Good morning. Hello. How are you? #613
Man everything is totally crazy with Clarence and Ginny right now. A rumination on the changing nature of pandemic dadddy bedtimes and despair.
Good morning! Hello. How are you? Well this Ginny Thomas stuff is all sorts of fucked up, isn’t it? Let me see if I have this right: The wife of a Supreme Court justice was texting the chief of staff of the president to stage a coup. The Chief of Staff has to answer her because, well, her husband is a prestigious conservative supreme court justice and che is a Qanon Amway victim who’s been giving every penny of her money to nutbag conspiracy theories for twenty years. Oh she also hapened to be at the January 6th rally no biggie. And we know all of this because for a little while Mark Meadows was cooperating with the congressional committee investigating the assault on the capital and turned over a bunch of text messages. But he didn’t turn them all over, and he eventually thought better of cooperating with the January 6th committee because he is a coward and at first he thought maybe he could get away with cooperating and following the law but then realized Trump was probably going to survive this and he would be a dead man walking for cooperating, so he very showily stopped cooperating and didn’t give the committee any more of his messages. So there are more. And there may be more from Ginny Thomas in the batch not yet sent to the committe. Meadows says Trump had some sort of executive privelege still, which was bunk, and that it extended to him, which was double bunk. The committee took this matter to the Supreme Court, which agreed that Trump did not have executive privelege in this matter, and Trump lost handily, thus negating Meadow’s defense for not cooperating. He still has not handed the messages over. That verdict was near-unanimous, with only one judge dissenting, Clarence Thomas, whose own wife probably had messages that would be effected by the verdict. He 100% should have recused himself and did not. And it seems pretty clear no one is going to do anything about it, a gross violation of judicial ethics at any level of court, let alone the highest, on a matter no less major than an attempt to overthrow the government.
And no one is going to do anything about it.
No one can do anything about it.
Meanwhile, the dude is sick, maybe dying, no one knows, because they’re not telling the public anything, they said he was in the hospital for a flu or something and he took some medicine and was much better now and was getting out any day now and then… that just didn’t happen and they didn’t say anything about why. When he went in, they said he was going to participate in arguments via Zoom. But even when he was supposedly doing well, that did not happen. Lord knows if he’ll recuse himself from these cases, I doubt it.
Man. That is all just nuts. Nuts!
Luke O’Neil had a good comment about this:
Very good discussion about Licorice Pizza’s racist scenes in the comments on yesterday’s posts. One thing I learned was that these scenes… were found to be funny by people? It seems so obvious, now, that theaters full of people would laugh at them, but Emma and I found them so appalling laughing was not under consideration. I can’t imagine making this film, putting it front of a test audience, and seeing all these people laughing and… keeping that in the film. Also I was pointed to PTA’s comments when asked about these scenes and they were just… awful. Like so willfully blind. So yes, I now understand why the creation of these scenes is deeply problematic, not just the presence of a bad person character being portrayed. The more I think about it the angrier I get, actually. ALSO: the scene immediately following the second racist scene in the restaurant: the bathroom scene, with the talk of handjobs. What was up with that? How did that fit at all into the rest of the film? That was so… disjointed.
It was daddy bedtime last night, Jane and I had a lovely time. I always really like bedtimes on days where Jane had stayed at Grammy’s, because we didn’t have our morning alone together and I miss her. We were doing our bedtime routine, and we were singing our nightly lullaby song while she danced around me, and I was pretty happy doing it, it was so nice. And I was thinking of early pandemic, and how each night, when I got to that point in the routine, and I was holding her singing that song, I would be so, so sad. Like on the verge of utter despair. Not because of Jane or anything, but because of the state of the world around me. I mean, one thing is Trump was in office, and we should not discount how much better things are that Trump is no longer in office. But he is still with us, obviously, and we still have a pandemic, and we now have a very large new hot war going on, the planet is still burning, there is still a ton of bad shit going on that I think about all the time. But it occurred to me last night as I was singing to Jane that I don’t feel that bedtime lullabye despair in the same way anymore. Maybe I’m a boiling frog, I have adapted to a new world in greater amounts of crisis, absorbed it to a large extent, and I can be personally happy singing my daughter to sleep, which is something I absolutely could not do in mid-2020. I still constantly fret about the world, about Jane being in this world, about things that are bad that are going on. But, then, I constantly fretted about the world, about Jane’s place in the world, about bad things that are going on before the pandemic and before Trump and most people didn’t even notice cuz I could also be pretty jolly and go out to a bar or a dance night and have a real good time. And I can do that again, I guess, or I am guessing because I haven’t actually tried it yet but I bet I can.
On the one hand I am deeply thankful for my body normalizing and adapting to the new crisis state of the world, because it was not healthy or sustainable to be feeling things at that level, it is not healthy or sustainable when nine nights out of ten you feel utter despair when singing to your daughter. This is better. For me. But of course I’m gonna feel guilt about it. But also… that guilt isn’t too too bad this time. First and foremost you gotta be healthy and survive if you want to help anyone, and all things being equal, the world is a veerrrrry slightly better place if I no longer feel despair while singing my kid to sleep. Yet that improvement in my mental state did not come because I checked out of current events, it didn’t come because I decided to turn into an uncaring Republican. But it also didn’t come because of any deep emotional therapy work or something. It came because… of exhaustion. Which doesn’t feel good? But kind of is? I don’t know! It is a paradox!
Thank you for helping me work that out. Or not working it out.
We met one of the reclusive neighbors yesterday it was very exciting. She said they’ve been redoing their kitchen for, like, six months. That is crazy. But also… tempting. Man I want to redo our kitchen. My mom rightly pointed out that if you’re gonna do it, do it now, because it is dumb to stall for so long that you don’t get to, like, live with it. Which seems like sound advice. But also all this nonsense about redoing your kitchen every ten years to keep it in style. That is dumb. I think we can split the difference here. One remodel to get it exactly how we want it that lasts… twenty years? Our tastes match and they do not change that much. You can find timeless elements. And then worry about it again if and when we ever decide to sell the house, which is not in the cards at the moment.
Today’s mix is a moody and quiet one. Lotta new ones. My release radar was moody and quiet today. And I swear I’m almost ready to leave Spotify any week now. There’s a new Bauhaus song? Whast is up with that? I did not know that was going to happen, in fact all evidence was to the contrary. I am kind of freaked out. Also there is a new Loop album today which is nuts. The world is a crazy place. Crazy!
It is Friday so I will see you in a few days. I have to reorganize the box closet (aka utility closet) and take a bunch of shit to the storage unit. I gotta do my podcast. But most excitingly, I am going to finish setting up the drip irrigation. It is so exciting! It’s like LEGO! But in the garden!
Have a lovely weekend!