks took a dark turn, he really didn’t like that show. For the rest of that day I was told everything he knew about the civil war, which I assume his parents told him.
I was upset and I think I even called him a liar. We were never friends after that day.
My mom’s entire side of the family is from the south, she was the first generation born in the north and we visited family in North Carolina, Virginia, and Arkansas regularly. That being said we never discussed the history of north and south, slavery, or the war. So that day I went home and asked my mom about it.
Mom has always believed in sharing everything. The good, the bad, and the ugly were laid out in an afternoon conversation punctuated by hotdogs with mac and cheese. When we were done I had a lot to digest but it was the first step in my journey to see race relations in America with as clear of a lens as possible. There were missteps and I have said things I am ashamed to think about in my youth.
Nobody’s point of view is ever unbiased but I keeping trying.
I grew up in Metro Detroit, Michigan, which if you are unfamiliar with, it is an area made up of a large immigrant population. And yes Greek, Middle Eastern, Polish, and other nationalities from all races make up a significant portion of the population. At the time I lived there it had one of the largest percentages of African Americans north of the old Mason Dixon. Add to it a massive transfer population of first generation southerners thanks to the auto industry and is it any wonder Detroit has historically been a hotbed of both innovation and racial tension?
Also kids the food in Detroit is amazeballs!
I like to think my life experiences have left me open to change. I’ve been through my ultra conservative phase, I’ve been through my flirtation with racism I think ALL people secretly go through, and I’ve done the whole angry, financially poor, white, moron thing. I admit to all of these not because I’m proud of them, but because I’m ashamed of them. I admit to them because even thought they are a dark and shameful part of my past, they ARE part of me. They are a darkness I fight against when things are scary and I feel small. I commit them to this page so I never forget and try to convince myself it never happened.
I say all of this in preamble to current events.
On the evening of June 17, 2015, nine good American men and women were massacred in a church for no other reason than they were black. Despite what a LOT of right wing pundits and corporate talking heads have said in their laughable attempts to paint it as an anti-Christian act, there is nothing to indicate a deeper motive. From the survivor statements, to the browser history of the shooter, to the very words from his mouth, and contents of his Neo Confederate website and manifesto—this was clearly a racially motivated act of terrorism.
The reaction to this atrocity has been unbelievable. On one hand I am in awe of the people of Charlotte. The little murdering bastard wanted to ignite a race war and instead the people of the capitol city of the first state to secede from the union have come together in forgiveness and together forced the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the capitol grounds, and state after state is pushing for removing of Confederate symbols from government grounds.
On the other hand, corporate media and all of the mouth-breathing talking-heads are doing their damndest to spin this as one racist asshole and not as indicative of race relations—and some people are actually buying it! Some people are ignoring the deaths, the history of racism, the continued marginalization of non whites, and the overt disenfranchisement going on in the courts and legislatures, and instead scream some variation of, “YOU AIN”T GONNA TAKE MY RACIST FLAG IT’S MY HERITAGE!”
Every day I become a little more ashamed of large segments of this country.
Right now my ultra right wing and libertarian friends are thinking I’m about to start swimming in a deep vat of white guilt brought on by decades of the namby-pamby media telling me the plight of minorities is my fault. Conversely, I’m sure many of my uber progressive liberal left wing comrades expect me to start ranting about the white man and modern racist patriarchal Caucasian society oppressing the poor ignorant and helpless masses. In other words both extremes of the spectrum are expecting me to react just like they would.
All of you can just shut the hell up.
Despite what the likes of O’Reily, Hannity, and Limbaugh scream into their cameras and microphones, we do not live in a post racial America. Are things better than they were 1980 when I found out my ancestors fought under a banner dedicated to keeping millions of men and women under chains? Of course they have, anyone who tells you they haven’t knows nothing about history… of course anyone who tells you we’ve moved past such things is either a blind idealist or a fucking moron.
There’s still a long way to go but if you’d told me in the 1980’s we’d have a two term African American President, that LGBTQ people would be on the cusp of marriage equality, and that we would be openly debating these issues (along with a plethora of others) with tangible results before I was forty I’d have laughed in your face.
So today I’m sad and ashamed… but for tomorrow I still have hope.
– Josh
Published on June 25, 2015 08:30
June 21, 2015
Fathers Day 2015
If you’ve been reading my journals for any length of time you know this is a hard time of year for me. Not only is it summer, when everything bad seems to happen in my life, but it’s also Fathers Day.
Right now you think I’m going to bag on my dad or whine about my past, but I’m not.
Last year when I wrote my infamous Father’s Day Essay, which I clearly said would be the last one on the subject—I did more damage to my relationship with my father than good. That wasn’t my intention and looking back I take responsibility for it, I admit I fucked up big time. Let me be clear I’m not sorry for being honest and getting my feelings out, but I am sorry about how I went about it. I should have handled it better, not could have – SHOULD HAVE.
I don’t blame my dad for not talking to me anymore, I blame myself.
This year was looking to be worse than normal. It’s been more than a year since I spoke with my father and I’ll be honest it’s had me in the dumps. I’ve been seriously depressed over the last six weeks and been keeping it in house. I don’t mean I’ve been holding it in, because I haven’t, I mean I’ve been gun shy about talking about in a public forum even though that’s the tactic which has helped me so much over the last three years. Tell the truth and shame the devil depression cycle or not, I’ve never been this happy and I know it’s because I cleaned out my proverbial closet.
Now onto what’s different this year. Like I said depression was kicking my ass hardcore, until two days ago. That was when I had one of those lightning bolt revelations you read about in bad pulp fiction.
I realized I’m a father.
Yeah laugh all you want. I have six kids and been a dad since 1996, so yes, technically I’ve been a father for nineteen years. But now I get it. Now I understand what it means to be a father. My first born bio-kid, Chrissy, graduated high school last month and last week she started working fulltime on third shift at the local gas station while she bides her time till college starts in the fall.
It was a sledgehammer in my heart… and not in a bad way.
My kids are twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-four, eighteen, seventeen, and five. My youngest will be starting school at the end of the summer and then I will have an empty house every day. My kids are all growing up and doing their own thing and I’m so proud of each and every one of them. Stephen is married and working like a dog, Josh and his girlfriend live next door to us and are building a life together, Beth and her fella have their own place and she goes to school, Chrissy graduated and has a great future ahead of her, Alex is entering his last year of high school and has one of the best attitudes of anyone I know, and Katie is my bunny girl she makes the days brighter.
For the first time in my nearly thirty-nine years on this planet, Fathers Day means something very different to me. This year it’s about me being a dad, not lamenting what my relationship with my father had become, although that wound is always going to hurt, and my ham-handed attempts to fix things. This year I’ll be concentrating on my kids, but I’ll still be thinking about my dad… he’s my dad and I love him.
The last six months have been life changing for me but this one may top them all.
I’m a husband, I’m a son, and most importantly I’m a father.
– Josh
Right now you think I’m going to bag on my dad or whine about my past, but I’m not.
Last year when I wrote my infamous Father’s Day Essay, which I clearly said would be the last one on the subject—I did more damage to my relationship with my father than good. That wasn’t my intention and looking back I take responsibility for it, I admit I fucked up big time. Let me be clear I’m not sorry for being honest and getting my feelings out, but I am sorry about how I went about it. I should have handled it better, not could have – SHOULD HAVE.
I don’t blame my dad for not talking to me anymore, I blame myself.
This year was looking to be worse than normal. It’s been more than a year since I spoke with my father and I’ll be honest it’s had me in the dumps. I’ve been seriously depressed over the last six weeks and been keeping it in house. I don’t mean I’ve been holding it in, because I haven’t, I mean I’ve been gun shy about talking about in a public forum even though that’s the tactic which has helped me so much over the last three years. Tell the truth and shame the devil depression cycle or not, I’ve never been this happy and I know it’s because I cleaned out my proverbial closet.
Now onto what’s different this year. Like I said depression was kicking my ass hardcore, until two days ago. That was when I had one of those lightning bolt revelations you read about in bad pulp fiction.
I realized I’m a father.
Yeah laugh all you want. I have six kids and been a dad since 1996, so yes, technically I’ve been a father for nineteen years. But now I get it. Now I understand what it means to be a father. My first born bio-kid, Chrissy, graduated high school last month and last week she started working fulltime on third shift at the local gas station while she bides her time till college starts in the fall.
It was a sledgehammer in my heart… and not in a bad way.
My kids are twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-four, eighteen, seventeen, and five. My youngest will be starting school at the end of the summer and then I will have an empty house every day. My kids are all growing up and doing their own thing and I’m so proud of each and every one of them. Stephen is married and working like a dog, Josh and his girlfriend live next door to us and are building a life together, Beth and her fella have their own place and she goes to school, Chrissy graduated and has a great future ahead of her, Alex is entering his last year of high school and has one of the best attitudes of anyone I know, and Katie is my bunny girl she makes the days brighter.
For the first time in my nearly thirty-nine years on this planet, Fathers Day means something very different to me. This year it’s about me being a dad, not lamenting what my relationship with my father had become, although that wound is always going to hurt, and my ham-handed attempts to fix things. This year I’ll be concentrating on my kids, but I’ll still be thinking about my dad… he’s my dad and I love him.
The last six months have been life changing for me but this one may top them all.
I’m a husband, I’m a son, and most importantly I’m a father.
– Josh
Published on June 21, 2015 11:11
June 20, 2015
Johnny Got His Gun
There are several versions of the text of the Second Amendment, each with capitalization or punctuation differences. Differences exist between the drafted and ratified copies, the signed copies on display, and various published transcriptions. The importance (or lack thereof) of these differences has been the source of debate regarding the meaning and interpretation of the amendment, particularly regarding the importance of the prefatory clause.
One version was passed by the Congress.
