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What the fuck are you looking at me for? There is literally nothing I can say about the Supreme Court's decision today to end federal abortion rights that a woman can't say for herself, better than me. So fuck you if you were expecting anything different. 

That is all.

UFO Sex Cult 1 (Exclusive Poem)

 Up along the interstellar matrix of enlightenment

I found a spot where all the people who fucked me can get bent.

It's a place in space, a rock with an underground base

Where I'm ascendant to the secret race.

Black triangles and saucers fill the skies in my dreams

And I'm rising in the grip of a tractor beam.

Can the human race survive my dream?

I should start a UFO sex cult.

The Dracos in their crescent ships arrive in force

And I'm beholding a pale horse

And something inside me stirs with grace

I'm master of the secret race.

My followers behind me, now,

I'm invincible.

Sex cult, sex cult, UFO sex cult.

Sex cult, sex cult, UFO sex cult.

Some say I'm a dreamer, or that I run a scheme,

But I'm the type who thinks the truth is always in between.

My UFO sex cult guides the people along destiny's path

But for this the mainstream labels me a sociopath.

I'm just a man, a man alone, reaching for the stars.

And if you listen good, I'll tell you of my astral projections on Mars.

My UFO sex cult will raise your consciousness

Your relationships will benefit and partners, you'll impress.

Sex cult, sex cult, UFO sex cult.

Sex cult, sex cult, UFO sex cult.

Antarctian Nazi pyramids mark the secret base

That Elohim and Yahweh established on the Sixth Day

To monitor the goings on of all humanity

They rule the Earth from a mass surveillance facility.

Everyone alive carries with them the Seed of Doubt

Implanted thus at birth with vaccine injections

And only a brave souls favor rejection

Of the Demon Breed Seed that forces its way

Into the genome of man.

But my sex cult has a plan.

My sex cult has a plan.

Something That Frustrates Me

 They way people talk about politics in general frustrates me, but there is something particular I wanted to bring to light that seems to happen to me. And I'm wondering if it happens to other mental health professionals who lean left.

It's like people forget, when they talk politics with me, that I am a therapist. I work with a lot of Medicaid and Medicare patients, I don't choose my patients (and wouldn't want to). I meet people where they're at. To the extent that I might discuss "politics" with my patients it's because I'm trying to understand their worldview. I hear peoples' racism sometimes. More when they begin to trust me. I can't always call them on that, it's not always the right moment. I am trying to treat depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, mental illnesses, there's no ethical way for me to always address the racism I hear or the bad political takes (or address them at all), that would be imposing my views on people. I hear many, many things I disagree with that I have to accept are part of a person's worldview that I can't change. I wish I could change this stuff but that's not what I'm there for, these persons would not stay engaged in therapy if I attacked their worldviews.

So it's not like I can't tolerate disagreement or dissent. It's not like I live in a bubble. I'm not an academic, I run a mental health clinic that primarily serves working class people in a county with a blue collar reputation, and when I'm not reviewing peoples' paperwork and providing clinical supervision, I'm doing outpatient therapy with a diverse set of clients. I have almost 40 patients. I hear all kinds of things. Spiritual and psychosocial enlightenment. Grandiosity. Passion. Compassion. Conspiracy theories. Hallucinations. Delusions. Paranoias. Phobia. Bigotry. I get the full spectrum of human behaviors.

And I've been in the mental health field over ten years and have had over a hundred clients, maybe something like two hundred, I would have to sit down and do some guesstimate math. But it's a broad experience of the human multi-spectrum to draw from. I've seen just about everything. So I don't use language lightly. I dislike when even leftists misuse words like "cult" to describe strict religious traditions that don't meet the criteria for a destructive cult. I try to be precise with my language and not engage with hyperbole.

I find hyperbole dishonest. It's like endorsing lies because they "feel right." I don't have time for the ultra-negative perspective that everyone is a hypocrite because I know plenty of people who are struggling in earnest, and they are not always perfect but their struggles are valid. I don't think I'm going to change the world in a generation but I'm content with being part of peoples' healing process, and by modeling tolerance I am helping to spread it. 

