Anyone else planning to spend Voting Hell Day in ‘murica with a bag of weed, a bottle of rot gut tequila, junk food galore as you marathon Schitt’s Creek? Anyone? Buehler?
I hate Ferris Buehler’s Day Off with a passion, by the way. Hated it when it first hit, hate it now. I just. Yuck. I have never been charmed by that slick mud puddle of a movie. Sorry if I crapped on your dreams or best movie or life, whatever.
I voted already. We can do that here in Oregon. We have mail-in voting since…ever. I don’t remember a time when you couldn’t just chuck your ballot back in the mail box. Well, until this year. I took my ballot to the drop box at the county courthouse. There was a car sitting there, idling. Paranoia hit me. WTF is that car doing there? WTF? Drive off, fuckweeds. Drive away! But I voted. Straight Dem, full total disclosure.
Just one more day…Not actually, as ballots come in from absentee and such will still need to be counted. If they are allowed to be counted, that is. My country seems caught on the idea that democracy is too hard, so let’s try fascism which is super-easy! Voter suppression galore! Woot?
Hey, Kangaroo Court, er, Supreme Cunts, can ya fix the election already for Drippy Clownfuck McTraitorface? Oh you plan that if given even a sliver of a chance?? Wheeee!
Me and tequila have a complicated relationship at best. Any time I go near it, yeah, things get complicated. I end up pawing at people or under a table sobbing for a razor blade. There’s no in-between option. Vodka doesn’t do this to me or rum or whiskey. Tequila fucks my shit up, as the wise children opine. So prolly not gonna get some of that devil juice.
Weed is legal here. I am surrounded by dispensaries, not to mention, hey, my aunt grows the stuff, as do several cousins. I actually like it. It calms me. I just float. It’s kinda nice.
Election. Huh, so ABC is broadcasting a chump rally in entirety. Fucking hell on burned bran muffins, be they super-stupid?
Obviously I have nothing elegant or new to say on the day before the Day. I am hopeful yet OH MY FUCKING GOD WTF kinda something. Record number of voters showing up. Record number of voter suppression tactics in play. Rallies and lies and alibis, oh my!
Also saw where Trumpanzees are showing up to block roads, run buses off those roads, block voting sites. FBI investigating some of that.
Have not been able to concentrate for ages. Waiting for Civil War II to drop is kinda all-consuming at the present.
Schitt’s Creek is truly delightful. I didn’t have much hope at how it started—very broad stereotypes of both the rich and the not so rich, and small town everything, how funny, ha ha. But then. But then!
Depths and shades and nuances started to appear. David and Alexis, wow. Mr. Rose emerging as the most empathetic of the family and an actual pretty okay day. Moira…has her moments of utter loveliness. I was won over to Schitt’s Creek when Alexis asked her brother for a hug. He hemmed and hawed, as he does, then he just gave in and gave his sister the comfort she and he needed. That was in season two, or so. Maybe?
I am not charmed by Chris Elliot. I’ve seen him do this type of character too many times. I love his wife, whoever that actress is. Oh I know that too-nice, gotta help everyone but herself character. It’s my mom!
Possibly a much deeper dive into this series when I reach the end. I’m in season four or five, somewhere in there. Right after Patrick’s housewarming party where Ted kisses David. And I must say, I do really like Alexis and Ted together. I just do.
SPOILERS IF YOU’VE NOT SEEN THIS YET. SORRY NOT SORRY FUCK OFF ALREADY YOU SNIVELING SNOTMONSTERS
Oh. I seem a bit hostile. Ouchie.
Please please don’t let Stevie dangle in the wind as this series seems to do endlessly. Thanks in advance?? Eh…?
So yeah. Weed, booze, snacks, a funny show I can watch all day. While I try to wait for the final results without LOSING MY GODDAMN MARBLES.
I predict a Biden win but chump and lawyers and such will challenge it. Chump has stated this already, several times. At rallies. And so this nightmare doesn’t end, we all keep falling toward the rocks…splat.
Splat.
Splitter-splat.
How could they remove the Peanut’s Halloween Special off network TV?? THIS FUCKING YEAR SUCKS MOLDY MOTHERFUCKING BALLS.
It’s the Great Pum…NO IT’S NOT CAUSE YOU CAN ONLY WATCH IT ON APPLE FUCKING FUCKING WHATEVER FUCK FUCK FUCK
Christopher Walken from the cowbell sketch on SNL. Also? Replace ‘post’ with the word ‘America’. Thanks.
Hi, Mr. Mueller. Apparently, you were like, boring, or somethin’ yesterday. When you did that testify thing and senators yelled at you for eighty nine millions hours. Yep. I’m thinking now you didn’t play to your audience.
Which is ‘murica.
No bells, no whistles? Come on! We’re trained lab rats when it’s politics time. If you’re not super-animated, waving your arms, shouting about socialists, how are we supposed to know to pay attention?
If you’re not throwing gang signs or white pride salutes or whatever, we check out. Bor-RING.
Where’s the fireworks? Where’s the pithy soundbite? Where’s the meme-able moment, old dude??
No shiny outfit? No wild hairdo? No tats?? WTF? I’m, off to watch old eps of Barney Miller, buh bye!
Did you know, by the way, that you’re old? I heard that so much yesterday I was confused. Do you not know your age, Mr. Mueller?? Are you some sort of weird JW sort who skips cake and present day?? WTF?!
After all, old dudes like you are tired and can’t remember shit. Except the Insane Shitweasel is older than you and actually can’t remember one set of feces from another set of feces at any given moment.
Also, it seems people forgot that Dougie Barr, Trump’s pet attack goblin, gave you some strict gotta do this instructions, so overgrown Boy Scout that ya are…
you decided to straddle the middle and just DO YOUR DAMN JOB.
I mean, hell’s bells, non-shouty old dude…
We wanted you to go all medieval on their asses.
You acted like it was just another day. Where you repeated, yet again, that there’s this sorta rule that says you can’t indict a sitting prezzie. Implying that the current thing in the WH is GUILTY AS ALL FUCK. Not a half fuck or a quarter of a fuck but the full fuck.
Obstruction of justice. Lying. Having aides lie to impede investigations. Oh yeah, also? Not a witch hunt and that Russia thing is for realsies. Oh my, oh dear, cue the twatwaffling from Fuck Your Face News blond shouty numpties.
It’s just a demonrat plot, they fed him the answers! Of course it’s a witch hunt!
No, it’s not, says Mr. Mueller.
He’s a dem operative working for Soros! He’s an old man who can’t remember doodle squat!
Impeach that motherfucker already, er, not a witch hunt. Not a witch hunt.
Hillary is behind this…what did Mueller say? What?? He’s old and insane and we’re the only real news. Just us. Just us!
I mean, hey, old Billy Clinton was impeached for one lie or somethin’. Or cannibalizing an entire red state in the Rose Garden as Hillary planned her world takeover. I don’t know which is true at this point. I’m thinking Bill Clinton really did chow down on an entire red state and they had to impeach him, praise Baby Jesus and the Machine Guns of God, hallelujah. Or the bodies would have piled up cause the Clintons are murder machines.
[There’s a trend over on Twitter or there was, about the Clinton body count. No, not even kidding. Not even a teensy tiny bit.]
They’ve got access to that Soros money! The secret Jewish cabal of endless money to turn the world into some sort of skate park! Stay tuned to watch Laura Ingraham rant for a whole hour about the Clintons and Soros money as she rides a dildo shaped like our beloved, dear, sweet, wonderful, so picked on it’s a crime, president! You go, girl!She’s gonna stick it to the libs in more ways than one!
Yeah, uh, yep.
My advice? My words of wisdom to you, Mr. Mueller?
Oh sure, I’m obscure. I’m a nobody. I’m a far left occasional blogger with a garden fetish. Sometimes I post pics of rocks I painted. But hey, listen to me anyway!!
Everyone’s opinion these days is, like, so valid and special and precious. You don’t have to be an expert in anything anymore. It’s GREAT.
So here goes:
Dude. Mueller. My human bloodhound friend—YOU GOTTA COWBELL EM UP.
