Posts

Posted on

But WILL He?

Thomas Massie said: “Congress has a few more days in session before the election. I should do a discharge petition to give out $5,000 checks before the election. I wonder how many republicans would sign it?”

Marjorie Taylor Greene responded: “😂 do it. Since none of the Republicans bemoaned his $5K vote buying scheme, and all of leadership was there, surely they will jump on the opportunity to get it done.”

Just some rough math, if there’s 270 million adults in the USA and he gives them all $5000. 270,000,000 x $5000 = $1,350,000,000,000. I wonder wheres he’s gonna get $1.35 trillion dollars from? Probably your own pockets

And while they’re at it, can they add my DOGE & Tariff checks too?

I’ll believe it when I see it.

0 comments

Posted on

One button, one truth: the machine obeys; she never will. BORN TO DISOBEY, starring Vivian Wilson (the eldest daughter of Elon Musk and his first wife, Justine Musk née Wilson).

0 comments

Posted on

That’s Quite A Hallway…

arkular_: Embrace the slow. Designed around the landscape, the Jindabyne House is a home base for getting out into nature and then retreating back in.

At 280m², the L-shaped layout balances shared living with private retreat spaces, creating a home that feels generous, calm, and easy to live in. Expansive glazing brings the outdoors in, while a fully self-sufficient, off-grid setup allows for independence without compromising comfort.

Thoughtfully designed, sustainably powered, and carefully considered, this is architecture that works with the landscape, not against it. Your site deserves a home designed for it.

0 comments

Posted on

Good news, guys! Donald Trump’s gonna give us five thousand dollars of our own money! What a magnanimous motherfucker. I haven’t seen generosity like this since the ATM gave me back my own fucking paycheck.

He just needs to find the money, get permission to spend the money, and have us reelect the people who could give him permission to spend the money right fucking now. Before they’ll help us pay our bills, we have to guarantee we’ll keep paying theirs.

So we have to give them the jobs they already have before they’ll do the jobs we’re already paying them to do. Try that at work. “I’ll finish stocking the yogurt when somebody guarantees my fucking pension, Brenda.”

And if they borrow it, we get to pay interest on our own fucking present. He gets his name on the check. We get our names on the debt. Somehow I’m financing Christmas and this son of a bitch gets to be Santa.

Congratulations! You’ve been preapproved to finance your own fucking bribe.

Welcome to the Publishers Clearing House of fucking Representatives.

He’s calling it the “Trump dividend.” Five grand if Republicans keep the House and Senate. The House and Senate they ALREADY FUCKING HAVE.

So why the fuck can’t they get moving on it NOW? Aren’t they in power NOW? They’ve got the White House, the House, and the Senate. What additional lever of fucking power are they waiting for? Do we need to run down to Home Depot and pick them up another fucking lever?

I’m sorry, did I miss the Schoolhouse Rock episode where the little singing bill sits on the Capitol steps refusing to budge until we guarantee his bosses another two years of government dental?

Do the smooth-brained, truck-nutted troglodytes have to elect them harder? Tattoo their names across their chests? Rename the cat Mike Johnson and the dog Donald Trump? Spend the next twelve years standing in the backyard in their bathrobes hollering, “Donald! Get your nose out of Mike’s asshole!”

Did they get the fucking trial version of Congress? What else do you need, you cash-catfishing, country-club cocktease? Does Mike Johnson need somebody to sign his folder?

And the five grand wasn’t the only pledge at this fucking direct-deposit tent revival. He promised them a check, they promised him their remaining cerebral function, and only ONE of those transactions required immediate payment.

This pompadoured potentate had them raise their right hands and pledge to HIM, “the greatest president in the history of the United States.” He even worked “cheat like hell like they do” into the voting pledge, because he couldn’t get through his own fucking loyalty oath without accusing Democrats of cheating.

And they call this rugged individualism. It’s a fucking cult, a star-spangled self-abasement seminar for these obsequious, oath-bleating, orange-idolizing ovines waiting for their dividend-dangling, deference-demanding Daddy to tell them what to say.

