Feelings as the world falls apart

     I feel so heartbroken.  I feel as useless as a chocolate teapot or a computer with a magnet stuck to it.  I can't handle fear; if I could, I'd have gotten my Bachelor's Degree and be in a different city or state right now.  Nothing I do seems to be working.  I begged Tara Platt and Abby Trott for silly selfies on BlueSky, ultimately having to acknowledge they probably don't want to do social media as much anymore because all of it is propagating Nazis who think they should just be housewives.  I want to punch Google in the face for their racist, sexist, antisemitic and homophobic decisions.  I want to smash things with a sledgehammer while crying and screaming bloody murder.  I am scared my Mom will lose the right to vote.  I'm scared it's too late because it required more of Congress to say "no," and the majority party says nothing but "yes," even when it's illegal and unconstitutional.  There is no hope.  Satan and Nazis are everywhere.  Soon the military will march north of the 49th parallel to seize Canada, triggering the bloodiest nuclear war in history.  They will torture me and it will hurt.  I want to die.

Writings from my second of three memoir classes

 Pivotal Moments:

 

Seeing The Laramie Project:

 

    I had to see The Laramie Project for my drama class.  My friend Whitney volunteered to see it with me and drive me home.  As I saw Matthew Shepard cruelly murdered, the Mormon stood out like that racist Phillies manager would later stand out in "42," insisting nothing be done for Matthew.  Then, even the Catholic who arranged his funeral said, "He got what he deserved, and I hope he recanted before death."  I knew being that lifestyle wasn't a choice and they were being homophobic.  It was then that I realized that's how the outside world sees us.

 

Choosing Garden Street Methodist:

 

    It was finally too much.  Years and years of no safety, only talking about the Mariners and living with anxiety that my secret of being an LGBTQ+ rights advocate would be outed for that Church to punish me and call me "of the world," as they toted on Facebook.  It had to stop.  Same-Gender marriage was constitutional and a woman called us the "United States of Sodom and Gomorrah."  She said she'd go to Canada and I told her "it's been legal there for a decade."  I wanted to scream "Why don't you go to Israel like all you extremists want because you think we're destroying the world?!"  I cried with Mom.  BCC couldn't be my home anymore.  I just wanted to play a certain way with video game characters in response to our carelessness and they wouldn't stop punishing me.  They probably laughed victoriously after those 2 elections and the death of Rachel Held Evans.  They oppose love and trade Jesus for corrupt CEOs and mindless celebrities.

 

Beating Three Houses: 

 

     I was unrelenting on the dragon, the Immaculate One.  I saw in her everything I had come to hate; saying God was responsible for punishment, utter contempt, no desire to let us criticize her and be peaceful in doing so.  The axe, the magic, the sword, into her face as I screamed.  No more would my two girls need to hide.  No more of this theocratic dictator.  And in a few blows, it was over.  The animation that followed, wondrous.  Edelgard and Byleth leapt, smashing the dragon's skull.  Byleth then collapsed as the Immaculate One died.  Edelgard began crying, it was then that it hit most to home how similar we are.  Byleth returned to life and for once, I was at peace as Edelgard cradled her.

 

5 key figures:

Mom

Dad

Miley Cyrus

Rachel Held Evans

Tara Platt

 

Letter to Rachel Held Evans:

 

Dear Rachel,

    I would like to start by apologizing for how little this country listened to you.  I would also like to apologize for abandoning Twitter from late 2017 to late 2020, you needed the support.  You don't know me, we never spoke, but I always admired how bold you were in speaking the truth.  No matter how many enemies you made, you spoke the reality without sarcasm, without fear and with nothing but righteous indignation.  I retweeted you a few times, hoping Michael Sweet would listen and change, realizing he had become a Nazi.  But I doubt I could say anything strong enough to get him to rethink his politics.  I have read "What is God like?" and have 2 copies, one for myself and the other for my nephew.  I wish you were still here, I don't feel a lack of fear in speaking the truth.  I know the Wishbone version of "Tom Sawyer" says "Never be ashamed of the truth," but I fear backlash every time I post truth, as well as fear of the despair that comes from dwelling on hard realities.  I think you would've been a good friend to Brandi Carlile and Miley Cyrus.

Love, 

Daniel Short

Bellingham, WA 

Stress-release valve

     Every email list I'm following is telling me to donate money to their work, and I don't have the budget and possibly the funds to donate.  I have to make more payments this month and I can't afford to donate, or my housekeeper is unpaid and I can't get the deluxe edition of "Slippery When Wet" by Bon Jovi, the 1986 album that gave us "Wanted Dead Or Alive" and other hits.  I'm not enjoying this, I'm drinking so much soda because I don't trust my food stamps to last into every next month, but the caffeine makes it all so much worse.  I'm having to shut down how much I look at these emails because I'm getting the urge to kill some people who share my building with me, I even flipped off one of them, though she didn't notice.

