28 July 2020: Cat Laughs

Apparently, the combination of fire heat, parenting + working, lack of sleep, Barr’s smug, sanctimonious, selective “remembering” today, and a profound aversion to the bandage on my chest has led me to need and immerse myself in a vat of cat footage. I am delighted.

Observe.

This cat tries ice cream for the first time. I have watched this no less than 92 times today, and even Tom laughed when I forced him to watch. I have a cat, Nutmeg, who LOVES all dairy, even the vaguest hint of it— cheddar, ricotta, milk, cream cheese, cupcake frosting—so this video is infinitely plausible. And yet, what happens? Does the cat get a brain freeze? I’m dying.

Meanwhile, this cat, bless its heart, has no grace. I forced Tom to watch this one too, and he did chuckle. Cats are Majestic Creatures. You really cannot tell which cats will and won’t be graceful and next-level feline. Nutmeg, for example, weighs 15 pounds and I swear he walks like a ghost. There is NO sound. Not a whisper. Ruthie, meanwhile, all 8 or 9 pounds of her walks like a plodding, lumbering goat on stilts. She is loud. Really loud. Like clunky loud. It’s phenomenal, really.

Lastly, I leave you with this. It is in this share that I feel I’m fully becoming middle-aged. Or I’m just desperate because 150,000+ Americans are dead, my oldest may spend his entire freshman year of high school learning from our kitchen, and we’ve been at home for 20 weeks come Friday. Also, the “president” today retweeted “a voice that seemed very important” despite the fact the he doesn’t know anything about her. The her and voice in question belong to Stella Immanuel, a “doctor” who believes that women’s gynecological issues are caused by having sex with demons while they sleep. Demon sperm is a thing the American press had to ask our “president” about during his presser today.

So, I’ll take cat videos and catmouflage with raccoons.

Shit's bad

Friends, I’m not really sure what to say. In short, America is in extremely deep trouble. Uninformed and misinformed citizens are marching willingly with leaders -who at best have been brainwashed and hoodwinked but who are, more likely, fully cognizant of what they’re doing in the name of personal gain and power- into the maw of authoritarianism.

Since the GOP acquitted trump, he has:

• disinvited Mitt Romney to CPAC, and the conference’s organizer stated that ‘the Utah Republican’s vote for more witnesses and documents in President Trump’s impeachment trial would make him unsafe at the event.’ “This year, I’d actually be afraid for his physical safety, people are so mad at him,” American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp said in an interview Saturday on “Full Court Press” with Greta Van Susteren;

• recalled Gordon Sondland (who really cares, but still) for not-enough fealty;

• fired Lt Colonel Vindman AND his twin brother from the NSC and had them escorted out of duty by security officers as if they were criminals;

• worked with AG Barr to interfere in the federal sentencing of Roger Stone, a move so unprecedented, wrong, and offensive to the justice system that all four federal prosecutors resigned from the case and one from his job entirely;

• urged government prosecutors to indefinitely delay Michael Flynn’s sentencing and the judge agreed;

• told Barr/approved of Barr’s decision to create “an ‘intake process in the field’ that could vet information coming from Giuliani, as well as ‘all information that comes to the department relating to the Ukraine.’ This would allow the information to “be carefully scrutinized by the department and its intelligence community partners so that we could assess its provenance and its credibility.” The justice department is NOT supposed to serve as a secretive informational pipeline between the White House and shady, off-book, rogue actors like trump’s “personal attorney,” Rudy Giuliani.

• withdrawn the nomination of Elaine McCusker, a Defense Department official who was to become the chief financial officer of the Pentagon, because she had raised objections to his withholding aid to Ukraine;

• suggested that warmer weather in April will “miraculously” end the coronavirus epidemic.

and on and on.

This is all seriously bad and seriously dangerous. I hope you are doing everything you can to encourage a blue tsunami in November. Everything depends on it, and I am not being dramatic or hyperbolic in the least.

Please call your representatives and demand that Barr be called to testify before House Judiciary MUCH sooner than March 31.

At least Parasite won Best Picture and Bong Joon Ho won Best Director. Sigh.