Quizzing as a living

Callum Train, 44, is a professional quiz master. He runs pub quizzes all over East London and probably possesses more factual titbits than all the panelists of Quite Interesting put together.

His dry humour and understated confidence get him through rowdy pub nights like a breeze as he pokes fun at punters left and right in his mild, unassuming manner.

Callum is a member of the gig economy, surviving off whatever opportunity is granted him next. When he was made redundant at his office job four years ago, going on benefits was not an option. What was originally a light-hearted hobby became a serious job, and he now relies on five well-attended evenings a week to make ends meet.

Pub quizzes are a precious commodity in the modern age, in that they disallow the use of mobile phones and encourage good old brain-racking and face-to-face interaction. There were over 22,000 of these events every week across the UK, according to a 2009 study.

Pubs use such events to boost otherwise quiet weeknights. During the busy period of the World Cup, quiz masters like Callum have to deal with many cancellations and disinterested crowds.

I HAVE MOVED

I have moved on, my faithful followers, to another website. My friend Jack and I have started Atypicalpolitical.blog, and seeing as my posts were getting more and more politically centred anyway, I would like to invite everyone to follow me on there. More thought out, interesting posts, and more diversity of opinion. Folloowwww… meeee!!!

(I will still publish some personal thoughts on here. I doth still have musings that are outside the realm of grand, worldly matters.)

Victims of the modern age

I think I’ve fallen victim to some sort of intellectual breakdown.

We are living in a society of utter ignorance and ignorants.

Dare I say it? The left wing has become a parody of itself, and worse. It has reached a point where they listen to nothing, but nothing of what is said to them. A point where they stick their fingers in their ears and hum “na, na, na I’m not listening to you!” if an argument is made that may hurt .000001% of the population’s feelings. We find ourselves in an era of feelings-based politics.

I know, I know. It’s happened before and will happen again. For example, the theory of the blank slate, wherein we are all born equal and develop personalities via our environment, was disproved by E.O. Wilson many decades ago and it took years for people to stop protesting against scientists, calling them fascists and low-lifes for performing research and revealing truths that the average person simply didn’t like to hear. Wilson himself got personally attacked for developing a sound theory of evolutionary biology applied to the human species. Yes, you are perhaps genetically unintelligent if you can’t open your hearing holes and assimilate cold, hard facts when they are stated to you.
I’ll  agree that science is never set in stone and this can be your argument: you’d rather set everyone on the same starting block and ignore scientific theories that you find reductive and damaging to your cause. That would be fair enough. But no, it has to be about name-calling and denying the studies…

Watching Ben Shapiro argue his point about transgenderism maybe being a mental issue that could be worked on psychologically rather than magicked away by reassignment surgery, sat against a panel of six loudmouths without a brain between them, really struck a chord with me. It seemed to strike one with him, too, because he then made a play-by-play commentary of the “debate” where he picked up on every single detail of their distinctive lunacy.

The conservative right seems to be the new hub for progressive thinking nowadays, because the original progressive thinkers of the left have veered so far into emotional territory that they have blinded themselves to logic and science. Liberalism has become a religion, with certain untouchable “truths” based solely, and I mean solely, on faith, emotion, and some skewed sense of moralism. The simple way to see it is thus: when you are having a debate with someone, and it reaches a point where you are stating facts and they are interrupting you with name-calling, “I feel” statements, and repetition of facts that you’ve already thoroughly refuted, they lose it. And they can’t accept it, and you have to be the bigger man and move on.

Sadly we now need people like Milo Yiannopoulos and Shapiro to keep pushing healthy controversy down liberals’ unwilling throats, provoke them until they get epilepsy from blocking their ears and minds to different opinions. For every thousand easily offended leftists Yiannopoulos riles up into a Twitter frenzy, there will be maybe 200 who stop and think about what he’s actually saying – rather than accuse him unjustly of rallying an army to go and put all of those pesky minorities in concentration camps.

