Betrayed by President Cheeto

Extremities are to scale.

This probably makes me a bit of an asshole, but when I read about Trump supporters who are now feeling fucked over, I get the giggles.  This guy’s troubles really aren’t funny, of course, but I do feel more than a little bit of schadenfreude reading about the extraordinary lengths he went to in supporting the Orange One.

‘Trump Troubadour,’ who attended 45 Trump rallies to honor his late son, feels ‘betrayed’ because of health care

Beginning in January 2016, Kraig Moss traveled to 45 rallies, belting out songs in support of Donald Trump and telling the story of his late son, Rob, who died three years ago from a heroin overdose.

Wow.  A little extreme, but he really believed in Trump’s promise to “help young people”, whatever that means, and there’s nothing wrong with following your passion.

…He stopped making his mortgage payments and sold the equipment for his construction business to stay on the campaign trail, galvanized by Trump’s promise to help young people — like Moss’s late son — who struggle with drug addiction.

Holy shit.  This guy really had it bad for our future Puppet-in-Chief.  Most were content to just wear one of those stupid red hats and wave an American flag while shouting at brown people.

Trump made this promise to Moss personally at a rally in Iowa in January 2016. Speaking through a microphone to the crowd, he addressed Moss directly: “The biggest thing we can do in honor of your son … we have to be able to stop it.”

Wow, that’s awesome!  Trump really cares.  It’s not like he’s just saying this stuff to get votes.  I mean, that would make him a lying, pussy-grabbing sack of badly-coiffed shit, right?

But about two weeks ago, Moss caught his first glimpse of the Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act. The proposed health care bill … would eliminate a requirement that Medicaid cover basic mental-health and addiction services in states that expanded it, a mandate that covered nearly 1.3 million people.  “This bill is just the absolute opposite,” Moss told The Washington Post. “I felt betrayed. I felt let down.”

Whoops.  Sold his business and lost his house, all in order to follow a third-rate Hitler cosplay enthusiast around the country singing songs about his greatness.  Now, like so many others, he’s finding out that he was being conned on an epic level.  Awww.

Moss said he initially supported many of Trump’s other promises as well, such as his pledge to build a border wall with Mexico. But lately he has been upset hearing the stories of families being separated by deportations.

Oh really?  What did you think would happen when you hand the highest office in the nation to a cheese-colored bag of jingoist raccoon farts?  Christ on a cracker!  Too bad about his son, but I have zero sympathy for people like this who blindly supported a widely-known con artist and big-business bullshitter.  The only good thing to come of his election so far is the vast amount of epithets invented to describe him as anything other than “President Trump.”

So to you disillusioned Trumpites, all I can say is:  boo-fuckin’-hoo.  Now you’re paying the price with the rest of us.  Enjoy!

80’s Therapy

Listening to music from my childhood and teenage years has not only fed my hunger for nostalgia — it’s also helped me cope with the terrifying reality of our new authoritarian nightmare.  We all have to do what we can to stay sane, right?

I grew up in a small Arizona town which was surrounded by radio stations that played nothing but country music, and as a teenager in the 80’s it didn’t appeal to me at all.  I had to settle for buying the occasional tape or record from the Flagstaff Mall which was an hour away (which seemed like days away at the time).  This was before the internet and file-sharing, so I usually discovered music via friends at school or on MTV.  Yes, they used to play music videos.  Shocking, I know.

I can’t even begin to imagine how many of these I filled up with radio recordings and homespun mixes.  Truly, I am an old fart.

One day I discovered that our local TV cable company carried FM stations, and by touching the CAT5 cable directly to my radio antenna, I could magically pick up all the stations in Phoenix!  It opened up a whole new world of music for me, and I discovered a lot of music that helped shape my tastes as an adult.  So when I hear songs from the 80’s today, it brings back a lot of great memories of that time of discovery, when I’d listen to the radio constantly and record songs on cassette to enjoy many times later.

It’s not necessarily the “good” songs that do this to me.  Even when I hear a shitty 80’s song, I’m transported back to my teens just by that 80’s sound.  You know it when you hear it:  the way the synths sounded, the cheesy and (mostly) programmed drums, the weird sustain effect they put on the vocals for that “stadium” effect…I love all that stuff, even if the song is a turd.  And that decade produced a lot of shitty music, let me tell you.  (This sound has made a comeback in the past 10-15 years, but most bands trying to emulate it can’t quite get it right.  I can always tell a legit 80’s band from a group of poseur millennials trying to replicate the “oldies.”)

