Social engagement

After Twitter got destroyed by Elon the Terrible, I basically did without any social media for a while. I still had a Facebook account, but that service and its overlords are problematic (to say the least) as well and I never hang out there anymore. I tried a few of the new Twitter competitors as they came around—Hive, Post, one other one I've already forgotten the name of—but they all lacked functionality or otherwise rubbed me the wrong way somehow. I never tried Mastadon or Threads; the former seemed way too complicated and the latter is, like Facebook, a Zuckerberg joint, and I'm not a fan. Then Spoutible came along, and I liked that one. I was hopeful (still am, to a lesser degree) that it would be the platform to rise to the top of the heap and become the "new Twitter," for lack of a better term. But it's BlueSky that seems to have won that war, that's the one that now has the userbase needed for such a thing to succeed and, for me, to be interesting.

So I'm on BlueSky now. Still on Spoutible, too—I prefer that service as an entity, with its BotSentinel integration and its general Bouzyness, but it just doesn't have the reach BlueSky has now with its much greater numbers. Spoutible also doesn't have the sort of integrations useful for sites like this, whereas BlueSky does. Hence the new feedbox at right (if you're reading this on a phone screen, it won't be there unless you turn it on its side to landscape style) and the share buttons, which now have share-to-BlueSky as well as Facebook (because for some damn reason Facebook is still how tons of people use the Internet in toto) options and no more Twitter options. Because screw that guy and his now-shitty rebranded platform.

Anyway, at some point I'll get back into the habit of "skeets" and "spouts" of things that aren't meaty enough for a post here.

Posted on December 23, 2024 at 7:43pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Miscellany

Weird but fun, Interior Chinatown is worth a watch

Today's post: A random assortment of disjointed stuff!

• The dishwasher saga is over, with a new one purchased, delivered, and installed and the old one carted away to whatever scrap heap such things are taken to. I hadn't initially planned to replace the broken one so quickly, but holiday sales at Lowe's convinced me I was better off spending $600 now, on a good one on sale, than later on a cheaper one at regular price. It works, it's quiet, and most importantly, it doesn't leak into Rachel's kitchen downstairs.
• I've spent a chunk of time doing maintenance on this here website, including recreating the sketches page and beginning to populate it with stuff readily available, i.e. mostly stuff from the last few years that was either already scanned into my computer or at hand in my currently in-use sketchbook. There's other stuff in my hard drive already digitized, things that were on prior versions of my blog, but they were posted in the olden days of the Internet when nobody had a screen resolution bigger than 800 pixels and are thus pretty lousy scans. I'll have to find the originals and rescan them at some point. Anyway, the current format has clickable icons that produce a fullscreen image and a button to continue to "notes and comments" that takes you to a page for that individual sketch and any blathering I may have done about it, plus a commenting form just like a blog post. Click anywhere other than the button to close the fullscreen image and return to the sketch menu.
• I had my Christmas the other night at K&E's place, enjoying delicious food and talking about the world and also TV. All three of us love the Hulu show Interior Chinatown, starring Jimmy Yang and Chloe Bennett. It's a wacky comedic sendup of action movies, the Law & Order franchise, and meta-storytelling that takes place both within a Law & Order-style TV show and around a mild-mannered Chinese-American's family in a fictional Chinatown neighborhood. Recommended. We also agree on the greatness of Michael Schur's A Man on the Inside (Netflix), which I discussed briefly earlier but deserves a second recommend. The Diplomat (Netflix) also works for all of us, and we commented on the overlap of cast and crew from The West Wing on it (even though neither of them have ever really watched West Wing, which is really a bummer for them). Shrinking (Apple TV+) wasn't something they'd seen but which I think is terrific; they liked Slow Horses, which I've not sampled to this point. I'm very much into Silo (Apple TV+) and, naturally, the just-concluded (boo) Star Trek: Lower Decks, but know better than to try to convince K&E to watch those.
• I was gifted the book What's Next on that early-Christmas evening, and though I've yet to start into it, I am anticipating some great West Wing reflections and truly wonder how it will feel to revisit the details of the fictional Bartlet Administration while living in the impending nightmare of Trump 2.0, Now With More Oligarchy.
• I just learned that baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson died today. One of the all-time greats, Rickey was a fantastic character with is arrogant self-assuredness, his speaking in the third person, and his generosity to others. Despite being exactly my kind of ballplayer—the stolen base king! Consistently walked more than struck out!—he was never one of my favorites, maybe because he took the steals record away from one of my faves, Lou Brock, or maybe because he spent his career primarily with the Oakland A's and the hated New York Yankees. He did spend part of one season in Seattle as a Mariner, in 2000, in the waning days of his very long career, and was always fun to watch no matter who he played for. My two favorite Rickey Henderson anecdotes come from other players. One, from former Seattle Mariner Harold Reynolds, who won the stolen base crown in 1987 with 66 steals (because Henderson was injured that year) and got a postseason call from Rickey congratulating him but also containing Rickey-style mockery, with Henderson ending the call with "Rickey would have had 66 by the All-Star break." Two, from fellow Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, who was Rickey's teammate with the New York Mets; Piazza recounted how Rickey voted when teams would be divvying up the postseason bonuses among the support staff. “Rickey was the most generous guy I ever played with, and whenever the discussion came around to what we should give one of the fringe people—whether it was a minor leaguer who came up for a few days or the parking lot attendant—Rickey would shout out 'Full share!' We’d argue for a while and he’d say, 'Fuck that! You can change somebody’s life!'” Apparently Rickey died from pneumonia, less than a week shy of 66 years old. Bummer.
• Earlier this week, Craig Calcaterra referenced a Washington Post article called "America's Best Decade" in his newsletter. The article analyzes results from polling 2,000 American adults on which decade was best for 20 different things, like best movies, best economy, best music, best reporting, and so on. There are some interesting (though not surprising) things, like Republicans are twice as likely to think the 1950s were awesome as other people are (hey, Republicans, that being the case, let's go back to the 90% marginal tax rate that existed then, which made for a lot of the circumstances you say you want!), or that people think the "best music" is the music they listened to in their formative years. But Craig's takeaway was surprise at the generational consistency of people liking their own youth (not just the music, but everything). "Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age," says the article. "The good old days when America was 'great' aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices." There's a handy graph to illustrate:
  

