Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

We still have time to mess this up!

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You cannot shame the shameless.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Giving up is unforgivable.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Friday Morning Open Thread: Good Riddance to A Lousy Year

Friday Morning Open Thread: Good Riddance to A Lousy Year

by | 251 Comments

This post is in: ,

I try to keep these first-of-the-morning posts upbeat, but I regret to inform y’all:

WE ARE SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS.
.

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: That his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events…

… “We are going to see the number of cases in this country rise so dramatically, we are going to have a hard time keeping everyday life operating,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, told MSNBC.

“The next month is going to be a viral blizzard,” he said. “All of society is going to be pressured by this.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease official, on Wednesday said cases will likely rise through the end of January. He and other U.S. health officials have said early data shows Omicron appears less severe, but they have continued to push vaccinations, masks and physical distancing.

With testing shortages and breakthrough cases, experts warn the surge will upend hospitals, emergency response services, schools and retailers, among others, in the coming weeks…

Glass-half-full scenario, the Omicron wave will burn out by the end of January, and there’s some small-study hope that Omicron infections actually provide some extra protection against the so-far-more-dangerous Delta variant. But such hopeful signs always remind me of the old Irish proverb: Live, horse, and you’ll get grass…

Reader Interactions

251Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I think it’s been a great year. Good government, good economy, good people mostly protected by vaccines. 2022 looks to be even better once Omicron washes through.

  6. 6.

    satby

    Well, for me personally, it’s been a lousy year. And I look forward to hunkering down at home for the next month as much as possible.

  10. 10.

    JMG

    I cannot speak to the entirety of what is a “good” or “bad” year for a country of 330 million people, let alone a planet of 7 billion. I can say for me it was a distinct improvement on 2020. I was comfortable economically, got vaccinated then boosted to significantly reduce covid stress (the most contagious element of the virus, everybody caught it), my son and his wife were able to stage their wedding in August, and we were able to exchange week-long visits with my daughter in France, who was also able to attend her brother’s wedding. If 2022 improves as much as 2021 did, I’ll have a splendid year. I wish a splendid new year for everyone.

    In macro terms, I think that 2021 was likely a better year, a much better year, for everyone with the simple common sense to be vaccinated. It was for me anyway a new birth of freedom, or feeling free anyhow.

  11. 11.

    debbie

    I think the year has been both good and bad, just like every other year, but I worry about Times Square tonight; I can’t imagine that entry only with proof of vaccination will work out well.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    On a less uplifting note, while long distance armchair judgment is always iffy, still an important story to peruse., IMHO.

    A “red flag.” With red fringe, on a red pole with a red finial.

    After 4 killings, ‘Officer of the Year’ is still on the job in Pennsylvania
    [snip]
    Darrel W. Stephens, a former longtime police chief who now helps run a policing research institute at Florida State University, called the four shootings a “red flag.”

    “Four is incredibly unusual,” he said. “That is out there on the edge.” Even if the shootings can be legally justified, he said, the pattern needs to be “examined very closely” to determine why the same officer repeatedly resorted to deadly force. “Because they can, it doesn’t mean they should,” he said.
    [snip]
    Splain, 41, is a patrol officer who works in largely rural swaths of Pennsylvania, where state police rarely kill anyone. During his time on the force, he has been responsible for four of the nine fatal shootings by troopers in the three counties where they occurred, according to a Times analysis of cases identified by research group Fatal Encounters. The killings by Splain were reported by local news outlets, although he was mentioned by name only in one case.

  13. 13.

    Betty Cracker

    The puppy insisted on sleeping on an end table next to the sofa, so I had to sit there and guard him for about an hour to prevent him from rolling off. He’s an oddball, this one. :)

  20. 20.

    Barbara

    My kid went back to school and we were all the beneficiaries of the fruits of a really potent medical discovery (which are usually much less evenly distributed).  We lightened the burden for many hit hardest by all manner of societal shocks. The year began by demonstrating the rottenness of some aspects of our political situation, and individual circumstances always vary, but calling it a lousy year for all seems unduly pessimistic.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    I ran into this quotation at the top of retired photo editor Susan Vermazen’s Twitter account. I’m sure this has been seen here, but it bears repeating:

         There are now only two parties: traitors and patriots. And I want to be ranked hereafter with the latter and, I believe, stronger party.

    Ulysses S. Grant

  27. 27.

    Spanky

    @Baud: CNN agrees with you. Current screaming headline:

    The undeniably positive signs America is adapting.

    I’m sure the powers at CNN will soon wrest control of the headlines from this optimist, and doom will once again lead the news. So let’s enjoy it now!

  30. 30.

    germy

    @NotMax:

    there's been a lot of astonishment over him getting "Officer of the Year" for executing a troubled man and it's worth noting a lot of departments hand out that award explicitly to officers who have done questionable kills so they can bring it up in court as testimony to character t.co/rjHC4YxHz9

    — Nathan Bernhardt (@jonbernhardt) December 30, 2021

  31. 31.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @satby:

    Sorry you’re going through that. Every time some maskless moron wishes me a happy new year, there’s a part of me that wants to say, “fuck you”, but of course I can’

    Hopefully next year will be better

  37. 37.

    Immanentize

    My year has been good and bad. It is now finishing decidedly bad —

    My mom (91) fell two weeks ago, broke her hip and had emergency hip surgery. Upside? This happened just before the COVID shutdown of her area hospitals to non- necessary procedures. Emergency =/= necessary I learned. In light of the injury, she lost her memory. When I went to visit her, I had the odd experience of her not recognizing me. She thought I was a priest from about 40? years ago. Me, a priest? — demonstrating how far from reality she has slipped. I now will spend years, I guess, mourning the woman who was my Mom while still seeing her sitting there in front of me.

    Then, Christmas morning, I stepped out my front door to get the morning paper onto an invisible sheet of ice. My legs flew out, I flew forward and landed neatly on my back on the edge of the bluestone steps. I missed my spine by about an inch, but have had so much internal bleeding that my right butt is a huge hematoma which looks like Moby Grape. You know, Deep Purple. My Doc does not think there is anything fractured — not vertibrae nor shoulder, but maybe the tip of my elbow for which nothing really can be done anyhow. I say “does not think” because I can walk, sit (a bit), and roll over (very very slowly) but cannot do the twist. And of course x-rays are ixnay because they are not “necessary.” And I don’t want to get Omicron and share it with the Immp.