Baa, baa, bootlicker, have you any fucking shame?

Nobody ever asked me to swear a pledge of allegiance to Joe Biden, for fuck’s sake. Then again, I didn’t tattoo his face on my ass and turn a routine colonoscopy into a fucking presidential meet-and-greet.

Which brings me back to the five grand, because the electric company doesn’t accept a fucking oath of fealty. You can turn your entire ass into Mount Rushmore, but until the money clears, you’re still sitting in the damn dark.

Anybody can promise shit they never have to deliver. Hell, vote for me and I’ll give you a puppy, a unicorn, a hand job and a velvet painting of a sad clown with a goddamn poodle.

Don’t ask how. That’s second-term shit.

He said the economy’s doing “so well” that we’re ALL getting a payout. If it’s doing that fucking well, cough it up today, asshole. Why does my share of this magnificent prosperity have an election attached?

And how the fuck isn’t this socialism?

By THEIR definition. The one these flag-fondling, fiscal-purity fetishists drag out whenever somebody without a private jet needs help paying for a fucking root canal. One free school lunch and suddenly the cafeteria ladies are storming the Winter Palace with a tater-tot trebuchet.

Some exhausted woman needs help buying groceries and these holier-than-thou hemorrhoids want her employment history, her blood type, and a notarized explanation for the name-brand mustard. God forbid the indigent enjoy a condiment. You’ll eat your federally scrutinized sandwich dry, Deborah. This is America.

But put Trump’s name on the handout and the bootstraps brigade comes barreling down the aisle in paroxysms of panhandling. The Ayn Rand book club has turned into Supermarket Sweep, and Earl’s about to dislocate a shoulder getting to the fucking bonus ham.

What happened to personal responsibility, you sanctimonious, selective-socialism, subsidy-suckling sons of bitches? Did Karl Marx become a job creator when he learned to sign a check with a Sharpie? Does Das Kapital come in Realtree camouflage now?

Now look at you, standing under a DON’T TREAD ON ME flag, refreshing your banking app with the evangelical fervor of a man expecting Jesus to arrive by direct deposit.

“The government must never give people money.” Unless of course, the money can help Republicans keep getting government money for telling us the government must never give people money.

And these are the motherfuckers who call themselves the party of fiscal responsibility. The balanced-budget, belt-tightening, bean-counting bullshit brigade. They’d make Oliver Twist submit his fucking porridge request in triplicate.

Meanwhile, by August, nearly thirty percent of our entire outstanding national debt had accumulated during Donald Trump’s time in office. Roughly eleven-point-six TRILLION fucking dollars across his first term and this unfinished second one.

They’d convene a congressional inquisition over a poor woman’s premium paper towels while their bankruptcy-baptized fucking messiah treats a trillion dollars like he’s breaking a twenty.

But please, tell us more about the grandchildren. They’re always so concerned about leaving debt to the grandchildren. Until Grandpa needs another electoral ego massage, at which point apparently little Brayden can get a second fucking job.

The party of fiscal responsibility, my ass. These pauper-policing, plutocrat-petting deficit disciples are backing a promise with a trillion-dollar price tag to improve the customer reviews on their own shitty fucking performance.

And hold the fuck on. Weren’t we already getting five large from DOGE?

Elon, that chainsaw-brandishing, chest-thumping technofeudal twat and professional sperm spreader, tore through Washington while Trump floated sharing the savings. We got the chainsaw. We got the cuts. We did not get the fucking check.

I’ve received more actual cash from the washing machine.

The two-grand tariff rebates haven’t arrived either, which Stormy Daniels could’ve warned you is kind of his thing.

When The New York Times asked about it, this bronzer-brained, bloviating blowhard said, “I did do that? When did I do that?” Then he said the money would come later in the year.

Now the Geriatric Grift-of-the-Month Club is promising the sequel.

Wonderful. Another five thousand dollars I can’t spend. I’m almost not buying a fucking boat. I’ll name it Insufficient Funds and christen it with the champagne I didn’t order and can’t afford.