  

  
  If they'd polled me, I might have skewed the results just a smidge. I mean, if I followed the pattern, I'd have my bests coming in the 1980s, and frankly there was a lot about the ’80s that wasn't all that. I mean, sure, those years were largely good for me (well, not ’89), but thinking big picture not so much. I'd say... Best Music? 1970s. Best Movies? I'm not really big into movies like some people, so I don't have a real feeling on this, but I guess the 2000s? Best Fashion? Hell if I know, but certainly not the ’80s; maybe the ’60s, since it spanned a lot of stuff. Happiest Families? Again, WTF do I know, but I'd say maybe 1990s since (a) women had far more agency than in prior decades, and (b) economically things were stable and good throughout. Most Moral Society is a question that inevitably tracks one's politics and I'd be tempted to say the 2020s if not for what happened last month to show us how many millions of Americans are still racist, misogynist, cruel asshats. Most Reliable News Reporting? 1970s again, though it really depends on how you quantify; there's a lot of fine reportage more recently, but also increasingly widespread BS from the dawn of cable TV forward. Best Economy? 1990s. Best Radio? I've no proper context for this, but given how much more radio was a thing the further back you go, maybe the 1940s or ’50s? For me, again the ’70s. Best TV? Right now, man. So much great TV being made even as the TV delivery system is transmogrifying. Least Political Division? Um...never? I mean, now is the worst in ages, but there's always been a lot; maybe the ’40s, what with the war being a unifying purpose. Best Sporting Events? For me, that's limited to baseball, really, and in this area I fit the trend—1980s baseball was great and I wish we could exhume Bart Giamatti to be Commissioner again. Best Cuisine seems like a dumb category, as food doesn't change, really, it's how we eat that changes. I like good food whenever it's eaten. Anyway, kind of an interesting survey.

Tagged Site issues, Politics, West Wing, Baseball, TV, Craig Calcaterra   |   Posted on December 21, 2024 at 8:37pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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America the Stupidful

I had some friends over the other night to nerd out a little on some DS9 and Lower Decks, but we also gabbed about other stuff and inevitably the subject turned to our individual post-election anxieties and outrage. I guess we’re still in the assign-blame stage of our trauma, because we spent a good chunk of time on how is it that so many Americas are this stupid?

I hesitate to use the word “stupid.” Yet, while un- and misinformed is a true and more specific substitute phrase, it fails to capture the greater scope of failings. Why did the Republican propaganda campaign work so well, especially considering that the garbage being claimed in it was so obviously false and easily debunked with very little effort? People accepted the misinformation without any critical thought because, what? Laziness? Indifference? Need for simplicity?

History has shown us that the Republican party is (a) very bad at governing when it comes to the bulk of the American public; (b) completely devoted to concentrating as much wealth in as few hands as possible so long as it includes their hands; and (c) expert at manipulating low-information voters and using fear of The Other to focus voter attention away from their real priorities, which are profoundly unpopular with the vast majority of Americans. The New (i.e. post-“Tea Party”) Republicans have taken the fear tactics and psychological warfare manipulation playbook and kicked it into overdrive.

Despite these New Republicans being openly fascist, despite the plain-to-see influence of corrupt billionaires on their agenda, despite literal criminal convictions among many of the major players, they won election largely on the basis of anti-LGBTQ posturing, demonization of immigrants, coded and not-so-coded racism and misogyny, and fantasy fiction about how money works. All bullshit, all reliant on generating a lizard-brain emotional fight-or-flight response and completely bypassing rational thinking in their audience.

It shouldn’t work. And yet, here we are.

It’s the last of those things—fantasy fiction about money—that’s the most maddening to me, both because it underpins all the others and because it’s so easily refuted for anyone who bothers to look into it.

Also, it isn’t just a New Republican thing, it’s been a Republican thing for ages, a long con on the American people going back a century but that really got rolling with Ronald Reagan. Somehow it became conventional wisdom that Republican economic policies were more sound, when in fact, with the possible exception of the Dwight Eisenhower administration’s, every Republican agenda since the 1920s supported concentrating more wealth with the rich and putting more of the onus for funding the government on the lower classes. Favorite methods for this were shifting the tax burden downward and eliminating regulations on businesses, always leading to disaster.

