89 Seconds to Midnight: Eating Spiders in Your Sleep

Look, I don’t like being what others call me: a pessimistic doomsayer. You think I wanted to be like this?

Well, I didn’t, and I hate it.

But this is a big deal, and I’m telling you now, do not take it lightly.

Except, some of you may find belief in flying saucers and aliens easier to manage than the calamitous situation we are all looking at. And hey, I get it. We’re in deep doo doo here, and none of us is going to face that without anxiety and fear. But be careful. Some diversions just aren’t healthy. I should know.

In coping with CPTSD, I have often taken on self-destructive activities, and I’m blessed to have survived some of them. But what I’m seeing isn’t exactly diversions except for movies and the gaming world. Lies flood the Internet, and, having fallen for my share, I am telling you that there’s danger out there. Enough of them catch on, and the next thing you know, you’ll believe anything.

People believe that you eat spiders every night in your sleep.

What baloney, and even the slightest bit of research will illustrate that you’re far more likely to be struck by lightning than to ever, in your entire life, swallow a spider in your sleep. Spiders don’t like us. They want nothing to do with us. Even bites are rare, meaning that usually you need to stick a hand or foot into a space where one is chilling out. It’s true that shoes left overnight on the floor can seem like a haven to a spider, but if it makes you feel better, hang them up, laces across a hanger, or pour a bunch of foot powder inside. Heck, I’d worry more about scorpions.

However, if we ground ourselves with reality, if we just read or listen to reliable sources, they tell a story of something we all should be worried about.

The Trump administration has already, in record time, made enemies of almost every country in the entire world. This does not include Russia, which will wring everything it can get out of Trump, then turn into a rabid enemy. He does not believe that. He believes lots of things that, frankly, have already killed people, and will kill many more.

His gold dome defense is essentially slag; useless and not even nice to look at. Experts have easily torn it apart as being inadequate and an invitation to other countries to make the slightest of adjustments to defeat it.

I personally don’t know if Donald Trump wanted to destroy the United States, but he has managed it in short order. Everything is corrupt. Idiots are being put in key positions, leaving us open to the domestic terrorism of ICE, illegal imprisonment and worse, and he exalts in his power to see lives end.

He is guilty of serious human rights violations, and nobody in our government utters a word of protest.

He takes things verbatim out of Hitler’s playbook.

Meanwhile, what of the countries he’s strong-armed, pissed off, or harmed economically?

China had, because of tariffs, embarked on a trade embargo, with empty cargo vessels being sent.

Who really suffered?

The people of the United States. And Trump knew that would happen.

If the Doomsday Clock has moved even one second closer to midnight, it is significant. That’s because the board takes into account breakdowns of political talks, the state of world economy and its projected path, climate change (global warming), and who is in power, and with that, any social upheaval.

Indeed, planet earth has never hosted a scene like this. All of history, even in the most horrible of times, has nothing that compares to this.

And it’s just getting started.

Any one person can make a difference.

Heroes are not born, not trained, not distinguishable from anyone else. You can’t point at someone and say, “Hey, that dude looks like a hero.”

By the measurements of history, a hero is someone who acts in a crisis when others are running away. They want to run too, but they don’t.

But heroes are also unsung most of the time. Nobody points them out, and nobody even knows their names. They help others. They give money to the poor. They defended the defenseless. They act in the moment without hesitation, not because they want to be heroic, but because it’s the right thing to do.

There are heroes all around us. They are faceless until their moments come to act. These men and women fade back into the crowd. You’ll never find them. But they are still there.

On the other hand, villains grab headlines and try to stay in the spotlight, loving and craving attention. They sway everything from individual to crowd behavior, until the fanatics they most appeal to surround them.

Hitler was one such man, and we in the United States are now led by someone who has taken his playbook word for word. If he is not stopped, World War Three will soon commence. Some believe it has already begun. It hasn’t, and this is nothing compared to what’s coming.

When the United Nations relocates to another country, you will be told that they are traitors and cowards, and more.

