For a week now, I’ve written about nothing but being sick. It must be boring to read, but the zine is my diary so it’s boring, by definition. What d’ya want for three bucks anyway?
From Pathetic Life #22 Saturday, March 2, 1996
Saturday morning came, and the thick white coating on my tongue had faded to a polka dot pattern, leaving me less miserable than the day before. Most of the bacteria or virus had been peed away, or blown out of my nose or coughed up and out my mouth — I’d been a veritable mucous machine.
Feeling better, I wheeled the cart to Telegraph. The walk took lots longer than usual, because at every intersection all along the way, I had to find a bench or lean against a telephone pole, to rest before continuing. Would’ve preferred to stay home and sleep, but I can’t afford more days without pay.
By the time I reached my assigned block and set up the table, my skin, hair, and clothes were drenched in sweat, and as quick as I’d wipe it away, fresh sticky soup poured out of my pores.
Brenda worked beside me, though I left an empty space between us and told her not to come too close. When I shared a summary of the delirium and fevers I’ve barely lived through, she said it sounded like walking pneumonia.
That’s an expression I’ve heard, but didn’t know it was really a thing. It sounds more impressive than “just another flu” so I’m going with it.
We chatted about other stuff, too, not just my miseries. I like Brenda, and when that happens, me liking someone, I like to take the conversation into uncharted territory. Thinking is better than boring chit-chat about the weather, so I asked, “Do you do anything political?”
“No, don’t insult me,” she said. Good answer. Anyone who finds political participation distasteful goes up a notch in my estimation.
Then I stepped away to barf, and didn’t say much for a while, but when my wits semi-returned and neither of us had any customers, I said: “Tell me something you believe in wholeheartedly, that most people don’t.”
“Hmm,” she said. “I’m not sure I have an answer to that.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “When I had cancer, they asked us all to tell why we wanted to recover and live. A stupid question, right? Who doesn’t want to live? Everyone else said, ‘Oh, to see my children grow up, to see more sunrises, and so on’. Whatever. What crap. I said I wanted to live long enough to see the aliens land on this planet.”
Clearly, Brenda rocks, but I should probably add this brief aside for you, dear reader: She’s substantially older than me, and living with some man, so my liking her, and I do, is 100% platonic.
♦ ♦ ♦
After selling some fish and taking a few more puke breaks, then parking the fish-cart and coming home, I went straight to bed and straight to sleep. Dreamed the aliens had landed, and they wanted Brenda and I to “Take us to your leader,” but all of Earth’s leaders are stupid so we took the aliens to meet Hate Man instead.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
The article doesn’t quite answer the headline’s question, so I will: Why are they prosecuting non-violent protesters? Because cops are cops, so local cops support ICE, and prosecutors are virtually always on the cops’ side. There is no-one in government who actually believes you have a right to peacefully protest, unless you luck into a judge who still has a soul.
Full text: The Trump administration scheduled a Friday flight to bring a deported college student back from Honduras after a judge ordered her return, but she declined to board the plane after U.S. authorities said they may detain and deport her again.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a freshman at Babson College in Massachusetts, had been deported to a country she left when she was 8, after being detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport while traveling to spend Thanksgiving with her family in Texas.
The 20-year-old was flown to Honduras on November 22 despite a Massachusetts judge’s order the prior day barring her from being deported or transferred out of the state for 72 hours. A government lawyer later apologized for what he called a “mistake.”
Boston-based U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns on February 13 ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to rectify the error it made during its immigration crackdown by Friday by facilitating her return.
Lopez Belloza told reporters she had been excited to learn on Thursday the administration had arranged for a flight to take her home.
“Hours later, that excitement turned into a nightmare,” Lopez Belloza said.
She said a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer misled her by repeatedly telling her on Thursday that if she boarded the plane, she would be released upon landing in the United States.
“I believed him for a second,” she said. “I pictured stepping off of the plane and finally being free.”
Yet in court filings on Thursday afternoon, the administration said it planned to move to deport her again once she arrived. It said it had the authority to detain her if she took the ICE flight from Honduras to Texas because she was already subject to a final order of removal, which was issued when she was 11.
“I won’t mince words,” Lopez Belloza said during a virtual press conference. “I am angry. I am sad.”
Todd Pomerleau, Lopez Belloza’s lawyer, accused the administration of “gamesmanship” and vowed to continue her legal fight.
“I’m not stopping until she’s back here, but she’s not coming back in handcuffs,” he said.
In a court filing later on Friday, the administration said Lopez Belloza failed to appear for a pre-arranged meeting to assist with her departure and did not board the scheduled flight after previously agreeing to come to an airport in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Leah Foley, whose office has been fighting Lopez Belloza’s legal challenge, in a statement said the ICE-arranged flight was intended to restore the “status quo.”
