2024 October❮❮prevnext❯❯

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Sort of a meh month.

"Babylon Creation" from that musical about Daniel was pretty much the coolest, but I liked the Strong Songs deep dive on "Cameo Lover" by Kimbra (Later I added Pink Pony Girl after hearing it at HONK!fest 2024)

4 star:
* Cameo Lover (Kimbra)
* Babylon Creation (Sight & Sound Theatres)
* Pink Pony Club (Chappell Roan)

3 star:
* Pac-Man Season 1 (French) (Pac-Man)
* The Day the Nazi Died (feat. Emily Parrish) (Blank Tape Tax)
* The Sheik of Araby (Decca Audition) (The Beatles)
* Tie Me Kangaroo Down (Don Spencer)
* Move Your Feet (Junior Senior)
* Funk Formula 1 (Intro) (Bootsy Collins)
* Mardi Gras In New Orleans (Olympia Brass Band)
* Disco Snails (Vulfmon & Zachary Barker)
* Too Sweet (The Macarons Project)

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Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

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17 Baby Boomers Admit The Things That Are Way Better Than When They Were Young - some things are improving, no matter how it feels.

The Happy City Index has released its list of happiest cities in the world, with mainly European cities making their gold tier. They tend to have four elements in common: prioritizing people over cars, access to nature, plenty of museums and a diverse food scene.

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A friend who has returned to India sent me this article The Language Trap, showing how (just as a for instance) most USA political conceptions will not map neatly onto an understanding of what goes on in India, and vice versa.

tx Michael Roh

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Saw Megalopolis on my own this week.

Same. I enjoyed pretending Aubrey Plaza's character was actually her Janet Snakehole from Parks and Rec.

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Other shots from Davis Sq Plaza

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Wordle 1,206 2/6

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...better to be lucky than good (spoilers: ADIEU to FLOUR)

Car broke down
Wife left me.
Life is lite,
and then Hefty.

(poem-let I grabbed in 1998) Bath Cat

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People in North Carolina and probably soon Florida are gonna pay for these sins of disbelief and bullshittery.

But oh here we go, let's start pretending it's vast weather control conspiracies.

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For whatever struggles I'm muddling through I'm grateful not to be in a hurricane path or war zone right now.

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Just watched "Drive My Car" which got the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in 2022 - A long but really moving adaption of a Haruki Murakami story.

(I may go on a kick of checking out the "best movies on HBO" Wired has). I feel like some day I should try to gain a LITTLE more proficiency in all things cooking. I know it ain't rocket science, though it does take a certain intuition and comfort with ambiguous judgements that I have never liked. (Not to mention, since I've always been more about textures than flavors, my concepts of spice are extremely limited.) I should be more willing to experiment, but I guess I'm too worried about ruining food or cookware.

I kind of like this article on good ideas from Trader Joe's, which is exactly the kind of thing I hoped this nutritionist I met with once or twice would come up with - pragmatic (and grocer store based) specific options, not just generalized "here's nutrition guidelines now work out an action plan for yourself"
My latest bit of bachelor-boy-ish cuisine is some kind of quick cook rice with torn up leafy greens, and then maybe a bit of some kind of dressing (Heh - maybe I should add it onto my previous "bachelor boy" food list I made in 2002) And maybe I should thrown an egg on that? Or go back to Chicken Sausages, though I've been steering away from them a bit.

Actually here's a promising cooking for newbies from back in quarantine days. I do admit, "Assume it will take you 60 to 90 minutes to prepare and clean up after any meal that's not scrambled eggs." is probably that I hate to admit is right; mostly I would like to cook to not appear incompetent to others and maybe for special occasions, more so than caring about eating something interesting, and 90 minutes is a hunk of time.

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Everyone will not just

If your solution to some problem relies on "If everyone would just..." then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they're not going to start now.

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fry an egg and put it on that and it almost looks like i know what I'm doing

Gen-X Humor be like - ok, first of all 10,000 is way too many spoons. And have you tried using the side of a spoon to cut maybe?

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Charlie's Kitchen must be the most underrated place in Harvard Square. from the beer gardens to the street side seating to the good well priced food to the big extent of beers, it's great. I don't understand why it's less packed than the other places. I don't want to defend what Woody Allen has done, but I think it's sometimes ok to separate the art from the artist. (Though maybe it's even a little tougher with Allen... all his dialog is so distinctively him)

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Kleinmann: I've never paid for sex in my life.
Prostitute: Oh, you just think you haven't.