So, there's a political component to all that, in terms of my need to frame my work according to principles I can endorse, but it's primarily about best therapeutic practice. So, I think I'm entitled to be a bit more critical in my personal life of things people say, especially if those things reinforce a prejudiced view of another group or a rejection of modernity. You'll forgive me for that :)

A Few Stray Thoughts (6:25 AM)

 So, I'm management now. I still work with patients. Doing outpatient therapy. But I'm also running a clinic that provides outpatient therapy for children and adults and wraparound services for children. I have a caseload of patient with whom I mostly do telehealth counseling, although we are slowly transitioning to in-person visits with as many as possible. I am learning how to manage people. It's been a good transition, it's an upward swing in my career. 

I don't think it is too much at odds with my principles as an anarchist. I did have to leave a certain union due to a bylaw that I myself wrote an amendment that specifically excludes managers. That was ironic and I appreciate the irony. I left on good terms and obviously maintain my connections with the anarchist and socialist communities. To the extent that I am responsible for firing people (which I have had to do), it's almost always for Medicaid Fraud, which involves underserving our population and undermining our reputation. 

I feel bad about leaving the kids at the school in the middle of the year but I was financially struggling and this job involves supervisory experience so I would have been stupid not to take it. As a friend and comrade of mine said to me, "Sometimes you have to put your own gas mask on first."

My work involves meeting people where they're at.

I'm also working on a project involving character development and storytelling, based on Bigfoot, UFOlogy and the/Secret Space Program mythos that I can't really discuss in detail but will reveal later, on this blog. Consider it a "metamedia" project for now. I'll explain that when I release the details and final product.

I'm toning down the politics on this blog, intentionally.

I don't think talking about anarchism does much. I think anarchism is something you have to do.

You should try it.

Story: UNTOUCHABLE ME

 

Untouchable Me

 

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”

But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country,” when the guns begin to shoot;

Yes it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;

But Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool--you bet that Tommy sees!

 

-        Rudyard Kipling

 

Sometime after the Sixth Great Migrations…

Somewhere in the Triangulum Galaxy…

 

I figured, this was it. I was caught. They knew. Kreeg, if was I ever in trouble, it was now.

They knew it wasn’t my ident I used to sign up. They knew I wasn’t supposed to be here. I thought I’d be sent home in shame, barred from service. An embarrassment to the war effort. I’d been in the army five months, stationed on Eptosh B, defending our allies from the Rukirian Hordes.

The provosts came and called my name. They wore coilguns on their arms. There was no place to hide under the grey canvass tent. If I ran, they’d have shot me.

So, I cooperated. They took me from the field hospital, on a Howler, somewhere else. I don’t know where. A bare, grey room.

And I waited on the bare, grey bench.

 

Eptosh B was conquered by the Hordes last year. It was in all the holostreams. They invaded with gunships and drop pods, and captured the Eptosh High Senate, and their Idols, too. They brought the senators and the idols both back to their homeworld as trophies and established garrisons on the poverty-stricken planet. The Eptoshim had only recently redeveloped deep space travel. Their ships were primitive and not built for combat. They barely had an army, even. They never had a chance. But our treaty with their High Senate and Chief Executive demanded we intervene. They were Homeworlds’ allies, and that meant it was our fight, too. The Hordes had to be stopped, or they would move through the rest of Phycon Sector like a plague.

That was what the holos in the recruitment office said. And they said, soldiers got good benefits. Seemed like soldiers had it good. So I figured, why not? It was something to be, more than an orphan.

 

A provost brought me a tray of food. It was the same kind of overly processed synthetic mush they served at the base. Five differently colored, differently textured lumps eaten with the same spoon. I picked at the lump that was gritty and yellow, not particularly hungry, until an officer who looked to be in his early thirties arrived. He was no provost, this one. I thought his black eyes looked kind. He didn’t look like he’d ever seen combat. He reminded me of a school guidance counselor, more than anyone who belonged in a warzone.

“Hello, Otto,” he said, using my real name. Not “Private Pollock,” which the Lieutenant called me, or “Pollock,” like my squadmates, or even “Castador,” which it said on the ident I used to sign up.

