Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained...

 

...and potentially everything you ever dreamed of, lost.  ⏰🚪

The Infinite Suckiness of AI

Goddamn, do I hate AI.  Aside from how shitty it looks and the fact that the images ("slop") are turning the internet into one giant graveyard haunted by dead-behind-the-eyes women with shit-eating grins and stringy hair (typical AI image shown above), you have to PAY to use every single image generator out there.  Sure, maybe the first image is on them, but beyond that you have to have bogus ass "credits" or pay a monthly/yearly fee to use the shitmaker.  

Why do I care if I think AI images suck, you ask?  While sick with shingles recently, I had some of the most vivid, disturbing dreams of my life, and I say that as someone who has nightmares regularly.  I was trying to recreate the appearance or vibe of those dreams by turning them into liminal spaces with AI and... here I am, more frustrated and hating AI more than ever.  Why must every potentially good or cool thing be turned into a profit-seeking drain on society?  And I do mean drain.  

Just like AI to downplay the damage caused by AI.  🙄

Recently my mom was like "can I send ya something sad?"  Sure, why not.  It's Mother's Day I figured.  Let's get (more) depressed.  She proceeds to send me an obviously AI-generated video of an old woman wailing in bed like she's dying.  She legit couldn't tell it wasn't real.  🤦🏻‍♀ 

It led me to question what kind of person creates something like that, but also:  are these fake images & videos intended to escape the bullshit filter of older people whose vision is compromised by age-related vision loss and cognitive deterioration?  Even if that's not their sole intent, they're undoubtedly gonna make it easier for catfish and other scammers to trick and rob the elderly online.  Deepfakes are even worse than the fugly AI images and vids, with the really good ones being imperceptible phonies that would trick even the most savvy young tech-minded person.  

Why would anyone ever need this?  Nobody asked for this.

Some of the known uses of AI are creating fake porn pics & videos of female celebrities and ex girlfriends/wives.  Think of it as next-level revenge porn.  (If you'd like to have one of these bogus, offensive images or vids scrubbed from the internet, check out StopNCII.org).  It's also stealing jobs from writers and teachers when we were promised that shitty manual labor jobs would be the first to fall to robotics.  Bring it on, we thought.  Then gov't will have to institute Universal Basic Income or something like it!  But no.  Instead it's coming for the blue collar "helping" and "creating" professions & promising to turn our already-fucked medical system into an even more dangerous shitshow.  Fake online reviews generated by AI, driverless cars used as weapons, stock market manipulation & misuse of military robots are among the potential crimes of the future that this plague of dronebots will create from thin air, all problems that need not exist.  And for what?  So some shit-tier developer can get rich?  

Essentially, yes.




Doing Things the Hard Way...for Profit

Evil AI creature generated by, you guessed it, AI.

The potential for profit seems to be the only motivating factor necessary to justify turning this planet into an inescapable hellscape on the fast track to destruction.  While it's fine to make money from a small business or merchant-type venture, there are some areas where profit motive/capitalism have no business, healthcare, housing & other basic human necessities being among them.  If the potential harms of a thing far outweigh the benefits, said thing should not exist in free society.  Full fucking stop.  The convenience of not having to write up your own homework essay or work assignment does not outweigh the harms of putting writers out of work & turning the internet into a giant AI graveyard, for instance. 

Humans seem to be embarrassingly bad at weighing cost-to-benefit ratios, a fact that became horrifyingly clear during COVID when anti-science whiners complained that they'd NEVER get a "dangerous COVID jab" or even wear a mask indoors in public places.  Nope, their comfort and convenience were more important than saving their own or another person's very life.  Think about that for a second:  there are people out there who put their "right" to eat INSIDE the Applebee's in the middle of a pandemic that killed more Americans than any other single war or crisis in U.S. history ahead of continuing to remain alive.  And many of them didn't.  (Remain alive, that is).  Oh well... nothing of value was lost I guess.  Except of course it fucking was because innocent people just trying to get groceries or go to the dentist came in contact with these superspreading mouth-breathers and died right alongside them through no fault of their own.  OUR right to life, liberty & pursuit of happiness was trampled on.  Something-something, your right to swing your fist, something-something, my nose.  🤜🏻💥👃🏽

Modern life in the 21st Century was supposed to be a Jetson's-esque utopia where technology solved our problems, not created them.  It became clear that wasn't the case as soon as the "information superhighway" started issuing DMCA takedown notices to anyone who shared files online.  And then came social media, which turned the once wild and free internet into a giant shopping mall full of identical stores peddling often dangerous, pricey shit we didn't need.  Like body image issues in teen girls and rainbow fentanyl, for instance.  No, because the true uncensored internet would've interfered with the potential for old guys in suits to get rich from cable TV subscriptions and CD purchases, it had to go.  Now we have to pay 50 separate fees to 50 separate online networks plus a monthly fee to evil-ass Spotify just to listen to music or watch TV.  This is not what was promised to us and I'm mad.  At the internet.