As passed by the Congress and preserved in the National Archives, with the rest of the original hand-written copy of the Bill of Rights prepared by scribe William Lambert:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, then-Secretary of State:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
– Source: Wikipedia
It’s been said by many people in the last twenty years that there are five subjects you should avoid speaking of on the internet. In no particular order they are: race, religion, abortion, politics, and guns. I doubt it’s any coincidence these are the subjects Americans seem to hate one another for the most. These issues are always bubbling and threatening to go Mount Saint Helen’s on us at any moment. So of course it’s happened again.
Sigh… once more the issue of guns is as hot as magma in the USA.
Oh let’s just cut the bullshit and call it like it is—guns and the public right to access them has been a major issue for most of my life. When Saint, I mean President, Reagan was nearly killed by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981 all of the simmering factions on both sides of the gun control argument came to a head. What has followed has been a train wreck of pundits and demagogues on both sides drowning out the more reasonable and responsible voices.
So where do I stand and what am I going to say on this?
I’m not stupid, I know that no matter what I say someone will take objection to it and probably blast some form of derision in my direction. There was a time when I would have avoided this subject or done my best to walk a middle line like so many milk toast politicians. But that ain’t me anymore boils and ghouls.
I believe whole-heartedly in the rights of all Americas to keep and bear arms.
WAIT!!!
Before you either cheer and applaud me for being a REAL ‘MURIKAN or you start referring to me a psycho gun fetishist let me explain what I believe and why I believe it. At the end of this I promise you’ll be even more confused by where I stand than you are now. I aim to irritate and confuse all in equal measure.
I respect the weapon but I do not fear it.
I grew up around guns. From an early age I was taught that under no circumstances were guns to be treated as toys or playthings—they are weapons. At the best they are tools to be used to for target practice, but in the end a gun is designed for one end purpose, they are made to kill. Whether we are talking about animals or people in the end it’s all the same thing. How to approach, handle, use, and maintain a firearm was drilled into me from a young age.
I had a friend that wanted to get into a very heated discussion with me a few month ago about my assertion on the nature of guns. This friend, and yes he is a real friend and a person I respect a lot, has a VERY narrow view on the issue of firearms. I think he’ll go to almost any length to justify completely unfettered access to firearms and in our discussion he said my claim that guns are designed to kill was “Bullshit” he claimed competitive target shooting is just as relevant.
To that I say bullshit.
I know there are plenty of people who only shoot at targets, but in the end target shooting was started as a way to train better marksmen. The reason to be a better marksman is to use the gun for its intended purpose, which is to kill. Guns are made for killing. People who shoot competitively to the exclusion of all else are the exception, which proves the rule.
So if a gun has only one purpose in my mind why do I think we have a right to them?
For the same reason I should be able to do drugs, be an atheist, have sex with whoever I want, and do none of those things if I don’t want to. I am an American and we are supposed to be a country based on freedoms.
Right now the Libertarians are cheering and I’d ask them to stop.
I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat, and I’m not a Libertarian. If I am forced to identify with any affiliation other than Independent, it would be a Socialist. Not a Communist and not a Marxist, I identify as a Progressive Socialist.
I believe there is an implied social contract the ultra right wing never wants to acknowledge. Rampant the 100% Libertarian Capitalist style freedom is just as dangerous as Stalinist Communism. Every citizen has a duty to help maintain our society and lift up our fellow citizens. Not carry them, but give them a helping hand. We need one another, anyone who thinks our standard of living can be maintained when its every man for himself should look at wonderful places like Somalia.
But I still think I should be allowed to buy a gun if I want.
Something a lot of the Ultra Liberals don’t want to admit is intent follows the bullet. The adage “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is true in that a person has to pull the trigger. A gun, except under extraordinary circumstances, will not fire itself. If a person wants to murder another person they’ll find a way, but the ultra right need to admit that access to guns makes it a million times easier and that doesn’t even take into account accidental shootings.
What we need is common sense gun laws.
Before my gun rights advocate friends start screaming at me about “OBAMA TAKING OUR GUNS!” please allow me to invite you to be quiet. No one is taking your guns. Yes, there is a small percentage of people who’d love to take your guns, but I secretly bet a lot of them are people you support and think can do no wrong. Just as people like Ted Nuggent are a tiny minority of the gun crowd, the true “Gun Grabbers” are a tiny fraction of the control crowd. Conversely before my very liberal friends start yelling about rocket launchers and anti tank weapons for all I would like you to likewise be quiet.
I don’t have the answers but I have a few ideas. I’m sure none of them are new to any of you, but I’d like to state them before I wrap this up. It will only take a minute and then you can commence with the indifference, the agreement, or the hate.
Universal Background Checks: I don’t want people with severe mental illness or have been convicted of violent felonies with access to firearms. I have kid’s damnit.
Training and Licensing: You need a license to drive a car damnit.
Registration and Insurance: You need them for cars.
Age Limits: You have to be 18 to own a gun.
Assault Weapons: Sorry folks, but I’m just not sure. Sometimes I say ban them and other times I don’t. I don’t have an answer for everything, or most things, or many things, or what to have for dinner.
And that’s it, I know there are a lot of you who’ll think I go too far and those of you who’ll think I don’t go too far enough (if you get that reference you’re awesome). I won’t apologize these are the things I believe.
– Josh
One version was passed by the Congress.
As passed by the Congress and preserved in the National Archives, with the rest of the original hand-written copy of the Bill of Rights prepared by scribe William Lambert:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, then-Secretary of State:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
– Source: Wikipedia
It’s been said by many people in the last twenty years that there are five subjects you should avoid speaking of on the internet. In no particular order they are: race, religion, abortion, politics, and guns. I doubt it’s any coincidence these are the subjects Americans seem to hate one another for the most. These issues are always bubbling and threatening to go Mount Saint Helen’s on us at any moment. So of course it’s happened again.
Sigh… once more the issue of guns is as hot as magma in the USA.
Oh let’s just cut the bullshit and call it like it is—guns and the public right to access them has been a major issue for most of my life. When Saint, I mean President, Reagan was nearly killed by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981 all of the simmering factions on both sides of the gun control argument came to a head. What has followed has been a train wreck of pundits and demagogues on both sides drowning out the more reasonable and responsible voices.
So where do I stand and what am I going to say on this?
I’m not stupid, I know that no matter what I say someone will take objection to it and probably blast some form of derision in my direction. There was a time when I would have avoided this subject or done my best to walk a middle line like so many milk toast politicians. But that ain’t me anymore boils and ghouls.
I believe whole-heartedly in the rights of all Americas to keep and bear arms.
WAIT!!!
Before you either cheer and applaud me for being a REAL ‘MURIKAN or you start referring to me a psycho gun fetishist let me explain what I believe and why I believe it. At the end of this I promise you’ll be even more confused by where I stand than you are now. I aim to irritate and confuse all in equal measure.
I respect the weapon but I do not fear it.
I grew up around guns. From an early age I was taught that under no circumstances were guns to be treated as toys or playthings—they are weapons. At the best they are tools to be used to for target practice, but in the end a gun is designed for one end purpose, they are made to kill. Whether we are talking about animals or people in the end it’s all the same thing. How to approach, handle, use, and maintain a firearm was drilled into me from a young age.
I had a friend that wanted to get into a very heated discussion with me a few month ago about my assertion on the nature of guns. This friend, and yes he is a real friend and a person I respect a lot, has a VERY narrow view on the issue of firearms. I think he’ll go to almost any length to justify completely unfettered access to firearms and in our discussion he said my claim that guns are designed to kill was “Bullshit” he claimed competitive target shooting is just as relevant.
To that I say bullshit.
I know there are plenty of people who only shoot at targets, but in the end target shooting was started as a way to train better marksmen. The reason to be a better marksman is to use the gun for its intended purpose, which is to kill. Guns are made for killing. People who shoot competitively to the exclusion of all else are the exception, which proves the rule.
So if a gun has only one purpose in my mind why do I think we have a right to them?
For the same reason I should be able to do drugs, be an atheist, have sex with whoever I want, and do none of those things if I don’t want to. I am an American and we are supposed to be a country based on freedoms.
Right now the Libertarians are cheering and I’d ask them to stop.
I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat, and I’m not a Libertarian. If I am forced to identify with any affiliation other than Independent, it would be a Socialist. Not a Communist and not a Marxist, I identify as a Progressive Socialist.
I believe there is an implied social contract the ultra right wing never wants to acknowledge. Rampant the 100% Libertarian Capitalist style freedom is just as dangerous as Stalinist Communism. Every citizen has a duty to help maintain our society and lift up our fellow citizens. Not carry them, but give them a helping hand. We need one another, anyone who thinks our standard of living can be maintained when its every man for himself should look at wonderful places like Somalia.
But I still think I should be allowed to buy a gun if I want.
Something a lot of the Ultra Liberals don’t want to admit is intent follows the bullet. The adage “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is true in that a person has to pull the trigger. A gun, except under extraordinary circumstances, will not fire itself. If a person wants to murder another person they’ll find a way, but the ultra right need to admit that access to guns makes it a million times easier and that doesn’t even take into account accidental shootings.
What we need is common sense gun laws.
Before my gun rights advocate friends start screaming at me about “OBAMA TAKING OUR GUNS!” please allow me to invite you to be quiet. No one is taking your guns. Yes, there is a small percentage of people who’d love to take your guns, but I secretly bet a lot of them are people you support and think can do no wrong. Just as people like Ted Nuggent are a tiny minority of the gun crowd, the true “Gun Grabbers” are a tiny fraction of the control crowd. Conversely before my very liberal friends start yelling about rocket launchers and anti tank weapons for all I would like you to likewise be quiet.
I don’t have the answers but I have a few ideas. I’m sure none of them are new to any of you, but I’d like to state them before I wrap this up. It will only take a minute and then you can commence with the indifference, the agreement, or the hate.
