Late One Night…

Late one night jack takes a shortcut through the cemetery.

Hearing a tapping sound he becomes scared and quickens his pace. 

The tapping gets louder and Jack is now scared out of his wits.

Then he notices a man chiseling a tombstone.

"Thank goodness!" Jack says to the man. "You gave me the fright of my life. Why are you working so late?"

The man replies, "They spelt my name wrong."

Settling In

Some things old, some things new, some a combination of the two.

After six weeks, slowly but surely, our lives are coming back together. We have a new place to call home. We haven't gotten any money from the insurance company yet, but they have dispersed funds to the two companies that were handling the restoration/cleaning of our clothing and belongings, and we have received all those items. In addition to the furniture that was restored, we ended up with approximately 175 boxes full of stuff. And as we go through these boxes, we're discovering things we didn't even remember we had.

I was feeling extremely frustrated last week as it seemed we were making no headway whatsoever with the mountains of boxes. I described our abode to a friend as "an episode of Hoarders." And as I said to Ben the other night, "If we never got any of this back, we probably wouldn't have missed most of it." We've already taken one carload to Goodwill and I'm sure there will be several more before the last box goes to recycling…

I never thought I'd say the words, I am so tired of spending money, but that's exactly where I—where both of us—find ourselves at the moment.

Everything should be put away a week from now, and as of tonight there are only about 30 boxes remaining, and probably half of those are full of record albums, books, and tchotchkes, which I can't do a thing with until I get one or more replacement Kallax shelf units from IKEA on which to store and display them.

And before I can do that I need floor space upon which to put them together, something that is still at a premium in this place.

To be continued…

 

 

If I Had 5 Minutes with Donald, This Is What I Would Say… #Resign

From Margret and Helen:

Dear Donald,

I'd call you Mr. President, but you never bothered to act like one. With no respect where none is due, I must insist that you sit down and shut the hell up. We are done with you.

I know you find it hard to believe that you lost the election. It must amaze your tiny brain and make your enormous ego soar to know that over 70 million American's voted for you. It might seem incredible what you can accomplish taking advantage of people's fear and ignorance, but convincing a fly to land on shit really isn't a very impressive accomplishment. It's a fly. And you're shit.

What is impressive, stunning actually, is that over 80 million Americans turned out during a pandemic and overcame a whole host of voter suppression tactics to vote against you. Just think about that. More people voted for President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris than have ever voted for a political candidate in our nation's history. That, sir, is just how much we hate you.

But if 81 million people voting against you isn't enough to convince you just how truly despised you are, let me clarify it for you now.

You are a racist. You are not the only racist out there, but as a rule, most Americans don't like racists.

You are a misogynist. Again, you are not alone in that mindset, but as a rule, most people don't like misogynists. Women can't stand them actually.

You are an idiot. And while there are lots of idiots in the world, you alone hold the tile of dumbest, shit-for-brains President ever. EVER.

Georgia! My God Georgia, a state bracketed by South Carolina and Alabama, voted against you. Georgia, a state that has the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world, voted against you. THAT is how hated you are. Georgia voting against you is like Alabama choosing soccer over football. It's like walking into a Baskin-Robbins and ordering vanilla. It's like Fox News hiring a fact-checker.

Twitter and Facebook have suspended your accounts. Think about that. My granddaughter has an account on Twitter. She's twelve. Two and half billion people are on Facebook. You are not. I mean how much of an asshat do you have to be to have Shopify ban you. Shopify? A shopping app wants nothing to do with you and your stupid MAGA products.

And… excuse me while I laugh… Pinterest. Pinterest! It must have been a crushing blow to lose your vision boards for decorating Trump Hotels Moscow and Beijing. Good riddance.

Thanks to you, Americans have had to sit through 4 years of some of the stupidest shit ever to come out of Washington. Imagine going to Washington with the likes of Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Gym Bevis Jordan, and Matt Butthead Gaetz, and still you are the biggest loser.

Those shower heads and dishwashers you were always talking about… They work just fine. No one is complaining about them. They use less water. It's called conservation and we have them to ensure that our children and grandchildren have access to clean water.

And for the love of God that stupid wall. The wall that Mexico did not pay for. The border between our countries is almost 2,000 miles long. Do you know how many miles of new wall you built? Forty-seven. 47 fucking miles. You did managed to replace 400 miles of existing wall. Good for you. But after four years you only built 47 miles of new wall? Congratulations sir. If the wall project continues (let's hope it doesn't) it will be completed sometime in June of 2068. My God what a complete and utter asshat you are.

And you know what? I'm going to let you in on a little secret. We all know it, but nobody talks about it. A whole lot of us -millions of us really – were hoping COVID would have ended more than just your presidency. There I said it. Millions of us wanted you gone… permanently. Some people couldn't take it quite that far – wishing someone dead isn't for the faint of heart – but they were at least hoping you would go on a ventilator for a few weeks.