    And Zhena, yes I am getting an extension on my grades (silver lining?)

    So starting next year, things will be back on the lucky track. Or did I just jinx that?

    Love you all, and for the sake of all that is, well, sacred, eat your black eyed peas tomorrow.

  43. 43.

    Matt McIrvin

    I took a huge step early last year and got the knee replacement I’d needed for years. Since everyone was hunkering down anyway, it made it that much easier to be homebound for the couple of months I needed to get to better mobility than I had before. But it did mean a lot of potential exposure to COVID through the medical system at a time when I couldn’t get vaccinated yet (and I became uncomfortably aware of just how many antivaxxers there were working in the system). Somehow I avoided getting sick before I could get the shots. And for the first time in a long time, I don’t have the sense of being on a downward spiral physically.

    The news stories about the vaccines had me imagining that my recovery would dovetail with the pandemic getting under control so that I could be free to roam the world in more than one way. And that did kind of happen. But the interval between my whole family finally getting fully vaccinated, and the Delta wave hitting, was so frustratingly short–just a few weeks in June, really, and then that sense of being back to normal was yanked away from us. I had a nice brief vacation in that window when my parents came up and rented a house in Newburyport. By the time we took a more substantial one in August, we were already fretting about Delta. But I was able to go to Six Flags and ride some roller coasters, anyway.

    I’m hoping it’s better next year but I still have so much dread of what’s coming. I think we are heading for new political disasters because people have the memories of goldfish and the Trump administration is now regarded as a wonderful halcyon era somehow. I guess if you’re going to break the country, what you need to do is break it hard enough that the next guy can’t fix it, so people have happy memories of the time when you were only just about to break it.

  45. 45.

    Immanentize

    @NotMax: Yes the Immp is home. He is going back next Friday (so far) to face on line classes until February. As was said above, the hope is that the death spread from Xmas and new year’s will lighten up by then.

  53. 53.

    Immanentize

    @eclare: The nice thing about my Mom and her new confusion is that she is a generally happy person. Complete non-griper. Nice to all the PT staff and nurses. And she expresses constant gratitude for having lived such a long life through so many amazing changes and having seen her family and relatives succeed beyond her imaginings. That is not a bad place for memory confusion. However sad for me, it is rather inspiring.

  54. 54.

    cope

    @Immanentize: My wife and I assembled our black eye pea dip (i.e., “Texas Caviar”) yesterday to give it time to age. We’ll share some with the neighbors who like spicy stuff.

    As for the year passing and the new one coming, I really can’t put them into “good” or “bad” or “horrible” any more, there are just too many scales at which they can be analyzed. I’m good with being alive as the years come and go with alarmingly increasing velocity.

  57. 57.

    sdhays

    @Baud: It was a difficult year, with hope in the early summer dashed by the Delta variant and the anti-vax terrorists. But it has been a substantially better year compared to last year. We did have that brief window of some relaxing and most of us have been able to have the real protection of the excellent vaccines for at least half of the year.

    We’ve also had a national government actually working on problems and trying to solve or mitigating them. The economy has been improving. We’re out of Afghanistan. And, on a personal note, my wife finally got her driver’s license, just yesterday!

    Maybe this year has still been lousy, but I’m definitely grateful, nevertheless, for the dramatic improvement over 2020.

  58. 58.

    MomSense

    Hoping for much better for Satby and Imm and everyone who may be going through tough times in our community.  It’s been a mixed year for me.  Lots of fun with my kids, friends, and the music scene being open again.  Spending time with my dad after not seeing him for a year and a half was a highlight. The pneumonia and a fall on Boxing Day (I feel like I was the loser in a boxing match) have been challenging.
    I was supposed to leave for CT to see my son but the long weekend was cut short by work demands on Monday.  Going to see my cousin overnight instead.  I haven’t been able to see my cousin  because the cold, pneumonia thing lasted so long and she is a healthcare worker.  If they have any cold symptoms even unrelated to COVID they cannot go to work.

    I am looking forward to being in the woods and listening to the trees.  I think science finally confirmed that they do talk to each other.

  59. 59.

    brendancalling

    @Baud: whenever I see/hear people complaining about 2021, I like to remind them that on 12/31/2020, Trump was still president, vaccines weren’t as available as they are now and most of us weren’t eligible, lockdowns were still in effect, and the bodies were piling up.

    Not that 2021 was a lot of fun, but it was a damned sight better than Slaughterhouse 2020.

  60. 60.

    Geminid

    @Immanentize: Man, that’s bad! My friend Stephanie did that- her feet slipped out from under and she landed on the edge of a step, square on her pelvis. Nothing broken, but the deep bruising took months to heal.

    It was painful! Stephanie said she was “screaming like a banshee.” I hope you’re not hurting too badly.

  61. 61.

    Kayla Rudbek

    Thank you very much to whoever posted the link to the iHealth website. I ordered two more boxes of Covid testing kits and I sent the link to my parents and sibling.

    And I hope that 2022 goes much better for me than 2021 did! I should be starting my new job in mid-March which would relieve a lot of stress…

  64. 64.

    germy

    @cope:   I’m good with being alive as the years come and go with alarmingly increasing velocity.

    Last year an elderly neighbor said “Any day above ground is a good day.”  I agreed with her.

  68. 68.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Immanentize: Sorry to hear about your and your mom’s falls and aftermath. Still you find the glass more than half full and make everyone feel better.  Thanks.

  70. 70.

    Cermet

    Been a great year for me in many respects and for the country especially; we not just obtained some great vax’s but breakthrough treatments and meds, as well. The economy has bounced back, employment and pay have really increased; we all learned about the supply chain and fixed and/or identified some of its worse bottlenecks, discovered infrastructure matters and have a fat new pot of money coming to address the most serious needs, some great achievements by NASA, we are OUT OF AFGANISTAN!!! and these are just some of the great things; the deaths were beyond sad and terrible so that is the horrible counter balance and certainly can view this years as bad. But a pandemic was bound to happen and we really dodged a bullet thanks to SCIENCE (and it rules!)

  71. 71.

    Immanentize

    @Geminid: There might have been some involuntary pain whoops. My Doc warned it could take a long time to resolve. Or not. Who knows?

    I want slippers with crampons.

