The prodigal daughter returns.

The Blob began about three years ago as a way for me to put off packing for the big move from Houston to San Francisco.  It feels appropriate that it should end now with me being a giant procrastinator again, but this time packing for my big move back to the east coast (beast coast, as they say).

I'm so glad people have enjoyed this blog.  I promise there will be more to come (possibly "Reports from Solitude"...we'll see).

Merry Christmas (isn't it great we're allowed to say that again?  Just don't mention that Jesus was a vulnerable fetus) and a happy, healthy, peaceful 2018 to you all.

I'll leave you with my packing playlist--all songs that appeared on my Spotify Top Songs of 2017 (you'll find I am not "hip").  I can recommend these songs for singing aloud while moving piles from one place to another and mulling over your life choices.

• "9 to 5" by Dolly Parton: Particularly satisfying after you have quit your job.

• "You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling" by Hall and Oates: Becca and I are going to be Hall and Oates for Halloween next year.  This has been good practice for the karaoke portion.

• "I Want Crazy" by Hunter Hayes: Not sure I need too much more of it though, tbh.

• "Montezuma" by the Fleet Foxes

• "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise" by The Avett Brothers

• "Fuck You" by Cee-lo Green ;)

• "Respect" by Aretha Franklin

• "Send Me on My Way" by Rusted Root

• "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon & Garfunkel: SAIL ON, SILVER GIRL

• "Time to Say Goodbye" by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli: CON TEEEEE PARTIROOOOO (also, why is she so weird in this video?)

• "One Day More" by the 10th Anniversary Cast of Les Miserables (the best version IMO, 25th Anniversary also acceptable): One day more to pack and get rid of all this, plus several items not shown:

A coup in America.

This segment followed by this segment make me about as hysterical as a Fox News host when Barack Obama wears a tan suit.  I feel crazy.  But I think this is incredibly alarming and probably evil shit.  

This is the test of American democracy.

If this White House continues to discredit the FBI, sowing misinformation via their propaganda media arm, insinuating without real evidence that FBI officials were planning subversive activity against the president, we very well may be witnessing a coup—the hostile takeover of the American government by anti-democratic forces and their idiot stooges.

This is what happens in authoritarian regimes—the demonization of the “other”, the undermining of checks on power, the banning of words, the consolidation of that power.  The circumstances are said to be so dire we must put aside the law.

The circumstances are dire, and that’s why we must cling to the law. 

The foundation of our government, those precious values in our Constitution, is under assault.

We, the people, must cling to the law if our leaders will not.

This is the chaos Vladimir Putin wanted when he interfered in our election.  He wants to make a mockery of us, and he’s had definite success.  But his target is not just the office of the president—it’s our whole system of government and society.  He wants the world to see that we as Americans do not value our greatest strength—that we are a nation of laws, and not of men.

If we want to preserve the republic, we, the people, must prove him wrong.

We, the people, must demand our leaders are held accountable to the law.

Congress, representative of the people, must impeach President Trump if he fires Robert Mueller.  The people must demand it.

This is not sexy stuff.  But democracy is destroyed by gradual disintegration from within.  A series of events make up that gradual decline.  The election of Donald Trump was one such event.  The removal of Robert Mueller would be another. 

---

I’m not a big protest person, but I will participate if Trump crosses this line.  Consider finding an event near you. 

Belated birthday message.

I find I'm getting pretty cheeseball in my old age, so please bear with me.  Also if you've been watching the Crown and imagine this in the style of the Queen's Christmas message, I won't be upset.

My husband and I--

Oops sorry, got a little too into being the Queen.  I don't have a husband.  Ahem.

I'm fairly sure my 28th year on this planet would hold its own against most soap operas.  It at least holds the record for number of times yours truly has said, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."  (Nobody was ever kidding.)

It would be easy to dismiss 2017 as a miserable year.  There's been a lot of bad shit.  But I'm not about doing things the easy way.  Some really wonderful things have happened this year.  

