NaBloPoMo

Storms

Louise Burns – Storms

Just as I was getting dinner started tonight there was a huge, house-rattling boom. They’ve been doing road work around our neighborhood and at first I thought it was one of the giant diggers but then I realized it was thunder. A few minutes later some lightning and another loud boom. Surprising for November 27.

Time to Get Ready

The Bats – Time to Get Ready

I’ve been using my daughter’s room as a staging area while trying to finish getting some other rooms cleaned up and rearranged. With Thanksgiving fast approaching, I am now having to move the stuff I was stashing there, which means I have to get those other rooms ready first. Of course none of this would be necessary if I could tackle these projects in small increments.

I always have good intentions to sort through things and get rid of stuff we don’t need or use anymore. What usually happens is someone or something interrupts me when I’m just getting started and I’m in that stage where it looks worse instead of better. Invariably I don’t get to finish it but I need to reclaim the space so I put stuff back where it had been, probably in a different order but, there’s still too much stuff. Clothes my kids have outgrown, toys, old school projects, protest signs, but mostly books. Oh, so many books.

I’m never going to be a Marie Kondo type, too many things spark joy. And the things that don’t are probably things I still have because I need to keep them. I know the wisdom of taking a stack or working on a corner at a time but that isn’t very satisfying. If only we had some closets!

Jikaku

Teke::Teke – Jikaku

As I mentioned the other day, I follow a bunch of Instagram accounts that post pictures from concerts. It began as a way to compensate for my shitty phone pics. After I’d get home from a show, I would look on Instagram for pictures other people had taken using the location or a hashtag. If I liked the picture, or maybe the caption they wrote made them sound like someone with similar interests, I’d scope out their account. If there was enough overlap, I’d follow them.

Between the concert photos and the vinyl collection people, that now makes up a significant portion of my feed. Last year there was a guy beside me with a serious camera at the Public Service Broadcasting show. I started following him so I could find out if he ever uploaded those pics from his camera. This guy goes to a lot of shows, and a lot of them are a complete mystery to me. More often than not, I will have zero clue about the bands he posts pictures of, and usually they are stills so I’m not any closer to knowning what they sound like.

He’s currently attending some conference or music festival up in Montreal. He posted pictures of the band Teke::Teke, and one video clip. I usually have the volume on mute but the video started playing silently and I could see they had a trombone and a flute. I wondered what they sounded like so I turned up the volume to discover they were singing in Japanese. On their Instagram bio they bill themselves as a Montreal-based, Japanese psychedelic-post-eleki band. I have no idea what eleki is, let alone psychedelic-post-eleki, but I was pretty curious to hear more. I mean how often do you see a French-Canadian band, and then to find one that’s not singing in French or English but Japanese? That alone makes it worth checking out.

Loudmouth

Ramones – Loudmouth

Is anyone surprised by Rump talking so loudly on the phone that it was easy for others to hear their conversation.

I have an idea, let’s indict Bibi and Trump and let them share a jail cell together. The thought of the pair of them rotting away in prison would just be a perfect ending.

Us v. Them

LCD Soundsystem – Us v. Them

I am not watching the impeachment hearings. For one thing, they take place when I’m at work. Sometimes they are still airing them on NPR when I’m driving home but then I have to change the station any time a Republican has a turn to ask questions because I just can’t stand to listen to their manufactured outrage and attempts to undercut career diplomats. The Ukrainians got the money eventually, they whine, so there’s nothing to see here.

I also feel as if I already have all the facts. Anyone who has paid any attention to who Trump is for the past 40 years knows that he will always con, steal, lie, and cheat to get what he wants, and when he finally gets unmasked, he shrugs, says he did nothing wrong, then pays his way out of trouble. He would always settle a lawsuit rather than let it go to court because he (or his lawyers) knew he would lose when the facts were revealed. The same goes for his taxes. If people can see he’s not as rich and good at business as he claims, that would show him to be a fraud.

Though at this point I don’t know why he cares about protecting his image since his supporters will never believe a bad word about him, while people with two brain cells to rub together can see he’s utterly unqualified for the job in every conceivable way and that he has committed multiple impeachable offenses (again, I’d say treasonous) warranting not only removal from office but jail time.

I did see a snippet in a recap tonight of Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney raking Ambassador $ondland over the coals for his flippant attitude and inability to have told the truth the first time he was questioned. Whoo boy! On fire! 🔥

I do not have any hope that we will actually oust Twitler as result of all this because the Republicans are falling all over themselves to defend the traitor. I can’t imagine being so craven for power that you’d prostrate yourself for a draft-dodging, tax-cheating, misogynistic, bigoted, racist buffoon who lies so much that he has to write down, in giant block letters, “I WANT NOTHING, I WANT NOTHING, I WANT NO QUID PRO QUO” lest he forget and say the wrong thing in front of the TV cameras. The man is the Tasmanian Devil, shredding through the Constitution and our standing in the world.

The two sides have squared off. It’s us v. them, over and over again. May we prevail, for the sake of democracy.