Universal Background Checks: I don’t want people with severe mental illness or have been convicted of violent felonies with access to firearms. I have kid’s damnit.
Training and Licensing: You need a license to drive a car damnit.
Registration and Insurance: You need them for cars.
Age Limits: You have to be 18 to own a gun.
Assault Weapons: Sorry folks, but I’m just not sure. Sometimes I say ban them and other times I don’t. I don’t have an answer for everything, or most things, or many things, or what to have for dinner.
And that’s it, I know there are a lot of you who’ll think I go too far and those of you who’ll think I don’t go too far enough (if you get that reference you’re awesome). I won’t apologize these are the things I believe.
– Josh
Published on June 20, 2015 15:51
June 16, 2015
Mono-Poly?
I live in a monogamous relationship. I know people in polyamorous relationships, and I’ve known people in open relationships. Every one of these arrangements has its own set of pluses and minuses. They are all personal choices and to my way of thinking none of them are any better or any worse than the other. It all comes down to what the people involved want and need.
I think we all get monogamy, two people in a mutually exclusive relationship, period point blank. It’s simple and has been the benchmark of relationships for a very long time… although not as long or as wide as many a religious person would like to you to believe. Since we all get monogamy I don’t see the need to delve into it. If you think it’s the only option this essay is NOT in all likelihood for you and I invite you to exit stage left and have a tasty beverage—if I have any say in the selection one with some top shelf booze as a main ingredient would be the one to choose.
Are you still here?
Good, then let’s continue.
There is a growing fear amongst the anti same sex marriage crowd that the next fight will be for poly relationships. By “poly” I mean any relationship based around three or more partners in a consensual arrangement. I’m avoiding the more specific labels such as Polygamy, Polygyny, and Polyandry. This is simply a broad personal statement on Polyamorous relationships. I am tangentially adding the idea of Open Relationships to this essay, but much like different types of Poly Relationships I’m not going to delve into them specifically. That is NOT me implying they are the same thing, because they are not. I’m just a lazy man and don’t want to dig into any of the minutia.
I think the people fearing the rise of the poly lifestyle are absolutely right. The next equality fight may very well come from the multiple partner crowds and I’m okay with that. Let me say this right now, any statements I make in support of “Nontraditional” relationships is predicated on the position that all partners are of the age of consent and willing participants. Anything else is illegal, immoral, and should be prosecuted to the fullest.
Is that 100% clear?
Good… moving on.
I think, like most of you, I grew up wondering a lot about the differences between the emotion of love and sexual attraction. I was raised an American male in the later quarter of the twentieth century and therefore my views were shaped by those circumstances. Like most Americans of a certain generational threshold, I was taught there was a clear line of demarcation between love and sexual attraction. I was raised to believe a romantic/sexual relationship was between one man and one woman—anything else should be looked at with suspicion and disgust.
It didn’t take much time for me to start questioning those views.
We all know I’m bisexual and have always known it, even if I didn’t accept it until much later in life. But it is relevant because being who I am it provided the first crack in the wall between the fantasy of “Normality” and reality. With that having been established ad nausea I won’t go into it again. Let’s just say for sake of argument that I’ve always questioned the validity of the male and female only viewpoint and move on.
I remember when I was first introduced the idea of a true Polyamory like it was yesterday. Seriously it made a huge impression on me. I can still recall most of the details. In the summer of 1990 I moved from my grandparent’s home in Dayton, Ohio to my father’s house in Wayne, Michigan. I turned fourteen that summer and went to spend a week with my childhood best friend Jason.
That week was the last time I’d ever see him due to a falling out we had.
He was the same boy who was my first same sex kiss and I guess I consider him my first boyfriend the same way I consider Shannon Howard to be my first girlfriend. By that I mean we were in elementary school so take that however you wanted. It was my fault our friendship ended—I own that. When I showed up I learned he had a new friend, they were just friends I don’t think Jason actually had any interest in boys, and I hated him on sight. I mean I fucking loathed him and it was my jealousy and some really shitty things I said because of that jealousy that destroyed our friendship.
But none of that is relevant to this essay.
While I was there we both slept in the living room. We’d stay up watching bad movies and eating junk food. One of the nights Jason fell asleep long before me and I was so hyped on sugar and ramped up from watching Hellraiser 2 I never did fall asleep. At about three in the morning I stumbled upon a local Detroit talk show on one of the broadcast stations.
This stupid, poorly produced, local talk show was eye opening.
The subject was about poly marriage, although they didn’t use that term back in 1990. There were two women and one man and they all said they were married to one another even though it was illegal. These people were NOT sexy, let’s get that out of the way right now, and they weren’t eccentric weirdo’s. They were normal looking, sounding, and acting people. They spoke about how they fell in love, they talked about the guff they’d taken from their friends and family, and they spoke about how scared they were to come out and talk about it in public.
It was fascinating to say the least.
I think poly relationships are going to be very common in the coming decades and the way I see it there are three issues when it comes to being in poly relationships in the current day and age. The first, and probably largest, is legal. The second and of nearly the same importance, will be organizing the relationship to work for all partners. Third and to me least important, will be the religious aspects.
To the point of the legal ramifications let’s just be honest, it’ll be a mess for awhile. Americans are a leap before we look culture. We’ve always been that way and I find it hard to believe that’ll change any time soon. But it’s just a matter of finding a balance. It’ll take a series of laws and judicial rulings, but in the end things such as inheritance, divorce, and child custody will be shaken out.
I can’t speak to the interpersonal relationship aspects. Even in a purely monogamous relationship no two arrangements are alike. It’s up to the members of a relationship, no matter the configuration, to find the balance that works for them. It’s nobody else’s business how you live your life as long as you’re not actually hurting anyone.
As for the religious issues… I don’t give a shit.
I’m not being rude, but it just doesn’t apply to me. Although I will say if your deeply held, sincere, religious beliefs have a strong opinion regarding poly or open relationships then follow them. But if you use your religious beliefs on the matter to oppress or make life difficult for people not in your little group, then you’re an asshole and I’ll tell you so. I might get my nose broken, but I’ll still do it.
And that’s it. I make no recommendations for or against poly relationships. If they are for you, then I say why not look into it. If they’re not for you, then this essay was probably a colossal waste of time (it probably was regardless but at least it was free). It’s a big world with a lot of different wonderful people in it, dip your toes in lots of pools you might be glad you did.
Or not, what the hell do I know anyway?
– Josh
LINKS:·
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Josh-Hilden/e/B...
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/josh-hi... ·
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/10836796214340... ·
GWS Press Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/gwspress ·
Mailing List: http://forms.aweber.com/form/03/11031... ·
Twitter: http://twitter.com/josh_hilden ·
Watt Pad: http://wattpad.com/JoshHilden ·
Website: http://www.joshhilden.com/ ·
YouTube: http://youtube.com/user/marsbear22
I think we all get monogamy, two people in a mutually exclusive relationship, period point blank. It’s simple and has been the benchmark of relationships for a very long time… although not as long or as wide as many a religious person would like to you to believe. Since we all get monogamy I don’t see the need to delve into it. If you think it’s the only option this essay is NOT in all likelihood for you and I invite you to exit stage left and have a tasty beverage—if I have any say in the selection one with some top shelf booze as a main ingredient would be the one to choose.
Are you still here?
Good, then let’s continue.
There is a growing fear amongst the anti same sex marriage crowd that the next fight will be for poly relationships. By “poly” I mean any relationship based around three or more partners in a consensual arrangement. I’m avoiding the more specific labels such as Polygamy, Polygyny, and Polyandry. This is simply a broad personal statement on Polyamorous relationships. I am tangentially adding the idea of Open Relationships to this essay, but much like different types of Poly Relationships I’m not going to delve into them specifically. That is NOT me implying they are the same thing, because they are not. I’m just a lazy man and don’t want to dig into any of the minutia.
I think the people fearing the rise of the poly lifestyle are absolutely right. The next equality fight may very well come from the multiple partner crowds and I’m okay with that. Let me say this right now, any statements I make in support of “Nontraditional” relationships is predicated on the position that all partners are of the age of consent and willing participants. Anything else is illegal, immoral, and should be prosecuted to the fullest.
Is that 100% clear?
Good… moving on.
I think, like most of you, I grew up wondering a lot about the differences between the emotion of love and sexual attraction. I was raised an American male in the later quarter of the twentieth century and therefore my views were shaped by those circumstances. Like most Americans of a certain generational threshold, I was taught there was a clear line of demarcation between love and sexual attraction. I was raised to believe a romantic/sexual relationship was between one man and one woman—anything else should be looked at with suspicion and disgust.
It didn’t take much time for me to start questioning those views.
We all know I’m bisexual and have always known it, even if I didn’t accept it until much later in life. But it is relevant because being who I am it provided the first crack in the wall between the fantasy of “Normality” and reality. With that having been established ad nausea I won’t go into it again. Let’s just say for sake of argument that I’ve always questioned the validity of the male and female only viewpoint and move on.
I remember when I was first introduced the idea of a true Polyamory like it was yesterday. Seriously it made a huge impression on me. I can still recall most of the details. In the summer of 1990 I moved from my grandparent’s home in Dayton, Ohio to my father’s house in Wayne, Michigan. I turned fourteen that summer and went to spend a week with my childhood best friend Jason.
That week was the last time I’d ever see him due to a falling out we had.
He was the same boy who was my first same sex kiss and I guess I consider him my first boyfriend the same way I consider Shannon Howard to be my first girlfriend. By that I mean we were in elementary school so take that however you wanted. It was my fault our friendship ended—I own that. When I showed up I learned he had a new friend, they were just friends I don’t think Jason actually had any interest in boys, and I hated him on sight. I mean I fucking loathed him and it was my jealousy and some really shitty things I said because of that jealousy that destroyed our friendship.