TL;DR - AI bad, real bad.  Maybe I'm just an old dinosaur shaking my fist at the sky about tech developments, but in this case I really don't think so.  

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Trump/Musk Feud Exposes American Delusion

All anyone can talk about is the Elon/Trump feud.  It's the Rosie O'Donnell/Trump feud of 2025 except this time, our personal data, government jobs & democracy are bound up in it.  Maybe it's the depressive realism talking, but if there's one thing Americans excel at, it's doing fuckall about national crises that would have other nations on the rafters while maintaining a delusional mindset about how fucked we truly are.  There's definitely a place for humor & escapism when it comes to coping with hard times.  The problem is when you "use humor" exclusively instead of DEALING with the problem head-on.  

My mom's the world's worst about this.  Haven't had a mammogram or pap smear in 40 years?  Psssh, blow it off with a joke.  Haven't EVER had a colonoscopy & you're in your 70s?  Something, something, poop pun.  That's great until a totally preventable disease takes you out the game with no fanfare or warning, leaving all your loved ones traumatized permanently. 

This is where America's at with their political wisecracking.  Our social safety nets are in the process of being dismantled by the likes of Mehmet Oz while science and medicine are under a full-on assault by our Dept. of Health Human Services Secretary--a career politician with no medical credentials.  All this as we sit on the brink of an Avian flu outbreak that would make our abhorrent COVID death toll look like a bad Monday at the office.  Rather than make billionaires pay their fair share of taxes--or any federal taxes at all--which would literally solve all our nation's problems & help trim the deficit, the Trump Admin is choosing to dismantle Medicare/Medicaid/SSI & raise the barriers for receiving welfare; fire federal workers from practically every field & add stupid tariffs to the few affordable services and products we could previously afford.  All while Senate Democrats twiddle their dicks.  

Excellent short vid by Chris Hedges proves his point: only 776 views.

And what does the American public do?  Make memes & joke about the "catfight" between one of the most evil billionaires in existence & our reality TV show president.  Bet we look REAL smart to people from actual developed countries.  I think Chris Hedges said it best when he referred to our country's psychotic, fantasy-minded immaturity in the face of imminent crisis.  We want to joke and carry on as if everything's normal or even going well when in reality we're gonna end up like the Soviet Union or perhaps Afghanistan shortly due in part to our own inaction.  And expecting (Democrat) politicians who receive fat paychecks, free healthcare & other perks on our dime to rise up against the tyranny is perhaps the peak of that delusion.  Politicians whose campaigns are financed by wealthy donors, who are plied by lobbyists daily & if that fails, blackmailed by the likes of Epstein/Maxwell into doing the bidding of billionaires &
 corporations.

Meanwhile, these were the most viewed videos on Youtube in 2024.

And again, what do we do?  Continue marching to the polls every 4 years like mindless zombies to uphold this system with our votes while avoiding the hard work of protesting, boycotting, striking & if necessary, burning it all to the ground like they do in France until these cocksuckers do something other than fuck us up the arse sans lube on a daily basis.  How many innocent, hard-working people will have to die due to lack of healthcare coverage... how many jobs careers will people have to lose to federal layoffs, AI & other evil forces... how much gentrification, inflation & enshittification will we have to endure before we WAKE UP?




Should've, Could've, Would've

Us, basically.

Trump should've never been president once, let alone twice.  He literally killed off most of his elderly, white, rural voter base by ignoring/denying COVID & holding maskless rallies, but because the opposing party ran such a shady campaign after 4 years of focusing on shit like "trans rights", pulling out of Afghanistan, letting inflation grow out of control & handing over billions to Israel for their illegal war genocide, enough democrats presumably voted "R" for the felonious bum to win (which is a whole topic unto itself).  That's to say nothing of that whole "insurrection" thing, his multiple felonies & the credible rape accusations.  Fun fact:  the Tariff Act of 1930 basically did exactly what Trump's doing now by taxing imported goods.  It was one of the main factors leading to the GREAT DEPRESSION.  See for yourself:

Headed for another not-so-great depression. 

