I really regret to inform you all but I do not have much of anything other than a bad attitude to offer you all. I still have seen absolutely no evidence that there is a plan for anything other than to just bomb and run and then let the chips fall where they may. Trump says something different every time he opens his piehole, we apparently killed scores of girls under the age of 12 at a school, so that should help everyone sleep tonight.
I am so pissed off about this earlier today I was running errands and was driving down a side street and there was a stop sign so I stopped and I immediately started fuming about what is going on and just raged and after like 90 seconds thought this is an extremely long light, snapped out of it, and realized I was at a stop sign. Last night my brain literally broke while I was trying to write the word scissors and got just all wrapped around the axle and could literally feel my brain grind to a halt and lose focus
scisor
sissor
sizzor
sciszors
and then like everything stop working and none of the words on the page made sense and I was dazed and had that “Is this a stroke am I having an acid flashback” feeling and then muttered god damnit and alt-tabbed to duckduckgo and searched for shears+synonym and found it that way. God I hate these people. I suppose along with a quagmire, every generation gets to relive the classics:
I guess it is part of the education of the youth to replay all the Greatest Hits, although this time it is the muzak version and the kids are far less prime to buy the bullshit. We’ll have to check in and see if Sullivan has spotted a fifth column in our midst. Just everything about this sucks.
Make sure you write and call your congressmen.
It’s late, I am spent, and I doubt many of you are still awake, so I will just stop complaining and call it a night. I convince myself this is somehow therapeutic for you all.
JaySinWA
For some reason I thought Andrew Sullivan had died.
Timill
Ain’t nobody awake here but just us chickens…
piratedan
on Tuesday I get to go to a local Dem org meeting on the possible Virginia redistricting possibilities. Starting to see ads running here in Va about the temporary redistricting referendum and how former state legislators are stating that this is a response to extreme gerrymandering INITIATED at the request of POTUS of RED states.
If this plays out in Virginia and passes, then suddenly my region is gettable and the smiling shitbag who represents me now can go away.
already signed up for postcarding in two weeks.
Gloria DryGarden
I’m looking for a respite thread that asks, what are the things you are doing to keep yourself from going batshit crazy? What resources nourish your soul? What purpose Do you find in the midst of crushing and crazy news?
Im working on my own list. I may report back later.
Martin
Charlie Kirk, educational inspiration.
Buddy dropped out of community college and made a career out of dunking on undergraduates with propaganda until his neck exploded.
Timill
@Gloria DryGarden: Feed the cats.
In particular, as of yesterday, we have a 30lb ginger Norwegian Forest cat to feed…
[he’s probably on a diet once we’ve got him to a vet for a checkup]
coin operated
@Gloria DryGarden: After 10 years of going bug-fuck insane while Trump was in office…I found some Indica-rosin prerolls that are 100% effective at blocking whatever Trump BS happened that day.
Of course…waking up to more bad news is kinda suppressing this effect.
Martin
@Gloria DryGarden: Factorio aka cracktorio. Gin is good too.
WTFGhost
Now, when I’m having neuro pain, that’s the kind of thing that happens. My brain might seize up or freeze, or hang on some stupid, common word, and, most importantly, it doesn’t feel like “ouch” pain at all.
More than anything else, that’s what I want people to understand and figure out. That kind of seize-up, that kind of loss of ability to spell, that’s precisely what I go through, but, I can also recognize the pain that’s the cause of it.
Which is to say I think there’s a possibility that this is a pain-caused effect, but, it does also sound neurological, like, brain overload, or, brain under-activation. Or some combo, this part is overloaded, that part is under-activated.
Geminid
@piratedan: I’m not sure of this, but I think Virginia’s new map puts Rep. Eugene Vindman in the 1st CD. He lives up in Prince William County.
different-church-lady
It actually is, John. For real. I think I would have gone nutty years ago without this place.
different-church-lady
@Martin:
Excellent use of the passive voice.
Melancholy Jaques
@JaySinWA:
At times like these I am glad that Joe Lieberman is no longer around.
Interesting Name Goes Here
Somehow, the guy who swears he’s not a Nazi despite evidence confirming he really likes Nazis keeps getting caught next to Nazis:
bsky.app/profile/charlesgaba.com/post/3mfzrc3y2hk2
Progressives really know how to pick them, don’t they?
WTFGhost
@coin operated: I switch between 9lb hammer BHO concentrates, and a physical 9lb hammer… never mind, but, let’s say, some days, dealing with the BS is more painful than other days.
