In which I monopolize the global Bead industry

We haven't had a bling post in awhile, but it has been a crazy-busy month in the shop. I can't keep up with the holiday demand, I list stuff and it's gone by sundown. Crazy. 

I get that it's just a bunch of beads, but it beats doom-scrolling the headlines and it's cheaper than therapy. And, to be honest, I feel like I'm doing more to solve the world's problems by putting pretty stones on string than I did in the entire 30 years I spent living and working in the cesspools of DC. 

Some of these beads have existed for thousands of years. Some of them will still be here long after America has sunk into the sea. And who knows, maybe they'll actually spread a small amount of happiness to someone in the meantime. 

Fine, it's not much. But it's something. And it's weird how there's a little community growing that is centered on my shop, a fairly steady crew of repeat buyers who just "get it" with beads and like my stuff. We interact, sometimes they interact, I get comments on my socials, things like that. A weird little community we're growing over here, and I like it. 

Anyway, if you're interested in seeing more, I've put the link to my shop at the bottom of this post. Meanwhile, enjoy these pretty pics of some of my recent sales.  

For those still scrolling this far, you really should check out the shop, it's unending fabulousness over there. Click here:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/bongobeach/?etsrc=sdt

This aged well...

Welp the joke's on me, ha ha. Turns out I was worried for nothing. 

 

 

The wind, Nicodemus, the wind.

So, I pretty much quit humanity on November 6, stopped reading the news, I'm done with politics etc, etc.  I've been singing this song for a long time now: The fewer interactions I have with "people," the better. The feeling isn't new, and this election didn't help. 

But I opened my eyes at 3AM this morning and, still half asleep, said out loud: "The wind, Nicodemus, the wind." 

Um. What the hell? The Book of Matthew. At fucking 3AM. REALLY...!? 

I haven't looked at a bible since I moved away from home, but the passage has to do with the moving of the Holy Spirit, like the wind, through the hearts of regular people. Something like that. I have no idea why I woke up speaking this, but seemed like a message, like something my back-brain was trying to tell me.

I'm not a believer in spirits, and holy ones are no exception. But it does occur to me that the only way forward, the only way out of the mess America has made of itself, is through those small, everyday interactions, the moments of connection, the little acts of unexpected kindness that I used to be so good at when I still had a soul.

 

Those little, every day interactions are where life happens for me. Not in the endless headlines of endless wars, not in the outcome of this or that election, not in the silly antics of some celebrity.

Forget saving the world, Dumblog. Forget winning out against  adolescent billionaires and boutique politicians. America is lost for at least a generation, and I'm not wasting another minute on it. There is no saving it from an apathetic and misinformed citizenry that actively votes against itself again and again. There isn't much you can do with that.

But what I *can* do is make someone's day a little bit kinder. A bit easier. A bit less marginalized. A bit less isolated. I can't fix humanity, can't save the world. But I can do that much.  

Not for their sake.

 

For mine.

So, we're all just fascists now?

 

Is it just me, or does this lull before the American Kristallnacht seem almost... anticlimactic? I'm so old I can remember when the worst we thought could happen was another riot at the Capitol, or a run on the certification process by a few Trump cultists. 

My, but how the times do change. We're now staring down the barrel of what feels to me like the End of Civilization as We Knew It. Or certainly, "America" as we knew it. Or, more accurately. what we pretended it to be. The sad fact is that the guardrails are gone, the gloves are off, and they will soon have their blood letting. 

"The People" have spoken, the same people who don't understand how tariffs work, or that "Obamacare" is how they get their health insurance, and that they just voted to keep themselves in poverty for the rest of their lives. 

But as more and more MAGA fascists awaken to the fact that they can't travel between the states without their papers anymore, that women now require a "reason" to cross national borders, when they realize that a head of lettuce now costs $45, and Grandma lost her Social Security and lives with us now...? 

I say, good. GOOD! This country needs to suffer for its sins, and Donald Trump is just the man to settle old scores. I, for one, am going to enjoy every fascist, bigoted tear drop when they realize that their Big Orange Daddy isn't just going to punish the hoards of brown people picking our cabbage and cleaning our homes. No, the bloodletting will be for all of you, too, the white and the stupid and the angry. The Christian, the zionist, the nazi, the thug: The chosen: 

Bring me your bitter tears, you fuckers. Your misery sustains me.