Good morning. Hello. How are you? #859
Writer's Dread, RIP Crazy Bob, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Chicago, Finland, Trump, Theories about Tricia Cotham's motives, Kinder-Fascism,
Good morning. Hello, there. How’s it hanging? I am okay over here. Just went to McDonald’s it was delicious. Jane is at Grammy’s. Different day this week, something to do with our impending visitor. I don’t need to go to Walmart this early in the week, but I took advantage of the situation to get an Egg McMuffin because I am old, and to drop a few things off at the collection center. I love how when I go to McDonald’s in the morning they always say “you had the muffin, right?” Because no one else gets Egg McMuffins anymore, it’s all breakfast bagels and burritos grumble grumble the kids these days.
Anyway, didn’t really need to go, but I won’t lie, I’ve been facing GMHHAY with something like dread this week, the whole thing’s been really hard. Been sending me into a bit of an existential panic, want to quit doing it, etc. What am I without graphomania? At three million (ish) words of journaling across nearly forty years have I hit a wall? Do I have no more psychological problems to work through? Is my life boring?
Or maybe, I just realized, I’m really freakin tired at 6:45 in the morning and if I got a bit more sleep and woke up a bit before endeavoring to write a thousand-ish words, it might be a bit easier. And what do you know. Feels easy as pie today. Unfortunatley, this is through a fluke of circumstance, not especially replicable. So I guess I’ll just go back to having The Fear tomorrow.
So. Thing are good today but I will start with something bad. For the second day in a row, I must report the death of an old friend: Bob Lee, former Square CTO, developer of the Cash app, was fucking stabbed to death on the streets of San Francisco Monday night. I did not know Bob well but we got along so, so well, I loved running into him, we had some fantastic evenings in both San Francisco and New York. He was a Trekkie, he was kind, he was hilarious, and we bonded quickly when we first met. The details are still sketchy and the killer seems still on the lose but come the fuck on, man. This sucks. I always feel weird saying someone was a “great guy” when I only knew them in one aspect of their life, but he really did seem to be one of the good ones. He listened, he talked, he cared about people. I am sad.
But let us turn to more happy topics.
Wisconsin. Chicago. Trump being indicted. What a night, what a night. Not gonna lie I turned on MSNBC last night and just sort of enjoyed a nice liberal feel good kumbaya. Shit I just wikipedia’d “kumbaya.” Is this appropriation? Well, I was raised on that song, in a church of social activism and civil rights, so I’m gonna stick with it. I am not using it ironically here. Wisconsin is huge, and it was sure a great time watching Steve Albini lose his shit with excitement on Twitter last night.
Yes, I still use Twitter. I am a bad person.
Oh yeah we forgot about Finland joining NATO. That’s pretty cool too. Good for Finland. Big day for them. Crazy how there was all this other news and people just kept talking about Trump. When all this other stuff was going on. Wonder what the news was like in Finland. Oh also they lost their young, hot, club-dancing prime minister, that is a shame, she seemed pretty cool. I hope she goes into the UN or something.
I mean, that was pretty exciting, don’t get me wrong. I haven’t read the Statement of Facts yet. It’s in my Kindle I’ll get to it this week. But after listening to all the talking heads I think I get a pretty good idea. This does not seem good at all for Herr Trump no siree not one bit. It’s a pretty cut and dried case. I mean, not completely, I guess. You have to prove intent to commit another crime while falsifying your records in order to get to the felony level for falsifying records. But you don’t have to prove they actually committed another crime. And the DA did a great job showing, you know, intent to commit all sorts of other crimes: election fraud, tax fraud, fraud fraud. He only has to be right once. Also it really helps that Trump essentially said “we are doing fraud here.” I mean, not completely but “stall on paying Stormy because after the election who cares if people find out then.” Of course, the irony is that Republicans wouldn’t have cared anyway: they are quite comfortable having a devil do “the lord’s work” if it gets it done. I guess we just have to chalk it up to a fluke that such a Huge Genius made such a dumb mistake.
Anyway, that was all great. Maybe America isn’t especially anti-choice. Maybe America does care about gun violence, maybe America is tired of this shit. Maybe. Maybe. Let’s just pretend that’s true for a day, shall we?
Of course, one person who does not seem to care about these things is North Carolina state representative from Charlotte, Tricia Cotham. She has switched from being a Democrat to a Republican this week, for reasons sort-of unknown. I say sort-of because who can read the mind of the enigmatic Tricia Cotham, but we do know a few things:
On the night of the first successful Republican override of one of our Democratic Governor’s vetos — a veto against loosening gun permitting regulations — Tricia’s office put out a press release saying she was sick and could not make the vote. She was then spotted at a bar with a bunch of Republican senators. She said “my vote wouldn’t have made any difference anyway,” when the Democrats had a one-vote margin for keeping vetos from being overridden. She’s not entirely wrong — two other Demorcrats did not make the vote — but they were not caught in lies while drinking with Republican Senators.
The rumors are also that she is, get this shit, secretly dating the Republican House Majority Leader. The words being used by political insiders is “they have been dating in secret for quite some time but have been being slightly more open about it of late.”
