Author: MsTek

This Dystopian Hellscape

You WILL KNEEL to BEZOS or MUSK. You’ll suck them off while getting rammed up the ass sideways by the Federal government, while the state governments does titty twisters on you. You will do all all this and accept all this and LIKE IT… because you never bother to care or stop it to begin with.

“Oh Tek, what the actual fuck are you on about NOW?”

See, I decided to treat myself today. If you know what’s going on, I have no income and I just lost BOTH of my parents in tragic ways. And I can’t find a job. And I have no close friends. I have zero family now. I have literally nothing to look forward to and am in so much fucking trouble, that somedays, though I have no desire to kill myself, I wonder what the point is in waking up. Then I remember: “It’s to spite all those motherfuckers who wish me dead, who wished me buried. ” They may gloat now at my massive misfortune, and that’s fine. So long as I am not dead, I still have a chance of grinding their faces with my heel into the pig shit. But I digress, I digress… (can you tell I am a little bit bitter, sensitive and angry, oh so ANGRY.) I took a tiny bit of the cash I had to buy some apple cider at Whole Paycheck (foods) because they have the one I really like and I just wanted something today to feel kind of normal again (we’ll get to this in a moment). As I am checking out (and I was way to agast to take a photo of it), I saw “Check out with your palm, register now.”

Look, I fucking LOVE technology. I LOVE IT. And I want to be down with all this shit, but when I look at the fuckers in charge (MUSK is the worst, but then we have Bezos and Zuck- though I think Zuck is going to lose it all, to be honest), I really do NOT want to be part of their data mining and commodification of humanity. I do not. I fucking would love to pay for shit with just my thumbprint, but I’m also smart enough to know two things:

  • Those fuckers are evil because they have not idea, clue or care about how the 99% live.
  • They will catch ALL Of us eventually because the governments of the world see use in the biometric technology to catch the pocketbooks of EVERYONE, even those who are trying to stay OFF the grid.

It’s becoming harder and harder to actually USE cash in some areas. You need a card… but now we’re upping the ante- use biometrics. Let’s talk about what that actually means for a moment.

If need to pay for things via biometrics, that’s another way of tracking money… how much money you have, if you are saying that you have this amount yet are able to spend that amount. I’m really sensitive to this right now because for the first time in my life, I need to use the social safety net that is provided to me (meagerly) by my state and federal government. But that is tied to my income. So if someone has felt sorry for me and given me $20 buck so I can go buy some cider at Whole Foods and if I paid for said cider with my fingerprint, but my fingerprint is also tied to my LINK benefits, then with the magic of algorithms, it could come back to say “yo, I thought you had no income, but I see you bough a $5 half gallon of NON-ALCOHOLIC apple cider at Whole Foods. Cleary you had that $20 of income so we’re going to reduce your benefits by $20 because you are abusing the system.”

Wut?

No, this hasn’t happened but I am presenting a scenario that could due the technology we have available and which way we’re heading. If I believed in the good of man and the government, I’d be the first to use my palm. I’m all about Cyberpunk and AI and technology.. But that technology is NOT being used for good at all (though it has the potential) because the assholes among us just see it as a way to lower wages, reduce jobs, reduce benefits and line their already fat wallets (I mean who buys a social media company because it hurt your masculinity then runs it into the ground for millions of dollar and it’s no big deal… Not naming names, I don’t need to.) Yet, said person is still getting your federal tax dollars to run his companies which for some reason on the backs of other people’s minds and again, your tax dollars have given him cache and clout.

Yeah, fuck that. He should have been on that sub. ‘Nuff said.

But yeah, let me circle back to “feeling normal”.

It’s so fucked up. I don’t feel normal. I want to feel normal. But I will NEVER get my normal back. It’s kinda like the world post Covid. The world before Covid is never coming back, you can try to make people go back to the office all you want but eventually you have to come to a new normal, and that’s bloody hard. But let’s take that Covid example and put is on a person who lost both their parents in a very shit ways in less than year, have ZERO support network and are just now…

alone.

