Misread and Miss Understanding

Bob was there, Jane was happy.

Jane knew there was another, it was not a secret.

"She's upset that I'm here," he said.

"Sure," Jane thought, "I'm often upset when you're with her, but those were the terms we agreed to".

Jane shrugged, they moved on.

Weeks later, Jane found out that only two of them knew it was a triangle. That was more upsetting than previous levels had reached. There was a lot of talking. Jane said, "For these past few months, I've been operating under the assumtion that I was also your girlfriend". 

Bob replied, "Yes." 

Oh.

Jane thought about it for a while, realized why she'd been mistaken, and decided to ride it out. After all, she was the one who knew all the facts, she was the one actually being trusted.

Then it occured to Jane - if the other girlfriend was upset that Bob was visiting her, and she didn't know Jane was also dating him, then holy cow, she was just being a bitch.

Nine inch Knives

Someone else hurt me, today, so I'm sure that I still feel. No need to resort to hurting myself.

Gimme One Reason

 Tonight I find myself counting the number of people who would be unhappy, inconvenienced, or all out devastated if I wasn't here, any more. If I just wasn't.

Some nights it's all there is, and it has to be enough. It doesn't feel like enough, but it has to be. 

Pastime in No Company

Death comes for us all, eventually; no one here gets out alive.

Some, perhaps only the good, die young.

The rest of us must wait our turn.

If you’re broken, and tired, and you know that the best times of your life have come and gone, or if you no longer understand who you are, and why you’re here, you must wait your turn.

If you’re too afraid to take your own way out, or you know that leaving on your own terms would destroy those you love, you have to wait. Even if, ultimately, you cannot give up the hope that tomorrow will bring better things than today, when it never does, you still have to wait.

Death takes the ones we love, the taunts us by leaving us alive without them. 

Sometimes, Death is kind of a real dick. 

Nourishment

 A poem:

I recall the days, all of them, not just the early ones. 

What I remember is that you looked into my eyes like they were a banquet, and you were starving. 

One day you told me that you had to stop, you were spoiling your dinner. 

Now, a literal lifetime later, we're speaking again. You say out loud that you don't need me to get you anything, so why do I hear what I hear in your voice? 

You sound hungry. 

Oddly Pathetic, Old-Timey Version

 Lately, I’ve been living the second verse of “You Are My Sunshine”.

The other night dear as I lay sleeping, 

I dreamed I held you in my arms

When I awoke dear, I was mistaken,

So I bowed my head and I cried.

OK, I’m not crying, but I do feel pretty pathetic for having dreams about the past. Now’s an extra bad time for it. 

Maybe I should just write about Ukraine, like everyone else.  

 

 

Poop Sandwich

No one wants to say hard things.

Opening our country cautiously will be expensive.

People dance around it, and maybe they get real when talking about businesses not being able to reopen, but that’s not all of it.

I just read the CDC guideline that daycare centers should limit the sharing of art supplies. That would mean that they have fewer kids during arts & crafts sessions, or they need more supplies for the same number of children. It’s stupid how much that would throw off the budget of the average day care. You know who can easily afford that? No one.

Imports are down, or else they cost more money. This pandemic is going to permanently increase the price of things that we bring in to this country, especially items that we import from China. You know who can easily afford that? No one.

I was starting to whine about how I can’t get the Irish butter that I like, now, when I realized that I’m not worried about how I’m going to afford groceries. I’m privileged, and should shut up.

Now that the first wave of the virus is starting to ebb, people who aren’t soulless money monsters are going to think about the economic impact, because we will all be victims, at some level.

Our world reset, a little, and we don’t get to resume it, exactly as it was.

Nobody wants to think about hard things.

Bounty, Indeed

NYT story

After groups of governors on the East and West Coasts announced Monday that they planned to work together in regional groups to decide when and how to reopen business, Mr. Trump invoked the film “Mutiny on the Bounty” in a Twitter post, likening the governors to mutineers who took over a ship from a captain they believed was abusing his crew.

I’m just going to point out that in said movie, the captain was, in fact, a nut job who was abusing his crew.

Opinion

Congress needs to stop trying to shove everything in to one bill, hoping that there will be something in there popular enough to make it pass, and just start passing smaller bills that focus on some of the popular things that the country needs right goddamn now.

Reading that a bill to help small businesses failed because Democrats were trying to push for medical supplies and other funding in the same bill just feels so self-defeatist, to me. Yes, we need all those things, but half of something is ALWAYS better than all of nothing. Fight for everything, but take small wins if they’re what you can get, right now. Small business owners are people, and people are who we need to help.