GOP: GREED OUTWEIGHS PUBLIC INTEREST

 

Warren G. Harding became President in 1921 after campaigning on a “return to normalcy” after the Spanish Flu pandemic and World War I, appealing to a nostalgia of days gone by rather than the needs of the present and future. He opposed the League of Nations and championed deregulation, but had little else to work with in terms of policy goals. According to Woodrow Wilson cabinet officer William McAdoo, a typical Harding campaign speech was “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea,” while the New York Times described voters’ reception of Harding’s words as “a reflection of their own indeterminate thoughts.”

Harding cut taxes, including the elimination of an “excess profits tax”—wouldn’t that be handy today?—and reducing the top marginal income tax rate from 73% to 58% and eventually to 25%. Regulations were slashed on the railroad industry and business generally and his administration was rife with corruption. Though in the short term the economy boomed, lack of regulation under Harding and his successor Calvin Coolidge allowed for monopolistic industry and excesses of greed and led to the Great Depression in 1929. Hebert Hoover was elected in 1928, the third consecutive Republican administration, and took office with this statement: “Given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” He said this despite growing income inequality that was seeing the poor get poorer, then stock market crashed mere months later. Coolidge and Hoover had both been warned that economic calamity was coming but neither did anything to head it off and Hoover did nothing to effectively combat the Depression when it came, though he did increase taxes on the wealthy—basically the only people left in the country with any income to speak of—and attempt reforms, just not to the scale required. It took Democrat Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to start righting the wrongs of the three Republican administrations and ultimately the economic impact of World War II to fully bring the nation out of the Great Depression.

From FDR on, only the aberrant presidency of Eisenhower, only nominally a Republican (he described himself as a “progressive conservative” that believed in robust government services, at least compared to other Republicans), broke the string of Democratic administrations until 1969, when Republican Richard Nixon took office. Nixon inherited a generally healthy economy that was experiencing high-for-the-era inflation of over 4% thanks in part to the expense of the Vietnam war. Nixon policies turned surplus into deficit, begat recession, and, despite some easing in the short term, higher inflation that peaked at 11%. The second Nixon recession continued after he resigned from office and successor Gerald Ford saw unemployment hit 9%, a post-WWII record.

But it was the “Reagan Revolution” that kicked off so many of the troubles we live with today.

Declaring that “government is the problem,” Reagan stormed into office in 1981 to implement “trickle-down economics,” the long-since discredited theory that giving more money to wealthy interests will result in that money “tricking down” to everyone as those at the top hire workers. His reforms cut the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 50% and eventually to just 28%; cut corporate taxes and tripled the exemptions for the estate tax; brought on a two-year recession; saw unemployment top 11%; busted labor unions; and halved the number of regulations on industry. The wealth gap began to widen greatly and the middle class started to shrink.

Reagan’s deregulation of banking and broadcasting gave us the Savings and Loan crisis (which cost taxpayers $160 billion as the government had to pay back customers of nearly 750 S&L institutions that had their savings pilfered by embezzlers and lost to previously-illegal investment schemes) and the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, plus ushered in those lovely pharmaceutical commercials we see constantly on TV. Deregulation of the insurance and healthcare industries put profit motive front and center, eliminating non-profit requirements for hospitals and health insurance; public health programs were slashed, the percentage of uninsured Americans spiked, medical debt became a common thing.

We’ve never recovered from Reaganomics, with successor Democratic administrations only managing to make marginal improvements and successor Republican administrations doing their damnedest to make things worse.

George W. Bush repeated the deregulatory escapades of the 1920s and the budget-busting tax breaks and military spending of the 1980s, giving us sanctioned energy scams and the Great Recession of 2007, not to mention a mountain of debt and an even more enormous wealth gap between the top of the heap and the bulk of the country. Trump took corruption, fraud, and reverse-Robin-Hooding to levels previously unheard of, and is so incompetent that his mismanagement of the COVID pandemic contributed greatly to worldwide economic hardships and inflation unseen since Nixon’s time.

There is nothing, nothing, to support the idea that Republican policies will help the average American economically. They invariably hurt everyone but the super-rich. Trump policy is even worse, promising the most extreme transfer of funds from the poor, middle class, and even well-to-do to the billionaire class.

The middle class comprised two-thirds of Americans when Jimmy Carter left office in 1981. It’s now roughly one-third and falling, thanks to Reaganomics, George W. Bush malfeasance, and Trump criminality.

And yet spouting bullshit at rallies and handing out placards at the RNC that read “Lower Prices Now” convinced people Republicans will help their bank balances? Really?

So, yeah: People are stupid.

Posted on December 19, 2024 at 5:59pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Just in time for Christmas

Yay, more expenses!

The other night I ran my dishwasher, you know, like you do. Seemed fine. Until I opened it up after it was finished. Then water flooded part of my kitchen.

This kind of thing had happened once before, though not to this degree, so I thought I knew what to do—get into the drainage filters and clean out the muck. Which I did, and there was muck.

