Tag Archives: Marguerite Perrin

communication, complaints, home, music, rants

I think Kate Bush sang it best, back in 1982…

Good afternoon, ladies and germs… Today, on this Wednesday, and the third day my house has been occupied by inconsiderate clods, I have an old Kate Bush song in mind. It’s a song from her brilliant 1982 album, The Dreaming, which also happens to be the very first album I ever heard her do. The song, quite appropriately for my mood today, is called “Get Out of My House”.

Here are the lyrics…

When you left, the door was
(slamming)
You paused in the doorway
(slamming)
As though a thought stole you away
(slamming)
I watched the world pull you away
(Lock it) So I run into the hall
(Lock it)
Into the corridor
(Lock it)
There’s a door in the house
(slamming)
I hear the lift descending
(slamming)
I hear it hit the landing
(slamming)
See the hackles on the cat
(standing) With my key I
(lock it)
With my key I
(lock it up)
With my key I
(lock it)
With my key I
(lock it up) I am the concierge chez-moi, honey
Won’t let ya in for love, nor money
(“Let me in!”)
My home, my joy
I’m barred and bolted and I
(Won’t let you in)
(Get out of my house!) No stranger’s feet
Will enter me
(Get out of my house!)
I wash the panes
(Get out of my house!)
I clean the stains away
(Get out of my house!) This house is as old as I am
(Slamming)
This house knows all I have done
(Slamming)
They come with their weather hanging ’round them
(Slamming)
But can’t knock my door down
(Slamming) With my key I
(lock it)
With my key I
(lock it) This house is full of m-m-my mess
(Slamming)
This house is full of m-m-mistakes
(Slamming)
This house is full of m-m-madness
(Slamming)
This house is full of, full of, full of fight
(Slam it) With my keeper I
(clean up)
With my keeper I
(clean it all up)
With my keeper I
(clean up)
With my keeper I
(clean it all up) I am the concierge chez-moi, honey
Won’t letcha in for love, nor money
(“It’s cold out here!”)
My home, my joy
I’m barred and bolted and I
(Get out of my house!)
(Won’t let you in) No stranger’s feet
(Get out of my house!)
Will enter me
(Get out of my house!)
I wash the panes
(Get out of my house!)
I clean the stains
(Get out of my house!)
(Get out of my house!)
(Get out of my house!)
(Get out of my house!)
Won’t enter me
(Get out of my house!)
(Get out of my house!)
(Get out of my house!)
(Get out of my house!)
Yeah! Won’t let you in
(Get out of my house!)
(Get out of my house!)
“Let me in!”
“Woman let me in!
Let me bring in the memories!
Woman let me in!
Let me bring in the Devil Dreams!
“I will not let you in!
Don’t you bring back the reveries
I turn into a bird
Carry further than the word is heard
“Woman let me in!
I turn into the wind.
I blow you a cold kiss,
Stronger than the song’s hit.
“I will not let you in
I face towards the wind
I change into the Mule
“I change into the Mule.”

God, I love her. She is amazing.

I know not everyone appreciates Kate Bush. I think she’s an incredible singer, songwriter, piano player, and all around goddess. I’ve loved her music for about 40 years– that is, since I was ten years old. Kate Bush is pretty intense for a ten year old, but even back then, I loved how creative and gorgeous her music was, and how interesting and intelligent the lyrics were. “Get Out of My House” even incorporates a mule, complete with braying, which as a former horse girl, I can totally get behind.

I’ve read that this song is really not about a literal house. Instead, she’s referring to her psyche– not letting anyone in to get to know her, or what’s deep inside of her soul. She is the master of herself, and she won’t let anyone in “for love nor money”. She protects her heart and her mind by becoming very stubborn, like a mule, complete with “hee haws”. She keeps everything under lock and key.

Well, I’m not as much like that with my psyche or, at least this week, with my house. Yes, it’s a rental, and yes, as I’ve pointed out, the work being done this week is for our own good. And I have seen a little bit of progress. For instance, the two workmen have stopped habitually leaving the front door open, and they have turned down their god awful dance music, so my head doesn’t pound incessantly.

However, the two guys who have been here all week have really been annoying me. Every day, they make messes that they don’t clean up. They move my stuff and just leave it wherever they put it. Yesterday, they left chocolate on the floor where Noyzi could get to it. I think my landlord brought it over for them with the customary German coffee break, but they just left it on the steps. Fortunately, Noyzi doesn’t eat things he hasn’t been invited to eat. If Arran were still here, we’d really have a problem. He would have eaten that chocolate in a heartbeat. Chocolate can be very toxic to dogs.

