Category: Politics

Tsunami

I’ve been spinning my mental wheels all day just waiting for the other shoe to drop. The results of the mid-term elections were… I was cautiously optimistic that the Democrats would do well but I didn’t see this coming. We took the House, we took the Senate, we took a slew of governors. All of the Massachusetts ballot questions went exactly as I had hoped. It was just an amazing night watching the results come in. It was so much better than I had hoped.

Now… the day after… I fully expected the orange shitgibbon squating in the white house to make dementia addled misinformation statements left and right all day long. I expected him to start gearing up for another January 6th… but it hasn’t happened. He was quiet. I wouldn’t say he was respectful because he is not physically capable of that, but he didn’t rule out the evil the way I thought he would…

…and that is weirding me out like crazy.

Some of the party leaders have already made statements saying they are willing to work with the fascist regime. FUCK THAT. Those mother fucking fascists have to be held accountable. I you don’t work with them, you punish them for their crimes. You put the fucking pedophiles and rapists in jail. You put the war criminals and those who commit treason against the nation and the constitution away for the rest of their miserable, fascist, evil lives. I don’t want cooperation between parties. We tried that bullshit in 2020 and look where it got us. It is so much worse now than it was in his first term and its because none of them were held accountable.

I want justice and I want it now.

In other, unrelated news…

Today marks 4.5 years since I had my gastric bypass surgery. It is one of three days each year when I weigh myself to see how things are going. I was nervous about it. My weight has been trending up over the last couple of years and I nervous that the scale would show a number that was surprisingly higher than it was six months ago when last I weighed in.

My weight was up since May 4th. It was up 0.8 pounds. Sigh of relief. That’s a weight gain I am okay with. Less than one pound in six months? I think we can call that “maintaining” and be happy.

The next weigh in is January 19th on the anniversary of the first appointment at the weight loss clinic. Here’s hoping for good results then as well.

Election Day Stress

The US mid-term elections are happening today. How are we doing, America? Are we hanging in there? We’ve all voted, right? Polls in Massachusetts are open for another 4.5 hours, but we all voted early or went before work today, right? No one in their right mind is putting it off this time, right? We need to vote the fascists out of office with gusto. Send those nazi scumbags back to whatever hole they slithered out of.

Having said that… anyone else stressing out about the outcome? I fully expect my Massachusetts to come off without a hitch, but the rest of the country? The orange nazi shitgibbon and his billionaire fuckboi Musk all but admitted that they rigged the election in 2024. We’re all assuming that they are doing it again, right? The only way to beat their bullshit is to vote in ridiculously overwhelming numbers so that whatever strings they are pulling won’t be enough to change the outcome. Still… we are all nervous, right?

At this point, any race that ends in anything other than a huge landslide victory for the Democratic candidate is going to look suspicious. I’m really hoping that after tonight when all is said and done, nothing seems suspicious and we can get on with the business of blocking the nazis from doing further damage, up to and including impeaching every single one of those fucking evil shit bags.

I’m cautiously optimistic that the end of all of this begins today, but I am also scared shitless that it will never, ever end. At least not without another civil war.

Weekends are Too Short

This past work week felt like the longest six months of my life. This weekend? Over in a blink. Well… it is Sunday evening so its not quite over yet, but… you know what I mean.

I didn’t do anything creative this weekend. No music, no photos. I did run a bunch of errands and I did some work around the house and that’s all positive. The biggest thing though was voting. My wife, Jen, and I participated in our city’s early voting program. One step closer to the inevitable blue tsunami that’s coming next month. It doesn’t really affect much though as we’re in Massachusetts and our state (along with California) is basically the liberal headquarters of the US. Still, it feels good.

In other news, we are seven days away from our next Rush concert. I’m ready right now.

My beloved bride made a huge, fancy dinner tonight and it was fantastic. So good. Thank you, my love.

I feel like I had a lot more to write about tonight but I have somehow lost the thread. Suffice to say that trump is a pedophile and a rapist and a fascist and he needs to be impeached, removed from office, and put in jail for the rest of his miserable life.

If you live in the US, vote.

A Minor Epiphany

I had a minor epiphany this morning that is meaningless to the greater world but served as an “ah ha!” moment for me.

