Squatlo was right

Back when more people blogged and Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, et al. were a minor annoyance one of my favorite bloggers had a saying that explains a lot of weirdness and dumb fuckery: pussy makes you stupid. The recent Haley Stevens weirdness shows that the conclusion is gender neutral. Why do I think that? Because it sure looks like she got way more interested in keeping her current bedwarmer happy than she was thinking about preserving her political career. Unless, of course, she fantasizes about making big bucks as a lobbyist for AIPAC. 

The various accounts I've seen all trace her decision to back stab El Sayed to pressure from her fiancé, a fellow who is definitely anti-El Sayed. He had said several weeks ago that he would vote for Mike Rogers, a person Stevens had spent the past year denouncing as a terrible choice for Michigan. Inquiring minds might want to know why she wanted to be with a dude who disagreed so profoundly with the values Stevens claimed to have, but, hey, pussy makes you stupid. Given a choice between actually showing she had some principles or keeping the main squeeze happy, she opted for the latter. Here's hoping the dude at least gives good head because she essentially torched any future political career she may have dreamt about. 

Today is Election Day. Whether or not Stevens abrupt attempt at ratfucking El Sayed makes any difference in voter preferences is probably a nonissue. With the election so close to when she picked dick over principles odds are the vast majority of voters had already decided which candidate they preferred (or already voted, either absentee or as an early voter). So her self-immolation was most likely a totally wasted effort. No matter who wins, both parties are going to view Stevens as damaged goods, no principles, totally unreliable. So here's kind of hoping the fucking she gets is worth the fucking she gets. 

I will say, as many other commenters elsewhere have said, we all dodged a bullet on this one. Whoever wins, Rogers or El Sayed, at least we know what we're getting. Had Stevens actually been the Democratic nominee for the Senate, we could have wound up with a female Fetterman. 

And they miss the point. Again.

Cheesecake Factory interior

From what keeps appearing in my social media feeds, it appears the Reich wing has once again focused on the wrong thing. Former President Obama joked about Orange Julius's obsession with plastering as much gold crap as it's physically possible to cram into one mansion. He noted that Cheetolini is so focused on decorating that he should be on HGTV, which is actually a pretty accurate assessment. The Donald seems to be a lot more interested in and sort of knowledgeable about things like pilasters than he is in foreign policy or how economics and trade work. (I saw a clip in which he went on and on about minutiae involved in home maintenance. He apparently knows how to repair cracked plaster pilasters and blistered stucco.)

In any case, Obama's quip was that Trump has the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. It's actually a bit of a dig at the Cheesecake Factory. The decor at a typical Cheesecake Factory is indeed over the top (note the pseudo-Egyptian Old Kingdom columns in the photo) by some standards but it's not covered in architectural tat that looks like someone got turned loose with a case of Krylon metallic paint. The exteriors of the chain are much gaudier than the interiors. In contrast, The Donald has the White House so packed with cheap gold crap that even Hussein might consider it all a bit too much.

The Donald has always been obsessed with gold tchotchkes. He and Melania did a photo shoot at their Manhattan penthouse quite a few years ago. The penthouse bore a strong resemblance to what I've always mentally pictured what a low-budget bordello would look like. Tacky. Super tacky. Decor that appeals only to drug lords and not-too-bright mafiosi. Which does fit Orange Julius rather neatly.  

The MAGA world freaked out over Obama's joke, proving once again that (a) MAGA has absolutely no sense of humor, and. (b). they're not too bright. Omigod. Obama is sneering at working folk and their taste in food. No reaction to the comparison to Saddam Hussein (a horrible dictator) and Hussein's well known love of gold and tackiness in his multiple Iraqi palaces. Nope. It's outrageous that Obama was elitist and mocked the food of the working class. Given that the Cheesecake Factory menu prices run on the high end for casual dining, I'm not sure just how many "working class" folks are eating there, especially when restaurants in general are seeing diminishing sales this year, but that's a minor quibble. How does anyone with two brain cells just breeze right by the Saddam Hussein reference and focus instead on overpriced hamburgers? 

One thing that just struck me about The Donald's obsession with "fixing" the White House is where the heck is the First Lady? We all know Melania has zero interest in doing anything, but even Epstein's sloppy seconds must know it would be good public relations for her to be the face of "improving" the building. It would be yet another way to one up the Kennedy legacy. Of course, it's possible Von Shitzenpants suggested that Melanoma be the public face for the tackiness and she said No. Based on recent photos, my guess is she's hoping to be a grieving widow soon. 

I need to find a better cave

I swear every time I'm foolish enough to emerge from self-induced blissful ignorance and listen to the news or read something other than AI generated revenge stories on Facebook I regret it. Each time I think things have gotten as weird as humanly possible, things get even weirder. Or maybe disconcerting would be a better descriptor than weird.