I was like that when I was 20. I can hear myself talking over my mother telling me that boys’ and girls’ brains are different, that we are, for example, at a disadvantage in domains like physics and mathematics. I can hear her telling me off now: “if you can’t hear your opponent out, you are no good at debating, and make no valid point whatsoever. Don’t let emotions get involved in a debate based on scientific fact.”

So I listened, and I learned. I read The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker and I learned about biologists who discovered that people were not all born equal, that sexes did indeed differ neurologically, and most importantly that these discoveries had to be kept on the down-low for all the feelings they might hurt and exclusive policies they might engender. While this is certainly a concern, why must we automatically assume that just because someone may be slightly more predisposed to academia that someone else, they should be mocked or excluded? Why assume that because women biologically have lower spatial awareness than men, that if a woman happens to be excellent at orienting herself, she should not be allowed to be a cab driver? No one on the right is suggesting that, and I think these are actually more offensive ways of thinking than whatever unsavoury secrets the science of the human brain may uncover.

There is a similar reasoning on the right. Capitalism, the system we have lived in as long as we can remember, is based on competition, healthy or otherwise. Favouring and mollycoddling certain sections of the population does not lead to progress, but instead to stagnation. It’s such a difficult debate on where to draw the line and when to assist certain people, but it must be engaged with facts and open-mindedness rather than mental blocades and baseless insults. It’s just so funny that the people who are so on board with language policing, being careful not to offend anyone, are the first to spew venom at whomsoever dares to argue against their ideology. They are in fact the most offensive of all with direct, personal insults rather than the clear, direct language that people like me are in favor of.

Look, I personally differ strongly on many points with conservatives, notably about religion and abortion, but their analytical and often irrefutable language is winning me over these days. I can’t deal with one more leftie raising their hand dramatically to their forehead and crying “ugh! I can’t believe you could say that. That is so offensive,” at the mere mention of an opinion that differs from the left-leaning mainstream media – regardless of who might be saying it and in what context. The mere concept of triggers… isn’t it a beaut? That’s exactly what it is: a trigger is pulled in a split second, completely outside of time and the realm of thought. This is the way political debates are going nowadays, and everyone has their little team of online friends who all think the same as them so that when one little rightie goes astray, he or she is certain to be demolished and bullied on the spot. It’s a team game, now, rather than a thought exercise.

It’s an intellectual breakdown, orchestrated by the media with all their phony empathy and melodrama, which really is just a distraction from the actual horrors that the West is inflicting on the rest of the world, such as war crimes in the Middle East and government torture tactics. Wake up!

Cruelty to Enamel

A wee poem I wrote prompted by the phrase “if walls had ears”. A reflection on surveillance (and the plight of sentient objects).

 

If walls had ears, I’d live outside.
Surely wouldn’t it defy
The whole purpose of walls
And end up being their demise?

If walls had ears, we’d hesitate
When buying a piece of real estate.
I know I would, at least
I know I want my privacy.

Now you’re wondering, I assume
What it is I’m trying to hide
What goes on in there, you pry.
Now let me make it absolutely clear
I would spew obscenities with much intensity
Before leaking any secrets in here

But wait – would they have brains, too?
‘Cause if it’s just ears, my point is moot
And do they have mouths with which to speak?
I don’t much care for abusing the weak.

With ears and minds, a sad demise
For a poor, poor wall who has to stand tall
And have no say in whoever lives there
That sentient wall will learn to care
For its well-being, and that of its ceiling
Its doors and its paint, wait – would it not suffocate?

Hold it a minute, this has gone too far.
A theme built on sheer human arrogance
I say, down with this concept and its extravagance
Pretty soon we’ll be humanising cars!

God knows they’d suffer too, if they had the tools
A brain and some eyes would suffice to prove
What slavery they’ve succumbed to under our rule
I’ve said save the birds, save the earth, save the sea
And now I’ve decided to stand up for machines!

A painful display on the Overground the other day.

I was sat in front of a down-and-out drunkard, both of us minding our own business until he suddenly perked up and tried to ask the people sitting next to him for a favour – if they could just text his daughter for him from their phone, for he had no credit to call her with. The three youngsters, all in their twenties and very cool and liberal-looking, understandably bristled in response, for he was drunk and unappealing.

