Author: Ellen

Instead of boring my friends with my need to catalog my life through music, I'm putting it here.

Unbelievers

Vampire Weekend – Unbelievers

After work I met up with a friend for happy hour. She used to work in the office next to mine but she started a new job about a year ago so we try to get together every couple of months to catch up.

Since we didn’t have a ton of time and we had a bunch of things to update each other on, we didn’t dwell on the shit happening in the world post-election. Acknowledge, express disgust, move on. As a result, I felt like today was one of the most normal days I’ve had in a while.

I can’t go to happy hour every night, once a month would even be a lot for me, but having something else to do after work besides just going home, having dinner, and doomscrolling the evening away, feels healthier. I will have to find a new hobby or something. It’s dark before I get out of work so it would need to be an indoor thing. If only I could work up some enthusiasm for decluttering my house.

Look What They Did

Low Cut Connie – Look What They Did

Not that you need a reminder but just for the record, the criminal in chief has always been a con man, grifter, cheat, and a racist piece of trash. He has more bankruptcies than successful business ventures and he’s in the pocket of foreign investors who saw an easy mark and made a buy.

Congratulations, America, you sold out your future to a bunch of billionaires who are going to do to the country what they did to Atlantic City.

Not Strong Enough

Boygenius – Not Strong Enough

I forced myself to go on a walk today. Originally I thought I would try to go for a run but I didn’t have the energy. It was a beautiful day and I thought it might help me feel less like I want a black hole to open in the kitchen if I at least moved and had the sun on my face.

“It would only take the energy to fix it
I don’t know why I am
The way I am, not strong enough to be your man
I try, I can’t stop staring at the ceiling fan and
Spinning out about things that haven’t happened
Breathing in and out”

There should be some time allowed for grieving but instead it’s keep going to work, keep being a parent, wife, daughter, pay the bills, go to the store. Don’t break down in public. And soon it’s Thanksgiving and then Christmas. We are supposed to give gifts and pretend our world isn’t about to end? I know an alarming number of people who either are about to become first time parents or just had a baby. I can’t believe people are having children. What were they thinking?

I want to scream and cry and hit something and get tossed around in a mosh pit, but I also want to be in a coma or on a deserted tropical island and just check out. I am not strong enough to do it all. Giving in to a fascist takeover isn’t an option but I feel like 2016-2020 broke some parts of me. I know, I am spinning out about things that haven’t happened. Yet.

Deep breaths.

Too Late

Wire – Too Late

These days are hard to get through. I don’t think I am hiding it well either. I need someone to tell me what the plan is so we can crawl out of this existential dread and not just throw up our hands and say, oh well, guess we live in a dictatorship now. Can we get a Democrat to not be John Milquetoast? Can anyone actually be a leader and shake some sense into the rest of our politicians? It doesn’t have to be this way! It doesn’t have to be a foregone conclusion! Don’t sell us out!

Our World

James – Our World

Back in October I went to see Johnny Marr with James opening. I was familiar with James, knew and liked the singles from way back when, but I never really listened to them much. So it came as a surprise to me that nearly half the crowd came to see James with Johnny Marr. They wore old tour t-shirts and knew all the words to all the songs.

To prepare for the show I listened to their most recent album on the way to work. There are a number of timely songs, like this one, which made me appreciate them more than I had before.

I’d also heard that a big part of a James show is frontman Tim Booth’s dancing. He did dance in a kind of trance-like way sometimes but the thing that really struck me was the grasp he has on the audience when he ventures off of the stage. He did this a couple of times. Standing on seat backs and holding people’s hands for support, or out in the aisle right up in front of people. He would hold people’s hands aloft, like they were going to take a bow together, and he would stare into their eyes with this smile on his face, never breaking his gaze. It was kind of incredible to watch. At first people were excited or a little nervous but the longer he stood there, a foot in front of them, smiling, and just drawing them into his eyes, it was like he was imparting a message about his love for humankind, and in that particular moment his love for the person he was communing with, all with his eyes.

