Category: Uncategorized

And it’s not because it’s my birthday. That has very little to do with my current mood. I’m in this headspace because of all the awful going on in this country right now and our seeming inability to remove the cancer that’s metastasizing from from the White House.

It seems COVID-19 and the very reasonable recommendations about staying home, closing non-essential businesses, and wearing masks and practicing social distancing when you do have to go out have brought out the absolute worst in a certain (i.e. racist, Trump rimming, MAGA-hat-wearing) portion of the population.

My heart goes out to my non-white brothers and sisters who are bearing the brunt of this behavior. It’s as if the United States is finally vomiting up 244 years of suppressed hate, and instead of it blocking out the sun as it did in the I Am The Night—Color Me Black episode of The Twilight Zone from 1961, the country—or at least Minneapolis—is going up in flames. I have feared all along it will take just one more incident to touch off a conflagration that will consume this country like none seen in our lifetimes. And George Floyd’s murder seems to be the spark thrown into that dry tinder.

And you know what? I say burn it to the ground. The horseshit treatment of minorities has gone on more than long enough. It needs to be stopped, by any means necessary. Being nice and playing fair only leads to genocide. Racists are bullies just like Trump, and the only way to put them in their place is to smack them back into the 1860s where they belong.

I fear that even if Minneapolis does not spread to the rest of the country, the rage of the minority Reich Wing  when Trump is removed from office will reignite a whole new set of fires because you know that after months of Citrus Calignula’s sowing seeds that the election will be rigged or the results illegitimate when he loses that his followers will not acquiesce to a peaceful transfer of power. He is, after all, their GOD.

And regarding the Orange Russian Wig Stand’s threats to shut down his Twitter account?  Be serious. Trump cut off his only conduit to his brain-dead sheep? Oh PLEASE.

And his promise to muzzle social media? BRING IT, BITCH.

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

The man is pissed. And well he should be.

0 comments

They should just break out the hoods, declare him the Supreme Dragon or Grand Wizard or whatever and get it over with.

The Republikkkans need to be squashed.

Vote.

0 comments

As you all well know, I’m no fan of Twitter, but…

It’s a national embarrassment that this imbecile is the President but it is a national shame that he has NO UNDERSTANDING of the Constitution

The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It is freedom, generally speaking, from the government interfering with you saying anything you want, whenever and wherever you want to say it but there is no First Amendment right to use Twitter or have a Facebook page.

Social media companies are private enterprises and therefore free to adopt policies relating to user content and to remove users who violate such policies without implicating the First Amendment.

The moron in chief keeps declaring that he is directing his administration to “explore all regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech and the free speech rights of all Americans” & that they will “strongly regulate or close them down” by which he only means people that agree with him or encourage him.

Any regulatory or legislative action taken by the government, which obviously includes the current corrupt AF administration, would constitute a threat to the free speech rights of all Americans.

It’s upside down world in the Cheetohinchief’s head but it’s a reminder to the rest of us never to give so much power to someone so ill informed on the Constitution.

Source.

0 comments

I am an infectious diseases physician. Let’s be clear about masks. I wear a mask to protect you. You wear a mask to protect me. That’s how it works, and it’s simple. Without your mask, you are telling me and everyone around you that you don’t care about others. And that’s not how we get through a pandemic.” ~ Stan Schwartz, M.D., Tulsa

Preach.

0 comments

From The Palmer Report:

There is still no one who has any idea what Donald Trump’s “Obamagate” scandal is about – least of all Trump himself. But that hasn’t stopped Trump’s most embarrassing sycophants from trying to prop up the imaginary scandal. That includes Ted Cruz, who never misses an opportunity to humiliate himself.

It all started when Trump incoherently tweeted “OBAMAGATE MAKES WATERGATE LOOK LIKE SMALL POTATOES!” This prompted pundit John Heilemann to ask, “Could you explain again exactly what it is? We’ll wait.” That’s when Ted Cruz decided to get involved, much to his own detriment.

Cruz thought he was being clever when he fired back at Heilemann with “I thought that was a reporter’s job?” At that point Heilemann finished him off: “Sorry, I’m still busy reporting out Trump’s accusation that your father was involved in the killing of JFK.”

Ouch.

0 comments

0 comments

And that’s exactly why I won’t be able to wear a red cap for the rest of my life.

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

And my life was forever changed.

0 comments

From The Palmer Report:

There’s a moment in a science fiction TV show called Avenue 5, in which the captain says “We just watched seven people stupid themselves to death.” And yes, the title of this article is from The Office. What can I say? Those of us who are dutifully staying home during the pandemic are watching a lot of TV. As these past few days have played out in the real world, these lines keep coming back to me – because we’re sadly seeing a whole lot of people stupiding themselves to death right now.

It’s one thing to go to a grocery store right now, masked up, taking as many precautions as you can. It’s a far less safe thing to eat in a restaurant right now, where you can’t stay masked up while eating (if you must do this, please be as careful as possible). Then there is this whole other ballgame where a certain segment of people are tempting fate by doing the most risky and stupid things they can possibly do in a pandemic – and they’re being egged on by the President of the United States.

