It’s the middle of summer and on the first Sunday of August it was time to go to the yearly book fair again. I visit the used book fair in Deventer every year with my dad, and two of my uncles also come along. It’s a nice day out and probably the busiest place I visit willingly. Last year when I went – even though I had a good time – I didn’t buy anything. And even though you really don’t have to always be a good little consumer, I did want to buy something this time around. And I’m happy to announce that I managed to buy a few books this time around. It helped that I was looking for several different things.

But first things first. The book scene is changing rapidly y’all. I have definitely been aware of the fact that the romantasy genre – that’s a genre where fantasy and romance come together – has gotten quite popular lately but I was not prepared for the amount of stands there that were focused solely on this genre. There were probably over a dozen stands that just sold romantasy books and nothing else. Now you know me, I like fantasy, I like romance, so the combination of the two definitely seems like it could be up my alley, but this is the part where I admit that I felt too awkward to try and push in between a crowd of women just to see if there were any books that seemed particularly interesting. I know next to nothing about the genre so I wouldn’t even know where to start, and to try and figure that out in a crowd would be a bit too much for me.

So instead I made my way to a stand I know is there every year which sells what I assume are leftover books from the store they have. What they sell are English hardcover books of all genres and each book is only 5 euros. Yeah, there’s a reason this stand is super popular and it takes at least 15 minutes to get to the front and even be able to see the books properly. So after all that waiting I did, I ended up buying four books there. I bought a book about King Arthur, mainly because I liked the illustrations and it was at the end of the stand where I was standing and waiting, so I figured I might as well. I also got a book about Irish folk tales written by an author that I know my dad likes. I also picked up a fantasy book that I didn’t recognize but looked interesting. I got the book Master of poisons last year which was a fantasy story that was very different to what I’m used to culturally and I found it fascinating. I’ll admit it wasn’t the most fluid read, but I love it when people put a lot of care into the cultures and characters they build, so I’m trying to find more of that. Finally I got the book Kith and Kin which is from Critical Role. I love Critical Role and I’ve thought about buying their books before, but never really put in much thought to doing so, so when I saw it here for five bucks it was a no brainer. I wasn’t near the front of the line at this point so I was sweating a little bit that someone else might pick it up, but they didn’t. I was even wearing my Critical Role T-shirt, so I couldn’t leave it there.

Speaking of which, one thing I always like about the book fair is that even though you see people from all walks of life, they have one thing in common, and that is that many people wear T-shirts with either pop culture references or book related puns. I’m no stranger to funny T-shirts, I love it when the kids at work look at my shirts and either think they’re funny or let out a deep sigh. My colleague who teaches math is the same, he often has math related puns on his shirts which we both find hilarious. I’ve seen so many shirts with fun prints on them today that I almost want to do some shopping myself. 

But let’s talk about the rest I bought. I was talking with one of the vendors about teaching and wanting to find some books that are good for kids who are ESL. He couldn’t help me out per se, but I found some books myself. I bought a book about Alice in Wonderland and an Artemis Fowl book. I might read them first for myself, but then I’ll bring them with me to work so I can lend them out to kids who didn’t bring their own book. I have a few books for that. The downside is that not everyone treats the books particularly well, but it’s one of those things where I only give out books if I don’t care for them too much. Books are meant to be read after all, but the vain part of me does also want a nice display. And let’s be honest, the kids who do not bother getting their own book are also the ones who don’t take great care of their stuff. But I’ve now added two more books to the pile, hopefully the kids like them and if not… well they should have brought their own book then.

Lastly, I told myself I wasn’t going to buy any manga here. As much as I like second hand books and don’t mind that they already look used, when it comes to manga I like how nice they look on the shelf, so I only buy the manga new. Of course I will read them myself, but I take great care of my books so they still look as new. Despite not wanting to buy any, it wouldn’t hurt to take a peek right. There was some good stuff there, although a lot of the larger series he was selling were incomplete because people picked out just the volumes they missed or only took the first couple volumes. Then I happened to see three volumes of The water dragon’s bride. Now I don’t know anything about this manga except that a good friend of mine told me I would like it literally a few days ago. So obviously I bought them on the spot. Let’s hope she’s right and I do like them.

All in all, it was a fun day out, albeit a bit hot due to the sun being out all the time, and I’m happy with what I managed to buy. I’ll attach a picture of what I bought and keep in mind that everything in the picture combined only cost me 50 bucks. Not bad right? Makes up for the ice cream and the stroopwafels being so damn pricey. Thanks for reading!