Back story: I used to have a problem with one aspect of American culture just after the turn of the century. Post-9/11 so much of our society become very militaristic. There were huge examples like… ya know… wars. Plural. Two of them. One of them felt justified. The other did not and was evil and insulting and horrible. I felt like many of my neighbors were very much behind both wars and it bothered me.

There were little things too. Lots of support-our-troops stuff everywhere. People wearing camo all the time. Lots and lots of recruiting ads on TV. Lots of military weapons showing up in police stations. Stuff like that. Much of the US embraced militarism in a way that I found disturbing.

This sort of stuff became so common that I stopped thinking about it. It still bothered me on some level but my level of concern slipped away, more or less.

Fast forward to this morning and I’m in the cellar doing my daily exercise while watching something on Disney+. Our subscription includes ads because I don’t want to pay extra to get rid of them. I noticed after 2–3 ad breaks that each segment included at least one ad that was somehow related to the military. Watching all of those military-related commercials caused a thought to pop into my tiny little brain:

Is it any wonder we devloved into a fascist shit hole?

Immediately after having that thought all of those concerns about the militarization of US culture post-9/11 came flooding back to me all at once.

Holy shit… seriously, is it any wonder that we devolved into a fascist shit hole? Seriously!

And that was my minor little epiphany from this morning. My country fucking blows.

Another Pedal Company Down

I haven’t been as out of control buying guitar gear over the last year or two as I was prior, but I have gone through stretches where I get hyper obsessed with making tiny tweaks to my guitar sound that require me to buy amps and pedals and accessories. I own a bunch of amps and a lot of pedals. I mean, a lot of pedals. Every now and then one of them bites me in my conscious’ ass. That seems to have happened today.

The first time it happened was when I found out the owner/operator of a boutique pedal company that made a really cool fuzz pedal that I really wanted had donated money to a church that sponsored pray away the gay conversion bullshit. When called on it he got defensive and just made a mess out of it. He also apparently ripped off a circuit from a woman and then got really ugly with his verbal attacks when he was called out. The woman was actually trans and he went after her and it was just bad. I never bought that fuzz pedal. I never will. I won’t do business with a putz like that.

Fast forward to 2020 and I put a second pedal company on the no-fly list when one schmuck in California went after people who were protesting the murder of George Floyd. He first implied that his neighbors store windows were more important than a human being’s life, and then when he was called on it he verbally attacked his own customers. He said if we supported the George Floyd protests we were unworthy of using his gear. Can you believe that? What kind of utter narcissist would say something like that? I owned three of his pedals. Two of them were on my main board at the time and one of them is still the best pedal of its kind I’ve ever heard. Those three pedals are now rotting in a box in my cellar where they will spend the rest of eternity. I don’t do business with assholes like that and I won’t let other people see me using his stuff on the off chance it might lead to a sale. Fortunately this asshole’s company went out of business not long after. Unfortunately, he has had some luck restarting it. 

Now there’s a new one to get pissed off about. Early this morning I saw a post on social media saying that the owner and operator of this very successful boutique pedal company that has been around since the birth of the boutique pedal market is a trump donor. The post included screen shots of receipts. I own two of this guy’s pedals. One of them is at my bass player’s house waiting for me to go over and pick it up. It’s possibly the best overdrive pedal I’ve ever played that isn’t made by Klon. The other is a mod of a well known overdrive that I put on my board about a month ago while looking to change up my sound for the demos I was making for the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. One great pedal, one very good pedal. I was also thinking about buying another overdrive that this guy sells. I had actually put it into my shopping cart on musiciansfriend.com but had not yet pulled the trigger. Thankfully. I will not do business with a fascist or even a fascist collaborator. Not in this lifetime at least. To hell with this clown. I’ll have to pull his pedal off of my board. I’ll probably replace it with a King of Tone because Analogman is on the record as being very anti-trump and… well… selfishly and musically… its one of the best overdrive pedals on Earth. So… win win, I guess.

I hate it when fascism and racism and sexism and religious bullshit make me feel bad about myself musically. Fuck all of those assholes.

I wasn’t going to name names, but screw that. The gay conversion donation came from JHS, the George Floyd asshole was Fulltone, and the trump donor is Keeley Electronics.