People still venomously defend our “president,” if that’s what he is. Their arguments include “who has he gassed?”

Just because something has not yet happened, doesn’t mean it won’t.

Photographs from El Salvador show very clearly that bad things are happening. The Trump support base says “they’re just gang bangers.”

They are repeating what they’re told. Not what’s true, and the truth is that ICE is grabbing arbitrary people including real citizens. There are no formal hearings. No legal aid is offered; rather, it is flatly denied. Those people will all die in a place too terrible to comprehend if you are sane.

I served the United States of America. I would never bear arms against it.

But a monarchy, a crown? I’d fight that. A fascist authoritarian regime? I would defend others against it if I weren’t already dying. I have to sit on my ass, watching this horror evolve.

My conclusion, therefore, has merit: the United States of America no longer exists. Like global warming, I believe the damage is too extensive for recovery.

This is why I warn travelers from other countries not to come here. Not for vacation, tourism, business or any other reason. You may never see home again, and there is nothing here that is worth your life.

*The United States is now a terrorist threat.

*The nights here hold a darkness and fear I have never seen. The sounds of small arms fire puncture the peace of the night, reminding me that everything is different now.

And I have nothing positive to say. If I tried, I would have to lie to you. I can’t do that.

Hug your children. Your spouses. Tell them they are loved and treasured. Keep them safe.

And pray. To God, the Father, your Abba. Never pray to anything else. Have faith in Him. And maybe, He already knows that we need a hero.

Stay safe, my friends, be well. May God bless you and keep you safe.

Occam’s Razor: Dudleytown, Curses and Cryptids

I have no idea what’s going on in Europe, Asia, the Middle East (aside from war), South or Central America, Canada or the Islands. Cultures and religions different from my experience or teachings insure that I have not the time left to learn much.

Most people mean well, but being ignorant of customs and cultural taboos, invariably come off as offensive.That’s sad, especially when it causes angry reactions or pain.

It happens all the time. But one thing that I know we share, every one of us, is the inability to explain something another person might describe as a haunting, a UFO sighting, or seeing a werewolf. Among those and many other things, there are, for each, skeptics and believers.

And those caught in the middle.

How can I make a conclusion about that which I have not had experience with? Well, if there’s something I find little to no evidence of, something with no concrete evidence outside of paranormal websites, YouTube videos or television shows, then I should be a skeptic. And no matter where you are, so should you, right?

But no, we aren’t skeptical of certain things, even in the face of little to no evidence.

For example, almost every religion has dark, or evil spirits to resist and pray for protection from. Demons, to some, other names by other people. But it’s always there in some form. And they all do pretty much the same things.

But what about this? Can evil plague a town, and can cryptids surround it? And what about curses as opposed to bad luck?

At a time, in the early 1700s, someone decided to stake a particular piece of ground in the US state of Connecticut. It was a bad decision for potential farmers as the land would be in the shadow of a small mountain for part of the day. But a small town eventually formed there, and to this day, there are odd stories about it. See, Connecticut isn’t the most hospitable place. I had an ancestor who, with two sons, came here on the Mayflower, which is considered historically important for some fucking reason. But John Turner and his sons did not survive their first winter, spent in Connecticut. The reason the bloodline continues is his daughter, who came across the Atlantic later.

I’ve trucked up there in 18-wheelers, and in 1990, still found it to be a place I wouldn’t want to live. In certain places, I felt a heaviness, sometimes even felt that I wasn’t traveling alone. Oh, if you stick to I-95 up the coast, you’re fine. The only thing you’re going to encounter is traffic, and plenty of it, most of which is incredibly comedic, or would be except for idiots with steering wheels in one hand while the other is busy texting or masturbating. Most of my trips were without incident except for the one time I had to go into the interior of the state, almost to the Massachusetts line. I don’t remember what I was hauling or where I went. A half hour after leaving New York I had to take some highway west then another north.