My best friend in the entire world got engaged to her (other) best friend in the entire world and I've never been so sure two people belong in each other's lives.  They are going to adopt me and we will live happily ever after in DC with our dogs and cats.  (Can't wait to join you guys on the honeymoon, it's gonna be great.)  

I have two beautiful nieces who give me hope and remind me to keep fighting.

I've made some lifelong friends in San Francisco.  (You're stuck with me, bitches.  Kisses.)

Most importantly, I really think a miracle happened this week.  (I told you this would get cheeseball.)  I'm not always sure God is a real thing, but he got several checks in his column over the past few days.  The last time I felt this sure there is a God, I was laying on the ground in Victoria Park in London having a small personal crisis when a puppy rushed in from out of nowhere and attacked my face with kisses.  Hard to compete with that.  (The puppy probably just liked that my face was sweaty from running, but still.  Higher power.)

Here's to all of us getting out of 2017 alive and maybe even well.  And here's to me becoming a 29-year-old hermit.

A message from Sean.

The Blob breaks its regrettably long hiatus with this special message from Sean Hannity.

Stand down, you idiot fucks.  Stand down.

Such moments in history do not often befall us mere men.  The Keurig has wronged us.  The Keurig has burned us.  Your valiance against the Keurig will not soon be forgotten. 

But we cannot continue in such bitterness. Brother against brother, father against son, husband against wife, husband against husband (lol jk, that would be gay and we don’t do that on this show), son against brother against father against nephew, men against single serving coffee machines.  Enough!  What more can the world take?

Again, I say, stand down.

We cannot hallow these grounds.  Frankly, they don’t deserve it.  I call on you to make peace with the Keurig, not because it is easy…but because it is hard.  Also because Volvo pulled its ads and I’m a little afraid to see what you’ll all do next. (Oh who am I kidding—GO SMASH SOME VOLVOS INTO HILLARY CLINTON’S FACE)  (lol jk again, my lawyers are advising me not to encourage this behavior.)

There will be other hills of beans to die on.  This is not our hill. 

You have fought the good fight.  You will finish the race, maybe even all the races.  You have kept the faith.  Know that our God fully espouses our righteous rage.  Is that not the best part of waking up?  But we must return to merely winking at violence, rather than actively stirring the pot.

Press on.

Panhandle peanut gallery.

I wore a neon green Rice t-shirt on a run in the park after work today.  Comments received:

“Jerry Rice—he was a good, good friend of mine muttermuttermuttermutter”

“You run to burn calories, but you wear rice on your shirt!  HA HA HA HA”

“Rice!  It’s what’s for dinner!”

“You don’t eat a lot of rice—I like you have no belly.”

WOW THANKS EVERYONE RICE FIGHT NEVER DIE

Public service announcement.

A British friend recently informed me that “blob” is slang for “period”.  So if someone were to, let’s say, name a blog “Claire Blobbing” or perhaps “THE BLOB”, others might infer this blog is somehow related to Claire’s menstrual cycle.  Given the semi-regularly scheduled bitching that may occur on such a blog, some might even think it a clever, if vulgar, title.  Any resemblance to such cleverness, however, is purely coincidental.  Longtime readers may recall the rationale for this blog's name back from episode one.  I apologize to my British readers and friends if I unwittingly distressed their polite sensibilities.  We all can now share in the awkward terminology commonly employed here ON THE BLOB.  GOD BLESS.

Harvey who?

I find myself in a familiar scenario—I fly tomorrow for the Dirty Jerz, my suitcase stubbornly remains unpacked, and I decide that now, 11:00pm, is a good time to sit down and blob.  At least I’ve packed the two critical items—my everything bagel and cream cheese making kit and my terry-cloth bathrobe. Whatever else I need I can probably steal from my sisters.  This has worked in the past.

But now I feel compelled to share some big, cheesy love for the first city that stole my heart—HOUSTON, you big, ugly, beautiful, delicious sprawl of a city.  Just writing the word “cheesy” made me hungry for the queso only you can provide.  Look what you’ve done to me.  I have you to thank for some of my best friendships and best memories.  I miss you, I love you, I’m proud of you.  The images from the hurricane boggle my mind and break my heart, so I went back through my own images of Houston to cheer myself up.  I hope they’ll do the same for you.

First, literal cheer.

Second, comfort food.

Third, weather you used to think was a disaster.

And fourth, the kind of downpours we prefer.

Please be mindful of your safety.

And know we've got your back.
(Friends, please consider donating to YES Prep Family Flood Relief fund. I used to coach at YES Prep--they are wonderful people.)

PS. Current presidents need not apply...

...Houston has enough dopey big heads!

Turn around, bright eyes.

I am the first to admit: from time to time, I poke fun at our president on this blog.  One, it’s just too easy, and two, he is always such a good sport about it.  In the spirit of generosity, I would like to cut the man some slack for something the internet is blowing WAY out of proportion:

 

Donald stares directly into eclipse.

I know.  You’re surprised.  Claire, you say, of course we believe in your magnanimity, but why won’t you join the fun and heap scorn onto our blithering idiot of a president?  Well, it’s definitely not because I did the exact same thing.  Because I didn’t do exactly the same thing.  I was inside…looking up…at the sun…during the eclipse…without the glasses.  FOR A SPLIT SECOND.  JUST DON’T THINK ABOUT HOW FAST LIGHT TRAVELS.  OR ABOUT HOW DELICATE AND WONDERFUL OUR EYES ARE.  BECAUSE THAT’S DEFINITELY NOT WHAT I DID FOR THE REST OF THE DAY.  I have not been fretting about premature blindness in my left eye.  I am not one of those people who googled “How fast will I know if I damaged my eyes by looking at the eclipse”.  (I googled, “likelihood of cancer from UV radiation directly into eye”.)  I didn’t immediately make an eye doctor appointment.  (Because I already have one next Monday.  A lucky stroke of advance planning.  Should I tell her what I did?  Or see if she can figure it out?)

So listen…we’re all human.  We make mistakes.  We fly too close to the sun.  I'm with you here, Donnie.  I will ask St. Lucy, patron saint of the blind, to intercede for us.  (Might help with more than the literal blindness!  Who knows!)

(Fun story—I always remember St. Lucy is the patron saint of blind people because we had these little books of saint biographies in my second grade classroom and I WILL NEVER FORGET ST. LUCY’S PAGE BECAUSE SHE IS HOLDING A DISH WITH HER TWO EYEBALLS IN IT BECAUSE THEY GOT PLUCKED OUT WHEN SHE WAS BEING TORTURED FOR BEING A CHRISTIAN.  SECOND GRADE.) 

Cheers, y'all!

Robert E. Lee is Deplorable: A Treatise on Charlottesville

One reason I’ve been bad about keeping up with the blob is that I’m exhausted and speechless at our constant deliveries of fresh bullshit from Trumpworld.  This is not sustainable.  This shit is piling up and reeking.  America’s existential question seems less “will we drown in shit?” and more “how quickly will we drown in shit?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert E. Lee.  We have a Robert E. Lee problem.  We don’t think of Robert E. Lee as the guy who led the fight to keep black people enslaved.  We remember him with a sort of apologetic romance—the guy who was personally opposed* to slavery, but could not take up arms against his beloved Virginia, who would rather oppose the Union than sacrifice his sacred Southern honor.  We felt sorry that he died without his American citizenship restored, so our Congress posthumously awarded it to him in 1975.  Bless his heart.

What is that all about?  I don’t feel sorry for this guy.  He used that classic “but it’s the Southern way of life” line to excuse some pretty awful shit.  I’m glad they turned his family’s ancestral home into the premier cemetery for the war’s dead.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee was faced with a serious moral decision—fight for your country against slavery and your home or fight for slavery and your home against your country.  The item that defines the morality of that decision is slavery, but the item that steered General Lee was his home.  A sentimental choice?  Yes.  A morally correct choice?  No.  He picked the wrong side.  I see no honor, Southern or otherwise, in his choice.