We’ve just gone through a historic heat wave and it’s only June, the summer has barely begun. It’s cooled down a little bit as of writing this which is great because the kids have just entered their test week. The downside is that I would bet very few of them have actually managed to get much learning done in the last couple of days due to the heat, but at least we’re back to manageable temperature now. Due to at least having portable AC the days are a lot more manageable for me once I get home, but the nights are awful. I can’t sleep in the heat and the AC is way too loud to leave on at night. When I do leave the AC on at night, I’ll at least be somewhat comfortable, but there will be no sleeping. So last night – I’m writing this on Monday – was the first good night’s rest I’ve had in a week. And now, let’s talk about what the end of the school year looks like for a teacher and what plans I have for this blog in the upcoming weeks. Spoiler alert, I’m keeping it simple this year, no big promises, but hopefully some pleasant consistency. But first.

It’s test week for the kids. Which means they have no classes, but (usually) 2 tests a day. Putting aside the efficacy of this system, it makes for a very boring week for us teachers. For starters, we have to be there to take the tests, often with a random class and a random subject as all classes will do the same test at the same time. Of course, towards the end of the test – which tends to run for either 50 or 100 minutes – the kids who have already finished their test get rather bored. How do they think I feel? After writing this post I have another class to go with 30 kids. That is not going to be fun for anyone involved, but it is what it is. At least there’s only three weeks of this a year. After that is done, we’ll have to mark all their tests of course and where we usually have three weeks after a test to get their grades ready, in this case we have much less time due to the fact that we need all their grades before we decide who goes where.

That’s what the final two weeks are for. Resits where necessary and then deciding where to send each kid. If their grades are perfectly adequate, they simply advance to the next year at the level they’re at. If their grades are exceptional, they might even go up a level, although this very rarely happens beyond the first year. If their grades are not high enough, then there’s often much to discuss. Either they repeat the year or they go down a level depending on the situation. Sometimes they even continue on to the next year anyway, if there are other factors in play. A lot of the more clearcut ones are discussed before I ever get involved as a language teacher so these meetings are often not that much work for me. And when that’s done, all that’s left is to give them the good or bad news and get ready for the summer.

As for the summer, I don’t really have big plans this year. I finished my assessment at uni and only have two essays left that I’m leaving for after the summer is over. Of course there will be no work from mid-July until the end of August, which is one of the big perks of being a teacher. As for this blog, I want to spend some time updating the pages and layout of the blog, as it’s become a bit of a mess lately. Despite keeping up with most of the posts I’ve planned, I’ve not done a great job of actually putting links to the different chapters and such in the right places. Besides that, I want to get some work done on The Hesitant Hero volume 1. It’s currently coming along relatively well, but the latter one-third of the story still needs to be revised and since that is where by far the most things happen, it requires me to stay properly focused and make sure I’m happy with everything. But with six or seven weeks (man I both love and hate that meme) of free time, I am hopefully going to be able to finish a final draft of the first volume. 

Alongside all of that I want to keep giving you your weekly chapters of volume 5 as well as get a start on what I want to do with volume 6 next year. I’m hoping to bring the end of volume 4 and the end of volume 5 together in volume 6 as we head towards the next big arc in this story, the beginnings of which we’re already seeing in Mirgia’s story as strange dungeons are starting to pop up on the continent of Palaria. There’s a manga called Magi that I absolutely love which has this concept as well, where dungeons suddenly appear and people conquer them to become kings. Obviously that’s quite a bit different from what is happening in the Hesitant Hero, but I’ve always wanted to write something like what I read about in Magi, and I’m happy to finally be doing it. It’s also giving me some experience in creating dungeons – which I’ve always found difficult because making puzzles sound interesting and fair isn’t something I’m good at. I want the characters in my other story to investigate some dungeons too, so this is good practice.

And that pretty much sums up what I am planning to do in the upcoming few weeks. Outside of these plans I want to spend a lot of time resting up and preparing for the next school year. I’ll be teaching more classes next year so I’ll be a bit more busy, but hopefully the final essays I need for uni will be done soon and that will free up the time needed for this extra class. Now then, I need to get ready for my next two hours of test surveillance. As a little sneak-peek, in July I’ll post a review of Witch Hat Atelier as well as the Fragrant Flower Manga. I’ll also finally post my top 10 manga list of all time, which has gone through many iterations. Look forward to it and thanks for reading!