He said, “I’m Captain Tobias Krafft. Public Relations. Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble. But you’re a long way from home, kid.”

His eyes began to look less kind and more like they were searching me, waiting for me to say something. Like a trap. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to fill the silent space, or if I should hold out and wait to see if he would speak again, unprompted. So, I said nothing. I didn’t want to own my name. Some stubborn part of me thought if I ignored him, maybe he would go away. But when has that ever happened? I should have known better. I wasn’t stupid.

Tobias Krafft spoke in calm, measured tones:

“I understand why you would expect to be in trouble. But you’re not. Yes, we know your real name. Castador is your brother. He’s four years older than you. He studies architecture at Tesh City Community Higher School, and he still has no idea you enlisted him in the army and are illicitly serving in his place while he is technically absent without leave. We haven’t contacted your next of kin yet. Your family must think you just ran away.”

That was awfully presumptive of him. Castador and I didn’t even have parents. He remembered them, but I didn’t. We had been wards of the state since I was a baby. I spent the first ten years of my life fighting for scraps and fleeting attention in a group home where we were assigned by the Benefactors. Army seemed like a step up.

Maybe Krafft knew this already, probably he did, and was trying to goad me into confirming something, saying anything, like it would give him an edge. So, I said nothing.

He half-smiled, half-sighed. It was his way of telling me he was amused but not surprised. Like he thought I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.

“Castador is nineteen. That makes you fifteen. And you are not supposed to be here, either.”

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” I asked. I still considered myself a soldier.

“You don’t need my permission,” said the man. “You’re not legally supposed to be wearing that uniform.”

“Are you going to send me home, sir?” I asked.

He shook his head like he was bewildered why I would even ask. Like I should already know. I hated when adults did that. Then, all of what I thought was kindness seemed to evaporate from his face, leaving behind something menacing.

“Now, why would we do that?” he asked. “I told you, you’re not supposed to be here. If it was known that you are here, we would have a lot of problems. There would be questions. We don’t want that. So, we have absolutely no intention of revealing to anyone outside the chain of command that an underage civilian illegally enlisted using false credentials, and we sent him into combat. There’s the public’s faith in us to consider. So, you have our full support, Private Castador Pollock. That’s all.”

Wanting to believe something is worse than knowing you’ve been lied to. At least, that’s what I thought, when Captain Krafft left the room. The door lock clicked. I was obviously a prisoner, here on their terms. If I wanted to stay, I’d have to follow the rules. But actually, that wasn’t really any different from how it was before. There were rules. If I didn’t follow them, I’d get punished, and if that didn’t take, then court martialed. And they would have found out anyway. And who knows, maybe that would have gone down worse. But worse for me? Or worse for them?

I know this sounds crazy, but I did want to stay.

I really did believe we were doing some good over here, and there was nothing for me at home. Being here actually meant something. It was the only choice I ever really made for myself. I knew it wasn’t mine to make. But I made it so. Now, I felt robbed of that. Krafft had made it clear they had their reasons to look the other way, and it had nothing to do with me.

I didn’t know what time it was, but I was tired. Eventually, I slept. In the morning, Krafft came back. He had a contract with him, readied on a paper-thin digiflex sheet for me to sign.

“I’m supposed to read this with you and explain every section,” he said.

 We reviewed the contract.

I was never to speak of this to anyone, ever. If I did, it would invalidate my veterans’ benefits, and the military would erase all records of me and deny it ever happened. Another section stated that when I did return to Homeworld, when my cycle was over, I was required to attend therapy. I asked Krafft about that. I said I didn’t need therapy. There was nothing wrong with me.

He acted like he was being made to explain water to fish.

“Look, you send kids to war, ninety-nine times out one-hundred, you’re not much good for anything else after that. There’s no one in the chain of command wants to be responsible for kreeging up your life. So, you finish your cycle. You go back home. You see someone. You move on. Not a kreeging choice, Private. It’s a consequence. You skipped the line. Now you pay the price.”

“They didn’t mess up my life, though…” I said, careful not to use a two-syllabary word like “kreeg” before a superior officer. “Sorry, sir. I shouldn’t have interrupted. But no one did anything to mess up my life, sir. I chose to be here.”

