I spent the day administering standardized tests, of all fucking things, which are somewhat more difficult to do remotely than in person. Furthermore, spending seven hours in front of my computer– I literally did not leave my desk all day, and my wife was nice enough to bring me lunch– watching numbers slowly tick up from 1 to 53 has got to rank as one of my most boring days as an educator ever.
And I get to do it a minimum of twice more, since they’re not all done yet. This is basically the plan for the rest of the week.
Nonetheless, I’m going to loudly insist that I’m not complaining, because the alternative remains worse.
Speaking of that: neighboring districts have announced their plan to move to hybrid learning in a couple of weeks, which will be fun until they back off of it right before it happens. The state’s numbers have done nothing but worsen in the month of August, and so have the county’s, particularly once Notre Dame came back– so do you know what the state board of health did? They took a set of metrics that had everything in the red and added a new color band so that what was once red and definitely recommending distance learning was now orange and distance learning was just “strongly recommended,” or some shit like that.
Just say you’re bored and you don’t care if people die. Just fuckin’ do it, we all know it’s what you mean.
It’s more honest and I’m really tired of bullshit.
We closed everything down in March, when there were virtually no cases in the state. We closed them again in August, when things were much much much worse than they were in March because Americans are dog-stupid and selfish as fuck and no one could be counted on to act right. Now in September damn near everything is worse than it was in August and with Labor Day next weekend, guess what’s about to happen? Motherfuckers are gonna have parties and then two weeks after that they’re gonna get sick.
Oh, and Notre Dame, fresh off of two weeks of quarantine, is about to allow crowds at the football games they’re still insisting they’re going to have. So, a super-spreader event in my town roughly every two weeks for the next few months? Awesome. Just what we want.
It’ll work out fine, I’m sure. After all, we’re bored.
I almost just started this post by posting pictures of Covid-19 graphs; needless to say the state spiked monstrously yesterday and CNN finally heard me griping about how they clearly hadn’t been including Notre Dame’s numbers in our averages, because we had a similarly terrifying jump in our county numbers there as well. Meanwhile, the county health department says that our current seven-day rolling average of new cases is at over a hundred, and they want it below twenty before schools should reopen.
That’s a rolling average, remember, which implies, since the numbers have been going up daily for a while, that we’re seeing significantly more than 100 cases a day recently, according to the health department.
Dandy.
So I guess I need to find a way to get used to sitting in front of my computer for eight or nine hours a day, don’t I? I mean, granted, this is what I want, compared to the alternative, but it continues to blow my mind how people cannot simply act right so that we can get this thing dealt with like every other country on Earth. Because Americans are a uniquely toxic blend of selfish and stupid. I’m never going to pretend otherwise again. There’s simply no available evidence that we have any sort of national will left, if we ever actually did in the first place.
We are not going back to school in 2020. We just aren’t. And every day I move closer to declaring that we’re not going back this year at all. Colleges and universities will start shutting down in a couple of weeks. Just wait for it.
I dunno. I’m tired and my neck hurts and my back hurts and I’m already kind of half-assing my instructional videos and my attendance is already dropping off pretty significantly. So, that’s all bad. But it’s still better than being at work. My son’s only a couple of days into his school year (he’s home too) and he seems to be doing better than I thought he would be, but we’ll see where we’re at in a week.
Gah. I have to record a video about square roots now, because I need to make sure the kids know what they are for the next thing we’re doing, but what that’s going to lead to is a blowoff assignment for half of them and the ones who need to learn this aren’t going to bother trying. It’s way too early in the school year for cynicism to be setting in already, dammit. I need to get this together so that I can play video games for a bit and then go to bed early. Hopefully I’ll be in a better mood tomorrow.
The Wonder Woman Funko POP on the far left is brand new as of today; do I keep her with the other Wonder Woman or move her with the other three Funkos on the desk?
These are the questions that keep me up at night.
I have left the house more in this last week than in the six weeks prior to it, mostly because I have to drive my wife to and from work, which is automatically two trips a day, and I went and got groceries yesterday and picked up the grill and blah blah blah. I had a couple more errands that needed running today, unfortunately, but other than work runs I shouldn’t really need to go anywhere for most of next week. When I’m out, I’m wearing a bandana over my face, and I have a friend who is a seamstress making a few proper masks for us. Witness:
We are under a state order right now to wear masks when in “enclosed public spaces,” and the county health department has released a bunch of recommendations as well. What this has led to is a bunch of businesses posting prominent signs outside that you need to have a mask on to be inside … and a bunch of people inside without masks on. One of the errands I had to run was to the pet store, and I was in and out in under five minutes, and less than half of the customers I saw while I was in there were wearing masks. Indiana has had 1400 Covid-related deaths, and St. Joseph county is closing in on its thousandth confirmed case.