Why am I going on about this?  This is not an argument about the statues.  Take them down, get over it, assholes.  Chances are, your beloved statue got put up by white people trying to assert their dominance over bIack people during Jim Crow or the civil rights era.  Is that the heritage you want to celebrate?  Congrats.  I’m talking about the morality of our choices.  Many of us chose to vote for a man who now (unsurprisingly to others of us) cannot whole-heartedly disavow white supremacists and anti-Semites.  A man who declared there were “fine people” in the group that marched into town wielding torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us.”  Friends and family who voted for this man, can you condone this?  What are the limits of our excuses for vile behavior? for race-baiting and dog-whistling?  Will we not stand up while he perverts our democratic values?  while he spits on the sacrifices made by our grandparents to defeat Nazis and fascism?

I ask you to think about what defines the morality of your choice to condone or disavow the words of this man.  I’ll give you some hints: it’s not your party affiliation, it’s not the “alt-left”, it’s not your pride, it’s not how much you hate Hillary Clinton.  None of that will justify (or has ever justified) your choice to support him.  The defining element of Donald Trump is the hatred he spews and promotes. If you support him and condone his words, you are complicit in his hatemongering. 

-

One of my biggest regrets about Hillary Clinton’s campaign is that she did not double down on her “deplorables” comment, referring to that contingent of Trump voters.  She wasn’t wrong and it wasn’t a mistake.  I wish she had said to the squeamish Trump voter, “I dare you to tell me those people who would resurrect the KKK and who would dare to carry a swastika are not deplorable.  Do you want to be in their camp?”  You didn’t believe it then, but it’s still true—you’re in their camp.  And they are making the rules.  How long do you want to stick around?

I promise next post will not be so doom and gloom.  Maybe we will explore possible reasons my dentist and I always end up talking about prison. (?? it's so weird.)

All's quiet on the western front.

Reporting live (for the time being) from the West Coast, apparently within striking distance of North Korean missiles.  Isn’t this fun?  Ben and Jerry’s 2 pints for $6, yes please.  If I’m gonna get burnt to a crisp or have my taste buds radiated off, I’m having Half-Baked TONIGHT.  BALLS TO THE WALL, Y’ALL.  THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE ELECT A MAN WHO ONLY UNDERSTANDS REALITY TV AND LOVES TO SAY “YOU’RE FIRED”.  REINCE PRIEBUS?  YOU’RE FIRED.  NUCLEAR MISSILES?  YOU’RE FIRED.  ISN’T THIS GREAT.  I’ll eat my communist ice cream and await my destiny.  At THE VERY LEAST we can be thankful we don’t have a lady president with email troubles.  Having a competent woman in power would obviously be MUCH WORSE than nuclear holocaust.  BenghaziemailsradicalIslamicterrorism, am I right?

Because this is a normal thing to do, I considered my last will and testament while walking home today.  Fortunately for all of us, I have Marie-Kondo-ed most of my shit in the last few months (thank you for your service), so nobody will have to dig through this stuff and feel bad about throwing it away:

It was important work.

But here go the crucial items:

If Minnie survives the nuclear blast, I entrust her to Trish.  Hugging Minnie for the last 26 years has contoured her perfectly to my body.  Trish and I have the same body.  Therefore, Trish gets Minnie and her wonderful hugs.  You’re welcome.  Treat her well.

My pearl earrings will go to Molly and my diamond earrings to Rose.

Give all my money to Kelsey Gleason.  Girl, have a killer wedding.  Or, elope and use my money for a down payment.

Will, you may keep my TV, wine, and coffee table.

In the event that my death is murder by an illegal immigrant, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT ALLOW MY DEATH TO BECOME AN OBSCENE TOOL OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. I’m pretty sure having my name repeated over and over by Paul Ryan and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity will not allow me a good rest in peace.  I do not want any Claire’s Law unless it has something to do with forcing all grocery stores to function additionally as full service liquor stores EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN DAY. 

