This is not unexpected during the current turmoil in Washington politics. It just doesn’t surprise me. British Broadcasting reported overnight that the shutdown is in effect.
So far, Social Security and Medicare and other mandatory government functions are not affected. However it’s unclear how our military will be affected. They are expected to report for duty as usual, and deployed personnel must remain in place, but they will not receive pay until the shutdown ends. This is a disgrace and an overwhelming problem to expect the men and women who serve our country to deal with. Many Americans have no concept of what this means. Every single Air Force, Army, Marine, Navy and Coast Guard enlistee have to pay rent if living off-base, and they have mortgages and car payments, insurance and everything else a civilian has to keep up with while not being paid. When I served, it was illegal to foreclose on a loan or evict our service people, but I can’t find out if those clauses are still upheld. It worries me. Almost one million federal workers will be “furloughed,” a grotesquely polished word for being laid off. They, too will draw no pay. Those people are always under the gun, since Trump has been slashing jobs, indeed entire government departments, since January. I know a man whose vote for Trump was immediately rewarded with losing his job, yet he still insists that Trump is a genius. That doesn’t surprise me, but it is disgusting. A federal worker, eh? I wouldn’t trust a man who’s that oblivious to trim my shrubs. There wouldn’t be anything left, he’d get no pay, and he’d be cheerful about it.
I’ve lived a long time and seen shutdowns before, but never have I been this apprehensive about one. I’m not overthinking this; neither I nor anyone else has to do that. It’s bad, it will only make the current economic situation and American morale worse. I still find it shocking that anyone from points south would want to cross into “el Norte,” or anyone from Europe to immigrate. Many don’t know what they’re in for. Our elected leaders had better get their shit together, or all of them will be replaced. We can do that. We’re pissed and getting damn tired of the threats.
The swearing in of Donald Trump as our next president is like the Doomsday Clock being reset to midnight.
This babbling, lying, evil Antichrist is everything that the world doesn’t need right now.
He’s a racist, a misogynistic sex offender, a senior citizen who acts like an evil little boy with no interest in toys but a keen passion for destruction and death. Chaos is imminent.
Personally, I’m forced to apologize on behalf of my fellow citizens who, though opposed to Trump, would never elect a woman as leader of my country.
Yes, I mean to sincerely apologize.
There are people in this country and the world over who don’t deserve this – and what is sure to follow.
As my life wanes, I believe I’m fortunate in that I won’t be here for another four years. I did put up new Christmas lights this year, but I threw them away around a week ago. I kept one string for my bedroom because I no longer have a tolerance for the dark. I believe my Christmas Curse has been paid for in full. I’m finished.
I’m not afraid, but I do worry about you, wherever you are. I’ll be leaving behind a shell of pain, but you will be entering the worst time in modern history.
We are in a worldwide famine. Only rapid depopulation (like a really big war) can stop that. Global warming has not been disproven by our current weather; indeed, it was stated long ago that such weather would be driven by a warmer Earth. And one reason it feels so cold is because we’ve already changed and “normal” is no longer what it was. And in the face of recent past winters, even a trace of snow and ice seems like a catastrophe.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
The wildfires in the US West are the result of winds coming in and being driven through the Santa Ana Mountains, drying everything out even worse than drought had already started (climate change has made these winds more likely in January). All it takes then is a discarded cigarette or cigar, or an idiot with a can of Zippo fluid and a pack of matches.
But whether it’s carelessness or arson, it’s all done. People have lost everything they own in an inferno. Those people were fortunate, but they don’t feel like it. Others died.
Being burned alive is no way to die.
We’re in a bad place. Insurance companies are nothing more than thieves with a license to steal and even to kill. The homeless are now dependent on others for “charity” as a Republican put it.
This is all “apocalyptic,” and if you scoff now, that will soon change.
If you choose to ignore the danger, that’s your choice to make. But you may be overwhelmed by the fear of what’s coming, and trying to be optimistic and numbing the fear.
Or maybe you’re full of the lies pushed by idiot politicians and you’ve been manipulated by the press, which is never about the truth. It’s about being sensational, titillating and peddling bullshit that will fill commercial ad space. Sell the lies, sell the products; it’s all for the money.
