Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@Leucrotta Oof, yeah, OK, I have NO TROUBLE AT ALL agreeing with you that it can feel very bandwagony and "Two-Minutes-Hate"-y. It does have the potential to spawn into something far, far worse if we let it become a habit.

I think you've convinced me to at least *try* not to feed those kinds of posts. No guarantees-- I'm not sure I'm even gonna have basic emotional reins again for the rest of 2021 at this rate. But you have a REALLY good point and thank you for hammering it home for me.

@LexYeen No energy for details but I thought I'd weigh and mention that I transcribed a series of USMC and US Army oral history tapes from Iraq and Afghanistan... and I was impressed by what a bunch of assholes the middle-brass WEREN'T.

They actually kinda won me over. They reminded me of the troops from Catch-22, kinda drably aware that they've been sent to a clusterfuck and just too tired and busy to be mad about it.

They weren't exactly woke, but there was some VERY frank speech in those tapes, and the closest they came to racism was being uniformly unimpressed with local military discipline and job pride. And they even seemed aware that some of this was because THE LOCALS WEREN'T ABOUT TO GO OUT OF THEIR WAY FOR INVADERS. They were mostly just griping about, say, "Why the FUCK can't our local water guy ever show up on time?!?"

They were very up-front and forward, at least on mike, about the fact that there was CATEGORICALLY NO TIME for bullshit like abusing the locals, because they absolutely would not get by without earning their trust.

How all this played out in reality... well... *sigh* But I went in with very low expectations and ended up kinda liking some of these majors and captains.

@Leucrotta I felt that way for a very long time but after a certain point of ingratitude, gaslighting, and open hostility I just... stopped feeling obliged to keep empathizing with people who have rejected EVERY overture to not be my enemy.

I can still muster sympathy for people who just quietly *don't want* the vaccine. Quite a bit, actually. There's a woman I follow on Youtube whose channel is very woo-heavy and it's attracted a lot of new agey vaccine skeptics.

Them, I'm generally pretty nice to. In their presence, I try to be the Reasonable Friend Who Shared Their Fears And Is Just Fine, See? I tell them-- truthfully-- that I was very worried about the vaccine interacting with my host of weird autoimmune issues. And that it's not unreasonable at all to be afraid of having something foreign and scary put into your body. I really hope I've at least reached one of them.

But as for, say, hard-core Trumpies who wear "fuck your feelings" masks on airplanes and abuse the staff... it's gotten real hard not to see what's happening to them as Sherman's Second March To The Sea, except that a virus is doing all the fighting for us. It feels like these people really would have made us make war on them, and this just hits them hard while letting us keep our hands clean, so to speak. There's something so *civilized* about a war that anybody can escape by just LISTENING TO THEIR FUCKING DOCTOR.

So yeah. I'll cheer for COVID to take pastors and senators and such who SPREAD this nonsense. And I'll cheer for it to take the sort of people who would have just spent the rest of their lives on trying to take away, say, Peg's freedom to be Peg. I didn't want it to be that way, but I am done trying to stop them from performing the admittedly incredibly convenient act of dying.

But still. All it takes to get my empathy and humanity back is showing me a shred of it to start with. All these people have to do is approach the topic with calm, polite concern instead of being smug assholes. It's actually happened, and I do still engage them with sympathy, if a bit less than I had last year.

I wouldn't even feel this cruel about the worst of the Trumpies going from "muh freedom" to "muh ventilator" if I didn't already feel that ALL reasonable attempts to communicate with them had not only been ignored, but got their active hostility.

So yeah, I don't think I'm going to be able to stop cheering when I see someone die who's been actively hostile to our concerns for them. Them dying now is starting to seem like our last, best hope of being able to take the country back from them, and... you have seen how fucking hard I tried to make nice to the Republicans once upon a time.

I still think you are very noble to want to avoid that feeling yourself, though. *hug* You're NEVER wrong to say people should get whatever empathy we have left for them, even if they've done wrong, in that GLIMMER of a hope we can win someone back over.