After the initial lame excuse of “I don’t know how to use that phone,” (well, my friend, he’s not asking you to use it – but to text someone from your own), and as he continued to push the subject, they started getting hostile. Which sure got my heart pounding. Thubthub, thubthub. The man was a self-proclaimed Irish gypsy; not somebody you’d want to mess with. I’m illiterate, and stupid, and I’m not well, and need to contact my daughter, he shouted. He would pay them for their help, he cried, very nearly spilling his drink over the distressed young man beside him. Racists, he called them. Funnily enough, they were two black men and a white girl. It may have had something to do with that – travellers are known to be ostracised from the community. It looked to me more like fear of a violent drunk than anything else, but I did somehow enjoy seeing hip modern youths being accused of racism, a term our generation loves to throw around willy-nilly at everybody but their “open-minded” selves.

Surely in an era of tolerance and acceptance we should all be willing to help an illiterate in dire straits? Hell knows I’ve dealt with my fair share of Irish travellers, working in a pub, and they can indeed be a handful, but here was a fucked-up alcoholic who genuinely could not reach help, and his exclamations of self-deprecation softened me. I’m a gypsy, I can’t read or write, I’m fucking stupid, I’ll pay you if you text her for me.

And I could almost hear them not listening. Why don’t you text her? Whatever! Shut up. I don’t want your money. Basically, completely missing his bloody point. I hear this a lot actually: the sound of not listening. When attacked or confronted, people are driven out of their comfort zone and unfortunately with that goes two-way communication skills.

They say liberals are those
Who give sinners a second chance
They sneer at conservatives’ tough-loving policies
Who then sneer right back at the socialists’ romance

Equality for all, righteousness on call
It’s all fine words when you’re at home
The faceless masses, they need our help
Every day more pesky humans stumble out, all alone

Don’t be racist, sexist, or pro-gun
But it’s a-OK to be kinda dumb
Just hide it well until you arrive at
A real life situation with one of those bums
You keep trying to side with
Suddenly you go numb.

Think before rolling your eyes
At the crude young mum at the foodstore
It’s circumstances your society creates
That make her so irate

If you’re going to stand up for unity
Do it by standing up for the loonies
Don’t wait for them to become part of the system
For they go to phony schools, more like juvies
That produce criminals and layabouts
That we can later complain about

For the record, I put an end to my fellow commuters’ misery and texted the poor guy’s daughter, very nearly getting drooled upon in the process. “Tell her code red.” She called him promptly, giving me time to make my getaway from this slobbering, unrequited friendship and sit at the other end of the train – he was a filthy pikey, after all.

(for the record, that last sentence was sarcastic; I’m not qualified yet to make such risky jokes without a disclaimer.)

Sad, woefully inapt boys.

Again, the fun tales of being a girl behind the bar.

Sometimes I hear the thoughts inside of some boys’ minds. I call them boys because they are not apt to carry the epithet of manlihood. When one is babbling at my feet, trying out all the seduction techniques he’s clearly picked up from the Internet, I can hear his mind goblins pitter-pattering and adjusting gears whilst regulating blood flow to mediate the sexual organ before anything truly telltale happens. He will be helpful in any way possible, to the point of suffocation – and suffocation is damn hard to do when you have only met someone once. So +1 for advanced technique, but -100 for wrong technique.

He will talk to me about me and try to relate, putting on a flabby shell of seduction and thereby showing his true colors by not being himself. He will stare, then, for a while; if it works for the Jedi, why not him? I ignore the boy, then, and go about my business, and he’s probably thinking I’m playing hard-to-get now.

So it’s time for that much-decried method of negging, which apparently aims to crush a woman’s self-esteem by finding weak points and making her fragile and approachable. Needless to say, this doesn’t work on me and in fact turns me off more, which I didn’t think was possible – I was already a windowless room with the lights off, and that just makes me a coffin in the ground at midnight in a Scandinavian winter. Not only is it a transparent avowal of having read bullshit seduction techniques online, but it doesn’t make you look pleasant if you’re nasty to someone you, again, hardly know. I really don’t know what woman that one works on. Maybe if you’re really subtle, like bringing up things she wishes she could do and showing that you are better at them? Anyway, a sad attempt, but nothing compared to what’s to come.