 

    I feel like if I don't do enough, they will come to haul my LGBTQ+ friends off to die and I will be left and I need to die with them.  There is no hope.  The culture has shifted to worship Trump and soon, all art will be propaganda, all news will be propaganda and they will kill millions for having a different opinion.  It will be worse than the Holocaust and they have already begun demanding the world join them in fascism.  There will be no term limit.  I can't donate to the left-leaning causes any more than $20 a month to Faithful America and $20 a month to the Pride Foundation IF I still have my SSDI payments.  They will starve me to death and make me homeless.  I just feel if I could donate to Daily Kos and MoveOn more than $1,000 a week each, it'd all go away.  But there's no way I can afford that.  All I can do is post African-American baseball players and music to BlueSky and post LGBTQ+ music and couples in entertainment and hope that is enough.  I am devastated by "Date Everything" getting held back to June, because it was to be my new way of speaking out on social media by dating both genders, as you need to date all 100+ characters to beat the game.  Now I have to wait until then and the end of May for it and "Rune Factory; Guardians of Azuma," where I can do same-gender marriage and plan to have the girl protagonist marry Clarice, a soldier-type who is hard on herself to the point she "can't forgive herself" and "doesn't know why people are nice to her."  This character trait was on full display with both Edelgard and Dimitri in Fire Emblem; Three Houses.  I'm so messed up and sad.  I worry sports teams will stop celebrating minorities because of Federal pressure.  I worry I'm going to kill someone because the pressure is so high, the evil is so dark and there feels like nothing I can do, what stops me is knowing if I do, all my causes die with my arrest as they pick apart my laptop and history.  I often feel like I can't do this anymore because I'm just so pressured and I don't feel like I can do enough.  Please check out my BlueSky page: https://bsky.app/profile/danielshort89.bsky.social and tell me if I'm doing enough.  Facebook feels too dark to make a difference right now.

Writings from my first of three memoir classes

     It's getting hard to do this, but I really want to write for something beyond just a stress-release valve, something meaningful that creates positivity instead of dwelling in all the anxieties and angers the world creates and hits you with, or at least provides a distraction from that.  I want to write a memoir and try to create positive change, so I'm taking a three-session class about it.  Here's what I wrote tonight, plus some bonus content I didn't get to writing.

 

Breakfast:

 

    My Aunt and Uncle were extremely generous in letting me stay at their home in Federal Way the night after my first Seattle Kraken game.  My Aunt promised me French Toast for breakfast, but all I could wrap my sleepy brain around was going to sleep.  I had walked from Climate Pledge Arena to T-Mobile Park, not knowing where the 1 Line stops between those points.  I crashed around 1:00 in the morning, getting up to use their restroom, accidentally letting one of their 3 cats in doing so.  Opening the door to let her out, another padded in as if waiting for the door.  I awoke before they called me, having a plate of crunchy bacon with the toast, which I poured pancake syrup on.  I tried to be careful and not get any syrup on the bacon, but it ended up on a strip regardless.  This didn't detract from its taste and the moist syrup enhanced the chewy toast with egg innards applied.  I had a glass of cool, creamy milk to hydrate myself, as I've heard milk hydrates better than water.

 

Room:

 

    It was a cold December Day, at least, I think it was cold.  I posted clips from Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, my favorite, or one of my favorite, movies to BlueSky that morning, it had been released in theaters 30 years ago that day.  I assured myself I would watch it, finally popping the DVD in, but I did not want to stop after the film was done.  What was there, the fear and rage of the internet otherwise?  Trying to be heard and feeling like failing?  I went with Sailor Moon S, an anime movie from the same time.  The DVD was old, I had gotten it from an FYE almost 20 years ago.  It still had the bad dub, not the newer one from 10 years ago with everyone I knew from video games, so I watched it subtitled.  I still didn't want to stop when that was done, it was about 5:00 and there was still time. So I popped in Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, my favorite movie from 2024 I had at the time and watched that for the first time on DVD.  Still, my hunger for video lingered afterward, so for a finale, I watched the Sailor Moon's first season's episode 16 with that dub.  I don't know anywhere else where the half-genie heroine's voice chats with a more motherly Flame Emperor/CEO of the Kirijo corporation period, let alone wanting to learn to sew for a handmade bridal gown competition.  Feeling accomplished for once, I bragged about my marathon achievement online.