It's still a damn shame we couldn't save them. I just can't pretend not to be a little relieved when reality weighs in our side YET AGAIN after someone willfully, angrily, defiantly walks straight into this and dies.

So in case anyone was wondering where I've been post-Ida...

@anthracite and I got into a dispute with the Crazy Cat Lady we were trying to help. She is now convinced I am stalking her on the dark web. I'm 80% sure that in our final phone call she mentioned dating Harry Connick Jr.

What actually happened is that she sent a text to us during Ida that said she was without power and low on phone and to contact... the other people who had been feeding her cats, who proved later to BARELY KNOW HER EITHER.

They didn't answer so we Googled her first name and phone number and found the front desk of her nursing home, who we asked to go check on her. Apparently that was an "invasion of her privacy" even though SHE asked US for help and never told us not to contact anyone else.

And now she's gotten it in her head that I used some "secret Internet site" to find her information-- uh, it was the first result on Google, darlin'. And I am now a "force of chaos" in her life.

Just yesterday morning, she'd told Peg we were "angels." That's how fast she turned.

But then our neighbor-- who she's been sparring with over these cats for 8 years, and she ASSURED us would mind his own business-- spots us going to feed the cats and starts harassing us. And we call her to tell her we just can't fucking do this anymore. She ARGUES. She PLEADS.

And then the moment I mention that I went over to that guy's house later and attempted to apologize, suddenly I have done something terribly wrong and she's told me not to go over to that house or feed the cats again, and I'm some kind of hacker violating her privacy.

So yeah.

I am emphatically not okay today. This is all on top of a bunch of other post-Ida crisis. Crazy Cat Lady told us herself that she once threatened to shoot that neighbor's kneecaps off. (I am somewhat assured by the fact he still has kneecaps after 8 years of her shit.)

We blocked her texts last night. And I know how narcissists are. I'm really afraid that she's going to come try to force the issue. I'm worried she might try to take it out on OUR cats. People reassure me she'll probably forget about us now that we've stopped rewarding her...

And they're probably absolutely right. This is a feeble old woman who seems to have burned every bridge in her life. (I'm not even BEGINNING to detail all the sketchy contradictory stuff in her stories.) But I am already traumatized and having even that vague worry that she MIGHT be deluded and vindictive enough to try something with us won't leave my mind.

I am in really bad shape, folks. I think I'm at the point where I don't feel guilt or shame in saying I have some genuine trauma happening here.

I didn't even fucking like Norm MacDonald in the slightest and I am too fucking traumatized to pretend that I was not kind of a bit chuffed to see that he's trending because he's dead. I was honestly expecting they were just quoting obnoxious he'd said about the culture wars. I can't really look beyond my own emotional needs right now, and I'd take the dead Norm over the live annoying smug one.

@JulieSqveakaroo Honestly... it's just the lack of clear resolution on any of this. Plus all the anger over trying our best to help this lady and getting burned YET AGAIN.

What I really need is some reassurance that she's never going to try to start any shit with us, and... that's going to be difficult since she's apparently going to resume feeding the cats, which will bring her to our block AND NEAR OUR OWN CATS on a daily basis.

I'm scared. This woman has a long history of making threats against people, one of the first big red flags I should have seen coming. But the other big red flag was that she would NOT TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER and would start browbeating and making excuses every time we tried to duck out.

And there's a point where I KNEW this was all gonna end this way, just because we said "oh sure, why not" to a request to feed some cats.

It's just too huge of an anxiety trigger to leave open indefinitely. I might not be okay until MONTHS have passed without hearing from this woman.

Apparently she also has a son on the police force, which is worrisome, though I strongly suspect he is NOT on the Mid-City NOLA police force...

@JulieSqveakaroo I do but I don't even know what I'd ask for. Maybe a hitman to quietly dispose of this woman if she ever causes us any trouble again. ;p

So the latest is that I got subjected to a lengthy tirade about "looking into her private affairs" and "prying" because during Ida she had texted us (WHY?!?) saying she was stuck with no power, phone battery, or lights.