Better yet, Citizens United should've never passed.  This law allows politicians to accept "dark money" contributions from literally anyone without disclosing it.  Could be the Taliban, could be Russia, Israel (we all know it's AIPAC), Mexican drug cartels, hackers, scammers, sex traffickers or the CCP.  AND WE'D NEVER KNOW.  This is who politicians serve, not you & me.  Get it through your heads before they're bl0wn off by a trigger-happy cop or the military.  (That's rich: Trump supports the Insurrection Act despite leading one himself.  Where WAS the military on January 6th?).

As these horses leave the barn & never look back, American voters and workers do fuckall about it, watching as if in a daze while driving past a trainwreck.  Late night comedians crack jokes & the public takes its cue from them, leading to a flood of memes, puns & self-serving online rants.  "Can't afford to protest or strike!" is the rallying cry.  "Real adults got bills to pay!" they say.  No, baby.  You can't afford NOT to put your daily life on hold & do the ugly work of standing up for your allegedly "inalienable" human rights.  Here are few recent bills to make the Objectively Worst Bills in U.S. History list as our safety, rights & lives are chipped away at in realtime:

Republican policies: so bad even AI hates them.  

Notably absent from this list are the 1994 Crime Bill (signed by Clinton & drafted by Biden) which led to more Black men being in the prison system than there were slaves in 1850, and the Patriot Act, which was built on legislation introduced by Democrats (again, Biden was involved) after the 1995 OKC Bombing.  It was this legislation (fuck, does anyone even click these links or am I wasting my time?) that provided the groundwork for the Patriot Act & allowed Congress to get it passed so quickly when those planes flew into those towers so unpredictably, an event they "never could've foreseen".   🙄  Yet Google AI simply glosses over it by calling it "existing anti-terror legislation".  Don't think people don't notice shit like that.  Is there really a "liberal bias" in the media and online, or is it like a case of outrageous overshadowing:  because Republicans do such egregious shit, the evil Democrats do is downplayed or dismissed? 

Don't ponder too long: we're under attack by both sides & risk losing our freedoms, our comforts & our very lives in the process.   

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How To Protect Yourself From Toxic People

 


When a person's words & actions don't align, ALWAYS believe their actions. 

It costs nothing to lie or make empty promises, and for some people it's second nature.  Relevant present/past actions always reveal the truth about a person's intentions.  Why?  Actions require effort, whether that effort is enjoyable or taxing to them matters not.  Actions require a bit of pre-planning, however small.  And many actions also cost money, time or some degree of self-sacrifice.  But the main thing is that they all require effort on a person's part while words do not. 

We're taught to see the best in people, have faith & give the "benefit of the doubt" when what our parents SHOULD be teaching us is to believe people's actions & ignore their words.  If someone wants a thing badly enough, there's nothing they won't do to make it happen.  Read that again because I need you to understand it.  Likewise, if they DON'T care or desire a given outcome, they'll go out of their way to make excuses & avoid putting forth the effort to make it happen, usually at the same time.  This results in their words & actions contradicting each other which is perhaps THEE red flag of the century.  

It requires EFFORT to cheat; to get dressed up & sneak around to meet someone you shouldn't be seeing; to create & check an online dating profile or catfish account while in a "committed" relationship.  Going to therapy, showing up on time ready to bare your soul & work on your shortcomings?  Immense effort & vulnerability required.  Committing actual crimes requires effort & huge personal risk.  Having sex with you, hitting you, stealing money from your bank account or posting passive-aggressive shit about you online all take some amount of physical, mental or emotional effort.  (Remember, it's not about whether they view the action as "work" or "fun").  Know what doesn't?  Superficial flattery, promising to change or lying about what they were doing in a given situation, saying "But baby I was gonna marry you!", promising to get help, etc.  Without concrete proof that they mean what they're saying, it's nothing more than hot air no matter how sincere it may seem.





Liars = Lazy

Not sure what a "cretan" is but otherwise this checks out.

The thing about liars & toxic assholes is they tend to be incredibly lazy in interpersonal relationships.  They want the biggest payoff for the smallest amount of effort, & nothing requires less effort than lying, exaggerating, making excuses or bullshit promises.  Even if a person is well-intentioned when they promise you something, promises aren't legally binding.  Until they've actually DONE the thing, it means nothing.  Intentions are a lot like false promises:  they don't amount to shit in the real world.  "But your honor, I didn't INTEND to kill him!" isn't going to bring the dead man back.  You still killed him; he's just as dead as if you'd plotted out the killing for months & done it on purpose.   

True accountability looks like admitting you killed a person, apologizing sincerely & then DOING THE TIME you're sentenced to for it without trying to wiggle out of it & then never killing anyone again.  No excuses, lies or "but" justifications.  Just acceptance of responsibility & changed behavior.  And that still won't bring the dead man back!  But it is the most a person can do to atone for the their actions in this lifetime.