But none of that is relevant to this essay.
While I was there we both slept in the living room. We’d stay up watching bad movies and eating junk food. One of the nights Jason fell asleep long before me and I was so hyped on sugar and ramped up from watching Hellraiser 2 I never did fall asleep. At about three in the morning I stumbled upon a local Detroit talk show on one of the broadcast stations.
This stupid, poorly produced, local talk show was eye opening.
The subject was about poly marriage, although they didn’t use that term back in 1990. There were two women and one man and they all said they were married to one another even though it was illegal. These people were NOT sexy, let’s get that out of the way right now, and they weren’t eccentric weirdo’s. They were normal looking, sounding, and acting people. They spoke about how they fell in love, they talked about the guff they’d taken from their friends and family, and they spoke about how scared they were to come out and talk about it in public.
It was fascinating to say the least.
I think poly relationships are going to be very common in the coming decades and the way I see it there are three issues when it comes to being in poly relationships in the current day and age. The first, and probably largest, is legal. The second and of nearly the same importance, will be organizing the relationship to work for all partners. Third and to me least important, will be the religious aspects.
To the point of the legal ramifications let’s just be honest, it’ll be a mess for awhile. Americans are a leap before we look culture. We’ve always been that way and I find it hard to believe that’ll change any time soon. But it’s just a matter of finding a balance. It’ll take a series of laws and judicial rulings, but in the end things such as inheritance, divorce, and child custody will be shaken out.
I can’t speak to the interpersonal relationship aspects. Even in a purely monogamous relationship no two arrangements are alike. It’s up to the members of a relationship, no matter the configuration, to find the balance that works for them. It’s nobody else’s business how you live your life as long as you’re not actually hurting anyone.
As for the religious issues… I don’t give a shit.
I’m not being rude, but it just doesn’t apply to me. Although I will say if your deeply held, sincere, religious beliefs have a strong opinion regarding poly or open relationships then follow them. But if you use your religious beliefs on the matter to oppress or make life difficult for people not in your little group, then you’re an asshole and I’ll tell you so. I might get my nose broken, but I’ll still do it.
And that’s it. I make no recommendations for or against poly relationships. If they are for you, then I say why not look into it. If they’re not for you, then this essay was probably a colossal waste of time (it probably was regardless but at least it was free). It’s a big world with a lot of different wonderful people in it, dip your toes in lots of pools you might be glad you did.
Or not, what the hell do I know anyway?
– Josh
LINKS:·
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Josh-Hilden/e/B...
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/josh-hi... ·
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/10836796214340... ·
GWS Press Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/gwspress ·
Mailing List: http://forms.aweber.com/form/03/11031... ·
Twitter: http://twitter.com/josh_hilden ·
Watt Pad: http://wattpad.com/JoshHilden ·
Website: http://www.joshhilden.com/ ·
YouTube: http://youtube.com/user/marsbear22
Published on June 16, 2015 08:10
June 15, 2015
Open your bag, pee in this cup… and smile while you do it
I’ve worked at a lot of places in my life. Some of the jobs have been awesome and some of them have sucked donkey balls. Some have been fun and more than a few have made me want to punch random strangers on the streets as they walk by and then challenge them to a duel when they get pissed off. From the grocery store to the mall, from the newspaper to the nursing home they’ve all had one thing in common. Every single one of them reserved the right to force me to open my bag and piss in a cup on demand.
What do I mean by that and why does it piss me off?
Give me a few minutes and I’ll try and explain.
Forcing a person to pee in a cup to get a job and to keep a job presupposes they may be a drug user and it’s the right of the business of the employer to know these things. Forcing a person to show you the contents of their bag is presupposing they are a thief. I will tell you right now some of this I understand and some of this is complete and utter bullshit.
Let’s back up for a second.
This won’t surprise a lot of my friends but those of you who only know me through my books and social media presence might not realize how dear I hold personal rights and privacy.
I’m gonna try to explain, but I apologize in advance if my explanation comes off as muddy. It’s a complicated and nuanced thing.
I believe in equality and want the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) brought back into open debate and revived. I’m pro gun rights and pro drug legalization. I’m an atheist who advocates for the complete removal of religious symbolism and overtones from public institutions, but will argue to the death for religious rights. I’m for the transparency of government, but I understand that SOMETIMES secrecy is needed to protect lives. I believe education, healthcare, water, food, housing, and speech are universal protected rights for every person. I believe corporations are NOT people. I believe in love and I acknowledge the reality of hate. There’s more and I could probably go on for awhile but I think this covers the basics.
See what I said, muddy as hell, sorry.
Now back to urine and man purses.
So here’s my problem with searches and drug tests. In my experience they are used to humiliate, they are unevenly enforced, and are completely detrimental to the operation of a business and tend to lead to MORE theft (in the case of bag checks) as opposed to less. There’s an inherent hypocrisy in these policies I will address later on, but I want you to remember I said that before I make the following statement, which will piss some of you off.
If the policies of drug testing and bag checks were 100% enforced and universally applied I wouldn’t like their existence, but I would accept them. Now don’t slam you’re computer shut and walk away, I have a rationalization for my views and an explanation why it’ll never happen.
First let’s talk about drug testing.
This one is simple, if everyone and by Tesla I mean EVERYONE had to have an initial drug screening I would actually be fine with it. I think it’s a waste of money, which the company better damn well eat, and frankly there are easy ways around it. I think the policy is unconstitutional but the various state and federal courts disagree with me on the subject. But in the end I want people responsible for enforcing the law and providing health and human services to be sober on the job. Personally I think as long as you’re sober ON THE JOB that’s all that matters but this isn’t an essay about the war on drugs… that’s for later.
Now we come to my own personal observations on the subject of workplace drug testing. With a few exceptions (spare me your isolated examples attempting to prove me wrong) drug testing in the work place is reserved for the lower echelon workers and the upper Muckity mucks are exempted from it. Let me tell you a single story from my own work history, although I could share dozens, to exemplify this point. When I was working at Toys R Us a friend of mine was injured. I was there when it happened, a box fell from a rack and hit her on the head. She needed two stitches and she was forced to take a drug test. She was clean so there was no issue, but it bothered me that even though she did nothing wrong she was still forced to take a drug test to prove she wasn’t high and at fault.
Fast forward three months.
One of the managers at the store filleted his hand open with a box cutter and had to have a half a dozen stitches. I don’t know if he was on anything and I don’t give a shit if he was, but for the sake of argument I’m gonna say he was completely sober. When he came back from the hospital I found out, not gonna say who told me but here’s some advice to upper management “The people you walk on are not your friends”, he never had to take a drug test. In fact, contrary to what we’d been told there was an unwritten rule that management was exempt from the policy. I don’t know if that unwritten rule was corporate, regional, district, or local and I don’t care. Even if it was just the store policy it proves my point about universal enforcement and implementation.
But that’s fair right?
I mean the bosses are just better people than the rest of us. It’s not like we had a store director at one point who was also a reserve swat team member who was hopped up on amphetamines all the time. No that never ever happened… except for when it did.
Now bag searches… this one really sticks in my craw.
In my not so humble opinion forcing workers to open their bags for inspection is unconstitutional. Once again many of the state and federal courts disagree with me on this but I bet you can guess how I feel about that. Once more my example comes from the land of Geoffrey the Giraffe, I worked there a long time Boils and Ghouls, sue me.
There was a standing rule that if you carried a bag it had to be inspected by a manager before you could leave for the day. Sometimes the rule was implemented and sometimes it wasn’t. We actually went months at a time when it was never even mentioned. And the process, oh the humiliating process, it was glorious in its awfulness. You had to go to the customer service desk at the front of the store, open your bag, and allow the manager or supervisor to root around in it while customers and employees watched.
Nothing like a little psychological and emotional rape to create a good working environment.
I will say this, the managers and supervisors weren’t dumb enough to not also subject themselves to the searches, in fact they made a show of it so everyone knew even they had to do it, except for one of them. Isn’t there always one asshole in the bunch?
We had a district manager by the name of Warren (not his real name) who carried a man purse everywhere, and by man purse I mean MAN PURSE. I carry a backpack or shoulder bag all the time, but Warren’s bag was something special. It was massive, it was made of really expensive hand tooled leather, and it never left his sight. Do you think that bag was ever once searched in all the years he was our district manager?
If you answered anything but no you should reread this essay.
I really don’t think I need to say anything else. I had to make a list and cull through my available stories because there were a lot of them. I think these two stories speak for all of the ones I didn’t choose and I think they serve to make my point.
All or none, there’s no middle ground… and that’s why things will never change.
– Josh
LINKS:·
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Josh-Hilden/e/B... ·
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/josh-hi... ·
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/10836796214340... ·
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YouTube: http://youtube.com/user/marsbear22
What do I mean by that and why does it piss me off?
Give me a few minutes and I’ll try and explain.
Forcing a person to pee in a cup to get a job and to keep a job presupposes they may be a drug user and it’s the right of the business of the employer to know these things. Forcing a person to show you the contents of their bag is presupposing they are a thief. I will tell you right now some of this I understand and some of this is complete and utter bullshit.
Let’s back up for a second.
This won’t surprise a lot of my friends but those of you who only know me through my books and social media presence might not realize how dear I hold personal rights and privacy.
I’m gonna try to explain, but I apologize in advance if my explanation comes off as muddy. It’s a complicated and nuanced thing.
I believe in equality and want the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) brought back into open debate and revived. I’m pro gun rights and pro drug legalization. I’m an atheist who advocates for the complete removal of religious symbolism and overtones from public institutions, but will argue to the death for religious rights. I’m for the transparency of government, but I understand that SOMETIMES secrecy is needed to protect lives. I believe education, healthcare, water, food, housing, and speech are universal protected rights for every person. I believe corporations are NOT people. I believe in love and I acknowledge the reality of hate. There’s more and I could probably go on for awhile but I think this covers the basics.