“Why?” he asked.

“To serve my planet,” I said. Obviously. I mean, didn’t he know that? Wasn’t he wearing the same uniform as me?

He sighed, frustrated, and said we’d talk later. He said I’d be transferred soon, to another Howler. They wanted to pass me back through the same field hospital they pulled me out of. Like I was fresh from a fight. I felt like I was being smuggled.

I got back to my unit at the front, and everything was normal again.

 

My days were grey and red. I didn’t sleep well, but I never wanted for action. And when my cycle was over, I still didn’t want to go back. There was still nothing for me. But I knew they wouldn’t let me re-enlist. Not for two and a half more years, anyway. And even then, probably not. They know who I am and what I did, and I don’t think they would let me be a soldier again.

The thought did occur to me that I was untouchable. A scandal, just waiting to break loose and ruin their reputations. Dangeboy. I could’ve taken advantage of that, lorded it over them, like a brat. But I’d be hated for it, and I’d have hated myself. I was still something of a patriot, and I couldn’t bring myself to sully the glorious flag of Homeworld with bad behavior unbefitting a soldier. So, when my red slip came, I quietly boarded the transport ship and made the journey home.

I’ve tried to move on, but Krafft was right. After that, I really wasn’t much good for anything else. Not for lack of trying, though. I’m just a rotten kreeg-up.

I’ve had thirty-seven jobs in eight years, and just as many stints on unemployment. None of these jobs lasted more than six weeks. I’ve washed dishes and cleared rubble and taken out the trash. Sure, there’s work, but what else is there?

I’ve heard there’s others out there, and they’ll take you if you can fight. They have ships, they’re not bound to any planetary authority. They’ll take you, and if you play it right, they won’t ask too any questions. They have their beliefs. Their causes. I’m open to whatever. I just want my life to mean something again. So, these people, well, it’s just a matter of time. I’ll find them. And I’ll be a soldier again.

Please Support My Patreon

 Good morning.

I am terrible at begging for money.

I have a Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/TheSpeculativeAnarchist

If you like my fiction, I would appreciate your (minimal) financial support. I am trying to gain notability as a science fiction writer. I experienced success late last year with the radio show and I have a book being considered for publication right now by a small science fiction press. I am hoping to break out soon as a sci fi writer. I need Patrons. I'm trying to get something started, off the ground, like a fantastic steampunk flying machine, Please consider supporting me in this mission.

Thank you. It's been nice to see traffic increasing on this blog. I appreciate you, readers.

Be well.

-Raven G (The Speculative Anarchist)

The Partisans - experimental short piece

 

The Partisan

 

eMark@:88.29.52.77X85.71[encrypt.matrx.SIGMA-9]

ATTN/HX: Village SubNet Subcell 197019G

Transmo Freq: EHZ.K12.2021.0901A

Telematrix Domain Prefix Delta

 

Oh, comrades!

Thik’n’ning as I was rolling high, and abouts the finer things in the worlds, I reflected as like in a mirrored parabola on the people in my life.

And I tried to find Order in Chaos.

Before I was wetwebbed, I had a name: Mordecai of Iko Band, Wanderer Clan, Wind Dagger Tribe, Born Free to the Steppe. I was well enough read for a Barbarian. It’s why the Wetweb numbered made me First-Among-Equals. I believe in theories and I believe in facts and things I can see or smell or make explode. And I like my thik’n’nings on things such as Order and Chaos. I take at it analytically as like I was some science observer from some parallel plane, looking askew and ignorantly at all the worlds that humanity calls home, and when I do this I find myself questioning of myself, why is it that I say “Their Great Vigilance” sometimes, not with reverence or respect, but out of fear? And am I thik’n’ning alone on this? And all the other oddball thik’n’nings I thik. And chief among the thik’n’nings this mornering as I heat breakfast stew over a fire outside my thermal-insulated tent and huddle myself with shivers against the bite of wind, is that the people in my life are special.

I love every one of the combat workers in my squad like they were family. Because, though I am first to wake, alone, when each partisan wakens and wetwebs, I absorb them into my heart and soul.