Bring your Chris Walken A-game.
Bring the cowbell, don’t send someone out to find one as you sit there waiting for the screaming GOP senator to pause long enough for you to ask him to repeat whatever he just screamed cause you like to watch the veins pop out in their red, red faces.
Dazzle em. Razzle-dazzle em. That number from Chicago? Where the lawyer does tricks and soft shoe?? Yeah!!
We want Law and Order explosions, not the dull creaky unwinding of actual facts and what actually went down. Fuck!!
COWBELL, DUDE.
Cowbell.
This has been a Pubic Serviced Allotment from yours truly.
Gotta know the audience you play to these days. They’re trained to crave drama, quippy word salad and above all, a good time.
Come on, sir. Did you really think showing up, being all dignified and measured, with the patience to listen to that bullshit streaming from the right and the omg, can we impeach this motherfucker yet gritted teeth of the left…would, like, produce results that shoved the country out of the no-one’s trenches we’re in right now??
Mm?? WTF is the matter with you??
Cowbell em up, sir. It’s not the patriotic thing to do but hell, patriotism now means ‘Arbeit macht frei’.
See what I did there?
Dramatic use of historical phrases to end a thinly veiled primal scream over the state of America lately.
You take care, Mr. Mueller. We keep waiting for you to turn into Captain America crossed with Clarence Darrow or even Sam Waterston’s lawyer guy offa that Law and Order juggernaut.
That’s why you should get all theatrical and wave that damn cowbell.
Then maybe at least four more might pay attention or…vote for Trump anyway cause they can’t get inspired by the democratic candidate who once had tea and cookies with Satan. That’s what Hannity said!
Cowbell em up, sir.
from Cowboy Compulsion. Now imagine a cowbell in his hand. Costume and props, Mr. Mueller. You’re dealing with America, not a rational set of citizens who do their homework. Hello!
Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau and Brie Larson as Carol “Captain Marvel” Danvers
[[note– I promise this is cheerful. Fluff. Absolute fluffy kittens and unicorn dreams. ]]
I went to the movies yesterday afternoon. Guess what I saw? Not the cute dragon movie. Not the anti-romance romance comedy that I will probably really enjoy when it finally gets to TBS or TNT. The one with Rebel Wilson. That one.
CAPTAIN MARVEL.
Yes, that’s the obscure art house pic I suffered through. As those art house pics generally demand that you SUFFER to get to the end without throwing up, falling asleep or generally giving up ten minutes in during the first of many twenty minute monologs on how swift life is by a teen girl working retail as her mother does crack in the alley out back.
There were other people there. Sigh. I go to matinees because they’re [A] cheaper and [B] not attended by other people. Okay, whatever! Popcorn rustles, comments flying about me, soda pop being sucked loudly through hollow plastic tubes. The sounds of cinema! I arrive just before the previews start, so I don’t have to sit there pretending not to be making snide mind comments about everyone else there. As you do.
Previews. Avengers!! Tony Stark in outer space giving some sort of Hamlet-like speech. Captain America filling up with HOPE that some Hail Mary plan will work against a [guy, thing, god, dancer, evil bad farmer, etc?] who just took out half the known universe. What’s this…a new avenger might join in to CHANGE THE GAME? What???? Yeah, I’m so going to this it’s not even funny. I’m a weak-souled consumer drone mind-raped by Hollywood’s Satanic influences. You heard it here first.
LION KING. Now!! I’ve seen the cartoon version X number of times. Yet! I’ve got oddly wet eyes, so there must have been a drive-by onioning. Shouldn’t a live-action movie about animals use, um, actual animals who are not…Stop that, brain! The heart is sobbing right now! Shut up, brain! Disney, how dare you pile on the pathos!! How dare you!
There’s also a preview for a movie I’ve already seen soundly panned and ‘not wanted by anyone’– Dark Phoenix. Which is Sansa Stark getting all evil on Mr. Tumnus. There’s lots of screaming, explosions, people in extensive makeup with superhero hair looking truly magnificent. I wanted to see it. How evil does Sansa get?? Like, super-evil or just mildly evil where she kicks a puppy then goes to work for the ASPCA? I’m hooked! I also can’t wait until it’s on TNT in two or three years. Yay! Also, maybe the X-Men can call on Dani and her dragons to KICK DP’S bottom. Oh my, the crossover potential there. Game of Thrones meets X-Men. Somebody get on this one, stat!
Holy cow bells, that isn’t a still for Capt. Marvel! Sophie Tucker will play Jean Grey again.
I could just do a blog post about listening to people snack in the near-dark and my reaction to the various trailers.
Here we go:
Captain motherfucking Marvel.
That’s a Sam Jackson shout out.
Pretty much what you expect to happen, well, happens. Plot? There was an actual twist here that was pretty solid. I thought it went well. It was set up through memory loss flashes. Plus, any time you have a British guy in an American superhero movie…yeah.
Ooh, that was a sort of spoiler. Yikes!
But I had my suspicions. I don’t trust people who seem ‘nice’. They’re just not. In real life or superhero movies.
Carol, played by Brie Larson, was everything Girl Power needs. She’s fierce. She’s a fighter. She’s got hot hands…hands that light up and shoot lasers. Or fire. No, lasers.
She’s also a hothead who’s…wait for it…emotional. [I let out an actual WTF gasp at this.] Of course the Nice British Guy [Jude Law] hammers this one over and over and yet over again.
Our heroine also keeps having this memory of a female scientist [Annette Benning], being an Air Force pilot, having a life on earth. Vers, as she’s called now, lives on the Kree planet…here I just clocked out. More comic worlds I should know like the back of my hand??
God damn it, no thanks. I have enough crap crammed in my cranium at any given moment.
So we get Vers crashlanding through a Blockbuster after chasing the Bad Aliens, who are shapeshifters. Who can be ANYBODY, right down to their memories. Some of their memories…again, I checked out here, just rolling my eyes.
The movie took place in the Nineties. Ah.
Nostalgia, you tricksy blighter. Everybody laughed and sighed over the Blockbuster bit. The Blockbuster here in Ontario, Oregon went under overnight seemingly. In a day. It’s now a gym or get your taxes done here office front.
CM goes on a Journey of Discovery with Sam Motherfuckin’ Jackson, which is Great Fun. We get to see her Kick Ass. A Lot. She was a one-woman Rambo aboard the Bad Aliens ship, after all. Well, she beat the crap out of large groups of extras. Those scenes where Our Hero or Heroine [Yay, girls can be heroes, too! Yay!] takes on legions and just GOES TO TOWN on their bottoms. Yep!
So, we get the Plot Twist. We get the Betrayals. We get the Moments of Doubt. We get the If You Need the Suit You’re Not a Hero moment that all Marvel movies seem to employ unblushingly. [I just watched one of the new Spiderman movies, where Tony Stark says this to Spiderboy.]
Now. All of that? I still enjoyed the ever-livin’ crap out of this movie. I was glad I left my house to go see it. I enjoyed the heck out of the trailers. I could totally get away from how my country seems hellbent on installing an actual dictatorship…Her Emails! Lock her up!! Build the wall! Fake news!
I felt an odd Captain America type hope that a Hero Will Rise. And save us. From ourselves. So we don’t have to do it. Yeah. The Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free fully expect to be saved from themselves by some superhero unicorn sort that everybody can get behind…ha ha ha ha. Sob. Okay!
Oh my goodness, there’s the thing with the cat in Captain Marvel. Ha ha ha. There’s also the rather sweet shout out to Stan Lee in this movie. Ah!
To sum up this Not Really a Movie Review so much as a Sprawling Mess, I really liked Captain Marvel. It fired on most of its cylinders. She wasn’t the grim awfulness of a Gamora. She was more a combo of Starlord and Wonder Woman. While your head explodes for various reasons from that…ha ha ha. Done exploding yet? Okay!
She kicked ass. Lots of ass. In satisfying ways. Things Blow Up. In satisfying ways. There’s a pretty good dogfight battle with Best Friend of Cap Marv. I liked it, anyway.
