Fuck Washington, Especially Seattle

So my problems when I was young, growing up in western Washington (mostly Covington), I had no support from anyone. My mother was psychologically abusing me, even the teachers knew something was wrong but back then no one thought psychological abuse was a thing.

So instead of getting me the help I needed, they would just punish me for my odd behavior. I had no one to turn to, being trans and atheist for as long as I could remember.

In school I avoided the popular kids, even though they often wanted me to hang out with them. Most of the time I was far more happy with cats, dogs, pretty much any other species by my own.

After turning 18 I was lost, no aim, no goals, because I didn't even know who or what I was. All I could do was strive to survive, and that I did well.

I picked up a set of skills, which would better serve some super secret agent in a fictional movie than any real human. After having helped many people and a lot of cats, I was diagnosed with disability and locked into a system that does what it can to keep you there, no matter who is in charge.

The only thing I could look forward to was that one day I could get some surgery and feel happy about my body. Then a medical doctor who was a bastard in Virginia Mason decided to lie and remove my hopes of getting that surgery by having me declared suicidal just because I disagreed with him on something unrelated.

So now I had only one thing to live for, a single cat who I would raise from a kitten and have for their entire life. A cat who I could say "I remember when he/she was so tiny."

That cat was going to be Rhodey, a wonderful black cat with a shady past who got really lucky. Healthy and happy, friendly to everyone, and I was forgetting all my problems focusing on taking care of him and his sister.

I looked so forward to the next twenty years, I probably won't live much longer after that because of a few health related problems and the mistake of smoking tobacco. But at least when I died I would be happy to have had this one thing.

Then, only a year after I had brought him home, our home was flooded and Compass Housing Alliance did not follow through with the repairs, forcing us to live with mold, no kitchen, and exposed insulation. Rhodey lost two pounds in about six months, scared I took him to the vet.

Everything seemed okay, and the vet assumed it was his teeth. I took that diagnosis because it was something I could directly help with.

Brushing his teeth regularly, I hoped he would regain the lost weight and start growing again. But he didn't, though he didn't seem to lose anymore weight.

A few years later, last year in fact, I took him to renew his vaccines and have him checked on. I was correct, he had not gained weight, so they did a full blood work on him.

It was expensive, but I was desperate now, I was worried, tense, scared. A few days later I got the email back, everything looked perfect, as in perfectly healthy, as in what I was doing was great for him, except ...

That except was kidney disease, when I read it I felt numb, fear, rage, hatred, washing over me, all at once. It was obvious who was responsible for it, a disease caused by environmental toxins, a thing which he was only exposed to during the time of the flooding.

Seattle had taken the last two things I loved from me. This vampiric city that masquerades as "environmentally friendly" and a place for equality.

Seattle, the city where everyone will tell you they care about you, as long as you don't rock the boat. Seattle and Compass Housing Authority, the people that claims to be animal friendly while complaining about the extra strong urine small caused by a cat who suffers because they poisoned him.

The last good employee for Seattle Housing Authority, the one who demanded that Compass Housing Alliance actually finish the repairs for the flooding that was caused by a drunk who passed out, retired the same day he did that wonderful thing. The last person who cared about the poor, the needy, the ones truly in danger, retired with one last loving act, though too late, I will always remember that he was the last good person in the Seattle government, perhaps in all of western Washington, perhaps in the entire country of the USA.

Rhodey, My Baby Boy

Three years ago I brought home this tiny ball of fluff. At six weeks old, he was covered in ringworm and looking for a loving home.

Typically I only adopt adult felines, ones which don't have any annoying phases of development that I have to deal with. But Pepper would not accept an adult so my options were limited.

Pepper was still unsure of me, and I needed to bring her out of her shell so I took a chance. Bringing this little adorable boy home did just what we needed, and Pepper is now a very loving and trusting cat because of it.

But one year after I brought him home our apartment was flooded, and Compass Housing Authority did nothing to complete the repairs for a very long time. During this time Rhodey lost two pounds, but was otherwise looking quite healthy.

The vet said it might just be the stress, which kept me at ease and I just tried really hard to find a treat he would love enough to eat all up. But a year passed and no change, so we went in for a checkup last month and they decided to do an in depth check.