I learned about this concept a little while ago and wanted to write a post about it but didn’t have enough to say about it at the time to make it a full post, so I left the topic for a bit. I figured now would be a good time to revisit it.

“Ma” is the idea that between each bit of action there needs to be quiet. It’s the Japanese concept of negative space in art. One thing that we find a lot of in modern art is that it’s loud. Now that’s not necessarily bad, as the entertainment factor of a piece of art can be powerful too. If something keeps you hooked for the entirety of the time you spend with it, then that’s a good thing. But what I also find very impressive is when the quiet moments let you enjoy the action even more. I wrote a post years ago that I never published called “the insane to contrast the mundane.” It was a review of the second season of Kobayashi-san’s Dragon Maid and I wanted to talk about how the quiet scenes in that show brought the insane action episodes to life so much more, but I hadn’t heard of the concept of Ma yet and didn’t quite know how to put all of this into words. I really only stumbled upon the concept on a Youtube short with Brennan Lee Mulligan and Matthew Mercer talking about it.

The reason I wanted to talk about it now is because I saw an application of this in the last episode of Akane Banashi that kind of floored me. In this final episode, Akane’s mentor – Arakawa Shiguma – is taking a walk through the nearby neighborhood as he ponders what Akane’s stage name should be, now that she is finally getting one. We simply see him wandering through the streets, enjoying a bright summer day and thinking back to all the memories he made with the young daughter of his former disciple and how much he treasures all those moments. Without having these quiet moments, the emotional payoff of this show doesn’t hit nearly as hard as it would. It’s the same as with Dragon Maid that I mentioned before. If we didn’t spend several episodes with those characters just enjoying their lives and having a good time, the conflict that arises wouldn’t have nearly the same impact on us.

Ma is a very important part of storytelling. I think it’s part of why so many of us fell in love with Tolkien as well. Sure, he gives us epic wars, journeys to Mordor and encounters with a Balrog, but he also spends several pages describing what a home looks like and how much the Hobbits like their quiet. If we want to immerse ourselves in another world, the best way to do this is by showing how much the people that live in their world enjoy living there.

It’s something I want to apply to The Necromancer’s Daughter, the story I’m writing on the side. I absolutely love deep lore, overly described surroundings and just characters enjoying the moment. I’ve put some of that into my other series as well, but I want to do even more of it in The Necromancer’s Daughter. I want it to be a world I’d like to live in, even if things aren’t always going great for the characters. Fantasy and novels for me will always be about escapism. When I was younger I desperately needed to feel like I was somewhere else and although that desperation is long gone, the love for feeling like you’re in another world for a little while has never vanished. And if we can enjoy the quiet that happens in another world, then what more can we ask for.

I don’t really think this post has all that much to say for itself other than I wanted to talk about this concept for a little bit. I’m a bit of a nerd for Japanese culture as many of us who like anime and manga are, but I think there are a lot of interesting things specifically when it comes to their culture of Yokai and the way they think about art. Let’s not talk about their work ethic though, or how xenophobic the country can be. Yeah, nobody’s perfect. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this little bonus post. Tomorrow you’ll get my review of Akane Banashi and I’m quite proud of the title I thought up for that post, so look forward to that. Thanks for reading!

Dramatic much? Obviously it is a bit of an exaggeration, but truthfully at times my life did feel like it was filled with despair. Now I’m not going to wax philosophically about how my problems are nothing compared to the larger issues plaguing humanity like famine, genocide and the boiling of our precious planet, but even considering all those issues, a panic attack can feel like an experience so dreadful that it might as well be life-threatening. 

I talk about mental health on this blog from time to time. I used to do this more often than I do it now, mainly because my mental health used to be much less stable. I make no secret of the fact that I have been medicated for anxiety for over two years now, and this decision has done wonders for my mental health. I’ve not turned into a happy person overnight, but in weeks like the past few, I have noticed that the severe anxiety I used to experience has mellowed out to more of a general unease. Not to say that this feeling permeating my recent days has been pleasant, but I’ll take this over the dread I felt when I was younger.

