I don’t know how many of you are familiar with this terrible show. If not, well, it’s fuckin’ terrible, and it’s on Hulu, and you should probably watch an episode or two because it is terrible in a uniquely addictive way, like, I hate it but I can’t get enough of it.
Anyway.
The wife and I have started season 3. She has somehow already watched all five (Five? Sure. It could be as many as twelve; I have no idea) seasons already and is rewatching them with me. At the end of Season 2, one character found out a woman he’d recently had sex with was pregnant. I believe his entire reaction to this news was the single word “Fuck.” And then the season ended.
And do you know what happened at the beginning of Season 3?
She told him she’d had an abortion, and he was cool with that, and that was the end of the storyline. It was barely a three-minute conversation, with not a trace of remorse on either one of their parts. It has not been mentioned since.
And I gotta be honest: it was fucking refreshing. Because with any other show this would have been a half-season fucking ordeal, and there would have been endless conversations about it, and then it probably wouldn’t have happened.
But this one? Yeah. Season 2 cliffhanger, done and dusted four minutes into Season 3.
Who’s the dumbest Democratic elected official, at a national level? Meaning, like, either a member of the national government or a high enough state or city-level official that people who don’t live there might have heard of them?
I’m either back on my bullshit or still on my bullshit, depending on how long you’ve been around here, and I have (like many of you) grown increasingly impatient with stupid Republican arguments. The person in the White House is still insisting, as recently as today, that America is having more coronavirus infections on a daily basis than some countries have had in total because we have more testing. A recently elected Republican Senator announced this morning that America fought in World War II to preserve Europe from the horrors of socialism. And enough Republicans have confidently asserted something about masks that was utterly horseshit or pointed at a mostly-red electoral map of America recently and smugly declared that they don’t understand how the Democrats could possibly when when so much of America votes red that I really don’t feel the need to point to a specific example. It literally happens multiple times a day.
There has got to be a similar Democratic equivalent. There’s got to be. Like, this has got to be my bubble working against me. There are dumb Democrats, I know there are, because Democrats are people and people are dumb. By definition, there must therefore be some really dumb elected Democrats. I’m not asking for stupid on the level of the numbskull that just lost his job, or any of the various no-exaggeration brain-damaged Qanon morons they just put in office. Just regular, run-of-the-mill, that’s a dumb guy dumb guys.
Like, Biden is probably the dumbest person I’ve ever voted for for President, but the only reason that can be true is his competition. When you’re being compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore and John Kerry (himself probably the least of that group), it’s gonna be really hard to come off as intellectually impressive. On any kind of remotely objective scale, he’s at least high-average, I think.
The funny thing is that I think if I asked Republicans who the dumbest elected Democrat was, I’d probably take their answer as evidence that they themselves were pretty fucking stupid. I suspect it’d be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, frankly, and I don’t know how many times this woman has to run rings around Republicans before they admit she’s smarter than most of them. That’s only something they go after her for because of sexism, racism, and ageism; she’s a young woman of color so she can’t be smart.
Seriously. I want to know. Who’s the Mike Pence of the Democratic party?
It is an unbelievably perfect demonstration of how fucking perverse all of existence is right now that, literally less than ten minutes after telling my wife that I was getting (hah!) stir-crazy and wanted to go out and impulse-buy something, I went outside and checked the mail and found a brand-new Goddamned Best Buy card waiting for me. The card currently carries no balance at all; I typically use it only for large purchases (really, the only reason I ever enter a Best Buy nowadays) and the last thing I bought was my desktop, which is a 2017 model. I could use a new laptop, as the battery on the old one is starting to go, or I could make the smarter choice and just replace the damn battery. Similarly, for the first time since my initial upgrade I’ve cast an eye at the new Apple Watch, but there’s just no good reason to do that either. In either case it would be spending money just to spend money, and I’m trying to be smarter about that crap nowadays.
(I do expect to have to shell out the money for the laptop battery pretty soon, which will be a couple hundred bucks. But the thing is … six? seven? years old and there’s no speed issues at all, and if I bought a new one it would be north of two grand. The only problem is the battery, and since I don’t go anywhere I can keep it plugged in most of the time. I even still have my work laptop at home in case of emergencies.)
(Checks to see if BB has PS5s available)
(They do not)
In general, the election has failed to improve my mood. Other than the presidency, which is all over but the shouting at this point, I went from “it looks like I’ve lost every other race I care about” the other day to “I have lost every other race I care about” today. The School Board race was especially heinous; not only did the plagiarizer not lose her seat to the crank, but the other district seat up for reelection, another person who voted to return, also won, and the teachers lost their best advocate on the Board in favor of an imperious ass who I am not at all looking forward to having to deal with, ever. My personal interactions with her when she was with the district were never good, plenty of people have much worse stories than I do, and her husband was fired for incompetence.
And yet, because this is South Bend and we hate education here, she actually got the most votes of any of the At-Large candidates. So. Dandy.
But yeah: I’ve been waiting for that moment when it feels like the weight falls off my shoulders, and apparently Biden at least theoretically clinching the Presidency hasn’t done it yet. In theory the rest of the networks (particularly the AP) getting the fuck in line and making the call might help, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to relax until the fucker is hauled out of the White House by his hairpiece, preferably to be tossed directly into jail to die alone in a deep pit. Apparently the AP is waiting for Biden’s margin to exceed half a point before they call Pennsylvania; I’m not sure what the holdup is otherwise. Either way, I thought I was going to feel better about all this by now.
