Friday at Last

Work has been good this week. No disasters, no scary moments. I did get a call from a customer (service programmers, like me, are not supposed to get calls directly from customers) but I was able to help the guy and it actually felt pretty good. Nope, this past week was a good week at work.

It was the rest of civilization that blew chunks. My wife and I agreed when we discussed it last night that this week has been the longest six months of our lives.

I need to do something creative this weekend. I NEED TO. Photography. Let’s go out and snap some pictures! Let’s play with the new long lens I bought a few months ago. Let’s play with the 120 film camera I bought a few months ago. Let’s go to the ocean and watch the sunrise and shoot all sorts of good stuff. Of course we should check the weather first… snow and rain today and tomorrow and rain on Sunday. Well you can just bite me, mother nature.

Music it is then! Guitar! I will play guitar this weekend if it kills me! I don’t know if we’re going to have a band practice or not. I’ll post something to our messenger thread later today (when it’s not pre-8:00am so that the other three guys don’t think I am weird and obsessed or anything) and see what’s up. If not then I need to find something else to do.

I do not want this weekend to be spent doom scrolling news sites and reading stories about the collapse of american democracy that will build up inside of me until I have a stroke. No. That would be bad, even if it is more or less inevitable. I must play guitar! I! Must! Play! Guitar!

I Hate When it Hits Home

I saw a headline this morning that pissed me off and scared the crap out of me, but I haven’t been able to verify it yet (and I almost don’t want to even try, in the spirit of burying my head in the sand). It said that trump mentioned including pharmaceuticals in his tariff bullshit.

That’s scary shit. Where is my step son’s insulin manufactured? Where is the company that manufactures it based? Is the already insultingly high price of insulin about to go up? Is it manufactured in china? Will the price go up 104%?

Like I said, I have not verified this report yet. I tried looking online for about four seconds and then stopped. Think of it as a no-news-is-good-news kinda thing, you know?

Further thoughts on being in the spirit of hiding ones head in the sand, I feel like I have less and less to say on the interwebs these days. I feel like the state of the world is just making me draw more and more inward. The collapse of american democracy is getting me in touch with my inner introvert. That’s my natural state, I think. Despite being a ridiculous online over-sharer over the last 25+ years or so, the real me is someone who clams up and doesn’t speak unless spoken to. I feel that I am losing the fight to not be that way all the time. Social media used to be my personal revolution (this is getting way too dramatic), but facebook and twitter and instagram and threads are all dead to me now. Flickr is a social media site at its core, but I don’t use it in that sense very much. I still use bluesky, but with each passing day I find I have less and less to say. I’ve been using Flashes as an instagram alternative, but that app is literally just bluesky with a filter to only show posts with images.

This isn’t a censorship thing. I’m not afraid to speak out. trump is a fucking fascist who needs to rot in prison for the rest of his miserable, evil life. See? I am not afraid to say what needs to be said. I just don’t feel much of an urge to speak up anymore. It’s not even that… it’s more like I will speak out when I have something to say… I just don’t often feel like I have anything to say. I don’t know. I will say it’s one of the reasons I am considering canning this blog and all of the social media things I still use. If my country doesn’t give a fuck about me anymore, why would I waste the effort acting like I give a fuck about it in return? I do, and I will do what needs to be done… I think I am just tired.

Jen and I have been watching a show that is set in Australia. Maybe I’m just jealous of people who live in countries that aren’t actively eating themselves. I don’t know.

Boy… this is a depressing post, eh? Sorry. There will be cat photos at some point today. I promise.

PS: I am turning comments off. I’m not interested in comments on this one. I’m not sorry.

Crushed

I am having a hard time focusing on anything today. I’m getting my work done, it’s just tougher than usual. I keep peeking at the internet to see how bad the markets are. I guess the numbers in the US started improving slightly before the numbnutz in chief announced a new 50% tariff against China. Fucking nazi putz.

I did see a flyer online that was interesting. I re-posted it and now I am sharing it here too. Mostly so I don’t forget about it, even though I will probably forget about it… you know how trauma fucks with your brain….

Our calendar is currently clear on Saturday April 19th. It’s the anniversary of me and Jen moving in together. It was 2008 and we rented half of a duplex. I will forever refer to that day as our Duplexiversary. Maybe we can sneak into the city and yell at the nazis with a big group of people. I would have liked to have done that this past weekend, but there were other things going on that demanded my full attention (ie: the kids were home and it was awesome).

I tried listening to some podcasts in the background while I work in the hopes that it would distract me from the soul crushing current events. Nope. Didn’t work. Now I am listening to vintage prog rock (a play list of Genesis records released between 1971 and 1977). We’ll see if that makes life a little better. I doubt it.

Fucking nazis.

Rain

The kids are at a concert with their father and their step mother. Jen is working. I’m sitting in the living room typing this and looking at a sleeping cat or two.

I want to shoot film at sunrise but I can’t because New England in April means rain on the weekends. Not just the weekends, of course, it just seems that way. Every Thursday or Friday I start looking forward to the weekend and I check the weather forecast and it’s always the same. It is always rain. Rain and gloom. Even the Red Sox have been in a rain delay for the last hour and a half or so.

I wish I could have made it into the city to join in on the Hands Off demonstrations today, but the kids were here and I would rather be with the kids than almost anything so I happily stayed home. One of these days there will be a certain ridiculously tall old person with red hair in one of those Boston throngs, I promise.

Until then, here’s a photo of Lily that I took a few minutes before she jumped up onto the ottoman and curled herself into a ball and fell asleep.

I think Jen and I are going to do dinner via DoorDash tonight. It’s a special day for us so we need to do something nice to celebrate. 18 years ago today, on April 5, 2007, we went on our first date. As special days go, today is a big one. I love her so much, and it all kicked off 18 years ago today. Our relationship is old enough to vote, assuming the u.s. will still have elections… you know… nazis in charge and all. Oh shit, I just brought politics into my happy first-date-aversary message. Fuck me. Sorry about that.

Hands Off

Folks are showing up in Boston today. I’m not. At least not physically. Spiritually, I am there.

I Hate That I Feel This Way

Aw hell… why can’t I just be a hockey fan and enjoy it?

Alex Ovechkin tied Wayne Gretzky’s record for career goals last night by scoring his 893rd and 894th goals. Gretzky broke the previous record of 801, held by Gordie Howe, back in 1994.

I want to just be a fan and enjoy the little bit of hockey history, but I can’t. Politics has ruined this for me. Ovechkin is from Russia and in the past has been a vocal supporter of putin. Gretzky stated publicly that he is a trump supporter. Fuck them both. Fuck them both right in their ears. Two fucking fascists.

Ovechkin could break the record as early as tomorrow and I don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut. To hell with him and to hell with Gretzky. Also, just to show that I am not just being a sore loser Bruins fan… Bobby Orr is a trump supporter too. The greatest Bruin ever… fuck him too. They can all just rot.

Mild

The weather was kinda nice today. It was warm enough for me to open the windows in my home office. The cats approved.

Change of subject. Here is my unsolicited political thought of the day.

Are We Great Again Yet?

The nazi orange shit clown announced a slew of new tariffs yesterday. Pretty much every country in the world except for Russia (who owns him, clearly) got a new batch of hefty tariffs because the nazi orange shit clown still thinks it is 1930 and he never heard of that little thing we call The Great Depression. Fucking moron.

I just saw a graphic showing that at one point today the Dow Jones was down 1,225 points, the NASDAQ was down 827.19 points, and the S&P 500 was down 202.60 points.

So my question for the nazi orange shit clown moron is…

Are we great again yet?

Putz.

April 1st

Oh shit… it’s April Fools Day. Never have I ever had less interest in playing along with this bullshit. The fascist states of america is already filled to bursting with fools and idiots and pure, unadulterated evil. Why anyone would think fake stories on the internet is entertaining during times like these… I just don’t get it.

Change of subject. The Red Sox are off today. We will be spared the slaughter and the constant strike outs. In five games thus far this season the team has struck out 123644258686134 times with about 86358629357 being Devers alone. Unfortunately, the Bruins are not off tonight. They will be annihilated by the Capitals. Times are tough in Boston sports-land these days. Why not? Times are tough everywhere.

Change of subject again. When was the original Star Trek given the Star Wars Special Edition treatment? After finally getting through Star Trek the Animated Series the other day, I decided to watch the original show all the way through. I’m through the two pilots and up to episode five now. I just watched Sulu take on the bridge with a sword while the Irish guy sings badly over the ship’s PA. I’m a little put off by most, if not all, of the exterior shots of the Enterprise being replaced by CGI. When did that happen? It doesn’t affect the episodes at all, but I still kinda don’t like it. I want my 1960’s models back. I want the pure form of the show back, even if it is less impressive and cheesy looking.

Change of subject again, again. Sticking with television, what is the deal with the month of April? We have the start of new seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, Andor, The Last of Us, and Doctor Who. We’ll also see the last two episodes of Yellowjackets this month. This feels like collusion. This feels like the television industry conspiring to keep me from sleeping for the foreseeable future.

Again with the change of subjects again, again. I did not participate in the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month thing. I wanted to. I was going to. I just didn’t. I’m thinking of maybe compensating for my failure by trying to do an April album in a month instead. Write and record 35 minutes worth of new music before the month ends. Will I be able to muster up the motivation? Probably not, but let’s give it a shot, eh?

Okay. Time to go and get ready for work. Welcome to April. Stay away from those damn April Fools jokes. It’s going to be a long and painful day on the ol’ internets. Good luck, everyone.

The Worst Attitude

I think that the worst attitude an american can have right now is apathy. The natural inclination is to look at current events, decide that it’s so far out of our control that there is nothing we can do about it, and then give in to indifference.

I get it. I completely understand the urge to go that route.

But then you read a headline about someone torching a bunch of swasticars in Germany and you start thinking that there is always something you can do to resist the fascists. Even if it’s just sharing news. Maybe you’ll say something that will fall on the right ears and change someone’s mind about the drain we’re currently circling and, who knows… maybe it will make a difference.

Luke Skywalker: Look, I can’t get involved. I’ve got work to do. It’s not that I like the Empire; I hate it, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now… It’s all such a long way from here.

Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: That’s your uncle talking.

We need to stop listening to Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen. We need to spend more time listening to Ben Kenobi. He’s a cool dude. He knows what’s what.

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