We keep seeing the images of partiers crowding into confined spaces, smashed up against each other, in large numbers – and almost none of them are wearing masks. No matter where in the country this kind of incident happens, it’s nearly a statistical given that at least one of the people in that crowd has brought coronavirus with them, which means that a large chunk of the others will leave with the virus. They’ll take it back to their families, their communities, their workplaces. This is how the second coronavirus wave begins, while the first wave is still going on.

The amount of stupidity on display here is mind boggling. In every one of these images we’re seeing of tightly packed mass crowds right now, a percentage of the people in each image will be in the hospital or dead within a couple weeks. That’s frankly their problem. But first they’re going to spread the virus around to a bunch of unsuspecting people in their community. That’s unconscionable. And yet Donald Trump keeps egging them on to carry out this murder-suicide routine. When this is over, Trump must be criminally charged for these deaths.

As Ben and I were saying yesterday, the stupidity we see rearing its head on Memorial Day will start bearing its deadly fruit in about 2-3 weeks.

For me personally, grocery shopping is fine. Picking up take-out food or medications (conveniently located in my grocery store) is fine. But anything beyond that is just plain crazy until there is a proven vaccine in place and I’ve been innoculated.

I may end up spending the rest of the year at home.

0 comments

This movie scared the crap out of me when I first saw it opening night. The Cine Capri in Phoenix finally stopped showing Star Wars and this was something new, and definitely different from Luke Skywalker & Co.

Driving home, I kept looking in my rear view mirror because I expected it to pop up in the bed of my truck at any time.

The only other films to affect me this way were Poltergeist (I slept with the closet light on with door open for a week afterward) and Aliens (I came home, opened every door, and turned on every light in the damn apartment.)

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

0 comments

I want to be fashionable as much as the next gay, and since it appears wearing masks in public (at least among people who actually care about others) is the new norm, these caught my attention.

You can get yours here. (He’s currently sold out of these designs, but I’m sure he’ll be getting more in soon. He’s been overwhelmed with orders since he put these online.)

0 comments

REDRUM!

As odd as it may seem, I’ve never seen The Shining in a theater. In fact, I don’t even remember hearing about it until I happened to stumble upon it while—unable to sleep for some reason—cable surfing at 2 am back in ’81 (or maybe ’82).

It scared the fuck out of me.

And while I know it’s not faithful to King’s source material, I still prefer it over all subsequent attempts to bring The Shining to the big screen.

0 comments

From John Gruber:

I’m old enough to recall when wearing seat belts became mandatory. Roughly speaking, these laws spread quickly from state to state, starting with New York in 1984 and becoming the rule rather than the exception within a decade. (“Live free or die” New Hampshire is the only remaining state that doesn’t require adults to wear a seat belt.)

I recall a similar sort of opposition to these laws as we see now with mandatory face masks. Opposition to compulsory seat belt laws always seemed crazy to me, because the evidence was so overwhelming that seat belts save lives and greatly reduce injuries that it was clearly worth making an exception to the principle, widely held in America, that the government generally shouldn’t tell people what to do. But crazy or not, opposition there was. “Fuck you, I don’t want to wear one, it’s a free country.” Word for word, the same sentiment then about seat belts as now about face masks.

One of the arguments against compulsory seat-belt-wearing was that sometimes wearing a seat belt makes things worse. “What if I’m in an accident and my seat belt gets jammed, trapping me in a burning car?” “I read about a guy who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and he walked away from a terrible accident because he was thrown out of the car before it was totaled.”

I don’t agree with it, but to some degree I get it: What right does a government that sells you lottery tickets have to tell you that your odds are better if you’re wearing a seat belt?

But there’s a fundamental difference between wearing a seat belt in a car and wearing a face mask in a store. A seat belt really only protects the wearer. There are tangential arguments that society as a whole benefits from fewer car crash deaths and injuries, but the primary reason we have laws requiring you to wear a seat belt is to protect you from harm. Face mask requirements aren’t like that. They’re more like laws banning smoking in restaurants and making drunk driving a serious crime — they protect us all from harm.

From earlier in my childhood, I recall ubiquitous signs at the entrances of stores and restaurants: “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” There were variants, but that exact phrasing was common. I always considered those signs so strange, as I couldn’t imagine why anyone would even want to go into a store or restaurant without a shirt or shoes, let alone need a sign telling them that doing so was not permitted, but I figured it must have been a problem with hippies or something. (There were a lot of old people complaining about hippies long after there were any hippies left to complain about.)

Basically, other than poolside or at a beach, anyone who wants to go into a public establishment barefoot or shirtless is an asshole. It seems pretty clear that the people today angrily objecting to mandatory face masks aren’t really concerned with the epidemiological efficacy of masks. They’re concerned with asserting their perceived entitlement to be an asshole. You don’t need to hang a “No assholes allowed” sign to enforce it as a rule.

0 comments

No apology from pastor of Butte County church where 180 were exposed to COVID-19

This is the reason you are not supposed to be gathering in groups. But don’t listen to science you fucking idiots, listen to the raging orange moron in the White House. Because when the fuck has he ever been right about one fucking thing?

So many outbreaks have started in churches and a lot of our elders go to those churches.

And while we’re witnessing Charles Darwin in action, be vigilant. Listen to your own self-preservation instinct. Regardless of what may be open, STAY THE FUCK HOME and WEAR A GODDAMNED MASK WHEN YOU HAVE TO GO OUT.

0 comments