Gloria DryGarden
@WTFGhost: when my ptsd knocks me on my ass, there are many cognitive symptoms. Dis comprehension. I’m inventing it as a new world. Unreal realities. Dissociation. An inability to ground. Odder than usual cross associations, thought spiraling, and not knowing things I usually know. Less frightening than it used to be.
At the beginning, there was a time when I couldn’t understand basic sentences in my first language. And reading became difficult. Gratefully, this stuff has become rare, and minimal.
it’s s great to read your experience, you convey it clearly.
im still trying to understand neuro pain. Not sure if this is it, but you’ve made me thing of nerve entrapment, and of fascia that wraps the nerve bundles and might stop the glide of physical tissues. There’s a thing called nerve flossing, they’re basically stretches, and I don’t understand it yet. The exercises for nerve flossing come around at times, and I try them. I’m not convinced yet, but I remain curious, and might look for how to do more of it.
gratuitous
Of all the offenses to humanity in the last 48 hours, I think my top one is the folks who are rooting for the return of the Pahlavi family to the Peacock Throne of Iran. Nobody in the political media as currently constituted seems to remember why the Shah Na Na of Iran was deposed in the first place.
Chetan R Murthy
@Interesting Name Goes Here: I think there’s a typo in your link
— the trailing “x” got deleted. But I found it by looking at Gaba’s user timeline.bsky.app/profile/charlesgaba.com/post/3mg23ihmcqc2x
ETA: or maybe Gaba deleted/recreated the post.
piratedan
@Geminid: will know more on Tuesday! I’ll report back.
WTFGhost
@Martin: The Patron Saint of Gun Rights, wise enough to acknowledge his own preaching could lead to his death. He certainly did learn a valuable lesson, akin to “FAFO,” and, perhaps, that is the only Republican “education” available right now. Face it: thinking, planning, consideration of important factors, etc., those are for loser Demoncrats.
jonas
FWIW, on Iran, Israel, and Trump these days, Sullivan is sounding like a goddamn DSA hippie running for a seat on the Berkeley city council. Still a clueless dick about GAC and trans kids, though.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Chetan R Murthy: It’s still showing for me. Try this link:
bsky.app/profile/charlesgaba.com/post/3mfzrc3y2hk2x
Gloria DryGarden
@coin operated: that’s exactly the trouble. The next day more. It’s like managing symptoms but getting reinsured plus additional injuries.
p.a.
Bought some white tea online from *don’t ask* but it seems to have a calming effect. For a time.
WTFGhost
@Gloria DryGarden: One thing I’ve learned, is, if my neuro pain is firing, I can’t tell if what I’m feeling is pain, or PTSD. When too much sensation floods my brain, it can trigger memories or emotional states. Recognizing that, I find if I can often go mindful of my body’s sensation, I can conquer the PTSD effects, though the downside is I’m aware of every bit of pain (since I’m no longer sublimating it as emotions/memories). Still, mindful pain tolerance is a thing – those Buddhist monks aren’t wrong.
Martin
@different-church-lady: Not for me to determine how it happened.
p.a.
Is our Space Force ™ being used in the totally not a war? Is it still a thing?
Gloria DryGarden
@WTFGhost: golly. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Real sorry you go through this.
btw, weeks and weeks ago, your fascia report inspired a nature/ fascia poetry exploration that I put late in a thread as a reply to you. It had trees, and earth mitochondria in it. It was half a magical incantation of sorts. Perchance you never saw it. Wondering. Not saying it was great literature, but it had cool imagery.
NotMax
“Pointy cutty things” works.
:)
jonas
Aaaand we have at long last arrived:
ETA: the remaining 30% either 1. haven’t heard of Iran, 2. aren’t sure where it is, or 3. think it may be the name of a prog rock band.
JetsamPool
I’m just glad I’m not the only one who is stressed by all this. My conservative parent, who normally does not talk to me about politics, made some comments about Hillary Clinton/Kamala Harris enabling the Iranians. How can you reply to someone who does not listen to you at all? (That was a rhetorical question).
Shalimar
I think I’m done. Wasting hours every day following all the evil in the country and the world is a path that leads only to depression. There are too many awful people. Better to focus on home and fantasies.
jonas
Absolutely. Do you realize what might happen if the mad mullahs ever managed to seize control of any one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of close approach asteroids out there? They were just days away from perfecting the technology to do so…
Matt McIrvin
Is Marc Thiessen really that dumb or is it an act?
dmsilev
@jonas: Some numbers indeed are universal.