If I have the misfortune of having to spend more time with this leech, there is no doubt that he will pounce before the night is through. I’ve been through the motions, something must be astir in that cold-hearted woman’s heart. There’s no space for questioning it. If you don’t do it now, boy, you’ll never do it. It’s like the adrenaline rush you get before running up to jump off a ten-foot-high diving board – now or you’ll be disappointed in yourself for never trying. And besides, it’s just a bit of water, you won’t die.

Unfortunately, that attitude is the wrong one to have when it comes to women, because even though we can’t kill you either, you can certainly make us extremely uncomfortable at best, or traumatise us at worst. You’re not dealing with your own personal hormonal blood rush here, but the sanity and self-preservation instinct of another person – one that has likely been through this bullshit before. If you’re lucky, she is like me and far too considerate: she will push you away and shake her head with an internal eyeroll. If the world is just, however, you’ll try your final, pernicious move on a girl with no patience and a lot of pent-up energy. She will either elbow you in your pretty little boyish face or speak up and humiliate you if people are around. She will not let you forget your stupid sexual attack on a clearly unwilling human being, clearly being the key word here, if only you’d paid attention to body language class in the womb like most adults.

Can’t stand boys. Bring on the men.

Self-help nonsense.

Hows about some poetry? On the magic of self-help.

These self-help geniuses in turtlenecks
They really think they are the best
Crowds of women in their seats
Try to put their minds at rest.

Tai chi, dance, pilates and yoga
Stick to the lifestyle like a soldier
But city life’s not made for unwinding
Or enjoying it at all
Living here is getting older
Rushing ahead of the crystal ball.

“So to find out which way you swing,
You simply must think of five things:
Who you are, what you do;
whom for, whence from, where to.
And when I snap my sweaty fingers
You will know the ugly truth
No matter who you think is you
That dreaded feeling ever lingers.”

They don’t say that, though, you see
Or one may just get up and leave
If it’s all in my hands, what am I paying for?
Give me results or I’ll walk right out the door.

Question yourself more.

Say, I reckon the main thing affecting human relationships is self-doubt. Too many friendships end up at the landfill because of stubbornness and unwillingness to question oneself.

So, there are extremes. I hear people come up to me at the bar when I’m waiting to serve them and start off our interaction with an awkward titter and a polite “ooh, sorry”. I can not help but give them a baffled look – what is everyone so sorry about? Maybe they’re apologizing in advance for the unpleasantness they are predisposed to causing later on.

Use up your daily quota of apologies on banalities, to instill a sense of sympathy and trust in your interlocutors – so that when a compromising situation arises, you can let indignation take over in an impassioned outburst, and not owe anyone any  apologies.

See, people know of the concept of being apologetic, respectful and willing to back down. All these are valuable assets to a fully integrated member of our society. Most of us, however, have grown so massive inside our own minds that the consciousness herniates.
What pokes out on the surface is a never-ending outflux of generic apologetics.
Underneath, an unrelenting sense of self pulsates and readies itself for the great pounce when its sense of sensibility is questioned, or its needs not quite met. It is when apologies and self-doubt are most crucial that they are treated as nothing more than pesky obstacles, and conceited rage is allowed to take full reign of the mouth and, on special occasions, treat it to its favorite candies: obscenities and mockery. When two people do not get along, it is often a case of one ego not even entertaining the possibility of the other’s opinion being worthy of consideration.

The mind must be mediated, the hernia removed, the consciousness evened out.

The acceptance of lonelitude.