But don’t worry, because JD Vance, that oleaginous ottoman enthusiast, says tariffs could cover this trillion-dollar campaign coupon. The same import taxes we’re refunding by the fucking billions.

Even the Kohl’s cashier working through an edible understands a fucking return.

You can’t keep spending the receipt after you’ve given the money back. And even the tariffs we keep don’t magically become Donald Trump’s personal checking account. This hush-money Houdini wants to play sugar daddy with OUR credit card.

“Daddy bought you groceries!”

Daddy, that’s my fucking Discover card. You can’t pilfer my purse, buy me a pound of pastrami, and expect me to start calling you Big Poppa.

And why the fuck are we letting him near the purse in the first place? This Fozzie Bear with a four-foot tie bankrupted casinos.

Just fucking think about that. Think how hard you have to try to suck to bankrupt a casino. People walked in specifically to lose money, and he still managed to beat them to it.

Now this fiduciary fuckwit is promising five grand without an approved payment or a delivery date. At least the fucking Tooth Fairy tells you when to check the pillow. Nobody makes a six-year-old wait for his molar money until Pennsylvania demonstrates sufficient fealty.

But I’m supposed to sit here and clap like a trained seal because this slippery, spray-tanned, self-dealing, solipsistic snake-oil salesman has discovered that people who need money would enjoy receiving some?

Yes, Donald. I fucking KNOW people need money. We all need money. We need even more of it since your tantrum tariffs made the shit we were already struggling to afford more fucking expensive. You don’t get to slap a surcharge on surviving and then expect me to genuflect because you’ve waved a checkbook in the general direction of my overdraft.

I’d fucking love five thousand dollars. I’d love to replace my brakes without briefly considering whether Fred Flintstone had the right fucking idea. But I can be broke without volunteering to be bamboozled. Needing help with the bills doesn’t mean I’ve agreed to let this predatory, pomade-plastered prick use my financial anxiety to finish paying off his political mortgage.

And he’s counting on us needing that money badly enough to vote like it’s already in the fucking bank.

He doesn’t need to pay you before November.

He just needs you to believe him when he says he will.

But how fucking stupid do you have to be to fall for this shit?

Remember The Boy Who Cried Wolf? The intended audience still occasionally shits its pants, and even THEY grasp that you stop believing the fucking liar.

You shidiots finished it and demanded an investigation into who was funding the sheep.

He’s buying your loyalty on layaway, and you’re making the fucking payments.

And if you’re dumb enough, gullible enough, enough of a pudding-brained, promise-gobbling patsy to believe he’s going to deliver on this latest dangled fucking carrot after more than a dozen promises just like it that he suddenly doesn’t even fucking remember making, then you deserve to get fucking fleeced.

1 comments

Posted on

Midcentury Compact

Other than the windows on the exterior rendering not matching up with the actual floor plan…

The kitchen needs work, moving the door to the carport if necessary to the other side of the “food bar” so cabinets can be run the lenth of that wall. The entry hall is also unnecessarily long and dark, but I don’t know what could be done other than putting a glass panel front door in place.

Obviously some changes have been made…

0 comments

Posted on

During a brief moment during the COVID lockdowns, humanity unintentionally ran one of the largest environmental experiments in modern history.

With cars parked, flights cancelled and factories operating at reduced capacity, global daily CO₂ emissions fell by about 17% at their peak in April 2020. Road transport alone dropped by roughly 36%, making it the largest contributor to that sudden decline. 

The change was visible from space too. Satellites observed dramatic reductions in nitrogen dioxide pollution over many major cities and industrial regions. The air genuinely became cleaner in many places, although pollutants such as fine particulate matter did not fall everywhere because weather, dust and other natural sources still played a major role. 

But Earth didn’t suddenly “heal” in a few months. Atmospheric CO₂ continued increasing because humanity was still emitting billions of tonnes, just at a slower rate. Once economies reopened, emissions rapidly moved back toward previous levels. Across all of 2020, global CO₂ emissions ended up roughly 6% lower than in 2019. 