When I was a teenager, fresh out of high school and tackling university for the first time, my life kind of collapsed. My parents’ marriage hadn’t been stable for a little while and although it would take a few more years before they divorced, the writing was on the wall even when I was seventeen. On top of that, my little brother – who is now living in Denmark and making more than me and I could not be more proud of him – was struggling with school a lot, and bringing worrying behavior home. This would also take a long time to eventually resolve. And adding to that, uni did not treat me well. I was beyond overwhelmed. There were so many strange people, unfamiliar places, new rules, chaos, and everything just collapsed. I recognized early on that something was wrong, but as teenagers do, I didn’t want to admit to it, and kept pretending I was fine. I was normal, right?

I wasn’t. Not by the standards of what society considered “normal” at least. My social skills were rough around the edges but in my late teens I managed to learn a decent amount of masking – without realizing what I was doing and how unhealthy this habit was – and I was getting by. Sure, I was severely depressed, laying in bed playing video games and eating unreasonable amount of candy while still somehow losing weight, but at least I managed to go to school in the meantime, right?

Well, that collapsed too, as the anxiety was reaching its peak and I quit school. I went back a year later and tried my hand at a different degree, only for the system to be designed in such a way that I was not able to navigate it. Putting aside the cost of studying and the difficulty of the subject matter, dealing with deadlines, signing up, scheduling and sudden changes was just not something I was capable of doing, and I quite quickly had to recognize that and move down to a lower difficulty of education. To briefly touch upon this, higher education here is split into three difficulty levels, the top two being considered education and the lower one is more practical and much easier. I don’t intend to be mean to people who do the lower version by calling it much easier, but the jump is kind of crazy, having experienced it myself. I believe this leads to a big barrier between groups of people that is fueling the sense that we’re a class-based society despite all being the same, but I digress.

After getting my degree in Business Economics at this lower level, I realized pretty quickly that I was not built for work life. I got panic attacks on the regular and some of the simplest tasks within this field were completely beyond my capabilities. Making a phone call to a customer? I’d genuinely rather staple my nutsack to the ceiling and hang suspended from it. Take in that visual. That’s how much I hate phoning strangers. I even tried to get a partial disability fund from the government, but they told me I’d be fine. I have thrown away their papers on this subject somewhat recently, but it basically said that if I could find a job that “didn’t have any deadlines, interactions with strangers, no pressure from bosses and allowed for me to work in a quiet space and still make a good wage” I would be fine, so I didn’t need help from the government. Yeah, that was a low point.

Then how did I climb back out of this pit? It was partially luck, but it was a lot of hard work too. The decade of therapy definitely helped. The cognitive behavioral therapy I was taught wasn’t good for my mental health in the long run, but it definitely taught me some skills I can abuse to get by. Stumbling into education might have been the most insane decision I’ve ever made, but it’s also one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I genuinely enjoy teaching, despite it having all the things that I should hate in a job. Close cooperation with coworkers, constant social interactions, public speaking, working with constantly changing variables and of course the noise. Did you know that a room full of 13 year olds is loud? Of course you did, even one of the little fuckers will drive you up the wall if you’re unlucky. I love these kids but sometimes I would like to just stuff them into a soundproof room and lose the key. 

I suppose I have to thank my English teacher at my aforementioned MBO education for this decision. Both of my English teachers there. The first year I had a teacher for English that I hated. I was getting top marks every time yet somehow this seemed to piss her off. When I helped my classmates with their English I got told off because I might be explaining it wrong. How bad can you be as a teacher? Motivating students to help each other is something that we all strive for as teachers. Then the teacher I had the year after that was much better and she told me I should perhaps consider doing something with the English language. So I applied for English culture and language studies, and promptly got rejected. It was too complex for me and although I hate to say it, I’m not nearly as smart as I used to think I was. So the only real option left was to study to become an English teacher and then pivot into translation work as soon as possible.

As you know by now, that pivot never happened, as I ended up quite enjoying my first internship as a teacher. Sure, it was absolutely nerve-wracking and I was terrible at it, but the way the kids tried to bond with me and even wrote me a card after I left – definitely the idea of my coworker, but still – kind of felt nice. I hadn’t had that feeling from a job before. Feeling satisfied with what you’ve done. And being involved in things around the school also felt kind of neat. It felt like I was actually being useful, despite having no real world skills. So I decided to stick with teaching a little while longer but it wasn’t until I taught special education for a year that I fully fell in love with the job. This happened during the accursed Covid times, so there are a lot of bad memories mixed in with the good, but teaching a small group of kids with severe mental health issues that even someone like me with pretty bad autism can make it in the world is a feeling I will never forget. Hearing that one of the boys went home and told his parents that “his teacher also has anxiety attacks just like him and he managed to become a teacher” is arguably the biggest compliment a person can receive. The rest is history. I finished my final internship and then got a job as a teacher at my current school. I’m starting my fourth year there after the summer and I wouldn’t even change this job for being a writer, what used to be my dream job. I’d much rather keep this job and write as a hobby, as I’m doing now. The meds helped me tremendously with the anxiety that I was still experiencing and allowed me to enjoy the good aspects of this job while numbing the stuff that made me want to pick at my own skin and eat the flesh off of my fingers. Yeah, I did that, it was not good. 