So you live in a nightmare that your head is trying to get around the concept that you are just 100% alone now. You don’t even have people who fight with you and make your life difficult yet you know love you and if worse comes to worst, will do their best to take you in . You don’t have it. It’s gone. You have nobody to take you in. You have also found that your “friends” are very selfish people who use this time to make it about themselves, or just don’t have the emotional capacity and intelligence to support you (this I can forgive a little bit, and I have distances myself from them and they have from me and that’s okay. Disappointed, but I don’t hate because when I think about it, I remember that when I was younger, they were emotionally out of touch back then and I should have figured they wouldn’t be able to deal. ). I mean, I am 100% okay of letting go of the people I’ve let go of in the past month and I don’t miss them or want them back as I see they were not good for me. Still, I don’t have my mother to cry to or my father to make me feel bad for crying to him and lecturing me and making me feel like shit yet still my father who loves me. Don’t have him anymore either. I have nobody and again I realize that I am…

alone.

And it doesn’t feel normal because its a new state of being and its really fucking stressful because I know I have no safety net. It’s really fucking stressful because when I am upset, I can’t pick up the phone and call anyone (no, that is NOT why you need a therapist. We over drug and over subscribe therapy because we don’t know how to manage feelings and and develop real relationships with people anymore. Everything has become monetized in some aspects… even relationships..”I will be this for you, if you do this for me”.) So I walk around kind of in daze. I don’t feel like a real person anymore because I know that I don’t matter to anyone anymore. The two people in this world I mattered to are gone, so what does that make me? Who does that make me? I feel like a living ghost. So I am trying to go through the motions, trying to live but I have to live for myself. And I mean we all have to live for ourselves in the end but, it feels better when you know in the background, somewhere, someone cares about your wellbeing and loves you. When that’s absent, you feel like you’re not apart of society anymore- not that society is all that great to being with but still.

So I know, that I need to find that new “normal” and that new baseline because that comfort of who I was and how I perceived the world is never, ever, EVER coming back. I literally am connected to no one. I am a ghost (except for whatever money I make for the government and the 1%, suck my taint and die you fucks). This isn’t something that I can figure out in a day, a week or even a month. I’m trying to be kind to myself. Still…

I also know this is a time of massive change and it’s time to let go of A LOT of things that made Tek, Tek… so I am dying too, I guess. This is hard. This is a process, however, I also see painful, slow fucking growth in me as a person through all of this, sad and tragic as it is. I hate it. I’d rather have my parents back but they are never coming back. Just like I probably am not an IT person anymore and am never going back to corporate America. I’m trying to sort this all out at what has to be the worst time of my life. No savings, no job, no close friends, no parents…

But I do have one, one fucking thing. Just one:

me.

As horrible as things have been, I have never let myself down in the end. And that’s the cruel fucking thing- some of my “friends” are like “well, I know you will sort it out in the end.”. You know what? Fuck you. You could help me but you don’t because “You’ll sort it out in the end”. Yeah, probably, but think how much faster that would be with a helping hand. Think of how much better I would feel if you would stop, give me a hug, offer to help me find work, offer to help me clean my apartment or take me out for a drink or just fucking REACH OUT TO ME so I stop feeling like I don’t exist anymore.

But you won’t. I have nothing to give you at the moment besides entertainment or annoyance at my situation. And truth, it was like this before I fell so low, the only difference was that I could call my mom or my dad. They couldn’t help me but they were for me. I even have that anymore. It’s just…

me.

So its going to take time for me to navigate a new “normal” for myself. At least I caught on today what the problem was when I said to myself “I just want to feel normal”. I’m self aware enough to say back to myself “But Tek, that ‘normal’ is gone. What you want to feel is never going to feel like that again. It’s impossible. You need to find what the new normal is. Its going to feel bad until you figure out what your new baseline is.” And that sucks, because I know its going to take time and I need to just be that ghost but I also know that I am a fighter and maybe if I need to stand against the world, I won’t go down without taking a few of you with me.

