2019: A Year

I don't generally do these year-end kind of things. Not that I haven't done them before... or maybe I haven't? I don't know. I'm not going to go digging back through my posts to find out. I'm pretty sure I haven't done one recently, but I suppose that depends on how you define "recent." But 2019 has been... a year, and I feel like talking about it. Not that I know what I want to say about it, so let's see where this goes.

The last few years have been... tough, to say the least. Mostly, it's the world and the fact that everything is descending into madness and chaos. If you've been around my blog for any length of time, you'll know that I spent 2017 mostly writing political posts. A lot of 2018, too. Not so much in 2019 but not because I didn't want to or don't feel they're important anymore but because they felt redundant or that whatever I was going to write about was no longer exactly relevant by the time I was going to write about it.

So, yeah, there is this existential gloom that has been getting worse since the election in 2016, and it might be okay if it was just the US, but it's the whole fucking world. People everywhere seem to be hellbent on sending us all to Hell. Or turning the world into Hell, even more than it already is, and even the best politicians, the ones really out there trying to make things better, are not able to stand against the tide of right-wing fundamentalism who want us all to burn.

What, then, to say about 2019? Politically, I mean. I don't really know.
I want to be happy about the impeachment, but it's hard to be. McConnell, the truest evil in Washington, is just going to dismiss everything as quickly as he can, so, really, what is the point to all of this? And it's not that I don't understand this idea of "making a statement," but, from a practical standpoint, it's worthless and difficult for me to feel good about.
And don't even get me started on Britain. They seem even more determined than the US to wreck their country. I mean, voting for fucking Boris? Clown Trump? That's more insane than voting for Trump, and Clown Trump makes fun of Trump! Not that every leader outside of the US doesn't make fun of Trump, but Johnson is demonstrably dumber than Trump -- maybe not his actual intellect (because it's very difficult to be more dumb than someone already dumber than a box of rocks), but the total package of him is just... dumb -- and Britain gave him the victory, anyway. They gave it to someone determined, vocally determined, to destroy Britain at all costs.
I don't understand!!!

Apart from all of the meta-angst, this year has just been... difficult. It has been the year of home and vehicular "disasters," some of which I've written about, like the whole sewage escapade, which was, arguably, the worst of the disasters... other than being without a fully functional refrigerator for something along the line of two months, which I haven't written about, but could also be argued to be the worst bit of 2019, especially considering we mostly lived out of an ice chest for three weeks or so. There were also six new tires, one new battery, three calls to towing companies, and one dead computer. Mine. Again. I'm pretty sure there were some other things, too, but I'm not really feeling the need to dredge down past the things that bubbled up on their own. Oh, yeah, and one fire evacuation. There was that, too.

Needless to say, the year has been... challenging. Which is not to say that there haven't been good things that have happened but, overall, the year has been tough. And, I think, in the future when I look back on 2019, the things that are going to most come to mind are the sewage incident and the refrigerator.

I am, indeed, ready for 2019 to be over.

And, man, I hope 2020 brings better things. Which is not to say that it's not going to have its own foreseeable issues, namely, the election. I can't say how much I am not looking forward to this campaign season. But it is what it is and, hopefully, 2020 will end on a much more positive note, with the GOP losing the White House and the Senate and, maybe even, a lot of them going to jail. I can't wait to see the orange on orange look of the "peach" fake-president.

The Rest of the Year

the rest of the year...
It's going to be a BIT MEssY
somewhat
LIKE
this
post

Things are just...
>>>>>>>>>>busy<<<<<<<<<<
And I'm behind
on most things
BUT
specifically
the Blog
Because I keep it several weeks ahead most of the TIME
But tIime
caught up to me during all the stuff with the fires, and I've failed to get back ahead of things

SO
even though I don't have a specific
SCHEDULE
I do have a pattern
most of the time
but NOT through the end of the year

Also...
I'm working on beginning to sell off my comic book collection
right NOW
and that's taking a lot of tiMe
but
you know
if you want to buy some comic books
let me know

Power (part 4)

Theoretically, my wife was supposed to go to work. Theoretically, she was supposed to have been at work on Monday, too. She had almost gone on Monday, a half hour commute north, but had made the decision to work from home, something that hadn’t much happened due to the power loss and poor internet reception. It had been a good thing, though, because they had shut down the freeway north of us about half an hour after she would have arrived at work. The freeway was still shut down on Tuesday morning, so she would have been stuck there overnight with no way to communicate with us. That would have been a nightmare.


You can find the rest of this piece here:

Silent Night (part 3)

That said, Monday was a waiting game, like being stuck in traffic behind a terrible accident. But a terrible accident involving a bus full of people you know. All you can do is sit and wait to hear if there are casualties, but you know that emergency services are having difficulty getting there because of all the backed-up traffic.

All of our information was coming through the radio and my wife’s phone...


You can find the rest of this piece here:

The Red Glow in the Sky (part 2)

I left her to do the research on what was actually going on while I took the dog out. The dog, too, was up early and wanting to go out hours before she usually wants to do that. Agitated, I guess.

We, the dog and I, went out the door into the pre-dawn darkness and made our way to the end of the driveway and turned north to go up the sidewalk…

…and the sky glowed red against the black of night.

You can find the rest of this piece here:

A Piece of a Life (pictures)

The Smell of Smoke (part 1)

The smell of smoke was in the air. Strong, like sitting around a campfire, but the smoke haze in the air had no obvious source. I thought back to the plume of smoke we’d seen from the highway on the way home from the south Bay earlier in the day. Not that we’d agreed that it was smoke, but I’d thought it was smoke.

Still, as far as I could tell, there was nothing to see...



You can find the rest of this piece here: