The inset selfie is from a couple of days ago. Donna and Polly, at the other end of the house, were yelling at each other about something or other. When they get into it the girls seek shelter with me. Look at the concern on those faces!
Do our four-legged companions wonder what life would be like if we weren’t there to feed them? Donna’s taking Lulu to the vet for dental work in a couple of hours. They’ll have to put her under for the procedure, which means she can’t eat beforehand. That, in turn, means Fritzi has to wait until Lulu’s gone before she gets her breakfast. Is it woke to wonder how our pets will react to changes in their routine?
Break break … it’s been a few hours, and a groggy Lulu is home again, 13 teeth shorter than when she woke up this morning. Although our intent wasn’t cosmetic, she no longer has an underbite. Fritzi, who fretted all day about her missing companion, doesn’t like the way she smells now, a lingering fragrance of veterinary clinic and anesthesia, and is keeping her distance. We’ll be giving Lulu pain pills and antibiotics the next couple of days, along with empty pill pockets for Fritzi so she doesn’t think her housemate’s getting treats when she isn’t. When it comes to goodies and who gets what, there’s not a doubt in my mind they count and keep score. Just like us … well, hell, we’re all mammals, so no surprise there.
The annual holiday season letter is written and, mostly, sent. These days almost everyone on our address list gets theirs via email or Facebook messenger. We’ll have to reach out to the rest the old-fashioned way, with paper, envelopes, and stamps.
When it comes to buying things online, we pretty much stick with Amazon. Yes, I know we’re supposed to hate them, but we almost always find exactly what we’re looking for there, at a good price and with quick free delivery. If it’s not right, it’s crazy easy to return a purchase, and refunds are instantly credited back to our account. They’ve never let us down. For us, an Amazon Prime membership is a no-brainer, especially since it includes their ad-free streaming TV service.
Sometimes sellers on eBay can beat Amazon prices. A couple of weeks back I got brave and branched out, ordering a wristwatch from an eBay seller. It arrived promptly (only for Donna to confiscate and hide it until the 25th), so I stuck my neck out and ordered a Lladro figurine from another eBay seller, ditto Christmas, this time for Donna. It was meant to replace one I once brought home from a deployment to Spain, a tall thin lady sitting in a tall thin chair and doing embroidery with her tall thin hands, a figurine Donna loved but sadly dropped years ago, smashing it to bits. Which is how, yesterday, the replacement figurine arrived … in bits, courtesy of the USPS. I sent a quick note, along with a photo, to the seller. Two hours later he’d refunded our money. So we’re trusting eBay now, along with Amazon.
So that’s good, but now what? That was to be my big gift for Donna. And I owe her one, especially after she bought me new living room and office chairs for our anniversary earlier this month. Scrambling now. Wish me luck!
I’m going to assume I don’t have to explain that Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered in their home Sunday, and that Donald Trump posted a hateful rant about Reiner on Truth Social. What I’m finding interesting is right-wing reaction to Trump’s nastiness. Like this post from conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan, a person I almost never agree with:
I’m focused on Sullivan’s last sentence: “The damage he is doing to the civic and moral core of this country is profound and irrevocable.” Yes, exactly that, and I’ve been saying it since 2016, when he first ran and somehow managed to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, who earned almost three million more votes than he did. The man is a moral abomination. It’s not politics, it’s morality. The damage has been, and continues to be, real.
Until Trump took office, I never fully realized just how right Hillary Clinton was when she said this: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.”
I could have gone through life not knowing that ten to twenty percent of the kids in Sunday school and my childhood classrooms, where we were being taught moral and civic values like working together, being brave in the face of adversity, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, feeding and clothing the poor, welcoming the downtrodden, and looking out for one another, were privately thinking “fuck this goody two-shoes shit; I’m gonna grow up and do the exact opposite.”
Unfortunately the deplorables, led by Trump, have come to represent America to the world. The moral rot is so deep now it may take generations to excise. What I can’t understand is how we, normal people who were raised with decent values, allowed it to happen. The deplorables used to know, or at least sense somehow, that their beliefs were contemptible and shameful, and mostly kept to themselves, but they’re running wild now. As Yeats says, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” It’s way past time to put that mob back in the box. I just pray it’s not too late.
Dogs and cats are hyper alert to perceived favoritism. Humans are too but we suppress our hatred of our rich owners in order to maintain social hierarchy. Good luck with the convalesent.
I’m the last remaining person on earth never to have bought anything at Amazon because I don’t support illegal banks like PayPal. Or dick-headed oligarchs with their hand in my pocket like Bezos and Musk (no Tesla for me) and Peter Thiel. Yet somehow I manage to spend my money pretty effortlessly.
Though I just recently joined Costco, who are actual reputable retailers, currently suing the trump banana regime over his illegal tarriffs.
Just for making The Princess Bride Rob Reiner is assured a place in heaven, if there was such a place.
And just for the traitor Donald trump’s reaction to his murder the president deserves an eternal afterlife burning in Hell, if there was such a place.
When we are little children we’re taught how great and powerful is the US and how godlike its leader.
And the rest of our lives our delusions of our goodness and righteousness, and that of the president’s, dwindle as we learn the truth.
After Reagan, the Bushes and the horny hound dog of Big Bill Clinton you’d think we’d know better than to associate the presidency with morality in any way.
Except for maybe Jimmy Carter, every one left office vastly richer than before they ‘served’- grabbed while the grabbing was good. Even Truman.
And if you read any history you’ll find presidents like Andy Jackson, a violent psychopath: Warren G Harding, another sexually obsessed neurotic like the Clintons: and Woodrow Wilson, a virulent rascist like Teddy Roosevelt.
Let’s not forget Franklin Roosevelt imprisoned all the Americans of Japanese descent for the duration of WWII in hell holes like Manzanar. But not those of German and Italian descent. Rascism much?
I suspect, judging by how many Americans love trump, that if Hitler had been American he would have been even more popular here.
Since before Hitler Germany had been very cultured, educated, and a bit of a refuge for those being religiously persecuted.
While the United States was built on the backs of black people enslaved by our billionaire Founding Fathers.
But we are a largely apolitical volk, happy to keep DC writhing with maggots so long as we have beer, football and Dancing With the Stars.
Yet everything is political and our every action displays morality, or the lack of it.
So, along with the country’s degradation, maybe the advent of the Trumpite cult will further dissolve our delusions about our 1%er, oligarch owned, ‘democracy’.
But probably not, since our owners have successfully shrunk our educational system small enough to drown in a bathtub.
So we are devolving into an even dumber clusterfuck than before. See Mike Johnson, that anti-vax idiot Kennedy, and the moronic senator from Missouri, Marjorie T Greene and her Jewish space lasers.