Everything came back as "normal", except one thing, his kidneys were not functioning correctly. The vet found he was suffering chronic kidney disease.

Usually caused by exposure toxins, it reduces their life expectancy significantly. Toxins like mold and mildew caused by massive flooding of an apartment which we were forced to live in during his development.

I have been fighting my own brain to accept this, the tiny runt I had come to love so much, the runt I had hoped to get at least twenty years with, I will have no more than five or six years in total. Thanks to the vile monsters who run Compass Housing Alliance, the monsters who dragged the name Compass through the toxic mud.

Since I got the news I struggle every day to do anything, I struggle to keep a smile on my face, I struggle to get out of bed at all. I struggle to live. I will never forgive Compass Housing Alliance for this, may they all suffer long and painful deaths on the streets, forgotten and alone.

The Long Tale of Corruption

How has Compass Housing Alliance changed for the worse? A question that is not asked often enough, it seems.

As Compass Center they were the pinnacle of social services, one of the best that all others could look up to, where those in need found someone who actually cared. This resulted in them getting the bulk of donations from local businesses, enough to fund reconstruction of their offices and a new apartment building fully furnished and ready for occupancy.

But now they struggle, trying to make ends meet and getting no donations to replace the amenities they sell off to pay for office parties and new chapels. That statement should make their mistakes very clear, but the repercussions are long standing and cut much deeper than you'd expect.

Local businesses were already reluctant to assist most social services due to the corruption and the fact that almost everyone they supposedly helped was still unable to meet even basic sanitary standards. But Compass Center residents were clean and presentable to a point that we always blended in with the other customers.

So when the earthquake hit in 2002, the organization had to get money for extensive reconstruction. To get the support of local businesses they offered to turn half of the building into apartments which would be run less like a shelter for the more stable clients using their services.

The result was the Karlstrom, which had all amenities and personal living spaces and very few restrictions on the residents. We were treated like people, and it was managed by a no nonsense manager who took regular maintenance so seriously that she would schedule maintenance inspections monthly to come in and ensure everything was working.

It was great, a wonderful apartment and the residents left good impressions on those who had donated to this project. Seattle had known of no low income apartment building with a better track record for keeping pretty much everyone happy and cooperative.

The Karlstrom was supposed to be a flagship building, a new standard to which all others could be compared to so that when the bulk of staff left Compass Center for retirement, schooling, or new careers those who took over would have the standard already set. Sadly their dream of helping people was destroyed by those hired to take their place.

For the first few years it was just a small amount of chaos as we awaited a new manager to be assigned, so we could get everything back on track. What we got was the beginning of a nightmare, Peter Madril was first appointed, and with him came several new residents which we can only surmise he hand picked from his other program.

Fine, we got some new neighbors, but these were not the same class of neighbor the rest of us had become accustomed to. One on my floor was abusive toward several residents to the point that we had to file complaints of assault on him, he died a few weeks ago and is not missed, but that's a story for later.

Then they sold off the laundry facilities that one of the businesses had donated specifically to this building. Suddenly they were struggling for money to the point of having to cut corners everywhere, including essential maintenance in the building, delaying repairs caused by flooding for years at a time, and having almost no staff present at any given time.

There were no emergency staff to contact, no organization, nothing left but an apartment building lacking basic essential amenities and maintenance which the organization was slowly taking over by storing their old files and supplies in the rooms now vacant after removing the amenities. Carpets with mold growing under them, walls with mold growing in the insulation, and toilets breaking from wear and tear because they have not been replaced in over a decade.

Now to add insult to injury, they remodeled the chapel in the building and hired some new preacher in place of taking care of the people who relied on their organization. Makes you wonder why a religious chapel would take priority over people here.

Our fire alert system has not been updated in over a decade either, wall heaters have not been cleaned or maintained in about that same time, and sinks are routinely clogging at the base of the building. To get any response from them requires many attempts to contact the staff, and most times we don't even know who to contact.

Then the belligerent neighbor dies, which was a huge drama as he was in the hallway attacking another neighbor while suffering what appeared to be a stroke. Others say it was more than a stroke, but I like to give the benefit of the doubt.

He had a cat living with him, a female the same age as my Rhodey. Now Rhodey is slightly underweight at 7.4 lbs because he has a kidney disease, he should be around 9 lbs if he was healthy.