That fucking radio has been torturing me for days. I was tempted to remove the batteries, but unlike these guys, I was taught not to touch other people’s things.
Some of the crap the dudes have been leaving in my house this week.

This morning, the guy didn’t even ring the doorbell before he came barging into the house. I mean, where I come from, if you don’t live in a house, you don’t just come in without at least knocking. At least not the first time you show up during the day. It’s common courtesy and basic manners. Tomorrow, I won’t be deactivating the door lock before they arrive. They can ring the fucking doorbell like civilized people. I may be a tenant, but this is still my home.

And, sorry, I know this is going to sound really petty and kind of mean, but right now they are outside at my freshly oiled teak patio table, sitting on the chairs with new cushions on them, eating lunch, while listening to their industrial powered radio. Much to my shame, when I saw that, it really pissed me off. I wish I were a more laid back, less territorial person, but I can’t deny that I feel like telling them to get off my patio and get back to work, so they can finish up and get the fuck out of my house. It’s an irrational response, I know… but it’s the one I’m honestly experiencing right now.

It’s not so much that I mind them using the patio or even the table and chairs. It’s the fact that they didn’t even ask, and they have no regard for the fact that they have invaded my home, and are messing with my things. I can’t speak to them, because we don’t speak the same language. I didn’t hire them, and have nothing to do with their employment, other than the fact that I live in this house and they have invaded it, as they take their long coffee breaks. I’m sure it never even occurred to them how annoying they are to me, nor would they even really care. But they can have lunch on my table and chairs without so much as a “do you mind?”. Earlier this week, they ate in their van.

The two guys reek of pheromones, inconsideration, and sexism, and I want them OUT of my life. I feel like I used to feel when I waited tables and was forced to be nice to people who were assholes. But this time, I’m not working for anyone. I just have the misfortune of being a tenant.

And y’all, before anyone leaves me a lecturing or shaming comment (cuz it’s happened before), bear in mind that I do have some idea of how difficult it is to do this kind of work, especially when it’s hot outside. I do have some empathy for that. I wish I were a more compassionate person than I am. I guess it comes from being treated with little consideration for most of my life and, in turn, not necessarily being taught to be considerate myself.

Yes, that’s right. I kind of had to learn from people other than my family to have regard for others. But even when I try to be hospitable, it comes off as kind of awkward and weird. Usually, people don’t accept, anyway. At my age, I figure I might as well be real. And I want these dudes to finish their job and just beat it. Get the fuck out of my house! NOW!

Just one more day… just one more day. Hopefully, I won’t emulate Marguerite Perrin before tomorrow…

“Get the hell out of my house in Jesus’ name I pray!“

I’m getting really close, y’all.

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condescending twatbags, politics, religion, stupid people, wingnuts

The strange case of the scary, satanic, plastic spoon from Sonic…

It’s Sunday morning, so I think I’ll write a post about wacky social media posts by Christians that go viral. Why is it that Jesus loving, God fearing, Christian types are so often white males who want to declare everything fun and fantastic as evil and satanic?

Yesterday morning, as I was cracking open my bloodshot blue eyes for the first time of the day, I opened Facebook and noticed that a college friend had commented on a viral post. My friend had written her reaction to a picture of a plastic toy that was put in a “Sonic Wacky Pack” for a Mississippi man’s daughter. The Mississippian father, name of James Charles Phillips, had written a lengthy post about how his daughter commented that the toy “felt evil”.

Because her father has obviously indoctrinated her with right wing religious bullshit, the child was afraid of the fluorescent green spoon, modeled after the scepter carried by Masters of the Universe character, Skeletor. She threw it out of her dad’s truck… evidently opting to litter, and befouling God’s beautiful creation, Planet Earth. How very Christian.

Screenshots of the fuckery.

I decided to share the post with the comment, “This is fucking stupid.” At this point, a number of my friends are laughing with me about this guy’s wackaloon post about the evil spoon from Sonic. Some have agreed with me that this man’s post is also kind of skeevy, since it’s a dad praising his good little daughter for recognizing a piece of plastic as “evil”. One friend pictured the guy wearing a MAGA hat. Another said she got “Jim Bob” vibes, as if the daughter is his property.