So, as you can imagine, I was soooooper excited to find this astonishing collection of 80’s DJ mixtapes, lovingly curated by a guy who created the San Francisco Disco Preservation Society.  This was recently profiled on the SFist blog and it’s a fascinating read:

The art of the club mix — equal parts curation, imagination, and rhythmic skill — is something that’s evolved over the decades in different ways in different cities, with DJs finding influences both locally and internationally. But before the explosion of file-sharing in the early 2000s and the widespread accessibility of digitized music a few years later, DJ sets were things you only ever experienced live in the nightclubs themselves, unless your friend was a DJ and copied a cassette for you — or unless that DJ was famous enough to have a record label and a few CDs.

Hopkins wants people who went to SF nightclubs like Pleasuredome, the I-Beam, and the EndUp back in the day to be able to hear some of these multi-hour mixes that they may only have the haziest memories of, and he wants to introduce a new generation of DJs and nightlife mavens to the talents of their forebears.

Some of these mixes were on cassette tapes, but others were recorded on big reels which go for 2-3 hours, recorded directly from the soundboard.  He even went through the trouble of scanning the actual tapes and reels so you can see the DJs’ scribbling on them.  This extra level of detail proves how serious he is about it.  I’m a serial archivist and I totally get off on collecting and curating hoards of different media (music, ebooks, digital comics, photos, retro games), and including the scans is exactly how I would have done it.  I tip my Pac-Man hat to you, sir! 😀

There are many hours of music available to play and/or download.  Some the mixes I love, others not so much, but it all depends on your tastes and what was hot at the time.  I’ve been playing these while I work since they make surprisingly good background music, and every so often a song comes on that just lights up my face with nerdy delight.  Stuff I haven’t heard in what seems like a thousand years.

So go explore it if 80’s music is your thang!  He also has a collection of 90’s stuff which I’ll have to dive into later.  One decade at a time…

Unnngnggghghhhhhhh

Christ, what a week.  I had a post all ready to go, and then something else happened with Trump.  And then something else.  And then he did something even more stupid.  And, and, and…  It’s hard to keep up with this stuff while watching your country transform into a jingoist’s wet dream.  It brings out my apathy — it’s depressing enough just following the news, but why bother writing about anything when something even more awful is just gonna happen tomorrow?  But who cares, here’s what I had before the shit really hit the proverbial fan a few days ago.

————

Looks like Team Trump is already off to a great start!  First act as President:  tell your press secretary to tell a brazen, easily-verified LIE because the media reported something that your hurt widdle feewings.

When the media showed the world the tellingly dismal turnout for Trump’s inauguration compared to Obama’s in 2008, he was not happy.  Because, you know, when you’re a tin-pot dictator it’s more important to project a fictional image of yourself vs. deal with those pesky, provable facts.  And oh, does he hate it when anyone reports facts that embarrass him, even those with photographic proof.

The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot – The Washington Post

Trump has been resentful, even furious, at what he views as the media’s failure to reflect the magnitude of his achievements, and he feels demoralized that the public’s perception of his presidency so far does not necessarily align with his own sense of accomplishment.

So we basically have a child running the country, one prone to tantrums and foot-stomping when he doesn’t get his way.  Or, in this case, when someone tells a truth that doesn’t live up to the Successful Businessman Superhero fantasy image he’s created for himself.

What’s next?  Oh dear, now they’re all fighting for a spot at Trump’s teats.  Especially his son-in-law, whose appointment already reeks of nepotism.

Two people close to the transition also said a number of Trump’s most loyal campaign aides have been alarmed by Kushner’s efforts to elbow aside anyone he perceives as a possible threat to his role as Trump’s chief consigliere. At one point during the transition, Kushner had argued internally against giving Conway a White House role, these two people said.

Yes, folks, they’re proving to be the festering snakepit of sycophants we knew they were.  And speaking of snakes, you do not want to cross Kellyanne Conway.  Not only does she deflect important questions like Wonder Woman and her bracelets, but I suspect she can also unhinge her jaw and swallow her foes whole.  Best not to provoke that one.