I mean, in the past week or so we've had the Cornell gang rape case (not much of a shocker to any woman who's been unlucky enough to attend a college with frat houses; the most surprising thing was Jane Doe having the courage to go after the asshats with civil litigation), the Trump administration's decision to emulate the Taliban by live streaming a public execution (I am moderately surprised Trump isn't pushing for holding said execution at Northwest Stadium as half time entertainment for a Washington Commanders game), Trump's ambassador to Greece being so blatant with her grifting (she sent text messages detailing her extortion attempts? Seriously? We all knew Guilfoyle wasn't real smart -- she was briefly engaged to Cokey McSniffles [aka Don jr] -- but whatever gets used as lip filler must have a side effect of rotting brain cells), and the list keeps growing. 

*Trump cheering while 3 male MAGAts attempt to beat the crap out of a woman who had the audacity to wear an anti-pedophile tee-shirt, which kind of paints a clear picture of what a bunch of kiddy diddlers the MAGAts are. In what has to be a classic MAGAt move, one of the dudes involved bragged about assaulting the woman in a Facebook post. If we sane folk didn't know already that MAGAts live in an alternate reality, going public and bragging about attacking a woman for wearing a shirt that he didn't like would make it clear. What sane person is going to brag publicly about assaulting anyone? 

*Trump's new press secretary, another Ivanka clone who can give Natalie Harp a run for the money as the most obsequious minion in the White House but apparently can't read words more than one syllable long -- her first outing at a press briefing was so bad that there are rumors she's going to beat Scaramucci's record for rapid firings. Every day brings another bizarre episode, something so unthinkable in terms of what passed for normal a few years ago that it renders me effectively speechless. 

And it's not just Trump and politics. It's also people. While everyone is still talking about the Cornell 7, sexual abuse, and misogyny, Shane Gillis decides to do a woman-hating joke on national television. Dude might as well be wearing a I'm With Stupid tee-shirt with the arrow pointing at himself. 

I definitely need to spend more time in the Woman Cave with soft rock playing quietly in the background from the local easy listening station. No news, no internet, just perfectly good fabric for me to cut into tiny pieces to sew back together eventually. 

 

Unexpected pleasures

I was recently gifted three cases of Ensure (one vanilla, two chocolate) and discovered it's true the vanilla flavor makes a great coffee creamer. I'm told that's also true of the chocolate. Guess I'll find out when the vanilla runs out. For now, though, the vanilla Ensure turns my coffee into something that bears a strong resemblance to Coffeemate French vanilla. It was a pleasant surprise. And possibly semi-healthy. The bottle claims it's "plus high protein."

I was skeptical of the possibility of Ensure being remotely edible -- back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I worked as a restorative therapy aid (Edmonds Villa Care paid me to walk old people) Ensure was a disgusting liquid that came in cans and got poured into comatose patients' NG tubes. I had zero desire to ingest it myself, and, to be honest, still don't except as a tablespoon or two at a time in my coffee.

It did occur to me as I remembered my long ago days as a people walker that the ancient crones and dirty old men I cajoled into doing laps* around the nursing home were probably younger than I am now. Lots of stroke victims in their 60s, for example. One of the odd things about any nursing home is there will be a bunch of people in their 60s (strokes, early onset dementia) and a bunch of nonagenarians (90s) and not much in between -- and the really old patients will be still mentally fine but have just gotten too physically fragile to remain independent. So those of us who are "only" in our 70s and 80s can look forward to coasting for another decade or two. Maybe.

*We did do laps. The building was a square -- four long hallways and a courtyard in the middle -- so we'd walk in a big circle.

Why did these go away?

"These" being round cake pans with a nifty feature (a cutter bar) that makes it easy to get a cake out of the pan without cursing a whole lot.  

Okay. I know they haven't actually gone away. When I consulted The Google a few minutes ago I learned Vermont Country Store sells them. But you're not going to find them at Walmart or Target. I know. I had a pair of round cake pans with cutters and somewhere along the way, between multiple moves and general weirdness, they disappeared. I'm not much into baking layer cakes so it took awhile for it to sink in that those pans had vanished. When it did sink in they got replaced (eventually) but wherever I bought the replacement pans did not sell pans with cutters. I wasn't thrilled with the lack of cutters but I accepted reality. On those rare occasions when I did use a round cake pan I would wax nostalgic about the cake pans that existed in the good ol' days. I never got nostalgic to the point of doing a serious search for pans with cutters, but I did miss having a set.