I’m glad they were on this tour with Johnny Marr because I don’t know if I would have gone to see them otherwise. It seems unlikely they’ll be back here any time soon but keep it in mind.

Joe McCarthy’s Ghost

Minutemen – Joe McCarthy’s Ghost

Welp, the cabinet appointments are rolling out and it is just one jaw-droppingly bad pick after another. We thought it was appalling last time but now? A friend shared a post that said, “at some point he’s going to start nominating inanimate objects and fictional characters.” I replied that we’d be better off if he nominated Clint Eastwood’s empty chair for Secretary of Defense. Instead we get a Fox News personality who hasn’t washed his hands for ten years because he doesn’t believe in germs since he can’t see them.

Then there’s the Russian asset in charge of intelligence, the pedophile for attorney general, the toady hawk for the UN, the evangelist as the ambassador to Israel. I haven’t heard yet if RFK Jr ended up getting the gig for public health destroyer but a guy with a brain eating worm who sounds like he gargles battery acid is going to fit in perfectly with this crowd.

The only qualification needed for these jobs was complete loyalty to president pompadour. If the media would like to begin salvaging their reputations they could start by planting little seeds of infidelity in the ranks. Talk about how Elon is really in charge and Donny is just his useful idiot. All you have to do is prime the pump and stand back.

Back in March 2018, the New Yorker ran this cartoon that has really stood the test of time.

My only hope with this clown car of an administration is that the infighting and back stabbing will mean we rid ourselves of some of the worst people in government when they inevitably get canned. Trump loves nothing more than firing people.

W.M.A.

Pearl Jam – W.M.A.

This morning I was really feeling the anger stage of grief about the election. By the time I headed home after work I was back in the depression stage, after cycling through all of them throughout the day.

But in the car on the way to the office, I was making my way through the early Pearl Jam albums. Young Eddie Vedder with his barely contained rage. YES. More of this, please. When I got to this song, with those drums pounding and Eddie belting it out, I felt stronger than I have this whole past week.

I am probably going to keep pinballing around between denial, anger, and depression for the foreseeable future. One thing I really have to do is limit my news and social media intake (she says while posting on social media). Every time I hear about some new cabinet appointee, or some plan to destroy fill-in-the-blank, it sends me reeling. There’s nothing I can do about those things and losing my footing is really not helpful.

Geneva Strangemod

Glyders – Geneva Strangemod

I had to start work at 7:00 this morning and I am wiped. It’s not just being tired from a long day, it’s that plus the impending disaster exacerbating everyone’s problems, and the usual lack of sleep.

It doesn’t help that it’s dark when I’m driving home from work. I have an online friend who lives in Chile where it’s coming into summer. She posts pictures of bushes full of flowers with a deep blue sky and you can just feel the warmth and you know it smells gorgeous.

Something about this song has a vibe that kind of matches with those summery scenes. Maybe I will try listening to this while I fall asleep in hopes of peacefully drifting off.

Mind Your Own Business

Delta 5 – Mind Your Own Business

People can fuck all the way off with their calls for returning to respectful debate. Nope. The Christo-fascists have absolutely no intention of being respectful or honest and I will not aid them in their takeover by giving them the veneer of legitimacy.

How have people not learned this yet? NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO OR SAY, they will just make shit up and put words in your mouth, and spin them up through the vast right wing echo chamber. No one is eating the pets, no one is having surgeries at school, we do not have an open border, the list goes on. You cannot debate lies, which is all they have.

How about, instead of returning to civil discourse with fucking Nazis, we tell them to go to hell. How about people who don’t want abortions just don’t have one, but the rest of us can still access a medical procedure safely. How about people mind their own fucking business instead of policing bathrooms.

I am so far away from being polite to anyone who either voted for a con man of the highest order, votes third party, or just sat it out. I am not charitable. All the bad shit they have planned? I want it to happen to the people who chose that, thinking it wouldn’t happen to them. I am not some ‘I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy’ kind of person. I do wish it on them and I hope it happens to them first. This is beyond schadenfreude. I will take no joy in it. But they deserve it.