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"If I thought that there was nothing except this, I'd kill myself."
"I've thought of it. Believe me, there have been many times when my brain has said 'Why not?' I mean, there's no point to anything. But somehow my blood always said ''Live! Live!''...And I always listen to my blood.

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There's only one kind of love that lasts, that's unrequited love. It stays with you forever.

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second time this week, better to be lucky than good.

Wordle 1,211 2/6

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(spoiler: ADIEU to STAIN)

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I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he's a total fascist

covfefe.

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Just watched Love Story. It's sweet (if very sad) even if some of the early romance feels unearned. Interesting glimpses of late 60s Cambridge. You know, stuff like "snow". (Also I always appreciate the chance to inject a Tom Lehrer "Fight Fiercely, Harvard!")

They had a line that that to rent four rooms for 8250 a month 9in Cambridge) is absolutely impossible. took me a second to realize they meant $82.50. (~$670 these days, which at least 2-4x what I'd say now, if not more.)

(IMDB'ing around I see Ali MacGraw also played a Radcliffe romantic interst in "Goodbye, Columbus". Though that's the city and not the lost spice mongering slaver dude.)

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It's funny how much I resent "rate this movie" features on streaming services and IMDB. And for my own records, I have no trouble ranking stuff 1-5 stars (heavy on the 3s and 4s; 2s are some what disapointing, rare 1s I despise, 5s are like all time greats for me - and it's curved by my expectations for it) but being called to being part of a big consensus judgement goes against my sense of the world.

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Today I watched Love Story and Goodbye, Columbus. Neither were super fantastic but I feel empowered.
This lyric/title ("More Than This") came unbidden into my head this morning - I had to look up the song, and it was never part of my music collection.

Like wikipedia says "The song's narrator is hopeful about the existence of something more but is vaguely melancholic about there not being so", so, like, mood.

Actually more than "mood", strong sharp jag of sad.

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...I have never even considered Dr Pepper could be a person...
I'm good with my assumptions.
"I'm a Pepper, he's a Pepper, she's a Pepper, we're a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too"
I mean, it's about as accepting as a soft drink can be!

I really like Scottish tweets

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Heh, interesting to see a review of the video game Elden Ring in Harper's

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Sigh.

The other weird thing is... I don't even remember watching Goodfellas but according to my media diary I did in 2013. It's interesting when you find an author whose stuff you reliably like, like Sally Rooney. (I also appreciate the miniseries for her works that get made and put up on Hulu.)

"Intermezzo", about a nearly estranged pair of brothers (one a solicitor the other a chess prodigy) coping with the recent death of their fathers and dealing with romances (complicated by age differences) was resonate.

Aber fühlst du nicht *jetzt* den Kummer?
("Aber spielst du nicht *jetzt* Schach?")

But don't you feel grief *now*?
('But aren't you *now* playing chess?')

--LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN,
Philosophical Investigations

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Nobody when they're rejected believes it's really for extraneous reasons. And it almost never is for extraneous reasons, because mutual attraction – which even makes sense from the evolutionary perspective – is simply the strongest reason to do anything, overriding all the contrary principles and making them fall away into nothing.

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Sadness, missing his father, and a kind of shame somehow, because each passing day seemed to bring Ivan further away from him and the life they used to have together, a life that was receding increasingly into the past, into the realm of childhood and adolescence. The realisation that his adulthood, into which he was entering now so definitively, and which would last all the rest of his life, would have to be lived without his father. That he was becoming a person his father would never know.

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Yes I would like he thinks to live in such a way that I could vanish into thin air at any time without affecting anyone and in fact I feel that for me this would constitute the perfect and perhaps the only acceptable life. At the same time I want desperately to be loved. Aloud he says: Whatever, I don't know.

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They look at one another again, tired, and tender, affectionate again. Pitying themselves and one another. The old fond familiarity in her look, without which he thinks he could not live. Yes. When he saw her waiting for him at the gate: to encounter not only her, the beauty of her nearness renewed, but also himself, the self that is loved by her, and therefore worthy of his own respect.

