It Always Frustrates Me When A Toy Is Hard To Customize, Because If It's Hard To Customize, It's Hard

Okay, so I bought one of those cheapo styling heads fom Dollar Tree, thinking I could stick her on my Endless Hair Barbie.

Unsurprisingly, the rooting is bad and sparse. She also started shedding really bad after I removed the rubber band holding her hair.

So she was a little bigger than I expected, though the vinyl was a good color match in-person, lol.

She fit size-wise on a 1/3 body I got off ebay. Her neck hole would need modding to fit. With a 10/11 wig, she almost looks okay. Granted, I had to chop off all her terrible hair to put the wig on.

I'd say the head is really only okay for learning to mod and repaint vinyl heads in 1\3 scale. She would definately need a reroot or wig, though.

The photographer/model is Talamieka Brice and her instagram is here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CE8PjruAhX8/

Her website is Talamieka.com

“WOW IM SO GLAD MY DOCTOR TOLD ME ABOUT THIS” SAID NONE OF US EVER

A regular day at the citadel

I finally finished this monstrosity!!!! (And ordered some holo stickers cause I’m an adult)

I had to keep taking breaks because the bright colors hurt my poor old eyes

some day ill be able to post this on thursday

Look at him go! Remember when i said i want some little “meet the artist” thing as a pinned post but i dont want to sculpt a self portrait? You all had such awesome ideas and this is what i decided to pick! Now i just gotta see if dumblr allows me to use this and then this fucker is gonna be my new online face! This extremely poorly done animation took me 900 years btw, how on earth do animators do this at all. I do 3 frames and im like “ok this is enough”

Cause what this blog needed was more animal crossing. ;p Anyway, placing stuff I got from the Sea Bass Emporium in my WIP houses. Appropriate, since Dia (green hair) runs a secret sea bass based cult.

Little Meow Meow

Social Security doesn’t actually publish the rules for disability benefits, I don’t know if y’all are aware of that.  

You don’t get a booklet when you apply or approved that explains how things work.  Not for SSI, anyway; SSDI is a separate thing that works very differently and I don’t know anything about it.  The SS website isn’t the easiest to navigate, and only lists minimal information for many aspects of the program, and for specifics, you have to call them and ask.  When you do that, they offer to send you some pamphlets, which contain the same information that’s on the website, which means you wind up having to call again.

And the thing is, even when you reach someone, they don’t always give you the same information.  Some employees seem ignorant about the entire system, some seem apathetic about everything, and some are doing their best but don’t know everything.  And some do know what they’re talking about.  And there is no way to know what kind of person you’re dealing with, and no way to check their information against something you already know to make sure, because you very well may not have the right information.

I have, in fact, been told things that are incorrect more often by SS itself than by anyone else, and I have been told wildly conflicting things by SS employees.  As an example, I was told initially that I had to report all income, even if it was under $1000. Then I was told I only had to report income if it was over $1000.  Then I was told that they can only go by taxable income, meaning if you made over $1000 at, say, an off-the-books unlicensed popup lemonade stand, or if you sold a dozen of your empty butter tubs on Craigslist for $100 each, that money doesn’t count because it’s not money that is taxed by the US government.

I was told these things within the span of six months, and the most favorable take, the latter one, came from someone higher-ranking than anyone else I’d spoken to.  She said, in these exact words, that “We only really care about taxable income.”

So what would you do?  Go by what is most favorable to you, but run the risk of having it held against you if someone decides it’s wrong, or if it IS wrong but you didn’t think it was because an employee of Social Security itself told you it was correct? Or would you go the conservative route and live in more hardship just to be safe?

We shouldn’t have to crunch ourselves into the smallest possible living situation, afraid of what they might do, not knowing the rules. Even in school, even for the very smallest children there are, there are clear rules, and everyone knows what they are so the kids can abide by them and the teachers can fairly enforce them.

You don’t get that with SS.  You get the information piecemeal and from unreliable sources. We are treated in a way that authority figures agree even children should not be treated. And I want people to know that.

Now, I admit I may have missed something. Some very obvious site, or a rulebook they were supposed to send me and I just never got, but I don’t think that’s the case.  I think they deliberately keep this information kind of under wraps because they don’t want people to “take advantage” of it.  But withholding information people could use to help themselves qualify for benefits they deserve is harming the many people who need help in order to prevent a few theoretical people from fleecing the system. 

Something like 5 million people are on Social Security. Compared to the number of people who genuinely need it, welfare fraud is nearly nonexistent. And yet policy is set, not by the overwhelming need of those who cannot do for themselves, but by the potential abuse of “undeserving” people.

Keep in mind, even those trying to fleece the system have to go THROUGH the system to do it, and it is designed to catch those people using measures that would be absolutely exhausting and almost impossible to fake.  I should know, I’ve been through the approval process.

Keeping information secret that could help someone after they have been approved is low, it prevents us advocating for ourselves and keeps us dependent on a largely untrained or poorly-trained network of social workers, SS workers, and case managers.  It is utterly inhumane.

THAT SAID

It IS worth it to fight.  It IS worth it to be on SS.  It DOES help.  It gets you into the Medcaid/Medicare system.  It helps get you SNAP benefits.  It is not enough to live on forever, not by itself; the system is broken by design; but it is SOMETHING, and without it, even fewer people would be able to survive.  The process is difficult and discouraging.  It is still better to take whatever they will give you, not as alms, not as a pittance meant to keep you quiet, but because they deserve to have to give it.  So TAKE from them.  Take everything you can.