This is not fucking complicated, God damn it. It blows my mind that, three years and some change into this person’s administration, the GOP is still finding new ways to be venal and cruel and stupid, and then it blows my mind that I’m still capable of being surprised by these people. Wear a mask so that you don’t get sick! Wear a mask so that you don’t get other people sick! Why is this difficult? Why is “stop being a fucking asshole” a partisan statement?
My Google-fu has failed me, but I saw a clip of a comedian a bit back where he explained that he’s figured out the equation for this administration, which is (surprised x disappointed)2, because if you multiply it properly, first you’re surprised that you’re surprised, then you’re surprised that you’re disappointed, then you’re disappointed that you’re surprised, then you’re disappointed that you’re disappointed. Or something close to that, anyway. I can’t find it.
The other thing I want to bitch about is that on three different occasions today I have either read or heard people speculating about the “second wave” of this disaster that’s coming this fall. Y’all, this shit hasn’t slowed down yet. If anything, we’ve plateaued. There are a few specific localities in America that have bent the curve a bit but they’re about to be overwhelmed by the states that are all opening too fast– probably about another week from now, if past experience is worth anything. We can’t have a fucking second wave if the first wave never stops. And the way things are going, this isn’t going to get any better anytime soon. We have an entire fucking political party openly fucking dedicated to making it worse. We’re fucked for as long as any of these people hold any power, damn it.
5:25 PM, Saturday May 9: the world crossed four million confirmed infections today, with 1,305,199 of those being in America; 78,469 Americans have died, and we’ll be over 80K by the end of the weekend. And y’all are too fucking manly to wear a mask. Fucking idiots.
If y’all don’t mind, I’d like this to become my most famous post ever. I want this getting 10,000 views a day for the rest of my life. I want it shared in drivers’ ed classes. Hell, I want it to be the only topic of entire days of drivers’ ed classes.
If you stop, unpredictably, in order to allow someone to pull from a side road or exit from a business and turn left in front of you, ESPECIALLY if you are already in the left lane of traffic when you do this, you should lose your license. On the spot. It should self-destruct inside your goddamn wallet and burn a painful hole in your ass. And once you have lost your license and bandaged your burnt ass, whoever is behind you and managed to avoid rear-ending your ignorant self should get to choose one of your body parts (possibly the other unburnt half of your ass) to cut off and wear around as a hat.
The protection of the law should no longer apply to you if you make a decision like this.
Fucking stop it.
In conclusion, I hate you and hope you die. Which, given how you drive, will probably happen sooner rather than later.
So, in theory I have to have heard of Jacob Wohl before yesterday, or at least become aware of his existence, because I already had him blocked on Twitter. But … surely, surely the combination of this unbelievably fucking dumb story and the person claiming to be President insisting that we are under an existential threat because of the existence of a small band of starving refugees a thousand miles away from the US border, we’re at least going to have a brief reprieve on Republican idiocy before it gets worse again? For a couple of weeks, at least? Please? I know full well that the two rules of Republicans are They Always Get Worse and They Only Get Worse. I literally wrote those two rules. But does the slope have to be constant? Can we get a fucking break, please, just for a minute, before you idiot fuckweasels step on your dicks in public again?
I feel like I ought to be able to send these motherfuckers a bill for the brain cells I’ve lost since becoming aware of them.
At any rate. I’ve been quiet around here for the last couple of days, mostly because I’ve been trying my damnedest to spend every available second asleep, and I still feel like I have a month of sleep deprivation to catch up on. If I’m doing NaNoAnything I don’t seem to have started yet, and if it weren’t for the fact that I have an outside chance of actually passing up last year’s traffic numbers I’d seriously think about taking a hiatus at least until after the election. I’ve already voted, so I think I’m probably justified in burying my head in whatever sand might be nearby until after the horrorshow is over.
But, y’know, as usual, anytime I say “I won’t be posting for a while!” the next post is 3000 words. So.