This time, though, there was also bits of broken plastic. And a couple of screws. Some part or parts of the thing had disintegrated, clearly. It's never worked all that well since I moved in here anyway, and this struck me as possibly a last straw of sorts.

Anyway, I sopped up my floor flood and emptied the dishwasher of dishes that had to be rewashed by hand and then put it out of my mind until I got a text from my neighbor downstairs asking if I might know why there was a slow but steady drip from her ceiling.

Oops.

I'd sopped up all the water on my kitchen floor, but maybe there was still a small pond underneath the dishwasher? Why hadn't I thought of that?

So tonight I removed the damn thing, and sure enough, about half an inch of standing water under it, plus the thing had somehow accumulated another inch or so of water inside it despite my not having run it in the meantime. Shit. (And removing the dishwasher involved disconnecting the waterline and drainage hose, of course, so more flooding, though comparatively minor. I believe I have two dry towels left, having used the rest to sop up the pond and the new flood.)

Good news is, there should be no more drip-drip into my neighbor's place. Bad news is, I have to get rid of this piece of junk and eventually replace it with a new one, which apparently will cost anywhere from $400-$1200, and that's if I install it myself. Assuming I can get it up into my kitchen. Maybe Lowe's will deliver it all the way upstairs even if they aren't installing? Hm. Anyone have experience with that sort of thing?

Tagged Money, Homeownership   |   Posted on December 7, 2024 at 2:26am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Bizarro Cabinet Spotlight: SecDef

The incoming POTUS has named many, many utterly horrible people as cabinet nominees. Some of these incompetent and dangerous buffoons and clowns (clowns with the arsenal of the Joker, by the way) will be confirmed by the incoming Senate. We can only hope that enough Republicans in the new Senate have actual standards befitting their office and the worst of the worst get rejected.

Our worst-of-the-worst spotlight today is on the Department of Defense. The nominee is one Pete Hegseth, who is a Fox "News" personality and wholly unqualified for the gig. But he is, like the incoming POTUS, a sexual assaulter who pays off women to keep them quiet, which likely makes him an A-one perfect candidate in the eyes of the man nominating him. He's also appears to be one to give Rudy Giuliani a run for his money when it comes to who's drunkest.

Prior to becoming a weekend anchor on Fox, Hesketh headed up two veterans advocacy groups, Concerned Veterans of America and Veterans for Freedom. He was forced out of both due to frequent intoxication and misuse of funds, among other reasons.

A report on Hesgeth's conduct with CVA described a series of drunken appearances at CVA events which were "embarrassing, but not surprising; people have simply come to expect Pete to get drunk at social events." One person who worked with Hegseth at CVA said, "I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary."

With VFF, Hesgeth mismanaged funds so thoroughly that the group had run up nearly half a million dollars in debts while having less than $1,000 on hand. “There’s a long pattern, over more than a decade, of malfeasance, financial mismanagement, and sexual impropriety,” said a former Hegseth associate. “There’s a fair dose of bullying and misinformation, too.”

That part makes him basically twinsies with POTUS 45/47. The alcohol abuse isn't something they have in common, but he was seen at a bar in 2015 shouting, with a companion, "kill all Muslims!" in a drunken chant, which no doubt 45/47 finds endearing. Oh, and he has white-nationalist tattoos and one of an American flag with an AK-47.

But not to worry. It's just the Defense Department. Not like he'd be heading up anything important or influential in any way.

We're so screwed.

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on December 3, 2024 at 4:49am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Hundred-dollar evening

Green-sauce enchiladas, spanish rice, refritos, and avocado. Traditional Thanksgiving fare.

Greetings, Internetizens. I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday; mine was largely unremarkable. It's been a while since I had a regular Thanksgiving hang, what with people dying, marrying into other holiday groups, kicking me to the curb, or moving out of state—most of my pre-pandemic Thanksgivings going back a couple decades at least have involved being with those specific folks. This year I treated it like most any other average day, except I did cook a whole lot of food. Mexican, though, not the traditional sort of things, as turkey's been off my menu for 37 years. (Incidentally, I had a weird dream last night/this morning that I had been very hungry and ate one and a half hamburgers before realizing that I hadn't eaten a hamburger in nearly 40 years. I was disturbed by the realization and quite upset but still finished the second hamburger since at that point I had already contributed to the cow's death and throwing it in the trash would benefit nothing. It was a strange nightmare.) There will be leftovers and I will see folks over the weekend.

But Thanksgiving Eve was notable. Wednesday night I went to a speed dating event in Fremont. I'd done a couple of similar events before, but this one was by a different outfit and was a less organized, differently-structured format. I won't be trying this outfit's events again.

I met, I think, six different women, most of whom didn't register much. I mean, nice enough ladies, but I'm not prompted to try to see them again. But two were exceptions. One was someone I may or may not have umpired last summer, she is on a softball team I may have drawn on my Sunday afternoon schedule once or twice but I'm not often at the park her team plays at. But we did know people in common and our "date" consisted mostly of talking about people and experiences with the league. She evidently knows several people on my favorite team to ump, The Leftovers, so Neal, if you have any scoop on Anna from Line Drive Capital, feel free to let me know. She was fun to talk to.

