It's funny when having a social conscience and financial well-being suddenly collide.

Brava. As I watch the younger generations try to become TikTok celebs and YouTubers, I think to myself that it's appropriate god is on our money, because money is our god, no matter where you sit your butt down on Sundays. If the pandemic taught you anything, it should have taught you that "new stuff" doesn't make you happy. Money doesn't make you happy and if I hear one more person misuse the phrase "self-care" I will punch them in the head. "The phrase you're searching for, Jellybean, is 'pseudo-enlightened self-indulgence.'"

I've lost so many friends because of the utter selfishness I've witnessed w/r/t all this. People saying "COVID's political" then using that as a reason to not wear masks. But sometimes, esp. these days, you don't know who or where people are anymore.

Example. The only thing I do for myself isn't for beauty purposes, but pragmatism. My nails break, peel, bleed, because I'm a visual artist and my hands are constantly in water or chemicals. I get hard gel overlays on my real nails, which I keep short and dark, like me. ;)

So I used to go to the local nail salon owned by two women who also happen to be life partners. I have always considered myself a very open-minded, sane individual, both personally and politically.

My nail tech was a sweet girl, YOUNG, from a small Utah town, and once, as we were talking about the words I can't ever spell right (spelling blocks) like "separate" (seperate?) and "semblance" (semblence??) and the word "privilege" (privilidge? Priviledge? Privilige?) Yeah, that's a word I've always messed up, and when I said the word, she almost spat out the correct spelling, as if I embody the word and that's why I have trouble spelling it. As if I was trying to insult the whole...word. So the salon, a very left-leaning atmosphere. UNTIL.

Until all businesses were shut down. Then when it reopened, I came in, mask affixed, supplementary oxygen tank with me, because I'm higher risk due to a brain injury...and the place was packed. PACKED with elderly women, masks feebly affixed, and an angry discussion between my nail tech and the owner, both extremely informative about George Floyd's criminal record, and how they didn't have TIME to go LOOT, you see. They WORK for a living. And the owner said, "When my grandkids ask me, 'Grandma, what did you do during the pandemic,' I'll say 'I worked for a living like everyone else who just went on with their lives" and so on.

I couldn't believe the disconnect, the about-face. My nail tech was furious at people who wore masks while they drove. I asked her if she'd ever knocked on wood when she'd said something portentous, and she said she had. I said "How is it different?" (Other than the mask is less nuts during a pandemic, obviously.)

Then she told me that if people were at that much of a risk, or that afraid, THEY (me) should stay home and let the rest of the world go on, get sick, build "herd immunity" and then she quoted the whole "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection" and THAT is when I lost my shit.

I said that just because her immune system is stronger than one of the elderly ladies in the salon at the moment, that doesn't mean she's "fitter" or deserves to be here. It means she's young and can have children, period, and how incredibly ignorant to quote a book she'd not read. If she'd read it, she'd understand the principles behind the vapid misunderstanding of those overly-simplistic sentiments.

I brought up the "gay cancer" --which is the pejorative term for HIV when it first came out. I was around for that and I remember how horribly their community was judged and treated, but how everyone pulled together to help each other. Then I told them that their mentality was the same. "Hey, let them all die out," right? It was disgusting then, it's disgusting now. I didn't get an apology and I never went back.

It was like having a cattle prod striking my head. I'd never felt so shocked at how quickly my patronage, my health and wellbeing became irrelevant to these women in my community, women I felt were more than just "nail techs" etc. I called them friends. I mean, what in the actual "eff" did the BLM movement have to do with the pandemic?

Well, you'll have to ask all the ladies who work at that salon, people I supported during the Prop 8 debacle. The marches, the active fight for LGBTQ rights, the film, and other ways I supported them because I was invested in their right to marry. Their quality of life.

(sorry) /rant