Middle of winter, middle of the night. I was on a main route, but there was no traffic. It was nice for a night haul, roads clear, no foul weather. I crested a hill, and before me there was nothing. Woods and darkness. It’s all I can remember about that trip. It felt like I was seeing backward through time. It’s disorienting, going through one of the world’s most populous cities, only to end up out there in Ichabod Crane country. One feels as though the pages of time had been thumbed backward.

I wish I could do that. Because a town that was doomed to fail from the start was possibly nearby, but I wouldn’t know it, because I would not read about Dudleytown until years later. And though I wound up north of it, and most likely to the east, I guess those forests probably all have the same vibe. There’s history in there, not much of it the good kind.

The stories vary, and most lean towards the skeptical side, but any writer can turn the story into a scary one.

Founded by a descendant beheaded by Henry VII, one wonders if that’s not the best way to begin a thriving town. But as the homestead became a town, there was something going on. People died. Cholera, exposure, the stories differ. There were encounters at night with unknown and presumed dangerous creatures.

As the town emptied, the residents dying or moving away, by 1900 almost nothing remained. No one lived there and the buildings were ruins. Sometime later, a man named Clark bought the property and set up the Dark Entry preservation association. Meant to preserve the land as pristine, he and his wife lived on the land in or very close to Dudleytown. Probably closer to the town proper of Cornwall, where they kept a summer home. The association was to keep acres of woods protected from hunting and logging. Clark had to travel for business, but once, he came home to find his wife highly agitated. She said that there were creatures in the forest. They moved, but left the Dark Entry intact. It is still private land and has been said by some that even using Dark Entry Road will get you stopped by police.

I doubt that; the same thing is said about lots of abandoned places. Usually those roads lead to places which are described in lurid urban legends. Investigation almost always debunk those stories but leave some unexplained, and I believe Dudleytown is a bit of both. First of all, Dark Entry Road is mostly a road in name only. Its final meters end in a narrowed trail that eventually becomes nothing more than a foot path.

Sure, farming in the shadow of a mountain is a stupid idea, and crop failure in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was devastating, but common. It meant going hungry unless travel to buy food was possible, but with what money? No crops to sell (but they did mine iron ore and they did make charcoal).

A Connecticut winter is still a rough go. But that’s with heating, insulated homes, electricity and supermarkets.

It must be said, though, that plenty of other settlements failed. And that’s true everywhere. Bad stuff happens. Mistakes get made. Wars and wildfires and droughts, tsunamis and hurricanes, tornadoes, and more, have more power to destroy than we have to preserve.

One question that lingers, though, is exactly what the “creatures” were. I can’t find any accounts that describe them. “Ghosts” and “demons” are all that show up in records. That’s not exactly specific.

But accounts, from beginning to end, of Dudleytown differ. Clark becomes Clarke, and the Dudley family becomes a cursed family, and it was a Dudley who committed high treason against King Henry VIII.

It’s noteworthy that another difference is cited. The town, not really an incorporated one itself but part of Cornwall, was in the shadow of three mountains, not one. It’s said that madness and suicides and disappearances together with plagues ravaged the town. The “curse of the Dudleys” which began with a death sentence by the Crown followed them to the new world.

An entire family named Brophy was to die and vanish; a death while building a barn; suicides; lightning striking someone on a porch; all said to be on former Mohawk land, and the failure of two industries — logging and iron ore mining — all lend to the belief in a curse.

The Dark Entry Association really does own the land in and around Dudleytown, and it absolutely is private and protected, but not because of creatures or ghosts or demons. It’s the simple fact that a bunch of people have, since World War Two, trampled through, and though clearly marked as no trespassing land, it continues today. Most violators seem to be “ghost hunters”, in other words idiotic thrill seekers who have less respect for the law than urbexers who stack up misdemeanors like a squirrel stashes nuts, the dickheads. These ghost hunters claim to get bad vibes, get touched, or even scratched by unseen entities. I don’t believe that any more than I believe the Dudley Curse.