  73. 73.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Immanentize: I’m sorry to hear of all that. I of course don’t know much about your mom’s situation, but in my limited experience of two parents and a other family members, memory can get better after a damaging event like what your mom went through. It takes time and is often gradual. Good luck.

  75. 75.

    Jinchi

    whenever I see/hear people complaining about 2021, I like to remind them that on 12/31/2020, Trump was still president, vaccines weren’t as available as they are now and most of us weren’t eligible, lockdowns were still in effect, and the bodies were piling up.

    Agreed. Counting from the day Trump left office, this year has been pretty damn good.

  76. 76.

    Matt McIrvin

    @brendancalling: For most of the country, though, 2021 has actually been worse than spring 2020 simply because Slaughterhouse 2020 was happening somewhere else. It was a bunch of New Yorkers dying–and if it’s not from scary Muslim terrorists, who cares about them? In Red America, the pandemic simply wasn’t happening yet.

    Now, parts of Red America did get hit later in the year, and then we saw the start of the kind of suicidally aggressive denialism that would rule once the vaccines were available. But I think the tone of the discussion was set during the early period when COVID was a blue-state problem so Trump didn’t have to worry his head about it.

  77. 77.

    Cermet

    @Kayla Rudbek: Congrats! So too will my daughter – its her first job after college and happens to be her dream job too! Double lucky (through she put in four years of extremely hard work to make that possible.)

  79. 79.

    Betty Cracker

    @Immanentize: That’s rough; I’m sorry. To echo ZG at #69, maybe your mom will recover some memory. I saw that happen with both my grandmothers, and it was kind of a grace note, those moments of having them back, at least temporarily. Best wishes to you all. 

  80. 80.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Immanentize: My mother was a … difficult… person most of her life, until the dementia set in. Then she became nice to everyone.

    Anyway, sorry to hear about your butt.

  82. 82.

    Matt McIrvin

    @germy: Love how she got a response from a dude who insisted your dick really could be too big for condoms. Never change, Twitter

  85. 85.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I take heart from all the reminders that we’re better off as a country. Personally though, I feel as if the pandemic has broken me a little. I had to stop going places, and now I feel like I can’t do it or don’t want to do it. And my sense of play has weakened, which means my writing is going badly. My wonderful publisher is under stress right now because one of the two people who do most of the work is on leave because of chronic illness, and I’m worried that they’re losing money on me anyway. Rationally, I know I’m lucky. But it turns out a couple of years of pandemic, on top of the Rs tipping into madness, has worn me out.

  87. 87.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic: I admit I feared the opposite with my mom. I am also keeping you and Ukraine in my thoughts this season. Every slice of lekvar cake reminds me of my Ukrainian friends growing up upstate NY and their continued family ties to the Old Country. Glad your dil got an interview scheduled.

    I wish Ozark were here because he has certainly had more interesting fall and injury stories to tell in his storied life than I.

  88. 88.

    Kalakal

    @Immanentize: Wow, that sounds painful, glad you didn’t crack any bones.

    Sorry to hear about your mom. My mom’s memory went in her last few years but throughout she herself was actually pretty happy.

    She had no idea who I was for the last few years which was very hard but she was always pleased to meet new people.

  89. 89.

    Karen S.

    My mother has been in the hospital ICU since Monday night due to respiratory failure. The hospital is the last place we wanted her to be but we couldn’t do anything to help her at home. I was able to visit her on Tuesday and Wednesday, but starting yesterday no visitors are allowed because of the Covid situation. My dad is really sad that he can’t see her. She’s 94 and fragile anyway. Rheumatoid arthritis and pulmonary fibrosis are her chief ailments plus she was hospitalized twice last year and tested positive for Covid in November 2020 though she was asymptomatic. What a way to end the year. Sigh.

  90. 90.

    Jinchi

    @Cermet: ​we are OUT OF AFGANISTAN!!!

    For all the shrieking by the warmongers in the press. Ending our forever war was a huge win.

  92. 92.

    Immanentize

    Thank you all. Look up for snow, look down for ice! Happy new year and I’ll see you in the funny papers.

  93. 93.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s the way democracy breaks through deliberate confusion of cause and effect that really grinds me down. The way that Republicans could actually make 2021 worse, by the numbers, than 2020 simply by voluntarily choosing to refuse vaccines and die, so people could blame it all on Joe Biden.

  94. 94.

    germy

    I have a great track record of doing nothing on New Year’s Eve. To all you New Year’s Eve non-celebrators, I see you, you are my tribe.

    — Amro Ali (@_amroali) December 31, 2021

    You all have intellectual backing on being a non-celebrator. Antonio Gramsci gave compelling reasons why he hated New Year’s Eve celebrations in a letter published on 1st January 1916. #NewYear2022 t.co/Crw1AB1ejw pic.twitter.com/jOgXnB9gmW

    — Amro Ali (@_amroali) December 31, 2021

  95. 95.

    SiubhanDuinne

     

    @Immanentize:

    I’m so sorry — about your mom and about you. I hope you heal quickly, fully, and uneventfully (though I don’t really understand why they couldn’t X-ray you), and I hope your mom’s memory shift is a temporary thing and not too distressing for either of you. Best New Year wishes to her, you, and the Immp.

  101. 101.

    Layer8Problem

    @Betty Cracker: I’m ashamed to say it, but I put it aside a quarter of the way in because of some family crisis or something equally mind-discombobulating and I swore I’d get back to it. That torn-up flag is staring at me accusingly from the bookshelf. It will happen!

  102. 102.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Immanentize: Ah, lekvar. One of my un-fondest memories of working the yogurt factory. The elderly crowd here may remember that Dannon used to have a flavor called “prune whip,” where the jam at the bottom of the cup was lekvar. Maneuvering that shit into the machine that packed the cups was a guarantee of getting it on you, and it didn’t come off easily, meaning you’d be sticky for the remainder of the shift. Nasty stuff.

  103. 103.

    MattF

    Since our falls are being reviewed, I’ll note that the effects of my own hard fall (nearly two months ago) are going away. Black eyes are gone, lump over eye is gone. Urological aftereffects (I’ll spare you the details) have gone from acute to not-so-bad-I-guess. I may cancel my urologist appointment. I’ve signed up with Instacart, which actually seems to work, I intend to start using a cane instead of a walker. Healing is slow, but is actually happening.