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Together they walked over from her apartment to the union meeting the other night, her hand on his arm. A philosophical problem. When they go out together, to be mistaken for what they aren't. Or rather: to be mistaken for what they are. And how is that possible. To see a man and a woman walking together: to name in the mind their relation to one another, as it were automatically. Which is to select from the assortment of existing names the one that seems appropriate to the particular case. To say to oneself that in relation to the man, this particular woman must be a friend, or else a girlfriend, or a wife, or sister. An act of naming which stands open to correction, but correction only in the form of replacement: that is, the replacement of one existing name for another. If you are mistaken in thinking this woman my friend, that means merely that you have chosen the wrong term from the assortment, and therefore that I can correct you by supplying the appropriate one in its place. The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, says Wittgenstein, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent. Because the name you give to a presumed relation between a man and woman may be both correct and incorrect at once. Each name including within itself a complex of assumptions. You say to yourself that a certain woman is my girlfriend: and intrinsic in this act of naming is the supposition of a number of independent facts. That this woman and I go to bed together, for instance; that neither of us goes to bed with anyone else; that while we are in bed certain particular acts take place, and so forth. And if you are corrected about the nature of the relation, you will therefore reasonably conclude that after all we don't go to bed together, certain acts don't take place between us, and so on. Here saying 'There is no third possibility' or 'But there can't be a third possibility!' – expresses only our inability to turn our eyes away from this picture. Is she or isn't she. Are they or not.

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One of ChatGPT's can be reframing "the obvious" (Along with a knack for taking established knowledge and seeing what sounds likely to apply it to a novel problem at hand, the "merge tool" model of these damn things.)

Anyway, I decided to ask it about procrastination. I thought

When confronted with many tasks, the brain can perceive them as a threat, triggering a "fight or flight" response. Instead of "fighting" (tackling the tasks), the brain might choose "flight" (avoiding the tasks).

was kind of insightful. Certainly "Fight or Flight" is a well-known trope, but I hadn't thought of it in this context.

And even if the tasks aren't scary in and of themselves, they are a constant threat to tender egos, our self-image as capable and competent people.

Still wishing I had better self-insight; definitely there is a part of me that is not my narrative, more-or-less rational self - that part of me that's reacting with fear seems to be something else - but if it's as simple as a left/right hemisphere split or something better described with Internal Family Systems type thinking is still an open question for me.

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I think the Dune "litany against fear" has it right. My favorite version was is the condensed version from the miniseries:

"I will not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
I will face my fear.
I will let it pass through me.
When the fear has gone,
there shall be nothing.
Only I will remain."

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I think from the fear brain part of my mind, having a big Todo list - even if most of the tasks are pretty straight forward, should be easy wins - brings up a " just remember that if you go knocking on enough doors asking to see the devil, eventually he may answer." - like at some point you run into the tough problems that seem more likely to kick your ass.

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Sometimes the slogan Jerry (from Rick and Morty) came up with for the National Apple Farmers of America - "Hungry for Apples?" - a rip off of "Got Milk?" that would only work in a custom VR world - is actually pretty good? At least I think about it and sometimes eat an apple.

(Kind of a geek joke - it's saying you won't pass a reference to the original Consciousness variable, instead you are passing it as a copy. So it's tough to say that it's YOU inside the computer, but a copy. This is another flavor of the "how do we know if the Star Trek teleporter is actually transportation or if it's more like murder plus super deep cloning...) me and my tuba back on our BS (Big Scary)

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Remember when you were a precocious teen, and you're like, "huh, I should save all these old letters and school stuff, probably some future biographer of mine will find it useful, once I'm renown in the intellectual circles..."

Or was it just me?

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Of course, then it's hard to admit some of that old stuff isn't even that interesting to ME. But still hard to discard, since it's literally irreplaceable.

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Heh, thinking of that last photo that got pretty decent play on FB - I don't love it but I can't think of anything else that has the same kind of social graph for me.

But you're at the whims of the damn algorithm, that wants to pretend you love random engagement shit as much as stuff from other people, which sucks.
One quirk is, I think for purposes of the FB/Instagram autocrosspost stuff, the algorithm seems to favor "one photo, possibly with description" over galleries. Like on the one hand, there is something to be said for that kind of enforced conciseness. On the other hand it seems to mix up the relationship between humans and machines.

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TAXI

Why don't we cruise
Times Square at noon
enjoy the jam
I'm not immune
to your deft charm
in one stalled car
I'd like to take
you as you are

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I love self-referential statements where you just say the name of the thing you wish to express and it counts as having expressed the thing so named. Apologies. Greetings. Fair warning. We should be able to do that with more things, I think.

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This site has some discussion on this graph on how couples meet online or elsewhere... I think it's kinda bullshit but i do wonder what the real numbers are

TIL "Go for the Gusto" was a slogan for Schlitz Beer.

(the slogan came to mind as i think about trying to act with a bit more verve in a fake it til you make it kind of way)

Sometimes my behavior feels like a flinch response (or I guess more accurately, the flight part of fight-or-flight) where when the least little stumbling block occurs - or its just time for the next step - and I have to at least stand up and maybe walk around. I think of the old (asshole-ish) kids' routine "two for flinching" where you mime going to hit someone and if they flinch you get to give them two punches. Which is... pretty inane? (But it reminds me of the line, false attributed to Churchill:

One ought never to turn one's back on threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching you will reduce the danger by half.