“The status quo that existed prior to her removal was that she was subject to a final order of removal and as the government argued throughout this case, ICE has statutory authority to detain an individual to effectuate such removal,” the spokesperson, Christina Sterling, said.
Excerpt: Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.
According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with re-investigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting.
Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push to persuade Trump to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.
Full text: Scouting America, the organization formerly known as the Boy Scouts, will make several concessions to the Pentagon — including getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and limiting participation to those joining in their biological gender — to retain its longtime relationship with the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday.
In exchange, the group for now will be able to keep its name and girls will still be able to join. However, Hegseth said that Scouting America will remain under a Defense Department review.
“Ideally, I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts, as originally founded, a group that develops boys into men. Maybe someday,” Hegseth said in a social media post announcing the agreement. Hegseth had used the threat of pulling all military support from the group — including kicking Scout troops off military bases — to force it to make changes that better align with his personal views and those of the Trump administration.
The organization has long been an important recruiting pipeline for the military services and a means for military personnel serving overseas to find support for their children. In a statement, Scouting America said the arrangement it has reached with the Pentagon will strengthen those ties by “waiving registration fees for military families, launching a new merit badge focused on military service and veterans, and reinforcing our commitment to Scouting’s foundational ideas: leadership, character, duty to God, duty to country and service.”
Me again: It’s worth stressing that last bit, if you don’t already know: Boy Scouts has long funneled its members toward military enlistment, and received substantial federal funding to do so.
The older I get, the more bullshit wars like this I’ve seen, the more predictable it all becomes, and the less I particularly give a damn about US casualties.
Foreign companies and investors can own ‘American’ companies, housing, real estate, etc, but immigrants can’t buy a car without “proof of legal status.”
These scientists have already been vetted for security, but now Trump’s pod people are simply saying foreign = scary. That’s about as deep as Republican thinking goes.
Excerpt: Both Trump and Hegseth announced their decisions against Anthropic on social media, with the defense secretary saying on X that Anthropic would be “immediately” designated a supply chain risk, prohibiting any business working with the military from “any commercial activity with Anthropic”.
Anthropic said on Friday evening that it had yet to hear anything directly from the White House or the military “on the status of our negotiations”.
Nevertheless, the company said being designated a supply chain risk “would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government”.
“No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons”, the company added.
Me again: I am slightly flabbergasted that the first big company to stand up to Trump & the Republicans is a fricking AI-maker. Still, Anthropic can lick my balls.
Excerpt: Under U.S. commodity trading laws, making trades based on death and war are illegal, since those kinds of bets create a financial reward for violence, human suffering and geopolitical instability.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Joey Jo Jo & John the Basketemeritus, Jeff Meyer, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn’t always shitty.
If a paywall prevents access to any coverage linked here, let me know& I’ll reply with the article’s complete text.
News always and only from reliable sources, and I decide what’s reliable — no right-wing bullshit, no Substack because fuck Nazis, and no RawStory, Newsweek, or other clickbait sites. Written news is preferred; video links will be rare, and damned near never to videos where a reporter or podcaster simply reads a script or does improv — that’s show biz, not news.
Yesterday I was barely able to stand or walk, so weak I had to steel myself and push myself and force myself even to scratch my balls. The dizziness worried me until I remembered I hadn’t eaten since some crackers on Tuesday. No appetite, then or still, but I shoved a cheese sandwich and a cup of ramen into me.
Planning ahead, I called Andrea and backed out of a babysitting gig for Friday night, but I didn’t wimp out on Saul, the wheelchair Republican. He’d already moved the boxes and light stuff, but he needed me for the furniture and heavy stuff, and he needed to be out by the end of the month, so I sighed and puked and BARTed across the bay to his address. Told him to keep his distance, and me and some friend of his dragged everything out and into a truck and then into his new place.
Then I came home and collapsed.
♦ ♦ ♦
That was Thursday, but I didn’t write about it until much later. I’ve been feeling a tad under the weather, low on the strength it takes to type, so ‘yesterday’ and ‘today’ and the next several entries are based on messy notes and hallucinatory recollection, but weren’t actually written until Wednesday and Thursday the 6th and 7th of March.
♦ ♦ ♦
On Friday I slept. That’s all I did. A gag reflex woke me in the afternoon, in the middle of a coughing jag, as I pulled a muscle I didn’t know was there, at the base of my tongue, stretching up the walls at the back of my mouth. It hurt lots more than it sounds like it possibly could.
Never have I ever been so sick. What else, sweet Jesus? Plague of locusts, perhaps? I was ready for a goopy metallic space alien to burst out of my chest. Then I fell asleep again, and woke up on Saturday.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
