Sunday, December 01, 2019

Remember this story when people tell you we aren't doing enough to help the poor.

I don't talk about my family a lot because my words look bad on paper. They really are the sweetest people on earth though. I can't emphasize that enough. They don't have a mean bone in their entire bodies, which makes what they do sort of frustrating. I am not resentful. I just can't do anything about it.

I do feel that if my Aunt would have married someone else she might have had a better chance at life. My Uncle lives for get rich quick schemes. He will buy into every single one of them. And guess what? Not rich!

Because of this, my Aunt and Uncle live in the projects in a fly over state because we pretty much got rid of the projects in California. I don't support them because I barely made it out of that dysfunctional family cycle alive. And I figured out a long time ago that I could give them all my money and they would still be poor. They won the California Lottery twice and basically spent the money on crap they couldn't even use. It wasn't giant lotto wins, but enough to put down on a house at the time. They used some of the winnings to buy more lottery tickets. Still to this day my Aunt feels that luck has more to do with becoming rich than good hard work. She thinks that if they win the Lotto again they will rent a cruise ship for all their friends to party on.

Anyway .....that is the backstory.

I called them over the holidays and my Aunt was complaining about her new smart phone. Why old people need smart phones I don't know. Apparently one day my Uncle just came home with two new phones. Mind you - they were previously on Obama phones. Yes.... that program is still alive - apparently. All of a sudden my Uncle felt left out because he couldn't text.

Obama phones were pretty much free. But now my Uncle is paying 90 bucks a month for these two phones. Almost 1100 bucks a year! When they are retired and living in the projects. But oh...it gets better.

The previous times I'd called, my Aunt she told me that the government used to send someone out to help her. I think for medical stuff or just social services. I can't always get a straight answer. But she would just wind up playing cards with this person. You heard that right.

I just marvel at all the weird bennies the government hands out. Once they had to move apartments in their building and the government just paid for them to move.

So, I asked her about the helper and my Aunt told me that she didn't come any more because my Uncle had apparently narc'ed her out. I guess the social worker was there and he confessed that the helper didn't do any actual work.  She came to play cards. He didn't do it intentionally - he just wanted to be part of the conversation. But if he would have kept his mouth shut that person would still be coming to the house.

Now my brain goes wild when I hear these things. Because can you believe you are paying taxes so my Aunt has someone to play cards with? It's so crazy. And these are just the things they admit to me.

I pay a lot in taxes and I still think my family is a net draw on government Beni's. But they do have some crazy stories I would never know about if I didn't have family who told me about them.

6 comments:

  1. Capital of Texas RefugeeMonday, December 02, 2019 3:00:00 AM

    "I don't talk about my family a lot because my words look bad on paper ..."

    I don't talk about my family because I don't like any of them that are still living, and although I won't speak ill of the dead by name, I will say that some of them being dead has been an enormous relief.

    Most of my living scumbag relatives have figured out how to join every racket there is: big charities, big education, big religion, even working directly for big government.

    They only call me or try to find me when they need something from me, usually something that's going to cost me time, money, or a hunk of my life ...

    Which is why I eventually said "fuck it" and got my attorney to start getting restraining orders against them when they thought they'd be super-creepy, super-invasive, super-lying (especially to government types), etc.

    "I do feel that if my Aunt would have married someone else she might have had a better chance at life."

    I used to believe this about a certain family member who is no longer alive.

    That's just the bullshit that got sold to everyone so this person could play another round of Games People Play, such as the "Look What You Made Me Do" game and the "If It Weren't For You" game.

    Now I see this person as a Basic Broken Bastard/Bitch type who couldn't actually get anything done independently, and that's because this person was so busy manipulating everyone else to do what could have been easily done otherwise that there was nowhere near enough time to actually get to the life stage known as Actually Winning.

    Manipulating someone else into participating in "get rich quick" schemes?

    Oh, but that does sound so familiar ...

    "I don't support them because I barely made it out of that dysfunctional family cycle alive ..."

    These people live modern-day versions of the Lum and Abner show, a radio show that used to be popular once upon a time that was also inflicted upon me every weekday morning as "entertainment" before I went off to school.

    They thought it was funny.

    I thought it was prima facie evidence that so help me, I would never go back to that place unless I was with a new General Sherman marching his troops into it, through it, over it, and stomping the ashes just for good measure.