See what I said, muddy as hell, sorry.
Now back to urine and man purses.
So here’s my problem with searches and drug tests. In my experience they are used to humiliate, they are unevenly enforced, and are completely detrimental to the operation of a business and tend to lead to MORE theft (in the case of bag checks) as opposed to less. There’s an inherent hypocrisy in these policies I will address later on, but I want you to remember I said that before I make the following statement, which will piss some of you off.
If the policies of drug testing and bag checks were 100% enforced and universally applied I wouldn’t like their existence, but I would accept them. Now don’t slam you’re computer shut and walk away, I have a rationalization for my views and an explanation why it’ll never happen.
First let’s talk about drug testing.
This one is simple, if everyone and by Tesla I mean EVERYONE had to have an initial drug screening I would actually be fine with it. I think it’s a waste of money, which the company better damn well eat, and frankly there are easy ways around it. I think the policy is unconstitutional but the various state and federal courts disagree with me on the subject. But in the end I want people responsible for enforcing the law and providing health and human services to be sober on the job. Personally I think as long as you’re sober ON THE JOB that’s all that matters but this isn’t an essay about the war on drugs… that’s for later.
Now we come to my own personal observations on the subject of workplace drug testing. With a few exceptions (spare me your isolated examples attempting to prove me wrong) drug testing in the work place is reserved for the lower echelon workers and the upper Muckity mucks are exempted from it. Let me tell you a single story from my own work history, although I could share dozens, to exemplify this point. When I was working at Toys R Us a friend of mine was injured. I was there when it happened, a box fell from a rack and hit her on the head. She needed two stitches and she was forced to take a drug test. She was clean so there was no issue, but it bothered me that even though she did nothing wrong she was still forced to take a drug test to prove she wasn’t high and at fault.
Fast forward three months.
One of the managers at the store filleted his hand open with a box cutter and had to have a half a dozen stitches. I don’t know if he was on anything and I don’t give a shit if he was, but for the sake of argument I’m gonna say he was completely sober. When he came back from the hospital I found out, not gonna say who told me but here’s some advice to upper management “The people you walk on are not your friends”, he never had to take a drug test. In fact, contrary to what we’d been told there was an unwritten rule that management was exempt from the policy. I don’t know if that unwritten rule was corporate, regional, district, or local and I don’t care. Even if it was just the store policy it proves my point about universal enforcement and implementation.
But that’s fair right?
I mean the bosses are just better people than the rest of us. It’s not like we had a store director at one point who was also a reserve swat team member who was hopped up on amphetamines all the time. No that never ever happened… except for when it did.
Now bag searches… this one really sticks in my craw.
In my not so humble opinion forcing workers to open their bags for inspection is unconstitutional. Once again many of the state and federal courts disagree with me on this but I bet you can guess how I feel about that. Once more my example comes from the land of Geoffrey the Giraffe, I worked there a long time Boils and Ghouls, sue me.
There was a standing rule that if you carried a bag it had to be inspected by a manager before you could leave for the day. Sometimes the rule was implemented and sometimes it wasn’t. We actually went months at a time when it was never even mentioned. And the process, oh the humiliating process, it was glorious in its awfulness. You had to go to the customer service desk at the front of the store, open your bag, and allow the manager or supervisor to root around in it while customers and employees watched.
Nothing like a little psychological and emotional rape to create a good working environment.
I will say this, the managers and supervisors weren’t dumb enough to not also subject themselves to the searches, in fact they made a show of it so everyone knew even they had to do it, except for one of them. Isn’t there always one asshole in the bunch?
We had a district manager by the name of Warren (not his real name) who carried a man purse everywhere, and by man purse I mean MAN PURSE. I carry a backpack or shoulder bag all the time, but Warren’s bag was something special. It was massive, it was made of really expensive hand tooled leather, and it never left his sight. Do you think that bag was ever once searched in all the years he was our district manager?
If you answered anything but no you should reread this essay.
I really don’t think I need to say anything else. I had to make a list and cull through my available stories because there were a lot of them. I think these two stories speak for all of the ones I didn’t choose and I think they serve to make my point.
All or none, there’s no middle ground… and that’s why things will never change.
– Josh
LINKS:·
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Josh-Hilden/e/B... ·
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/josh-hi... ·
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/10836796214340... ·
GWS Press Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/gwspress ·
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Twitter: http://twitter.com/josh_hilden ·
Watt Pad: http://wattpad.com/JoshHilden ·
Website: http://www.joshhilden.com/ ·
YouTube: http://youtube.com/user/marsbear22
Published on June 15, 2015 10:08
June 5, 2015
The Day Job (at night) a Follow up
I received a message from a friend and former coworker at Bethany Village yesterday that metaphorically blew my fucking mind. Please allow me to set the stage before telling you what went down.
When I left the job at Bethany on Christmas Eve it was NOT under good circumstances. After my supervisor Kelly left in the spring things went to shit. Before that I have to be honest and admit my position at Bethany was the best “Regular Job” I’d ever had. The hours fit me perfectly, the lack of other coworkers and supervision on my shit was freeing, and being trusted to do my job right because I had the most experience and skill in the department (except for Jim) was a good feeling.
It didn’t last.
After Kelly quit things went to shit. The Department manager decided to take direct control of our area until a new supervisor was picked. This control continued after she picked a new supervisor in a way which directly went against the way she was supposed to. The job was never posted for interviews and applications instead she just picked someone she thought she could control. After that the job became one irritating bit of juvenile bullshit after another.
I’ve chronicled most of this, including the straw that broke the camels back, in earlier essays and I just don’t have it in me to rehash all that soggy stale crap again. Suffice it to say I was far from the last person to split from the company and I’m positive most of them left because of the same bullshit I left over. No one wants to work for below subsistence wages in place where they’re treated like brain damaged paraplegics. We were constantly made aware that we should be thanking their god that we had the job and that we could be replaced at the drop of a hat. So we should shut up about the shitty pay, crappy benefits, and horrid work atmosphere and take it.
Last night all of my feelings were validated. Kelly, now just my friend and not my supervisor, texted me the most awesome thing I’ve seen in quite awhile.
Cleaner – Floor Technician – $1,000 SIGN-ON BONUS!!!! (Full Time)
Location: Dayton
Full-time (6:30am-3:00pm; every other weekend): Position primarily responsible for shampooing, spot cleaning and vacuuming rugs, sweeping, mopping and refinishing hard surface floors, trash removal, cleaning common areas, event set-ups and other duties as assigned. Previous experience in housekeeping or janitorial field preferred, but will consider applicants with excellent work and attendance history. High school diploma or GED required.
Sign-On Bonus information:
Must apply before 6/30/15. $1,000 sign-on bonus (gross amount) will be paid out on 12/3/15.
That was my position people, not the same hours but the exact same position. There were supposed to eight CLEANERS in the Housekeeping department and when I left they were already two down, I made three. Things are so bad that they’re offering a one thousand dollar bonus!!!
I am still gob smacked by this.
I loved most of the people who live at Bethany and there are a few coworkers I miss seeing every day. But they could offer me a ten thousand dollar bonus to come back and I’d tell them to shove it up their ass. At one time the place was an amazing place to work not it’s just another place where squeezing every penny is more important than anything else. I miss the Bethany Village I hired into six years ago, I don’t even begin to recognize this bastardized version of what used to be a wonderful institution.
What I do now doesn’t pay as well, yet, but we’re growing every day. I love what I do and I wouldn’t trade more money with all the headaches for the freedom and fulfillment I have now. I can sit at my computer cranking wordage, editing, formatting, and doing administrative work for twelve hours in a day and not feel like I’ve worked one. I spent the last twenty years of my life telling people I was a Janitor, even when I was writing at full tilt but still working at Bethany I identified as a Janitor and there was nothing wrong with that. Being a Janitor is a perfectly respectable job and anyone who tells you its easy has never actually done it.
That being said, fuck you Bethany Village I’m not a Janitor I’m a Writer.
– Josh
LINKS:Amazon UK Author Page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B0094ACFPA
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/josh-hi...
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/10836796214340...
Mailing List: http://forms.aweber.com/form/03/11031...
Twitter: http://twitter.com/josh_hilden
Website: http://www.joshhilden.com/
When I left the job at Bethany on Christmas Eve it was NOT under good circumstances. After my supervisor Kelly left in the spring things went to shit. Before that I have to be honest and admit my position at Bethany was the best “Regular Job” I’d ever had. The hours fit me perfectly, the lack of other coworkers and supervision on my shit was freeing, and being trusted to do my job right because I had the most experience and skill in the department (except for Jim) was a good feeling.
It didn’t last.
After Kelly quit things went to shit. The Department manager decided to take direct control of our area until a new supervisor was picked. This control continued after she picked a new supervisor in a way which directly went against the way she was supposed to. The job was never posted for interviews and applications instead she just picked someone she thought she could control. After that the job became one irritating bit of juvenile bullshit after another.
I’ve chronicled most of this, including the straw that broke the camels back, in earlier essays and I just don’t have it in me to rehash all that soggy stale crap again. Suffice it to say I was far from the last person to split from the company and I’m positive most of them left because of the same bullshit I left over. No one wants to work for below subsistence wages in place where they’re treated like brain damaged paraplegics. We were constantly made aware that we should be thanking their god that we had the job and that we could be replaced at the drop of a hat. So we should shut up about the shitty pay, crappy benefits, and horrid work atmosphere and take it.
Last night all of my feelings were validated. Kelly, now just my friend and not my supervisor, texted me the most awesome thing I’ve seen in quite awhile.