  104. 104.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize:

    Well, that’s surely a lousy way to end the year. As someone commented upthread, I hope your mom’s memory loss is temporary. And I hope the bruising is the worst result of your fall.

  106. 106.

    Betty Cracker

    @Layer8Problem: Perfectly understandable! My reading has been disrupted often over the past few years due to…everything. The backlog has formed a huge stack. Anyhoo, hope you enjoy it when you take it up again. Hubby and I thought it was interesting.

  108. 108.

    FelonyGovt

    Wishing the very best of New Years for everyone here and I hope things go better for us all. We lost my dear mother in law to advanced dementia after a tough few months. I’m hoping next year we can gradually resume going out to restaurants and events.

  111. 111.

    Kay

    Lots and lots of really good economic news going into the New Year so hopefully that will start being reported.

    We got a new grandaughter this year so we’ll probably never think of it as a bad year – 2020 too! :)

  112. 112.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    Is it just me, or does the virus always manage to do *exactly* the thing that would make Republicans look like total morons for what they said earlier, but no one seems to actually call it out?
    *FIRST*, they said “why not herd mentality immunity?” and now we have a variant that escapes immunity from prior infection. Then, they  said “Omicron is mild, so why not just let it infect people”, and now we start seeing that, wow, the herd mentality morons were stupid coming *and* going.

  114. 114.

    narya

    I don’t have much to add here . . . but I am hoping that the new year brings all manner of good things, for all of you. I’m sorry for the difficulties some of you are dealing with, and I’ll send some lovingkindness your way.

  116. 116.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    The good economic news will need to compete with all the stories about the inner workings of Kamala Harris’s office.

  117. 117.

    Miss Bianca

    @Betty Cracker: Pete’s little pink paw pads just kill me. Help! I’m in a long-distance love affair with someone else’s puppy, and he DOESN’T EVEN KNOW THAT I EXIST, oh waah!!

  119. 119.

    raven

    @Immanentize: Man, I’m sorry about all that! I had flip flops go out from under me in Florida and had a similar injury, nothing lasting but ouch!

    I just cleaned the collards and am hitting the smoked turkey parts in the instant pot for the broth. GO DAWGS!

  121. 121.

    raven

    See here how everything lead up to this day
    And it’s just like any other day that’s ever been
    Sun going up and then the sun going down
    Shine through my window and my friends they come around
    Come around, come around

  123. 123.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I can’t imagine what the reporting will be when it actually cycles the other way, which it will. They’ve moved the whole measure. Unemployment will be at 6 and they’ll be looking for bread lines.

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @LongHairedWeirdo:

    It reminds me of how small we are in the universe. I mean that. Watching Republicans deny a virus and try to intimidate the virus by yelling a lot has expanded my appreciation of the vastness of nature.

    It just doesn’t care. Argue with it, bargain with it, yell at it a lot- doesn’t care.

  129. 129.

    sab

    @Jinchi: Yes it was. The only people vocally in favor of our withdrawal that I knew were military families watching loved ones sent there on multiple deployments.

  130. 130.

    wenchacha

    @Immanentize: I am hoping time will ease some of your mother’s memory issues. And that you will heal quickly as well!

    My 2021 was a vast improvement over 2020! We got vavcines! I got to meet my grandchild! I saw one of my two children! My husband retired, and we both signed up for Social Security, and received our first checks this month! Joe Fucking Biden is my President, and Kamala Harris is the first woman, first VP of color!

    I’ll admit, I have been down this last week or so. This month and next are the ones I lost my folks two years ago. I miss them both, several times a day. My dad once told me there were times he wished he could ask his father something, but he was gone. I feel that. My heart breaks when I see my grandson Gio on FaceTime calls, but it is grand that he is here, and his folks share so many of his new developments, nearly every day.

    My wishes are for us all to have a better 2022.

  132. 132.

    artem1s

    2017-2020 were so awful it’s hard to make a comparison. Lifting the weight of worrying about TFG and what idiocy he and his minions might or might not be up to is a definite plus for the bulk of 2021. His general absence from the public sphere is also a relief that is real but hard to measure. My personal finances have flourished as my work was easy to do remotely and my employer was extra cautious about COVID protocols. When I am at work, I know I’m among the vaccinated and generally sane population, and that is huge relief.

    Unfortunately I lost my mom in September. Not COVID but the isolation did contribute to her declining health, IMO. She turned 89 in June and still able to get out and around and was living on her own. The final month or two was pretty terrible but easier to manage as I was able to be away from my home and close to her because of remote work. The long slow slog of letting go of the family house and her possessions has begun. Another mixed bag of family shit that I have to decide on – most of the rest of the family are the worst kind of white flight, christian nationalist MAGAt gun lovers. And I’ve known for four years that the final break with the deplorables would come after my mother passed. We are full into the ‘why can’t we all just get along’ denial phase. Nothing unpleasant must ever be said out loud, especially concerning their politics which they are all clearly embarrassed about – they cannot abide being criticized for their terrible choices and always resort to a defensive posture of yelling and bullying to shut down discussion of the facts. So while that has been pretty tiresome and awful, there is an end in sight to the decision about who I will and won’t hang with in the future.

    So yes, for me 2020 was worse because it was actually a 3+ year stretch in my mind. The final few months seemed to go on forever. 2021 has been hard but seems more like ‘real’ time again. And the worst that could happen to me personally now has.  Which is in a way a relief as it’s not hanging out there at some undetermined point in the future. I hope that those who have to deal with separations, forced or by choice in the New Year find a resolution that they can rest easy with.

  134. 134.

    sab

    @raven: I bought one too. 49 cents! Six bucks for a whole turkey. I like turkey and my pitbull loves turkey and my husband will just have to deal with it.

  136. 136.

    danielx

    Staying home tonight, which is totally normal for me. Making gumbo later.

    As to January…staying home as much as possible for that, too. Which is also pretty normal since January is usually miserable anyway, with Covid just being the cherry on top of the sundae this year.

    May the new year be better for all of us.

  138. 138.

    Miss Bianca

    @raven: I used to do that song with a band I was in, years ago!

    Leader of that band died earlier this year. It was a blow, still not sure I’ve processed it entirely.

  139. 139.

    Betty Cracker

    As usual, Republicans are going with “we were right all along.”