Six days after he died, during which time two of the neighbors were trying to contact the staff over and over again to get the cat from the apartment, they finally got her to safety and she weighed five lbs. Now when I contacted the only person I can get hold of, Kelli Hurley denied that all this happened, all of it except the death that is.

Then she added that someone else had died and made a snarky remark about me not caring. Here's the thing, I don't care, they're already dead and living people take priority over dead people every time.

Using dead people as an excuse to ignore living people is a huge problem and one that many rumored to have started the whole mess. Remember Peter Mardil, they had informed us that it was the death of someone in one of the other buildings he managed that caused him to simply lose his interest in doing his job.

Assuming what they told of us Peter, which I doubted until tonight, it appears there is a big problem with them wanting people to die in their care so they can use these deaths politically. The problem is that this kind of tactic actually works.

People will donate a lot of money to help the organization deal with the dead person but no one cares at all for the living people who the organization now wants to die. If you see the problem then please do me a favor and contact Compass Housing Authority on every website you can to let them know how fucked up this is, or contact Seattle Housing Authority and let them know you don't approve.

https://www.compasshousingalliance.org/

https://www.seattlehousing.org/

Disabled Is A Lie

Working with disabilities is not impossible, however, getting a job after being declared disabled is almost impossible. The problem is not the discrimination, even without the laws against it.

The problem is much deeper than that, ironically perpetuated by the working class in the USA more than the wealthy. If you are compassionate, you likely have this predefined concept that a disabled person needs special considerations resulting in you being aggressively nice.

This is the polite but obvious "don't stare" mentality, staring is not a problem, the condescending attitudes are. Disabled people are not less than you, the label is a misnomer, they are just not typical of the species.

If you have no compassion you likely think all disabled people, or a lot of us, are lazy people who just don't want to work. This stigma is precisely why so many of us are stuck being paid from your tax dollars.

How can someone show they are not lazy if you do not offer them a chance to work? Think on that a moment before you go crying about disability fraud, and remember that only a few claims are fraudulent at any given moment.

These stigmas make getting hired impossible, because no one wants to work someplace they are treated like a child nor will someone who thinks they are lazy hire them in the first place. This creates a very hostile situation, forcing most disabled USA citizens to just avoid trying.

Another one is pain, many disabilities cause large amounts of constant pain and we learn to smile in spite of it. This pain is considered debilitating for many reasons, the most prominent one being sleep deprivation caused by it.

This prevents a schedule from being followed unless the pain itself can be managed or removed. The ironic part is that any surgeries that could lessen or even stop pain are not offered for the few cases in which an option is possible, instead everyone screams at the person suffering and with the government they guilt trip the person suffering.

To make all this worse, most disabled people want to work. Consider that disability payments pay less than the poverty wage, sometimes as little as half that, and without a job the only thing you have to entertain yourself is old tech tossed out by other people.

Or you could read those old books that you collected from a trash bin for the thousandth time. This life is not fun, it's boring, tedious, monotonous, and often a cause of suicide.

In short, without some way to participate in the world, you are not really alive, and with our excessive population we can't just move to the wilds and live in peace. So you who are typical, you have no option other than to keep paying us a few thousand dollars a year, or offer us medical help that works and hire us while treating us like you get treated.

Those are your only two options, so stop your bitching and just make the choice. We are not going away just because you don't like us.

The Folly of the Afterlife - No Delusion is Harmless

The most wonderful discovery made by science is the very thing that Christians in the USA are most opposed, the fact that we are all connected in the most profound ways. From the particles that make up your body to your DNA, everything is part of a great chemical reaction called the universe, and we are all an integral part of this.

The reason they deny this is because it removes the necessity of a god, ironically it does not remove the possibility. This frightens them because Christians, like the other Abrahamic religions, are invested in a life after death, so they have given up trying to make this one better in the false hope of a reward after death.

Having invested nothing in this life, anything that makes a life after this one less likely (especially the one they believe in) makes them realize just how much of this life they have wasted preparing for something they don't even know exists. We call this type of denial cognitive dissonance, but to make it easier to understand it is better described as a fear of wasting your life on a false hope.