Artificial Intelligence is not your friend and should be tightly controlled. Well, it should have been. That ship has long since left port. Don’t trust anything.
This time I call on the people of good conscience to unite against treasonous oligarchs, billionaires, and those who are evil everywhere. The line must be drawn here: this far, no further!
Because it’s your last chance. And no matter how far into the Trump cult you are, I give you fair warning here and now that you and your children have no idea how your fervent loyalty is about to be repaid. You should be mortified by what you’ve done.
Shame on you, America. The sun will not set on this day before the chaos begins.
Temperatures in the life-threatening zone and a double round of snow.
Not much to look at, really. But pictures show how the color has been stolen from us. The following are proof; even the sunsets of yesterday and today look frigid.
Currently, it’s 24°F but feels like 14. I’ve just come in, and it doesn’t really feel like 14 degrees. It feels like the winter of ’77. I say, what difference does it make when it’s below the freezing mark anyway? None whatsoever, that’s what.
Wednesday, the heat pump went and hid from the coming cold and snow, like all cowardly pieces-of-shit scrap metal they are. The temperature in a below ground condo will always be colder than what your thermostat says it is.
That’s because heat pumps are ineffective. You see the temperature on the thermostat, and it says 69°. Okay, fine. But even one foot away, it ain’t no 69°. It’s more like 68, maybe 67. And that’s just in the living room. In the bedrooms, the most distant spaces from the thermostat, you can subtract 8° because the windows and patio doors are so drafty that they may as well not be there.
Service came out. It’s a three-year-old unit. That’s all. It wasn’t getting the job done. Most wouldn’t anyway. That afternoon late, they brought space heaters out. Those tripped a breaker.
Fuck!
No heat that night. On thursday, a contractor was brought in. He had to go out and get a new relay, and once installed, the unit was working surprisingly well. But I was wise enough to have already purchased two small space heaters on Amazon. Breaker tripped.
Fuck.
I learned quickly to use them on low setting with the thermostats set just at the point where the units kicked on. One for my bedroom, one for my housemate’s room. But I’m still sleeping under a blanket, which I detest and try never to do. It can’t be helped. And I’m blessed to have shelter and a bed at all, so I can’t say that I was really that grumpy about the whole deal. Considering the frightful plight of the homeless, I’m not just blessed, I’m living like a king.
If I have any complaints at all, one would be the time I wasted watching the movie Chariot (2022), an indie that had an intriguing beginning but then went straight to nonsense so thick that I’m here right now to dare you to watch it. It takes a really bad writer and director to put John Malkovich in a red wig and give him a totally incoherent dialog and character. At the end, I asked myself, What the fuck did I just watch?
I mean it: what the fuck was that shit?
I’m working on some retro reviews of some movies you may have missed but which deserve to be seen. In 10 years, if I do another retro list, Chariot will not be on it.
I’d rather watch Aquaman. Except, I don’t want to see that movie. Jason Mamoa did a remake of Conan the Barbarian and earned my everlasting anger. He pissed on a classic! You don’t piss on Arnold!
Kind of like Mother Nature just screwed Jack Frost and then dripped all over us: it may be wet, but it ain’t no piss!
Color Faked…Not My Best Day!NO COLOR. BUT IT’S NOT A MONOCHROME PICTURE!THIS SHIT EVEN SUCKS THE COLOR FROM THE SUN!
Folks, thanks for stoppin by. Stay warm, stay dry, and be well. Y’all come back now, you hear?
1987. Oh, I know that year. I began to serve the first of 3 presidents, my Commanders-in-Chief. I wasn’t all that political about it. I could not afford to be. There was no room.
My wife became pregnant with our son.
And I had just done the impossible: gone through basic training and combat medical school with a disabling, pre-existing condition. I couldn’t believe it. But the real problem remained and trouble was coming. Could I know the half of it? Of course not. It was always one day at a time for me. Besides, I was not much for the news back then.
Had I been able, I’d have seen what these guys did.