We found her address with a very basic Google search, LITERALLY just her first name plus her phone number, and had her landlord come check in on her.

Because she'd asked us for help, we couldn't contact the other people she asked us to contact (who apparently ALSO barely know her). And we did what we could in a BIG FUCKING PANIC because this old lady came to us saying she needed help and then we couldn't contact her.

She swears this "prying" has opened up a "whole can of worms" for her and she's sounds like she's determined we hacked her or something. Maybe she didn't want her landlord contacted during the storm, maybe she has something in her past she wants to hide, IDFK.

I have blocked her number and told her that she can contact Peggy to arrange to pick up her food IF AND ONLY IF she doesn't harass her about anything else.

I am so afraid, given all the signs that this woman is an obsessive nutcase with a history of harassing people, that we are now on her Shit List and we or our cats are going to have to suffer more for it down the line-- for trying to help an old lady we didn't even WANT to get involved with.

you guys i think today finally broke me

i was already stressed as fuck over ear relapse (luckily mild), no home internet, huge backlog at work, a foot injury AND a missing piece of glass on the floor where the cats might get at it. Plus all my doctor's appointments-- and the attendant suspense over the state of my eye and some mildly abnormal checkup results-- have been bumped back a month or more.

The Crazy Cat Lady drama broke me, and I'm still sitting here twitching over the possibility that it's STILL not gonna be over somehow.

I am gonna have zero energy for anything for a while. I can also feel that I have lost my basic chill reserves and any protective layer of padding over my mind that holds back my Inner Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat.

I may be very clingy, or very unresponsive and cold, or even quite snippy over the next few weeks until/unless things get back to some kind of normal. I really apologize in advance.

I think it's time to concede that I was already Damaged before this. And now that the adrenaline and relief from wife/cats being OK has cleared and reality's setting back in, I am Really Damaged.

God my next therapy appointment is going to be interesting.

@zx3 Laika she is the verklempt. Please to talk among selfs. <3

@troodon @lilithsaintcrow@raggedfeathers.com Unfortunately either our net's too sluggish or awoo.space won't let me see the first part of this thread. Can you e-mail whatever you need to postvixen@gmail.com? Whatever it is, the librarian is [VERY FRAZZLED BUT IN] and I would be happy to help if I can fit it in! Or have Troodon drop the details in my Telegram.

So the neighbor down the street yelled at us AGAIN, even though we weren't even going to feed the cats, we were just coming home and unlocking the door.

So I used this as a pretext to text Crazy Cat Lady and say... yeah... we really can't keep this up.

I admit I used @anthracite's "feminine weakness" as a strategy card and invoked the magic words "I don't want My Wife involved with this man."

That seemed to finally get through to her. We got back a characteristically rambling all-caps text that first instructed us not to feed them for the next couple days and only THEN (*sigh*), for that extra little bit of ambiguity said in the same text not to feed them at all, she's taking over.

I would feel really badly about making an old woman with a bad leg go across town to feed cats, but... there have been so many red flags at this point, I think I feel pretty morally secure chucking her in the "energy vampire" bin and bailing on her.

We told her from day one that we were not willing to make an enemy out of a neighbor out of this. Her reply was "well, he's everybody's enemy, he's a maniac."

And that was only one of SEVERAL valid concerns I had answered with a distraction, empty assurance, or convenient Senile Episode. (Did I mentioned in the previous toot that I'm 80% sure she mentioned dating Harry Connick Jr?)

When I told her I am ALREADY BEING TREATED for severe anxiety, her reply was that she has an anxiety diagnosis too. HUGE red flag. Honey, you are in charge of your anxiety level and I am in charge of mine, and diminishing my problem by telling me you have it too is NOT AN OFFER OF HELP OR SYMPATHY.

I am really, really hoping that this is the last we hear of either of these people. We can at least tell the pissy neighbor we've washed our hands of the whole thing. Although... the plot has thickened there, too?

We talked to his neighbor (who apparently likes these cats fine and has been feeding them the whole time *RAGGED SIGH*) and he claimed that guy had moved out... even though someone on that same porch had DEFINITELY yelled at us just this morning.

