This Blog Lacks Focus

I came in here for something and now I 

 

Surfin' In A Hurricane

I feel safer already. 

Here's Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with apparently nothing better to do on the day before a record-breaking CAT-5 hurricane hits, threatening his constituents who just want to board up their windows and hunker down. 

Yesterday he was dodging calls from the WH offering help, so that tomorrow he can join the chorus of lies claiming that all of that sweet, sweeeeet FEMA money has gone to those hoards of icky brown people who are stampeding over the border to vote for Kamala. 

Reminder: They aren't interested in governing. Here's sleazy and embattled Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz voting against the continuing resolution that kept FEMA funded for a few more weeks. 

It's like they're all surfin' in a hurricane. Can you imagine if this were happening while he and Marjorie Taylor Greene were playing patty-cake with poeples' lives? God help us, these sleazy clowns are trying to kill us all. 

No, Really: They Aren't Going To Accept Defeat

They aren't going to accept defeat. There's something happening over in MAGA land that should be deeply alarming to anyone concerned about America, concerned about Democracy -- or hell, concerned about their own safety.   

MAGA is preparing for a literal civil war. They've been enabled, and coddled, and normalized, and tolerated, and accommodated to the point where they think America is their sovereign right, decreed by God.

For the last four years they've been told repeatedly that the 2020 election was stolen, that Trump is the victim of a witch hunt, that he's a genius even though he can't string two words together. 

They won't believe it if Jesus himself returns with a host of Angels and tells them to their glassy-eyed faces that Trump lost another free and fair election. They simply aren't going to accept defeat. 

Meanwhile, here's House Hall Monitor Speaker Mike Johnson refusing to acknowledge that Trump lost in 2021.  Of course he is. He's probably afraid for his life, and given how MAGA has turned on Pence, who can blame him? 

It's gonna be a long month.

 

I'm sort of at the stage with this election that I don't see any more point to the screaming. Yes, yes, post your memes, get those zingers in while there's still time. But the messaging part of this campaign is over. There are no undecideds, they're all lying. 

It's all about turnout now. 

I posted some screed on FB for the "olds" a few days ago about how if you're still supporting Trump you're a fucking fascist, and for some reason, this very reasonable observation on my part led the last few evangelicals still clinging to my timeline to finally block me. 

Oh sure, we can all be expected to politely agree to disagree about whether or not the GOP thinks gay people should be imprisoned, deported or simply executed, but if I point out that you're a hateful bigot for supporting a party that wants me dead, then somehow I'm the rude one? 

Fuck all that. I'm done trying to reason with these people. I'm no longer in the persuasion business. I'm not interested in winning hearts and minds anymore. I want to crush them at the polls.  

We just need to get as many like-minded people out to vote as possible. 

Well, that and dismantle the electoral college, deploy an army of lawyers to handle the bogus legal cases already being filed, and pray like hell that the right four people on the Supreme Court are struck by lightening before then.

Because they're not going to accept defeat. There will be silliness. There will be ridiculous, blatant lies at the highest levels. There may even be blood shed. 

It would be nice if this country wasn't as stupid and feckless as I know it to be, but please, please America, surprise me in a good way for once?   

   

Are we still on speaking terms, or...?

 I'm trying to figure out if the comments work on this dumb blog. There was another blog once, in a galaxy far, far away, and there were days when you people would never shut up. Here? Crickets. 

Speak up, you simpering cowards. Somebody leave a snide comment to let me know I didn't flick the wrong switch when I set this place up and accidentally mute everyone. I thought we had comments for awhile there, but you've all fallen mute, undoubtedly with shock and horror at some of the completely rational shit I post around here. 

Reminder, if you don't want to wade through all the random bullshit and just want to see specific topics -- my peculiar bead obsession, for example, or how I'm aging gracelessly -- you can hit one of the handy labels at the right of your screen. 

I vehemently deny all allegations in my memoir!

I've been at a bit of a stand still on the book for two weeks, but feel like I'm finally back on track and making progress again. For the last few months it's been mostly stream of conscious word-dumping and a lot of it won't make the final cut -- but I feel like the needle finally moved a little again this week, and the words are coming again. 

I'm working from an actual chapter outline at this point, and a lot of the fodder I've just plunked down at random can now be fed into a more organized and cohesive narrative. I'm optimistic again, even if my original timeline is out the fucking window. I think it's doubtful it'll be done in time for the 30th anniversary of the OK City bombing, which is unfortunate since parts of my story are connected to those events. 

It's enough for me to be moving on it again. I'm trying not to be unkind to my mom, but the more I think about some of the dynamics of my childhood, the less flattering it seems to a parent. In fairness, I'm pretty unsparing of myself as well. 

