Judge NOT (lest ye also be judged, dumbass)

I just got off the phone with my mom. And got into a bit of a confrontational argument with her about who much time she spends criticizing other people when we could easily spend that time more productively by criticizing ourselves. You know? Like, I don't want us to be judging other people like they're so fucked up and ohhhhh, I know the solution IT'S SO EASY for their character defects or whatever. When we have got plenty of shit that we need to work on. Plenty of places where we are nowhere near fucking perfect.

It honestly makes me grateful for some bible verses a lot of us grew up with. Like,

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (Matthew 7:1-2)

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye." (Matthew 7:3-5)

"Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister." (Romans 14:13)

Bottom line: we should focus on correcting our own faults. And being reminded whenever we open our bitch-ass mouths how far we still have to go. That we are NOT perfect. That other people's challenges are not fewer or easier to overcome than our own. That all that steam we use bitching about other people is energy we'd be better applying to bettering our own damn selves.

I think one of the foundational reasons why I have this conflict with my mom (and within myself) when I'm talking to her (or, trying to listen to her) is that I don't "social" the way she does. Like ... I do not want to talk about our social dealings with other people. I do not want to bitch about other people. Though of course ... I *do*. I just do not want to hear her bitch about other people. Maybe partly because it is an unpleasant mirror for how I do the same things and it is so ugly and crazy and stupid. So that circles me right back to being a hypocrite. And this blog, which is not just an outlet for bitching PERIOD, but a reflective safe space to do it and then look at it and figure out WHAT NEXT? What can I do about it? How important is it? Who do I want to be? Just someone who complains?

I don't want to be a crazy dumbass bitch hypocrite who ignores the plank in my own eye while pointing out other people's specks.

CLAIMED: Whole Entire World is Other People's Phone Booth

I fucking hate people who exist EVERYWHERE on their phones with zero consideration of others, complete lack of self-awareness, no respect for space, and/or outsized pride at broadcasting their private and/or totally fucking boring phone calls. EVERY WHERE YOU GO, it's like trying to buy a .com these days: THIS DOMAIN IS TAKEN. How about (dot)crusty instead? How about you just relegate yourself to a SUBDOMAIN of the paradise that we *could* enjoy or create?

I know I've bitched about this before but summer requires revisiting it. The season of open windows in Washington state where most of us still don't have air conditioning but all of us really fucking need it starting LAST YEAR, sometime *before* that insane fucking heat dome, and NOW with the clear and present danger of it getting way fucking worse.

And people marching jogging wheeling cycling or even just STANDING under your windows, in the street, yackyackyackyackyackyackMWARHARHARHAAAA-LISTEN-TO-MY-OBVIOUSLY-FAKE-ASS-EXAGGERATED-EMPTY-SOULED-PERFORMANCE-LAUGHTER //inhale bitter shallow breath quickly through nose// yackayckayckayacyaka;kljasd;flkjas;dlfkjafd;io;ujidfakadfjslfdsl;adfklfdsl;

I promise I don't just bitch about it though. I fantasize about and envision solutions. And not just nasty violent ones, either! I think about how I grew up with PHONE BOOTHS: things that had DOORS ON THEM EVEN so they weren't just there to protect the telephone and cabled-on-phone-book from the elements, but ALSO TO PROVIDE THIS NOW-COMPLETELY-DEVALUED UNDESIGNED-FOR THING CALLED *****PRIVACY*****.

Oh, I know, there is a new very expensive fancy trend in open offices to finally provide little fish bowls within these spaces for such things, but it's not catching on as fast as it should, it's not affordable, and it's not recognized as a beneficial thing to build into other communal spaces or to have on offer or just to put on display as a suggestive hint. And it's certainly not a *requirement*. And now with pandemic there is the problem of needing to mitigate or eliminate the lack of air circulation.

I did read a novel that gave me some hope: TELL THE MACHINE GOODNIGHT by Katie Williams casually included wonderful phone booths in the near-future. I don't remember now what she called them, so let this be an excuse for me to re-read it.

So here's another idea: MOVING WALKWAYS. Like in airports. In big soundproof or somewhat-removed spaces (like dead malls?). Go to them to take your walk. Go be with one another, phone-talking-addicts.

Of course they won't do it, and in this era of people on all sides angrily refusing to give up a single selfish entitlement or make even the smallest concession to letting CLEAN UNDISEASED AIR or QUIET or DARKNESS be the default and it being SUGGESTED if they want to stray from that, that they make some small effort to contain their infectious noises, bright screens, or lung ejaculate, they feel SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OPPPPPPPRESSSSSSSSSED because it is their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT (they think) TO DESTROY EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY OF PEACE OR SAFETY we "snowflakes" try to secure. THERE SIMPLY MUST NOT BE A SINGLE PLACE WHERE THEY ARE LOCKED OUT: the noisemakers, the spewers, the flip-flop-loogie-hauck boys, the busybody know-it-all next-door gossip tattle cunts, the IMPORTANT MOVERS AND SHAKERS on their fucking VIDEO CONS in every fucking eating and drinking and book-reading establishment you try to get a break in.

Can I really be surprised though when people seem to have lost the ability to prioritize RESTROOMS in their rush to LOUDLY USE ALL OF THE SHINY NEW-MODEL POLLUTION MACHINES while infrastructure under our feet and tires crumbles? I guess that's where I need to continue to refocus: we need to design the horrible cities and bullshit "communities" we are all being forced to live in with each other to at least have CLEAN WATER FOR EVERYONE, and 24/7 safe publicly accessible places to SHIT, SHOWER AND SLEEP, and reliable safe free public transportation to unburden and unclog roads and bridges. Otherwise? How can we hope to live in anything but each other's raw fucking sewage, exhaust and noisy insanity?