  141. 141.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @Kay: You remind me of a sad comic strip I saw, this fellow tearfully apologizing to mother nature for all the harm global warming is doing, and her responding “me? Oh, you poor boy, I’ll survive, change, and adapt – it’s *y’all* that are screwed!”

    Alas, still true, in both senses.

  143. 143.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Thought that the New Yorker for $6 was a good deal?  Peter Baker’s beloved:

    The best thing you can say about 2021 is that it will soon be over. A year that started with an insurrection at the Capitol is ending with more than eight hundred thousand Americans dead in the covidpandemic, as a contagious new variant, Omicron, produces the biggest wave of cases yet. Inflation is the highest it has been in decades. The twenty-year U.S. war in Afghanistan concluded with an embarrassing and botched American retreat. The Republican Party, rather than rejecting the defeated ex-President, has redoubled its commitment to Trump and Trumpism, purged dissenters, and embraced outright denialism, whether of vaccines or election results. Who’d have thought that 2020 would ever look good by comparison?

  144. 144.

    Layer8Problem

    @MattF:  I’ve been hearing of clouds.  AND shadows.  Would it be irresponsible to make up baseless speculation?  It would be irresponsible NOT to!  /s

  150. 150.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    All the energy they put into bargaining and positioning and resisting- it’s just exhausting to watch. Looking for an angle. Positioning for the hottest or most contrarian take.

    Every guidance or suggestion or new approach questioned and endlessly debated and always, always portrayed as dark or malicious – it’s never just public health people doing what they do, which is give advice- it’s always some personal attack on them. Poisonous. They all make fun of covid cautious liberals but their denial and incoherent anger at a virus and every single health authority or health directive is much more all-consuming than wearing a mask.

    I followed the mainstream guidance from the beginning to the best of my ability and I have spent a lot less time worrying about covid than Ben Shapiro has. They’re the obsessives.

  155. 155.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    Fuck these fucking people who act like we should have known 100 percent how to deal with COVID on Day 1. Just fuck them.

    My laptop’s dying and my 24-year-old nephew’s cancer is back. Still not speaking to any of my family. 2021 has sucked and I struggle to remain hopeful.

  156. 156.

    Kay

    @LongHairedWeirdo:

    I think about it with climate change too. Go yell at that river as it rises, or make a snarky argument about liberals driving electric cars to halt the wildfires. That’ll work.

    I’m a gardener and I love trees and I read an article by a horticulturist years ago about how southern trees were growing further north- extending their range- and it described the trees as “marching north”. Tromp, tromp, tromp. Here they come.

  160. 160.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    That’s frightening in its own way, really. Fucking bizarre authoritarian dictator stuff.

    I won’t pretend to care where he is, but it’s alarming that the state employees around him are behaving like cult members.

  161. 161.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Sure Lurkalot: @JMG: I sorta kinda get how foreign correspondents, the reporters who were embedded and lived in the region, got emotionally invested in Afghanistan, but the people like Susan Glasser– who seems very much a creature of the Acela corridor– just baffle me.

    If I had the energy I’d look up the time she said that Obama “spiked the ball” when OBL was killed and it was just like Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” stunt.

  162. 162.

    Miss Bianca

    @raven: Of course you didn’t! That song is actually a happy memory for me, despite its melancholy – with all its ups and downs, I had a *lot* of fun with that band – and that music!

  165. 165.

    Ken

    @Kay: I see Florida’s lieutenant governor is also a Republican, so it can’t be because they’re afraid a Democrat will take over.  Though I see the L.G. is also a Hispanic woman….

  166. 166.

    Another Scott

    Condolences and best wishes and get well soon to all the Juicers and Juicer-adjacent.  There’s lots of good happening now, but it’s also a very stressful and disheartening time.  Here’s hoping that progress toward a better future continues in 2022.

    Hang in there, everyone.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  170. 170.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    She’s “embarrassed” that Biden ended a 20 year war. Their personal attachments to these wars is really a problem.

    They will never forgive him for pulling out and I will never forget finding out that we had a pro war faction all across media all along. You completely understand why these wars go on so long watching that reaction. They HOWLED like he had snatched something away from them.

  171. 171.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: Blobbism and Broderism are mutually re-enforcing viruses?

    @Kay: I’m usually an Occam’s razor guy, so I take them at face-value that he’s on vacation, but where could he be that they’re afraid to tell people? Aspen? If you live in FL would you bother to go to Cancun? Not a beach guy, so I have no idea, but I hear through the family grapevine that my aunt on Marco Island is reporting lovely weather, which must mean over 75 from her.

    If he had Covid, he’d be crowing about it to own Fauci

  172. 172.

    Kay

    @Ken:

    I think we learned with the Trump cult that it’s not an attachment to “government” or even “Republicans running government”. It’s fealty to the leader. It’s a personal loyalty oath. They’re not “public servants”. They serve these men.

  174. 174.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    He would deny a vacation though, because that’s what manly-man leaders do. One nice thing that younger lawyers have contributed to the profession is they admit they 1. want a vacation and 2. take vacations. Bravo. End this bullshit that they’re at work 24/7. It was a lie anyway.

  176. 176.

    debbie

    Anyone have any familiarity with New Egg? I’m eyeing a new laptop, and I’m worried about shipping.

  177. 177.

    smith

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Have they said he’s on vacation? That would be the easiest, most plausible thing to say whether or not it’s true. Posting misleading photos from weeks ago to imply that he’s not on vacation is what’s weird.

  178. 178.

    smith

    @debbie: I’ve had good luck with Newegg. I especially like them because I try to withhold business from Amazon as much as possible (how is it not alarming to have one company corner the market on online sales?). I believe Newegg was one of the few companies that successfully resisted Amazon’s attempts to gobble them up.

  180. 180.

    Kay

    The covid denial and anger on the Right is obsessive in its own way. Yelling at people who are wearing a mask and minding their own business is covid obsession, as are the big, loud proclamations that they aren’t “scared” of the virus.

    They’re not, in fact, getting on with their lives. They’re penning thousands of conspiratorial screeds – they talk about covid constantly. I bet Fox News has spend more tv hours denyng covid and spinning dark motivations and political angles than CNN has spent disseminating the guidance (which is really pretty dry).

    I read the guidance comply with it to the best of my ability. They’ll spend 7 days tweeting about how it’s all a plot with each modification. “We don’t think about it AT ALL!” Yeah, sure you don’t.