I’m pretty much only posting because the thought of going three days without putting anything on the site gives me hives. I don’t really have a ton to talk about, or at least I don’t have a ton of stuff I want to talk about. I’ve spent most of the last couple of days wanting to punch the internet in the face because the internet is stupid and the people on the internet are stupid. I’ve been protecting my sanity by unfollowing a ton of both-sidesers lately regardless of whether I think they’re generally entertaining when they’re not being both-sidesers. I don’t have the patience for it any fucking longer, sorry.
On TV just now, Gordon Ramsay pronounced “guacamole” as “wocka-moll,” and now I want to punch him too because British or not that’s just not right.
Anyway. An example: The world’s gotten stupid enough that I came very close to wading into a parenting argument on Twitter earlier today. I won’t link to anything because I was too disgusted to make it through the video, but there’s a video floating around of a little kid cutting up in a restaurant. He’s, I dunno, five, and he’s telling everyone to go fuck themselves and calling his mother and grandmother bitches and apparently at a few points he’s actually yelling Crip slogans. There are motherfuckers who are sincerely suggesting that what this kid needs is more violence in his life because apparently Mom and Grandma don’t beat him enough. How fucked up do you have to be to watch a kid that obviously damaged by violence and suggest that beatings are the way to help him?
So, you’d think if somebody wrote an article called “It’s Time for Democrats to Take Responsibility For Their Assassination Porn,” there would be a real good chance that that article would be about 1) assassination porn, whatever the fuck that is and 2) Democrats. That would be a reasonable assumption! Even, perhaps, a common one!
Unfortunately it’s 2017 and everything is stupid as fuck and it’s been a long time since I’ve ripped a politics article to shreds so let’s do this shit.
Wednesday, our public servants were violently attacked. Except, this time it wasn’t a man or woman with brown skin who swears allegiance to Allah. Nor was it a man or woman who worships in the “deep state” of Pepe the Frog and Alex Jones conspiracies while swearing allegiance to right-wing conservatism.
Okay, first of all, this intro would be half-assed coming from a high school student. The phrase “swears allegiance” is used twice in two sentences and you don’t worship “in” a “deep state,” much less a conspiracy. It sounds like it makes sense until you actually pay attention to it. Maybe the next couple of sentences will be better.
Instead, the perpetrator shares the same political ideals as 50 percent of the country.
Which fifty percent? Because that “right wing conservatism” thing is close enough to half of us to not be worth grousing about, and if you think “the left” is half of the country…
Yesterday a liberal supporter who volunteered for the Bernie Sanders campaign attacked a political servant, capital police officers, and Hill staffers.
Again, grammar: attacked a political servant? Just one? And what part of “liberal” and “volunteered for Bernie Sanders” says 50 percent of the country to you? Fuck Bernie Sanders.
But I’m quibbling. Let’s get to the meat of the article:
a madman released several gunshots at the representatives
Okay I can’t actually let that pass. Released? He released several gunshots? You release doves.
As the events unfolded, Sen. Rand Paul commented that if it weren’t for the capital police, everyone would have been dead on the field.
Yeah, let’s talk about some things Rand Paul has said real quick. There’s this, for example:
Now, Paul’s apparently quoting this “judge nap” individual here. Do I care? Not a fucking bit; he’s RTed this guy’s words without condemnation or equivocation and so he gets to fucking own them. Remember, it’s the Democrats who need to “take responsibility for their assassination porn,” but this fucker literally calling for people to shoot at the government (and then crying when they do!) gets a pass.
For years, the Left has focused on the racism and demagoguery on the Right that they believe led to the election of Donald Trump.
This is absolutely true.
Certainly, Trump’s comments about how “Second Amendment people” could do something about Hillary Clinton, or that he could assassinate someone on the street and still get elected, didn’t help negate such stereotypes. Neither did depictions from radical conservatives of Barack Obama being burnt, lynched, or hung from a noose ease tensions between the Right and Left.
These things all happened! Now, this person talking about “Second Amendment people” was running for President while he said that, and he’s supposedly the President now. And those “radical conservatives” include close associates of that so-called President, including his own employees, as well as violent scumbags like Ted Nugent who he has invited to the White House. Meanwhile, there’s that asshole who physically assaulted a reporter– he’s in Congress now, too!
So, I’m sure the Democrats who are guilty of “assassination porn” will be of similar influence as the President of the United States, right?