Not anymore. Today I am feeling inordinately happy because the granddaughter-in-law gifted me with several. She works as a home health aide. Clients frequently give her things as part of downsizing (Swedish death cleaning?). Some of it is pretty strange, some is useful, and some ends up at St. Vincent de Paul pretty quickly. She never says no because it's obvious the clients (or their family members) are happy to give the stuff to someone they think will use it even when she never will. 

One client is a dude who loved baking. Unfortunately he's now suffering from Lewy body dementia. He gave the GIL multiple springform pans in several different sizes and four pans with cutter bars. I was ridiculously happy to get the springform pans (they're ideal for cheesecakes) and for sure I did a figurative happy dance over the pans with the cutters. I actually used them yesterday to bake a layer cake, which was the first time in a decade or two. I even did a buttercream frosting from scratch -- powdered sugar is a pain to sweep up with you carpet a kitchen with it -- although the cake was from a mix. 

Given what a totally fucked up timeline we're all stuck in it is nice to have something small and tangible to be happy about. 

Trump curse strikes again

Earlier this week Senator Jon Ossoff made a pretty innocuous comment about Trump's favorite executive assistant Natalie Harp. His comment was meant to be a critique of Cheetolini's lack of interest in doing his actual job: being President. Instead of focusing on important policy issues and maybe finding an off ramp for the clusterfuck he created in the Middle East, Orange Julius would rather talk about drapes for his version of Versailles or the imaginary vandals attacking the reflecting pool on the National Mall. Ossoff correctly noted that Trump preferred to travel with Natalie rather than do any real work.

The MAGAverse flipped out. The response was bizarre. The Reich wing immediately went into overdrive ranting about how Ossoff had trashed the Diaper Nurse by suggesting she and the orange cockwomble were fornicating. It's kind of cute that the MAGAts hold Cheetolini in such high esteem they think that decrepit geezer is capable of fucking anything. Do they see the suggestion of impropriety as proof of Mango Mussolini's manhood? After all, if he and his human security blanket are getting it on it's more proof that he really is the hypermasculine almost a superhero his Truth Social posts keep suggesting he is. 

Let's get real. There isn't enough Viagra on the planet to stiffen the mushroom hiding in Cheetolini's diapers. And if there was it would probably kill him -- Viagra and a bad heart (and Orange Julius is like a textbook illustration for Congestive Heart Failure in an elderly man) do not mix. Granted, it could mean an old dude gets to die happy, but would The Donald risk it? He's definitely sliding into full-blown dementia but he's also got strong survival skills -- and Cheetolini is scared shitless of dying. 

So why do I say "Trump curse strikes again?" Because this is typical inept messaging from Team Trump. If they had all just ignored it anything Ossoff said wouldn't have been news outside Georgia. Instead the rapid response team freaked out and went more than a tad overboard on two things: accusing Ossoff of trashing Natalie and denying vehemently any unseemly genitalia fondling was happening. End result? Instead of a brief mention in the AJC (Atlanta Journal Constitution) a nothing burger turned into a multi-course meal for the national press. And maybe international. I haven't checked Helsingfors Sanomat recently but when a news item is on the front page of every major U.S. paper that news item usally ends up in papers elsewhere. The Trump rapid response team did a great job of promoting a news story no one really knew or cared about before they highlighted it.

So what is the deal with Natalie? It seems likely she's exactly what it looks like: a human security blanket who keeps Orange Julius mellow by indulging his narcissism. She carries a portable printer everywhere so she can produce hard copies of flattering memes, articles, whatever at a moment's notice to placate Cheetolini's ego. She's the one who feeds The Donald's vanity by handing results of bogus polls claiming he's super popular or that the economy is doing great. She guarantees he almost never hears the truth about anything. She's been described by various observers as basically unhinged, so totally obsessed with Trump that she's viewed by security experts as a potential threat (obsessive fans tend to lash out at whoever they've obsessed about when things don't go as expected), but Orange Julius is too dense to realize the woman is a few fries short of a Happy Meal. He loves the flattery so is oblivious to the crazy. Given Natalie's superficial resemblance to Ivanka, it's possible the senile old coot doesn't have a clue who she really is. 

Lessons in mortality

We spent Saturday afternoon at a potluck party at an older friend's house. The fellow enjoys a lakeside cottage and established a tradition years ago of hosting a yard party once every summer. Attendees include fellow lakeside dwellers (i.e, the folks who live on or near the same small lake he does), former neighbors from where they used to live, relatives, and miscellaneous acquaintances. 