The song goes fast for post-punk, but in the 80s, a decade full of okay music with some great masterpieces mixed in, it is a true standout. It stuns you, it goes so fast. But now, I can make myself believe that these lyricists knew something. A lot of somethings, to be honest. Watch the lyrics on the screen as you listen. Back then, this was dreadfully cynical and pessimistic.
Today, the general idea or theme is not so obscure as it once seemed.
I’ve been writing about mental illness as affected by multiple levels of harm done that were beyond my control. I’ve noted that healthcare is harder than drug ads or even ads for doctors or insurance providers make it seem.
Before this, I’ve written about industrial pollution, global warming, elitism, the looming failure of the United States government because of the Trumpian Party, racism, bigotry, corruption and greed, and the unscrupulous politics of organized religion.
There’s one line in the song about reporters being “trumped” and it has accidentally taken on new meaning.
The general idea of the song is that we’re all going to sit here and let the downfall of society happen, and how it happens won’t make a difference.
I wish I could have a better feeling about the future, because we had the means to escape the climate crisis we face, and we had the choice not to elect a lunatic for a president, and we’ve had power as a species to change to a different path.
But we have failed. We have abandoned the righteous cause of women’s rights, we have resorted to giving voice to violent criminals who should have been outnumbered by law enforcement and righteous citizens on January 6th, 2020. We care nothing for the sick, the elderly and the poor, we don’t protect children, we have elected leaders who give their souls for money and power and have made dishonor seem normal, and we’re not stopping.
People don’t care. Sex crimes are ignored and victims scoffed, shamed and left to themselves. Guns are far more valuable than an owner’s own child. Public safety is a joke with whatever disgusting tagline you care to attach to it, and here we all sit. Not caring, not doing, not helping.
I know that the impeachment of Joe Biden sounds like a joke. That’s McCarthy and MTG sitting around and fingering each other. But while people with mental illness are dismissed as fakers or lost causes, those two are proof that there are dangerous nuts in our own government. Politicians are now vetted by zealots and fanatics who belong in fenced-in hospitals while treatment remains out of reach of people who need and beg for help yet go unheard and forgotten. I’m not one to sit by and watch injustice and the end of the world as we know it. I’ll keep looking for help for those in need. Because I don’t feel fine, damn it.
Caution, adult language and graphic content ahead!
I really am having a very shitty day. And you can’t always know when you wake up if it’s going to be a shitty day. There’s rarely any warning before the first incident happens that indicates well, shit. This is not gonna be one of those daisies and cream days.
Or was it strawberries and cream, because I can’t rememberanything on shitty days.
Fell asleep around 05:00, slept fitfully and awoke around 13:00. This summer I sleep at night as often as I can because invasive insects are getting on my nerves. Plus, this year being morbidly angry with weather, it’s much safer. Or much more safe; pick one that suits you best. I’ve no wish to offend grammar Nazis.
But that reminds me: I’ve gotten a hold of a rumor that Murder Hornets are being called something else because people are offended by the name. Yet once they’ve killed enough honey bee colonies (as if the little guys weren’t already suffering CCD) we will be murdered by mere loss of pollination of food crops.
So what, now we gotta be politically correct about bugs? You gotta be shitting me! Stop this liberal bullshit and put your energy and indignation into saving the human race.
And then there’s yesterday.
Because yesterday wasn’t really a good day or a bad day. It was just a regular day. Until I saw a Reddit news alert that had me burning with rage.
Because a woman who taught middle school had, for three years, sexually abused a male student of thirteen years of age (his age when it began. Had she waited one year, it would have been a lesser charge. After all, we’re talking about Texas).
Sorry to use such language, but that is fucking sick. And against the law. So finally the kid himself called the police in secret and begged for help.
The sicko bitch was arrested. Prosecuted. Found guilty.
The amount of prison time she will serve? None.
The amount of jail time she will serve: six weeks minus time for good behavior. She gets a short time for probation, and will be a registered rapist and pedophile for the rest of her life.
But get this:
MARKA BODINE: Lord Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange, Ivan the Terrible and Kristen Heather Gilbert, all combined in the body of only one woman.
this pedophile does not have to report to prison until the summer of 2023.