Cleaner – Floor Technician – $1,000 SIGN-ON BONUS!!!! (Full Time)
Location: Dayton
Full-time (6:30am-3:00pm; every other weekend): Position primarily responsible for shampooing, spot cleaning and vacuuming rugs, sweeping, mopping and refinishing hard surface floors, trash removal, cleaning common areas, event set-ups and other duties as assigned. Previous experience in housekeeping or janitorial field preferred, but will consider applicants with excellent work and attendance history. High school diploma or GED required.
Sign-On Bonus information:
Must apply before 6/30/15. $1,000 sign-on bonus (gross amount) will be paid out on 12/3/15.
That was my position people, not the same hours but the exact same position. There were supposed to eight CLEANERS in the Housekeeping department and when I left they were already two down, I made three. Things are so bad that they’re offering a one thousand dollar bonus!!!
I am still gob smacked by this.
I loved most of the people who live at Bethany and there are a few coworkers I miss seeing every day. But they could offer me a ten thousand dollar bonus to come back and I’d tell them to shove it up their ass. At one time the place was an amazing place to work not it’s just another place where squeezing every penny is more important than anything else. I miss the Bethany Village I hired into six years ago, I don’t even begin to recognize this bastardized version of what used to be a wonderful institution.
What I do now doesn’t pay as well, yet, but we’re growing every day. I love what I do and I wouldn’t trade more money with all the headaches for the freedom and fulfillment I have now. I can sit at my computer cranking wordage, editing, formatting, and doing administrative work for twelve hours in a day and not feel like I’ve worked one. I spent the last twenty years of my life telling people I was a Janitor, even when I was writing at full tilt but still working at Bethany I identified as a Janitor and there was nothing wrong with that. Being a Janitor is a perfectly respectable job and anyone who tells you its easy has never actually done it.
That being said, fuck you Bethany Village I’m not a Janitor I’m a Writer.
– Josh
LINKS:Amazon UK Author Page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B0094ACFPA
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/josh-hi...
Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/10836796214340...
Mailing List: http://forms.aweber.com/form/03/11031...
Twitter: http://twitter.com/josh_hilden
Website: http://www.joshhilden.com/
Published on June 05, 2015 11:50
May 24, 2015
I’m a Bisexual Part 10 – “Jumping the Hurdle… and Running to the Next”
“Straight people say, ‘You know you’re just gay,’ and gay people say, ‘You know you’re just gay.’ There is such a thing as bisexual!”
– Andy Dick
This is the last part of this series of essays. I’ve said a lot, I’ve received a little amount of derision, and I’ve received more support and affection than I could have ever dared dream. This has been an amazing experience and if I’ve ever questioned whether coming out was a mistake, the overwhelming positive responses I’ve received have forever silenced them.
I am in amazingly high spirits on the subject of the LGBTQ (sorry I can’t bring myself to add more letters) movement. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has heard arguments on the case best set to legalize gay marriage nationwide and things look positive. In my ancestral homeland of Ireland, the Irish people have spoken in a national referendum and marriage equality is now the law of the land.
These are amazing things but not what has me truly upbeat.
As I swim the width and breadth if the internet I am seeing shifts in opinion. I see more people speaking up for the rights of their LGBTQ neighbors. I see the full retreat of the hate filled fundamentalist minority, who’re desperately clinging to outdated and vile points of view. I see the imamate full-scale collapse of the anti LGBTQ movement… they’re becoming a joke. We are jumping the wall and it feels amazing.
But it’s not the last wall.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t celebrate and I’m not saying the coming SCOTUS decision isn’t amazing. Let me be clear, if you’d told me at eighteen that before I was forty that true marriage equality would most likely be the law of the land I would have laughed in your face. But here we are, in what will probably be a 5 – 4 decision, at the end of June we’ll be one step closer to real equality.
It’s glorious but it’s not the end.
Right about now, I know someone will be thinking they should message me to ask me some version of this question, which I’ve received a lot in the last few years.
“Josh, you’re married to a woman and have been for almost eighteen years, you have six kids, and you’re a white American male so none of this affects you directly. Why are you speaking up and being loud about all of this? Why are you making it an issue?”
Sigh… I am so tired of trying to explain this to people, but I’ll try one more time. Let me make this very clear for the very last time in this series of essays, I AM A BISEXUAL. It does not define who I am anymore than my weight, my baldness, or my eye color defines me, but it is a fundamental part of who I am.
Does it really need to be explained further than that?
I truly hope not.
So what’s next, what do I see as the next target in the crusade to force equality upon the world? In twenty-nine states it is perfectly legal to fire or discriminate against a person based solely on their sexual identity or orientation. If you don’t believe me look it up, it might not be something that’s regularly used in the open but on paper the legality of it isn’t in dispute.
Does that sound right to any of you?
If it does once more I’m going to ask you to return any book of mine you may have purchased and see your way out the door. You’re not wanted in my world and I have no use for your money.
LGBTQ individuals need to be added to the list of protected classes. We need to expand the civil rights acts to include the LGBTQ community. I will even go further and really piss off some of the people I consider friends – we need to revive the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). We need to put it in the gods damned constitution of the United States of America that all citizen no matter of race, religions beliefs (yeah I’m an atheist but support this), gender, or sexual orientation have the EXACT SAME RIGHTS because we are Americans and we are supposed to strive for better!
All of my children are straight, or so they say, and I choose to believe them, but what about my future grandchildren and great grand children? I don’t even want to consider them going through the same pain I did in my journey to reach a point where I’m not only comfortable with my sexuality, but consider it a source of strength in my life. I want a world where someone’s sexual orientation and intimate life are no more interesting than a hairstyle or a new pair of shoes.
Will we see that before my time on Earth is done?
I don’t have an answer for that. In my lifetime we’ve gone from Mr. Harvey Bernard Milk, the first openly LGBTQ American elected to public office, being murdered to Kate Brown, an openly bisexual woman, becoming the Governor of Oregon. We’ve gone from homosexuality being listed as a mental disorder to gay conversion therapy being outlawed in state after state. We’ve gone from Stonewall to the Supreme Court.
I was almost a statistic, so many LGBTQ teens are killing themselves that it should be listed as an epidemic by the CDC, and I was nearly one of them. I was afraid and alone in a world that hated what I knew I was. Is it so surprising so many of us consider or have considered suicide the only way out?
I remember when the “It Gets Better” campaign started. All of these regular everyday LGBTQ men and women standing up (admittedly alongside famous people as well) and telling the young men and women wrestling with their sexuality that it does get better. I’m glad we can say that now and I want to add my voice to the hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) who’ve come before me.
I’ve been where you are and I promise you It Does Get Better.
– Josh
– Andy Dick
This is the last part of this series of essays. I’ve said a lot, I’ve received a little amount of derision, and I’ve received more support and affection than I could have ever dared dream. This has been an amazing experience and if I’ve ever questioned whether coming out was a mistake, the overwhelming positive responses I’ve received have forever silenced them.
I am in amazingly high spirits on the subject of the LGBTQ (sorry I can’t bring myself to add more letters) movement. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has heard arguments on the case best set to legalize gay marriage nationwide and things look positive. In my ancestral homeland of Ireland, the Irish people have spoken in a national referendum and marriage equality is now the law of the land.
These are amazing things but not what has me truly upbeat.
As I swim the width and breadth if the internet I am seeing shifts in opinion. I see more people speaking up for the rights of their LGBTQ neighbors. I see the full retreat of the hate filled fundamentalist minority, who’re desperately clinging to outdated and vile points of view. I see the imamate full-scale collapse of the anti LGBTQ movement… they’re becoming a joke. We are jumping the wall and it feels amazing.
But it’s not the last wall.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t celebrate and I’m not saying the coming SCOTUS decision isn’t amazing. Let me be clear, if you’d told me at eighteen that before I was forty that true marriage equality would most likely be the law of the land I would have laughed in your face. But here we are, in what will probably be a 5 – 4 decision, at the end of June we’ll be one step closer to real equality.
It’s glorious but it’s not the end.
Right about now, I know someone will be thinking they should message me to ask me some version of this question, which I’ve received a lot in the last few years.
“Josh, you’re married to a woman and have been for almost eighteen years, you have six kids, and you’re a white American male so none of this affects you directly. Why are you speaking up and being loud about all of this? Why are you making it an issue?”
Sigh… I am so tired of trying to explain this to people, but I’ll try one more time. Let me make this very clear for the very last time in this series of essays, I AM A BISEXUAL. It does not define who I am anymore than my weight, my baldness, or my eye color defines me, but it is a fundamental part of who I am.
Does it really need to be explained further than that?
I truly hope not.
So what’s next, what do I see as the next target in the crusade to force equality upon the world? In twenty-nine states it is perfectly legal to fire or discriminate against a person based solely on their sexual identity or orientation. If you don’t believe me look it up, it might not be something that’s regularly used in the open but on paper the legality of it isn’t in dispute.
Does that sound right to any of you?
If it does once more I’m going to ask you to return any book of mine you may have purchased and see your way out the door. You’re not wanted in my world and I have no use for your money.
LGBTQ individuals need to be added to the list of protected classes. We need to expand the civil rights acts to include the LGBTQ community. I will even go further and really piss off some of the people I consider friends – we need to revive the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). We need to put it in the gods damned constitution of the United States of America that all citizen no matter of race, religions beliefs (yeah I’m an atheist but support this), gender, or sexual orientation have the EXACT SAME RIGHTS because we are Americans and we are supposed to strive for better!
All of my children are straight, or so they say, and I choose to believe them, but what about my future grandchildren and great grand children? I don’t even want to consider them going through the same pain I did in my journey to reach a point where I’m not only comfortable with my sexuality, but consider it a source of strength in my life. I want a world where someone’s sexual orientation and intimate life are no more interesting than a hairstyle or a new pair of shoes.
Will we see that before my time on Earth is done?
