by bill | Jan 30, 2025 | Bread and circuses, Golden (State) Years |
After clicking “Publish” for yesterday’s post, I went to my email to make sure the notification had gone out. Then I jumped over to a New York Times tab, where I saw that the spending freeze I had just finished writing about had been rescinded by the Office of Management and Budget. That’s how the news cycle runs in a TFG administration; it’s government by squirrels on speed.
I think this is good news? Honestly there are a lot of ins and outs here and I’m not clear exactly what happened. Throwing up a screen of confusion is part and parcel of these guys’ Orwellian MO. But for the moment I’m willing to see it as a W.
Speaking of which, I just finished watching my Golden State Warriors pull off an unlikely upset of the NBA-dominating Oklahoma City Thunder. Just another game in January, sure — but it was a bright moment in what’s been an ugly slog of a season. When Gary Payton dunked on Isaiah Hartenstein’s head to put the exclamation point on it I jumped up from the couch and threw my glasses across the room. I didn’t know what else to do. The cat looked at me like I was crazy, and maybe I was.
There are going to be days like this, when we’re going to have to stop worrying about the big picture for a bit and take the W’s where we can find them. I’m not going to click over to a news tab now. Who cares that three of the craziest people in America — Bobby Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel — are currently being considered for important government positions? Or that scumbag is already exploiting the midair crash that killed 67 people last night for political gain? I laugh and brush these things off my shoulder. Serenity now.
by bill | Jan 29, 2025 | Bread and circuses |
I really don’t like writing about politics; it’s not my métier. I prefer, and am much better suited to, writing about music, books, TV, basketball, and other trivial but crucial matters. But at times like this all my angry energy needs a place to go, and so it’s either write about it or go down to the Plaza and start screaming at strangers.
After four years of Sleepy Joe and his boring competence, I had forgotten what it’s like in the maelstrom of the Shitheadstorm, where the news cycle is about two hours long and to go to the dentist is to risk missing major developments. Yesterday, for instance, in the morning That Fucking Guy announced that he was unilaterally and illegally shutting off several trillion dollars of federal funding. There followed several hours of utter chaos as millions of people ran around wondering if they’d be able to go to school or get health care the next day.
It was at this point that I went to have the molar that had cracked in half removed. I blame TFG for this condition, which was precipitated by a great deal of pre-election tooth-grinding. By the time the procedure was done — and it really didn’t take long at all, it’s kind of disturbing how easy it is to have your teeth removed; the idiom “like pulling teeth” is outdated — a judge had stayed the order till Monday and people had calmed down a bit, though they were still wondering What It All Means.
(more…) by bill | Jan 26, 2025 | Whatever Else |
Well, Watson, we seem to have fallen upon evil days.
—Sherlock Holmes
The first days of the second TFG administration have gone, I guess, about as expected? He made no secret of his bad intentions, but it has still been weird to watch him, for instance, try to rewrite the constitution, or settle the whole question of gender, by executive fiat.
I’ve only been sort of keeping up… it’s hard to turn on the news these days without feeling a cold chill creep up the back of your neck. I’ve been torn between Not Wanting to Know and feeling like, if I fall a couple days behind, I’m gonna miss the declaration of martial law and be surprised when the stormtroopers show up to take me to the reeducation camp.
Hyperbole? Probably. Hopefully. The problem now is that we truly don’t know how bad things can get. With TFG having been given a free pass to do anything he wants without legal repercussions, it’s only the other branches of government that can stop him from creating a full-on dictatorship, and they have as of late shown no inclination to do so.
(more…) by bill | Jan 14, 2025 | The Obits |
Today, for whatever reason, I was inspired to go on at great length. Needed to get something out of my system. If you’re pressed for time, just skip to the end; that was the whole point anyway.
The Times obituaries were a particularly rich vein this week, featuring several examples of my favorite kind of obit: that of a person who lived a full, rich, complex life and was much older than me when they died.
One of them was “Peter Fenwick, 89, Leading Expert of Near-Death Experiences.” After appearing on a BBC documentary about life after death, he became a sort of clearing house for people’s stories on the subject, and wrote several books about it.
He was a believer. “Describing it as a hallucination does nothing to explain the underlying mechanism and leaves many of the same old questions unanswered,” he said. “Why should everyone have more or less the same hallucination in the same circumstances? And why should it seem so real?”
I have no good answer for that and my official position remains agnostic, though I’ve never personally experienced anything to make me think consciousness exists separate from the body. My dad seemed like exactly the sort of person who would have things he wanted to say from beyond the grave, and I haven’t heard a peep from him. But maybe Peter Fenwick will come back and clear it all up for us… certainly he is qualified for the job.
Unlike Pete Hegseth, who as I write this is being grilled by the Senate about his nomination for Secretary of Defense, a position for which he is pathetically unqualified along numerous dimensions. I can’t watch it because, you know, sausage being made; but I’m glad to see there’s going to be some public airing of all his issues, rather than the backroom rubber-stamp That Fucking Guy wanted.
(more…) by bill | Jan 10, 2025 | Because he's David Bowie, that's why |
Today, as we mark the 9th anniversary of David Bowie’s departure for the Western Lands, I’ve been thinking about how he managed his final act.
He’d arranged well in advance for Blackstar to be released on his 69th birthday (no snickering), January 8, 2016. Although none of us knew it, he was desperately ill at the time. But somehow he managed to stick around till two days after that.
I wonder if, in those two days, he somehow managed to enjoy what he had wrought while in the process of dying? I’d certainly like to think so. The notices were glowing, even without the cheat of people knowing he was sick.
I’ve never been a great partisan of Blackstar (I still think The Next Day is the better album) but I’m listening to it right now and it sounds great. And I love knowing that David controlled his own narrative right up to the end.
Against my better judgment I clicked just now on link to a People article about Mr. B. Among many another things, it mentions that he regularly Skyped (this being pre-Zoom) with Gary Oldman, and on their last call they had technical difficulties. So Starman’s last message to Oldman was “Fuck off!”
His last song, if you think about it, said a polite version of the same thing. “I can’t give everything away,” he told us. I won’t be telling you how I did my tricks; thanks for coming, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Maybe he’ll tell us all about it on the next Bardo. Until then we’ll just have to do the best we can.