I mean the prologue is a recounting of my DUI, ffs, and how even that horrific experience didn't stop me from eventually driving under the influence again. It's not like I come out of this tale sounding exactly heroic. 

  

Rethinking my business model...

 Fuck it, I'm declaring this a microblog. It's just gonna be short, inscrutable posts around here from now on. 

They aren't going to accept defeat, Episode 3,547

Heard a thing on NPR a day or so ago to the effect that several deeply red states are basically implementing the same playbook as last election -- illegally suppressing votes, last minute tampering with election rules, targeted campaigns of intimidation and/or misinformation -- and doing so will the full knowledge that post-election cases will roll up to our illegally gotten and deeply criminal SCOTUS to decide the outcome.

That's the plan. They simply aren't going to accept defeat, period. America itself -- its ideals, its constitution, its laws, its people -- are completely irrelevant to these bastards.  

You Get What You Vote For

To the people on my timeline still supporting Trump (yeah I see you):

Here’s your guy calling for his very own Kristallnacht. It’s filthy. If you’re still supporting this worthless thug, you should be deeply ashamed of what you’ve allowed yourself to become. If you’re not a complete goose-stepping nazi yet, you should be very concerned with what he’s actually threatening here.

Know this much:

In the end, it won’t matter who you are. You are no safer from these fascists than an immigrant is, or a gay person, or a woman with an ectopic pregnancy. It’s the nature of fascism that sooner or later, for one reason or another, they will come for you, too. It’s what they do.

All the warning signs are there for the world to plainly see. When it happens, blame yourself. You voted for it.

Have a nice day.

Cool Beads

Awhile back I went through my ancient Roman glass phase. I was crazed with it, and I moved a LOT of old glass through this house. Well, that was then. Fast forward to African glass. I've gone through Krobo crazes before -- I just love their big, juicy, hand-painted colors -- but lately I've been out of control. 

I posted these modern pink & greens awhile ago, and have worn them in public twice. It's amazing how many comments I get on these -- but then again, they're rather huge. You really can't miss 'em. 

Anyway, I was hooked. I quickly moved on to some nice antique Krobos I had been hanging on to. I went ahead and put some of those together, and some of them are already listed in the shop. I'll be adding more of these bigger, "standard size" African powder glass beads.

 

But what I've gone completely bonkers over are these smaller krobos. Most of them are big and chunky, but these are much smaller. and they're ADORABLE. 

Anyway, all this stuff is listed in the shop and explained in more detail, origin of the beads, what they are, how old, etc. You can find my stuff here.

It's OK to be OK

I'm averaging 12-15 miles on the bike each night lately, and there have been some nights when I'm hitting 17-20 mile territory. The weather has turned cooler and the sun goes down a little earlier each evening. It's still too hot during the day to ride (for me, anyway), and even though I'm usually awake by 4AM each morning with the dogs (old dogs, old habits, etc) the morning already has its own routine. So, night rides it is, at least for now.

I usually start around dusk and get home well after dark. The other night I was out for nearly two hours, and by the time I got back to my neighborhood, the streets were quiet.

It's hard to square this with the guy I was just a few years ago. As I've said here before, this ain't no recovery blog -- not because I don't value being sober, but because I'm not willing to be a spokesperson for recovery. I've gone down that path before, enough to know that it's a thankless and precarious place to be. I write about it more in the book, and I'm trying to be as candid as possible about all this -- including the fact that I'm not out here posing as some kind of model of successful recovery. I'm doing well right now, and I'll just leave it at that. 

But here are two thing I can rightly point to as accomplishments I'm proud of: 

For four years I've been committed to quitting alcohol for good, and for the last two of those years I've lived a life free of alcohol. I don't think about it much anymore. That's something I would never have thought impossible just a few years ago.  

And I now get regular daily exercise. When I started riding my bike again, it changed how I think about exercise, that it wasn't about achieving some random goal for me, some target weight or miles per hour, but about fun. Now I miss it if I can't hop on my ride and fly somewhere. 

I'm not exactly a poster child for healthy living, lulz, even with the tai chi and the meditation and the visualization and the group therapy, and the bike. Far from it. I still have plenty of other filthy habits, and hopefully I'll get around to ending those before they get around to ending me.  

But in the meantime, I can honestly say just those two factors -- quitting the booze, and riding the bike -- have changed my life in profound ways. I've never been more mentally stable at any point in my life. I lost 34 lbs and it never came back. My BP stabilized. My bloodwork started coming back normal. I slept through the night again. 

I guess my point is that I don't have to be perfect. It's okay that I'm still a work in progress, and that I have a spotty record, it's okay to still have warts. I can have huge areas of my life that need improvement, and still be really happy and relieved that at least, by gawd, I'm not drunk today.

It's enough to just be okay with being okay.