Of Days

I have been glued to the news three times in my adult life (not counting elections of celebration or of heartbreak); 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Capitol Insurrection, the latter at the kitchen table while I assembled a Lego dump truck for my 95 year old grandfather agog as the horror unfolded at the behest of the orange tumor and his fascist death cult of don-drones and sycophants. A year later, I remain agog though wholly unsurprised; the dump truck, similarly, remains on my grandfather's shelf (though I do have to move the dump bed every few weeks via phone remote control for him; display purposes, variety, etc etc).

Three reads worth your time this morning, as we head into this day of days:

Consider the economic profile of the 716 people arrested or charged, as of Jan. 1, 2022, for storming the Capitol. Of the 501 for which we have employment data, more than half are business owners, including CEOs, or from white-collar occupations, including doctors, lawyers, architects, and accountants... Only 7 percent were unemployed at the time, almost the national average, compared with the usual 25 percent or more of violent right-wing perpetrators arrested by the FBI and other U.S. law enforcement from 2015 to mid-2020... only 14 percent of those who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 were members of militias...; 86 percent had no affiliation... In other words, these were people who had something to lose when they went to Washington and carried out this violence.

The day, this day of days, awaits.

EarBliss0001

in

I am alive and, as I’m still rearranging the deck chairs (as it were), I’ve decided to resurrect EarBliss here on Wednesdays, make it a regular feature and, like any half-respecting comic book series, start over with a new 0001: these are – in no particular order – the albums that have made my ears happy over the last few weeks:

INNOVATION, by the [law-rah] collective:

May your ears enjoy themselves; the day awaits.

PlagueState notions year 3029

Thinking back to that time of innocence (half an hour ago), that time in which I had designs on writing a whole thing about something else, a time before I read this morning's Ohio Capital Journal piece – a piece with which I agree wholeheartedly – and decided that I wanted to echo and add my own notions upon its sentiments: Ohio's leadership – a term I use loosely here, having glimpsed it only once in the last ten years I've been back in this godforsaken cesspit of my birthing, that once being March 2020, when actual difficult decisions in the interest of public health were made by a Republican without regard to the whims and delusions of a fascist death cult filled with halfwit zealots I wouldn't trust to know where to stick a thermometer – has been, in the last two years, an abject, myopic failure; to echo George Carlin, fuck (every last one of) the fucking fuckers: this place has tried to kill me too many times to count over my lifetime and I'll be damned if I'm going to let a bunch of mindless anti-whatever-might-do-some-good Don-drones do what my blood couldn't do on its own.

I miss you, Amy Acton; the day, or whatever it amounts to, awaits.

Level 8-4

…better known as what I've come to call Sunday’s little apartment/matchbook development visitation, the lava-and-fireball-infused final level of the week in which the only axe dropped on Bowser's bridge is leaving and the knowledge that I have six-plus days until I have to go and do it again, six-plus days in which to figure out a way to frame what I find interesting in a manner interesting to them (I've yet to figure this one out) but such is, la dee da – at least the morning's work was fruitful; the day awaits.

Newsletter Sunday / Links0062

Yes I know that this isn’t the 62nd installment of this series; it is, in fact, the first. But I'm trying to match NL numbering, so there’s that then. In other: Plaguechristmas avoided for another week. Further victory. Macro0062 inbound; a week in inputs / avidities / motifications / etc etc:

Macro0062 + new exclusive thing and a snowyrun before Sunday visit joy of joys inbound; the day awaits.

INFINITE CGM incompatibilities

Welcome 2022, remarkable if for no other reason than my date schema will not have two ones in a row in YYYYMM bit for the next ten years. Victory, likewise, in culinary things: I have cracked veg bibimbap WITH A BOWL. Next addition: sriracha.

All went according to plan in yesterday's biweekly CGM switchout until my phone said that "this device is incompatible with this app" upon scanning myself. A look at the box – buried under the pharmacy label, of course – revealed that they had given me the model one instead of the model two, as the concealing label (and the previous CGM said), a case study in why we should not put two similar boxes next to each other on a shelf in a now-understaffed and overworked pharmacy which has been consistently behind and off-target since before Omicron – which means that for the next two weeks I'm back to my former methods of glucose checking (read: arm-scan every couple of hours since there are no alerts to warn me when I'm starting to go low); let the games begin.

(At least I have a healthy stockpile of happy pills.)

Returning to victories and completed missions: the Lego Typewriter is fully assembed and HALO INFINITE is finished – capping what was the most fun I’ve had with HALO since COMBAT EVOLVED all those years ago – though I still don't understand the mythology, a lack of which I’ve come to accept will be a forever thing.

Ahead: a run in the rain while basking in the continued glow of bibimbap success and assembly of tomorrow’s weekly newsletter; the day awaits.

Sweet potato KN95s

Dinner with friends last night a pleasant treat and marked the first time in +/- two years I've had to make a decision as to what clothes to wear and, unlike the bluetooth device implanted in my tricep to be changed out later today, I haven't lost pairing abilities plus THERE WERE SWEET POTATO FRIES VICTORY YES even though I'm not sure if the aforementioned friends will take my advice and name their upcoming baby Spike since he was conceived in the era of Covid (hey, they asked for boy's name suggestions; it would be unfriendly of me not to duly provide) but hey one out of two isn’t bad... KN95s have arrived and familial distribution / retribution will begin this weekend – quite comfortable, actually (the mask, not the family part)... and I'm becoming - gasp - happier with AnotherFictionThing's progress: there's something there, waiting the persistence of the chisel/the scalpel; the day awaits.

I care carbs

Zipping past at a comfortable 60mph I couldve sworn that the backroad grocery sign said I CRAVE CARBS but, on the third double take it was revealed to say I CARE CARDS which says far more about my current state of mind than the current state of signage but it does drive home the point that – connective tissue be damned – T1D life is fucking hard, your continued existence being contingent upon your ability to make the correct(est) choices and properly dose a criminally expensive uncontrolled substance four to seven times a day while attempting to present a modicum of normalcy to your life and to yourself while accepting the truth that, whether you like it or not, this is a large part of – the third or fourth full-time job - your life but hey, in other news BOOK OF BOBA FETT was solid but not the revelation that those first episodes of THE MANDALORIAN were and REVOLVER remains The Beatles' best album – For No One McCartney's best, Tomorrow Never Knows easily in the top five of Lennon's – and there's no point in fighting me on this because I'm right, send I CARE CARDS or CARBS in care of/; the day awaits.

Less Bob-Evans-y

Not only did I cook near-perfect perch last night but I used the phrase "less Bob-Evansy" WRT a character this morning so I've got BOTH of those plaudits going for me (which is nice), remarkable truths which seem to be all I've got for you/from me this morning – though wait, no: I did order more blackout curtains because embracing the dark or the dork or whatever by constructing walls that arent walls but are within the sanctity of my Sanctum is the order of Christmas break; the day awaits.

tue/20211228

While DUNE is undeniably a masterpiece – visual, narrative, etc etc – Timothee Chalamet's greatest hit – and, for me, 2021's best line of dialogue/cinematic moment – was his exuberance over fingerling potatoes in DONT LOOK UP: may we all aspire to that fleeting joy – right up there with Mal Evans and his anvil – when we're face-to-face with the extermination of all life on Earth, which, given the way we're going, will probably be sooner rather than later but hey; the day awaits.