There’s a lot more to the story than most people are willing to say, because additional facts work less in the favor of sensation and much more in favor of serious scholars and historians. Can’t have that, now, can we?

The truths right there in front of us are simple: the village lay nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, where all sorts of things happen that can’t readily be explained. What you have to realize is, in the mountains of the United States, the ranges of the east, central and west, stories of wildlife that cannot be identified, disasters and deaths, and lots of missing persons, are constantly reported. Planes go down, and I’ve seen the wreckage of one myself. A low-wing, single engine private aircraft. Whoever landed that thing was good. It sat on its belly and still had paint on the exterior even though inside it was decked out with hives of hibernating bees and probably had some rattlers under it. Mountains eat planes. People get lost. They die of exposure, broken bones that put them in shock, and attacks by snakes, dogs, coyotes and bear. It happens. The Appalachian Mountains are constantly underestimated and at elevation, however slight, Dudleytown was a long shot from the start.

I don’t like it when mostly modern accounts alter the vague histories of centuries past. And from all the material I’ve read, I come now to Occam’s Razor. The answer that requires the fewest assumptions is probably the best theory….or conclusion.

I’ve had plenty of times in many places when I felt some kind of bad feeling. I can’t really prove what I think causes this, even though I have different ideas for different places. In the drive upstate in Connecticut, I believe the pitch-black surroundings when I was used to busy, populated routes, simply gave me the creeps. As for Dudleytown, I have no idea how far away it was. I don’t believe it made any difference.

Taking the least amount of assumptions to arrive at a reasonable conclusion about Dudleytown, I find myself on the skeptical side this time. Iron ore being so plentiful underground and having so much water that three mills operated at one time leads me to also conclude that feelings of “bad vibes” or negative emotions just ices the cake. That village was always doomed. Assuming that the place was cursed and surrounded by ghosts and cryptids takes too many jumps for me.

But I’m not quite finished yet. While researching, and believe me on this, you’ll find far more bullshit than you ever will facts, I came across a piece of flawless logic that I can’t get out of my head: i95 Rock, a very interesting radio station out of Danbury, Connecticut, had this to show us:

One DJ sent the town of Cornwall a request under the Freedom of Information Act. This allows US citizens or associations to obtain information from entities which are usually not particularly interested in talking to anyone. It’s been used effectively to obtain government documents and so-on.

The request seems well written and specific. What was sent as a response was even more to the point and is notable for its brevity. It says, basically, “Don’t come here. Your request for information is is denied.”

But the request did not ask for permission to enter the premises. The conclusion of the guest and the DJ is, hey, you stupid bastards, I didn’t ask for permission, I asked for records. What the hell are you boys playing at? What’s really in there? Why are you defensive?

I don’t know what became of this discussion, but it raises a glaringly unmistakable point: why would such a simple request be met by such a defensive and dismissive response? That is, if there’s nothing to see here? A conspiracy!

Suspicious at least, deceitful at most. But why?

If I have anything left to take consolation from, it this:

The linked article i95 posted on its sight is dated.

April 1, 2019.

April Fool’s Day.

Conclusion: not only should you not go to Dudleytown; you shouldn’t even research the fucking place.

Kill me.

Those Eerie Backrooms

“From the most innocent and mundane come the things we fear the most.”

–Michael Smith, blogger, 20 January, 2023.

I’ve often had feelings of unease and then a questioning of reality during and following innocent errands, trips to new places (most of which were hardly “new” but new to me, as in, places I’d never been before.

Most recently, and perhaps significantly as well, was a trip to an oddly generic office building in Ellicott City. I was to see an ophthalmology specialist, a plastic surgeon.

Driven there by my healthcare worker who accompanied me to the suite, I was struck immediately by the ordinary familiarity with it. I had been to the location before, I was certain of it. I knew the area well, as it contains a somewhat infamous and infuriating intersection, known for accidents, road rage and confusion among drivers because of limited vision ahead and the lack of automatic signal. There is one close by, but it only makes the problem of entering its intersection worse. You never forget such a place because traffic backs up ahead of the intersection itself by an obsolete merge area with little allowance for courtesy or patience. Yes. I’d been here before. It even has a place in my novel.

