The Uaries Are Almost Over

The Uaries are a drag. Bad weather, belt tightening from spending money on Christmas gifts, lots of cutting and reductions and healthy eating and Hallmark Holidays and my birthday and ugh it's a load of rubbish. This trailer though, it's pretty good. I'm ready for this movie. It looks like a lot of fun. Bring on Spring already.

2007 Was Alright

I dunno about 2007 Forever, but mash ups are fun as hell. They used to be called bootlegs and I agree they don't land as hard now as they did when Girl Talk first started swinging haymakers, but they still sound pretty good. Build your own here: http://themagicipod.com/

Or just get down to the above, because that is some good shit. Language not strictly safe for work, so turn it up in the headphones kids.

Happy Anniversary

Beast

Today marks the anniversary of my official arrival on this rock we call the earth. If my mom's narrative is to be believed then I spent the first several years crying and/or shitting myself. I was a crabby baby, is what I mean. Those that know me well will agree that not much has changed, but here we are. Anyway, happy birfday to me. I am going to celebrate by eating some cookies and going to the gym. And hanging out with my peeps, who remain the best. 

My mom sent me an ecard from Jacquie Lawson, who has a website that looks like it was built on aol in 1999 and a huge library of flash animated (of course) gift cards from which to choose. The dark web is a thing, people. Still, Cat Boogie was pretty good, and cats are the best. Unless you get a lame cat, and then she just wrecks your couch and lives forever. My friend Sweet Katie got a kitten and that cat is definitely the best. She is a spicy little meatball - it took her only few minutes to get into my suitcase and see if she could get cat hair on my work clothes. Well played, cat. Well played. 

I hope that you enjoyed your weekend. If you skipped the cards and gift baskets this year then fret not, dear reader. There's always next year. 

Thanks for reading. 

Consistency

Got my taxes done earlier this week. My accountant has been doing my taxes for as long a I have filed them (25 years and counting), and he has known me for a while longer than that.

My accountant is the parent of one of my friends from middle school and high school, and I more or less grew up at their house since I was there at least once a week during that time. He and his wife gave me rides to practices and games and events and movies, and then when we were old enough their son had a beater of a car so he drove us places: practices and taco bell and movies and the park to play basketball and so forth and so on. They came to every game and school event while in school, and then supported me generously over the years afterwards. (In 25 years I have paid to have my taxes done exactly zero times, which is absurd, but they literally refuse to take my money, so here we are.)

My accountant is a family friend, and he and his generous wife have always been more family than friend. They have been a constant in my life like little else. So when we sat down this year, with me as a middle-aged person, and my accountant family let me know that he has sold the business and plans to retire, I was affected in a way that I did not expect.

I guess the point of this rambling summary is that I am old, and I don't like to be reminded of it? No idea. This is also probably why my self-indulgent, navel-gazing corner of the cybers gets no traffic. I need to start a blog about diet and/or weight loss...

Happy Valentine's Day!

If You Don't Love This Dog You Are Dead to Me

I hope you had a much better day than the current POTUS. He wrote a goofy love letter to Putin and then Putin scolded him because his National Security Adviser got fired resigned after less than a month because he broke the law. And I don't mean speeding on his way to the office - he was negotiating with the Russians on Trump's behalf while Obama was still in office. Turns out that this is illegal at best, and mayyyybe closer to treason than anyone should be comfortable with. Oops!

One of the suggested candidates for replacing him is David Petraeus, who will have to let his parole officer know if he moves to DC because he is currently on probation for improperly handling classified information. 

Is there any good news? I dunno. This made me laugh. Is it a real thing? I don't find myself moved by Justin Trudeau but I'm not his target demographic. What says the readership? 

Love to you and yours each and every day. For real: hallmark holidays are bad and dumb. Love your people 365 days a year. That's your life, and it's all you get. 

And Furthermore...

The other thing that's getting up my nose about Neil Gorsuch and his 'originalist' approach to the law is that he writes essays about how if you don't like the law you should work to elect legislators that can change the law, then leave it to the judiciary to adjudicate.

This is in perfect alignment with Gorsuch originalist views, which leave anything not explicitly in the constitution up to the states. The issue is twofold. For starters (as explained in earlier posts) the constitution itself is a historical document, written by some well-meaning people with no concept of modern society. The second issue is that the legislative system itself is broken: the poor are being disenfranchised at every opportunity, the system is rife with corruption and more influenced by money than the actual will of the people, and also your elected legislators pass some very, very bad laws. If you are a bible-humping neocon like Gorsuch you just shrug and say well, abortion isn't explicitly mentioned in the constitution, and all life is precious because Jesus died for our sins and God loves you, so I hope you enjoy your pregnancy and resulting unwanted child and also it's too bad your insurance doesn't cover birth control but hey that's the way it goes. Not sure what coddled world he lives in, but applying leverage through the legislative branch is not an option for much of the country. It's almost as though he doesn't care, which, hey, about that...

Gorsuch also approves of discrimination on religious grounds. This has been couched as 'religious freedom', which: lol. It is actually a form of enabled discrimination. Most famously it entitles your employer to pick and choose your health care coverage to exclude contraception, because they don't believe in it. Can you imagine working at a place and finding out that basic contraception is not covered because your employer doesn't think you should have access to birth control? I think it's perfectly fair if they provided no coverage at all, but why do they get to choose what is and is not covered? Hobby Lobby was able to get this through the court because they convinced the (five male, Catholic) justices that their belief that certain contraceptives cause abortions (a provably false claim, btw), and providing those contraceptives to their employees is a violation of their religious freedom. In other words: hey I believe this to be true because Jesus, and you can't tell me otherwise, because Jesus. And hey what a weird coincidence that all you guys are Catholic and are voting against a womans right to reproductive health!

This is what we are up against. The ghost of Scalia lives on, and thinking people must keep putting that man and his discriminatory views in the trash where they belong.