Presumably because she just had a baby. News reports I refuse to link to claim that the boy is not the father. As if that’s never happened before. One woman eventually married the boy she was obsessed with and who did father a child with her, but even that’s not a new thing.
But the boy who desperately called police? He got screwed out of justice. She started by texting and playing Fortnite with him online. Then came the nude selfies she bombarded him with. Then classroom sexual abuse after classes. Then she was bold as brass and even visited his house!
Where were his parents? It might have been different had the teacher been a man and the student a girl, because only the most grossly negligent parents would not be outraged. But boys, like men, get raped all the time in familiar places right under everyone’s nose. Even cops don’t take men seriously.
But this boy?
The cops answered his desperate call.
We men, when boys as students with hormones assaulting us, may well fantasize about a beautiful teacher. Of course we do. But no sexual or romantic fantasy should ever actually happen. The results are traumatic and a complete interruption of normal growing emotionally. That is something that can never be restored; everything changes.
Perhaps, with such horrors on my mind, it was inevitable that I was never to sleep last night and that today would be a shitty day. I don’t know.
But at 13:00, I staggered out of my bedroom. I made coffee, a big mistake. I did not yet know how dreadfully big my mistake was until I stepped outside to smoke. I had a shorty, a Marlboro Red 72. I wanted another as I listened to distant thunder and lit the second one. Then I got a pang of warning, deep down in my gut. I squeezed my ass cheeks together, hobbled down the steps, trying to make the latrine in time.
I failed. Almost at the door, it started. This time, I couldn’t stop it. It was humiliating and disgusting. I’d already filled my shorts and the overflow ran into my jeans and getting them down took too long and I’m still going when I finally hit the commode, and sitting there in shame I look, and none of it is solid, because that is controllable, and shit, I just figure I’ll use my stiletto, cut the shorts free, and get rid of it in the sink so I can rinse them enough to get them in a trash bag.
Except it’s too heavy, and it doesn’t quite work out that way. Because now it’s everywhere. My boots, jeans, web belt, socks, the floor, wall, side of the tub, everywhere.
I sit, trapped, unable to do anything until it’s all over. Air freshener doesn’t help. It’s about the equivalent of a gastrointestinal exorcism. Demons flying everywhere!
Still clothed, I returned to Mother Earth and cursed her: this shit ain’t fair, you bitch!
And, still clothed, I just stepped into the shower to begin the process of getting the heavy stuff off of everything. It took so long that by the time I’m stripped and washing up, the water’s getting cold because even with a variable spray shower extension couldn’t get it all. Now I’m really mad. I can’t put this stuff in the washer. Everything goes in the trash bag, which by all rights should have been red with the word Biohazard on it.
It all goes: boots, jeans, socks. The boots were cheap, years past being comfortable anyway. I dried off, dressed in fresh clothes, walked the bag to the dumpster and went back inside for some immodium. Four of them. No shit (hopefully).
Then, as if thatshit weren’t enough, I finally settle a bit from a Klonopin and decide it’s safe to go have a cigarette to finish calming my nerves. But on shitty days like today, nothing is safe.
A neighbor walking her dog comes by on the sidewalk. Right in front of me, the cute little beast takes a shit.
On the sidewalk.
Then, this dog, whose mama had walked her past me a hundred times, looked straight into my eyes.
It knew.
That fucking evil beast knew, and it was making fun of me!
Because her shit was turds.
Solid nuggets of what used to be kibble. Her eyes bored into mine. My shame and humiliation came surging back, from brain to toes.
While not all victims of abuse and the traumatic stress disorder that will never leave them have the same symptoms, this is a common one seldom listed by doctors. IBSD or irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea has been a part of my life for more than half a century. Other symptoms you may be more familiar with and medicine to treat them are not effective with IBSD. What do you think the boy so relentlessly abused by his teacher will have to endure for the rest of his life while his rapist freely raises a family? Do you honestly believe that fact alone cannot torment and damage him even more? Because if you do, then you don’t know jack shit.
Jack Shit? You ask.
I know him better than I know my shadow.
Even that snobby dog knows. That dog, she…she knows everything.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 