And the quickie scene after some of the credits played…yeah. You sit there, along with a few others, waiting for it. Waiting for it. Ah! What??!! Holy crap, so going to Avengers! Satan, see you in a few weeks!
New Puppy. Brigit. Don’t be fooled! She’s a perfect engine of destruction.
It’s beginning to look a bit like spring time! I turned the earth over yesterday for my mini garden, Year Two. I’m also moving the stumps to New Locations. I am cognizant of both function and decoration via my mini garden. I am also eyeing the places where rabbits and ground squirrels like to visit. Plus, there’s the New Puppy. She likes to dig. Investigate where the humans go. Check out why the humans do this or that. I have a feeling my mini garden might not survive New Puppy.
Politics. If I. It’s just. WTF. I??!!
After that above enlightening delve into the current state of American politics, let’s move on. Oh sure, there’s a political rant in there eight miles long. It slaps the Spirit in the Sky, nut punches Jesus and generally includes words better suited for our POTUS and the Locker Room Boys known as the GOP. Anyhoo!!
What am I working on. Nothing.
That’s right.
I don’t have a PROJECT on deck or waiting in the wings. It just tires me to even think of rumbling up the engines right now. Or ever again. Which is troubling, to say the very least about that.
I have the Oregon novel. Which deals with the sorts that took over the Malheur wildlife refuge over by Burns. I really do wish to work on this. Eventually. It interests me. I like doing the research into extremist radical gun-toting scary ass militia groups as well as Oregon history. Scraping some sort of novel out of all that, interesting as well. But not right now? Or maybe tomorrow. Or.
Rework my Beastface Bay tales. Fuck no.
Start a brand new something. Maybe even a PLAY. What?? I never leave the house. What can I write a play on?
My conversations with the three dogs?
My inner monolog on trying to decide to make a pie or not out of whatever I can find in the fridge?
A family story that’s so boring it’s almost interesting but it’s not? Something I saw in the news cycles????
Seriously, when fiction can’t compete with your basic cable opinion piece on liberals taking their babies home to kill them, reported with a straight face as if true…yeah. You just kinda deflate like a sad little balloon writer-wise. Maybe that’s just me?
That’s total fiction, of course. But all we hear is that LIBERALS KILL BABIES here in ‘murica. It’s going to be a slogan for 2020. It’s predictable. They control the narrative, so they get to direct the narrative with the Lefties playing wide-eyed defense. It’s just…fuh.
Oh no, political rant about to snarl forth like a castrated lion looking for a snack.
Short stories, flash fiction, humorous essays? Mmm. Nope.
I seem to be running on dead writer batteries.
I even scraped myself together long enough to go to a FREE WRITER’S WORKSHOP. In Nampa, Idaho. It was on a Saturday, all afternoon, at the library, which was right by where that other writer’s gathering had been! So I knew how to get there and back again. Score!
It wasn’t in the downtown one-way hell of Boise!
Yeah, I went to the workshops, as there were four of them. I did three, then the fourth had to be held at a coffee shop, as the library closed at five. I just headed home, I’d had enough. All three of those were practical, well run, informative and actually helpful.
Death Rattle is the name of the organization here. I can’t say enough nice things about them. I’m glad they exist and that they’re nearby.
I wish, sort of, I’d schlumped off to the fourth one. The drive back was right as the sun was going down, so trying to see the road turned into GUESS WHERE THE ROAD IS HA HA for me. I also treated myself to a sausage biscuity thing and an outing outside my present comfort zone.
I also felt guilty. I was wasting time. I was feeding my delusions that I’m a writer. I clearly am not a writer because writers, well, for one thing, actually write.
My thoughts all the time. All the time. All the time. A constant punching stream, with me as that bag the boxers hit. Except it’s punchy thoughts that swing haymakers at whatever’s left of my drive, ambition or will to GET SHIT DONE.
Maybe it’s time for the ole writer standby of heroin, wine, mind-altering shit that allows one to be totally oblivious to reality while writing about reality.
I am trying to co-write a screenplay. I should have whipped that out in a couple days. Nope.
To sum up!
I just need to retrain myself to start writing again. Something like that. Just put some crap down on the page! I am in a frightful abyss, looking upward for any bit of light. There isn’t any. I always admire people who are positive, or at least pretending super-alot. The ones who’ve lost their entire family to the local volcano, then found out they have brain cancer. Their dog then gets run over, and their house catches on fire. Yet, that person smiles at the world, going, oh, isn’t that daisy growing through the cracks of that mass grave grand?
Maybe I need to hang out with more creative sorts. That energy seems to sizzle the old writer batteries a bit. Except me and other humans have seldom gotten along. I’m always too much or too little in some way…it’s confusing. Oh sure, just be yourself! If I fucking knew who that is, I’d now be a teacher with a pension plan, a bad perm, wondering what would have happened if I’d followed my dreams…
You get hammered in the face, dear.
That’s what I’d tell that other me. You get hammered in the face and it’s supposed to mean something. That’s pretty grim.
Smile. You look so pretty when you smile!
So, there ya go. You’re all caught up on my Artistic Strainings. Thanks for stopping by. I hope…
mumbles something about almost ready to outline that Oregon zombie novel set during the imagined ages of Middle Earth if it were run by the Narnian minotaurs. Almost ready. Almost.
I remember February 2 as being my grandfather’s birthday. Now that you’re warm and fuzzy or perhaps full of rage because your grandfather happened to be a total bastard, or bastards, if you knew both…Where was I?
Groundhog.
The groundhog said it will be an early spring. A charming American tradition or rodent torture run amuck?
Punxsutawney Phil.
There’s a Bill Murray movie about this, where he’s caught in an endless loop until he learns to be a nice person.
Why did this tradition catch on with America? I have no idea. None.
Oh wait, I do have an idea: I think we think it’s cute and charming to have a giant rodent predict the ending of winter wrong most of the time. It feeds into some sort of anti-science, pro-magic sort of mindset. We like our air conditioning and computer-run cars, but evolution is a plot dreamed up by Al Gore to bilk the government out of hard-working tax payer bucks. Global warming is a hoax made up by the Chinese to turn everyone into commie social marxists. Wheee! Freedom!
[ note to self– must stop reading comments under science articles. Must stop reading comments under science articles!]
I’m sure others have done in-depth psychological essays on everything Groundhog Day. I won’t.
Writing? Art I writing-eth? Oh woe betides and sucketh much-eth moi!
I seem to have wandered into some sort of Lake of Ultimate Doubts. I’ve drowned, they’re performing CPR right now. Someone is. I hope they are. I don’t think they are.
Who are they???
I haven’t been writing lately. I find I can’t concentrate. That I write something for a bit, then read over it, go…OMG THIS SUCKS DEAD WHALES. Then I start over.
I repeat this pattern for days on end. Days. On. End.
It might be the epic bout of never-ending depression. It might be that I suck as a writer. It might be that damn groundhog. It might be invisible unicorns sent by the trickster gods of Narnia. At this point I am open to all suggestions and ideas.
I am trying to get submissions off. I am trying to rework old pieces, get them turned into better this or that. I might be making them worse. At this point, I DO NOT KNOW.
Welcome to Writer Has Massive Doubts, Episode One Billion, Two Hundred Six.
Is there a writer alive or very dead that hasn’t suffered like a groundhog forced to predict weather patterns for an entire country?? WELL?? IS THERE??
Christmas. It’s over. I have tales. A new dog. A relationship so toxic Baby Jesus winced even as Baby Jesus gave the two the side eye. A funeral. Ah.
The death of a mother. A friend of mine. Right before a big holiday season. Not pleasant when there isn’t a string of days devoted to this or that. Horribly nasty when it takes place during festive times. A Buddhist funeral. I’ve never been to one. I went with another family member, who’d never been to one either. This was a neighbor lady, Japanese, who had lived at the house across the field for eons. Farmers. Everyone about here are either farmers or teachers. Or cook meth. It’s that kinda world here lately.