IRL Example:  My ex would randomly say "I can't believe my mom put her cat in the shelter!  I could NEVER!"  But as soon as she dumped & and replaced me?  To the shelter the skittish 10-year-old cat went.  This was after promising to take care of our (two) cats when I was suddenly forced (by her) to move back across the country & couldn't take them with me.  This is by far the most crooked, evil thing a person has ever done to me & believe me, I was heartbroken and enraged over it.  I still am.  She'd also said she planned to marry me several times during our decade-plus together & lied about big "deal-breaker" things I won't get into here.  I ignored the red flags in her actions, and that's on me. 

Claiming she wanted to marry me "someday" or proclaiming her love for the cats unprovoked cost her nothing and GAINED her my trust & respect so why not do it?  Low risk, high reward.  This is simply how liars & con artists operate.  Whether she meant it at the time also doesn't matter--her actions ended up telling the true story.  When she unblocked me on social media & started commenting on random mutual friends' posts during the pandemic so I would see that she'd unblocked me, I gave it about a day before blocking her sorry disgusting ass for good.  That was over 5 years ago now & I've never looked back... 

I won't make the same mistake of believing empty promises or "future talk" again.  Not without actual proof (read: effort) to back it up.  Ain't nobody that hard up for a relationship.






Believe POSITIVE Actions Too

Kinda vague, but accurate.  

For people who have been badly burned by loved ones in the past, it can be hard to know when to believe what somebody's telling us.  "Trust issues" it's called.  Well if so many people didn't have "honesty issues" or "accountability issues," we wouldn't be so untrusting.  🤷🏻‍♀

So when should you take somebody's words seriously?  When they have no history of lying or playing you for a fool, obviously.  Barring that, when their behavior suggests true change or effort on their part to bring their actions into alignment with their words.  Not just when they know you're looking but all the time.  I'm not talking about buying you flowers or a ring after hitting you or cheating--those behaviors are common in the cycle of abuse & don't indicate sincerity.  I'm talking genuine signs that they're doing the hard work of changing to become a better person on a consistent, long-term basis.  Key words:  "consistent" and "long-term".

This isn't "benefit of the doubt" shit, it's the exact opposite--judging a person by their actions.  It's not perfect but unfortunately it's the best we have.  They might still screw you over at a later date, but at least you will have done everything in your power by requiring proof of concept before believing them.  By all means, gather all the data you need; get "big" things in writing and document their words and behavior if they've got a history of shadiness.  If they do anything that contradicts what they're telling you, drop them like a hot potato.  But always judge by actions, for better or worse. 

Also, it's on you to define & lay out your deal-breakers upfront & to stick to them--if that includes lying, cheating or verbal abuse, say so.  ("Deal-breaker" means no 2nd chances will be given if they're caught doing said thing).  Simply ghosting someone without properly communicating your boundaries first is coward shit.  You also have a responsibility to do as you say you will do & won't be taken seriously otherwise.  But outside of that, continuing to punish or accuse someone when they've expended significant sustained effort to do the right thing or prove themselves to you is not fair or necessary.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of accusations leading to the thing you don't want to happen--i.e. broken relationships & pain.  In any case, being unnecessarily suspicious or punishing someone for another person's behavior in the past will lead to bad outcomes & heartache.  For you.  

TL;DR - Actions are where the rubber meets the road; all words are hot air until proven otherwise.  These actions can't be part time, half-assed or self-serving--you set the bar on that but you must follow through on your dealbreakers & not move the goalposts or only see what you WISH was there.  Wishful thinking should be called wishFOOL thinking because it's a fool's errand.

Kids (1995): A 30-Year Retrospective

Ahhh, the '90s.  When the tunes were good, the economy was boomin' & young people still had hope for the future.  Wait.  Scratch that last one.  Rich kids had hope, the rest of us had what is portrayed in Kids (1995), produced by Harmony Korine & directed by pedo-pornographer Larry Clark.  I re-watched it recently and BOY does it look different from an adult's-eye view in 2025.  It's now been 30 years since its release and, while it's a great time capsule of the clothing styles, music & lingo of its day, I have questions about the adults who wrote, produced & directed this borderline pornographic piece of NC-17 smut.  Serious questions.  

