zine

a show about nothing

How much time have we spent in front of the screen?
I imagine a qualitative number would only terrify. Much like other millennial children with working-class parents, the television in our house was my greatest comfort. Always there and always providing what my parents simply couldn't if we wanted to survive as a family.
Offering opportunities for bonding more than any other activity in existence, since it's available from the comfort of the home, at any time of day or night.
It has never mattered what was on the screen. The alluring glow of moving images and the clamoring of accompanying sound beckon.
At the end of the day, we all return to the screen as if gathering to worship a deity. Through it we consume glimpses of lives, fictions, lessons, and ideas provided by mankind at a tremendous cost.
Yet television has always felt free.
Obviously, it objectively isn't; we always pay in some form or fashion. But in my young mind, it always felt like a free escape from life, stimulation that didn't burden others with keeping me company.
Sure, we could easily argue the overall implication of the indoctrination of youth when it comes to the introduction of home televisions. But that is for another time and issue.
Being brought up by pointless shows that progressed over time from wholesome to slop is a common experience frequently discussed in niche circles online.
But personally, this occurrence genuinely does not feel the same as those brought up without broadcast/eventually satellite television. Perhaps because of the years sitting and watching everything TV offered, with no control over what was on or when.
Despite now having access to all television, all the time, it feels like a lie.
With streaming becoming the dominant provider of said access, now there is no television if there is no internet.
Analog television is effectively dead. And with it, a very small part of my inner child is buried.
But I'll still be putting the TV on when I go to bed.

female rage

Once upon a time they burned witches women. A time in our history that solidified what women truly were. A threat.
Much as Homer wrote in the 'Odyssey' of a woman causing his self-inflicted downfall, they became the universal scape-goat for everything men did and would do, as well as everything men didn't understand.
Women's suffering becomes commodified. Masked as an honor no one asked for, nor would anyone choose to take on. In so many words; our rage is generational. Building over time with every single infraction. Taking shape beneath the well manicured facade of modern womanhood.
While men assembled the backdrop, there are women who continually perpetuate those values. Almost as if sacrificing other women will secure their position in a man-run world.
These perhaps damaged or uneducated individuals, they readily join the ongoing campaign to keep women in check. Seconding proposals of direct harm to everything our ancestors built.
Simply due to the cognitive dissonance around the true reality of a total patriarchy.
There is no longer the intense suffering of more traditional life as there was in the decades leading us to the society we are now.
That progress has made things slightly more comfortable, comforts that will no longer exist if they continue to endorse suppression of women's freedom.
We have all only ever truly wanted to be free.
But the cost of freedom is total destruction.
A complete demolition of both societal structure and government systems only female rage can deliver.
An anger trapped for centuries, finally released in full force. A new time. A time where we watch men burn.
The way women burned for their mistakes.
A payment of debt made in flames.

Now I'm 30, and my life is over.

A dramatic enough title to contain the following dramatized existential crisis from before I turned 30 that I will now share with you.

Somewhere in the last year or so I have become painfully aware, of myself. Which sounds redundant but there is no other way to genuinely express the feeling itself.
I am painfully aware that I am both accomplished and unaccomplished. Grown but still growing. Moving forward and yet remaining entirely stagnate.
There are plenty of things I still want to do, and more than plenty of things I regret while still having almost a lifetime of regrets waiting in the future.
At the same time I am blindsided by the devastation of time running out; I am almost 30, and I haven't done any where near the amount of things I thought I would have done by the time I was 30.
A ticking clock echoes in my mind just thinking about my life expectancy at this very moment considering my current health and family history, 40 or 50 at the very least.
Maybe 60 if I get lucky and maintain my current stubbornness and need for a full resolution to a storyline. But that is just if I indulge my anxious thoughts about death altogether.
Maybe that part should be an entire chapter.
Feels like the appropriate homage to something with such a looming presence. But at the same time I don't want to give it that kind of recognition. What hardly seems optimistic to me is the idea that I still have time. Sure it's a reality but it is one that feels foreign to me regardless of how much I encourage the feeling to dissipate.
I certainly don't plan on that feeling holding me back from doing the things I want or spending my time doing things I enjoy when I can.
But I won't pretend it is not a major part of the feelings this period of my life evokes.
This is also meant to be dramatic. So...

f*ck cancer

Something our capitalist government and cancer have in common is the complete absence of consideration for human life. It's certainly not the only thing. However, it's the primary commonality between the two.
Something with absolutely no incentive to change or drive research toward a cure,it simply isn't profitable. Effectively keeping the eternal loop of suffering moving, regardless of what changes.
We will never cure cancer, and we will never eliminate capitalism within our government. There is no incentive for those in power to fix anything.