Bells. Incense. Chanting. Very dignified. A sort of foggy Christmas Eve day. No snow. Wet, muddy, foggy. A reminder that Dicken’s immortal classic began with a funeral on Christmas Eve. Marley’s. More bells and the sweet odor of incense.
Christmas Eve is spent with the hillbilly side of the fam’ly.
Christmas Day was and is traditionally spent with the other half of the family. Both sides of my family got along very well, in case you were wondering. Both sets of grandparents really enjoyed visiting with each other. Both sets migrated here to Oregon and Idaho from Nebraska, where they grow corn and manners and tornadoes. That’s what I’ve gathered from all that talking back and forth over the years. Christmas Day was giant meal, the women did all the cooking, and we played cards all afternoon.
Christmas Eve was spent with the hillbillies.
That’s my own pet snarky nickname for my mom’s kith and kin. I did get to see pictures of the cougars my cousin trapped and hear about how the price of coyote pelts is through the roof right now. I silently wondered who’s buying fur anymore. Who the fuck is that? Cause you’re not eating the cougar meat. You’re not eating the coyote meat– though I did see where you can cook it and turn it into haute cuisine sort of food. That was when Andrew Zimmerman still wandered through the Travel Channel. But anyway, before I get distracted and this gets super-ass long as hell!
I do cuss. If you’re new here, well. I do cuss on occasion.
Yes, now to Xavier and Vickie. Which is not their real names.
My little group trundles off toward the Christmas Eve festivities. It’s a foggy, muddy, somewhat rainy Eve. No snow. No real cheer. Just obligation and the thought of the chips and dips. Which tell me the holiday season is truly nigh. Sad. Chips and dips is what I look forward to, not halting awkward family interactions and hearing that the lib’rals have attacked God-fearing red-blooded ‘murican farmers.
I’ve done entire blog posts about what I hear pooped out of human mouths around me. M’kay.
We get there, it’s cool. As in groovy, not my auntie needs to turn the heat on or stuff some wood in her wood-burning stove.
Calm.
Most of the people showing up for this gathering are already there. It’s mellow. My aunt has enough food to feed Boise bubbling, boiling, baking or waiting to go into an oven. Ham. Turkey. Taters. Stuffing. Bacon mac and cheese, from scratch…with six kinds of cheese in it. OH MY WORD. Oh look, chips and dips. And then someone else brings bread and HOMEMADE DIPS THAT ARE SUPER TASTEFUL.
Veggies? No. I have yet to see a veggie dish show up since the death of my own mother over ten years ago. No salad. No squash. No weird green bean casserole attempt. Just meat and carbs and DIP.
Old-timey recipes!
However, I pick up on how watchful people are. Waiting. One cousin is not yet there. I hear, nearly five seconds after I enter the house, decorated with red and green, blue and silver, gold and sparkly lights, that Vickie is a bitch. There’s the oh no, don’t start that yet admonishment. Do I already know what is thought of Vickie and her California ways? Yes. Yes, I do. Yep, she’s from California. California is a bad word in Eastern Oregon/Western Idaho. It’s kinda the queen mother of bad words here. You want to really insult someone, ask if they’re from California. [Because it’s run by liberals, the housing, the myths and legends people absorb as truth, the…uh huh. Then, Californians are all moving to Idaho and Oregon, ruining everything. Uh huh.]
I’ve mentioned that one, too. I know I have.
Okay! So we’re all waiting for Xavier to show up. If he and his little woman show up. It’s that kinda crowd.
Ah, the two arrive. The lights splash along the driveway! We’re all tensing already. What will walk through that door? Stay tuned to find out! Where’s the dip??!!
It’s just Xavier and one of his very young chil’ren. She’s fucking still out there in the car, he snarl-snaps at the startled, still sorts watching this entrance.
Suddenly, we’re watching a Eugene O’Neill play, except with modern language added. [The f bomb, mostly.]
Xavier dumps his first load of baby stuff– as it takes several Sherpa loads these days to take babies anywhere– to fetch the other kid and the rest of the stuff, presents and stuff. Vickie has not yet made her appearance. We’re all…uncomfortable audience members to this kitchen sink reality show of epic proportions. It takes perhaps half an hour before Vickie makes her DRAMATIC ENTRANCE.
DOG SHIT. ON MY SHOE. BIG PILE OF DOG SHIT. RIGHT THERE BY THE CAR DOOR. WHAT THE FUCK? DOG SHIT DOG SHIT DOG SHIT!
She’s more wound up than a barrel of rattlesnakes and twice as poisonous. Something like that!
Instantly, as we’ve been enjoying the two very young babies– both under two years old or so– the tension goes to eleven.
Xavier bristles. Vickie uses Wet Wipes to clean the poo from her shoes. Instead of just removing her shoes, leaving them by the door. Or laughing about stepping in dog poo right out of the car door. Or…so many other choices here than what she chose to do. [It’s family, you pretend you have manners. If I learned nothing else, I learned that, hello!]
Though dog poo on velvet shoes or delicate little spendy numbers you adore…but. I saw the shoes, just some old cheap ass boot looking things. Then the mutters, from Vickie, about the baby crawling on the floor…mm. If the tap water was drinkable. To keep so and so away from Baby X. Mutters. Oh the mutters one overhears at times.
Xavier and Vickie apparently fought the entire time they drove to the Christmas Eve gathering. Apparently, they’ve been fighting since before they met, if you know what I mean. So, there’s muttering. So much under the breath muttering, just muttered loud enough for all of us to hear. Those not front and center in this O’Neill gritty reboot, have the side eyes down to an art. We’ve all become experts in body language communication exchanges. There’s selective deafness goin’ on! Whee!
The holiday air seems stained with invisible dirty bomb emissions. The chips and dips, so good! Everyone’s munching or in the other room, shoulders hunched up. Because surely, this ugly pimple is gonna burst. Spray noxious fluids all over us. Ever had one of those ugly angry white-topped pimples? Yeah, like that. Ever watched cysts and infected pimples get drained?? So gross and yet so satisfying!
Where was I.
The presents get opened. Ah. Thanks! The sound of ripping paper, the asking if those pretty boxes were bought at Joanne’s. [The local craft store.]
The food, the literal mountains of food, become available for consumption. The alcohol has been flowing, so actual food that’s not chips and/or dip, nice. Xavier, shoulders hunched to his angry earlobes, slaps some of that food on a big disposable plate, prepares to chow down. Vickie mutters she’d sure like a hot meal as she slams about getting out baby food stuff. Xavier about comes out of his angry skin, like a butterfly bent on rampages, bursting out of a cocoon, ready for carnage. He shoves that giant disposable plate away. He goes off for cartons of baby goo to shove at the youngest kiddo. The older kiddo gets mac and cheese and other tidbits. The two sit on the same side of the table. We’re…careful. Watching. Afraid to breathe.
Are the guns locked up? [I had that actual thought. Both sides of the fam’ly are totally into GUNZ.] This is the lead up to one of those Christmas Eve drunken fam’ly shootings. I’m watching it in real time. That was the impression I had.
Now, the two are shoving food at the two kids. Neither talk. The one year old can barely crawl. I see Xavier about once or twice a year, if that. My other cousin’s little woman fills me in on all this so…I have the gossip and what I observe. Okay!
Not long after the most uncomfortable dining experience I’ve had to sit through in years, Xavier and Vickie pack up their spawn, their shit, and head back ‘home’. Without a kind word for each other, without much enjoyment shown toward either kid, with faces like death masks from a Greek tragedy. A Greek tragedy channeling Long Day’s Journey Into Night with big handfuls of Mamet’s way with certain words thrown in.
During this brief, awful family drama unfurling, I go outside where people are smoking the funny weed that’s legal in my state. I burst out about the tension, what the hell is this, does anyone have any heroin, because it will take the edge off that scene in there. We all laugh, gossip fiercely, suck down some smoke. Because hey, why confront directly when you can smoke funky plants and gossip in half-whispers?
No. I don’t do heroin.