When former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin released a “crosshairs” target map of 20 congressional districts under faces of Democratic lawmakers with the text “Don’t Retreat, Instead – Reload,” liberals immediately chastised the violent, disgusting act “critics saw as a winking approval of violence,” wrote Max Fisher of The Atlantic.
“Former governor of Alaska.”
Former governor of Alaska.
Former governor of Alaska.
…
Man, I coulda sworn Sarah Palin did something other than be governor of Alaska for half a term. OH WAIT RIGHT SHE WAS A VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE. So so far we have the actual fucking President and the VP nominee from the previous political cycle who are guilty of violent, eliminationist rhetoric. So, man, we must really be up for something once they get around to those Democrats who need to take responsibility for their assassination porn. Sarah Palin putting literal crosshairs on people’s faces wasn’t quite enough to qualify, apparently; whatever it is the Democrats have done is probably way worse.
Liberals’ anger at Palin was justified, considering that soon after Gabrielle Gifford, a Democrat, was shot in the head and 13 others were wounded, including six killed.
Yeah, let’s not forget that that happened. Democrats reacted exactly the same way they’re reacting to the most current attack– calling for some sort of sane fucking gun policy in this country, because we want people to stop getting shot. Guess what: that’s going to be our reaction to every single shooting, no matter who does it or who they’re shooting at! Maybe there should be fewer guns, and it should be harder to get them! This might happen less often if that were true!
Republicans blew it off, since they only care when it’s them getting shot at. Two dozen fucking children were murdered and they called the entire thing a conspiracy and mocked us for caring. I’m supposed to cry when it’s one Republican congressperson who survives the assault?
Of course, Palin isn’t responsible for that tragedy, but I agree with Andrew Sullivan that her “inflammatory rhetoric has poisoned the discourse and has long run the risk of empowering the deranged.” Like our actions, words have consequences.
You didn’t have a stroke; the first half and back half of this quote do, in fact, directly contradict each other.
If “inflammatory rhetoric” poisons the well of civility, then certainly liberals bear some responsibility for Wednesday’s hideous assault against Republicans.
MY BODY IS READY. Hit me with some of that Democratic assassination porn!
Since last November, liberals (including myself) have engaged in rhetoric and disdain against Trump and conservatives for myriad reasons. But some of the arguments and intense conversations, especially on social media, have been utterly gruesome. This rhetoric I’ve personally refused to partake in, like pondering the assassination of the president.
I am super fucking psyched for the long list of examples of Democratic elected officials who have pondered the assassination of the President and/or called for violence against the same. I’m ready. Let’s go. Example time, assholes!
Recently, comedian Kathy Griffin
Wait what
Political commentator and activist Reza Aslan
Hold the fuck on
To this day, liberals refuse to accept that Trump won the presidency, despite the interference of the Russians.
Oh you did not just bring up Kathy fucking Griffin and Reza Aslan— Aslan’s sin, by the way, is calling the President a “piece of shit,” not, like, any violent rhetoric of any fucking kind at all– and then change the fucking subject like you were done talking. Is this seriously where we’re going, here? We’re juxtaposing literal violent threats and violent fantasies from the highest echelons of the Republican party with a third-rate comedienne doing a routine no one understood or gave much of a shit about and a religious studies professor with a potty mouth? Are you fucking kidding me?
How the fuck do you type something this stupid and not just hurt all over while you’re doing it? I would expect my brain to slowly shut down autonomous processes until I died if I persisted in something this fucking dumb.
We’ve engaged in mindless conversations about how Clinton won the popular vote, Trump is a moron, and Republicans are heartless.
Oh, go fuck yourself. I’ve not been talking about it much around here, but it’s becoming increasingly fucking clear as time goes on that that was the least legitimate election in American history. This isn’t that post, but these are far from fucking “mindless conversations,” and I’m sick to fuck of people acting like vote suppression and Russian interference in our electoral processes are just things that happen that no one should worry about. I repeat: go fuck yourself.
None of these arguments over semantics resolve real peoples’ problems, such as economic disparity, affordable health care, lack of job opportunities in urban and rural areas, climate change, and an out-of-control prison system.
You know what else isn’t going to resolve those real people’s problems? The Republican party. They don’t give a single fucking wet shit about people. Look at this abomination of a health care bill– oh, wait, you can’t. They screamed for years about how Obamacare, which was debated for a year and a half, was “rammed through,” and literally no one outside of the Republican half of the Senate has seen the fucking bill.