⚠  SPOILERS AHEAD!  ⚠

The plotline is thus:  We follow main male character Telly and his friend Casper, two latchkey kids from NYC on a quest to deflower virgins, get high & party.  In the process they show us how to shoplift, sneak into people's pools & do whippets.  We also follow main female character Jennie, played by Chloe Zevigny, who finds out that--despite only having one sexual partner & doing nothing freaky like her friends--she has HIV.  Her only sexual partner was Telly.  Womp womp.  (This was in the days before the antiviral meds so HIV was basically a death sentence).  Jennie then spends the rest of the film trying in vain to find Telly to break the bad news, meanwhile he continues his mission to have sex with young girls.  The filth comes full circle when Casper rapes Jennie in a drunken haze. 

How many of them have the virus?  The viewer is left to trace contacts between Telly & all the young, naive girls he's manipulated into sleeping with him & wonder who lives & who dies.  For context, 48,371 known AIDS deaths in the U.S. had occurred by 1995, including rapper Eazy-E who would pass suddenly that March.  This was also the year Olympic diver Greg Louganis disclosed his HIV+ status after hitting his head & bleeding into the pool.  Violent crime peaked in the U.S. in 1993 & had started to decline--albeit slowly--by '95, but was still much higher than today.  

Original Impressions

Starting young.

I was 10 when this movie came out and of course found a way to watch it as soon as possible.  The NC-17 rating only made it more appealing.  At the time I identified with the characters, who spent their days aimlessly wandering the city and looking for trouble to get into.  And why not?  I spent my days the same way.  It's a miracle I wasn't abducted or worse.  I spent my summers running the streets with 0 supervision starting at a very young age.  I had a friend whose parental figure would leave us at home alone all night on weekends to babysit her younger siblings starting when we were nine.  Said parental figure would threaten us not to open the door for ANYONE or go outside for ANYTHING, and we'd be outside under the streetlights until midnight the second her headlights disappeared.  She never did circle back to check on us.  This was after an exhausting day of sugar-powered shenanigans that started around 9 a.m & didn't stop until midnight.  We'd ride our bikes everywhere, pick fights with random kids our age, swim without sunscreen for 6-7 hours, throw eggs, commit random acts of vandalism & other fun.  We were closer to the ages of the 4 weed smoking boys pictured above than the main characters when the movie came out.

My parents may have been abusive assholes, but at least we had food to eat & they didn't abandon us to party all night.  I never found drugs in the house, our birthdays were celebrated & our mom didn't come home reeking of booze and raging from a hangover every Saturday/Sunday morning.  I didn't have to raise my younger siblings like many older sisters I knew, which is good because I wasn't very nice to them.  No strange or violent men came into our house (aside from my dad, badumptsssss).  I was very aware at the time that, no matter how bad I had it, other people had it worse.  Namely my bestie & her siblings.

Movies like Kids, Dangerous Minds, Boyz N the Hood, Higher Learning & American History X offered a dramatized-if-relatable reflection of my life in an odd way.  I wasn't from a city or even a suburb.  I was white, female, a CHILD & had never shot a gun or ridden a skateboard.  (Scratch that last bit:  I shot my 1st gun at 9 but not in the commission of a crime).  Yet none of that mattered.  If you're from a poor community & have dysfunctional parents, it's the VIBE you relate to.  The growing-up-too fast.  The creating your own family, turning to criminal activities just to stem the boredom.  The simmering rage that eventually supplants the boredom and of course, the feeling of being utterly alone in the world.  

(Things got exponentially worse in my teen years: I ended up ditching more class than I attended by my sophomore year--I even had a teacher who gave me an "attendance award" as a joke.  We had a good laugh.  I smoked as much weed as I could get my grubby little hands on & picked up hard liquor for a bit at 18.  I spent a big portion of my senior year in Alternative School, where I was the only white female besides the teacher.  SHE was awesome.  But I digress). 

Back in those days, I viewed Kids as a sort of lifestyle guide.  It featured a cool multicultural cast & was set in the big city, where I longed to be.  It definitely didn't have the intended effect of deterring bad behavior.  Sure, I'd avoid having sex with guys long past the age it was acceptable to do so (gay), but I still smoked weed daily, occasionally drank, stole stuff & cussed like a sailor.  Cops were called to the house several times; I was kicked out for a while and forcibly institutionalized at one point.  Miserable as I was, I thought all that shit was normal & had no serious plans to live beyond 21.




Modern Assessment

I replayed this scene a lot back in the day

And then I grew up, sorta.  The mood of country lightened (until 9/11 anyway); everything moved online & we all became highly offended experts in social justice.  However, you don't need a Social Justice degree to know that the dialogue and plot in Kids is unacceptable for any decade.   Now I look at movies like this and think, "What kind of twisted p3do dreamt up this script? " Lines like "I could tell she just entered pub3rty.  Oh shit, this girl's a baby...I wanna F*CK this little baby girl!" had to come from someone's REAL brain--a brain that likely had those real thoughts at some point or hung around scumbags who did.  (That's me generously assuming they were just thoughts & not actions).  