Okay! I’m not around Vickie on a regular basis so I don’t really know her but it does seem she got painted early on as a bitch, and unlikable. That she never really had a chance. When you’re around people who don’t like you, no matter how nice they’re pretending to be, you tend to get defensive. A lot defensive. Poor Vickie can’t avoid her own kid’s grandma. Well, she can and has, I gather. What a mess, a hot sticky this is gonna hurt to actually resolve this MESS.
That was my Christmas Eve. I had pecan-flavored whiskey, but did not get drunk. A bit high, but not drunk.
The fate of those four caught in some loop of resentment, outright hatred, commitment entanglements, children, obligations, job loss…ugh. I don’t know. Counseling might help, some neutral party that can weather the pimple bursting far better than family members can. I see a nasty as hell breakup galloping down the two-lane. Maybe people going to jail for assault. [Yes, that’s the air I got from all this.] I don’t want to hear Xavier and Vickie imploded and took everyone around them downward, too. I want to hear they took a realistic look a their situation, their relationship, worked out custody and money matters, then parted for good. So they could both heal from all this and become far better people on the other side. That’s my Christmas wish this year.
And the writer part of me…sadly…goes– how to use this? They don’t read my stuff. Or if they do, I don’t hear about it. [If that side did read my collected works, they’d tar and feather me, after asking me if so and so was them…] Family drama fuels a thousand percent of literature is my humble opinion. Usually first-hand family drama.
Except those writers who grew up in a vacuum somewhere in the wilds of Oregon on a communist commune where nothing happened except the day’s baking of nan bread. They grew up, wrote nice poems about flowers and were politely puzzled at another writer’s seething three-book rage-athon on why their dad was a POS.
Xavier and Vickie, poor things. Their two little peanuts. You just want to offer to take the two kiddos, let the two adults go destroy each other all they wish…
But hey, found a stray dog. Cream underbelly, dark brown silky soft short coat. What we call a cow dog. But there’s something else in there. Rottweiler? German Shepherd? Maybe even a bit of pit bull? Boxy head. Smart, female, no collar, skinny. I did post her on social media. I did ask the folks living where I found her if she was their dog. Nope. I found her where we’ve found other dogs, it’s a spot to drop unwanted canines out. Brigit. Or Miz Bridge. As she was found by the bridge. Yeah.
So far she’s torn up some mats and a old magazine. And my flip flops. But. She’s a big puppy yet.
I’ll end on a nice note instead of the intense sadness that is my cousin’s life situation at the moment. New dog! Oh and it snowed. It’s not a muddy spring-like mess without. Snow. I do love snow.
I just like this pic. We have rabbits, there’s snow now on the ground. Then I wonder if that poor bunny is cold…
“This week has felt like a war on women. And we lost.”
I read something like that on a playwriting thread about turning the Ford hearing into a play, with people [men] complaining it would be too one-sided, not give the one side enough layers, not give a voice to those whose voices are already overwhelmingly heard. Discussing it more along the lines of some abstract problem that doesn’t touch their lives at all, ever.
That farce yesterday. Ford v. Kavanaugh.
from the Cut
Where it went exactly as people feared it would– into he said/she said land. A female prosecutor, a female assistant, as she was referred to, got brought in last minute to ‘balance’ the all-male panel facing Ford. No other witnesses were allowed to ‘testify’.
It was her word against his. Where she got grilled by an actual prosecutor from Arizona…[yet, it’s not a trial?] Rachel Mitchell, by the way, worked for Maricopa County. Joe Arapeio. Go look all that up. Fun stuff.
Kavanaugh got to rage, growl, sob and whine, and have the male senators throw out that same female prosecutor they’d flown in especially to deal with the troublesome Dr. Ford. As this female hussy suddenly started asking Kavanaugh some questions that he had trouble answering! HUSSY! HOW DARE SHE!!! Remove her! Which they did, after the GOP senators all said they would give all their time to Mitchell to question Kavanaugh! That’s on record. That’s on record, oh my.
from Elle. Brett Kavanaugh
from NY Mag. Lindsey Graham
So!! The male senators. They turned into defenders of one of their own. They let out growls of rage. They threw hissy fits about what a ‘fine’ man Kavanaugh was and how this was JUST SO UNFAIR GOL DARN IT.
Of course he was innocent!
It’s all a plot by Hillary! Ford was confused! She was raped by members of the Black Panthers, probably led by Obama’s friends, paid for by Soros! There’s two rando guys here saying they did it, so let’s believe these rando guys! She’s just some crazy, mixed up nice lady who can’t remember squat!
There has never been a more horrible awful thing to happen in politics ever than this– see Lindsey Graham for how to be a real drama queen.
Anita Hill got tossed into all this.
What happened to her. How Clarence Thomas even now sits on the Supreme Court. How it was the GOP back then who allowed him on the bench and now it’s a pack of truly hideous Grand Old Perverts more than likely gonna let ole Kavagrope on the bench, as well. Even though there are calls for an FBI investigation, for delays to get other witnesses to testify, for a more thorough looking into all this.
For something other than THAT BITCH IS PAID BY THE CLINTONS.
For something other than LET’S VOTE ALREADY AND FUCK SOME HOT ASS AFTERWARD.
Yes, Kavanaugh actually shouted out that he was the victim of Democrats trying to get back at the GOP for Trump ‘winning’ the election.
from the Federalist Papers
also from the Federalist Papers
Okay, if I rehash all that yesterday, I’m not going to be able to function.
Not that I am doing that well right now.
Women lost yesterday. They lost. They got told they don’t matter. What happens to them doesn’t matter. Their voices, their traumas, their lives. They do not matter.
We’re opportunists. We make up stories of rape and assault just to get back at men in power. We lie. We’re confused. We’re vengeful harpies who just want to see men dead or broken. We’re every last fucking stereotype about women you can imagine. Or have heard. Or snicker about.
I’m angry.
A deep churning angry. I’ve been anxious for over a week now. I’ve been resorting to an old behavior of mine. I had a sleepless night. Yeah, stuff happened to me, too. And it was confusing, awful, confusing, confusing. I didn’t tell. I thought I’d get in trouble. I didn’t want to cause trouble. I thought it was no big deal– later on, when I heard what others had gone through. They had it so much worse. How could what happened to me be anything much at all?
I was just a drama queen wanting attention. I was just exaggerating and being all needy.
Except.
Rage. I am never not angry. Never. It never dies down. It never goes away.
I don’t like being around crowds of people, I don’t like people too close to me. Even people I know. Even people I love. I can barely hug people. I flinch if people touch me– a casual touch on the shoulder, I go stiff, I hold my breath. Someone hovering too close to me brings me into near panic and freak out mode at times.
I have nightmares. I mean the kind where you wake up screaming thinking someone is in the room with you. Usually a monster of some kind. A menacing male figure bent on harm. I remember screaming and screaming, trying to fight off some ghost-vampire thing darting across my bedroom. My mother said I screamed for a long time. I was in my teens.
There’s a list here.
Sure, I talked to a therapist about it. When I had the means. I talked about making myself throw up. I talked about my bouts of depression. I didn’t feel like I could fully trust the woman rolling her eyes and trying to listen to yet another garden variety woman with such silly problems. I’ve never had a therapist like the ones on television or movies. You know, the ones that seem to give a real shit.
Oh yeah, trust. I don’t trust anyone. I learned not to. A long time ago. I know better than to tell my little sordid store of secrets and stories. I will get dismissed. I will get that ‘okay, whatever’ face. I will get told I’m just attention-seeking. I will be laughed at. I will not be taken seriously. It will be used against me. It will be told to others without my permission. It will harm me if I tell. That’s what I have learned over the years. That people are just as awful and predatory and cruel and confusing as…yeah.
But. What’s been happening over the past two years or so, woman-toward.
It’s like seeing daylight after fumbling about in a dark room. You draw near the crack in the wall, look out into a world lit by the sun, get a whiff of fresh air. And then someone, from outside, brutally slaps a board over that crack, laughs as they nail that board over that small view you just had. Keeps laughing. Keeps laughing.
Except.
I think a lot of other women are angry, too. And anger gets shit done, to quote from American Gods, Mr. Nancy.