Tricia Cotham comes from a deeply blue district, there’s no way she could actually win as a Republican. She seems to have completely lied to her constituents. It’s also worth noting that despite being found unconstitutional several times by both the State Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court, the Republicans are still going ahead with their currently illegal gerrymandering plan. In this plan, Tricia’s district is being completely changed. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening, because I don’t know exactly where she lives, but I would not be surprised, at all, if her district is being packed, and she would be required, in the next election, to face a more popular democrat in a district she is weaker in than her current one.
So, I have four theories at the moment:
It’s an outright tit-for-tat bribe
She was a Republican the whole time, lying. Multiple NC Dems have alluded to such people existing in the party, without naming names, for quite some time.
She is getting gerrymandered to high hell and figures her only chance in her new district is being a republican
She did it for this handsome gentleman
My current bet is a mix of 1-3.
Then we have Tennessee, which also happened yesterday and was not as good. The good: a big protest against their Republican legislature and their utter lack of action protecting the state from gun violence. The bad: rather than, you know, listen to the protesters, they have begun the process of kicking three Democratic house members out of the house because they had the temerity to, you know, protest. Buncha white people kicking black congresspeople out of the government seems really on the up and up definitely.
Anyway, the vote is tomorrow so I guess let’s just see how that goes but I am not holding my breath.
Politics politics politics. Sorry. No I’m not, whatever, man, this shit matters so much. Wisconsin is huge. An overturning of their gerrymandered maps is huge, has major ramifications for the US House and the razor-thin republican majority.
Also it was Emma’s night with Jane so I don’t have too many cute Jane anecdotes for you today, except that during our breakfast she was relentlessly mean to me, argumentative, said no to everything and it was insanely exhausting. Just wouldn’t stop. I feel like I’ve — we’ve — tried every single approach to getting her to just stop this massively unhealthy cycle of saying no and arguing and saying “but I want to be mean to you forever” about everyhting. It’s not quite tantrum level so time-outs are only semi-warranted, and in any case, they don’t work. She just follows you around saying mean things to you and arguing even when you stop talking to her. She does this sometimes while insisting you hold her and be nice to her. She’s trapped in it, can’t get out, you can see her wanting to, but she has absolutely zero interest — then or later when she’s calmed down — for learning any coping mechanism. It’s dehumanizing and painful and exhausting. And of course she’s an angel to everyone else. Please don’t give me advice on this I swear we’ve already tried it, I’m just venting here, but man. It’s exhausting. We were both very worn down by yesterday.
I’m sure this “phase” is related to her “phase” of not being able to go to sleep, of being clingy and needing some sort of assurance. Emma thinks it might be tied to a new awareness we’re not all mentally linked, and a sort of proto-existentialist fear at the realization that we’re all completely alone when it comes down to it. I can certainly empathize with that. We talk about it. But god, man, come on doesn’t mean you need to be so meeeaaaaaaannnnn….
Maybe a little time with Grammy will straighten her out.
Ha maybe I’m not blocked in my writing today not because of sleep but because I don’t have to go upstairs and deal with the kinder fascist this morning.
That’s mean, she’s great, I love her, etc. etc. caveat caveat vent vent. Here look at this cute picture of her how could this little thing be so malevolent at times:
Got a W Hotel in a Better, Alternate Universe mix for you today. They’re reissuing that Fridge album and I haven’t listened to it in ages it’s so good. Most of the rest of this is new. I guess there’s a bit of a Four Tet double header with that Everything but the Girl remix and the Fridge album but I’m gonna role with it.
I am off the rest of the week after today. I am planning on writing one of these every day, because right now I feel really good about it, but if I freak out and decide to take a long weekend, don’t worry I’ll be back, mmkay? Mmkay.
I meant to post a note yesterday about your neck pain because I’ve been suffering from mysterious chronic neck pain for almost 20 years and finally discovered the cause of it. I wanted to share in case it helps you or anyone else reading this who suffers from neck pain.
I recently learned about a condition called Binocular Vision Dysfunction on Reddit that I thought might be the cause of my headaches, nausea, imbalance issues, etc. When I went to see a specialist, the first thing he asked me was if I had pain in the right side of my neck. I...couldn’t believe it. After years of working with all kinds of doctors, no one has ever been able to tell me what the source of my pain is.
So this doctor said he knew I had right-side neck pain because my head was tilting slightly to the left. After 3 hours of intense testing, I was diagnosed with BVD.
Rewind to 30 years ago when I took a fall onto my head at a Butthole Surfers concert. The bump to the head apparently knocked my optical nerves out of synch, so my body has been trying to compensate for the vision problem in all kinds of ways since then. It did a great job I guess, until it started getting old and tired, so I didn’t start experiencing physical symptoms until 15-20 years after the fall.
The good news is, there are special lenses called Prism lenses that bend the light in a way that corrects for the misalignment of the optical nerves. I got mine a few weeks ago and am in the process of adjusting to them. I’ll go back for a revised prescription in a couple weeks, after my eyes have relaxed into them.
When I got my first lenses, I instantly felt about a foot taller and my head felt incredibly lightweight and balanced. And walking in a straight line felt effortless!
It’s just nuts to me to think about all those people out there bumping their heads who will never know about this and will needlessly suffer their entire life. So this is my small bit of BVD activism, hoping it helps someone who happens to see this.
love ya buddy