So, right. Still waiting for that assassination porn. There’s gotta be one elected Democrat in here somewhere. Just one.
Sanders isn’t responsible.
Well, then.
He’s been responsibly engaging in conversations on practical progressive ideas,
Have I said “fuck Bernie Sanders” yet? No? Fuck Bernie Sanders. He’s not a Democrat and neither are his followers– in fact, they’re fucking proud of it. And gaslight as much as you like but there is a part of his base that crosses over quite neatly with Trump’s base, and that crossover element is pure fucking misogyny. Every white dude who thought he was a lefty but hated women anyway voted for Sanders. Every single one. And Sanders’ reaction to this rot in his midst has been to repeatedly deny that these people exist and try to gaslight those of us who have had to put up with them into believing we’re making that up. Yeah, I said it: that fucker who shot at those Congressmen was a Bernie Bro, and fuck him.
NOTE: this is another difference between us and them, by the way– any Clinton supporter/mainline Democrat who gets it into his or her head (who the fuck am I kidding; it’ll be “his”) to go shoot up anyone at all under any circumstances can also be similarly fucked. The Republicans defended the shit out of motherfuckers for pointing guns at federal agents when those motherfuckers were white conservatives. Does the word Malheur ring a bell to any of you? Do you remember these assholes?
I’m sure there’s a Democrat doing some assassination porn here somewhere…But yeah, back to Bernie for a sec, and in the interest of precision: I don’t hold him responsible for the misogyny of so many of his supporters. I hold him responsible for not openly condemning them until they were run the fuck out of his “revolution.” Which he never came close to doing.
But anyway. Bernie’s not a Democrat, and it’s the Democrats who are doing the assassination porns. I’m sure the last couple of paragraphs are going to get to the porny part. Surely.
Despite past rhetoric, Trump isn’t responsible for this recent attack either. In fact, he gets the severity of this tragedy: “Many lives would’ve been lost if not for the heroic actions of the two Capitol Police officers who took down the gunman, despite sustaining gunshot wounds during a very, very brutal assault,” said Trump in a statement from the Diplomatic Room at the White House. In my opinion this shows Trump is growing to understand his responsibility as president and commander in chief.
Wow.
We liberals have been too busy arguing with and hating on “the others.” We’ve done what we accused the Right of doing. And what has that gotten us?
Liberals, it’s time to have a serious talk about the dangers on the Left to prevent this type of tragedy from happening again.
Yesterday at work: a $2,000 return on an insanely slow day. I have like eight sales but the biggest one is for less than a hundred and fifty dollars so it doesn’t amount to shit.
Today at work: a $4,000 return, and I still haven’t dug myself out of yesterday’s hole, plus it’s Tuesday, so there’s two trucks in the morning and then lots and lots of phone calls to people whose stuff has arrived and then spending the rest of the day answering the phone and in a progressively worse and worse mood because you’re leaving detailed messages for these fuckwits and they’re calling without listening to their fucking voicemail and saying things like “Uh, yeah, I got a call from this number?” and then trailing off.
LISTEN. TO. YOUR. FUCKING. VOICEMAIL. YOU. FUCKING. CRETIN.
I’m gonna go off on somebody sooner or later, goddammit. If I answer the phone and say “Thanks for calling <furniture store>, this is Luther, may I help you?” then maybe the phone call might be about furniture? Did you even hear that, moron?
And then I got home and had an angry letter from the Illinois Department of Revenue wondering why I hadn’t filed my taxes in September. Because I haven’t set foot in Illinois since July, maybe? Or earned any income? And don’t taxes get filed in April, and what is this September shit? That could be why.
OH SHIT RIGHT also half the staff got written up because the store had too few prospects last month. That was fun too!
I’m pretty much only posting because the thought of going three days without putting anything on the site gives me hives. I don’t really have a ton to talk about, or at least I don’t have a ton of stuff I want to talk about. I’ve spent most of the last couple of days wanting to punch the internet in the face because the internet is stupid and the people on the internet are stupid. I’ve been protecting my sanity by unfollowing a ton of both-sidesers lately regardless of whether I think they’re generally entertaining when they’re not being both-sidesers. I don’t have the patience for it any fucking longer, sorry.
So, you’d think if somebody wrote an article called “
Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com 