Women are watching this shitshow. They remember. Women remember. What’s going on now remains in memory. Coated with grit. Coated with whatever happened to them as well. Maybe this time it will be enough. Maybe this time. How many more Anita Hill-like episodes have to happen before that anger explodes into actual action? That’s…that’s the truly gut-wrenching, savaging part. How many more Anita Hill’s will it take? How many HOW FUCKING MANY? What’s the number? What’s the number??
It took quite a lot to get the vote for women. If you want to get funky, it took thousands of years for women to be able to vote on shit that impacts their lives. Thousands of years for women to have a say in policies that affect their bodies, their lives, their futures. It’s going to take quite a lot to get women regarded as human beings.
Ain’t it cute?? Women can vote now. They’ll probably vote on who they think is cutest. Or vote with their periods. Fucking bitches.
I hope it’s not a thousand more years for Jesustown, which is ‘murica’s new name, to decide women are human, too. I hope women don’t have to go about acting nice, smiling a lot, being so calm they resemble house plants until they can be themselves in public as well as mostly in private. As even in private, among our loved ones, women tend to wait until alone in the bathroom to scream into a pillow or cry their eyes out as the shower runs to hide the sounds. Or else they get called crazy. Or emotional. Or asked if they’re on their periods. Or. Or. Or.
from Fox 31, Denver, Colorado
Ford, after all, remained relatively calm during her testimony and got labeled anyway. Kavacunt went off the rails and got called a hero by the GOP. Go look that up. Go ahead. I dare ya. I also read yesterday that the bar keeps getting lowered for men and made even more impossible to clear for women. Yep. Uh huh. Duh.
I hope the collective anger right now builds to an actual result.
That this continuous shitshow ends. That’s there are real repercussions for yesterday’s massaging of the male ego. That’s what it appeared like to me, anyway. A massaging of that male ego that says men can do whatever they like to whomever they like, with no consequences. The men screaming and sobbing about poor Kavanaugh seemed more upset that he had to suffer this non-problem to get onto the SCOTUS.
As that shitshow yesterday was all for show.
I knew it.
They knew it. Everyone there knew it.
It was like watching a bad high school production of Twelve Angry Men. A really bad production where no one told the actors to not telegraph exactly what they’re going to do next.
Hey–unless you’re a blind nun who worked among lepers for the last eighty years, your words will be ignored, spit on, not believed and used against you. But since you’re a nun, and a woman, your words won’t be heard in the first place.
Sorry! Grow a penis, hon! Then we’ll take you seriously. Then you’ll matter, you’ll count.
What happened in the past should not impact how men should be rewarded with the highest honor a judge in America can be rewarded, damn it! He’s older now! He coaches girlie basketball, damn it! How dare you interrupt the rise of a magnificent man like this???!!!
How dare you.
Bitch.
How dare you.
It’s hard to concentrate on anything right now. Maybe I need to. I. Maybe.
It’s rather sobering how the people around you get revealed. How that top layer of niceness and decency just go away. And you see the rotting bones beneath, the strips of moldering flesh.
You notice you’re talking to ghosts, who cling to things they know with all their might and mistake the screeches of a selfish idiot for truth, beauty and the American way.
He speaks for us. He’s saying what we’re saying.
Um, wow, I hope not. Have you actually listened to that thing speak/shout at the multiple rallies?
This isn’t strangers around me saying that. I’m a lone island in a sea of blank-eyed eidolons.
I grew up around these desperate little spirits, who can’t understand that their wages going down, and everything else going up isn’t because of welfare queens taking advantage of the system.
Well, it sort of is. Those welfare queens run giant companies like GE and Exxon and Bank of America.
The welfare queens, usually portrayed as a black woman or an immigrant-colored sort of gal, that my relatives and others are told to hate, holds some sort of legendary status right up there with Bigfoot, Nessie and the Abominable Snowman.
Everyone knows about them, but nobody’s actually seen one. There’s the tales about so and so in line at the grocery store. This woman, with a fancy phone, fancy clothes, blah, is buying steak and lobster with food stamps. The details! The more details piled on, the more people lap it up! She’s got her hair done, she’s got fancy salon-looking nails! She’s wearing clothes!
How dare this food-stamp mama WEAR CLOTHES?
Outrage, outrage, get your outrage here! We need to cut those programs…! Yeah. Yep.
It’s on par with an urban legend.
Except. People repeat it and repeat it, like an urban legend. Going back, fact checking that, boring!
Welfare queens milking the system, sexy as hell. And the fault of the left who wants to give all your hard-working money to gang members, those welfare taker milkers of the system, slutty single women who want abortions every other weekend and…yeah.
I can hear Fox News from the other room. Hyde Amendment, ever heard of it? You have to wait five years to apply for any sort of assistance in America if you immigrated here legally or…ugh.
I hear the loud, very angry hectoring that makes up the bulk of Fox News programming. Hannity to Laura Ingraham, screaming how Pumpkincunt is a savior of the American Way of Life while Obama and Hillary and the Left want to turn everyone into scary words scary words. It’s not the words at this point, it’s the tone that people respond to. That’s what I get from just hearing that shit from another room. That comforting outrage that pours into the ears like oil squeezed from snakes. I get a sick, hot feeling and a need to FACT CHECK EVERYTHING around me, then a need to take one of those showers you take after exposure to anything nuclear. I’m contaminated. I’ve been exposed to radiation.
I’m in a terrible place right now. Mentally, physically, the whole kit and kaboodle.
I walked out to get the mail. A beautiful day. Cooler than it has been. Clear skies, that smoky haze pushed out a bit. My thoughts full of what am I hanging on for. What. What am I hanging on for. There’s no reason for this.
It’s just this passing clot of darkness amid, should I make some biscuits, is my pumpkin ripe, I need to find a play for such and such. There’s even some fancy name for always having suicidal thoughts. Being always on that cliff. Looking into the abyss. Wondering. How soon. How soon.
My relatives, over on Facebook, posted a meme. Here, you can see it, too. Or curse me, wash your eyeballs with bleach and go get drunk with bikers. Or acrobats, hey, I will not judge you.
This doesn’t appear to be a joke or hoax
I know her. She’s a good person. Like, deep down nice. Funny, tough, one of those women who stand by their man sorta woman. She’s a throwback country song, sung by George Jones, with Mo Bamby singing backup. A bright spot during the family Christmas Hell-Eves.
And yet…that meme. Does she believe that? Is there some part of her that goes, some tiny still voice in the center of her head, that goes…I’ve been fooled.
Apricot Hellbeast’s speech in West Virginia. Actual excerpt.
She’s got a medically fragile kid. She’s on all sorts of assistance to help that kid, to keep him alive. Medical bills that way, ouch!
To pay for those massive tax cuts, the regime that holds all three branches of the American government will go after everything she depends on. Those programs to help kids in that manner already cut to the bone or going away.
This will be blamed on immigrants clogging the welfare system…or lazy Millennials who don’t know the value of working or people with arts degrees or Hillary. Or avocado toast. Or Starbucks coffee runs. Or. Or anything but pointing out the hoary old there’s always money for anything military, none for social programs.
Oh sorry. Anything military contractor. As veterans getting help when they come back from the never-ending war/s, pfft. We’ve never taken care of our veterans, why start now?
It’s all the Democrats fault, of course, that veterans blah dee blah.
They’re into BIG GOVERNMENT and red tape! It’s not us nice Republicans who love family, the military, guns and Jesus and tiny tiny government! Wheee! Sorry, veterans. If only the demoncrats would work with President Orange Jesus, everything would magically just become magical!! Unicorns in every cooking pot!
We’re the party of Lincoln! We must all tighten our belts, some must tighten their belts so much they get cut in two and die under a bridge having frozen to death. But that’s the fault of Nancy Pelosi. Nothing is ever our fault, we’re the party of Lincoln!
Doesn’t…doesn’t she know this? Doesn’t that compute? Hasn’t she been paying attention at all?
No.