Just what the South Side of Chicago needs: Luxury Office Spaces

Via Blockclub:

Historic Washington Park National Bank Building Gets Approval To Build Luxury Offices

There are so many things that the south and west side of Chicago need but this really isn’t it. This isn’t it anywhere in the country or the world right now. The old way is gone yet people are insisting on clinging to it. Correction, people who got to where they are now by “the old way” don’t want to lose the trappings of that power so want to hold on to it in every way they can. Being in the office is a power trip. If people want to be in the office, cool, if they don’t , that’s cool too. Younger people in the office, I sort of agree with that, but mid to senior level people don’t need to be where you can see them to be productive. But hey, let’s build luxury office spaces to prove something that in today’s current environment, really doesn’t mean anything, does it?

I still like to think that I am a capitalist however, I realize now that even if you are a good person and believe in responsible capitalism, the bad people, the manuplators, the con-men and the vultures are the ones who will make out in the end. The economy for the everyday person right now is SHIT, okay, it’s SHIT. Groceries and gas are out of this world, there are layoffs still happing with no replacement jobs, and if there are, those jobs are paying 30% less than pre-pandemic rates. THRITY PERCENT LESS THAN PRE-PANDEMIC WAGES. Inflation isn’t going down- at least not if you live in a major city, and we’re paying attention to Hunter Biden’s ding dong in tight whities (seriously, I do not give a fuck.).

The South and West sides of Chicago need investment but those investments need to be infrastructure, groceries stores and jobs- not of the office variety quite yet because due to how things are down there, the education isn’t there- YET. Investment in the people first, then the rest will come.

I wish I had money. I wish my parents had been smarter so that I had been smarter. There is so much that I KNOW now that I could do something with but I have zero capital. Stupid position to be in. I could do something about all of this.

Doing my best

I had a screening interview on Friday for a job that I really wanted that didn’t go well. I doubt I will move to the next round. I’m bummed for so many reasons:

  • I really wanted the job
  • I am on food stamps now
  • I have ZERO income
  • I don’t know how I am going to pay rent or my car payment.

I want to get upset but maybe I’ve finally “crossed over”. My stress level is bad but I dunno, I don’t feel like hiding in my bed and going “Oh woe is me”. There are a few things I DO know, as I said, over the last year, I found out who my real friends are… I have more than I thought but some who I thought were my friends are not. I do think about this Mike Tyson quote from time to time which is interesting. I feel bad for liking him in his old age.

Anyway… It’s almost a year that my mom has been dead (Sept 16th- buried Sept 22nd). I’m much better than I was however I still get random moments where I just cry. This morning was one of them.

Because I am on food stamps, I really have to be careful what I spend it on. I do have food that I put away during the pandemic.. some of it past it’s ‘best by” date, but I don’t think it will kill me. I am trying my hand at making sandwich bread from scratch today as the breadmaker is good, but I still am not getting that texture that I want. I have time (duh) so I decided to take a stab at it today. As I said, I was really good about putting some food away during the pandemic/start of the Ukrane war because I knew food prices were going to go up. I stocked up flour. I was out of bread flour in my pantry but I knew I has some in my deep freezer. I go to get it and burst into tears. My mother when she was at my house when I was out of town had taken my bread flour and vacuum sealed it. I didn’t do that.. I have black bags for that and I never got around to do it. She had clear ones. I didn’t want to open up the bread flour but I needed it so I did and that just started the waterworks this morning. She loved me so much. So much. I took that for granted and I am so sorry for that.

I have drinks that she bought me that I didn’t want in my fridge still. I can’t bear to throw them out.

***

Addendum… I never posted this… The day I was going to do this, I found my father’s body and my world, which was already upside down was now inside out.

More later, I suppose… and I thought I was going to get the food stamps but now I’ve heard nothing about it.