Zdravstvuyte from Republic of Trumpistan!

Today’s the day, comrades!  Donald Trump, America’s highest-ranking sexual assaulter and foremost expert on bullshitting his way to success, officially takes the highest office of the land.  Women, gays, and non-whites everywhere shudder with irrepressible revulsion.

He brings with him a parade of swamp trash chosen for his cabinet — a crew overflowing with conflicts of interest, shady business dealings, political assholery, climate change denialism, nepotism, histories of racism, religious zealotry, voting against women’s rights, disregard for the law, rejection of science, and a complete lack of any characteristic or experience that qualifies them for their appointed offices.

In short:  you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Not all of them will survive their confirmation hearings, of course, but some of them might manage to scurry under the door of a new office.  One of them has already slunk away in disgrace after being revealed as a serial plagiarist, so I’m hoping we’ll see a few more of them get the boot.

But back to the man of the hour!  And look, he’s already hacking away at all the progress we’e made in the last 40 years:

White House Website Scrubbed Of LGBT Rights, Civil Rights, And Climate Change Moments After Swearing In

Before today, the “Issues” tab of the website had a section devoted to climate change, the existential threat posed to our species that a scientific consensus holds is caused by human activity. That section is completely gone with the website revamp, along with any mention of climate change whatsoever. The Civil Rights section is also missing. And the LGBT section.

It’s only going to get worse from here.  All we on the Left can do is defy, obstruct, watch watch them very closely, hold them accountable for their actions, and vote the fuckers out of office next time we get a chance.  One website I’ll be reading daily is Corrupt AF, a site dedicated to tracking all the corruption of Trump and his team of toadies.  Sounds like a 24/7 job, doesn’t it?  I hope they’ve brought on extra staff…

And what of the depressed and outraged Democrats who are still trying to make sense of what happened?  I keep hearing this from certain corners of the Left:  “We need to reach out to the Trump voters to understand them and start a dialogue on how to proceed together.”  Well, I didn’t reach out but I did try to understand them.  I even learned a few things.  But you know what?  I haven’t seen anyone on the Right reaching out.  All I see/hear from them is the same ol’ shit: “You lost!  Get over it!  Stop whining!  We took our country back!  Too bad, snowflake!  You cucks blew it!  Benghazi!”  So until I see a lot more sincere “reaching out” from the Right on a national level, they can kiss my grits.

Actually, I have to admit that right now I’m not interested in interacting with these people — the borscht-like taste of illegitimate and tainted election results is still in my mouth — but maybe it doesn’t even have to be a dialogue.  I’m willing to settle for more public statements of “I shoulda voted for someone else” once they realize they’ve basically put a loaded gun into the hands of a child.  Tiny little baby hands.

I’m also tired of hearing about how we on the Left are in isolated bubbles here in our liberal coastal cities, shielded from the Heartland™ and ignorant of the needs of the real hard-workin’ Americans who like football and guns and Jesus and white neighborhoods.  That may be true for some people…but Trump voters are in their own bubbles.  They’re trapped in this delusional longing for the way America was when it was still great.  A time when gays didn’t exist.  Black people weren’t always whining about rights and stuff.  Mexicans stayed in Mexico instead of stealing ALL our jobs.  Everyone went to Little League games on Saturdays and church on Sundays.  Women stayed in the kitchen like God intended.  You know…that “golden age” we had.  If that’s the vision of America they want, and it appears it is, then I’ll stay right here in my bubble, thank you.

So I guess that’s it for my rant.  It’s time for my defensive mechanism for times like this:  pouring a giant goblet of wine and watching some Buffy.

Namaste, my ass.

Science!  Thank goodness we have these people around to explain in sooooper technical terms just what’s wrong with all those homos in the world.  It was so obvious.

Paranormal Organization Claims Gay Men are Possessed by Female Ghosts

According to a paranormal organization 85% of all gay men aren’t really gay, they’re just possessed by female ghosts that cause them to have attractions towards men.  The Spiritual Science Research Foundation (SRF), which has 12,000 followers on Twitter, claims, “The main reason behind the gay orientation of some men is that they are possessed by female ghosts. It is the female ghost in them that is attracted to other men.”

