Thanksgiving Quarantine

People are complaining about restrictions against family gatherings this Thanksgiving.

Don't be a child.  These restrictions are there for your own good.  You skip Thanksgiving this year, so more people are alive to attend next year.

People keep comparing it to Nazism.  Educate yourselves, jeez.  When the Nazis imposed restrictions, their goal wasn't to save lives, and their intent wasn't for it to be temporary.  If the Nazis tried to keep you from seeing your family, it was because they never wanted you to see your family again.  Temporary measures are not the same as totalitarian fiats.  

If you're looking for examples of abuse of power, look no further than Trump's current attempts to overturn a legal election.  But a government trying to save lives by postponing a holiday... that's not an abuse of power.  It's not Nazism, it's not fascism, it's not authoritarianism.  It's protection.  In fact, it's exactly the kind of protection we have governments for.

Be a grown up.  Right now, isolation saves lives.  You can visit your relatives once everyone's been vaccinated.  Until then, please play it safe.

A Blast from the Past

In 1982, I was at a high school basketball game, and ended up getting my picture in the newspaper.  We happened to be sitting behind Johnny Cash, whose son went to the same school.  On a whim, I went searching through the newspaper archives and found the photo.

You can see me on the left, sitting next to my dad.  Unfortunately for my brother, he was sitting directly behind Cash, so you can't see him at all.  But you can see his friend sitting next to him.

From The Tennessean

Monday, March 22, 1982 

Page 15

Congratulations President Biden

Biden Wins!

...for now.  You know Trump is going to pull every trick in the book to overturn it.  In fact, he'll spend his last two months in office focused on this one task, while continuing to ignore the pandemic.  That's just who he is - he uses the office of the President to benefit himself, and screw everyone else.  

I'm worried that the next few weeks will be filled with riots and violence, but to be fair, I was worried about that regardless of who won.  This nation is at odds with itself, and I don't know if it's even possible to reconcile.

I don't envy the work Biden has ahead of him.  Fixing Trump's mistakes will likely take up his first year in office.  A lot of rebuilding will need to be done before Biden gets to square one.  

A note to those Republicans who say, "Democrats only whine about the Electoral College when they lose."

I'm a Democrat.  My party won.  We still need to get rid of the Electoral College.  It sucks.  It's an antiquated system held over from a time when we didn't have the technology for a popular vote.

I'm not saying a popular vote is perfect.  But land can't vote.  A state with three people in it shouldn't have more power just because the state's boundaries are wide.  We're electing a president for the entire country, so we shouldn't be looking at state borders at all.  If the majority of the country's population is around the edges, then so be it.  

What we really need is an end to the idea that if you vote third party, you're throwing your vote away.  Some countries use a ranked voting system where you vote for your favorite, second favorite, etc.  So you could put down the Independent as your favorite, then the Democrat as your second favorite, and both votes would still count.  I wish we would do something like that.

In any event, our voting system is broken.  I believe this even when it benefits me.  I hope it is addressed at some point in the next four years.

Anyway, congrats to Biden and Harris.  I hope they are able to heal some of the scars from Trump's reign.

Election 2020

As I write this on the morning of November 4th, Biden has the lead, but most of the remaining states are skewing red.  So it really could still go either way.  Of course, Trump is already claiming he won.

This is very nerve wracking.  Republicans are currently thinking, "Oh no, Biden might win, and we'll have four years of political correctness!  Can you imagine not being able to use racial slurs?"  Democrats are thinking, "The planet can't survive four more years of this.  People are dying.  The climate is at a tipping point.  Children are in cages.  People can't afford life saving medicines."  

Gee, I'm just not sure which side's concerns should be taken more seriously.

But even if Biden wins, I'm incredibly disappointed in voters.  It should have been a landslide.  What kind of idiot looks at the last four years and says, "We need four more years of this?"

Idiots.  Idiots.  Idiots.  Idiots.  Idiots.  Idiots.  Idiots.  

Rest in Peace

My mother-in-law passed away today, after several months of health problems.

When I first met my wife, 27 years ago, her mother was in the hospital.  At the time, the doctors predicted that she had, at most, six months to live.  Just a few weeks later she was back on her feet and stronger than ever.  We always joked that she was too stubborn to die.  But this year her myriad of health problems finally caught up to her.

My mother-in-law was intelligent, sarcastic, headstrong, witty, and full of good advice.  We had our differences, but we got along, and I always respected her.  I will remember her fondly.  

Rest in peace.

I Voted!

I waited in line for 30 minutes, which is less time than it took when I voted 4 years ago.  I'm still pissed that I had to vote in person.  My state forbade mail-in voting unless you have a specific reason, and fear of COVID isn't considered an adequate reason.  It's an obvious attempt at voter suppression - what better way to ensure a low turnout than to make people afraid they'll die if they vote.  But it didn't seem to work, judging by the large number of people voting early.

In the past four years, we've seen Trump tell more lies than any president in US history.  We've seen him deny science, change tax laws to favor his wealthy friends, promote xenophobia, use the presidency to promote his own businesses, dismiss any problems that didn't directly affect him, blame the Democrats for his own mistakes, divide the country, stand up for racists and Nazis, and fumble the pandemic so hard that thousands more died than would have under a rational leader.

Remember, if you voted for Trump four years ago, you did this.  You.  Did.  This.  We warned you, and you didn't listen.  There is blood on your hands, and you owe your country a penance.

But there's still time to make up for it.  If you can't bring yourself to vote for Biden, at the very least don't vote for Trump again.  Don't double down on your error.  Own it, and resolve to do better.  Prove that you can learn from your mistakes.  Get back in God's good graces, and finally feel better about yourself.

Now go forth, and sin no more.

Dream Journal 10/19/2020

Screw it, I don't post enough blogs as it is.  I might as well use it as a dream journal as well.

Scot Adams, creator of Dilbert, has often said that there's nothing less interesting than listening to someone's dream.  But he's also a Trump supporter, so what does he know.  I can promise you this, that some of the dreams I post here will be boring.  But writing is a muscle, and I need to do it more often, even if I don't have a proper subject.  If you don't like them, skip those blog entries.

Last night I dreamed that I revisited my childhood home.  I still have lots of dreams where I live there, but this was different.  In this dream, I was the same age I am now, living where I do now.  But I found out that my parents' old house was now abandoned, and had been willed to me.

I arrived at the house, and everything was dark.  From the outside it looked pretty normal, except that all the windows had been boarded up.  But when I went inside, it looked much older.  Inside the house, everything was made of unfinished wood, like an old barn.  The floorboards weren't even tightly fitted, and you could see through some of the slats.  But other than that, the downstairs still had the same floorplan as the actual house.

But then I went upstairs.  The second floor was impossibly big.  It had the layout of a shopping mall - one huge hallway, and lots of store-sized side rooms.  But it was still completely wood.  I was there with a group of people I don't know in real life, and we all had camping gear, preparing to stay overnight.

An old woman approached us, and she told us she'd been living there for decades.  She said she was over 100 years old, and she was glad to finally have some guests.  I think she was based on Mother Abigail from Stephen King's "The Stand".  She said I could have ownership of the property, as long as I allowed her to continue to live there as well.  

Another odd thing, while most of the mall level was wood, there was one exception.  We discovered that there was one actual store in the otherwise empty mall.  It had a normal looking store front, made of plexiglass and neon.  It appeared to be a video/music store like FYE or Media Play.  The logo looked like Blockbuster Video's, but had a different name where the logo would be.  It looked so out of place, all lit up and modern, surrounded by old wood.

The old woman told us that was where she kept her record collection.  And that's all I remember.