The other one I haven't been able to get out of my head, and not for any good reasons.

I don't recall her actual name, but let's call her "Olive," since olives are among the most repulsive of the edible plantfoods. Olive started our mini-date asking blunt questions, which I liked, and quickly noting which of my answers were red flags, which I didn't like but found interesting. My never having been married was a red flag. My interest in science-fiction was a red flag. OK. When I told her one of my "red flags" was voting behavior or lack thereof, she revealed that she was a Trumper.

She did so in a kind of exaggerated fashion, too, going on about how the Democrats suck and Kamala Harris was useless. In the moment, I was, frankly, dumbfounded. I of course know these people exist—we're going to be very shortly living in a world that 70 million such folks willed into being with cruelty and ignorance—and that I'd inescapably encounter them in the wild, but I hadn't expected to run into one—a female one, no less—in "The People's Republic of Fremont, Center of the Universe." Clearly she traveled in for the event from somewhere else, but still.

I was so stunned that I thought she might be doing a bit, some sort of comedic performance art wherein she plays a character, Colbert Report-style, of some sort of cross between Victoria Jackson and Ron Swanson. So I interrupted her and asked, "are you doing a bit?" She was somewhat offended and said no, she was deadly serious, and had I ever seen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak? which just reinforced my impression that she must be doing a bit. Sadly, she was not.

I was so gobsmacked that this outwardly attractive middle-aged woman was on the inside either a mean-spirited hateful racist or a cognitively deficient rube (or both) that when she challenged me to explain why I or anyone would ever vote for Kamala Harris I hesitated for what felt like many seconds before diving in to policy matters. She then said how Harris was "horrible on the border," without answering my reply of "in what way did she do anything negative regarding the border since that wasn't really in her portfolio as VP," and went on to explain how vaccines are dangerous and that the worst thing Kamala Harris ever did was visit a Planned Parenthood office, which I assume refers to a campaign stop but might have been some sort of right-wing propaganda I missed that said she'd had abortions or something. I didn't ask.

"Are you sure you're not doing a bit? Because you've been hitting all the satire points pretty hard." She just told me that I was "obviously quite ignorant" and I laughed. Hopefully in a fashion that was clearly I'm laughing at you, not at your sense of humor since you are not doing a bit. She returned the conversation to RFK Jr. and her strong belief in "informed consent" and started talking about how parents shouldn't have to vaccinate their children because not everyone exposed to a virus will get sick. I asked if she saw any irony in believing in informed consent when she was so steadfastly opposed to being informed and she told me I would see she was right when Trump fixes health care. I laughed again. She said she was a doctor and knew what she was talking about and I laughed harder and said I'd never before met a "doctor" that was pro-polio. Then our phones beeped with the text notification that it was time to move on to the next speed date. I said, "All right, Olive, good luck," and moved on, she replied "good luck to you too," and I suspect each of us was not talking about speed dating. I know I meant "good luck getting through your life being a ripe mark for con artists and it'll serve you right if you become destitute and find yourself in the middle of a measles outbreak in the coming hellscape." She might have meant something similar.

After the event I left the bar and walked back to my car to find I'd inadvertently parked in a restricted-by-residential-permit zone and had a ticket on my windshield. What a capper.

So factoring in the ticket, an eleven-dollar mocktail, and the fee for the event, my evening cost me more than $100. Can't say it was money well spent.

If I do more of these speed dating things they will not be with this company, which claims to have a special algorithm to match you to "compatible dates" but clearly just says that for marketing purposes and has no such selectivity involved. Better to go back to the other outfit that makes no bones about it being random, you meet whoever signs up. (The events put on by the other folks also feed you as part of the fee rather than saddle you with a minimum bar purchase, so there's that.)

At least talking with Anna was pleasant. If nothing else, I may see her on the field next year.

Tagged Politics, Holidays   |   Posted on November 29, 2024 at 2:08am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Wither Phil Baharnd

Given tomorrow is, for lots of people in this country, "turkey day," it seems a good opportunity to reshare this classic West Wing clip of President Bartlet looking for pointers on cooking his stuffing. Fortunately, this is something I needn't be concerned with as I haven't eaten meat since 1987.

 

 

This, however, is sometimes an issue around here.

 

Tagged West Wing, Thanksgiving   |   Posted on November 27, 2024 at 6:26pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Exercise

Once upon a time I filled a sketchbook every six months or so. That was along time ago, though, and in recent years I've let my drawing muscles atrophy a bit. So, in climbing out of my latest Black Hole episode, I broke out the pencils and pens and tried to see if I still had what it takes.

As with all skills, practice is required to maintain whatever level of excellence one might attain, and being decidedly out of practice I have noticeably backslid, particularly when a likeness is involved Still, after a few false starts I cranked out a couple of OK pages. Here are the sharable (i.e. not terrible) ones. (Includes a couple of nekkid ladies, so if you're in a cubicle, scroll at your own risk.)