Upon entering the building, I was gripped by an uncanny feeling which had the promise of getting more serious.

Not Déjà Vu. I knew I’d been in the building so that particular sensation was not present. Of course, it had been sufficiently into the past that I could not recall which doctor or practice I had been there to see, and of course that causes people to be distracted on a somewhat semi conscious level. And this, I suppose, could contribute to what I experienced next.

My healthcare worker punched the elevator button for the second floor and the doors closed. Assuming that we were on the first floor, it took too long to reach the second floor. It was wrong, just as the tiny lobby had been wrong. I actually said to her that I didn’t like the whole building because it just felt “off”. She pretty much ignored this and that’s as it should be. But as we turned a corner to walk through one of two long hallways, it felt even more off, as if I had entered some sort of parallel universe, one I did not belong in. It felt like it wasn’t real, as if staying there would result in some nebulous but unfortunate outcome.

Once we reached the proper office suite, it should have cleared up. In different spaces, energy, temperature and pressure can have slight changes. These could explain why one suddenly forgets why they have gone to the kitchen, which happens to everyone. We stand, vacantly staring, until we either remember our reason for being there, or give up. It’s so common an experience that no one really feels fearful of it.

The reception area was generic, but small; so much so that an appropriately wallpapered support beam stood in the center of the room. This subconsciously forces one to picture the building at its barebone newest appearance before finishing carpentry crews moved in. It’s there, but you never really put much thought to it unless you’re an architect, who of course would know the entire building on sight and see its blueprint in his or her mind.

In practice, though, it adds a certain claustrophobic element, and various reactions from annoyance to terror are probably felt quite plainly by incoming clients. Around this county it is common structure. I’ve seen it before but there is always something that makes each suite different: these range from what type of practice or other business uses the space, but all have at least light touches which make them unique in some fashion. The counter at the reception window had at the right end a large silver-colored candle box, usually associated with Christmas decorations of an old-fashioned lantern vein. I’ve wanted one for years. Never seen one before except in advertising or as elements in holiday season wallpapers for computers and phones.

That’s what I think of as a grounding point. It is real.

Or is it? You’ll question everything before you leave here, old man.

There comes a moment when that voice speaks inside you, and at least a good number, no matter how much in the minority they are, believe once again that their perception proves that we are living in a simulation.

Personally, my take on “simulation reality” is that it would still prove the existence of God; a higher being, a creator, and that our souls are who and what we really are, and physical life in our sense is temporary, fleeting, but very real.

In other words, who built the machine? It’s a way for people to account for their anti-religious stances while paradoxically also proving that they can in fact believe in some higher being.

The doctor saw me, and in his examination room, a small picture hung. A depiction of a doctor and patient as if painted in Ancient Egypt. It was singularly remarkable, another grounding object.

But wait, did I really see it, or was it some trick because I’m about to replay “Assassin’s Creed Origins”, a game which takes place in Ancient Egypt?

Come on, now, this questioning of ordinary life is really getting out of hand.

That wasn’t the end of this weird excursion. Oh, no. It gets worse.

Having set the date for the optic surgery, having also been reassured that I did not have cancer, you’d think I’d feel all set. I should have; after covid-19’s initial outbreak and disruption of most healthcare concerns, I’m finally taking care of myself.

My healthcare worker had left after checking in. I had to go downstairs and call her. I left the office, and right outside of the door, there was this old man. Really old, and he was bent as he walked, concealing his face. Immediately he struck me as sinister, and after asking him which direction the elevator was in (a generic hallway, exit signs at both ends, and the lack of anything to regain one’s bearings especially if vision impaired is unsettling), I got the idea that I’d just asked the devil which way to go.

I followed him at a lagging pace. I had severe misgivings, however hilarious they seem now, about getting on an elevator with him and going the opposite direction of up.