And that’s perhaps the most important lesson. We don’t need permanent lockdowns to protect the planet. What those months demonstrated was how strongly transportation, energy production and industry influence the environment when their activity changes at a global scale.

The challenge is achieving those reductions deliberately through cleaner electricity, efficient cities, better public transport and low-carbon technology rather than through a global emergency.

For a few months, we saw how quickly some forms of pollution can respond when human activity changes. The planet didn’t heal overnight, but it showed us that our actions really can be large enough to change what satellites see from space.

[source]

0 comments

Posted on

Don’t Worry John. We’re ALL There.

A blurred woman holding her head
Photo by Windah Limbai on Unsplash

I feel like I’m losing my mind.

That thought runs through my head more than I’d like to admit these days.

As someone who has navigated the past three decades with a mental illness, I’ve gotten used to the crushing despair that visits from time to time, sometimes staying for a few bleak moments before departing as quickly as it came, other times moving in for weeks or even months, derailing recent progress and swallowing up my tenuous joy.

I have endured the darkest nights of the soul, and I’ve passed through protracted seasons of utter hopelessness.

Yet, as difficult as those times have been, they were always the exception; brief or extended detours from an otherwise manageable and often even enjoyable existence. I could usually be certain that, despite their ferocity, these internal storms would eventually pass and a gentler, more stable state would settle in.

I’m not sure I can say that anymore. 

In fact, if I set aside the weight of others’ personal and professional expectations of me, the facades of competence I work incredibly hard to maintain, and the worries of judgement, disappointment (or worse, pity) that may or may not come, I gotta say there’s a twenty-four-seven sh*t show going on inside my head.

A pervasive, insidious, and increasingly loud sense of dread is pretty much ubiquitous now. 

It sits alongside me in traffic as I think about my neighbors abducted from their workplaces and children lying under rubble half a world away. 

It hovers over my shoulder as I am hit again and again by an unrelenting flood of suffering flickering wildly through the screen in the palm of my hand that I can’t seem to put down. 

It sits like a massive stone upon my chest at night, as I inventory the nightmares of the day, and wait for sleep to come, knowing it will likely not be restful.

It greets me in the morning with a sudden jolt of panic, the second I happen upon the horrors du jour curated by powerful people who seemingly cannot be stopped.

I do my best to beat those stubborn black thoughts into submission or at least soften their jagged edges with the well-worn stockpile of coping strategies I’ve used and endlessly recommend to others: meditation, therapy, prayer, volunteering, exercise, nature, travel, fasting, medication, journaling, community, touching grass. 

Yet, if I’m honest, these have become an exercise in diminishing returns, rarely offering more than a short respite from the feeling that things in my head are not improving anytime soon.

And far from some nebulous, undefined source, I can precisely pinpoint the authors of my despair:

It’s the unthinkable cruelty that appears to be contagious.
It’s the seemingly inexhaustible capacity some have for hurting fellow humans.
It’s the apparent apathy of so many others.
It’s the brokenness of systems that seem beyond repair.
It’s what feels like the irreparable relational fractures that have been revealed.
It’s the burning of the planet, the disregard for the vulnerable, and the mockery of empathy.
It’s the realization that no one is coming to save us and we may not even be willing to save ourselves.

These are quantifiable, tangible realities; or at least they point to those things. This isn’t some negative mindset that positive thinking will magically remedy. I can’t manifest my way out of it or speak it out of existence. This is terrifyingly real, and knowing that actually helps a bit. It’s a comfort to realize this is not all in my head.

Look, there are things I know to be true about the hell we are all living through right now:

I know that I am not responsible for carrying all of it. 
I know I can only stay in the small space of my agency. 
I know that there are tens of millions of people working tirelessly to push back against the same darkness I am.
I know that all evil empires fall, that every malevolent regime is temporary, that things are never as black and white as they might feel.

I can know all of these things with great certainty, and still feel like the sky is falling.