    These INTP/INTJ personality types you run into who are super into solving problems and displaying actual competence in life?

    How exactly do you think these kinds of people get made?

    But about phones ...

    Your relatives are paying for "unlimited" plans that they use in stupid ways so they continue to believe they've won some sort of resource allocation lottery.

    What they don't see is the fine print: the mobile carriers will throttle the crap out of anything that's "unlimited" if you look like you hog resources.

    Do the math, and the person churning phones every two to three years who uses a cheaper plan is at worst paying only about 40% of what the super-churner with the "unlimited" plan is doing.

    But now that you see what this is, doesn't it fit the pattern?

    OMG WE MUST WIN THE RESOURCE ALLOCATION LOTTO IN THE DUMBEST WAY POSSIBLE
    SIGN US UP FOR THE UNLIMITED COVERT ALLOCATION OF LIMITED RESOURCES
    WE MUST HAVE EVERYTHING AT THE GREATEST COST RELATIVE TO THE LEAST NEED

    But they could go work for big charities, big education, big religion ... yeah, I know, they're retired, but what kind of big racket are they working now?

    The big government racket, obviously! :-)

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  2. "Which is why I eventually said "fuck it" and got my attorney to start getting restraining orders against them when they thought they'd be super-creepy, super-invasive, super-lying (especially to government types), etc."

    That is some high drama. Hey - at least your family works. I actually like the ones who are still alive. But I do tend to forget about my Uncles stuff when I don't talk to them for a while. For instance when I went out to see them a couple of years ago I had a fairly okay time., Until the very end as we were leaving. Then my Uncle hit me with a get rich quick scheme that he wanted me to invest in. And it all came flooding back.

    I doubt I would have the same relationship if I had to support them though. Let the government say no to them. I pretty much raised myself, so have a hard time wanting to raise them too. But society does guilt you for it.

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  3. Me too. It's like they are trapped in time. They never have to learn anything. They seem quite happy though. So maybe I'm the sucker.

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  4. I'm not going to lie, it does sometimes make me feel like it's pointless to be responsible. But I don't want to be a burden on anyone.

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  5. Capital of Texas RefugeeMonday, December 02, 2019 9:06:00 PM

    "That is some high drama. Hey - at least your family works."

    Definitely high drama, but I wouldn't call some of that working ...

    The "big religion" scumbag once thought it'd be interesting for me to "invest" money with one of his usual "God is in the details" plans related to his "faith", because obviously I am some sort of heathen who will need to buy his way into miserable places with names like Heaven.

    He conveniently forgot that I am a Buddhist who just does not give a shit about his big religion scam, and besides, his faith sounds an awful lot like Buddhist Hell that Haw Par Villa in Singapore tries to warn people about. :-)

    Anyway, I had hidden myself pretty well from him, just to cut down on the "high drama", but someone else blabbed.

    So after that, there's his wife in town, on the other side of the country from where they were living, trying to pull some bullshit with my landlord, my mail handling people, even my fucking power company, just to find out where in the world I happened to be physically.

    Eventually she got a working phone number as well as the location of the entry gate and call box for my building.

    Apparently she had enough money to stick around in town for two weeks trying to see if pestering the shit out of people who were involved with my stuff would convince me to get back in touch.

    OK, she wanted to play that game? I could play it better.

    After greasing the palms of a few people at her hotel, I found out when she was checking out. Would one of those people be so kind as to volunteer to be at the front desk on the day of her departure so we could make arrangements for her airport taxi? Here's a few hundred in cash for your kindness.

    She called a taxi, and she got a taxi ... with my people in it, who told her that she should back the fuck off, go home, and never, ever try to pull this bullshit again.

    She then got to hear the details about something scummy that Mister Big Religion did back in 1985.

    Their faith doesn't allow for a divorce, but they have had a de facto separation for a very long time now ...

    Karma's not always a bitch, but it can behave like a bastard.

    After that, things have been going much better because none of the rest of them are really sure what kinds of dirt I have on them.

    BTW, their kids grew up to be mostly decent people who also don't want to have much of anything to do with them ... who could have guessed that'd happen?

    It's bad karma to go looking for fights, BTW, but I sure as fuck know how to end them. :-)

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  6. "Sure, you can get out of the taxi, but we'll throw your luggage into Elliott Bay, you'll miss your flight ... you don't really want to do that."

    They weren't Italian or Sicilian, but they knew how to make a point.

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