I don't fucking know. We did our duty for Bast and for basic humanity and now I think we are absolutely done. I might even change my phone number after this. >___<

So apparently not enough of my pre-Ida worried had returned for the gods' tastes, because we FINALLY had that anticipated confrontation with the neighbor who doesn't want people feeding the cats down the block.

The Crazy Cat Lady was at her very craziest, reassuring us in a needlessly 20-minute long phone call that he's had the police and ASPCA both called on him and he knows that he's not supposed to bother us.

That does not reassure me in the least. She was absolutely insistent that there was nobody else who could feed these cats, and that this guy has never been more than all talk.

I REALLY do not like the number of times she contradicted herself or went into irrelevant details when she was asked to explain how this was all OK. I am still just BARELY willing to chalk it up to senility -- I could have sworn I heard her say something about Harry Connick Jr. during the call. *sigh*

If we disappear, this is why. If I kill him, it's because he tried to hurt one of OUR cats and I regret nothing.

I did not need this shit one tiny bit, not on top of our home wifi being down until at least Thursday, work piled up something fierce, my ear starting to bother me again, and my vaporizer tube shattering, leaving a glass shard somewhere on the floor we could not find.

I am really starting to lose it here. Next step will probably be contacting the people who "volunteered" us to feed these guys in the first place and asking if THEY can get us out of this 'cause THEY got us into it.

@PennyPennyPenny leave it to you to be the first one to pull it off in real life... 💜​

@PennyPennyPenny It makes me smile every damn time someone on a Very Serious political thread totally fails to comment on the slinky rubber zebra who slid in to argue. :D :D :D

Dunno if I'm the only one here watching this, but... I just want this down for the record so I can bookmark it and come back to it later.

Everybody seems to have settled on it being Jan, Theo, or Teddy. I think they've fallen into the classic trap: they've assumed it's just a single person.

In my experience, "multiple people did it" is a VERY common murder mystery trope and they're ignoring it at their peril.

It's also generally the most satisfying option-- it's complex, it's poised to take maximum advantage of all the clues, and it drastically lowers the chances of fans getting to the solution before the show.

This is going to have been a team effort. I'm betting Tim was killed by a series of events with multiple agents, possibly a Repo Man-grade chain of weird coincidences. Perhaps, for instance, Teddy poisoned some dips and Jan (unwittingly?) conveyed them to Tim?

I just don't buy that someone like Steve Martin would be unaware in 2021 that the fanbase could get way ahead of him. He was one of the very first stand-up comedians to approach his art with an abstract philosophical theory-- *specifically* one about depriving audiences of their natural expectations for as long as possible.

Of COURSE someone during the production of the show, if not necessarily Steve, would have noted that fan communities are *incredibly* aggressive and effective puzzle solvers. So there is just no freaking way we are going to get a single-variable solution to Who Has Done Did The Bad Murder Thing.

Yup, looks like the New Orleans ecosystem missed me so much that it reinfected my ears promptly on return. It's OK, I know the issue this time and already have the drops and a great ENT so I'm not really stressing.

On the other hand, my boss successfully sparred with HR on my behalf and got me the whole week of Ida as well as my travel day last week as "office-closure" vacation hours. In other words, I don't even have to spend any PTO hours on them...

We're still way behind, though. I really NEED a normal fucking week so I can catch up. This is probably going to hinge on whether our network comes back up by Monday. *sigh*

Also, Peebles and Artie remain adorable. If you were hoping for more interesting cat news, I apologize. I'll post some pics when I'm not stuck on mobile Internet.

@eredien right?! perfect aesthetic for me!

oh no

come on doordash i just got back home and i'm fuckin tired

i don't want to have to match wits with a sexy trickster, i just want my fucking dinner

@Phorm You will ALWAYS be categorically welcome on Mars, and woe betide any of my subjects* who stands in our way. Gonna eat their face up rawr rawr. <3

Don't make me show you The Thing again and make you wake up in a warm cozy harem with a big vacant smile, geniefox.