I’m still functioning, still doing my work, still making plans, still finding moments of joy, still stepping into the trenches of the fight, still creating, still endeavoring to “live well as the greatest resistance”, but there remains the lingering grief over how much has been lost and the sad realization that we didn’t have to be here.

I think feeling that is less a sickness and more a sign of humanity.

Please hear me: this is not a cry for help, an invitation of sympathy, or a solicitation for solutions; maybe more a plea for solidarity.

It’s the difficult admission of a far-from-ideal mental state that I wish I didn’t find myself in, in the hope that I’m not the only one whose head is a scary and disorienting place right now.

Maybe you might encounter these words and suddenly recognize the symptoms of a lingering sorrow that you haven’t been able to shake, a fear that does not relent, and a rest that does not come.

Maybe if we all admit how not well we are, that will be the healing we need to keep going for one more day.

Is your head a mess these days, friends, or is it just me?

4 comments

Posted on

it’s a well-known fact that Little Donny Fuckface is a quadrice-indicted twice-impeached once-convicted popular-vote-losing adderall-huffing dead-pedo-bestie-schmoozing East-Wing-destroying insurrection-leading ear-diapering testimony-ducking judge-threatening lawyer-ignoring debate-avoiding witness-tampering crypto-scamming disabled-veteran-dishonoring inheritance-squandering rube-fleecing clown-makeup-smearing language-mangling sneaker-hawking serial-sexual-predating draft-dodging casino-bankrupting butler-bullying daughter-perving hush-money-paying real-estate-swindling bone-spur-faking ketchup-hurling justice-obstructing classified-war-plan-thieving golf-cheating stock-manipulating weather-map-defacing war-criminal-pardoning horse-paste-promoting paper-towel-flinging race-baiting tax-evading evidence-destroying charity-defrauding money-laundering diaper-filling 34-count 80-year-old fluorescent-tangerine narcoleptic fart factory. we know this.

but do you know what else Donny is? a sweaty, festering pest-hole of megalomaniacal shit, that’s what.

“please raise your right hand. ‘I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe. that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way, I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try and cheat like hell like they do. they never— there’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care.’”

fuck off, bro. this is America. I’m not pledging anything to some malevolent burst trash-bag of personality defects.

seriously, who the fuck does this fucking fuck think he is? 

easy question, easy answer: Donny thinks he’s God’s gift to the world. he’s that fucked in the head.

let’s be crystal clear about one thing: Donny is not God’s gift to anything. he’s a very naughty boy. now go away.

but do you know who else thinks they’re the center of the universe? infants. they have no conception of the world all around them. they care about one thing only: that there’s a tit in their face to feed on, when they need one. doesn’t that sound exactly like Dear Leader?

Donny functions on the same level as a week-old baby whose brain is still half pudding. he’s never evolved past the me-centric worldview of a diaper-shitting newborn.

and why should he evolve? he’s got an entire political party willing to shove their tit in his face. did you hear them in that video clip above, dutifully repeating his ferkakta pledge to cheat in the midterms? what in the actual fuck?

now feast your incredulous eyes on this. here’s an actual video that got played on the Jumbotron, just before Donny’s speech last night.

“on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump.”

holy shit, they literally cast Dear Leader as God’s gift to the universe. 

they’re not being sarcastic. they actually believe this twaddle. remember, the whole purpose of this ‘Republican midterm convention’ wasn’t to promote Republican candidates. they gave the briefest lip service to the dipshits who are actually running in races this year. this ‘midterm convention’ was just an Emotional Support Tit, shoved into Dear Leader’s face so he could spend two days feeding off uncritical adoration.

that’s because the GOP is no longer a functioning political party. it’s now just some fucked-up cult whose prime directive is to make a colicky piss-baby feel good about himself.

I mean, at this point they’re not even pretending to be anything other than a cult.

CBS News reporter Ed O’Keefe: “is Vance your guy in 2028?”

MAGA: “my guy is who Donald Trump endorses.” 