As you might imagine, they believe that lesbians are possessed by male ghost.

If this had any possibility of actually being true, what’s wrong with it?  I know plenty of people who could use a little Spirit o’ Fabulousness in their lives!  It might help them feel some acceptance towards people different from themselves — and the very least it could do is give them an appreciation for campy cult movies.

Pretty hilarious stuff…until you start wondering if they’ve ever tried exorcisms on people possessed by these imaginary spirits.  Innocent people are routinely tortured and killed by fundamentalist Christians trying to turn them straight, so I wouldn’t put it past these people to be into something similar.  They all kind of run in the same herd, you know?

Their website says you can “treat” gayness with Chanting, Mudra, and Nyas. I decided to fix their photo titles for them.

And if there’s any doubt about where these people are really coming from, all you need is this quote from their website about Pride parades:

Organizing such Parades in the name of human rights and freedom does not indicate that society is progressing. In fact, this evidences its decline.

There are groups who are opposing Gay Parades and these groups should be supported, even if such groups are in the minority in a particular country or city.  Remember that even if a majority of people think that something is right, this does not make it is true. For example, if the majority says that drinking and driving is acceptable, does this mean we should engage in such behavior?

So you’re equating the way I was born…with a deliberate and dangerous act like drunk driving and the decline of civilization?  Wow.  I guess my eye color makes me a serial rapist.  Probably causes global warming, too.

It just goes to show that you can dress up your bigotry in all kinds of pseudo-religious spiritual peepeecaca, but at the end of the day you’re still just a shitty human being.

TRUMPNECK

It’s hilarious that our new President (sigh) complains when unflattering photos of him appear online, so tonight I decided to start a silly little Tumblr with that in mind.  More will be added to it now and then.  I know it’s super petty and juvenile, but I don’t care… 😀

https://trumpneck.tumblr.com/

Disaster recovery

I’m still processing this election thing.  There’s so much depressing stuff happening, and so much of it is unprecedented.  The cronyism and nepotism with Trump’s staff picks…the rise of neo-Nazi fucktards who are publicly sieg-heiling him…his refusal to release tax returns…his dodging of the press…his lack of (immediate) post-election outreach to other world leaders…his retention of an unabashed white supremacist shit-stirrer as his closest advisor…the growing list of his conflicts of interest…his very clear intention to use the Presidency to advertise and enrich his private businesses… 

It’s overwhelming.  Trump and his imminent shitfest of a Presidency are omnipresent in all media.  Social media is especially bad, as usual — I can’t even open Facebook without being firehosed in the face with Trump-related memes and rants.  Everyone’s saying the same things about the same things and almost none of it offers any hope or optimism.  I completely understand and agree with everyone’s fear of what he’s going to do to our country, but there’s only so much of it I can process at once.

So my brain is just kind of frozen in place.  10-15 years ago I would have been blogging daily about every outrageous thing he does!  Bush was at least dumber than a box of hair which made him fun to write about.  But lately every time I want to write something about all this stuff, some shitty new thing happens in Trumpland and I just slump back into “Why bother?” mode.  When I read about Trump trolls spamming Amazon with 1-star reviews for Megyn Kelly’s new book (which none of them have read), or how Europe is freaking out about America’s embracing of neo-Nazis, I just want to go play some videogames or work on my photo projects.  Anything to tune it out for a while.  Apathy, thy name is…uh, apathy.

However, I have been attempting to understand more about why allegedly sane people would vote for this monster, because it’s not just as simple as “a buncha racists and bigots decided to elect him” (despite what I said in my last post  😀 ).  It’s deeper and more complicated than that, and it took me a few days for the shock to wear off before I was willing to try and sort it out.  Some good articles about this:

• Bug Hunt
• Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit
• How Half of America Lost its Fucking Mind
• The Stark Contrast Between GOP’s Self-Criticism in 2012 and Democrats’ Blame-Everyone-Else Posture Now
  

There are many more out there, it’s pretty interesting.  Hillary still won the popular vote by over 2 million, so…I’m not sure what to do with that yet.  It’s going to be dissected for the next few years in painful detail, so we’ll just have to see what happens.  Preferably in small doses!