So let’s bring it all back to now. I’m talking about this all because I am struggling with the final steps of getting my actual teaching degree. As of writing this, I am missing 3 courses, two of which are mostly completed and just need to be handed in. I’ve been struggling a lot with getting the work done and I really needed to bring myself back into a more positive mindset. And nothing is better for that than to look back at how much of a complete and total failure I used to be and then compare it to how good I am doing now. Patting myself on the back from time to time is great, even if you also need to acknowledge that autism and the anxiety are still there, and didn’t magically disappear. I’ll probably struggle with anxiety, exhaustion and overthinking things for the rest of my life and that is something I have accepted. But hidden behind this is a very important lesson that I want to teach as many people as possible. If you just keep trying, you’ll eventually find the right place. Give it a month, a year, a decade (it took me over a decade to get to where I am now) but you will find your place in the world. And if you approach the journey with kindness, you’ll be surprised by how many people will end up sticking with you throughout the journey. Thanks for reading, tune in tomorrow for the return of The Hesitant Hero volume 5!

It’s been a very productive year when it comes to writing so far. I’ve been enjoying both of the stories I’m working on and although the progress on the actual Necromancer’s Daughter story has been very slow, the worldbuilding and thinking of what sort of characters I want to inhabit the world has been very enjoyable. Alongside this I have of course also been writing about anime and manga fairly regularly. But one thing has been looming over my head for most of the year so far. The deadlines for my uni assignments.

As you might be aware, I’m still trying to get my teaching degree and despite teaching for almost 3 years already, I still don’t have the degree. Now you might be wondering, if you already have the job, why bother with getting the degree? Well, you can only teach without a degree for up to four years. My contract just got renewed for a fourth year, but if I don’t get that degree fast, it won’t be renewed again. On the plus side, if I do get the degree, it’ll turn into a permanent contract. Yay for job security.

The deadlines for most of my assignments that I still need to do are in the next month. The last one is mid-June, which means that the next four to five weeks will be quite busy. Not to mention that this time of year is often also quite busy at work. The conclusion is that there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do all the things I want to do and find some time to relax. On my current schedule, I’m trying to write at least a thousand words a day, and have been successful in that so far. But lately I’ve been noticing that the quality of what I’m writing has dipped dramatically. There is too much going on in my life to be particularly creative. So time for a break.

Instead of being unclear about it, I’m giving myself a very clear time to be away from the blog. That way you all know what to expect, and I won’t try to do more than I should. This means that for the next three weeks, there will only be one post a week. That will be my weekly recap of Tensura. I enjoy writing those very much and it doesn’t take much energy at all. It wouldn’t make sense to me to stop doing those and then pick it up again in three weeks. Every other post will be on hold. What does this look like?

For the remainder of May, expect a Saturday post with a Tensura recap. The blog will return with a normal schedule on Friday June 5th with chapter 16 of the Hesitant Hero. From there on out, the normal schedule should return. If things do not go as planned, the hiatus might be extended by a week, but I would like to avoid that. With that out of the way, I appreciate your patience and I’ll see you all in a couple of weeks. Thanks for reading!

I’m tired. The news has been a constant barrage of negativity and even after I cut out about 95% of my news consumption it’s still too much. The middle east is in a state of chaos again, Palestine is still not free, AI chatbots are teaching teenagers how to most efficiently kill themselves and now we’ve finally upgraded to the final boss of gambling. It feels like there are a million topics to talk about when it comes to the final stages of capitalism, but above all the other things that are currently happening, there is one that feels particularly vile.

