I guess we'll see
This is an exciting day as far as I'm concerned, even with the worries about ridiculous and pointless partisan violence and unrest—which, hopefully, will prove to be far less severe than feared after the storming of the Capitol on January 6. I'd say that at some point these people will be forced to face reality, except these are the same people who believe Hillary Clinton runs a child sex trafficking ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor that literally has no basement. This is the kind of shit that makes me hesitate to have much hope for the future of our country, even without President Fuckwit in its most powerful position.
But, whatever. That made is widely expected to issue over a hundred despicable pardons today, and it's still exciting to know that it's his last day in office, and there's nothing he or anyone else can do about it. What an insanely chaotic four years. Much of that chaos would have existed regardless (Black Lives Matter as a movement first gained steam under President Obama, after all), but it also would have been tempered a great deal had our federal government actually been run by qualified and competent people. That's been the key missing ingredient here: qualifications and competence. Even horrid presents of the past (Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes; hell, even Clinton was horrid in hindsight, frankly) hired cabinet members who, while they made often terrible decisions, they still had qualifications and competence. The President Fuckwit era brought us a rotating assembly line of witless dipshits unlike anything this country has ever seen.
Back in 2016 there was the naïve hope that someone as insanely unfit for the presidency as he was would hire people who know what they were doing and what they were talking about. Instead, literally two days before the end of his term—and on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, no less—they released the so-called "1776 Report" that overtly elevates revisionist history over racist and genocidal realities with willful ignorance. What a step to go out on. Well, except we still have today's pardons to deal with as well, which is going to let countless horrid criminals go free. Thank god the people getting charged for storming the capitol haven't had their trials or convictions yet and cannot be among them.
Much of the racist nightmare that is America will continue after today—in fact, most of it will; after all, Trump was a symptom, not the disease—but it's still going to be one hell of a relief to see him out of office. It's been a dream just to see that fuckwit barred from Twitter.
As for how I spent my evening last night, I made tacos for dinner, using the last of the "No Evil" veggie meat products Erin the broker had sent me as samples to try. This one was veggie "pulled pork" and I wasn't quite sure what to do with that; I decided to mix it with canned Rancho Chili Beans as the protein portion of the tacos Shobhit had suggested I made for dinner. This was only a moderate success, as the veggie pork had a kind of barbeque marinade on it, and that's a kind of odd flavor for tacos. Mixing it with beans helped cut down the intensity of the flavor, and in the end I liked how it turned out. Although I had to have something more akin to taco salad because so many of the taco shells I had gotten at Trader Joe's a couple of weeks ago got crushed in the bag as I walked it home.
Some of the shells remained intact, so I did have four fully intact tacos ready for Shobhit when he got home from work—a bit later than normal, but earlier than feared: the security gate at Big 5 wouldn't close properly and he had to wait for security to come and fix it. He was afraid he might even have to spend the night there, as he was told it could be up to four hours before they got there. But, after I expected him to get home at around 9:00, in the end he was only home about half an hour later than that. Considering that too late to start watching something on TV with him, I had gotten into bed to read for a bit.
I did watch the first three episodes of the Martin Scorsese documentary series about Fran Liebowitz, Pretend It's a City, which honestly doesn't seem to have any particular purpose aside from following her around, or sitting with her, and letting her be entertaining by being her insufferably cranky self. I'm glad I don't know her personally; I think it would be exhausting. But in these half-hour doses, I kind of can't stop watching—and, often, laughing. She cracks me up in her bizarre devotion to New York City, because she has nothing but complaints about it, but she stays there because evidently anywhere else is worse.
I have no idea if later episodes will get into the pandemic, but the first three at least were clearly filmed before it. There are shots of her indoors walking around a truly spectacular scale model of the entire city, which I really want to learn more about and find out if it can be visited by anyone else, and she talks about the city being "quiet"—but without referring to the pandemic. I do wonder if those scenes were shot later last year. I guess we'll see.
[posted 12:38 pm]