Why Are You Dead, Jessica Mitford?

[mallorys_camera]

That Chernobyl sky. That ghastly white ground mist that freezes, then precipitates when it bounces off the telephone poles. Despondent much? Me? Why yes, now that you mention it!

But what can you do except pop your Vitamin D, huddle under the light box, and repeat your mantra: It’s only brain chemistry. It’s only brain chemistry?

###

Mrs. Neighbor Ed has gone off to be with the Providence grandchildren, which means Neighbor Ed spent the morning live-texting me the Impeachment Hearings.

I don’t care about the Impeachment Hearings!

I think the Impeachment is a huge mistake. Trump is sleazy and awful and horrifying, but the Senate is stacked for acquittal, so it’s a complete waste of time, money, and energy.

Plus the Ukraine situation is kind of ambiguous: Hunter Biden’s appointment to that gas company board absolutely was the sleaziest kind of influence peddling. And what are the Democrats saying here anyway? That no one who’s a Presidential candidate can ever be investigated for anything? That if you want to avoid a corruption charge, all you have to do is announce your candidacy?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Trumps are the very wizards of influence peddling!

Does that make it right for the ostensible good guys to do it?

If they want to go after Trump, much sounder grounds abound.

Like the small, throwaway story I read in some obscure media outlet yesterday: Trump apparently diverted $1.7 million in campaign contributions to defer operational costs at his privately owned powerbase, Manhattan’s Trump Towers.

Campaign fraud, no?

This, it seems to me, is much stronger grounds for impeachment.

But it lacks the narrative the Democrats want to push: Evil, orange Trump attempting to derail virtuous, beleaguered members of the Loyal Resistance.

The Democrats would rather run on that narrative than they would on Trump’s miserable record.

In fact, the Democrats want a complete do-over of the 2016 election. Another story yesterday was about some poll that shows the candidate that Democrats really want to vote for in the 2020 election is… Hillary Clinton.

I mean, fuck-k-k-k-k-k.

###

Scuttled off to tutor Khadijah. I think I have problems? I don’t have problems! Khadijah has problems!



Got home and texted Neighbor Ed: Are you still watching the impeachment hearings? Do you want me to come over and shoot you?

Sure, he texted back.

But, of course, we didn’t watch the impeachment hearings, though they were on the little TV in the kitchen. Instead, we drank beer, nibbled almonds and pepperjack cheese, and babbled.

Usually, so long as I can babble, I am a happy camper. But yesterday, I was not. Not even babbling could alleviate the awful hovering sense of oppression.

Neighbor Ed did tell me one amusing story, though: His daughter Sarah went to pick up her one-year-old from the Progressive Day Care Center. The kid’s nose was running all over her face, so Sarah grabbed a Kleenex and wiped the kid down.

The Progressive Day Care Center Worker clutched her heart and gasped: “You don’t ask her for permission first?”

The thought of asking a one-year-old for permission to wipe her nose is fucking ludicrous and signifies everything that’s wrong with “woke” culture.

I went home, did some remunerative work, drank waaay too much apple brandy, read Sapiens—very good book!—and watched the first two episodes of the BBC's Love in a Cold Climate.

Not for the first time, I wondered what Jessica Mitford would make of this sorry mess of a world.

Why are you dead, Jessica Mitford?

Don’t you know I need you to be my bestest friend?

Especially this morning when I am mildly hung over from all that alcohol consumption?

Comments

[asakiyume]

It was bad enough when everyone just Peter Panned, wanting to be pampered children all their lives (notably, when people shrink at the thought of growing up, it's never because they want to stay being a child laborer or victim of abuse; nope), but now they want the *actual babies* to be the adults.

[lethe1]

A friend of mine lives in the UK and the company where he teaches courses replaced the words 'blackboard' and whiteboard' with 'chalkboard' and 'wipeboard'. What on earth are the negative connotations there? Just remove 'black' and 'white' from the dictionary altogether, why don't ya.

Political correctness gone mad.

[mallorys_camera]

Oh, good analysis. The story is kind of like your playground story taken to another degree.

[mallorys_camera]

Wow. Unbelievable. It's like a return to the Victorian Age. Except instead of sex, we're bowdlerizing any mention of physical variation.

[rebeccmeister]

For some reason, this post in particular reminded me of something from growing up. In high school, I worked at a dry cleaner's next to my house - great place for a person's first job. At a place like that, you get to know your customers pretty well. Anyway, while working there we came to observe that the people who complained the most about the winter weather were all people who had moved up to Seattle from California. It always made me think, "Well, why don't you just move back to California if the weather bothers you that much?" (for some reason, I've always liked the gloomy weather, I think because it made indoor spaces feel more cozy)

My brother, in contrast, figured out after he graduated from college and started grad school in Texas that it turned out he's very sensitive to sunlight and had Seasonal Affective Disorder. He was amazed to discover how happy he was in the wintertime, compared to his experiences during childhood and adolescence. He now lives in Riverside, CA.

All said and done, though, I've got to say that I also developed an appreciation for the light quality in the Arizona desert. It's often painfully bright there, but on the other hand the light means that a person can play around so much more with fun colors.

[mallorys_camera]

Ha! 😃

I had Seasonal Affective Disorder the last decade or so I lived in California, too. Not as bad as it seems to be now, but I think what I'm experiencing now is connected to my advanced age. 😃

It's not the snow or the cold necessarily. It's that there's so little daylight time.

I grew up in New York, and I don't remember the winter ever bothering me the way it bothers me now, either. Being older does seem to be a trigger.

[rebeccmeister]

Yeah, these are things that can certainly change across one's lifetime.

Do you use any supplementary indoor light therapy? Last year I convinced S to create a light alarm clock because we determined that it was WAY more effective at helping him to wake up on winter mornings than other methods.

I've also been having the reaction of, "Put shiny lights on ALL the things!" this year, heh.

[mallorys_camera]

Yeah, I have a light box, and I pop Vitamin D. Like all harm reduction strategies, it's impossible to say how effective these things are, but it's very possible I would be beating my head against a concrete wall right about now if I weren't doing those things. 😃

Exercise probably plays into it, too. I wouldn't say I'm an exercise junkie or anything, but I'm on the high end of my age group in the warmer months. And in the winter, I basically stop exercising. I'm sure that has a negative effect on me. I hate commercial gyms! I do have a very ancient elliptical bike, and I did force myself to use it last night, and I do feel markedly better today than I did when I wrote the above.

So, maybe it's just something as simple as that. 😃

[rebeccmeister]

I can totally appreciate a dislike of commercial gyms.

I tend to go bonkers if I'm not getting regular exercise, although I suspect my flavor of unease differs from yours (heightened anxiety rather than depressive tendencies). I have the advantage of built-in exercise via my bike commute most of the time, but when the weather turns and I can't bike for a spell, I get grumpy.

I'm still trying to come up with a general approach/strategy for winters out here. The winter season is effectively 5 months long for me because we take our docks out at the end of October and don't put them back in until early April. I want to mix things up in the spring and summer to get in a combination of rowing, hiking, bicycling, and camping. The nearby snow isn't consistent enough for cross-country skiing, so I'm still kind of at a loss.