Another round of auctions...I'm almost halfway to my goal in paying the lawyer. Good stuff!
Decided that if I do decide to sell the game with the figures, I will auction them off individually. That will get me the highest amount of money. The one guy offering me $300 was kind of insulting. He said "I'll pay good $$" and then threw a lowball offer at me. Nah bro. You can fight it out with the others in an auction environment if that's how it's gonna be. No deal.
There was this other matter... Let me tell ya 'bout my friend Cody...
Cody is a train wreck, no two ways about it. He has left the devastation of poor life choices like the path of a tornado in his wake. Yet honestly, I feel sorry for the guy, and at least a bit admire him. He had cancer, had multiple surgeries, and during all of that he was a millwright. In other words, a laborer who dismantles, moves, assembles, and repairs large machinery and structures. The guy has ALWAYS been kind of a hard working survival badass. That, I admire. His work ethic and perseverance.
He is GWAR people, a longterm fan of the band, I've known him online for ages, and first met him in person on one of my trips back to VA in...2012? I think? Feels like I've known him a long time. He's covered in tattoos, he's been to prison, he hooked up with a woman and got her pregnant...they were happy, but then not, explosions of drama and violence, she took her drug addicted pregnant self off elsewhere and they fought it out with lawyers. He begged and borrowed money from people on social media, but probably spent it on drugs. He got busted for trying to move and sell meth, and went to jail, got out, is now back in the heavy labor in Iowa, cutting down and chipping a tree last I saw.
Anyways, he's one that I would never really allow TOO close, because obviously the guy is involved in some shady stuff...but when I saw him at shows or whatever, I would give him a hug and a few words of encouragement, let him know I saw how hard he worked and was impressed. Sometimes a few kind words go a long way in the life of someone who is struggling. And it costs me nothing.
Well, Cody was bidding on a rare shirt, and another bidder got the best of him. He really wanted the shirt but he said more than that he wanted to help me out with my situation I'm in (I gave him the short version, divorce kinda burned me, lawyer, bankruptcy)...and he was going to surprise me by sending me $100 even if the bidding stopped around 80. Well it occurred to me... I have this jacket, it's a canvas mechanic's jacket with a liner. It was sold to me because it was too small for the collector who had it previously, but Cody is a small, skinny dude. I can't wear it because the sleeves are just a bit too long for me. However, most men even if they aren't BIG men, tend to have broader shoulders, slightly longer arms. So it just might fit Cody. And it's not likely to fit most of the guys in the group where I've been auctioning stuff, but they'd bid on it just because it is SUPER rare. I could see it fetching 100-130, depending on who got involved in the bidding.
So... I offered to sell it to Cody for 100 since he got outbid on the shirt.
He says he has to "figure out how Paypal works." So uh...we'll see?
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On the Facebooks... There was an article about this person called Ohh, who decided to become a "genderless alien." The clickbait has social media all aflutter because it mentioned they might adopt a child. The reason for the mention, was that critics of Ohh's choice to remove their genitals and become truly "genderless" were being responded to in part with the whole "hey, if I want kids I'll just adopt." It wasn't so much "Hey look how shocking, not only am I weird, I'm going to expose kids to my weirdness! Be afraid!!" But of course that's how people were taking it. Well I gleefully jumped into an argument over this. Here is why....
The position that the herd should be outraged and upset by this WEIRD PERSON who is going so far out of their way to be SO HORRIBLY DIFFERENT...they are saying makes Ohh unfit to be a parent and are trying to prop up this assertion with "logical" "concerns" about Ohh's mental health. Being so different, on purpose, gosh we need to slap some sort of a diagnosis on that person. Definitely don't let them be around children. I mean. We can't have kids thinking it's ok to be so different. Before you know it, there will be scary weirdos everywhere you look! Heavens to fucking Betsy already, where will it end??
-.-
I get upset by this, not because this particular case is any of my business...but because it touches on some points that I feel a need to defend on principle.