I'd recently watched Aubrey Plaza's new film "My Old Ass" and have been enjoying a rewatch of "Parks and Rec" after seeing Michael Schur's new show, so I tried capturing Aubrey. It's OK, something not quite right there, but at least she's recognizable.

Pen and ink. Not the best medium for gradations.

Ethan Peck's younger Spock from "Strange New Worlds." Like Aubrey, not dead-on, but at least recognizable. I think.

Trying a little Photoshop lens flare for the hell of it.

Back when I built this site I included a "sketches" page, but it's sat empty all this time. I'll add populate sketches page to my to-do list and maybe that will prompt some more practicing.

Tagged Sketches   |   Posted on November 26, 2024 at 11:15pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Little of this, little of that

“We’ve been in the Void for over a decade, Kamiko.”
“Maybe it’s for the best, Ted, things might be a shitshow out there.”

I'm not coherent enough this evening to put together a "real" post, so I'm figuring to do a kind of potpourri of fragmented thoughts about whatever. Because getting some stuff out of my head seems helpful even when it's scatterbrained.

• First, a brief update on my headspace: The crash-and-burn of the previous post isn't quite in the rear view yet; I'm still climbing out and it's a slower process than I thought it was going to be. I think this is one of those circumstances where it hurts me not to have a day job. Maybe. Anyway, getting going in any given day is still a challenge and sometimes doesn't happen until it's safe outside for vampires and then my tendency to be awake all night reinforces the pattern. Work in progress.
• We had a "bomb cyclone" come through the area the other day and I was without power for not quite 24 hours or so. This also did not help my headspace because without electricity there wasn't much to do during the nocturnal hours I tend to find myself most awake. There's only so much reading one can do by candle illumination and awkwardly-held flashlights. No other inconveniences for me personally, but some folks in the (not-immediate) area had a lot of damage to contend with from wind and toppled trees and such. The rain's been pretty steady ever since, though, and whenever I go out to get the mail I half-expect to see someone building an ark in their driveway.
• Michael Schur is good at TV. I mean, we knew this already, he's not only half of the great PosCast about sports and nonsense, he's also the brains behind The Good Place, Parks and Recreation, and other such things that step up the level of quality and thoughtful humor on television. His latest show is called A Man on the Inside, and it's delightful. Ted Danson stars (with small roles for a couple of other Good Place alums and another for Eugene Cordero) as a widower in need of something to do who gets hired by a private detective to infiltrate a retirement home and be the "man on the inside" in an effort to catch a thief. It's only eight episodes, I watched them all last night. Charming, witty, poignant . . . you know, a Michael Schur joint.
• The Seattle Mariners are cutting ties with a couple of players I'd rather not see them cut ties with. Makes me wonder what they think their doing or if they have any sort of plan. Anyway, today they non-tendered (and thus cast to the free agent winds) both Josh Rojas and Sam Haggerty, two of the only bright spots in the non-pitching portion of the 2024 team. Haggs is recovering from a bad ACL injury and this seems an especially heartless thing to do to him since being with an organization when rehabbing and such can make a huge difference, both in terms of available facilities and financial security (though unless he's squandered it, he's made plenty of money by regular-people standards the last few years even though he's a pauper by professional athlete standards). Haggerty can play seven positions on the field and switch-hits and is the best baserunner in baseball right now (well, not right now, but when he has two working ACLs). And he's inexpensive. Why let him go, just to save a tiny-by-MLB-payroll-standards amount of money? Hard disapprove, Mariners. Rojas surprised me last year by being actually pretty good both as a third baseman and as a batter, though the bar was low; I'd thought of him as the least valuable piece received in the Paul Sewald trade the year before and he proved to be capable. Rojas isn't a key piece of the puzzle, granted, but still sad to see him go. And, this creates a new vacancy to fill—before today, Rojas figured to be at least a platoon partner at one of two infield positions; now, both the second base and third base positions have no one ready to step into them. Unless they're counting on Dylan Moore to fill one, which, ugh. No, thank you. (Or they think Ryan Bliss is ready to be an everyday big-leaguer? Mmmmmayyybe? I mean, good on-base chops in the minors, but all we saw of him with the M's was during the Scott Servais/Jarred deHart reign of error, so who knows.) Dropping these two is another cost-cutting maneuver, saves them maybe $6M in player payroll, but to what end? I guess we'll wait and see.
• Including those Cloud Five strips in my last post (and, yes, I know the C5 site is broken, it's been so for a while now, I just haven't been motivated to fix it) has made me think seriously of reviving it, but if I do I'm not sure what to do about the intervening 11 years or so. I mean, a lot of shit's gone down. Do I age the characters up and just drop into today? Do I pick up where I left off and pull a Newsroom and treat the now of the strip as 2014? Do I do both, do any picking-up-from-before in flashback? Or is it better to just start form scratch on a new thing? Or am I not willing to do that format again? I don't know. It's a big thing to take it up again in any form. Meanwhile I'm just doing some unrelated sketching, which is better than nothing.

Tagged The Black Hole, Baseball, TV, Seattle Mariners   |   Posted on November 22, 2024 at 9:58pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Crash and burn

I'd been doing fairly well, depression-wise-speaking, for some time now. Oh, sure, I've had a number of relatively mild stints in The Black Hole over the past few years, but I've come to accept that those are just a fact of life if you have the brain chemistry of, well, me. But I hadn't had a really bad episode in quite a while.