  181. 181.

    debbie

    @smith:

    Thanks. I’ve heard they’re great for parts and components, but I wasn’t sure about laptops. I’m looking at a what I think is new Mackbook Air from 2017. Great price, but minimal warranty.

  182. 182.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    It’s just a weird combo of excuses. One would think “wife is ill” and “on vacation” would be either/or.

    So ridiculous that he thinks either is somehow shameful and he has to hide it. What a miserable fucking life these people have- it’s all performance. They don’t get sick! And they don’t go on vacation either!

  183. 183.

    Another Scott

    @debbie: I used to use them a lot many years ago.  They were a good company then, and may still be so now but I haven’t bought anything from them in a long time (no particular reason).

    Note that Newegg (like Amazon and Walmart and many, many other online merchants) now lets other companies use their site.  Check to see if you’re buying from Newegg itself or another company using them as a storefront.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but look at reviews for the actual vendor, etc., and do your due-diligence.

    I often check Provantage.com for computer/office related stuff.  They are a big distributor with good service and often have better prices than Amazon, too.

    Happy hunting!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  184. 184.

    Another Scott

    @debbie: If it’s a 2017, it’s not new. Apple machines last a very long time, just know what you’re getting.

    You can often save a little with Apple’s Refurbished store. Santa brought J a M1 MBAir and you would never know that it was refurbished.

    I’ve also purchased machines from MacOfAllTrades and have had no problems with them.

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  185. 185.

    Geminid

    @MattF: Hang in there. Another of my falling friends had a bad leg break two months ago, and like you is trying to transition from walker to cane. Warren says that he is healing, but that it’s kind of like watching the hour hand on a clock: he knows it’s moving, but it’s hard to see.

  188. 188.

    smith

    @Kay: His staff is really doing him a disservice. Even the statements about him being on vacation are not simple declaratives, they’re kind of hypothetical/conditional: “Maybe a governor who has 3 young kids & his wife is battling cancer would want to spend time with his family!”, and he has “a wife and 3 kids ages 1-5, and it’s not surprising if he wants to take a few days off at Christmas to spend time with his family, especially as his wife is battling cancer.” That leaves wiggle room for it to be something else, and then to post activities from the past to imply they’re happening now…

    A simple statement that he’s taking time off to be with his family during the holidays, and then not respond to further questions would be much more effective in shutting down the speculation.

  189. 189.

    Betty Cracker

    @Miss Bianca: DeSantis’s press sec says he’s on vacation and he has three children under five and his wife is battling cancer, so shut up, that’s why. This is a woman DeSantis plucked from a rabidly pro-DeSantis mommy blog to serve as his NoKo-like hagiographer, and the state pays her $120K a year to troll reporters and retweet Let’s Go Brandon memes, so maybe it’s true or maybe it’s a lie.

    But the rerun tweets are weird. Like Kay says, it’s oddly authoritarian. I wouldn’t put it past these assholes to lay a trap for people on Twitter to speculate about his death or illness so that when DeSantis shows up alive and well at one of the bowl games later today, they can declare the libs owned. Really, that’s the level of governance we have here.

  192. 192.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Kay: Is there some super secret meeting at Mar-a-Lago? Are any other of his ilk MIA?  Gaetz? Greene? Boebert? Just a thought.

  193. 193.

    Kay

    More embarrasing than the mainstream media howling when Biden took away their war was the anti-war Left’s complete failure to either have his back or use the withdrawal to promote their position.

    I never want to hear another word about “forever war” from any of these people again. They’re useless.

    If Bernie Sanders had ended that war every single one of them would have loudly supported it. It was Biden, so therefore “incorrect” so they hid. With the exception of a couple of a Democratic congresspeople the whole “antiwar” faction of the Left just didn’t show up. Too cowardly to be the first to back ordinary Democrat Joe Biden’s really brave (and politically damaging) position, looking to their fellow Leftists to tell them what the ultra sophisticated take should be. They blew it.

  195. 195.

    Kay

    I know the media are rigidly conventional people who always back the status quo but after 20 years of Leftists braying about “forever wars” I expected them to at least show up.

    Biden took the whole brunt. The antiwar army never bothered to show up.

  196. 196.

    Mai Naem mobile

    This has been a really really shit year personally and on top of everything my f#$ing regular Starbucks has been closed on and off since Thanksgiving and they’ve been out of peppermint(of peppermint mocha) and they discontinued the very berry hibiscus.

  200. 200.

    Karen S.

    Thank you, everyone, for your good wishes for my mom. One of the nurses set up a video call so we could see her for a few minutes this morning. She looked good, alert. That’s what a steady supply of oxygen gets you. They’re bombing her with antibiotics because they found an infection on one of her heart valves. She’ll need 6 weeks of antibiotics, so when she comes home, she’ll need more nursing care. I just want her home again. We all do.

  201. 201.

    sdhays

    @Another Scott: From a tweet below the one you posted:

    carolynryan ?️‍??
    @carolynryan
    20h
    Still my favorite correction ever.
    Thank you ⁦@washingtonpost

    This story has been corrected to show that John Brown, not James Brown, led the raid on Harpers Ferry.

    ⁩LOL.

  202. 202.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @Immanentize: Probably unwanted and unnecessary advice, but my father appeared to have lost his marbles when he broke his leg many years ago.  He thought my brother was Robert De Niro (it’s funny now).  I demanded his drug list, and low and behold, the hospital was using a medication that was known to cause hallucinations in the elderly to “help” his digestion.  Two days off of it; he was fine.  So if you don’t have her drug list from the hospital or rehab, demand it and look up the medications on Wikipedia.  My spouse who worked for the FDA swears by Wikipedia for accurate information.  Best wishes to her, you, the Imp for a better beginning to 2022.

  203. 203.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Still negative of Covid.  About to head to Love Field and begin our trek back to cold/rainy Los Angeles.  If we make it out of Texas with neither of us catching the Rona (during Omicron-palypse) I will seriously feel like we ran the gauntlet, big time.

    Cant wait to get home to our kitties, couch, bed.  It was great seeing the in-laws but damn, old relatives are as exhausting as kids.

  204. 204.

    Kelly

    2021 has trended better as the year went on but yeesh what a lot of whiplash.

