Two very important questions

Please, wherever you see this, I’m begging for as many answers as I can get– either here, Facebook, on Twitter, wherever you happen to be able to find me.

  1. Are there any Republicans running for office in your district or your state who are using bipartisanship or “both sides are to blame” type rhetoric and explicitly declining to identify themselves as Republicans?
  2. For parents: did you keep your kids’ baby teeth?  If so, what did you do with them, and do you still have them?

Very different questions, I guess.  I NEED ANSWERS!

In which I give this more attention than it deserves

DmR4hllU8AIQdfa.jpg-large.jpegLet’s talk about this asshole for a second, and the shape her hand’s making.  Would I rather be talking about something else?  Yeah, probably.  Should this be a series of Twitter posts and not a blog post?  Well, maybe.  Am I still sick, and is this what I’ve come up with for tonight?  Yeah.  It’s my blog, so if I wanna waste time on nonsense I can.

The following things can all be true at the same time, and the majority of them are undeniable fact:

  • The woman making the gesture in the picture is of Mexican and Jewish heritage, which would make one think she, generally speaking, is rather unlikely to be a white supremacist;
  • but she still works for Brett Kavanaugh, so in this particular case “she can’t possibly think that because of her racial background” is, shall we say, somewhat less sound reasoning than it might otherwise be;
  • One can be Latinx and white at the same time!  The identities can overlap!  You can absolutely be Mexican, white, and a white supremacist at the same time.
  • You can also be Jewish and a white supremacist!  Ever heard of Jared Kushner, son in law to the person in the White House?  Hitler his fucking self was a quarter Jewish, for God’s sake.
  • I know how photographs work, and I know that sitting in one seat for hours with cameras trained in your general vicinity can lead to all sorts of ridiculousness.  It is entirely possible that she’s popping a zit in this picture.
  • 4chan originated the idea that this gesture meant “white power” as a troll move a couple of years ago;
  • but since then it has started to be used by actual, non-ironic white supremacists;
  • and part of the point is that it, as a fairly common gesture, will always be deniable.  That you will always be able to find pictures of, oh, Barack Obama making the same hand gesture and point at it and go “See!” and you can always make anyone making an issue of the white supremacist flashing white supremacist hand signs look foolish, by laying out the precise chain of reasoning I’ve set out above.  That’s.  The.  Fucking.  Point.  

So: Do I think that Brett Kavanaugh has white supremacists working for him, and do I believe that Kavanaugh himself may be one?  Absolutely.  100%.

Do I believe that this woman is, herself, a white supremacist?  Except insofar as it would not surprise me for any member of Kavanaugh’s staff to be one, I had never heard of this lady yesterday and will have forgotten about her tomorrow.  So maybe!  Maybe not!  I dunno.

Did this woman deliberately decide to take the time out of the however-long-she-had-to-sit-there to randomly and quietly flash a white supremacist hand sign at the cameras?  Ehh.  Try as hard as I might, I can’t figure out what the point might have been of doing something like that, and, importantly: it doesn’t really fucking matter, because they’re about to steal another fucking Supreme Court seat.  

The end.  I’m going to bed.

In which I shitpost

I don’t actually have anything of substance to say tonight, to the point where I’m not going to bother cross-posting this to Facebook like I usually do.  I’m mostly just posting because I’ve had a nice little run going for the last several weeks and I’m coming out of my September Death Cold (TM) just in time to go back to work.  So… thank unions for three-day weekends, I suppose, because otherwise I’d have had to take off from work and now I don’t have to.  Yay?

temperIt was actually a pretty pleasant weekend despite all the near-death nonsense.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the weekends lately, and this weekend I finished Foundryside, which was amazing, and then read Nicky Drayden’s new book Temper from cover to cover too.  I reviewed her previous book, The Prey of Gods, and it was one of those books where I didn’t necessarily like it all that much but the goddamn thing was oozing potential to the degree where not buying her second book really wasn’t something I even considered.    Here’s the thing about Nicky Drayden: each of her books, so far, have actually been six books.  Temper is just as stuffed full of ideas as TPoG, but it’s a bit more cohesive and less insane and while it still wasn’t quite a five-star read for me I am absolutely still onboard for her next book and think you should check one or both of them out.

This has been a spectacular year for reading, guys.

Hmm.  I guess that counts as a topic for the post?  Sure, why not?

Go read FOUNDRYSIDE right now

81lmKNW7T0L.jpg

Guys I am very tired and very sick and I should have been in bed an hour ago but instead I started this 500-page book like last night or maybe the night before that again I’ve been sick and this weekend is a bit of a blur but holy shit it’s good and I just finished it after reading basically all day and you need to read it now now now now dammit now why are you still here

God I need sleep

In which I’m definitely back in schools again…

20180827_fbl_at_notre_dame…because my annual First Or Second Week of September Head Cold is back, after a two-year absence, just like goddamn clockwork.  I was hoping that not actually being in the classroom would allow me to avoid it this year, but no to that; it’s laying around and moaning all day for me!  Hooray!

On the plus side, there is Football tonight.  We’re in that magical nine days or so every year where I want to watch football, not because I enjoy sports in general or football in particular but because football represents summer ending and, finally, the beginning of autumn, which is my hands-down no-doubt favorite season. The hoodie months are approaching.  They’re almost here!  I can tell, there’s football on TV!

By next week I’ll be over it.  But there’s a Notre Dame game starting in about half an hour and the good thing about being basically immobile right now is that so long as I make sure I’m planted in front of the TV I’ll be able to watch the whole thing.

…uh, anybody wanna bring me dinner?