The film opens with Telly & some nameless (very young looking girl) half-nude on the bed in a sex scene.   What did the directing process look like on THAT?   (I imagine an old grey-headed creep telling the girl to arch her back or cry louder as she simulates losing her virginity to a psychopath).  Most importantly, how old are the real actors playing these "Kids"?  

Age in '95

Here's what I could dig up:

Leo Fitzpatrick (Telly):  "About 17"
Chloe Sevigny (Jennie):  About 21
Justin Pierce (Casper):  18.
Sarah Henderson (aka Girl #1/Telly's conquest):  17.
Rosario Dawson:  About 16.  
Michelle Lockwood & Carissa Gluckman (kissing girls in the pool): ?? & "About 18"
Harold Hunter (Harold):  21.  

A 20-year retrospective called "We Were Kids" takes a critical look at the film and was apparently almost shut down legally by unknown forces (likely Harmony Korine or Larry Clark, both of whom refused to participate).  Kinda chickenshit that the people who dreamed up this script/plotline & brought it to life onscreen are hiding their hand.  But honestly, I might too.  Times have changed immensely in terms of what's socially acceptable.  Back then the film was considered controversial for the drug use, language & sex depicted... not the fact that these were LITERAL kids being directed & produced by creepy old men.  They'd almost certainly be grilled on the cast's real ages & other uncomfy topics today.

I can attest that literally nobody cared at the time about the whole "underage" issue.  My 1st kiss at 12 was with an 18-year-old who said he was 16.  It just wasn't a concern where I grew up.  Seniors in high school routinely dated 12 and 13 year olds with the parents' blessing.  Boys gave girls alcohol with the express intent of getting them screwed up enough to fuck them, a practice now considered rape.  So we definitely have to view the film in the time period in which it was created.  None of these things was legal or moral, mind you, but socially they were accepted by most.  





Since the Film's Release

A young Rosario Dawson awaits her HIV test results

The actresses went on to do more professionally than the male actors in this film:  Rosario Dawson & Chloe Sevigny in particular.  On the contrary, 2 of the actors have since died:  Harold Hunter & Justin Pierce.  Both were IRL skateboarders so brain trauma likely contributed to their demise, the former of a cocaine OD & the latter a suicide.  We now know CTE tends to cause these downward spirals of erratic behavior, substance abuse & early death, which are often a result of overdose, dementia or suicide.  Skateboarder Dave Mirra died of suicide & was later diagnosed with CTE, and Tony Hawk has voiced concern.  But I'm sure past trauma, life stress & other things played a role for Hunter & Pierce, as they usually do.

As for my IRL friends from that era, things haven't gone much better.  My partner in adolescent crime was in some pretty high-profile trouble recently.  3 classmates have died, all of drug/alcohol-related causes.  Another childhood friend and neighbor did 10 years of a 30 year sentence after shooting a cop.  The saddest loss of all was that of my bestie's sibling, whom I helped raise essentially.  Despite not being an opioid user, he died of a heroin OD his first time trying the drug.  His "friends" shot him up after a night of drinking & laughed at his death rattle cough before leaving him alone to die.  Whether out of ignorance or sheer lack of caring, that's repulsive & barbaric.  Nobody spent a day in prison for it.  

I think that's the most frustrating part of living a life of poverty & disadvantage--not that crime happens but that the people paid to prevent and investigate it do nothing of the sort.  I know too many kids and young adults who were almost certainly murdered but their killers still walk the streets.  I don't mean after a judge/jury found them not guilty, I mean the crime scene was never taped off & no interrogations took place.  Suspicious deaths (two gunshots to the head, shot in the back of the head with a rifle, injected with drugs & left to die, etc) are routinely labeled "accidental" or "suicide" without any investigation whatsoever.  Grieving family members, often too grief-stricken & un-empowered to push the matter, end up hearing in great detail how their loved one died through second or third hand gossip.  One of the joys of small-town living, I guess.   

And that's the thing ALL poor people have in common:  the realization that nobody is coming to save you.  The cops are quick to profile & target you for minor shit but overlook major violent crime (when not  committing it themselves).  Innuendo, gossip & rumor supercede facts and evidence.  And while Kids doesn't really cover that aspect much, it does a great job of leaving you with a foul taste in your mouth about America's future.  This was pre-9/11 when you could still support a family on a single income, mind you.  But times have been pretty much the same for poor people forever. 

