Archive of ‘personal’ category

Never mind, everyone! I have been proven wrong.

When this school district got enough pressure put on it by people who kept pointing out that they were flying in the face of CDC recommendations, they made the “difficult decision” to close schools for another week. Yeah, I know. It must have been incredibly difficult to turn away all of the federal funding that you would have gotten from opening schools back up even though it would have come at the cost, and on the backs of, those who are at increased risk from the potential community spread of COVID-19 (you know, coronavirus), those that this could very easily incapacitate if not outright kill. Spare me your melodrama and how this was allegedly actually a “difficult decision” for you. This just lines your pockets a little bit less. You don’t have to deal with the harsh realities that come with the actual panic (not the “alleged panic”) of possibly catching this, getting hospitalized with this, winding up on a ventilator, possibly dying and leaving loved ones behind because someone’s pocket book was more important than keeping fragile members of the community safe. Spare me your manufactured melodrama about how this was actually a “difficult decision” for you. Shut up.

Our county is now at age three on the “action plan”. This means…

· stay home if you are sick
· avoid contact with individuals who are sick
· avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unclean hands
· cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue away
· clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces with a disinfectant
· don’t travel to areas with active community spread
· wash your hands with soap and water regularly
· use hand sanitizers with at least 60% of alcohol content when soap and water are not available

· Actively practice “social distancing”
· whenever possible maintain 6 feet distance from other persons
· avoid physical contact with other persons in social and workplace settings
· postpone or cancel all gatherings of 50 or more people if possible

But most recently…

· the county may issue orders prohibiting and/or restricting mass gatherings and/or movement of people

Don’t imagine it, because it actually happened.

But imagine advocating so hard for the local school district to commit to an extended closure of schools, which other school districts in the area have done, that their response to you doing so over the course of several comments left on their social networking pages is to actually block you because they are that desperate to open doors and resume school for access to those federal dollars that they are willing to risk the health and lives of the at-risk students and members of their community as a direct result of this… and that they don’t even care, because the superintendent himself is literally willing to chalk it up as “panic” because he is literally all about that money. But as I’ve mentioned in here, I’ve attended this school district myself. I have absolutely nothing nice to say about this school district at all, and I mean every single word of this sentence. This school district has not improved at all, and their response to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic absolutely shows that in their recent actions. They are willing to endanger their at-risk students, the at-risk parents of those students who may be in attendance, other household members or people that they routinely come in contact with, and other members of the community by being in such a rush to open the doors to these schools back up (so much for “social distancing”, eh?) that they make it blatantly obvious that they continue to be all about that federal funding that it absolutely sickens me. This district is just trash.

At this point, I think that this district will always be trash and that it will never, ever redeem itself. Ever.

If anything changes between now and the time that school doors are supposed to re-open, of course I will make another post in here reflecting that, but this school district has always put money above the health and lives of the populace at large because… let’s face it, when has it not? “Panic” takes on a whole new meaning when you yourself are a member of that at-risk population. When this is something that could incapacitate or kill you, it’s not something that you’re “panicking” over, it’s a real-life scenario that you have to try to avoid. Anyone who claims it’s “panic” who is not in the at-risk group is trying to flex on privilege.

What the Catholic church really needs to knock off.

Complaints of mine that I’ve managed to come up with during Quarantine and Chill:
· actually “deciding” which religion’s baptisms are valid and which are not
(they seem to have this peculiar thing against Mormon baptisms… like, who died and made you arbiter?)
· deciding whose marriages are “valid”, “that you can only have one”, and their stupid annulments
(how about you stay out of the marriages, or private lives, of people who are not Catholics, for one thing?)
· expecting that non-Catholics, especially non-Christians, adhere to these “marriage rules” to make it valid
(for instance, not going into a marriage “completely open to life” or placing limits… makes it invalid)
· making you go through nearly an entire school year’s worth of preparation if you “really want to get baptized” or come into the church as an adult (or anyone older than the age of… like, seven), which I’ve read the curriculum of and… the personal accounts of from a lot of people who have personally gone through this to completion, found that a lot of the actual classes are superfluous at best and that there could really be improvement for a lot of this, and that there is almost no flexibility in any of it adjusting for life circumstances
· that individuals with Celiac disease or liver problems get the short end of the stick
(the cracker has to have wheat, and the “blood of Christ” has to have alcohol in it, folks, or it’s “not valid”)
· that even in a mixed marriage, the kids have to be baptized Catholic, because Catholicism “has to win out”
(hey, remember how well that went in 2010 when Bub was never baptized Catholic? try that shit again, y’all)

This is just my short list of things that really bother me about the Catholic church, going along with the major problems that I have with it that make me all the more glad that I chose to… out myself in the manner that I did, resulting in me being dropped from the RCIA class roster at the end of the very first class that I took, the first, the last, and the only one. To this day, I still have absolutely no regrets about any of that, and to this day, I still do not want to convert to Catholicism, nor do I want either one of my children to have anything to do with the church such that I will not consent for them to have any involvement with it where it is needed.

Imagine wanting to use Discord so badly…

(And this is relevant to this blog, because Discord is frequently used by gamers to text and voice chat.)

…that you come up with some form of fake ID so that you can use it, because your first account got banned when you were reported to Discord administrators for being under the age that you have to be (thirteen years of age or older) to use the chat program, as per COPPA rules. Remember that whole story that I’ve mentioned from time to time? Well, come to find out that the person that I, and one other person, had actually reported to Discord had actually been banned. He had been given fourteen days to prove to Discord that we weren’t lying when we reported him for being twelve years old, and he couldn’t, because… wait for it, he was twelve years old, under the age of thirteen, which you have to be over to legally use Discord because Discord adheres to COPPA. So he gets himself some fake ID, which is going to make reporting him a lot more difficult, and makes himself another account, and comes right back. I’m not even sure if reporting him again is going to be worth it since his birthday is coming up in several months unless he makes an absolute prat out of himself in the chat, because man, y’all, this kid is actually that determined. And I don’t know whether to be impressed, frightened, or both. Were any of us this way when we were pre-teens?

But was the Internet this way when we were this old? No, it wasn’t. Point made. Point absolutely made.

The impression that I get is that this kid’s parents just don’t care what he’s doing online because they seem to… I don’t know, take him at his word that everything he’s doing is okay, no, it’s fine, really. And this makes me want to watch everything that my own kids do online all the more, even though with both of them being autistic, I mean, I do that even more already than I would if both of them were neurotypical, so there’s that…

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