If you judge books by covers, you're going to have a bad time. Let's start there. I am so sick of "normal" people figuring that people who look different are therefore some sort of a threat. Most murderers and pedophiles look just like average, typical, normal whitebread folks. I sometimes suspect that powerful rich white men at the top (leaders of business and government) deliberately guide social thinking to feel safe and complacent with a certain "normal" appearance because they themselves wish to get away with horrors behind that smokescreen. Hey, no one would suspect a clean cut older gent in a suit of preying upon children, would they? It's surely that black man, that brown man, or that person with a mohawk or a Satanist or the gays, or some WEIRDO...clearly a misfit who does not belong in polite society...THEY are the ones to protect your precious babies from. Politicians? Nah, hand over your spawn to be jostled and smooched. Go ahead. It's a photo op! Trust them. They're famous. Nothing could POSSIBLY go wrong.
As someone who grew up loving the more colorful of humanity, keeping company with goths, metalheads, punks, geeks, queer and kinky, pagans, heathens, athiests and Satanists, deviants of many flavors...as well as plenty of normalsauce... I know I'd rather trust the ones who look different. While sure there are some like Cody who walk a path fraught with hardship and hazard, there are so many who are smart, sensitive, and deeply GOOD. More to the point, the most "mentally ill" and dangerous, disturbing or scary people I have ever known have always looked reasonably normal, not dramatically different.
I mean, to lure victims, you don't exactly want to look alarming.
So this assumption that uncomfortable difference is some indicator of danger or anything "unhealthy"... It's so false that I feel a need to make a serious effort to push it over, every time I see it rearing its ugly stupid head. I just can't let it be.
Moving on. The pathologizing, the "concerns" about Ohh's mental health, about their "self image distortion, dysmorphia, and addiction to plastic surgery." Oh, let's by all means break this argument.
1. Ohh should be evaluated as to whether they would be a fit parent in exactly the same manner as anyone is prior to adoption.
2. Even if Ohh has diagnosable mental health issues, I know plenty of parents who do, and who are still good parents. Including a close friend who is diagnosed schizophrenic and sort of believes herself to be a fairy. Her son is about to graduate with a full scholarship. Mentally ill does not mean dangerous, or an unfit parent.
3. Most women, especially those of us who have had babies, suffer from "self image distortion" and "dysmorphia" to some degree. Most of us just learn to live with the body image issues and moderate our self loathing somehow. Many struggle with depression. Some, who can afford it, get plastic surgery. A few get EXTENSIVE plastic surgery. Practically all spend time and money trying to look closer to the way they wish they looked. But because a.) they are trying to be "hot" and men support that (sexualization is fine) and b.) they are trying to move closer to "normal" and not further from it... their ability to parent isn't even slightly called into question because of any of this, nor is their mental health, even if in fact their mental health IS questionable sometimes. But by all means. Let's put the freak under a microscope. Clearly, they are asking for it.
NEXT! The main reason I'm pushing back so hard. I don't believe that the things that a person does that don't affect others, justify bad behavior towards them. It's echoed in "she was dressed this way and so she asked for it." And the friend I had with brilliantly colored hair, and the argument that strangers on the street were justified in invading her life with unwanted attention. That looking different justifies rude reactions. No. It does not. A person's tattoos don't give anyone license to touch their skin. No matter what anybody looks like, we all need to learn to be civil. And if you don't, you get to own the fact that you are an asshole, I figure.
I know this argument is a rather liberal one...but see, I've heard conservatives argue that the person who is "asking for it" needs to take personal responsibility for the consequences. And here I am making the argument that the person being a dick to others needs to take personal responsibility for that. And maybe all it amounts to is various people pointing fingers at others and demanding that other people take responsibility for things. The difference though is that one group just wants to be free to look strange or live strange. The other wants the freedom to not see strange people in their environment, apparently. Who is the "snowflake?" Who is demanding a safe space? The person who wants to not be yelled at or harmed, or the one who thinks they have the right to a life of not encountering challengingly different people.
Whose feelings are the more fragile? The "victim"...or the bully?