No, she hasn’t. It seems my entire family turned into members of some sort of weird cult. I’ve never fit in with my family but this is…so much worse. I feel afraid. For me. For them. For all of us. I can’t forgive that they embrace that thing. They can’t forgive that I don’t. I don’t want to talk to them or be around them.
They don’t seem like my family anymore.
At the Western Idaho Fair, Boise, Idaho. This is the Republican Party these days?
I think that’s the worse thing that has happened to this country, well…not even close, but still. Dividing friends, family into hostile camps dedicated to erasing the other.
Maybe this is a tiny taste of those pre-Civil War years. People divided so sharply that there was no reasonableness left. No logic, no reason. Just hasty words, slogans, propaganda and shouting. Promising things would be done to protect their side. Swords rattled. Before they really got rattled for four years.
Fuck, we’re still fighting that damn war to this day. It never ended. 1861-?. The South will Rise Again! Um, does that mean we’re gonna have to wear hoops skirts and own slaves and shout that cotton is king? Holy barfballs, ‘murikkka!
How long do you ignore this cult brouhaha from the ‘other side’?
When you remember a snowy Christmas Eve night– that hulking MAGA hat wearing sort used to be a tiny tot in a blue knitted stocking cap, delighted over all the Christmas wonderfulness.
When you remember your dad coming to get you after you flipped your truck but didn’t die or even get hurt that much. When…yep. How much do you have to give up to live with yourself a bit?
Because you can’t put the “nice” faces back on the rotting ghost visages.
You can’t unring the bells, that one is very true. You can’t unsee. You can’t unhear.
I don’t have any answers.
Others have cut all ties with their Trumpkin relatives and friends.
Others have given up on anything political, thrown up their hands with a ‘Can’t we all just get along’ darty-eyed look.
Others don’t discuss politics or religion with family or friends. I guess they talk about the weather or traffic. Or old Bewitched episodes. Who didn’t love Serena? Uncle Arthur! Dr. Bombay, what a hoot! Derwood!
And how, after all this is over and it will be, one way or another, how do you reconcile or reconnect? Or just find those you cut loose to point at them and laugh?
America will either right itself, ha ha, or it won’t.
We might very well find ourselves with an actual dictatorship in place.
And people writing careful puff pieces on the “right” people who had faith in Apricot Hellbeast and Sunny Jesus, and never wavered in faith for either. Because writing anything else. Mm. We’re already kinda there at that point. The lying media. Fake news. Enemy of the people. Yeah, we’re there. Fun!
We might find America will shake this off, with a lesson learned.
HA HA HA HA HA.
America flunks history every damn time. We have those Etch-A-Sketch memories. We in America are always AMAZED AND HORRIFIED at the latest wave of racism or awfulness.
America has never been this bad. Yeah, um, yeah it has. I’m outraged and horrified, this is unprecedented! Ten years ago, then five years before that and then…
It will all get blamed on the Democrats. All this now going on, when it’s over, will get that patina of Right Wing Blame It On The Democrats. People will fall for it, the same people now who think Hil Clinton is running a pedo international child sex slave operation out of a New Jersey pizza parlor. [See QAnon crap]
Or think that Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya to outer space lizard lords. Who then rigged the elections, twice, to ruin America so that Pumpkincunt had to save it…
to make amerikkka grate again and put amerikkka firstest. cause obummer fucked us for eight years and trump had sex like a boss with porn stars. he wasn’t prezident when he fucked them porn stars and cohen a big jew baby lied about all that, trump didnt no abut that money. he sed so i beleeve him. the russans helped killery not trump has anyone investigated the dnc?? lock her up!! crooked killery who had all those people killed but nobody went after her she’s a real witch kill that cunt we should kill her shes evil. baby killer killery. obama probably brought in those mexicans. maybe we should send the national guard to CHICAGO. fire muller it’s a witch hunt! clean coal! MAGA!!
People believe this. Actual real people believe this.
Why mother fact-checking, CNN? Why? What’s the fucking point now?
That’s what I hear. That’s what I hear. That’s what I read.
And worse. And funnier. And far more jaw-droppingly WTF. With bad spelling and monstrous trembling outrage and jumbled conspiracy theories galore, oh my.
I dread any meeting with relatives right now. I don’t want them watching me as they speak about…whatever they heard on Hannity or the Five. I feel any love I bear them get a little bit less each time. Each time. Until they’re just strangers to me. And if it came down to it…I’d be very ready for the Nu Civil War. And that goes a little deeper than some cheap tears and a hasty blog post.
Light-hearted summer moments with Jake, Molly and Clyde, the big Newfie, who is now, ah, over the Rainbow Bridge
What month is this in this ghastly interminable hellbeastly span of years masquerading as a span of days? Oh. August.
It seems time has thudded to a damn standstill. And yet speeds along. I know. How original am moi? Not at all.
I’ll answer myself as no one comments or spews invectives at me in the social media time out I seem to be in. Or maybe I haven’t pledged myself enough to Satan or given enough lip service to AmmoJesus.
from Pandora’s Boxx. No, not this version of Jesus. Is it me or did the artist put a bit of Tom Cruise in that face?
We only have two options for worship here in ‘murica. Sort of only sorta kidding about that. You’re either with Jesus and the angels or you’re a godless Satan worshiping hate America commie traitor who hates babies. Yep.
Oh, so for those at home breathlessly reading along, I wrote a poem. That’s all.
It included the words ‘motherlumping’ and ‘scorpion’ and ‘Mamerigaga’.
I wrote it with great and furious anger.
I had fun writing a poem in great and furious anger. It drained my fury and anger.
I sent off my barely coherent scream against avocado toast to that monthly poetry challenge I AM STILL DOING. Because it’s good practice, and it helps foment me into a BETTER WRITER.
Or so I tell myself. Don’t we all tell ourselves happy lies so we don’t spatter our pretty brains on the ugly walls wherever we live? Or perhaps we live under a bridge and have to walk to the library to use the internet.
So some other form of suicide will have to do for welfare moochers and societal losers. Starvation and disease and freezing to death are free, moochers!
from geograph.uk. Small bridge over river Dulais.
Wow, that took a dark little turn.
Ah, so. I squibbled out a VASTLY POPULAR post about fires. I believe that’s the one before this one. Let me check, brb.
Yep. The fires still burn. It’s awful. It’s getting smoky. It’s HOT. But it is summer.
Thank you, Queen Obvious!
You’re welcome, sarcastic voice in my head!
Some snow would be nice. A nice couple days of constant rain would be nice here in Eastern Oregon.
I do mean the entire area. From Ontario all the way to Bend. Awash with rainy rain!
No wind, no lightning, just rain. The wet stuff we’ve heard tell of in tall tales. As you can, literally, walk between the rain drops here when it does piss down a bit. I’ve gone outside, when it rains here, and not gotten a drop on me. Sorta, kinda…kidding. Sorta.
I’m working on Starved Out, which, for right now, is set in the mythical world of government-hating extremists. As in they have a mythical view of themselves as freedom fighters and the rest of us see them as scary fuckheads.
But anyway!
I am telling it from the POV of the women, as men have enough stories under their column, frankly.
And when I tried to just write it…I stalled right out of the gate, trying to put the two men who started a fire and started an actual insurrection against the gubbermint front and center.
I’d also read a blip about this woman homesteader who Starved Out right at the start of the Great Depression. And of course the Massacre at Hells Canyon, I wanted that to make an appearance in my Great American Novel that No One Will Read Until I Am Well Dead and Rotting Under A Local Bridge.
So far, it’s a tripod. Rosie, the wife of Butch, the son, and Vickie, the wife of Merle, the dad. And Gladys, who had to pull up stakes and head back to the big city when drought and ruin faced her in sagebrush country.
I was, at first trying to be super-accurate and capture everything about the Hammonds and all that.
And then went, yeah, it will be fun to get sued. Fun! I’m not writing a non-fiction account, after all. I can fudge things, smear things, compose composite characters to protect the guilty and insane.
So, in the hot afternoons, I attempt a few paragraphs. It’s slow going. I need to dive in and let her buck, as they say around here.