If I die in a freak accident or of some crazy disease, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT TURN MY FACEBOOK PAGE INTO A BIZARRO MEMORIAL WHERE YOU ALL WRITE NOTES TO ME.  GUESS WHAT.  I’LL BE DEAD.  I WON’T BE ABLE TO READ.  IF I HAVE SOME MAGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE AFTERLIFE, I WON’T HAVE TO LOG INTO FACEBOOK TO SEE HOW YOU’RE FEELING.  Instead, please direct your lovely thoughts and memories in notes to my parents.

As for the rest of my stuff, have at it, y’all.  Go crazy for that Ikea.  First dibs to sisters, cousins, and friends.  Now, I have some ice cream to attend to.  Please remember me as a lover of truth, humor, and peanut butter cups.   If I am granted more time on this fragile planet, I will be more attentive to this blog.  Godspeed.

And we're back.

2017 is not turning out to be my favorite year ever, but I’m not looking for a pity party.  Ladies and gentlemen, I am newly single and have already continued my rampage of breaking hearts across San Francisco (sorry to Sergei, my brief Muni romance).  As he said after I texted him that it turns out I’m not into 40-year-old Ukrainians, maybe we will meet again another rainy day on the Muni.  (We won’t, because I changed my commute.)

For the first time ever, I understand Taylor Swift.  I, too, feel compelled to fill my art (blob = art) with Starbucks lovers.  But then, the lilting voice of an old English teacher creeps into my head—girls, do not sell your souls in the marketplace.  I won’t, Mrs. O.—at least not more than I already have.

And thus, The Blob returns.  I leave you with one more bit of wisdom, from Sergei’s final text—don’t waste the pretty.

What did I miss?

Good night, sweet prince.

The Blob has been on hiatus, but I thought I’d check in to let you know that I planned this vacation sometime last fall and it has nothing to do with the sexual harassment claims against me.1  Unfortunately, the same may not be true for Mr. Bill O’Reilly, whose vacation became permanent today.

The Blob sends its heartfelt regrets.

What a world we live in—a world where a powerful man at the top of his game, making millions of dollars for himself and his company, can get fired because he’s suddenly not making as many millions for his company and because humanity is disgusted by allegations of him sexually harassing female coworkers.  How sad. 

Bill laments this world in his latest book, Old School.  He never would have lost his job back in the “old school” work environment.  As the book description says on his website, “It’s a values thing.  The anti-Old School forces believe the traditional way of looking at life is oppressive.”2  Bill might refer to agents of the anti-Old School forces as “pinheads” or “snowflakes”.  He wasn’t creating an oppressive work environment for all those women—it’s just tradition for a man in power to comment on a female coworker’s cleavage, or to masturbate while on the phone with her, or to threaten her career unless she visits his hotel room.  What woman doesn’t want that sort of attention from her saggy old boss?  Where’s the respect? 

Not that those allegations are true, of course.  Women are always looking to make a quick buck off sexual harassment claims, aren’t we?  It’s just such a fun and easy way to put our careers and reputations on the line, and maybe get a million dollars. 

My heart goes out to Bill.  He’s been through so much.  To have the President of the United States vouch for your character, and you still lose your job—what a blow.  I’m sure the left-wing media has something to do with this.

Keep your head up, Bill.  The rest is silence…for you…we hope.

---

¹ This is a joke.

² Other gems from the book description: 

"Do you look for something to get outraged about, every single day, so you can fire off a tweet defending your exquisitely precious sensibilities? Then you're a Snowflake."  ...Or the president.

"This book will explain the looming confrontation so even the ladies on The View can understand it."  And why don't women love this guy?

April fools.

A very happy April Fools Day to the Trump White House, the one day of the year we honor the whole darn team. 

Not just April fools.

 In tribute, I will perform “The Don” at a piano bar in San Francisco on Monday night.  Wish me luck.

A horrible, monstrous beast.

I saw Beauty and the Beast in the theater last night and was inspired to rewrite Gaston's song.  If there is any way we can get SNL to perform this, I think we should because it would be a big hit.  Please enjoy and feel free to sing along.