I passed a door marked “women” and decided I’d use the men’s room. But I couldn’t find it. I really did need to go; I’d had a glass of water with my meds before leaving. I said to the old man, who was now insisting that I get on the elevator, where the Men’s room was. He pointed but paused, so I told him to go ahead. He did, but didn’t he seem disappointed?

Entering the latrine was completely disequilibrating: it, too, was all wrong. The urinal was too small in proportion to the room and in comparison to every other pisser I’d ever seen!

The same generic wallpaper was there, yellowish-beige, a very unsettling color if ever I saw one. The only way it could have been worse was if they were blood-red or all black.

I went to wash my hands and found the hottest water I had felt since slipping while making pasta and plunging my left hand into boiling water. Had the old man really been the devil, and was he now punishing me for not going down on the elevator with him?

Back at the elevator, I noticed a door to a suite adorned with enormous silver laurel leaves: who does that, I wondered. It is bizarre and out of place and gave me the flying shits. I had to get out of this unholy place!

Pushed the button for the first floor. Exited the elevator only to find myself looking through a huge window onto the parking lot below. I stepped back into the elevator and found a button marked “LL” — Lower Level. I hesitated. I knew it was the floor we had entered the building on, but why mark it such when it should be the first floor? I wondered if the old man would be waiting, if the elevator would take me below ground. Far below ground. All of this seems silly now, because at no time did I feel panic. It was all disorienting and creepy, but not frightening. Except for the old man, who in reality must have been acting out of kindness. Still, the whole setting contributed to my perception, and in future, more consideration must be given to ensure that the layout and aesthetics of buildings comfort rather than the opposite. Because once outside, I felt better, less oppressed in the rain and cold air.

LIMINAL

There’s creepy pasta all over the internet, so much that there’s always more to catch up on. One of them involves “liminal spaces”. The first story and accompanying photograph involved something called “noclipping” a sort of transport into another reality, almost always accidentally. One ends up in a liminal space, like an office floor with yellow walls and absolutely no people or even furnishings. There is nothing but miles of connecting offices and one can actually become trapped there. Coming from 4chan initially, this concept has of course migrated to reddit, where it has been added to. Now long hallways exist in which you can walk until you die and never find a way out. Noclipping is a new concept for me, (I’ve encountered it in video games) but I take it to mean an accident during normal travel which deposits one into an alternate, in-between reality.

I have encountered the feeling before. Once, a very long time ago, in the 1980s when mega-malls were the next great part of the American Dream, I had to deliver a carpet to a shop called T-shirts Plus in the White Marsh Mall. The mall was unfinished, and that’s not an experience I’ve ever wanted to repeat. I walked through the mall with a heavy roll of Burlington Industries carpet slung over my shoulder (I was so much younger then) and the only comfort was a few construction workers above me.

While it was fascinating to see the mall in incomplete condition, it was also unnerving and uncomfortable. With the failure of malls to survive Reaganomics, and finally strip malls and online shopping, urban exploration has become popular, as have the recorded proof, both visual and auditory, of such risky endeavors. Trespassing is one thing; risking one’s life and limb quite another.

Liminal spaces are a real fear, although unquantified and little known, that I believe has been with us for a very long time. Whether psychologists want to examine the phenomenon, I can’t say, but it certainly does seem to qualify for scrutiny. It appeals to a fear of being lost and never found, a fear of being watched or menaced by an unseen force or being, a fear of being trapped, closed-in, and even of open spaces.

And while I believe these fears to be ancient in origin, I believe it all comes from one fear more than any others: the loss of control over one’s own life.

Since I have never been in control and believe that the concept of it is delusion and unreal, I have nothing to fear.

But yesterday, I came very close.

The old man was no devil. But in heightened awareness, when one suffers from various maladies, the wrong surroundings can make one believe almost anything.

Perhaps no one can explain the phenomenon more concisely than the Why Files personalities A.J. and Hecklefish. Here is the episode that gives us the skinny on liminal spaces and how they have entered pop culture.