Those mild ones still suck, don't get me wrong. Wouldn't wish them on anyone. But they're tolerable. The bad ones are . . . well, not different so much as just more. I'm not even sure when the last bad one occurred; the ones that stick in my memory are from much further back, and the more recent ones all had the same sort of flavor, if you will, not a lot to differentiate them. Call it six or seven years since the last one, that's about how long I've been on my current Rx, which has been largely effective.

But the streak, however long it was, is over. Nasty Black Hole time returned this last week, particularly from around Thursday night through yesterday.

There just isn't a good way to articulate the experience, my use of the Black Hole metaphor can only go so far and I always seem to mix other allegories in with it which probably doesn't help clear anything up. But suffice to say this one had me basically not get out of bed except to feed the cats—and then only when their patience ran out—for 2½ days or so. It's just so, so tiring, among other things.

I had more explanation here; I'd just finished a longish post when my PC decided to spontaneously reboot itself and I lost everything in temporary RAM. (Not sure if it was a Windows thing, a Bitdefender Security thing, or a screwed-up hardware thing, all I know for sure is that it was a failure-to-save-drafts thing which is a bad habit I can't blame on my fucked-up brain chemistry.) No matter, really, no attempt I've ever made at articulating the experience of clinical depression has ever been close to adequate; the best try was back when I was doing the Cloud Five strip, so maybe that's as good as it'll get (see below).

Anyway, this one was different. It was . . . weird.

Because there is a readily identifiable outside cause. Or, not cause, exactly, but . . . let's call it a prompt. I speak, of course, of the election and it's continuing fallout. And this evening, now that I have some of my critical-thinking faculty back, I wonder if that means this episode will be easier, harder, or about the same when it comes to climbing out of it.

Today's been OK. I got up, got outside, took a lengthy walk in the drizzle before it was completely dark out. A bit of exercise and a decent meal is a good jump-start. But the news is going to stay terrible for a good long while, so does that mean I'm just going to get pushed back into free-fall again? Or was this prompt only really potent becuase of shock value, and with shock dissipating and unlikely to be a factor again—I mean, the horrobleness to come is all expected now, right?—and thus won't be as big a deal in this specific way?

I tend to think this is better. Meaning, the outside-prompted episode is better than the "regular" kind because I'm not wholly at the mercy of my brain. Maybe focus, either on the prompting issues or deliberately away from them, can be a tool here. Combined with a little more diligence in getting some exercise (which I have been severely lacking since before my California trip, save for the adventure at Vazquez Rocks) and avoiding extended isolation, as well as maintaining my Rx, may well serve me better than just the usual having to "ride it out" reliance on time, rest, and energy recharge.

Well, at any rate. Life goes on, and with luck and effort it goes on in a more engaged and less debilitating fashion.

If only our macro-scale problems were so easily dealt with.

 

Here's most of the sequence from C5 I did more than 10 years ago now(!!) that seemed to be my best attempt at articulating the Black Hole in layman's terms.

 

 

I really should revive this strip someday.

Tagged The Black Hole   |   Posted on November 19, 2024 at 11:58pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Quotes of the day

Botox cautionary tale and rejected Batman villain Matt Gaetz

“We’re going to see the return of diseases we have controlled for decades.”

—Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, about potential public health consequences of RFK Jr. leading the Dept. of Health & Human Services.

 

"[She is] our girlfriend."

—Russian state television commentator, speaking of Tulsi Gabbard, 45/47’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence.

 

"I’m sure it will make for a popcorn-eating confirmation hearing."

—Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), speculating on whether or not Attorney General designee Matt Gaetz can be confirmed for a cabinet post.

 

"[He] will sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry’s profits."

—Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, about Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum.

 

And the chef's kiss of today's quotes:

 

"Matt Gaetz is a sex-trafficking, drug-addicted piece of shit. He is abhorrent. There are pools of vomit with more to offer the Earth than this STD-riddled testament to the failure of fallen masculinity.”

—Ben Domenech, co-founder of the ultra-conservative publication The Federalist, concerning 45/47’s choice for Attorney General.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on November 15, 2024 at 8:27pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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It begins

The Age of Idiocracy isn't scheduled to begin until next January 20th at 9:00am PST, but the incoming idiot-in-chief has already started naming his subordinate idiots, nominating some truly exceptional individuals to very important jobs.

I don't mean exceptional in a good way, either.

Many people that voted Republican, for POTUS and for Senate and House, likely don't realize what they've invited in. Not only are incompetents Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami now co-heads of the fictitious "Department of Governmental Efficiency" (no such thing exists and no such agency can be formed without Congress), charged with eliminating government programs they don't think are good for billionaires, but the people being tapped for real jobs in the real government are frighteningly extreme.