One week later

     A week has passed since I last posted and most of the orders are here now.  I now have several books, movies, TV shows and video games that are brand-new and put $25 dollars into savings.  It was going to be more, but I made a mistake with some money my Mom gave me to pay my housecleaner and needed to make a transfer.  I haven't fully gotten into everything, but I read the kids' books I ordered for my nephew, as well as one I ordered for myself and a second Godzilla-Power Rangers crossover comic.  This one wasn't as good as the first, the artwork was pretty bad and they threw way too much into the story to properly develop it.  There were some good moments in spite of that, though, so it wasn't a waste of money.  I also saw some episodes of Power Rangers; Lightspeed Rescue and enjoyed them, as well as many tracks from CDs I bought and also ones purchased on iTunes.

 

    Brandi Carlile and Elton John are releasing a collaborative album April 4th, which improves this year somewhat, and I got new songs by Electric Callboy and Sammy Hagar with Joe Bonamassa.  I also have a new live album from Led Zeppelin and a live album with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on guitar.  I will be taking part in February 28th's "Buy Nothing" campaign and the hardest part of this year is sending so many warnings and emails to politicians who are already going to vote against everything bad, but it won't make any difference because they're not the majority party.  Part of this makes me want to encourage violence against this country or at least the ruling party because I've had enough of them, I even wrote "Impeach, Arrest And Execute" the president in a hashtag when posting a protest song of Duff McKagan's on his birthday.  I honestly wish the guy in Butler hadn't missed, which just says to me the "president" is, in fact, Satan and made him miss through infernal powers.  He will not die, his cult will donate organs to keep him in good health for decades.  The only way out of it is to steal the football and give it to Canada or China and destroy the United States with its own weapons.  Speaking of, since the NFL changed "End Racism" to "Choose Love" to appease a dictator who doesn't know what love is, I will not be watching the Super Bowl or going to Seahawks games until it changes back, IF it changes back, which it won't.

 

    I also bought a ticket to see KT Tunstall in Mt. Vernon in May, she's a Scottish singer/songwriter who sang "Jump" by Van Halen at Brandi Carlile's "Girls Just Wanna Weekend" last year wearing spandex and a glittery silver wig, doing the jump-toe touch thing David Lee Roth used to do.  I only have 11 orders to go through before my Amazon boycott, I hope the company goes under and dies.  I hope everything Republican dies in slow and painful fashion, burning in Hell for eternity.

Sunday update

     I really can't take intaking all this bad news, I'm starting to shower multiple times a day and take naps because I'm getting so overwhelmed.  I'm getting stress pimples, as well.  It is really hard to be myself in these times because it doesn't feel like enough compared to everything.  I am terrified my income is going to be gone next month since they aggressively took over the Treasury yesterday.  They are attacking left-leaning Christian institutions for showing compassion, which is also terrifying, it suggests they will introduce an executive order criminalizing reconciling congregations and that line of thought that goes with it.

    I got a large amount of excess money, because Social Security does that sometimes, this month and bought three Pokemon games, donated to fire relief, donated to Faithful America and the Pride Foundation and some Democrat things, bought a lot in iTunes and am trying to end my Amazon time by buying so much of my wishlist I will have no use for it and just buy from Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and CDJapan rather than lining Bezos' criminal, racist pocket.  I might still use it for minor things I can't find at the other places, but I ordered so much it's lost its luster for now.  Today, I got Power Rangers; Lightspeed Rescue and the old TV show Night Gallery from there, they are now in my apartment.  I ordered them because Toei used the concept of Rangers fighting through a monster afterlife 8 years earlier in Jetman, and since I saw that episode, I wanted to have the series where I first got the concept.  Also, internet reviewer Linkara is a fan of Night Gallery and listed his top 15 segments either 9 or 10 years ago, making me curious since he avoided spoilers.  Provided I still have money, there are still items pre-ordered throughout the year, but it's too hard to shop there and feel good about yourself, so I'm buying my last orders, waiting for the pre-orders and likely saying goodbye to the majority for a while, possibly forever, I feel it may be possible they they could be good, have unions, not blame African-Americans and support Democrats, but that isn't happening right now.