Because we have rodeos and horses, and people actually go and get up on wild horses or other wild livestock, and…uh huh.
Why not write in the cool of the morning, dear? I hear some of you mutter that in nice, polite tones.
That tone you get when someone rattles on about some project of theirs that you could give two shits in a shot glass about.
Where your eyes glaze over as the person prattles about how they tracked down that one knitting stitch only used in Medieval stockings in Ireland by cloistered nuns who occasionally took fits because they thought the devil visited them at night.
That stitch!
Ah, well. I’ve been writing on ‘other stuff’.
Junk crap that I need to clear from my smoke-filled head so I can do the ‘real’ writing later in the day while not looking for gainful employment. Oh.
I did vow to at least go look at Craigslist and DesperateFuckers.org.
Sigh!
One last bit before I go find some pictures to place at random among these sickly paragraphs of LIKE ME I WRITE LIKE ME.
Shit howdy. I had a thought but…gone, baby, gone. Oh!!
Okay!
Movies.
Now, I wanna go see Mama Mia 2, I heard it’s great fun. I wanna see that damn Spy thing with the two women, because that looks like a lotta fun. I also want to see Spike Lee’s Blackk Klansman because that looks like angry fun.
I find I want to watch movies that are light, fluffy and might contain dance numbers with colorful outfits.
I find I have no head or heart for sitting through a Serious Drama. I find many others share this right now in ‘murica. We want our entertainment fluffy as wobbly kittens and our real life to resemble some dystopian novel that doesn’t get that happy ending. Whee.
I want Christmas movies all year round right now, the Hallmark ones. Where there’s barely any real problems, people are shiny clean and look made of glitter and sugar cookies, and the villains and obstacles are easily overcome in the last five minutes.
Give that crap some Oscars! Emmys? Yeah, Emmys, as it’s television. Sorry.
That level of sugary goo erases the gritty reality show playing on every screen and device world-wide. Where people seems made of rattlesnake poison and toxic sludge and the villains win every single fucking time.
And the heroes mumble and then there’s tweets from ten years ago with jokes and…ugh.
What the hell was this post? Mostly just fart noises, I think.
Ah, you were wondering where the ‘fart’ came in. Glad to help out, darlings.
Tee hee. My mother, who was a nurse, worked in a Catholic hospital back in the day. She was told to carry a spoon…not even kidding. Not even a little.
Now, I had a big long rant on the mangled orange hellbeast’s ACTUAL FUCKING TREASON that played across a stunned world stage for all to witness. Where hellbeast and Pootie held hands and skipped as they assured each other that no, the Russians had absolutely not interfered in America’s election process.
Where even Fox News had dissenters on hellbeast! I know!! Hell got a tiny frost for a bit but it will wear off and things will continue as before, don’t even worry, darlings.
I don’t know who made this but as a fan of Game of Thrones, I snickered a lot and then stopped snickering…yeah.
And the GOP expressed mild irritation over this…and they will fall in line as well, with Pencie actually proclaiming what a success that Helsinki Treason Summit/NATO blitzkreig was and that hellbeast…here, read it yourself.
Our @POTUS is now on his way home from a historic trip to Europe. And the truth is, over the last week, the world saw once again that President Trump stands without apology as the leader of the free world. Mike Pence
After you’re done vomiting…!!!
My pet eggplant. Isn’t she pretty??
MANIFESTO TIME!
Let’s see.
Number one–– I vow to speak up. I don’t need to explain this, right?
Number two— I’m drawing a blank. Oh, get a real job? Redo my resume? Oooh. That would involve…mmm.
Let’s see what’s available in my area. Let’s vow to do that.
Fuck this massive crushing chronic depression and my inability to be around other people for extended periods of time WITHOUT LOSING MY MARBLES.
No, really. I do. I go off the edge into Crazy as a Loon territory, I snarl and cry and shake and panic.
So. Customer service? No. Check out clerk? No. Oooh, waitress? Uh, no. Aide for group homes?
I’ve done that, I do have experience but budgets for those are long gone, and those jobs that used to be advertised all the time…seem to not exist anymore.
School aide? Those seem gone, too. [Kids don’t seem to trigger me as fast as grown ups do.] I could do the night shift at a group home. I’ve done that before.
What, use my degrees and teach? Yeah.
I either don’t have enough experience or am applying in the wrong area, as no one seems to think a playwright would have read Twain or Dickens or Toni Morrison. Or could discuss literary works with a class at college level or something.
Mm. I thought it was just me being a total loser not being able to land a gigantically fantastic, highly paid, totally no work at all involved, teaching gig at some college or university…nope.
Which doesn’t make me feel better as almost everyone I know is working at insurance companies or driving an ambulance while writing or acting or directing on the side…sigh. It’s not just me is no longer the giant comfort it used to be. Not that it ever was. [I know. Be positive and that will magically fix FUCKING EVERYTHING. I know!]
Number three-– I vow to write more. Novels, plays, etc.
No, nix that.
I have a pile of stuff and crap already.
Pretty up the stuff and crap to professional-looking levels [no typos and titles pages, hello.] and get those sent out.
Which I have not been doing lately as I’m waiting for America to end and kinda concluded there’s no sense sending off Maybelle or excerpts from my cannibal bikers versus the old ladies novel if I have to try and make it to the Canadian border with only some beef jerky and a half-quart of dirty river water to sustain me.
Yes, I do see that future happening. Yes, I do.
Number four— I vow to get outside more. Oh wait.
It’s a thousand degrees here and there’s wildfires all over.
Okay, stand by my mini garden and admire it as I get a sunburn in that five minutes. Coo over my dill plant. Squee over my Greek oregano. Weep gently over how well my squash are producing. Water as needed. Tell the mini garden what a good boy it is, which confuses the dogs. Score!
Good boy! What a good boy you are! Who’s a good boy?? YOU ARE!
Number five— I vow to be a better friend to the friends I still have.
I might be a near-hermit that makes that guy from the Misanthrope look friendly but I can still be a better friend. Or a better person or something. I just rolled my eyes so obviously, I either need to improve or just scrap this one.
Number six— I vow not to slap people on the left who get hung up on single issues and then refuse to vote or vote a third party or do a protest I’m not gonna vote at all number.
One of those slaps that’s actually a roundhouse that lands them in the ER, where they can’t pay their bills so that is all passed on to everyone else in ‘murica because fuck socialized medicine, it’s got the word ‘socialist’ in it. And that’s, like, bad, m’kay.
If it has a D by the name, you vote for it.
That tactic wins elections for the Republicans, as they vote for the R, regardless if that R is an actual Nazi screaming we need to round up the Jews and fire up the ovens, like, yesterday. Yes, there are actual Nazi-esque sorts running here in America for public office. Right Wing voters vote en masse no matter how stinky the candidate/s might be. They are well trained to do so. That’s how that works. Nobody notices that but me???[ Roy fucking Moore barely lost. Barely! Get it now, you idealistic fucktwats?]
Do I have to give up cussing? No? Thanks!
Number freaking seven— I must give up my Yahoo Answers persona. Did you expect something profound here?? Come on!
It’s an addiction at this point. I could be polishing my rough writing into smooth torpedoes of success and fame but no…I’m answering why atheists eat babies and if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys ‘questions’.
No, not kidding.
If you splash an atheist with holy water, will it cure them? That is an actual question there…see? You want to sneak over there and answer that one yourself.
I must wean myself from that rabbit’s hole of whackadoodles, religious nuts, atheist snarlers and those wide-eyed deer just caught in the too-bright headlights.
I didn’t vow to destroy the present government with an elaborate scheme of poison sugar cookies and fembots, so there’s that, at least. I know people who could build a fembot–I have friends who build robotics with high school students for competitions.
from the World Transformed.
I bet a fembot or gynoid, would be no problem for those whiz kids. I can bake sugar cookies and…wow, I’m there.
I’m ready to…yeah. Holy guacamole.
Interesting times indeed we live in.
Almost night, the moon casting a spooky spell over the spooky old locust tree…just the right touch for a manifesto post
ANN WUEHLER 