O’Keefe: “so it’s up to him to tell you?”

MAGA: “that’s exactly right…. people call us a cult. I don’t care.”

the entire Republican Party has lost its way — and I haven’t a clue how it finds a way back. they’re just too far gone at this point.

Preznit Fuckwit has run the GOP straight into the ground, just like he ran six casinos straight into the ground.

everything Donny touches, dies.

you would think that two days of maximum adoration would have put Dear Leader in a good mood — but you’d be wrong. Donny is too broken-inside to ever actually be happy. there’s not enough money, power, or attention the in world to satisfy him.

so of course this thin-skinned, eternally-unsatisfied shithead had to take it out on his favorite target — the nearest woman reporter.

reporter: “on the checks, we have $40 trillion in debt. if your economic policies are working, why do you need an incentive for people to turn out to vote?”

Donny: “I’m doing it as a reward for people having to put up for five years and four years of a horrible situation caused by Biden.”

reporter: “you also offered tariff refund checks—”

Donny: “not you.”

reporter: “you also—”

Donny: “NOT YOU! hey— NOT YOU.”

reporter: “—”

Donny: “your network and you, you’re the worst.”

Jesus H. Fuck, did you see the way this abusive sack of shit lunges at the reporter, and gets right in her face? who does that?

once again, Donny abuses a woman reporter. notice that he never pulls this shit on a man. he’s too cowardly. but if it’s a woman asking him a tough question? she’s a pig. she’s a bitch. she’s dumb. ‘NOT YOU!’

this is probably as a good place as any to note that my What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Challenge™ is now in its 2,355th day.

“…an amazing testament to the kind of man— ah— gha— mzzzzzzzbzt—[screen goes black]”

oh noes! United States First Failson Cokey McSniffle’s touching tribute to the misshapen garden gnome got all glitched to shit, too. so sad!

“he could go from fundraising, you know, making calls to zzZZZZckkkkk bububububillionaire to glrrRRRRRrr—”

try not to laugh. 

oh, fuck it — laugh all you want. never stop mocking the shit out of these incompetent ass-clowns who couldn’t find their own dick with both hands and a flashlight.

folks, the date has been set for the fourth No Kings Day of Action: October 17, 2026.

Donny fucking hates No Kings. it ruins his day to be reminded that hundreds of millions of people all across the world hate his guts.

let’s ruin Donny’s day. let’s make No Kings Four the largest one yet. go here to find or host an event.

Wonkette’s Rebecca Schoenkopf, can you step in here for a moment, and show us how it’s done?

fuck you, you fucking fuck — now that’s a message we can all get behind.

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

1 comments

Posted on

So many of John’s thoughts mirror my own. I’ve highlghted those that especially resonate with me.

a couple of tall buildings sitting next to each other
Photo by In Memory of Yan Ji on Unsplash

Horrible days don’t usually start out as horrible days.

As we woke up, made breakfast, walked the dog, got the kids off to school, went to work, or did whatever we did most Thursday mornings here in America, September 11th, 2001, was just another ordinary Tuesday to us… until it wasn’t.

Soon, all hell would break loose, and we would face one of the most catastrophic days in our history.

For those who didn’t live through it, there’s no way to accurately describe the immediate existential free fall: the urgency, the chaos, and the abject terror of those first moments and the hours that followed.

Nothing felt secure.
No place felt safe.
No one was immune to the shaking.
No one was insulated from the grieving.
Everyone was shaken to their core.

So many memories are burned into my brain about those first days: unthinkable images of carnage I’ll never get out of my head, paralyzing waves of fear I’d never experienced, a leaden heaviness that I have rarely felt since.

But I remember more about that time too: I remember America being its best self.

I remember the fierce flood of goodness that arrived almost instantaneously.
I remember people’s staggering courage.
I remember their incomprehensible selflessness.
I remember a unity that transcended politics.
I remember a kindness that bridged religious traditions.
I remember a defiant, expansive love standing stridently in the face of the hatred of a few.
I remember humanity showing itself in breathtaking ways.