Vote for the side that isn’t gleefully locking children in cages.
Vote for the side that believes climate change is real, and wants to do something about it.
Vote for the side that believes the coronavirus is real, and wants to do something about it.
Vote for the side that believes that health care, clean water, clean air and healthy food are human rights.
Vote for the side that wants the phrase “preexisting condition” to be something future generations have to have explained to them.
Vote for the side that wants your children to be able to retire eventually.
Vote for the side that doesn’t have actual Nazis and open white supremacists showing up at their rallies.
Vote for the side that doesn’t threaten gun violence every time they don’t get their way.
Vote for the side that believes Black lives matter.
Vote for the side that believes women are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.
Vote for the side that believes people of color are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.
Vote for the side that believes LGBQTIA+ people are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.
Vote for the side that believes immigrants are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.
Vote for the side that understands that trans women are women and trans men are men.
Vote for the side that isn’t represented in government almost exclusively by white men.
Vote for the side that respects knowledge and science.
Vote for the side that knows abortion is health care, and access to birth control is a right.
Vote for the side that doesn’t have racism, sexism and selfishness as the core motivating values of every single one of its policies.
Vote for the side that understands that the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask in public is worth it, because it helps to keep other people safe.
Vote for the side that believes that the ultra-wealthy shouldn’t exist and that the wealthy should pay their share of taxes.
Vote for the side that believes working people should be able to lead comfortable and dignified lives.
Vote for the side that doesn’t think that having a place to live and health care should depend on whether you have a job or not.
Vote for the side that believes access to the vote should be expanded, not restricted.
Vote for the side that believes every vote should be counted.
Vote for the side that doesn’t believe that the police should be able to beat and kill us with impunity.
Vote for the side that respects competence, expertise, and education.
Vote for the side that wants public schools fully funded and high-quality, not strip-mined for resources that could be channeled to wealthy white kids.
Vote for the side that hasn’t had the phrase “death tolls” applied to their rallies by major news organizations recently.
Vote for the side that believes that a healthy news media is a necessary feature of a democracy and not an opposing force to be coopted or silenced.
Vote for the side that believes we should be focusing on helping families during the pandemic, not corporations.
Vote for the side that hasn’t been openly calling on older people to be willing to die so that younger and poorer people can go back to work.
I have had two problems with my lifestyle lately. One, I’m spending way too much time sitting in front of the computer– which remains vastly preferable to the alternative, but still an issue. Two, I am bald and for some reason bald this year has been cold in a way that it simply hasn’t in previous years.
Enter the skullcap, which fits nicely (more of a problem than you might believe; it’s nearly impossible to find hats that fit) and which I intend to wear around the house and outdoors on these sorts of days, and the fact that I am back in glasses, sort of, which will sit by the computer and be worn nowhere else, as they are blue light blockers and are supposed to cut down on eyestrain. I have close friends who will be mildly berated if they don’t work.
(This is not true. I have been describing myself as reasonably financially comfortable for a few years now, and my definition of “comfortable” is “can spend $20 pretty much whenever I like.” These glasses were $20. I won’t even bother returning them if I decide they don’t work.)
I sort of like the look of the skullcap (feel free to yell at me if you disagree) but I’m not in love with the Harry Potter style of the glasses. Then again, this picture will be the only time anyone who isn’t married to or genetically related to me sees them, so I don’t much care what they look like. I’ve gotta say, it’s weird having glasses back on my face again.
(Figures eyes are already hurty enough for the day, takes them off, figuring it won’t get worse)
(Questions own logic)
(Does it anyway)
Blah blah blah blah election panic-cakes. Amy Coney Barrett’s successful nomination makes it all the more critical that we take the Senate and then pack the hell out of the Supreme Court, hopefully impeaching Brett Kavanaugh along the way. My position all along has been that Coney’s nomination was legitimate– there wasn’t a “no election years!” rule when Merrick Garland was nominated and there isn’t one now– but that she should nonetheless be opposed with, well, every arrow in our quiver, Ms. Pelosi, and with every procedural trick and lowdown dirty bit of nonsense our parliamentarians can come up with.
Welp.
There are a number of dark and depressing paths my brain could wander down at the moment; I’m doing my best to cling to what little optimism I can find. If the election is won by a large enough margin we don’t have to worry about the electoral college or the Supreme Court stealing it, and if the presidency is won by that large of a margin it should take the Senate with it. We’ll worry about that first, then move on to the other stuff.
The degree to which the last two Supreme Court nominees are poster children for overpromoted white mediocrity is pretty impressive, by the way. I actually brought up Coney Barrett last time around as an example of a nominee they could have picked who wasn’t a drunken, belligerent rapist and would still be a stenographer for whatever the Republicans wanted, but I still feel like there still has to be someone out there who has maybe been a judge for longer than I spent in high school, or, like, actually been a lawyer, maybe. But whatever. It’s fine, she’s white, that’s good enough for them, yeah? Sure.
The only thing I want out of the next eight days is to make it through them without some sort of catastrophic meltdown. I will figure out what to do next after a meltdown is averted, depending on how the election goes.
That’s all I’ve got right now. I just got very mildly corrected on Twitter, incorrectly, and I’m pretty sure the burst of incandescent rage that it triggered could have powered the house for a couple of hours. I managed to not retaliate inappropriately but that’s all I’ve got in. me right now. I am going to try and disconnect and read comic books for a bit.
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