And if you should find yourself somewhere strange, a featureless, empty space which evokes a feeling of the uncanny, of being menaced, trapped or lost, don’t worry.

You aren’t really alone.

I Finally Googled It And…

Sometime in the early 90s I was listening to Allan Prell, a talk show host on WBAL radio, Baltimore. His subject was weird names parents give their newborn babies. Some are really fucked-up. Like naming a son Adolf Hitler (then the surname). Hey, it’s happened. More than once.

The names he had callers talking about were unbelievable. According to a story he heard, an African American woman had a thing for Jell-O and therefore when she gave birth to twins, she picked her favorite flavors and the result was Lemonjello and Oorangejello. He seemed incredulous at first but then he walked the line. It’s an urban legend, terribly racist, as I found when I finally googled it; banking on the myth that black people are illiterate and stupid.

Of course, there’s a bit of racist in everyone, so legend be dammned, awful names children get burdened with are too easy to believe, even though it isn’t a question of race, religion, politics or even gender: parents of all walks are fucking mean.

Here’s this sweet bundle of joy, a blessing, and it needs feeding, warmth, mother’s tenderness.

But what happens? They come around with the form for the birth certificate, and suddenly nothing is about the baby. Nothing..

It’s about the parents, their whims, narcissistic power, and perhaps a bit of the drugs they use for “recreational” purposes. Oh, I’ve had a few gear-grinders come past me. The kind who, I mean to say by metaphor, will make you smoke the clutch and miss a gear. That kind.

Names like “Castle”, “Truelove”, and worse. Those were grown men. Women have it far worse. You wonder how the heck they ever made it to adulthood with names like those. I don’t mean names like Ian Fleming used for Bond girls, like “Plenty”, “Pussy” or “Kissy”; even though they’re pretty bad. But there’s a better than even chance that you have or had a female classmate with a name that draws bullies like shit draws flies.

It isn’t the child’s fault that his or parents were too selfish and full of themselves to give them a proper name.

The study that gave slight odds that children would end up in the juvenile justice system were better if their names drew ridicule, hatred and bullying or committed crimes is significant to me. In addition to the fire they drew, they probably already hated their names themselves. Low self esteem can cause severe social problems and inhibit learning at school. They stuff their resentment for what their parents did to them down deep which at some point will result in rebellious acting out, and that can take any of a thousand forms, none of which are good. Remember that if the percentage seems low, it still translates to individuals who can feel shame, embarrassment and humiliation. Plus a deep resentment for their parents. And that’s often all it takes to fuck up a child and do damage that’s for life.

Yes, they can change their names once they reach the age of majority. True. But by then, if their lives have gone sideways, it really won’t matter, will it?

Look around you. What do you see? A planet our race is determined to so contaminate as to make mass extinction unavoidable, and that means us; humans. Not just the poor. All of us. Trees are blighted, and if not, affected by LED parking lot lights that throw their nighttime and seasonal patterns off; temperature rise facilitates invasive species from insects to fungi and water levels underground are at their lowest in all of human history. People don’t mind driving even for stupid reasons, and you can’t recycle plastic because the recycling station crushes it and bales it and it goes to a landfill.

We keep proving that we don’t care.

And if children are treated so horribly, then why do you crusade against animal abuse? Don’t you realize what human beings are by now? They kill everything they touch.

You know what’s in a name?

You answer the question. And if you see this as pessimistic or nihilistic, you’ve got your eyes closed to the truth.

But what difference does that make? Nazis, MAGA Republicans and far-right “Christians” lie all the time, really using the most absurd and outlandish bullshit even when they are confronted with facts, video, audio; it doesn’t matter.

We obviously hate the truth, each other, our children, our pets, and this world.

What’s in a name?

Does not matter when it’s on a death certificate, Does it?

If we don’t look up from our cellphones and start paying attention to what counts instead of dirty texts, we’re doomed. And no matter what your name is, it’ll be on a headstone.