A mantra soon rose in those days: “Never forget.”

I suppose that meant different things to different people:
For some it was a declaration to remember the people who died and the lives that were squandered and the legacy they had left.
For some it was a prayer to the heavens, a commitment to live fully from a place of benevolence.
For some it was a condemnation of any hatred born out of bigotry.
For some it was a patriotic pledge of love of country.
For some it was a promise not to lose sight of all they had seen and experienced, about how beautiful people can be.

As I look at this version of America twenty-five years later, it seems as though we’ve all broken our promises, whether to God or country or the fallen or survivors or ourselves.

We’ve forgotten all that we learned on that horrible day in September.

We’ve forgotten how dependent we are on one another, how connected we all are, how tethered to each other’s lives we are, despite the surface differences or the myth of our separation.

We’ve forgotten that in the end, a life in front of us in peril is a life that deserves our attention, a life we’re charged with saving.

We’ve forgotten how difficult and painful a path every person is walking, and how pointless it is to try and make that path more difficult and painful for them.

We’ve forgotten how fragile and fleeting and priceless this life is, and how wasteful it is to spend a moment of it with contempt for strangers.

This is why the grief feels amplified on this September 11th: because of all the promises we’ve broken and all the forgetting we’ve done.

And, worse, today it feels as though for far too many Americans, the words “Never Forget” are now simply thinly veiled expressions of blind hatred of entire people groups, based on a violence they had nothing to do with and gave no approval of. It has simply become a rallying cry for those who seek an excuse to dehumanize their neighbors, for people harboring the same senseless ugliness that authored the nightmare to begin with.

That’s why our forgetting is such a tragedy: we squandered the lessons we could have learned.

September 11th, 2001 was a nightmare for us as a nation, but we woke up that day too.
We saw ourselves clearly.
We saw through the walls and the barriers of created divisions, past the chasms and gaps of surface difference.
We stopped the petty bullshit of partisanism, tribalism, and territorialism, and we realized our oneness.
We caught a glimpse of what America can be when it finds unity in diversity.

That’s what I wish we would have never forgotten in the years since that horrible day in September.

That day we learned to cherish life; to love people fully, to live with open-handed gratitude, to recognize the value of every human being, to move quickly toward someone in pain, to not withhold compassion, to see the best in people, to care for one another as our own.

May we not need another horrible day to remember that again, America.

Never forget who and what we could still be.

0 comments

Posted on

I Don’t Care For The Exterior Treatment, But I Rather Like The Floor Plan (With A Few Caveats)

I’d turn the existing Pantry into a Breakfast Room. Some of my fondest memories of childhood revolve around eating my bowl of cereal (usually corn flakes with sugar sprinkled on top, doused with half-and-half) in the breakfast room of my grandparents’ house in western Massachusetts. The closet between the Kitchen and the Service room could easily be turned into a pantry. I also think the cubbies and the fireplace in the Library need to go. There’s no place to put a desk unless you want it floating in the middle of the room.

I’d also have to sort out that rabbit warren of spaces just to the left of the staircase on the second floor. It seems odd that you’d have to pass through the door to the Master Suite in order to access the second bathroom since there is already a dedicated bathroom in the suite.

4 comments

Posted on

Morning With Pussy

Pussy Tourette – In Hi-Fi (1993) & Who Does She Think She Is? (1995)

Whatever happened to Pussy Tourette? An extensive internet search comes up with precious little. The most comprehensive thing I found was via grokpedia (including her real name, Mark Cliser, who, through further searching I learned is now 63 years old). Seems the last thing she released was EP1 in 2007—now only available for download via iTunes. There isn’t any physical media available for this release.

These albums prompt so many good memories of my life in SF during the 90s, including my return to The City in ’98 as I was winding my way through Oakland, just before I crossed the Bay Bridge.

I remember how scandalous the lyrics were considered at the time. Now you hear much worse on a daily basis.

And while you’re at it, GET OFF MY LAWN!

0 comments