The notion of a life after this one is not without merit, back when we did not have the time and resources to improve our lot it kept us from giving up. But it is inherently dangerous, as we can see with all religions who claim there is one.

First, if you waste this life investing in a future that may not happen you are wasting the one thing you know you have, this life is real, you know it's real, but anything beyond is only speculation. So you are wasting your real life on a speculation, one of thousands such speculations have been made and only a few actually demand investment anyway.

As horrible as this is, it's not even the worst problem with believing in a life after, suicidal encouragement is the worst part. Not content with this life, one who believes there is a "better" life after will be more willing to end this one, to hurry to the better life based on nothing more than speculation and wishful thinking.

This is where atheists or reality based religions differ. We have no choice but to invest our efforts in improving our lot for this life, it is all we know we have.

Religious people will often demonstrate their complete lack of rationality and logic at this notion, saying crimes are the inevitable result of not having a promise of an after life, they also display their sociopathic and psychotic personality traits with these claims as they need eternal reward to not kill, rape, steal, or torture other people.

Yet humans are not the only life on this planet, nor are we the most important, so even religion does not prevent these people from harming us all. Enter the "no afterlife" world view, because we need no reward to invest in our future.

Humanists have figured out one important fact, we will eventually conquer death, but to be there for that you either have to be such a good person that enough people want you back, or you have to help society get there faster. This is a true eternal reward, a second chance that we know will happen someday, likely in my own lifetime now.

But this is not even the best reason to be a good person, the main reason is that when you hurt others you ultimately increase the chances of you being hurt back, the inverse is also true, the more you help the higher the chances of you being helped in return. Many people call this karma, but the real name for it is herd immunity.

While herd immunity is often cited for vaccines, it applies to everything and encompasses the entirety of the world, even the other animals. We need other animals, even the plants, to survive as a species.

This means we must take care of the entire planet and do as little damage to it, lest we drive ourselves extinct for the arrogance of thinking that we are special and rewarded for believing instead of actually being good.

Disability - The Product Of Society's Faults

The notion that a disabled person cannot contribute to society is both foolish and based on old superstitions, a product of our fear of both differences and change. The reality is simply that no one wants to pay us a liveable income for what we contribute.

The other fallacious notion common, especially among those who are paid to actually assist us, is that we don't want to work. Many people have this idiotic notion that disabled people are as lazy as they are. This is demonstrably fallacious due to the fact that most of us are disabled because we were over worked and under paid prior to the disability.

Yet when we seek to change our situation we are greeted with contempt and hatred from everyone. Well, almost everyone, oddly the scientific community is mostly generous and easily the least judgmental portion of society. It is important to note that one does not need to work in a lab to be scientific, one must only comprehend the scientific method and not be a total idiot who asks "why are there still monkeys?"

Back to the topic at hand, disability is mistakenly thought as an inability or lack of desire to work, when it is actually lacking the ability to do a specific set of tasks due to a physical or psychological difference, making the person unable to function the same as others of their species. Fore example, Stephen Hawking, a genius who is unable to utilize most of our tools, you do not expect to make him flip burgers, but someone with arthritis of the hands is often called to do just that.

The flaw in society here is the definition of contribution, most incorrectly consider a contribution to be a marketable act for profit. Most of the greatest contributions to society offered absolutely no profit to those who have made them, and quite often resulted in their ridicule, discouragement, and even murders.

Many years after society has essentially destroyed them, removing the possibility of them offering more contributions that could benefit society as a whole, do we discover that not only were they correct, they just saved the lives of billions of their own species and never asked for more than food on the table and the right to live a healthy life. This is the legacy our species gives our offspring, even today.

As a species, are are fundamentally insane, for we create demons in the darkness because we fear lighting that candle called science we created to illuminate that cavern called life that we must all walk through. Instead we cling to the blindfold called religion finding a false comfort in the lack of answers offered by following the blind leaders who are looking only where we have already stepped.

To progress as a species we must now discard our notions of the importance of profit and excess, we must understand the true value of all contributions before we lose the sources for more. Look at those who face chronic illness, pain, disabilities of any sort, look closely as what we have to say, what we build and create, and what we discover in this ever darkened cavern called life.

I promise you, the cure for cancer lies in the minds of one who suffers from arthritis, they merely need someone to listen to them.