Now imagine for a second, that you want to bet on your favorite sport. Perhaps you think you’re good at predicting what a soccer team is going to do in the next few games and you want to make a few bucks by betting on it with some friends. Now I’m not big on gambling, but that’s something I don’t see much harm in. An example even more up my alley would be an idea that my favorite streamer had. Get four people together and put money on a game of Mario Party where all four characters are played by the AI. That seems like good fun where no one really loses much, except that one of your friends gets a few bucks out of it. 

So let’s expand on this. What if you could not only bet on your favorite sports team, or get to put money on Luigi winning by doing absolutely nothing, but what if you could bet on pretty much anything? Election results, current events, harassment and even which words your favorite CEO is going to say in a conference call. You name it, prediction markets have you covered. It’s on these websites (Kalshi, Polymarket) that you can bet your hard-earned money on all these things taking place throughout the world. Is the Ayatollah going to die soon? Put money on it. Will Trump say “Sleepy Joe”? Put money on it. Will someone throw a dildo on the WNBA field during a game? Put money on it, why the hell not. I wish I was making that last one up but no, that is unfortunately a real thing that people did and then started betting on.

Now these companies will try to pretend they’re offering a valuable service to the world. You can put down money against odds and get something out of the knowledge you have. And cheating is obviously encouraged, so any insider information you have should be a big boost to your winnings. It’s not gambling if you know what’s going to happen after all. Now as some of you might know, I once studied business economics in a dark, dark past. I loved the idea of working with numbers and making a company grow. I still like the more mercantile aspects of this idea, think about Spice & Wolf for example and the way they trade goods from one city to another, changing what wares they bring with them based on what needs the next city might have. But the way our economy has been operating for the entirety of my adult life has been downright depressing. We’ve lost the concept of adding value to the world completely and we’ve replaced it by a profit dogma that is holy above all other things. If you’re not constantly growing your profits, you’re a total failure. It’s that world that I dipped my toes in for a year or two before I completely tapped out and spiralled into a deep depression. Now admittedly, I was dealing with some pretty bad undiagnosed mental health issues, so the depression spiral would have probably happened either way, but I think it definitely made things worse.

I’ve since changed the direction my life is taking – as you’re well aware – and this has come with a different outlook on some parts of my life as well. I no longer want to make money. I want to make enough to live my life – and preferably in some comfort – but my childhood dreams of living in a big mansion with a pool have long died out. The way you can make money in this world is by taking the value of other people’s work and taking it for yourself. Capitalism as a system can only function if you are paid less than the value your work adds to the company. And in the final stages of this system, we’re desperate to make just a little bit more, and this is easily exploitable by these psycho CEOs that want you to bet on anything and everything so they can suck you dry with their commission fees. In gambling, the dealer always wins and there is no difference in this sentiment when it comes to these prediction markets. So even if you are perfectly fine with the athletes in the WNBA being harassed during their matches or the middle east once again crumbling before our very eyes with absolutely no regard for the serious effect these things have on people throughout the world, at least know that you’re probably just shoveling your hard-earned money towards the sycophantic corporate elite instead of making a big profit. I doubt anyone who’s been immersed in my blog over the past few years would be the type of person to use these websites so I’m probably preaching to the choir, but it feels nice to get this off my chest.

There will unfortunately not be an anime related post this week. I’ve been working hard on my stories and just like I said before the weekend, not in the right places. But that’s okay, this is my outlet and my hobby, not my job. I’d much rather enjoy myself than follow the schedule I’ve set up. I will try to get the chapter ready by Friday though, because I need to be somewhat consistent if I want to keep your continued support. Thanks for reading!

A Twitch streamer I used to watch would often refer to someone’s place of birth as their spawn point. It’s a bit of an odd way to look at it, but it also makes sense. If you are assigned a random spawn point at birth, things could be vastly different purely based on that one factor. Born to a billionaire? Well you’ll probably at least have enough money to never have to truly worry about it. Born in Gaza? Well, half the world thinks you’re a terrorist and should die before you can even crawl on your own. And born in Western Europe, well I consider myself lucky. Being born in the center of the western world, where things are affordable, social safety nets are sufficient – they can be a lot better but that’s not the point I want to make today – and the streets are safe. But we don’t have some of the freedoms that they have across the ocean, in the glorious United States of America.