    I was very depressed and anxious in January. Our home survived the Beachie Fire but we spent the winter and spring surrounded by the rusting ruins of many of my neighbors homes and blackened trees for 30 miles. My brother’s home was one of burnt piles. Some of the stumps smoldered all winter. Almost all the burnt buildings are cleaned up now and my brother is in his new home. Tens of thousands of burnt trees have been cleared. At least another year of clearing burnt trees to do but my attitude is much improved.

    Oh yeah there was that insurrection. We won the Senate! Biden inaugurated!

    Mrs Kelly hurt her shoulder in an awkward fall skiing then made it worse with an awkward kayak flip in fast shallow water. Between our shared tendency to think “Oh I can shake this off on my own” and the overwhelmed local medical services she only started getting therapy for some torn muscles in October. Recovery is a bit slower and harder over 60.

    By May Day we were fully vaxed and looking forward to summer. We planned our first outing with some of the grandkids. A paddle rafting trip on the N Santiam on June 26. Cancelled due to apocalyptic heat forecast. Our caution was justified. A day out at 117F with 6 to 10 year olds could have been an ordeal. Many, many trees with south or west exposure had scorched vegetation. So trees trees burnt by the sun joined trees burnt by the fires.

    August had new fires up near the perimeter of last year’s fires. Nasty smoke depending on the wind but nothing like 2020. They stayed up in the mountains 30~40 miles away but I was uneasy until the fall rains came. The 2020 fires were 30~40 miles away until the wind blew them over here one night.

    Oregon got a new Congressional seat and it’ll probably be a Democrat. The snowpack state wide is around 125% of normal. My family has avoided Covid. Things are looking better.

  206. 206.

    debbie

    @Cheryl from Maryland:

    Something similar happened to my mother. One of my brothers became suspicious about her growing spaciness, so I typed up a list of her medications (more than one page long!) and dragged her bitching and moaning into her doctor’s office. He had no idea because she was seeing several doctors. He cut the list in half and in two days, there was a huge difference. At least her memory wasn’t so good that she stayed angry with me very long.

  207. 207.

    Shalimar

    @Cheryl from Maryland: Same with my dad.  In his late 80s, still bright and sharp, and suddenly got very spacey and noticeably slower mentally after a trip to the hospital for a fall and fluid in his lungs.  After a few weeks, he was taken off of a new medicine and he was his normal self mentally for the last 4 years of his life.

  208. 208.

    Kay

    @Miss Bianca:

    The Afghanistan pull out revealed a lot, I think. How nice for the hundreds of people who conducted that war in a leadership position that Joe Biden stepped up to take all the responsibility. Worked out well for them. We should definitely listen to them next time. They are, after all, “the adults in the room”.

  209. 209.

    UncleEbeneezer

    2020 set levels of awful that really were almost untouchable.  Biden winning and Dems taking the Senate we’re about the only good things.

    Negatives we’re having Bobcat Fire get way too close to our house, months of unbreathable air and record heat, Covid, George Floyd/Breonna Taylor etc. and our beloved dog Juniper passing away on our Anniversary.

    2021 started with attempted insurrection but also brought safe/effective vaccines (which despite plague rat holdouts still has us in a much better place, long term).  Also the bullshit CRT backlash.

    We really want to start planning some big vacation trips and maybe move (and help in-laws move too) but Covid is making everything hard.

    I haven’t played music publicly or with others in 2 years which is the most time I have ever effectively missed.  I hope 2022 will allow me to do so again, but it could be awhile.

    Happy New Year to you all!!

  210. 210.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Good Riddance, But Now What?

    Come, children, gather round my knee;

    Something is about to be.

    Tonight’s December thirty-first,

    Something is about to burst.

    The clock is crouching, dark and small,

    Like a time bomb in the hall.

    Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.

    Duck! Here comes another year.

    -Ogden Nash

  212. 212.

    hueyplong

    @UncleEbeneezer: In early 2020, we’d have thought “Biden winning and Dems taking the Senate,” with the added bonus of universally available vaccines, would create Best Year Ever.

  213. 213.

    FelonyGovt

    @Betty Cracker: This DeSantis thing is really strange. I seem to recall that earlier this year, the press gave Gavin Newsom all kinds of crap because he took a few days (long weekend?) vacation without letting everyone know beforehand

  214. 214.

    Bex

    @satby: FWIW, the person I gave your soap to REALLY liked it.  And Penelope and Gus are doing well after being hospitalized over Halloween.  Saw a Christmas picture of the four of them with Pete and Chasten looking a bit tired, but happy.  Here’s to a better year for you!

  217. 217.

    mrmoshpotato

    Fuck you Rick Wilson!  Shitbag wants to kill more people than he has from being a Rethuglican operative most of his adult life.

  219. 219.

    Kalakal

    Good news for the kalakal family for the year end. My brother tested positive for Covid on Xmas day. Has tested negative last 2 days. Says he just had what seemed to be a mild cold and sore throat. He’s vaxxed and boosted.

  220. 220.

    Kalakal

    @Betty Cracker: And 2 days ago she was putting up official messages of his ‘schedule’ showing how hard he was working on our behalf.

    She’s so amateurish, I honestly thought that video message about the holiday was a parody.

  222. 222.

    pat

    Looks like the thread isn’t dead yet, so I will mention how I avoid falling on the ice on the steps:

    I have a bottle of Traction Grit on the porch and if it is icy I sprinkle it on the steps and the path to the garage or mailbox.

    The Traction Grit is NOT salt and therefore remains on the surface.  The bottle is from cat litter.  The grit is not available everywhere so I buy several bags at a time.

    Oh, and you can sweep it up in the spring and  use it again.

  223. 223.

    Another Scott

    Sounds like something out of some speculative fan fiction, but…

    Interesting thread (scroll up to the beginning).

    The Spanish plundered katanas and Japanese armor from the fort and kept them as war trophies. The Japanese never again returned to the region. It is hard to imagine Conquistadors & Aztecs dueling Samurai or fighting Ottomans in the jungles of Borneo, but it happened. pic.twitter.com/qMns2Y6RfS

    — Varangian Chronicler (@Varangian_Tagma) December 30, 2021

    (via Popehat)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  224. 224.

    mrmoshpotato

    @debbie:

    Fuck these fucking people who act like we should have known 100 percent how to deal with COVID on Day 1. Just fuck them. 

    Amen to every word.