My personal theory is that Trump learned that Bush got a (brief) burst of popularity by attacking Iraq, and he’s therefore going to attack anything he can find that starts with ‘Ira’. Preemptive condolences to the maintainers of Ira Gershwin’s grave site; it’s getting drone-bombed next week.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin: ‘Both’ is an evergreen answer to that question.
Melancholy Jaques
@Interesting Name Goes Here:
I don’t know that progressives – as that term is generally understood – either picked or support that guy. It’s more like the consistently anti-Democratic Party Bernie Woulda Won crowd.
While the Venn diagram of that group with progressives does overlap, it is not concentric circles.
jonas
@Matt McIrvin: Though I probably shouldn’t be at this point, I’m still surprised by how flamingly ignorant our billionaire overlords can be about almost everything in the world.
William F. Buckley once remarked that he would rather be governed by the first 500 names in the Boston telephone directory than the faculty of Harvard. Ok, fair enough. Can we say we’d much rather be governed by the first 500 people that turned up in a random generator of US citizens from anywhere in the country than the 500 richest morons in the country? Because that’s who’s effectively governing us now, and it SUCKS.
jonas
@dmsilev: He’s been pretty consistent over the years in slagging Bush and the neocons for all their stupid “nation-building” and “speading democracy” nonsense. He just likes watching military hardware blow shit up, and he’s still a bit high on his own supply after snatching Maduro out of Venezuela. He’s still basically thinking:
We’ll see how this looks in a few weeks after oil hits $100+/barrel and several dozen US service (wo)men and countless Iranians have been killed.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Melancholy Jaques: Any overlap is still way too goddamn close, especially considering the circumstances and increasing frequency. And not helping matters is Bernie Sanders – not just the leader of that anti-Democratic Party crowd but also the reigning chief example of a Progressive in this country – being ride-or-die with Platner along with David Hogg and a lot of self-proclaimed Progressive pundits. One would think that after Fetterman and Gabbard ended up being turncoat disasters, they would be more discerning about who they choose to represent them. Instead, it’s becoming increasingly clear that their goal isn’t sweeping change for all so much as it is widespread disruption and destruction that they can profit off of.
Jay
@Interesting Name Goes Here:
In Canada, a significant number of us are ABC voters.
Anybody But the Conservative.
We are multi-party, don’t elect the Prime Minister, different system than the US.
I am a Dipper (NDP) member in my riding. Canadian’s actually “joining” political parties is rare.
We had an excellent NDP Candidate in the last Federal Election. Proven talent.
I voted for the Liberal.
The Liberal was barely leading in the polls, the Con was a close, second, “our” Candidate was a distant 3rd, the Green was barely ahead of the Communist Party Of Canada.
If I lived in the US and could vote, I would vote for the Democratic Party candidate in the Primaries that the African American electorate supported. Period.
prostratedragon
@gratuitous: 1978 — Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was still Shah of Iran, and “Y.M.C.A.” came out. Coincidence?
Vthibeaux
@Gloria DryGarden: I have started going back to church. It helps.
Vthibeaux
@Gloria DryGarden: I have started going back to church. It helps.
Heshvan
@different-church-lady: I agree.
knally
Hmmm. I think this explains why USAID had to go
Rising anger over ‘lop-sided’ and ‘immoral’ US health funding pacts with African countries
Gretchen
We have the very unpopular Roger Marshall here in Kansas running for re-election. It’s not a great pick-up opportunity, but an idiot pastor has decided to run as an independent to make sure that the anti-Marshall vote is sufficiently split to let him glide back in for another 6 years of loving Trump and helping RFK push all his nonsense.
Matt McIrvin
@prostratedragon: Donald Trump is, himself, a figure of 1980s nostalgia and to some extent his mind is stuck in that era. Iran was one of the big villains to anyone who remembered the hostage crisis. Attack Iran and everyone’s going to love you automatically, right?
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: I think they’re thinking step 2 is “Iran sponsors a major terrorist attack on the US mainland”. They think that with a 9/11, they’ll get magically popular like Bush and just be able to steamroll opposition. Charlie Kirk’s murder was supposed to do it but it didn’t work.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin:
@dmsilev:
Yes and yes and yes.
Miss Bianca
@JetsamPool: “With all due respect, honorable parent, fuck you”?
Always happy to help.
Paul in KY
@Martin: That about summs it up.
Paul in KY
@Timill: Yow! 30 lbs is getting into ‘cat owns you’ territory.
Paul in KY
@Shalimar: I’m getting there myself.