A trip made with my best friend into the misty midnight heart of — Town and our very minds themselves.

nos corps frétillent de toutes les couleurs et voilà que j’écris des banalitées hippies
pourquoi c’est aussi sombre?
oh… putain-
les vagues frétillantes de couleurs et de langues

linguistic journeys through body and mind

on self-doubt-
Finally in the shower it is all there
Likelihood and passion
Usefulness in useless matter
I found some deeper meaning until I came to
And found my hair too wet not knowing what to do

I think I thought that I’d realised then
I was resisting more and more each day than men

Resisting some goal, some ultimate wish
But it seems too stupid to even think.

 

I keep interrupting myself. But what sickens me is the incessant littering of my ramblings with the word I. I me mine, I me mine, I me mine. It’s a game, it’s a game, and I’m losing.

temporariness-
The bright light of dawn pierces through uncomfortably grimy windows thick with decades of gathering dust and filth from the crude, unappealing High Street of –– Town itself. How to appease its wrath? The room is so vast and unwelcoming. Somehow making my room “like home” feels unnatural, like allowing myself to settle in to a situation I’m not at all comfortable in. Temporary… for I have dragged my precious friends down with me into the temporariness of –– Town and its permanent inhabitants. She did not need to see this. She could have thrived with friends much younger and more fun than I, forging a successful stage career with passionate no-nonsense jamming every night and just all-round healthy goofing off paired with a terminal dose of hard-work and love-for-what-ya-do, each and every breathing hour of the day and night.

Not me with my sour descent into sourness and bitter exhaustion of my own resources, brimming with bile and venom.

Perhaps I should embrace that bitterness and venom, perhaps it is what gives me my essence. Ooh, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine. There I go again.
And her…-
where did her mind lead her on these paths of longitude
While mine did leaps over bounds into mountains of plenitude
Of oddly formed worlds, different edges, #no filters
Odd filters, perhaps,
might show up in some of the snaps

Where did her mind lead her
This quiet ball of curiosity
Jittering with bubbling elixirs of youth
where did her mind take her as I walked us clearly down the path mine had chosen

shut my mind the fuck up-
I who lay my heart on mine sleeve
I who canst* not shuteth the fuck up
I who must hear my every thought vocalised
I who must drive others wild
With yearning for me to just keep my mind shut.

 

*I am fully aware that “canst” is the incorrect conjugation here, and shuteth obviously too

A bit about Carolyn Curiel

Here is what democratic politicians are best at doing.

They give you the facts in watered down form, assuming (correctly) that most city people will lap it up like sweet, sweet milk if it comes out of these powerful, “intellectual”-appealing mouths. They’ll admit their own faults to a certain extent, just the pardonable ones, so you’ll cut ’em some slack – sure, they’re a bit corrupt, but hey, who isn’t? Fair enough. At least they’re, you know, fighting for minorities’ and women’s rights and all the usual buzz words that are being thrown around like candy on Halloween (that is my preferred analogy).

They’ll then distract you with superficial issues that are nonetheless issues, so no one can pick on them for being delusional liars. Sure, the media is focused on entertainment more than actual news; sure, everyone’s handcuffed to their smartphone like it’s their illicit lover; sure, the DNC was a bit sneaky and careless, and Bernie Sanders was really a great candidate; now that he’s out of the way, that is. Oh, did you know he’s endorsing Clinton now? I guess they got over their catastrophic, compromising, illicit, double-crossing differences, so he’s totally behind the lib-dems now. Don’t worry about it, progressive voters. He’s on our side, promise. Promise Clinton will be just as good as he would have been. Sure, she’s a bit corrupt and hypocritical but cor, we all have to do our job somehow, don’t we?

Once they’ve softened you with some nice progressive talk about how modern technology is slowly devouring our brains and how minorities deserve rights, too, and how tragically poor people are because of “the wealth gap” and all our society’s usual well-known, perpetual problems; oh, and throw some vague mention of media bias in there for good measure so no one can possibly say a word about their integrity. They then unashamedly display their own bias with subtle jabs at the opposing candidate and not-so-subtle jabs at Putin – whom we’ll soon be at war with if this bullshit continues, by the way – and expect no one to see through it ’cause they’ve covered the bullshit angle already, blaming everyone else for it: the media, the republicans, Trump, the People… but not them so much, god no, not them. I mean, you know, maybe a little, as much as is reasonable. If you mention the whole e-mail fiasco, maybe they were careless, that’s all. Moving on!