 

Ganging up on 1 guy at the park

"Kids" is clearly short for "The Kids Are NOT Alright".  Those of us whose only babysitters were Sega, Nickelodeon & Jenny Jones can only relate too much.  

Despite the constant pearl-clutching about crime and "superpredators," I've since realized the real damage to society is not done by those who shoplift, sell drugs & vandalize the city, but those who gentrify it.  The '90s might've had gangbanging, militias & trailer trash beatdowns on Jerry Springer, but the 21st Century has shown that the real criminals are the guys in fancy suits & nice offices who do their dirt on Wallstreet or in boardrooms.  The Martin Shkrelis, Brian Thompsons, Arthur Sacklers & other nameless villains responsible for outsourcing all our jobs, buying up all the real estate & raising rent, tanking the stock market & deploying enough lobbyists to ensure the game stays rigged. 

The NYC of Kids is long gone too--today, every block looks the same: full of skyscrapers, outrageously expensive claustrophobic apartments, no diversity.  It might've been dirty, smelly, gritty & violent back then, but it had soul and, most importantly, you could afford to live there without being a millionaire.

Kids did do a great job of portraying the ugly reality of how teen boys think & behave in private vs. the bullshit they tell girls to get in their pants.  The way they manipulate girls into life-ruining bad sex only to go brag in great detail about it to their friends & never speak to the girls again.  I already wasn't trying to sleep around in high school, but this movie strengthened my resolve.  I wish more adult women realized how differently men and women think but it's a lesson too few learn, and usually too late when they do.  While AIDS isn't as prevalent an issue since the advent of the antivirals, other STDs like HPV can cause cancer, infertility or other lifelong complications.  And unwanted pregnancy is a real risk.  While it was always risky to have casual sex before you're ready, doing so in the smartphone/revenge porn era is doubly dangerous.  

Siskel & Ebert review Kids

To its credit, Kids isn't preachy & doesn't beat the viewer over the head with the message like most of today's "art".  It was one of the first hyperreal films told from a "reality TV"/documentary perspective, weaving real dialogue & behavior from the cast into the plot.  It even impressed the notoriously snobbish Siskel & Ebert, who called it "absolutely authentic," "raw" and "shocking".  A film like this featuring real minors & all the explicit content could NOT be made today, and that's a good thing.  (Actually, Cuties features even younger kids and is disturbing in an entirely different way but that's another article for another day). 

For all its shortcomings, Kids stands the test of time as one of the most haunting films of its era.  At a time when Clueless, Toy Story, My Girl & Twister were all the rage, Kids offered a fearless portrayal of the realities of life for too many of us, warts & all.  I put it on par with Requiem for a Dream (2000), Thirteen (2003), Trainspotting (1996) & Spun (2003).  It definitely paved the way for that genre of gritty reality flick. 

So what is the overarching message of this controversial flick?  "What goes around comes around, often literally."  If you live your life for the moment, doing what feels good to YOU while taking advantage of anyone smaller/weaker than you, the bill comes due eventually.  And often it's more than you bargained for.  The inclusion of AIDS denial comments in the film is highly relevant today in the era of disease denialism.  The movie itself is still relevant because kids need parental guidance to avoid ending up this way, and too many parents are checked out due to overworking, drug abuse or other things.  Kids don't just stop being curious about things like drugs, sex, drinking, violence or other "bad things" because you refuse to educate them--they just turn to friends, porn, sketchy adults or other unreliable sources for that info.  

While I was a bad ass kid with a smartass mouth, I've never been to jail, had an unwanted pregnancy, OD'ed, been homeless or killed anyone, and I attribute that partially to the fact that my parents kept it real with me.  We weren't forced to go to church or fed propaganda about demons, Satan or other BS.  We knew not to play with guns or do other majorly stupid shit because we were told what could happen--go to jail?  I'm not bailing you out.  Get "knocked up" by the wrong person or before you're an adult?  You're on your own.  Etc.  Too many kids today are coddled, enabled to behave like psychopaths by their parents who then wonder why they've "failed to launch" at age 35 or similar.  It all starts in the home, as Kids so graphically shows us.

R.I.P Justin Pierce & Harold Hunter

"Hey guys, what happened?"

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Outstanding Documentaries - Blood Business: The New Cannibalism? (2020)

Donating plasma is often seen as an act of giving & selflessness. But do you know where your plasma donations go? Most people assume they're sent to hospitals where they're used in life-saving emergency transfusions, but that's not the whole story. Not even half. Turns out, only 20% of the plasma is used in hospitals--the other 80% is sent to private pharmaceutical companies to be used in the development of proprietary biological products sold to customers around the world for top dollar prices while "donors" (a misnomer as they're actually compensated, though meagerly) are given a pittance: about $50-$75 per appointment.