So you tell me, did cancer kill my mother, or did greed?

Hell, maybe she would've died anyway, but not at 66 after just meeting her new grandson. After treatment, she was sicker than before she started it, causing so many new problems for her to recover from.
There have been a variety of statements on the progress of cancer research over the years and possible cures for various types of cancer.
But for those who earn money treating the sick, there is nothing to incentivize them other than general ethics and a sense of moral obligation.
Continuing like this has only created one thing: the planned obsolescence of human life. Simply not allowed to progress further after a certain point.
We've seen the writing on the wall for some time, securing our fate with the artificial intelligence-driven futures we are building. With only greed to blame.

So you tell me, did cancer kill my mother, or did greed?

please, for the love of god, have sex before marriage

Stop marrying people you don't love because of bullshit social constructs like religion and gender that hold no basis in reality.
Just like time, we are the only living beings observing strict social structures meant only to divide and shame.
Time and societal rules are relative.
Things put in place for human comfort and comprehension. Daylight savings is a pretty fair example. No one or nothing is actually losing or gaining time; time stays the same.
The only things that change are sunrise and sunset.
Based on how we keep time, and the fact that we don't tell time with a sundial like cavemen, when the sun rises or sets is irrelevant.
Marrying someone you don't know so you can have shame-free, unprotected sex and then force an unloving environment onto your subsequent offspring needs to be discussed for the absolutely insane string of logic that it is.
I'm aware some people do make this arrangement work, sure, but the majority is overwhelmingly unequipped.
I personally don't think you can know someone completely in a single year or less. You have not seen all of this person, just the current setting when you meet, and things are fresh.
You have not grown with this person, experienced nothing about their ability to handle all the things couples face in a relationship.
Anyone can fake who they are for a year, sometimes two, on occasion longer. But you cannot possibly know exactly who they are if you have never even been intimate.
Intimacy is what love is built on: being equal, vulnerable, shared, and understood.
However, let's also not be completely disingenuous and acknowledge that being physically attracted to someone in this way is distracting.
And if we are personally unfamiliar with the differences between wanting to be with someone because of a genuine love and desire for interpersonal intimacy, and simply wanting to have brief intimacy with someone based purely on attraction.
It is okay to want to have sex and have it safely with someone you feel you can engage with comfortably. Or whatever floats your boat.
Sex is no longer about survival and further colonization; we have evolved.
Just like I tell time with a watch and not a f*cking sundial.

---

No.

That's a full sentence.
Not just a word or title.
But a fully developed and complete statement of fact.
If that concept isn't something you can understand, I'm not sure how you are here or functioning if it is not without professional assistance.
There is no explanation required for the use or employment of the word.
While courtesy would have us deluded into thinking we always deserve an explanation for rejection, the reality is fairly a matter of fact.
You are owed absolutely nothing for existing.
No one decides to be born, nothing is guaranteed, and courtesy is learned just like everything else.
We have free will, and people are free to say 'no' to you just as you will say 'no' to them. Perhaps if that simplicity was always enforced this wouldn't need to be a concept we continue to discuss every time a new generation is born.
But when your immediate surroundings are established by the plotting of pedophiles hiding behind their favorite curtain of religion, words lose every meaning they have ever had.
Keeping you questioning a full sentence in the only language you understand, is how you know all the pieces fell into place.
The English language has never changed, linguistics and grammar have never changed, someone just convinced you the words are meaningless.
No.
I promise it is still a full sentence.
The power of words is yours to reclaim.