I remember when I was a young teenager. I used to idolize the lifestyle of Americans. Land of the free, where everyone can dream big. I was a huge fan of Hip-hop – not being smart enough to understand that a lot of that music wasn’t exactly praising the US – and basketball. I used to want to play basketball on some of the amazing courts in Miami and LA that were on the beach side, or had neon lights. We just had a dinky field next to the train where the nets were usually destroyed or missing, but across the ocean? They had things figured out. There was one small thing that worried me a little bit about the US. Their gun policy. The idea that people can just walk around on the street with a weapon on them seemed a little bit scary to me. But it is their right as American Citizens. They need those weapons to defend themselves in case there is a tyrannical government after all. So what… the… fuck… is happening over there? After today’s post I doubt I’ll even be allowed to enter the country so strap in, cause I got words.

Right now, the United States is going through some turbulence. And with turbulence I mean that the plane is on fire, the pilots have gone unresponsive and there’s monkeys hammering on the engine. In his first year back in office, the annoying orange has bombed at least seven different countries either directly and indirectly. He has not fixed any of the wars he said he would fix and he is now busy declaring himself interim leader of both the Gaza Strip, Venezuela and likely adding Greenland to that list soon as well. But on US soil, things aren’t much better. In the state of Minnesota, ICE has been killing people. ICE is the American immigration and customs enforcements. Their job is to make sure that the border is safe and that people aren’t entering the country illegally. This has of course been a hot topic for the US for some time, but now these goons are being sent into cities, pulling people out of their homes, harassing workers and intimidating children. Multiple times, this violent tactic has resulted in the deaths of innocent people.

Renée Good

Alex Pretti

Both people have been brutally murdered in their own city. Renée was getting harassed by ICE goons in her car, before trying to drive away. This was cause for the nearby ICE officer – a vile man named Jonathan Ross – to shoot into her car three times, killing her. Not only that, bystanders were stopped from giving her first aid for more than ten minutes. And the icing on the cake? The Trump regime then spun the story in such a way that she was made out to be a violent protester who was trying to kill the poor little baby ICE officer who was just calmly doing his job. Disgusting.

The second case that happened two days ago is even more indicative of how far gone the United States and their freedoms are. Many people on the right – and left – have advocated for their gun rights. The right to bear arms. This allows people to carry a gun on them even just going to the supermarket. I will admit I don’t know every specific rule, law and exception surrounding weapons as I prefer to stay away from metal contraptions that can kill me at a distance. This most recent victim of ICE is a man named Alex Pretti. He was protesting the violence that ICE has been bringing to his state, while having his firearm on him. Now I’m not one to think that having a gun on you makes you safer, but that is how the law works. The second amendment is there so you can have a weapon in case of a tyrannical government trying to take away your rights. The reality of the situation is that instead of protecting you from this government, they now end up taking it as an excuse to shoot you. This man was pushed to the ground by a gang of ICE thugs, pepper sprayed, his gun was taken from him and then he was shot dead. He never reached for his gun himself, he did absolutely nothing wrong. It boils my blood to read about stories like this.

I have some friends in the US. None in Minnesota, but that’s only a good thing if you think that it will stay limited to one state, and I do not believe that. I worry for the safety of the people there, as well as the future of our global geopolitical climate. We have Mark Rutte as head of NATO basically sticking his lips as far up the annoying orange’s ass as is humanly possible just to get him to stop aiming his wrath at us. It’s working for the moment, but all it’s doing – in my uneducated opinion – is giving Trump the feeling that he can get away with whatever he wants. I think it will be a tactic that we as Europe will regret.
For the longest time I’ve not been a big fan of investing in the military at all. We should make peace with each other after all. We spend so much money on institutions meant to hurt and kill that could go towards much brighter places like health care and education. But living in a world where one of the big global powers that has been a longtime ally is now turning into a violent dictatorship is an absolutely crazy reality to have to live with. I think my opinion has solidly changed and we should start investing more into our own defenses. Perhaps ally ourselves economically with China in an even stronger way than we already have. At least China – despite their pros and cons – is only trying to sell us cheap goods, and isn’t trying to take Greenland. (I know, Taiwan and Hong Kong exist, nothing’s ever simple and straightforward). 

To make a long story short, the US is sending its border patrol THUGS into cities to intimidate, hurt and kill people as a force of power. Donald J. Trump is a wannabe dictator who is turning the land of the free into his own personal business and we all know how well he’s run all of his other businesses into the ground. So fuck the police, fuck ICE, fuck Donald Trump, fuck RFK (yes you’re catching strays you pathetic brainworm) and to quote the great Kyle Gass “next time don’t miss.*”

*I am in no way planning or intending to personally cause other individuals harm