This is just one of the alarming facts exposed in Blood Business by Java Films. The filmmakers delve deep into this seedy industry that under-compensates donors who are often homeless, addicted to drugs or sick with serious diseases in exchange for this vital bodily fluid referred to as "liquid gold" by those in the plasma game.

Plasma donor describes the rush of a K2 high

Blood Business pulls back the curtain on a shady industry that played a huge role in the spread of the HIV virus in the 1970s (Google "Hemo-Caribbean" for more on that) which ran a similarly dirty operation in Haiti before shipping their plasma products to the U.S--the only country on Earth that would accept blood products from places with such lax hygiene standards. However, filmmakers are repeatedly thrown off the property & threatened with trespassing charges by police for simply trying to conduct interviews with plasma donors which sets an ominous tone for the movie.

The high point of the doc is the interview with a drug addicted donor who is selling plasma to finance his habit. It raises not only ethical questions but major safety ones. What are the health implications of accepting blood products from people who use novel Frankenstein chemicals like Spice & K2? Why are clinics allowing donors to give blood more than the recommended number of times per month, and what could the long-term health consequences be for them? (Even a single donation can lead to side effects like fainting, serious infections, bleeding & dehydration). Should the pharma giants getting rich off these vulnerable patients be required to pay them fairly for their vital donations? Should that even be a question?

Police "protecting" Octapharma from filmmakers

The demand for these plasma products is high: they're life-saving and currently can't be made synthetically, which raises questions about the ethics of paying people for their plasma. (The financial incentive tends to attract people who need the money rather than those who are there for altruistic reasons, which is why we don't pay people for blood donations. Whole blood is also a vital resource but paying donors makes the blood supply less safe). The supply has to come from somewhere, and the U.S. just so happens to have a dense population of drug-addicted, poor and needy people willing to do anything for the small amount of cash they get for selling their lifeblood.

The incentive for industries like this (and the war profiteers, who recently made remarks about military recruitment being affected by student loan forgiveness) to keep people desperately poor to keep their cheap supply of labor/bodies rolling in cannot be ignored. These interests have huge lobbying power in D.C. & finance the campaigns of candidates from both parties. Incidentally, it's illegal in most of the world to trade money for plasma. Only 5 countries allow it: Hungary, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria & the U.S.

Tracing the plasma's path from from the 'hoods of Cleveland to its final destination in the upscale Lake Zurich, Switzerland, Blood Business is a masterful documentary that paints a dark picture of the state of U.S. vampire capitalism in the 21st Century. The contrast between us and other developed nations is so stark in this film it will take your breath away, from the rampant poverty to the widespread drug addiction to the aggressive policing and corporate exploitation of our most vulnerable. As we claw our way back from the worst pandemic in American history, you can't help but feel like another is lurking in the shadows when watching movies like this. We're repeating the mistakes of the blood banks during the AIDS epidemic by relying on high-risk donors to self-report things like underlying health conditions & other dangerous behaviors that could taint the plasma supply in ways we can't even predict yet.

My Latest Obsession...

I'm kinda obsessed with Radio.Garden.  It's a website where you can listen in realtime to radio stations all over the world (and I do mean "all over"), from NYC to Papua New Guinea!  I stayed up all night smoking reefer and favoriting stations recently.  They offer starting points from different categories like "Island Life" and "Radio Diaspora" from which you can choose, or you can just click random dots all over the map to listen to things.  Click the little heart to save your faves.  ❤

One of many categories offered on Radio.Garden

As someone whose high school only taught us the 50 states in geography, Radio.Garden offers a great geography lesson while being really entertaining and educational.  And most of the music is SO much better than the crap we're subjected to here.  I'm discovering all kinds of artists and songs I didn't know existed.  The only downside is they don't list song/artist names, but with the help of Shazaam you can identify most songs.  Paris, France (Skyrock, Radio, FlP, CherieFM, Hotmix, etc) has the most stations of any large city I've found, followed by the San Francisco Bay area (SomaFM) so check them out.  Ibizza is great if you like dance/electronic music, and the islands of Bermuda, Jamaica & St. Lucia have some amazing reggae.  I found one random Black Power station on an island somewhere that just had a guy ranting about white people at 4:00 a.m. lmao. 

Check it out now, no app downloads or signups necessary!  

🌍 RADIO.GARDEN 🎶