    My laptop’s dying and my 24-year-old nephew’s cancer is back. Still not speaking to any of my family. 2021 has sucked and I struggle to remain hopeful.

    I’m sorry.  Hang in there with the rest of us.  I hope he beats back the cancer again.

  225. 225.

    Peale

    @FelonyGovt: my guess is that he’s getting plastic surgery before his presidential run. Hence he can’t appear in public even to drop a note. He doesn’t want anyone to know that it’s not just girly vain women who get a lift. Like we aren’t supposed to notice his dyed hair.

  227. 227.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @hueyplong: Absolutely.  It’s really the ridiculous CA wildfire season and loss of our beloved 14 year old doggy that will always make 2020 one of our worst, personally.

  228. 228.

    Ruckus

    @debbie:

    The worst are the guys who have to sleep across 2 seats with legs/feet in the aisle and their cart in another row. Commuter train, not subway. Although we do have 2 subway lines in LA as well and one of them is getting extended quite a bit.

  230. 230.

    debbie

    @Ruckus:

    I used to use commuter trains to visit friends in CT and NJ. The shoppers with their eleventy billion shopping bags were equally annoying.

  231. 231.

    Kay

    Susan Glasser:

    Sanity, competence, and civility have not exactly returned to Washington; normalcy is not just around the corner. Biden, it is now clear, promised what he couldn’t deliver in a nation divided against itself. He trafficked in hope that was arguably as misleading in its own way as Trump’s lies.

    A lot of us knew it wasn’t going back to normal. A lot of us knew we’d have to pay and pay and pay for the Donald Trump mistake.

    Why do pundits believe Americans don’t have to pay for massive errors like electing that piece of shit, lying conman? Of course we do. We’ll be paying for Donald Trump 20 years from now.

    It’s just childish. Accept the consequences. We’re not “going back to normal” that easy.

  232. 232.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay: that is some baroque phrasing to get to the end that Biden is responsible for the stubborn stupidity of the trump trash

    for having thrown them a lifeline to crawl out of their holes, which they rejected.

  234. 234.

    sab

    @Kalakal: That is how it is supposed to work if you are vaxxed and boosted. Which is why you get vaxxed and boosted.

    Glad it worked out for him as intended.

  235. 235.

    Kalakal

    @sab: Exactly so. It’s why I get so annoyed with anti-vaxxers and their ‘vaccines don’t work, people still get the disease’ . For my brother and many, many other people they have worked wonderfully

  237. 237.

    Ruckus

    @debbie:

    They could have owned a car and then the roads would be more crowded, the air more polluted, life a bit more dangerous, and one less place to park……

    There’s always a bright side to everything, but often one needs a microscope to find it…..

  238. 238.

    opiejeanne

    And 2021, which had gone so well for so many of us, just got her last kick in by taking Betty White from us, on the last day of the year.

  240. 240.

    J R in WV

    @E.: ​
     

    Knoxville abortion clinic just burned to the ground.

    Must have caught from that fire in Colorado, don’t you think? Quite a coincidence, though! Probably a Trumpista had an accident with their lighter and a cig, right? Total accident!

    “I had no idea gasoline could burn like that! Imagine that we all have some of that in our cars!!”

    //s in case you couldn’t tell…

  242. 242.

    sab

    2021 went so much better for me than 2020. 2021 pretty much sucked, but 2020 was horrible. 2021 we got vaccinated and could choose how to deal with the world.

    2021 I had two pets die, but I didn’t have to shoot them in the backyard after arming up at a gunstore. Instead they died peacefully in my arms at the vet hospital.

  243. 243.

    Ruckus

    If we are going for things to be glad for, here’s my list.

    I’m still alive. Because of my age and the VA I got my shots in January and February, with a booster in October. I sent a message to my primary and she replied that my group was opened up 10 minutes before she read my message. I called got appointments.

    Getting old is a lot nicer than not, at least that has been my experience so far, now that I’m 1/4 of the way through my eighth decade. Life hasn’t been always great, and I think that I’m dealing with some residual effects from a disease that I got from getting one of the then normal numerous childhood diseases, that we now have vaccines for. I know others who had it worse than me by far.

    One of the fun bits of current life is finding out that there is a rather large contingent of assholes, morons and dipshits who have managed to continue living in spite of the aforementioned characteristics. Another fun bit is that science has advanced enough that we had reasonable vaccines in less than a year. Now if we could figure out how to limit assholiness, morons and dipshits, we could make it even better. I’m not hopeful about that…

    We are alive, and for the most part and times, reasonable creatures. Enough intelligence not to play in traffic, not to eat things that will kill us, and to get vaccinated in a pandemic when available. Hell that’s a pretty good step above a way too large portion of the population and that’s not just the population in the US. I’m wondering if the concept of conservatism is more about conserving abject stupidity than anything else. A small thought for the day as we transition into a new year.

    May it be a lot better for all of us.

  247. 247.

    J R in WV

    @Immanentize:

    Very common drugs have side effects that would appear in an elderly patient to be dementia. My dad had lung surgery many years ago in the late ’80s IIRC and they gave him a high powered new antibiotic called Cipro. That afternoon following the surgery a close friend visited, and dad saw kittens in his arms.

    Doc asked if my republican father had used recreational drugs, to which I replied Vodka & tonic before dinners. We looked up the drug in the PDR and hallucinations was top of the list for side effects. But doc couldn’t do that, we had to do that. Ass for brains!

    And dad’s lung problem was an encysted little dead infection, harmless, not cancer. But they all made their BMW payments that month.

  249. 249.

    JAFD

    @Immanentize: Back in 2001, my father had what docs called ‘stroke-induced Alzheimers’ – was ‘not there’ for months.  Fortunately he got good care and prayers, we ‘got him back’ for the years until his heart failed and he passed on.

    My prayers for your mother.

  250. 250.

    JAFD

    @Gin & Tonic: Had a few cups of Prune Whip Yogurt in my time.  Remember ’twas greatly improved if one added a tablespoonful or two of maple syrup to the cup beforehand.

  251. 251.

    JAFD

    @Betty Cracker: Picked up copy of The Metaphysical Club at Fall In, read first couple of chapters on train home.  Then went thru Part 5 with highlighters, the ‘first find out his conclusions, then let’s see how he got there’ reading strategy.

    Will resume working way thru the middle chapters when I emerge from hibernation…

Comments are closed.