I'm not sure what category the S.O. and I fall into. The S.O. has known the host forever, since childhood, and my parents were friends with his parents. I'm not sure just how old the man is, but his younger brother is about to turn 85. So definitely an octogenarian, as is his spouse. Not surprisingly, it was not a particularly young crowd at this soiree. The S.O. and I were incredibly young and spry compared with some of the other folks enjoying the food and music -- the host plays the accordion and usually has a friend accompanying him on keyboards. It's a nice event. It's also one that guarantees that at least once a year we'll get to hear "The Sauna Song." 

The keyboardist, incidentally, looked to be about 200 years old and was toting an oxygen bottle. His grandson served as a roadie: carried in all the equipment, made sure his grandfather was set up correctly, and handled everything that required any physical exertion. His grandfather, despite looking older than the Crypt Keeper, was decent on keyboards. His voice cracked more than a little when he sang, but other than that. . . no issues. I'm not a fan of what I think of as wedding dance music (polkas, schottisches, etc.) with the possible exception of "Kulkurin Valsi" but it was all actually rather nice. 

So what does a summer potluck party have to do with mortality? Well, when the crowd on average is older than the proverbial dirt, one cannot help noticing that the number of attendees has been steadily declining over the past five or six years. More empty seats, more people negotiating with walkers, more folks toting oxygen bottles around. This was not a crowd that was likely to create a nuisance or disturb any uninvited neighbors with noise or rowdiness. The most likely disturbance would be an ambulance siren when one of the attendees dropped from a cardiac event. You know, it's always a nice party with good food and music and people generally enjoying themselves. . . but, fuck, everyone is getting so damn old. 

A very gray day

Houghton July 16

The smoke from the Boundary Waters and the north shore of Lake Superior is still hitting us. Not sure just what the air quality index says but it hit about 1,000 on Wednesday. It's probably lower now, although not by much, because it's raining. Anything above 300 is Bad, as in Really Bad. The local weather guys gave the predicted rain a mixed review. On the one hand, the rain will knock particulates out of the atmosphere. On the other, that might simply cause particulates to be more of an issue at lower altitudes. I don't know and don't especially care. It's going to be gray and smell like smoke outside no matter what our weather is doing here. I'm just going to hope it's raining hard in northern Ontario because a good soaking rain is about the only thing that will stop wild fires in a bone dry boreal forest. 

Our perpetually brain dead idiot of a Congress critter, the Louisiana carpetbagger, was shooting off his mouth yesterday about Canada needing to do something. Right. Like right now the Canadian natural resources people, their equivalent of the Forest Service and similar land management agencies, are just sitting back and saying, yep, let the entire Lake Nipigon/boundary waters region burn. Natural disaster, just let it go, sooner or later the fires will exhaust the current supply of spruce, balsam, and peat bogs. 

Minor digression: peat bogs burn forever, or it can seem that way. It's like when a fire starts in a seam of coal. It'll keep smoldering for months and years. There's a coal seam in Centralia, Pennsylvania, that's been smoldering for over 60 years now. No one knows how that fire started but current estimates are that it'll take another 200+ years for the fire to burn itself out. A bog fire isn't going to last centuries but it's also not going to be easy to extinguish.

Anyway, while Michiganders (and a Louisiana carpetbagger) are busy bitching about bad air, people in northern Ontario are living with apocalyptic scenarios with towns being evacuated and homes being destroyed. I saw a video filmed from a CN freight train that I was hoping was AI but was definitely real and definitely terrifying. Intense fire on both sides of the track and smoke so thick visibility was effectively zero. It's rather petty of Michiganders to complain about smoke when they're not living so close to the fires they can feel the heat. It is also, as my S.O. noted, remarkably chickenshit for people like Jack Bergman (carpetbagger) to complain that Canada is somehow to blame for aggravating asthma in Michigan when Canada has always been really fast in assisting U.S. firefighting efforts. A Canadian pilot died recently in Colorado while assisting with fighting wildfires there. Instead of complaining to Prime Minister Carney about Canada's supposed fuck-ups, Congress critters like Bergman should be asking what the U.S. can do to help. 

Of course, Begman and other Republicans can't go after the real problem that's leading to massive wildfires globally: climate change. Admitting climate change is real would piss off their fossil fuel mega-donors. Besides, Mango Mussolini has declared climate change a hoax which means, of course, that every Republican has to parrot the same line. 

It's also rather stupid for any Congress critter to bitch about Canadian fires when huge chunks of the U.S. are burning right now. If you want to depress yourself, check out the statistics from the National Interagency Fire Center. 

It is for sure an odd feeling to keep smelling smoke when the closest fire is on the other side of Lake Superior anywhere from 50 to 100 miles from here. Going by the maps I've seen on local news, the bulk of the smoke we're getting is coming from the Boundary Waters area so maybe Bergman should be writing nasty letters to Tom Schulz about how the U.S. Forest Service screwed up instead of lobbing insults at Mark Carney.