The Don (in bathrobe):

Who do they think they are?

The media’s tangled with the wrong man!

No one makes fun of the Don!

Le Spicy Fou:

Darn right.

The Don:

Dismissed!  Rejected!

Big-ly humiliated!

Why, it’s more than I can bear.

Le Spicy Fou (offers remote control):

Fox News?

The Don:

What for?  Nothing helps.

Everyone hates me.

Le Spicy Fou:

Who, you?  Never!

Don, you’ve got to pull yourself together.

Gosh it disturbs me to see you, oh Don,

Looking so down in the dumps.

Every guy here’d love to be you, oh Don,

Even those CNN chumps.

No one in the world’s as admired as you!

You’re everyone’s favorite guy!

Everyone’s awed and inspired by you

And it’s not very hard to see whyyyyyyyyy!

Noooooooooooo oneeeeeeee lies like the Don,

Thinks he’s spied on like Don,

Spreads conspiracy theories as blithely as Don!

How he bullies and growls he’ll get even,

And he will, sure as I’m Spicy Sean.

You can ask any Jeff, Reince, or Stephen,

And they’ll tell you whose team they prefer to be on!

Chorus:

No one’s rich as the Don!

Likes to bitch like the Don!

Tramples on laws and norms in the ditch like the Don!

The Don (swings around lamppost):

Yes, my tax returns are so incriminating!

Chorus:

My, what a guy, he’s our Don!

Give five “Heil Dons!” Give twelve “hip-hips!”

Le Spicy Fou (shakes podium menacingly):

The Don is the best and the rest of you are shit!

Chorus:

Noooooooo oneeeeeeeee’s mad as the Don,

Uses “Sad!” like the Don,

Wants to sleep with his daughter as bad as the Don!

For there’s no one so gross and so lonely.

He’s a narcissist pig, it’s no lie.

It’s no wonder Mel stayed in the city,

As she patiently waits for her husband to die!

No one tweets like the Don,

No one cheats like the Don,

Who grabs pussies with hands so petite as the Don’s!

The Don:

I’m especially good at retaliating! Sad!

Chorus:

Ten points for our Don!

The Don:

When I was a lad, my dad showed me no love.

My complexes blossomed and grew.

So now that I’m old, I’ve no shame to speak of,

And I’ll force all my wrath upon you!!!!!!

Chorus:

Noooooooo oneeeeeee’s orange as Don,

An abhorrence as Don,

Who will ban anything slightly foreign as Don.

The Don:

I use gold leaf in all of my decorating!

Le Spicy Fou:

Say it again!

Who’s a man among men?

Did we make you forget

You’re the worst president?

Who’s a super success?

Screw the Muslims!  The press!

Ask his minions and goons who is boss!

There’s just one guy in charge

And his name is writ large!!!!

And it’s V-L-A-D....

V-L-A-D-E….

V-L-A-D-I……..

Chorus:

The DON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Meditations.

Will has gotten very into meditation.  My experience with meditation almost exclusively involves snoozing during guided meditations in my high school theology class (“You’re walking along a beautiful beach.  You see a stranger in the distance.  Oh!  It’s Jesus!”)  Mrs. Choa (our teacher) would begin the meditations with deep breathing exercises.  These proved counterproductive for me, because I quickly discovered that slowly inhaling and exhaling made it much easier for me to burst out laughing.  Instead I had to bite my lip and concentrate on not peeing in my pants laughing, which was very stressful and defeated the purpose of a calming meditation.  Sleep was my best option, and thankfully, (then as now) never difficult for me to accomplish.

Will’s knack for meditating may be rubbing off on me, however, because I recently found myself meditating on a particular image.

Enter meditation sequence.

There was once a time of universal consensus, when men, women, and children of all backgrounds and persuasions could join hands and agree: surely this image is photoshopped. 

Buffoons.