Like I said - two for flinching. Maybe half for standing up to it (though ironically is I'm trying not to stand, and just sit there and plow through, keyboard under by fingers))

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No pressure. We're all going to be dead soon, and it really doesn't matter anymore. So there's zero pressure. You're either going to win or you're not. And when you win, you try to forget about it a week later, and when you lose, you try to forget about it a forget about it a week later. And so it's not pressure, it's an opportunity.

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I am both positive I know where this is and 100% sure I'm wrong.

(the basement of the Salvation Army building in Coshocton, OH)

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Trump became angry. "It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!" He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: "Don't pay it!"
-The Atlantic on Trumps...uh, mixed feeling about the military

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"In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, "Why can't you be like the German generals?" Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient. (Throughout the course of his presidency, Trump referred to flag officers as "my generals.") According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals "tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off." This correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: "No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him," the president responded."

LOL. This is the guy some of y'all want. trump is too old, and misfiring on a lot of cylinders. older than Reagan when he LEFT office.

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Always loved graphpaper in high school:

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I will always love Big Mouth's Ghost of Duke Ellington saying "Jazz is LIKE Life, it goes on for longer than you think, and then as soon as you're like 'OHH, I get it!' it ends!"

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I suppose any griping I have about the Dodgers and Yankees payrolls is kind of undercut by hoping this generation of Celtics get at least one more championship.

Or as New Yorker cartoonis Mankoff puts it:

See, the problem with doing things to prolong your life is that all the extra years come at the end, when you're old.

I've loved this book for decades. I remember giving a copy to my ex-, back before we were ex-, and inscribing it "to finding a place in poetic memory".

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We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

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Necessity knows no magic formulae--they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

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Karenin was not overjoyed by the move to Switzerland. Karenin hated change. Dog time cannot be plotted along a straight line; it does not move on and on, from one thing to the next. It moves in a circle like the hands of a clock, which--they, too, unwilling to dash madly ahead--turn round and round the face, day in and day out following the same path. In Prague, when Tomas and Tereza bought a new chair or moved a flower pot, Karenin would look on in displeasure. It disturbed his sense of time. It was as though they were trying to dupe the hands of the clock by changing the numbers on its face.

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But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

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While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.

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Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

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But deep down she said to herself, Franz may be strong, but his strength is directed outward; when it comes to the people he lives with, the people he loves, he's weak. Franz's weakness is called goodness. Franz would never give Sabina orders. He would never command her, as Tomas had, to lay the mirror on the floor and walk back and forth on it naked. Not that he lacks sensuality; he simply lacks the strength to give orders. There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

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She answered herself: When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out.

But the dead can't get out anyway! What difference does it make whether they're covered with soil or stones?

The difference is that if a grave is covered with a stone it means we don't want the deceased to come back. The heavy stone tells the deceased, "Stay where you are!"

That made Sabina think about her father's grave. There was soil above his grave with flowers growing out of it and a maple tree reaching down to it, and the roots and flowers offered his corpse a path out of the grave. If her father had been covered with a stone, she would never have been able to communicate with him after he died, and hear his voice in the trees pardoning her.

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Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.

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By the word "nonlove" I do not wish to imply that he took a cynical attitude to the young woman, that, as present-day parlance has it, he looked upon her as a sex object; on the contrary, he was quite fond of her, valued her character and intelligence, and was willing to come to her aid if ever she needed him. He was not the one who behaved shamefully towards her; it was his memory, for it was his memory that, unbeknown to him, had excluded her from the sphere of love.

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call *poetic memory* and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful. From the time he met Tereza, no woman had the right to leave the slightest impression on that part of his brain.

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"I used to admire believers," Tomas continued. "I thought they had an odd transcendental way of perceiving things which was closed to me. Like clairvoyants, you might say. But my son's experience proves that faith is actually quite a simple matter. He was down and out, the Catholics took him in, and before he knew it, he had faith. So it was gratitude that decided the issue, most likely. Human decisions are terribly simple."

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On they danced to the strains of the piano and violin. Tereza leaned her head on Tomas's shoulder. Just as she had when they flew together in the airplane through the storm clouds. She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.

I had a therapist for ten years, then moved off after feeling we'd grown about as far as we were going to, and noting that I was probably mostly looking for paternal-ish approval (stuff that I can't get organically, with my own dad having died over 30 years before.)