My first thought, upon looking at the “scary and satanic” spoon, was that the top of it reminded me of a woman’s reproductive system. Maybe dad was skeeved out because the horns on the scepter look like fallopian tubes. They live in Mississippi, and that’s a place where a woman’s reproductive rights are likely to be stripped away any day now.

Yikes! It really does look like a woman’s reproductive innards. Maybe dad thinks that’s satanic, too. This photo came from Wikipedia and is in the public domain.

I was curious about this guy, so I went to the original post. I noticed that, at this writing, he has well over 16,000 followers on his Facebook page. Who in the hell is he to have so many followers? Especially since he doesn’t write particularly well and lives in Mississippi? So I did a Google search, and discovered Revival in Courage, a Web site that is connected to him. Weirdly enough, the site appears to be based in North Carolina, but when I read the description of the self-described “Constitutional Cowboy”, and look at the person in the pictures, I’m pretty sure it’s the same dude. A link to his very public Facebook page confirms it.

Mr. Phillips appears to be a political activist, who does “motivational speaking and teaching”. He served in the United States Marines, and raises Longhorn cattle and “nine little patriots” with his “bride” on their farm. I looked around the site and wasn’t surprised to find that it’s basically advertising right wing political beliefs, with dire warnings about the United States’s inexorable slide into communism. Once again, I can only shake my head at the lunacy. I don’t think this dude even knows what communism is.

From what I can see on their home page, members of the Revival in Courage group believe that public health mandates are left wing strategies to take away our liberties as Americans. They deny that COVID-19 is a public health emergency, and that ivermectin really does effectively treat the virus. They are vehemently against wearing face masks, and they’re especially against children being required to wear masks.

They are against vaccines for children, even going so far as connecting them to abortion and declaring them “genocidal”. Naturally, they’re against abortion, and want it completely abolished.

This group believes that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” and the results were fraudulent.

This group is against gay pride, and gay rights. They are for forcing children in school to pray and read the Bible, even though not everyone is Christian. They think the schools are full of “filth”… I guess things like the satanic Skeletor spoon from Sonic are “filthy”, as is any discussion of sex education, and any books that might actually give children liberal ideas or help them think critically.

I see that this group deems itself “patriotic”, and refers to members as “patriots” and “minutemen”. And, looking under the speakers tab, I see there’s a list of people– James Charles Phillips among them– who are promoting the idea that they can “save” America from liberals who want to “take away their rights”. One of the speakers is Dr. Jeffrey Barke, who wrote a book titled Covid-19: A Physician’s Take on the Exaggerated Fear of the Coronavirus. The book actually gets pretty good ratings on Amazon, probably because it caters to the many people in the United States who are frighteningly wedded to the extremely conservative “Trumpian” mindset. However, there are only five reviews posted, so my guess is that the ratings are inflated.

I’m sitting here amazed, since a viral Facebook post written by some religious wingnut with extremely right wing ideas, has caused me to fall down yet another rabbit hole, when I could be reading Jennifer Grey’s life story. Still, I was amused by the many posts on the guy’s Facebook page. A lot of people were telling him, in no uncertain profane terms, how fucking stupid this is… and how he shouldn’t be teaching his children to be so terrified of plastic spoons that look like women’s reproductive organs and glow in the dark. In fact, many people have rightly called what this dad is doing as emotional abuse. Isn’t life scary enough without kids being afraid of satanic influences at Sonic? I guess it’s only Chick-Fil-A for this guy’s family from now on, since he’s so afraid of his kids being desensitized and influenced by evil demons at Sonic. If you have some spare time and need a laugh, I recommend reading some of the comments. They’re hilarious. Many people are pointing out that it’s just a plastic spoon!

Mr. Phillips has even posted a video in which he calmly tries to explain himself… I’m not sure he quite makes the mark with what he said in the video. I’m not going to post it here, but it’s on his Facebook page, and at this writing, is still public. He doesn’t sound like Marguerite Perrin of Trading Spouses, at least… but like her, he probably thinks tarot cards and gargoyles are “dark sided” and satanic. What a bunch of nonsense.

Get the hell out of my house in Jesus’ name I pray!

On a more serious note, though… I am a bit scared of these crazy right wing nutters who think they need to “save America” from communism. These people have the unfortunate combination of inherent stupidity, hyper-religiosity, no critical thinking skills, and no experience beyond what they’ve known their whole lives. Add in their love of weapons, and you have people who really could make America a dystopia akin to Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale. Now, to me, that is scarier than Satan ever could be…

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