I went to a university lecture given by Carolyn Curiel, former president Bill Clinton’s speechwriter as well as US Ambassor to Belize, influential writer and editor and finally professor. A prolific, intelligent woman speaking, basically, on behalf of the DNC and the American Establishment. Not once during her presentation did she hint at any of the Democrats’ gaffes and war crimes, their questionable yet somehow unreported policies and actions, or the pure evilness and mental illness of their candidate The Hillary.

Well that certainly makes me look biased and completely unworthy of consideration, right? If you picked up on that anti-DNC sentiment right there, well done; I take it back, at least the name-calling part.

Pure evil is not a thing and also I don’t think she’s got a mental illness, or Parkinson’s or whatever. None of this is the issue here. I’m sure if we were to research it really well, we could dig up as much dirt on Clinton as they have done on Trump, like for example the way she treats her inferiors.

In fact, Jesus Christ, the dirt has been dug up in past months and of course, unfailingly pushed back down, the culprits tackled with rape allegations and expatriated, the story hushed up and the blame laid on… hello, Russians! Not only that, but dirt such as Hillary Clinton’s private speech to her friends and donors the banks, where she readily and almost boastingly admits that it is a top priority of hers that they should continue to prosper, that her policies will keep the public from knowing too much about Wall Street’s mistakes that, for example, may have led to the recession in 2007-09. She also stated that “successful people” are commonly misunderstood and lead complicated lives. The poor, poor top 1%, right? Funny how she doesn’t promise any prosperity to the plebs, just empty fucking words. Anyway, watch this video, it really should kill her in anyone’s eyes, but of course we’re all distracted by that thing Trump said that one time, not by official “private” speeches by dangerous politicians or anything.

Anyway, she started out OK, aside from pointless photos of herself with her university students, a few cutesy anecdotes about Bill Clinton being hilarious (not his hardcore right-wing policies so much though, eh Carolyn? but there was no time to talk about that), ten minutes on how attached everyone is to their smartphone, and an unfair comparison between Clinton and Trump: “we have a choice between a man accused of misogyny who comes from a multi-billionaire family and … a woman, running for the presidency.” I waited and waited for a jab at Clinton to counter the countless “subtle” ones at Trump, but it never came. She put up a funny picture of her, sure, she acknowledged that TRUMP calls her crooked and corrupt. That sure makes the allegations a bit lighter in the eyes of all the pseudo-intellectuals watching you, Carolyn. If he says it, it’s instantly discredited; like anything rational he says, by the way. Which brings me to my next, final, shocking and eye-opening point.

At the end of the lecture, there were of course questions. I was brimming with questions but I had a terrible gut feeling that for all her sugary comical side, she would get dangerous and humiliate me in front of the whole room if I were to stammer out a compromising question. I waited in vain for someone else to ask something meaningful. Of course they didn’t; it was “thank you” this, “your lecture was amazing” that, “do you think that the media calling Trump names just makes him more popular” and things along those lines. Duh-doyyy, guys, she knew you wouldn’t challenge her. She knew all the intellectuals, the university students and staff members bloody love the Democrats and their slick ways with words and their blistering gossip about anyone who doesn’t agree with them. Bitchy, vapid, pandering academic morons is mostly what I saw in that room – the professor in the corner practically bursting with pride at having this important lady here, in his school! Thank you, Carolyn, for such a thought-provoking and compelling presentation, because it really helped to confirm what I’ve been taught by the “serious” media already, but also putting it in a so-called neutral form so I don’t feel so biased anymore! Trump definitely is the dangerous person here, and the former White House employee (who worked for a Clinton) just confirmed it to me. Yay!! Compelling! Thought-provoking!