My therapist retired, but still works with some of his old clients in a somewhat less formal way, and I've taken up ever other week sessions.

He says I should be more "libidinous". Putting aside the sexual aspect of it (though I guess that's a part of it), I see it as reflecting what they say in Taoism, where they label energies masculine and feminine, the former being more proactive, the latter being more receptive. Putting aside the gendered aspect of it, and using the same introspective framework I've found helpful, I see it as a call for doing more a bit for my own wants, putting aside my deeply ingrained habit of doing what the group thinks is best or most prefers (with my preferences being part of the group).

It's tough, because thinking of the group first is part of my integrity as person. Doing otherwise feels a bit greedy for me... and tbh I kind of wish more folks in the world were group-first in their mentality - more interested in using reason to figure out what really is true in objective reality, more involved with polling what other individuals in the group think and why - especially when there's a good-will difference of opinion and interpretation.

Anyway.

I'm struck by how shifting moods are. I have a ton of things to be nervous about, and sometimes I'm miserable and sometimes I'm sanguine. But usually there's no particular reason why my mood shifts - maybe I get triggered by some fleeting external reminder, maybe the mood just happens. And I have some control over the mood, by changing focus. Which i guess is akin to what some folks do with doom-scrolling and other distractions. Though my therapist, and some others, would seem to argue that it's not good to be blasé about everything. But I guess I feel equanimity is a worthwhile goal and as long as you don't totally undercut your efforts to make the situation better via acceptance, maybe we SHOULD be less attached to the outcomes we're hoping for.

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Harold Parker State Forest Making The Rounds:

