06 July 2026

So I’ve been on the internet a long time (my first forays into it occurred in late 1995!), and so I’m relatively comfortable with many different methods of online communication. One of my favorites is the message board or message forum. I haven’t been on one in a while if you don’t count Reddit-style forums, though. The last one I spent any real time on was the one for the online game Travian’s U.S.-based servers. (If you have never played Travian but you like MMORPGs, you should try it at least once. But only if you have spare time to fritter away. You’ll need it.)

And the thing with message boards, as with other online communication forums, is that they tend to develop their own culture over time. What brought the Travian message forum to mind for me was seeing the email from Substack today about how we can do text colors now. Because on the Travian message boards, somehow they decided that blue text meant sarcasm.

Like this: AI is amazing. I love asking ChatGPT what I should eat for lunch. Thinking is hard.

Anyway. I might abuse that here. I don’t know yet.

Oh, and apologies in advance if the blue text doesn’t propagate to the email version of this post. But that’s one reason I wanted to remark upon it. TEST RUN! I’ll at least find out if it shows up in Gmail. My bet’s on yes.

(How many of you are using POP3 email? I still have it! I never hear anyone talking about it anymore.)

So, Deep Green Resistance just wrapped up their annual conference here in town, and this is the first time we’ve had an event where Stuart showed up that was here in town but I never had to actually see him. I am not sure why, because even though they were using a different rental house this year for the conference site, it still had a separate little apartment that he got to stay in, but that was true of the usual site and he still came over to L’s house that first August I was here. I can’t decide if he’s extra-determined to avoid me or if the situation just never called for him to come over. I figure in another year or two I’ll stop wondering about even that. Not that I anticipate being here for next year’s conference, but in case I am.

I don’t know why they specifically picked the Independence Day weekend for the conference when usually the conference is in August. Might have been the closest available. I do know there is a thing coming up in August which would have made participation in the conference a bit of an energy suck for one of the major participants. I’ll say no more than that because that’s their story to tell. Nothing scandalous, just not public information unless the holder of the information chooses otherwise.

One of the other attendees is at least friendly with me and offered condolences about Dad yesterday, which was a little weird because it was the month’s anniversary. She wouldn’t have known; she’s on my Facebook, but there aren’t a lot of us who make note of the exact date of an event like that for someone we barely know. I get it, and it’s fine, but it’s just an interesting coincidence, is all. I am constantly wasting brain cells noticing little things like that. It is of no use to anyone, but there you go.

No death certificate yet. We are looking at probably a minimum of two more weeks on that one and for all I know it could be longer, depending on when the clock started for the funeral home and/or the state and/or whoever. I keep forgetting that this is going to be a thing, and so I have been under a bit of stress lately.

If I never impart another lesson to my female readers, it is this: Always look broke to men. Never tell men you have money. They will waste their entire lives calling us gold-diggers but the second they even catch a whiff of your bank balance, they will be after you to take as much of it as they think they can get away with.

I am not singling out any particular person in saying this. It’s just true. I’ve experienced it from at least three different men in my own life, two in the past year in fact. And for all I know, this sort of behavior is human nature or something because I’ve seen and heard enough women’s conversations about men’s money to know it can work the other way too.

The problem is we usually don’t have as much money as they do, on average, and so them coming after our bank accounts hits very differently. Sort of like the Widow’s Mite story in the Bible, except for taking, not giving. And if the man’s asking the woman for money at a time the woman has more money than the man does, that doesn’t make it better, because that’s just a financial snapshot. Even the brokest dusty scrote down on his luck is going to have more opportunity over his lifetime to make a decent income than a woman would have. Dudes look out for one another, dudes tend to be generous with compensation for labor with one another, and dudes are almost never stuck by themselves raising children and also having to pay for childcare on minimum fucking wage. It might as well be an entirely different planet from women’s poverty experiences. Basically, he might be broker than she is now, but he won’t be forever and he probably wasn’t a year ago. So no, him wheedling her out of her money is not okay then either.

(This is also, incidentally, why you see more female college grads than male. Dudes know they’re going to be able to make a living wage without a degree. Women are not usually going to make a living wage even WITH the degree, but at least we usually won’t be scraping the bottom of the barrel either. It’s not a conspiracy to push men out of school, you utter fucking boneheads.)

It’s just not a good time for it. I know, speaking of boneheads, that in a financial sense I was a bonehead to leave the hotel job. Granted. Got there before you did, since I knew I was done before you knew and all. I did not, however, leave the hotel job with the thought of, “Ah, yes, I have eight thousand dollars to support both myself and also this other person and their fucking debts, which did not need paying off right now, and camping trips.” Rent? Okay. Utilities? Sure. Food? Absolutely. Bullshit? Hell no. I didn’t even go into it thinking I was going to support the reasonable stuff. I thought someone was getting their ducks in a row to manage that themselves.

One of two things is going to happen: Either the life insurance payout is going to come in and then I will be washing my hands of a certain situation, or I’m going to hit the six-grand mark and then I will be washing my hands of a certain situation, because I can’t one hundred percent trust that I will have the life insurance payout by the end of the year and since I don’t have my own car (I am still borrowing Neighbor’s truck, because Neighbor is fucking awesome and I am still willing to run errands for him) and the job market here is shit, I have got to make sure my own ass is covered until the payout does come in. Because I have every intention of getting myself somewhere that the job market is better. But I’m not going to last until then if I have given all of my money away in the meantime.

I’m in danger of looking like I am picking on someone. It is just part of a larger, general trend of people thinking I was put on this earth to do everything for them but never, ever have needs of my own. And it’s not like no one ever does anything for me — see also Neighbor lending me his truck. Though I do notice they mostly tend to do things for me when it also does something for them. The sort of self-erasing, self-destroying sacrifice they expect from me would never, ever occur to them. It wouldn’t be so insulting if they didn’t obviously believe I’d never notice.

Well, I did. And when I turn into a crabby little fucking hermit who never does anything for anyone except her fucking houseplants, I want everyone to know where the fuck it came from.

Okay. Tantrum over. And hey, this could still turn out okay. We’ll see what happens if the fucking death certificate ever gets here. Stay tuned, I guess.