Still Sad

The President has put a temporary travel ban from Europe to the U.S. in order to stem the spread of COVID 19.

wsj.com

It’s already here. I’m feeling like he really doesn’t understand this.

Have it Your Way

Fine, you’re a witch.
I believe that you’re a witch, and that we should hunt you.
Where’s Witchfinder Major Pulsifer?

Rubber and Glue Defense

The “I’m rubber and you’re glue” tactic doesn’t actually work in reality.

Trump says those who gave info to the whistleblower are like spies, reports say

"I want to know who's the person, who's the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy," Trump said, according to The Los Angeles Times. "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now."

Oh, no, sir, oh no. You do not get to use those words.

Our President sounds like Tony Soprano. This is crap.

Bad at Crime

Trump Instructs McGahn to Defy Subpoena and Skip House Testimonyw.nytimes.com

The President telling people not to comply with subpoenas just makes it look like he’s not smart enough to protect himself against direct questioning. The smartest, best people should have a cover story, shouldn’t they?

Humans Should All be Held to the Same Standards.

A Partisan Call to Arms

"My family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional accusations," he told the committee in a fiery opening statement.

You know who else's family has borne vicious and false accusations? The Clintons. Ever hear of "Pizzagate"? No? How about Benghazi, or "her emails!"?

High profile life means taking a lot of bad press. I don't know if it's fair, but don't pretend that it's just for you.

Also, I think that you actually did these things. I might have been willing to look past it if you had just admitted that teenagers can be terrible humans. I still believe that people can change. I may even believe that this guy did. His unwillingness to admit flaws, though, it makes me mistrust him.

Insurance Rates Might Go Up For Expensive Sick People

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-takes-another-major-swipe-at-the-affordable-care-act/2018/07/07/0f1ff4c4-821f-11e8-b851-5319c08f7cee_story.html?utm_term=.808764b72127&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

I'm very nervous about this. I'm a very expensive customer, these days.

Let Me Explain the Obvious

When someone says, in a very public forum, heard by thousands of people, to punch dissenters in the face, they'll pay the legal bills, or when someone suggests "shooting something up", or killing journalists, I get  very angry.

This is the reason that I get outraged when people casually speak of violence to the masses as a joke. It's because sometimes, other people, whom the original speaker may never see, meet, or even think of,  hear those words out loud, then go and commit the violent acts that weren't a "serious suggestion", and it's horrible.

It's literally the cause of horror.

Words mean things, and they have power, speaking out in public is not the same as having a private conversation with your friends, and people that diminish this idea are not correct. The thousand times someone publicly suggests violence as a joke and nothing happens does not make up for the fact for any single time that something did.

The Cost of Cruelty

This is the article I've been waiting for:

Trump admin's 'tent cities' cost more than keeping migrant kids with parents.

WASHINGTON — The cost of holding migrant children who have been separated from their parents in newly created "tent cities" is $775 per person per night, according to an official at the Department of Health and Human Services — far higher than the cost of keeping children with their parents in detention centers or holding them in more permanent buildings.

...

At those prices, the additional cost to operate a 400-bed temporary structure for one month at capacity would be more than $5 million. The average stay for separated kids is nearly two months.

I've been saying this for days, now. The official numbers of keeping the family in a holding center as a unit is listed as $298, because those shelters already exist.

My point here is that not only is prosecuting all people that enter the country at unauthorized points costing us our souls, it's also costing us a hell of a lot of money.

I mean, that kind of money could be used to start a "Space Force" or something, right?

Weeping Trees

Sigh.

From

EPA whistleblower alleges spending and travel excesses by Scott Pruitt

"John Walke, who directs the clean air program at the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the executive order prescribes measures “intended to allow more air pollution, or abbreviated air quality reviews that risk more air pollution, or both.”"

Welcome to the new age of darkness. Making money at business is definitively more important than making our air safer to breathe. I suppose I'm glad they're obvious about it. 

I Hope He Was Kidding

...but I worry that he wasn’t, and that reason and tolerance are dying.

Insert Conspiracy Theory Here

I'll Show You Not Relavent

Someone should arrest this guy, if not for refusing a subpoena, for this statement:

Nunberg fired back with a tirade about Sanders to NY1, the New York cable news channel: “If Sarah Huckabee wants to start debasing me, she’s a joke. Okay, fine, yeah, she’s unattractive. She’s a fat slob. Fine. But that’s not relevant. The person she works for has a 30 percent approval rating, okay?”

Seriously, that guy's an ass.