Why I voted for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz:
So when people ask me why my yard is the only one within a mile to have a VOTE HARRIS sign and not a Scum Trump sign.... I have to explain that there are a few things I don't like about Trump and what he has done so far to America......
• Like when he incited an insurrection against the government,
• mismanaged a pandemic that killed over a million Americans
• separated immigrant children from their families, and now they are lost in the bureaucracy.
AND.....
• tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church
• tried to block all Muslims from entering the country
• got impeached
• got impeached again
• had the worst job record of any president in modern history
• pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden
• fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia
• bragged about firing the FBI director on TV.
AND...
• took Vladimir Putin's word over the US intelligence community
• diverted military funding to build his wall
• caused the longest government shutdown in US history
• called Black Lives Matter a "symbol of hate"
• lied nearly 40,000 times and still lying.
AND....
• banned transgender people from serving in the military
• ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions
• vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers
• refused to release his tax returns
• increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion
AND...
• had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history
• called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers
• coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist
• refused to concede the 2020 election
• hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House
• walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl
• called neo-Nazis "very fine people"
• suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID
AND...
• abandoned our allies, the Kurds to Turkey
• pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans
• incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic
• withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords
• withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal
• withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was designed to block China's advances
• insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter
• pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op
AND...
• failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies
• called Haiti and African nations "shithole" countries
• called the city of Baltimore the "worst in the nation"
• claimed that he single-handedly brought back the phrase "Merry Christmas" even though it hadn't gone anywhere
• forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader
• believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe
• suggested the US should buy Greenland
AND....
• colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges
• repeatedly called the media "enemies of the people."
• claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID, we'd have fewer cases
• violated the emoluments clause
• thought that Nambia was a country
• told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public
• called his exceedingly faithful vice president a "p---y" for following the Constitution
• nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet
• nominated a corrupt head of the EPA
• nominated a corrupt head of HHS
• nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department
• nominated a corrupt head of the USDA
AND
• praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies
• refused to allow the presidential transition to begin
• insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death
• spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president
• falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote
• called the Muslim mayor of London a "stone-cold loser"
• falsely claimed that he turned down being Time's Man of the Year
• considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions
• mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID
• locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones
AND...
• used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the "China virus"
• hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses, including his campaign manager and national security adviser
• pardoned several of his shady associates
• gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressmen who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories
• got into a telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!)
• had a Secretary of State who called him a moron
• forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history
AND ....
• botched the COVID vaccine rollout
• tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him
• charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties
• constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate
• claimed that COVID would "magically" disappear
• called a U.S. Senator "Pocahontas"
• used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka's merchandise
• opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling
• got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers
AND....
• claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US
• ignored or didn't even take part in daily intelligence briefings
• blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining
• redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle
• got played by Kim Jung Un and his "love letters"
• threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution
• botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico
• threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them
• pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to "find" him votes
• thought that the Virgin Islands had a President
• drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane
AND.....
• allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing
• rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos
• pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID
• rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers
• held blatant campaign rallies at the White House
• tried to take away millions of Americans' health insurance because the law was named for a Black man
• refused to attend his successors' inauguration
• nominated the worst Education Secretary in history
• threatened judges who didn't do what he wanted
• attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci
AND....
• promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn't)
• allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues
• struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble
• called an African-American Congresswoman "low IQ"
• threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders
• went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic
• claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were "witch hunts,"
• seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution
• demanded "total loyalty" from the FBI director
• praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles
• completely gutted the Voice of America
• placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service
AND...
• claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower
• suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country
• suggested that COVID wasn't that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public
• overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported
• reduced the number of refugees the US accepts
• insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames
AND...
• gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address
• named as head of federal personnel a 29-year-old who'd previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties
• eliminated the White House Office of pandemic response
• used soldiers as campaign props
• fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him
• demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade
• hired a shit ton of white nationalists
• politicized the civil service
• did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government
• falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts
AND....
• claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won
• insulted reporters of color
• insulted women reporters
• insulted women reporters of color
• suggested he was okay with China's oppression of the Uighurs
• attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him
• summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election
• spent countless hours every day watching Fox News
• refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas
• hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer
• tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him
• acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney
• attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a woman who accused him of sexual assault
AND....
• held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present
• didn't disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin, so the US had to find out via Russian media
• stopped holding press briefings for months at a time
• "ordered" US companies to leave China even though he has no such power
• led a political party that couldn't even be bothered to draft a policy platform
• claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers
• tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course
• suggested that the government nuke hurricanes
• suggested that wind turbines cause cancer
• said that he had a special aptitude for science
• fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure
• blurted out classified information to Russian officials
• tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida
• fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban
• hired Stephen Miller
AND...
• openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago, where everyone could hear them
• interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel
• abandoned Iraqi refugees who'd helped the U.S. during the war
• tried to get Russia back into the G7
• held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden
• seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive
• lost 60 election fraud cases in court, including before judges he had nominated
• falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren't
• shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies
• still hasn't come up with a healthcare plan
• still hasn't come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated "Infrastructure Weeks"
• forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID
AND....
• told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."
• screwed up the Census
• withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic
• did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule, "President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings," allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act
• seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican
• stood before the sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win
• constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president, which presumably includes four who were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump
• claimed Andrew Jackson could've stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened
• said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake
• claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him
• claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,
AND...
• created a commission to whitewash American history
• retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain
• claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn't have happened if someone there had a gun, even though there was an armed security guard there
• hired a senior staffer who cited the nonexistent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims
• had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others
• bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties
• apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House
• stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians
• falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police
• said that the head of the CDC didn't know what he was talking about
• tried to rescind protection from DREAMers
AND ....
• gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic
• tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax
• said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn't count blue states
• deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented
• claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln
• touted a "super-duper" secret "hydrosonic" missile, which may or may not be a new "hypersonic" missile or may not exist at all
• retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile
• forced through security clearances for his family
• suggested that police officers should rough up suspects
• suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs
• tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender
• suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher
• nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy
• retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called "Fuck tha Police" at a campaign event
AND...
• hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags
• accused Democrats of "treason" for not applauding his State of the Union address
• claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were "spending too much time" on Russia
• mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault
• obsessed over low-flow toilets
• ordered the re-release of more COVID vaccines when there weren't any to release
• called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek)
• hijacked Washington's July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech
• took advice from the MyPillow guy
• claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists
• said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure
AND...
• falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent
• announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria, which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest
• insulted the leader of Canada
• insulted the leader of France
• insulted the leader of Britain
• insulted the leader of Germany
• insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!)
• falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues
• blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually
• continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,
• said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their "Sony televisions" if the US were ever attacked
• left a NATO summit early in a huff
• stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of five knows not to do that
• called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary
• refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise
And I can't remember many other things at the moment.
Copy and paste to your heart's content. Ahaha, a brief clip of me attempting to fancy dance on the HONKfest mainstage:

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Every morning I send a doodle to my nephew... I liked this morning's...

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It's ok, Yankees; at least you won one world series this century.

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One of JP Honk's two oldest traditions is Halloween @ Dunster Road. Please enjoy this brief video of us with a Gorilla on neighoring Holbrook Street.

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2024 October❮❮prevnext❯❯