I couldn’t hold my tongue for long. The little woman was talking in the corner to some very eager students, so respectful, so trusting; looking at her with awe, asking her for a photo together. “Oh my god, guys, we met the coolest, most important lady the other day, I am so involved in politics guys.” I walked over with my (free refreshments!!!) red wine and my plate of canapés, and I asked her some stuff. Now I started out with a bit of light humor, saying I would have asked in the room but I wimped out. That didn’t lighten the mood at all. She looked at me, and as I inquired about the clear bias against Russia in American media and Clinton’s content, the woman’s face turned to scary, powdery stone. First, she “didn’t understand” what I was saying. Then she said, “you mean Putin. It’s Putin we’re against, not the Russians! In fact, there is a large integrated community of Russians in America who fled Russia,” she had the gall to say, unaware that I was the daughter of some of these Russian-Americans. She started walking away from me early on in our thiry-second encounter. I pushed a little bit to say, fine, Putin then. She reminded me of the rumors that he shot down a passenger plane from the sky. I reminded her that America could hardly talk, in light of all its recent war crimes in the Middle East. With a face as stony as Hillary Clinton’s heart, she vaguely acknowledged that. She also said that any candidate taking Putin’s side would be in a bad position. I quickly pushed on last question in, “but don’t you think maybe the only reasonable thing Trump has said is that we must negotiate with Russia, as opposed to Clinton’s warmongering?”

“Well,” she said, uncomfortably smug, “that’s if you trust the Russians.”

And we parted ways, not only because she was clearly making a beeline for the refreshment tables and away from myself, but because my beating heart simply couldn’t take the strain of talking to such a scary tool of government and media power and trying to make a point. It felt almost scary; sure, I’ll kick up a fuss with any old leftie on my facebook friend’s list to spread awareness, but when you are talking against the actual Establishment itself, it’s a whole different feeling. She did not like being asked difficult questions. Funny, for a professor. They should be open to any interpretations, shouldn’t they? Eager for alternative information, happy to share knowledge and open their minds. Hah, not much of a professor, this one. More like a gentle pusher of neo-liberal “values” onto her poor students in Illinois. If anyone were to mention the dirty truths, she would probably look-at-the-time! them or dismiss it as Russian propaganda. I’m willing to bet that that is what she would do. Alternative news sources, schmalternative schmews schmources. We’ve got all we need with C-SPAN, MSNBC, NY Times (where she was a member of the editorial board) and the couple of other outlets that all work in the name of our government.

How very dare anybody question that?

My bike ride home in the autumnal London darkness was a nauseating one full of heavy breathing and wide, lit-up eyes of bewilderment and anger. I had necked the wine after speaking to her and it was giving me stomach pain – it and her evil witchy self, I assumed at the time. This was last week.

When I fully calm down and come to my senses, I always allow myself room for self-doubt. I am but a passionate twenty-something rookie with no accomplishments to my name, no real education apart from what I’ve been teaching myself with some edgy news websites these past few months. Maybe I’m exaggerating? Maybe she really believes what she says and isn’t trying to hide anything? Many older people tell me to relax, see it as movie or a play, because there’s nothing I or anyone can do to affect the movement of the Establishment cogs. I still think Trump is in the best position at the moment to do just that. A shame that it must be him, but at the same time quite beautiful. It is like putting a mirror to America’s face. This man is what your government allows and encourages to thrive by whatever means necessary. And this man is out to fuck your government up, ’cause he’s already done his money-making bit, and he knows the system inside-out, and he can expose them, and he can destroy the party system as we know it, because no one Up There is happy about him.

I gave myself a week to think about it, to cool down. Frankly, I’m still not cool with it. So I wrote this. Think of it what you will.

PS: I know Trump is still a bloody pro-life, pro-gun republican. I’m sure he is, and let me assure you that puts me off considerably. I’ve been frankly convinced that voting 3rd party would be the only way forward. No one’s gonna do it, though. I still believe he outweighs the Clinton risk because he won’t have the time in four years to fuck up our progressive values – and also because foreign policy at this time is more important than ever, and somehow we may not want someone who has a record of starting ridiculous wars and condoning the secrecy of war crimes. But to be perfectly honest, I hardly know what to think anymore.