Before this image was just a twinkle in Vladimir Putin’s eye, we believed, as children believe, in the resilience of our democracy.  When we heard the words “Kid President”, we did not picture an orange 70-year-old having a tantrum.  We thought of this charming fellow:

When we heard the words “Donald Trump”, we thought “you’re fired”, not “yuge pussy-grabbing tiny hands”.  

Can we go back to that time?

No!  You are terrible at meditating.  BREATHE IN DEEPLY.  Nostalgia is not the way forward.  The time to be awesome is now. Go pack for your ski trip.

Meditation—still not my strong suit.  I should probably go back to running into Jesus at the beach.  Or just take a nap.

Lent prep.

It’s definitely a big fat Tuesday.  At 11:00 this morning, I was shocked to see that it was indeed 11:00, as my subconscious had led me to believe I had already eaten lunch and we were well into the afternoon.  And then I remembered it’s Tuesday.  And not just any Tuesday.  Tuesday of a five-day work week.  Life is hard.

Lent begins tomorrow.  I am giving up Facebook because it’s annoying and Twitter because it turns me into a rage-against-mostly-Paul-Ryan-but-also-others-machine.  Don’t worry, I will continue to blob, but I won’t be posting to Facebook.  Allow me, then, to shamelessly beg you to subscribe to my blog.  If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you will see a box where you can enter your email.  I’m pretty sure it won’t spam you.  Blogger is a Google operation, so if you have problems, take them up with Will.

As our President would say, a blessed Lent to all the haters and losers.

Drastic times.

Listen, I really am trying not to interpret everything as signs of looming World War III/American implosion via class warfare/anarchy/eventual nuclear holocaust.  But suddenly preppers seem a lot less crazy.  (Don’t worry, I’m not building a bunker but our storage room may serve, so that is where we keep our bottled water and canned tuna.)

I’m not the only one freaking out:

Catchy new tagline.

I’m just very disturbed at how faithfully Orange Julius is following the authoritarian playbook.  The scapegoating of particular religious, ethnic, and non-heterosexual people, for instance, was an old standby for another thin-skinned dude who liked to yell and had bad hair.  (Ok, you caught me.  I’m not above a Hitler-Trump comparison.)  NEWS ALERT: Muslims aren’t killing us by the thousands (guns are), Mexicans aren’t stealing our jobs (automation is), and transsexuals aren’t grabbing your daughter’s pussy in the women’s room (she should watch out for our President though).  Picking on minority groups and the vulnerable may make some (miserable) people feel better, but it does not solve problems.  It actually creates them.  Stop me if I sound crazy.  Oh right, you can’t.

Here’s a problem created by the dogwhistling and hateful rhetoric that spewed from the Trump campaign, and now spews from the White House:

 

In case your preferred news source didn't cover this, vandals desecrated 100 graves at a historic Jewish cemetery in St. Louis this week.

As it turns out, bad people are empowered to do bad things when we do not actively embrace tolerance and respect, when we elect people who do not actively embrace tolerance and respect.

One of the most moving places I have ever been is the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague.  For over 300 years, it was the only place the city’s Jewish people were allowed to bury their dead.  The graves are stacked layers upon layers, making “ground level” something like thirty feet above the current street. Up to 100,000 people may be buried there.  Seeing these graves all crammed together sparked a major understanding in my brain when I visited with my family a few years ago.  The Nazis didn’t cook up anti-Semitism in the 1930s—it was hundreds and hundreds of years in the making.  Passive cruelty and episodic violence were the norms.  Europe was so primed with anti-Semitism that it required just one particularly evil man to twist prejudice into holocaust.

Photos can't really capture this place. 

I’m not saying Donald Trump is plotting to murder all the groups he recklessly scapegoats.  But I am saying he is too cozy with authoritarian methods of exploiting fear and prejudice.  People like David Duke, Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, and cowardly grave vandals should not feel encouraged by the President of the United States.  But they do.

I’m still hopeful our nation's history has primed us to love and defend freedom.  But I fear this slippery slope we’re on.  I love you, America, but I don’t like you a whole lot right now.  We need to open our eyes to reality.  Democracy dies in darkness.