I don’t have an answer for that. In my lifetime we’ve gone from Mr. Harvey Bernard Milk, the first openly LGBTQ American elected to public office, being murdered to Kate Brown, an openly bisexual woman, becoming the Governor of Oregon. We’ve gone from homosexuality being listed as a mental disorder to gay conversion therapy being outlawed in state after state. We’ve gone from Stonewall to the Supreme Court.
I was almost a statistic, so many LGBTQ teens are killing themselves that it should be listed as an epidemic by the CDC, and I was nearly one of them. I was afraid and alone in a world that hated what I knew I was. Is it so surprising so many of us consider or have considered suicide the only way out?
I remember when the “It Gets Better” campaign started. All of these regular everyday LGBTQ men and women standing up (admittedly alongside famous people as well) and telling the young men and women wrestling with their sexuality that it does get better. I’m glad we can say that now and I want to add my voice to the hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) who’ve come before me.
I’ve been where you are and I promise you It Does Get Better.
– Josh
Published on May 24, 2015 07:40
April 17, 2015
Everybody’s Working For The Weekend Part 5 – “Mallrat”
I love the mall.
Does that surprise you?
Well it shouldn’t.
I mean seriously boils and ghouls do the math. The epicenter of Mall Culture occurred when I was a teenager. I spent more evenings and weekends within the confines of one South Eastern Michigan mall between the ages of 14 and 18 than I feel comfortable admitting. My favorite destination, or as I called it my home mall, was the sprawling complex in Westland Michigan. It wasn’t the biggest, it wasn’t the fanciest, it wasn’t the cleanest, and it wasn’t the safest but by Tesla it was mine and I loved it.
When I was driven from Michigan I missed the Westland mall almost as much as I missed my friends… and more than most of my family.
When I left the Dayton Daily News I didn’t have another job lined up, this was the last time I found myself in that position, but unlike when I ran from Meijer I’d been actively hunting for a few weeks before the end of that nightmare. It was less than a full week, I believe four days, before I had an interview and was immediately offered a full time job with full benefits. Before cashing my last check from the Dayton Daily News, for they didn’t even do direct deposit for part time employees, I was a maintence man at the Dayton Mall.
Ah yes, the Dayton Mall. When I live in Dayton as a kid, between the ages of 11 and 13, The Dayton Mall was my mall. I had my first date there. I went to see Beatle Juice with Jenny Thornton. The Dayton Mall was the first place I was allowed to be for hours outside of the neighborhood without adult supervision, maybe in retrospect not the smartest decision on the part of my family. And the Dayton Mall was the first place a hormonally charged Josh got to second base with a girl.
Oh the memories…
I was hired into the maintence department technically as a beginner maintence tech but in reality my main job was to drive the Lot Sweeper. Allow me to tell you about the machine I named Greta. Greta was a one ton GMC pickup chassis with a blower/sweeper hopper mounted on the back end. I would arrive at the mall at five in the morning and sweep every inch on the parking lot until it opened at nine.
After that I’d follow the other maintence men around and learn how to do the myriad of jobs to been done in that shrine to consumerism. I was paid to learn to do things, skills I still employ to this day. We were a real team, everyone got along and we even hung out after hours as a group. On Saturdays and Sundays I was the only Maintence man on the premises and that was a revelation. I was given a tremendous amount of trust, I had keys to everything on the property except the stores, and that trust made me want to work harder.
I loved that job.
Don’t get me wrong, the pay sucked and the benefits were mediocre but it was without a doubt the most fun I ever had at job. That was until the outsourcing began. That was when the perfect job went sour.
The first things were small. The light bulb replacement inside the mall was outsourced to the people who did the parking lot lights (we didn’t have the equipment for that). Next came the plumbing, even I started getting worried about our job security when we weren’t allowed to replace a broken toilet. I mean seriously I could have done that before I started working at the mall and now we were call professional plumbers to do it.
The layoffs and Greta being sold were the final straws.
One day I was told the lot sweeping was being contracted out in two weeks and I needed to get Greta as clean as possible. I did clean her but somehow in the time between being told she was going and those bastards came to get her one of the sweeper engine cylinders cracked.
Am I saying I had something to do with that?
Of course not, what would give you that idea? Am I saying I might have seen the signs that the engine was in a bit of distress and I ignored it to the point of playing dumb when I was confronted by management?
You’ll just have to decide the answer to that on your own.
After that two positions were eliminated, one full time and one part time, and another person was transferred to an associated mall. The atmosphere went from one of camaraderie and brotherhood to one of suspicion and resentment. It got so bad that for the first time in my life I yelled at one of my bosses.
He thought he’d told me to come in early on New Year’s Day, he never did, and when he arrived and learned I hadn’t he lost his shit. He started screaming and throwing things, not at me just around, and I popped. He was one of those guys who reacted roughly to everything and the changes being made had him on edge. Still I’d had enough of bullying bosses and I told him in less than friendly terms that boss or not he’d better never talk to me like that again. Inside I was ready to drop to my knees and beg for forgiveness if he yelled back but outside I like to think I kept my composure.
He stopped in shock and left. Two days later… well he didn’t apologize but he indicated he’d fucked up and things were okay with us for the rest if tenure. We were never really friends but we could work together.
I, and everyone else in the department, was waiting for the word that our department was now outsourced (they did it to the security department before Easter) and we were all being laid off when a new opportunity presented itself. Fun fact before I continue, the department was eliminated a year later.
My wife was offered a management position at Meijer.
So in the end I left the mall job. Karen’s promotion actually left us with more than enough money to live on and the removed burden of childcare and transportation for two was a major stress reliever. For sixteen months I enjoyed the hell out of my life. I took care of my kids, I took care of my home, and I loved my life. That all changed when it was decided we had to join the throngs of other lemmings and buy a house.
– Josh
Does that surprise you?
Well it shouldn’t.
I mean seriously boils and ghouls do the math. The epicenter of Mall Culture occurred when I was a teenager. I spent more evenings and weekends within the confines of one South Eastern Michigan mall between the ages of 14 and 18 than I feel comfortable admitting. My favorite destination, or as I called it my home mall, was the sprawling complex in Westland Michigan. It wasn’t the biggest, it wasn’t the fanciest, it wasn’t the cleanest, and it wasn’t the safest but by Tesla it was mine and I loved it.
When I was driven from Michigan I missed the Westland mall almost as much as I missed my friends… and more than most of my family.
When I left the Dayton Daily News I didn’t have another job lined up, this was the last time I found myself in that position, but unlike when I ran from Meijer I’d been actively hunting for a few weeks before the end of that nightmare. It was less than a full week, I believe four days, before I had an interview and was immediately offered a full time job with full benefits. Before cashing my last check from the Dayton Daily News, for they didn’t even do direct deposit for part time employees, I was a maintence man at the Dayton Mall.
Ah yes, the Dayton Mall. When I live in Dayton as a kid, between the ages of 11 and 13, The Dayton Mall was my mall. I had my first date there. I went to see Beatle Juice with Jenny Thornton. The Dayton Mall was the first place I was allowed to be for hours outside of the neighborhood without adult supervision, maybe in retrospect not the smartest decision on the part of my family. And the Dayton Mall was the first place a hormonally charged Josh got to second base with a girl.
Oh the memories…
I was hired into the maintence department technically as a beginner maintence tech but in reality my main job was to drive the Lot Sweeper. Allow me to tell you about the machine I named Greta. Greta was a one ton GMC pickup chassis with a blower/sweeper hopper mounted on the back end. I would arrive at the mall at five in the morning and sweep every inch on the parking lot until it opened at nine.
After that I’d follow the other maintence men around and learn how to do the myriad of jobs to been done in that shrine to consumerism. I was paid to learn to do things, skills I still employ to this day. We were a real team, everyone got along and we even hung out after hours as a group. On Saturdays and Sundays I was the only Maintence man on the premises and that was a revelation. I was given a tremendous amount of trust, I had keys to everything on the property except the stores, and that trust made me want to work harder.
I loved that job.
Don’t get me wrong, the pay sucked and the benefits were mediocre but it was without a doubt the most fun I ever had at job. That was until the outsourcing began. That was when the perfect job went sour.
The first things were small. The light bulb replacement inside the mall was outsourced to the people who did the parking lot lights (we didn’t have the equipment for that). Next came the plumbing, even I started getting worried about our job security when we weren’t allowed to replace a broken toilet. I mean seriously I could have done that before I started working at the mall and now we were call professional plumbers to do it.
The layoffs and Greta being sold were the final straws.
One day I was told the lot sweeping was being contracted out in two weeks and I needed to get Greta as clean as possible. I did clean her but somehow in the time between being told she was going and those bastards came to get her one of the sweeper engine cylinders cracked.
Am I saying I had something to do with that?
Of course not, what would give you that idea? Am I saying I might have seen the signs that the engine was in a bit of distress and I ignored it to the point of playing dumb when I was confronted by management?
You’ll just have to decide the answer to that on your own.
After that two positions were eliminated, one full time and one part time, and another person was transferred to an associated mall. The atmosphere went from one of camaraderie and brotherhood to one of suspicion and resentment. It got so bad that for the first time in my life I yelled at one of my bosses.
He thought he’d told me to come in early on New Year’s Day, he never did, and when he arrived and learned I hadn’t he lost his shit. He started screaming and throwing things, not at me just around, and I popped. He was one of those guys who reacted roughly to everything and the changes being made had him on edge. Still I’d had enough of bullying bosses and I told him in less than friendly terms that boss or not he’d better never talk to me like that again. Inside I was ready to drop to my knees and beg for forgiveness if he yelled back but outside I like to think I kept my composure.
He stopped in shock and left. Two days later… well he didn’t apologize but he indicated he’d fucked up and things were okay with us for the rest if tenure. We were never really friends but we could work together.