    I saw my first NHL game on Thursday and the Kraken won 6-2, they scored 4 goals in the first 6 minutes of the second period.  I didn't know players just go on and off the ice so often based on personal need and only one fight broke out (though those who took part in it got sent to the Penalty Box).  Events I bought tickets to using my windfall were Warren Haynes at the Neptune Theater and Billy Idol and Joan Jett at the Climate Pledge Arena.  Warren Haynes is the lead singer/guitarist for Gov't Mule and tends to lean on jamming more than regular setlists, so almost anything goes.  He has done great versions of Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" with Grace Potter, Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," The Beatles' "Helter Skelter," Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here," Jimi Hendrix's "Power of Soul" and "Spanish Castle Magic" and the Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider."  Since I'm mostly writing this for Dad, I know he knows who Billy Idol and Joan Jett are.  This year is going to be terrible, but provided I still get money, there will be bright spots to look forward to.

My catastrophic thinking is out of control

     I am not taking these last 9 days well.  It is clear to me, as well, this is not going to stop in 2028, since a Tennessee Congressman introduced an amendment to grant him a third term, probably without him needing to win an election to ensure him in his current role as long as possible.  I foresee this is going to be a life term, and the Fox News Confederates raised on Rush Limbaugh and all the stuff Reagan permitted with trickle-down economics and getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine will cheer gleefully.  I heard a sample of my nearby neighbor's far-right news and they are presenting it as though everything Democrat, everything "Woke," is satanic and pagan and Trump is the only one who can restore sanity because we are out of control and ruining America.  They will never regret their decision, they will see it as the right thing forever, even as they burn in Hell for eternity.  I am honestly hoping either a coalition of nations carpet-bombs the USA into oblivion or that someone steals "the Football," gives it to Canada or China and turns the US into a crater at the bottom of the ocean, killing everyone in it because even the good Americans can't stop their children from turning evil as the Nazis raise them to be heartless, racist, homophobic and xenophobic.  Might as well look at my nephew and know he will turn into a soldier that turns his parents and I in to an "Auschwitz is a 5-star resort compared to this" death camp!  They took away Medicare and I have a doctor's appointment next week and a counselor's appointment today, do I just miss them and die?!  DEATH TO AMERICA!  DEATH TO ITS POPULACE!  DEATH, JUSTICE FOR HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI!  JUSTICE FOR THE CHINESE CHILDREN IN SWEATSHOPS!  JUSTICE FOR THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY!  JUSTICE FOR THE AFRICAN-AMERICANS!  DEATH TO THE WAR PIGS!  THEY'RE NOT HUMAN, THEY ARE THE SPAWN OF SATAN, MURDERING THEM IS JUSTIFIED!  KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!

    I said that last one in the shower last night, and started crying.  It's a line from King Dimitri from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, when he's ready to commit genocide against Adrestia because he's not well, he's seeing ghosts and he feels betrayed by a childhood friend.  He is a traditionalist and his nation has a state religion.  Adrestia is ruled by Emperor Edelgard, who I've talked about quite a bit.  She has been catharsis for all this madness in the past, she is a revolutionary against a theocratic dictator, who kills people for not liking her and has installed a system that leaves many without.  She suffers from depression from being tortured in "experiments" caused by an organization that seems to take inspiration from Nazis and especially Joseph Mengele, treating people as test subjects to experimental surgeries just to see what happens and not caring if their "subjects" live.  One of the best parts of the spin-off, Three Hopes, is that in the Final Battle, you can strike their leader as Edelgard with an axe repeatedly.  I feel the game's fandom has a lot of very aggressively opinionated people due to somewhat mirroring the current political climate.  I may be one, because I refuse to leave Edelgard's catharsis of striking down people who remind me of every bully I've ever met and suffered from.  But Dimitri is not one of them, she almost cries after killing him and suggests earlier he was her first love.  I don't want to succumb to anger, but it feels like I have to in response to all the evil.

    I've been listening a lot to Brandi Carlile, Miley Cyrus, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and things of that calm, folk rock nature these days.  My first NHL game is tomorrow, as well, which will be a nice distraction.  I am hopeful the Mariners won't cave to Executive Branch pressure and still have Pride Night and African-American Heritage Night at the games I'm going to in June, though I keep imagining a declaration that all Pride and Juneteenth celebrations will be prosecuted with mass arrests and beatings.  Right now hurts and future hope seems dim because of the overreach they're doing.  I would stop going to Amazon if they weren't the only place I know that has Yang and Blake necklaces and a bumper sticker of Edelgard with a lesbian flag.  I could try eBay, but I always feel highly stressed there, because you're not looking for something specific, you have a general parameter and you want something in there in your budget.  It did net me my Edelgard plush and my Mitsuru and Yosuke mini-figurines, but I can't imagine using it for everything, especially not shopping for Mom, my Brother and my Sister-In-Law.  I honestly am not sure if Bob Ferguson is doing anything based on his promise that Project 2025 would not hit Washington State.