some stuff I had lying around (ramble town)

29 years old now.


I didn't have as much to catch up on as I thought. I've started volunteering at the local zoo.  I love being around all the animals. I've been pretty depressed lately and they uplift me. I'm hoping to get stationed in this self-sufficient building that collects all its own water and shit.  There is also an insect observatory and a bee/hummingbird open garden. I just like being involved in something that matters. Getting kids excited about nature is the best part. I don't love kids. I don't want any of my own. But I love nature and knowing that I am instilling in some small way a wonder and fascination and respect and love of nature is supremely rewarding. It was upsetting to find out that Care.org had sponsored an event to protest our zoo, even though it's one of the best AZA accredited zoos in the nation. They use propaganda to get people to donate more. Using people's love of animals against them. I blocked their ads on Instagram now because I can't really trust the information. How many petitions did I sign that weren't truthful and did naively more harm than good?


Mommy's maybe got
a bit of blessing in her bottle
her teeth are fake
her clothes are worn
she lives in a hovel


I'm sad. My heart mourns.


I don't care for all this man hate recently. I had a friend ask me when I was over at her apartment, "Guys suck right?!" in a way that made it seem like the most acceptable answer was, "Yea!"
I was uncomfortable and I think I awkwardly eeked out a, "yeaaaa" and then felt slimy as she went back to her conversation.
I don't think men suck. I don't think men are trash.  I think saying those kinds of things is exactly why some men end up sucking. We expect it of them.  Many guys that society deems as 'good' get bullied and called, "Pussy!" or "Faggot!" which not only degrades the boy but also degrades women and homosexuals by saying that because of their sexual identity and/or orientation that they are somehow less than a man (which is presumably what the boy is supposed to be). When we say words we write a connectivity pattern in our brain. Every time we repeat words or sets of words we more strongly establish them in our minds. If we constantly tell little boys to, "Toughen up, don't cry. Act like a man, walk it off," when they are legitimately hurt or confused or upset, then we are telling them that we don't care about their emotions and just want to them to be stoic. We are rewriting that pattern over and over and over. The other thing that happens in your brain is that connections you don't use fall into disrepair and aren't strong and are less likely to fire. So when you say, "Guys suck," instead of, "Guys need to change," you are choosing to view the situation negatively and those positive outlooks will start to breakdown, and when something bad happens you may say, "Guys suck," instead of recognizing the individual for his faults but keeping a fair outlook on an entire gender.
Children can only hear this kind of talk from adults. Many of these insults are delivered before or during sexual maturity when nobody has any real clue what's going on. Adults tend to project their experience onto children. [[It could be as offhanded as when you drop your kids friend off at his house and after the door closes you say, "Who was that Mexican kid?" (when that kid was actually Filipino, but your child had never even noticed he was different at all) Or it could be more direct by attaching your own opinions about them based off your experience. Like say you think Christianity is absurd, and there is a cross in the yard and you say, "Religious nut-jobs." As a parent, you are setting a standard to how to view these types of people.]] This type of talk and teaching internalizes a fear of being emotional and a desire to be tough and aggressive to fit into society.  It internalizes an understanding that to be a man, one is better than other kinds of people. It propagates the falsehood that men inherently believe that they are better than others, when really we are the ones who teach each other how to label and view the world. We are living in the era, right now, where we begin to eradicate this type of thinking.
We need to be conscious. Progress does not come lightly. We have an abusive relationship with our own species and our planet. Leaving an abusive relationship is hard; that's why so many people stay in them.  Changing your life and taking responsibility is scary, but most people would agree that you should still leave. We need to end this relationship of hate and abuse and build a new one based on love and support and understanding. Men aren't garbage that needs to be tossed, they need to be allowed to take on a new role within our society.
It's unfair to punish all men with these kinds of blanket statements because hindsight is 20/20. We are lucky to be able to say we live in a time where we can tell a man, "No, let's figure it out together." And we should take advantage of this new found enlightenment to teach new people of the world. Men don't suck, men need to grow and that's okay. We need to let them, instead of making them feel guilty for the last thousand years. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. It does absolutely no good to make negative blanket statements about men. It chooses a side when we should all be on the same side.  We need to believe in each other, not write each other off.


Mav