Second-Among-Equals came here from the Peoples’ Legion to show us how to fight. She is a Canalite, from the coastal region. She brought the Newsong.

Fourth-Among-Equals came with her from the Canalite land of Pontiel. He is a cherubic warrior, skilled with the bow, the scimitrix, and the long-gun.

Fifth-Among-Equals is young, maybe too young, but fearless, and strong. She is the Carrier-of-Water and Songkeeper.

Sixth-Among-Equals prefers to fight using the weapons of our oppressors, the Technocrati, the Forces of Jacoby Prosser. He’s amassed a collection.

Seventh, they sing.

Eighth, they ache for their lost love.

Ninth, he is always first to volunteer.

I love even Third-Among-Equals, who came to us from the Disenfranchised Classes. I see how he hard he tries to fit in. But it never clouds his mind. He can stand on his own feet. The Family is a dying cell. We are the Newkind, the Wetwebbed, the Many, the Proud, the Partisans!

And we are all the children of Grand Marshall now.

Rush concludes. High roll come down. Drop low. Then, boom! Big white flash.

The Gammamen coming. I senses it. It’s killing time.

One detaches slowly from its cluster, a lonely bubble now, this strange envoy. Floating up in the sky, unattached and cold, its sight inspires the fight in us to overwhelm the allness in ourselves.

Our Enemy is cold and detached. It does not know the simple pleasurings of hearthfire and Song. It has never felled a gamebird with bola or toxdart, it has never run on the steppe and flapped its arms like wings and shouted at the Greater Light and called the Lesser names.

But it has invaded my home. It wants my lands for more “rational” use.

And that is why we fight. We fight for our freedom. We fight for Grand Marshall!

Grand Marshall was like us once, thik’n’ning just like this, on his circumstances as like they’d look to an Outsider. And Grand Marshall, in all his thik’n’nings, concluded that the Steppe of Marr, and the Forests of Gend, and the Coastal Cities of Pontiel, ought not to be anymore a part of the Global Domains under the Technocrati. Our planet had seen its share of conquerors- Rigelians, Diamonders, Ophidians, Taskmasters. We drove them all off. The Technocrati defeated four empires with Higher Tech, and that was truegood, but when they turned that tech on us, to take away our lands, that’s when Grand Marshall knew he could no longer tolerate what the Global Domains had become, and he declared the Trifecta an independent, sovereign, and macrocollectivist Folk Republic. And within that Folk Republic’s borders, he dissolved the Classes and encouraged mixing of the Trifecta Nations. In his thik’n’ning, if the Steppeans and the Foresters and Canalites- all the Folk Tribes of the Trifecta- got wetwebbed up together, we could protect our lifeways from the Technocrati. So we wetwebbed, on a subnet of the Telematrix, encrypted and walled off from any Enemy hacker. And squads like mine, operated as a subcell in the Wetweb. We were localed to each other, and segmented from the All. It quieted the voices in our minds. We operated in tandem with the prowline scouting-cats, the dual webchips in our brainstems and forebrains aligned with theirs in a repeating sequence that tied us and our thik’n’nings together as one so that we knew each other and the world through each other. We creep together through the Trifecta sowing chaos and devastation upon every reach of the Technocrati.

We are all like Sixth-Among-Equals now, using the weapons of the Technocrati against them. EmRails and plasmery, EMPs and nuclear fusion missiles, long-range attack craft and gunships and cruisers, lasers and caterpillar mines, and sleepermist grenades, and the naked rawness of mere bullets.

The lonely bubble swoops low, and free-electron lasers slash outward from its mirrored skin. Scorches burn on the ground where the hot beams strike. They prefer not to kill. They prefer to quell with awe.

But in all our webbed thik’n’ings of late, we are not so suchly prone to awe.

May Their Great Vigilance forgive my abouts-to-dos.

Roll high, roll on, sibs!

Victory to Grand Marshall, victory to the Trifecta Folk Republic! Victory to the Confederation of the Non-Aligned! Victory and Long Life to the All.

I give my life.

Do not forget me, oh!