That is how despised you are. When Reagan was shot. The world stood still. And when he came to the hospital window to let us know he was ok, even his detractors were relieved. You got COVID and the world imagined tubes and a slow painful death. Your clown parade around Walter Reed after you got well left millions believing there was no God.

Since March 2020 you had one job. ONE JOB. Get people to stay safe until a vaccine was ready to distribute. You failed miserably. 375,000 people are dead because you couldn't convince your army of morons to wear a mask… which is odd considering how easily they wear a hood. And what is their excuse? "It's too uncomfortable and it won't do any good." Are you shitting me? Look at EVERY picture of a surgeon during surgery and then sit down and shut the hell up. "I can't breathe in one of those. You are taking away my freedoms." A bunch of snowflakes with you being the head snowblower.

And now that the vaccine is here, we discover that you had no plan. None. No plan to distribute the vaccine to the 327 million Americans who need it. I'm older than dirt. If the highest priority group is Group A, I should be in Group Before-A. That's how old I am. Ask me if I have gotten the vaccine. Ask me how many waiting lists I am on. How many appointments that were made and then cancelled because they had run out of vaccines. Unbelievable. That god damn wall will get built before we all get vaccinated.

You positively repulse me. The way you comb your hair. The way you stand. The way you end sentences with stupid ass statements like: you wouldn't believe or like never before. You made fun of a disabled person. You complimented nazis. You bragged about assaulting women. You have a very unhealthy appreciation of your daughter. Creepy really. You remember you have two, right? The awkward kind of clueless one and then the other one – Don Jr. No wait. Tiffany.

This latest shenanigan. This insurrection at the Capitol. What the hell did you think was going to happen? Did you really think that you would remain in office? Are you really that stupid? From where I sit, nobody is home, the porch light isn't on, and the bulb isn't even screwed into the socket. Your screw isn't just loose. It's lost. You are not just one fry short of a Happy Meal. The burger, the fries, the small drink, the shitty toy, even the napkin isn't in your bag. You could throw yourself on the floor and miss. If you had an intelligent thought it would die of loneliness. You are an asshat wearing an asshat.

Deplorable was too kind. Hillary should have called you the c-word. Oh, and listen. That is a word I have never used. Never. But I didn't think ball sack would quite hit the right note. And I am not talking about the female body part. That particular part of the anatomy is way too good for you. I'm talking about the way the British use that word. C**t. Not referencing anything other than how incredibly shitty you are.

You lost. It happens every four years to someone. Get over it. Leave the White House and take those god-awful children and that sour puss wife with you. If possible take Cruz and Hawley too. Stay out of politics. Go back to building shitty hotels or bankrupting casinos. Spend the rest of your life writing a book or two that no one will ever read. You are now simply a page in history… a page most of us will rip out and use as toilet paper.

So please. Just leave. If we never have another orange President again, it will be too soon. I mean it. Really.

This is brilliant. Just brilliant.

What Needs to Happen

This perfectly sums up what I think a LOT of us are feeling today after yesterday's seditious storming of the Capitol.

From Greg Fallis:

First, invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump's power and authority. Second, impeach him again, and this time do it right. Third, appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Trump specifically in regard to yesterday's insurrection.

That first step, invoking the 25th, is critically important. I don't think we can afford to wait two more weeks for Trump to be removed. I don't think he's emotionally stable enough to trust for…hell, for another day. So yeah, I think it's necessary for Vice President Pence to get together with Trump's cabinet and invoke the 25th Amendment in order to remove Trump's control of the nuclear arsenal, to take him out of the chain of military command, and to remove his power to issue pardons. I think we have to neuter his presidential authority, because yesterday he demonstrated more clearly than ever that he simply can't be trusted to wield that power responsibly.

Then we need to impeach him again. The House needs to draft and pass articles of impeachment based only on his abuse of power yesterday. Keep it simple and specific. He incited a riot that resulted in an assault on a federal building, the destruction of federal property, and four deaths. The Senate needs to try him on that charge and Republicans need to find the balls to convict him and remove him from office.

At that point — before Biden assumes office — appoint a non-partisan Special Counsel with a very narrow mandate: investigate Trump to determine his level of responsibility in the January 6 riot and breach of the Capitol.

That's not everything that should be done, of course. It's not everything I'd like to be done. I'd like to see Trump hauled out of the White House in handcuffs. I'd like to see him in an orange jumpsuit. Hell, I'd like to see Cruz and Hawley and the rest of the Sedition Caucus removed from office. I'd like to see them dipped in shit and rolled in the sand. But what the nation needs right now is stability and maturity.

Right now — and I mean right now, starting this day — we need to take a few strong but essentially simple steps to settle the nation. We can sort out the rest later. But the shit that took place yesterday simply cannot be allowed to stand.

I'm ashamed to say it, but I don't think any of this will happen. I don't think there are enough Republicans with integrity to do any of this, and it can't be done without them.

I have a LOT more thoughts on what happened yesterday, but I'm still too angry and sad and ashamed and disgusted to put them in any sort of order.

18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or Insurrection

Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C

18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or insurrection

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.