Just Leak Them

How many people have seen the complete unredacted Epstein files? I saw a story tonight about a US congressman who was commenting on how the files definitely include something about trump raping kids. Has that congressman seen the documents with his own eyes? If so, I have one question for him and for anyone else who may have seen the full unredacted files…

Why haven’t any of you just leaked the whole thing to the press? Just put it all on a thumb drive or stack the print outs in a trapper keeper folder or something and just drop them off at your local newspaper office? 

Just leak the fucking files and get it overwith.

Your country requires this service. Leak the god damned files already. Help a country out. Do the right thing.

What’s Going On?

The nazi fuck in the white house is going to give a speech tonight where he will say the 2020 presidential election was stolen even though it clearly was not stolen. There is zero credible evidence to say it was stolen, but the nazi pedophile rapist in the white house (which I legitimately just typo’d “shite house” and will probably forever call it that from now on) wants to pass the uber racist/sexist and utterly unnecessary save america act which will effectively remove voting rights from millions of americans including all married women who took their husbands name so he’s going to lie to our fucking faces again (which he does literally every time he opens his nazi fascist pedophile rapist racist mouth) and tell us how he has evidence that 2020 was stolen even though he will present no evidence because no evidence exists and his base will get down on their knees and swallow every word.

Okay… I need to calm down. I’ll change the subject.

On my personal laptop, I use Vivaldi as my web browser of choice. It has recently started being unable to connect to certain sites. Like, random sites that no browser should ever fail to connect to. Things like… wordl. Why? Why are you fucking with my word games, Vivaldi? I can connect using Chrome and Firefox. Why not Vivaldi? It’s not me, it’s clearly you. I don’t want to go back to Chrome, damn it. I’m not as pissed about this as I am the nazi fascist pedophile rapist racist in the shite house, but I am pretty pissed about it.

Ugh… what else. Music. Let’s talk about that. The 50 songs in 90 days Challenge. I have had three days in a row with little to no progress. Today I recorded some guitars. I feel a little better. Not much, but a little. 

I had used my Les Paul Standard on everything I’d done since the project started on July 4th. Today I changed guitars. I was going to go to my Les Paul Custom but instead I went to my SG. I hereby declare that today is officially Gibson SG Standard day in my basement music nook. You heard it here first.

Bribes

Remember when bribery was illegal? That was before the nazi in chief of the fascist states of america declared that it was a smart move to let a foreign government give you an airplane as a present. Our new air force one, which will stop being air force one and become trump’s personal plane once he leaves office, assuming he leaves office before he dies.

Yeah, this country fucking sucks. Can you imagine if Barack Obama told the public he was taking a passenger jet as a gift from an Islamic nation? Fucking fascists.

Change of subject. Two things to look forward to this week. First, I have my three year post-gastric bypass surgery check in at the weight loss clinic. I expect them to tell me that I am the greatest patient they have ever had, and that no patient they’ve dealt with has ever had such overwhelming success with their post-op program. I am hoping for a plaque or something to honor me.

Of infinitely greater importance, my step son Harry is going to graduate from the University of Vermont this weekend. I am so proud I am so proud I am so proud I am so proud. Did I mention how proud I am? We’ll be heading up there after work on Friday. I am really looking forward to it. I don’t know if you can tell by the context of this paragraph, but I am really proud of Harry.

Okay, Robert. Back to work with you.

254/365

I Am Trying

I am trying today. I am doing my best. My best, however, ain’t gonna be good enough.

I am trying to not get mentally bogged down by idiotic shit going on in the federal government. I just want to have a day where I ignore the morons and concentrate on work for a change. Something tells me I am not going to be terribly successful in this endeavor though. Don’t get my wrong, my work is getting done. No worries there. I just find myself distracted by all the other bullshit.

I am in the office again today. This makes four business days in a row for me. Ugh. Yesterday I left the house at 7:30 and got to work at 9:10. Today I left the house at 7:20 (makes sense, right?) and got to work at 9:10. Oh for crying out loud.

On the way out the door I told the cats to take care of my wife while I am out. I always tell them that. I don’t know if they ever listen though. They aren’t really team players, you know? They just do their own thing and mostly ignore anything I say. They’re cats that way.

248/365