I, and everyone else in the department, was waiting for the word that our department was now outsourced (they did it to the security department before Easter) and we were all being laid off when a new opportunity presented itself. Fun fact before I continue, the department was eliminated a year later.
My wife was offered a management position at Meijer.
So in the end I left the mall job. Karen’s promotion actually left us with more than enough money to live on and the removed burden of childcare and transportation for two was a major stress reliever. For sixteen months I enjoyed the hell out of my life. I took care of my kids, I took care of my home, and I loved my life. That all changed when it was decided we had to join the throngs of other lemmings and buy a house.
– Josh
Published on April 17, 2015 04:54
April 14, 2015
Everybody’s Working For The Weekend Part 4 – “I am the security department bitches!”
I quit Meijer the first time in a steaming rage of adolescent stupidity. After I quit and had enough time to regret it, like some men regret blowjobs from sixty year old partial amputee tranny hookers, I was broke and desperate.
Much like those same Hooker clients.
I hunted everywhere for a job with nothing to show for it in three months. We were subsisting off Karen’s income as a cashier at Meijer and NO child support from her ex-husband, it would be many years before we saw a dime from him and then it was grudgingly. I was talking to a friend of mine and he said there was an opening where he worked. He was a security guard at the Dayton Daily News building in downtown Dayton. This was before the new facility was built in Franklin Ohio.
I had no desire to be a security guard. As I have said so many times over the course of our journey in the words of these essays I am a complete pussy when it comes to confrontation. And unfortunately confrontation is an essential aspect of security work. I did the interview and the only thing I remember about it is that Karen drove me and brought all of the kids (four at that time) and when the parking meter ran out she had to circle the block waiting for me.
She was not happy.
I got the job and it was … well it sucked. I busted my ass at that job because I was told I was next in line to be made full time. To be honest compared to the rest of the people working there a donkey retired from a long term stint in Tijuana would have been a super star. While I was there I went above and beyond. I worked double and triple shifts, I came in every time I was called no matter the occasion, I did extra duties such as sitting in a van for eight hours guarding equipment in downtown Dayton, and I reported on some of my fellow employees to my bosses because there was a massive power struggle going on in the department.
Yeah … I am more than a little ashamed of myself for that last one. Of course I also wrecked the security van in a parking structure built in the 1950’s but those fuckers couldn’t fire me for that one. I’d said more than once I was uncomfortable driving in the parking the structure.
The Dayton Daily News was the only job where I have ever flat out kissed the bosses ass. My boss was a tall piece of shit named Chuck. Chuck was the slimiest cocksucker I’ve ever had the disservice to work with or for. He was a steroid juiced misogynistic douche bag who stuck his cock in every woman and girl that crossed his path. He was a backstabbing piece of shit and seemed to get off on setting his employees against one another. Part of me believes the son of a bitch sat in his closet of an office and jerked off watching us on the security monitors. But at the time I believed I was one of his “Boys” and that as long as my lips stayed super glued to his cinnamon ass cheeks I could enjoy the ride.
I had dirt on Chuck that it never even crossed my mind to use.
During the adventurous week of sitting all night in the van guarding the equipment downtown I had to relieve Chuck on one of the mornings. I drove to the van and nobody was in the front seat. I walked to the back and opened the rear door.
Inside Chuck was fast asleep … and so was Gina.
Gina worked first shift security and she was a nice girl of eighteen. Chuck fawned over her and gave her whatever she wanted. But people were never upset with her about it because she seemed to be genuinely nice. First off, the problem with what I walked into was Chuck asleep (they’d fired a guy for it less than a month before for the same thing). Second off, was Gina being there (we’d been told nobody was to join us in the van).
Oh and third they were both 90% naked.
Chuck freaked out and yelled at me to close the door. Five minutes later they drove off and I took my shift guarding the stuff. I never said anything. I never even thought to say anything. At that moment I still thought Chuck was my friend and even though he was twenty years older than her I figured they were consenting adults.
Of course I was a naïve and their “relationship” was an open secret.
There was another woman working security. Her name was, and probably still is unless she did us all a favor and jumped off a bridge, Ruby. Ruby was the first black person I ever met that actively hated white people on the surface and was not afraid to let everyone know it. She was also wet for Chuck and was fucking him in his office from day one working at the paper. After she found out that her mahogany stallion was fucking the little white girl she went insane. She started taking her anger out on everyone else and making an already combative and stressful workplace a hundred times worse.
All of the drama culminated with Ruby calling Gina’s father and telling him in a disguised male voice that Chuck was fucking his daughter. It was never proven that she was the one who did it but when I picked up my last check she was there working and she laughed her fucking head off at me and called me the dumbest motherfucker she had ever met.
But I am getting ahead of myself,
Chuck decided that it was either me or another guard that did it and tried to have us fired, but since it couldn’t be proven Human Resources wouldn’t allow him to do it. Instead he started cutting hours and holding me to an unbelievably high standard. But I was a good worker and there was nothing he could get me on.
Then I called in sick one night.
He decided that I was not allowed to come back without a doctor’s note even though I did not have a single write up. At first I was going to fight it and set up a meeting with Chuck’s boss … but then I pussied out and quit.
I had no intention of keeping that job but I was ashamed of the way I left. I never got to have that reckoning, I never got to have my say, I never got to be a man and confront that piece of shit.
I eventually got to have that experience with another boss and reclaim my manhood … but that is another story, for another day.
Much like those same Hooker clients.
I hunted everywhere for a job with nothing to show for it in three months. We were subsisting off Karen’s income as a cashier at Meijer and NO child support from her ex-husband, it would be many years before we saw a dime from him and then it was grudgingly. I was talking to a friend of mine and he said there was an opening where he worked. He was a security guard at the Dayton Daily News building in downtown Dayton. This was before the new facility was built in Franklin Ohio.
I had no desire to be a security guard. As I have said so many times over the course of our journey in the words of these essays I am a complete pussy when it comes to confrontation. And unfortunately confrontation is an essential aspect of security work. I did the interview and the only thing I remember about it is that Karen drove me and brought all of the kids (four at that time) and when the parking meter ran out she had to circle the block waiting for me.
She was not happy.
I got the job and it was … well it sucked. I busted my ass at that job because I was told I was next in line to be made full time. To be honest compared to the rest of the people working there a donkey retired from a long term stint in Tijuana would have been a super star. While I was there I went above and beyond. I worked double and triple shifts, I came in every time I was called no matter the occasion, I did extra duties such as sitting in a van for eight hours guarding equipment in downtown Dayton, and I reported on some of my fellow employees to my bosses because there was a massive power struggle going on in the department.
Yeah … I am more than a little ashamed of myself for that last one. Of course I also wrecked the security van in a parking structure built in the 1950’s but those fuckers couldn’t fire me for that one. I’d said more than once I was uncomfortable driving in the parking the structure.
The Dayton Daily News was the only job where I have ever flat out kissed the bosses ass. My boss was a tall piece of shit named Chuck. Chuck was the slimiest cocksucker I’ve ever had the disservice to work with or for. He was a steroid juiced misogynistic douche bag who stuck his cock in every woman and girl that crossed his path. He was a backstabbing piece of shit and seemed to get off on setting his employees against one another. Part of me believes the son of a bitch sat in his closet of an office and jerked off watching us on the security monitors. But at the time I believed I was one of his “Boys” and that as long as my lips stayed super glued to his cinnamon ass cheeks I could enjoy the ride.
I had dirt on Chuck that it never even crossed my mind to use.
During the adventurous week of sitting all night in the van guarding the equipment downtown I had to relieve Chuck on one of the mornings. I drove to the van and nobody was in the front seat. I walked to the back and opened the rear door.
Inside Chuck was fast asleep … and so was Gina.
Gina worked first shift security and she was a nice girl of eighteen. Chuck fawned over her and gave her whatever she wanted. But people were never upset with her about it because she seemed to be genuinely nice. First off, the problem with what I walked into was Chuck asleep (they’d fired a guy for it less than a month before for the same thing). Second off, was Gina being there (we’d been told nobody was to join us in the van).
Oh and third they were both 90% naked.
Chuck freaked out and yelled at me to close the door. Five minutes later they drove off and I took my shift guarding the stuff. I never said anything. I never even thought to say anything. At that moment I still thought Chuck was my friend and even though he was twenty years older than her I figured they were consenting adults.
Of course I was a naïve and their “relationship” was an open secret.
There was another woman working security. Her name was, and probably still is unless she did us all a favor and jumped off a bridge, Ruby. Ruby was the first black person I ever met that actively hated white people on the surface and was not afraid to let everyone know it. She was also wet for Chuck and was fucking him in his office from day one working at the paper. After she found out that her mahogany stallion was fucking the little white girl she went insane. She started taking her anger out on everyone else and making an already combative and stressful workplace a hundred times worse.
All of the drama culminated with Ruby calling Gina’s father and telling him in a disguised male voice that Chuck was fucking his daughter. It was never proven that she was the one who did it but when I picked up my last check she was there working and she laughed her fucking head off at me and called me the dumbest motherfucker she had ever met.
But I am getting ahead of myself,
Chuck decided that it was either me or another guard that did it and tried to have us fired, but since it couldn’t be proven Human Resources wouldn’t allow him to do it. Instead he started cutting hours and holding me to an unbelievably high standard. But I was a good worker and there was nothing he could get me on.
Then I called in sick one night.
He decided that I was not allowed to come back without a doctor’s note even though I did not have a single write up. At first I was going to fight it and set up a meeting with Chuck’s boss … but then I pussied out and quit.
I had no intention of keeping that job but I was ashamed of the way I left. I never got to have that reckoning, I never got to have my say, I never got to be a man and confront that piece of shit.
I eventually got to have that experience with another boss and reclaim my manhood … but that is another story, for another day.
Published on April 14, 2015 11:54