For the benefit of some folks I've talked to over the past few days what have been asking who these people are, let's have a look at the proposed nominees for the Idiot Cabinet:

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio. You might say, wait a minute, isn't Rubio "Little Marco," one of those Republicans 45/47 hates and ridicules all the time? Yes, same guy. But that doesn't mean anything, the wannabe führer disdains everyone who isn't himself whether he says so publicly or not. Rubio is a toady, a yes-man, who will go in whatever direction the winds of power are blowing, yet is just enough of a "regular" (i.e. pre-2015) Republican that he won't face much trouble getting confirmed by the Senate. Left to his own devices, Rubio is a simpleton and a hawk who likes the idea of the U.S. being "robust" in confronting nations like Iran and North Korea and has characterized Vladimir Putin as a "gangster" (presumably as a negative), so accepting this gig means he'll do a 180 on all of that (except maybe Iran), since Putin is the incoming POTUS's boss and North Korea's Kim Jong Un is the incoming POTUS's best bud.
• Attorney General Matt Gaetz. In no universe, including this one, is Gaetz confirmable to any cabinet post without shenanigans of some kind. He is (was) the Ted Cruz of the House, loathed by basically everyone. He resigned from Congress early in order to stop a House investigation into allegations of him engaging in statutory rape and sex trafficking. Of course, 45/47 likes him probably because of all that, two peas in a pod, if you will. Gaetz would have no problems turning the justice department into a new form of thug force to carry out the incoming POTUS's grievance fantasies. At least he's out of Congress now.
• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard has zero experience in the field, but she is a Russian propaganda mouthpiece, which makes her ideal for 45/47’s purposes of kowtowing to Putin.
• Secretary of Defense Pete Hesgeth. Though Hesgeth is an Army National Guard veteran, decorated for tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has no experience in government of any sort. Instead, his career has been as a pundit/talking head on Fox "News," spewing lies and propaganda on behalf of 45/47. Also not remotely confirmable to the post in any year before now. Oh, and he has tattoos of Christian Nationalist/neo-Nazi symbols on his torso, so, yeah, nice guy.
• Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Infamous for being a puppy killer, Noem is no doubt attractive to 45/47 for this gig because as governor of South Dakota she defied all health measures during the pandemic and loves the idea of deporting immigrants. Though I suspect the biggest draw was that she killed her dog.
• CIA Director John Ratcliffe. This guy was DNI for the final year of 45/47’s first term, having been nominated, then withdrawn because of massive bipartisan pushback, then renominated and barely confirmed. His only qualification is staunch obedience to 45/47 in all things. When in Congress, Ratcliffe was ranked by the Heritage Foundation as the second-most conservative legislator nationwide. He was a member of the defendant's team in the first impeachment trial of 45/47.
• Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Also not confirmable, RFK Jr. is an anti-vaccine conspiracist and has claimed that vaccinations are a sort of "holocaust" on American children because he believes they cause autism (they don't). During the pandemic he slandered/libeled Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly and spread lies about COVID-19 and the vaccines for that virus, no doubt endearing himself to 45/47 in the process, including a whopper that the COVID vaccine killed Hank Aaron (it didn't). At one point, RFK Jr. was regarded as a respectable environmental activist, but no longer; he's a brain-addled nutjob who literally had a worm eating away at his cortex.
• Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins. Another toady, Collins was also on 45/47’s defense team in the first impeachment trial. Collins is a 2020 election denier, a climate crisis denier, an anti-abortion zealot, and an ardent foe of the Affordable Care Act. So, you know, exactly the kind of guy 45/47 would want in charge of veterans and their health care.
• Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. The perfect guy for the post in 45/47’s mind, the North Dakota governor is in deep with various energy industry CEOs. One of the loudest voices behind the absurd claim that Joe Biden Wants to Ban Your Gas Stove, Burgum supports fossil fuel industry of all kinds, hates the very idea of subsidizing a shift to electric vehicles, and wants to open protected Federal lands to mining and oil and gas drilling. The guy makes James Watt look like a tree-hugger.
• Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin. Zeldin has no experience (sense a theme?) in the field, though he was on the congressional Climate Solutions Caucus as a hostile member. He opposed the Paris Climate Agreement and champions the elimination of regulations that prevent industry from even greater polluting behavior.

Maybe "Idiot Cabinet" isn't the proper term. It's more like the "Bizarro Cabinet." Every official is there to do the opposite of what the job is supposed to be.

And that's just cabinet officials. If we were to get into White House staff it would be even scarier, in part because there's no check on them, the president can put whomever he wants there without approval from anyone.

Of course, 45/47 wants to do an end-run around Senate confirmations because he knows most of the people he wants in these jobs has no business being there. At this point we can only hope that the Senate Republican leadership won't just give away its power and abdicate its Constitutional duty. Not sure what kind of odds I'd give that.

Much of this has to be 45/47 trying to see just how far he can push the envelope before he gets back into the Oval. How many Senators are dumbfuck sycophants like Tom Tuberville and how many value their job to advise and consent and, if necessary, reject? Tuberville, Lindsey Graham, and no doubt at least a couple dozen others are lost causes, but what about the rest? What about incoming Majority Leader John Thune?

I suppose one silver lining of the Bizarro Cabinet is that since they all know nothing about their potential gigs a lot of stuff could blow up on their and in 45/47’s faces. Hopefully some of it, at least, won't blow up in ours as well.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on November 14, 2024 at 9:26pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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