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Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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Tuesday, November 5 2024
Today was election day, and, like most rational people, I was nervous about what would happen. Based on the data I'd digested, I thought there was an 80% that Kamala Harris would win. But 20% is not good odds when the thing that could happen is an unleashed Donald Trump presidency. (Thanks, Federalist Society!) Meanwhile, down in Virginia, my brother Don had arranged with his neighbors, the Vesseys, to take him to the polls (as they expected him to vote in a manner similar to how they would be voting). I wasn't sure Don would actually be allowed to vote, as he may not have voted back in 2020, and Virginia purges its voter rolls of people who don't vote at least every four years. And Virginia is also in the near-South, where legislatures love to implement the kind of identity requirements that make it difficult for poor urban African Americans to vote. But later this morning Don called and proudly told me he'd voted. Unfortunately he'd vote for the Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and evergreen on Presidential ballots, largely there due to the efforts of Republicans to dilute the votes of progressives. (Just yesterday I'd heard a clip of Donald Trump talking specifically about how much he "loves" Jill Stein.) "Oh my god, that's so stupid!" I declared. "But she's in the Green Party!" Don replied, as if her ideological purity, assuming it exists, would make up for the loss of a potential vote for Kamala Harris in a blue-trending swing state. Don voting for Jill Stein is a good summary of all that is wrong with Don: he's overly-literal, deeply naïve, and something of a contrarian. He's not the kind of person to think through the consequences of his actions. All he knows is that Greens are "good" because their branding is "pro-environment," something that would've made our father proud, though he was too pragmatic to fall such a ruse. I was disgusted, and declared, "I don't want to talk to you any more today!" And with that I hung up on him. The truth of the matter is that I don't much like talking to him to begin with, and I was kind of happy to have a reason to cut the call short.

For some reason Gretchen decided to take a break from her busy day helping women get funding for their abortions to go do some last-second election day canvassing with Kirsty (the photogenic vegan Buddhist). She would come home to a huge backlog of women needing abortion funding, but her do-gooderness knows no bounds.
Meanwhile I went off to do a couple landlording chores. The first was at the Wall Street rental to fix a leak in a cold water pipe I'd discovered when I was there on Saturday to investigate the boiler. While there, I thought I'd vacuum up all the suspicious soot to see if it somehow returned. My other chores was to go to the Brewster Street rental to take a bunch of photographs, as the tenant is moving out and we didn't have any good pictures of the place for advertising. It was yet another unexpectedly gorgeous day, with sunny conditions and temperatures in the 70s. I stopped on the way home at Hannaford, mostly to get beer, tempeh, and tofu. I also went into Herzog's to see if they had any make quarter inch to male quarter inch bras flare fittings, and again I found that they normally sold it but was out. What the hell is going on? This was the third local hardware store to have run out of htat fitting.

Later this evening after Gretchen got back from pilates, she suggested we make pizza with that dough I'd bought at Adams. I was thinking I'd be making it tomorrow, but Gretchen said she'd plans to go out with Lisa tomorrow. So I quickly transitioned into pizza-making mode, though I was working with a dough I hadn't been slowly warming, so it wasn't quite as bubbly and stretchy as I would've preferred. Gretchen proceeded to make vegan ricotta from tofu, which is a fun thing to add to pizza, so all I made for toppings was a pan of crimini mushrooms with red onions that I fried up. Gretchen also made a salad and seared a pan of broccoli when I was done using it to make the pizza toppings. We ate these this fairly elaborate dinner while watching Jeopardy! and the episode of English Teacher about the wealthy parent who makes our hero's life miserable after he gives her kid an F for a paper he wrote about the Red Badge of Courage.

Because it was election day, I'd started drinking with a road beer on the way home from my landlording chores. I was, of course, anxious for election news. But that never comes until polls start closing after dark. There was a trickle of stories about exit polls, but that never really tells you anything.
Whe the polls started closing, Gretchen didn't like what she was seeing. Ominously, Florida was called right away for Trump, though supposedly polls had bee close there. But it was too early to tell, and nobody knew anything. So I maintained my hope, though I was starting to get a little nervous. Gretchen took a xanax and I switched to whiskey.

At something like nine or ten, Gretchen and I drove to the Super 8 Hotel (off Washington Avenue in greater Uptown) for the Pat Ryan watch party, where our friends Chris & Kirsti would be. The mood wasn't as somber as I expected given the way the results were coming in, though that might've been because all the local candidates we'd been supporting were doing well and seemed poised to win. While I was off finding a bathroom, Gretchen settled in with Chris and Kirsti and asked if there was any drink that paired nicely with xanax. "Everything!" Chris declared, and he got Gretchen a generous glass of white wine from the cash bar. I thought it was water when I arrived and took a hearty sip. Otherwise, though, I was not supposed to be drinking so that I would be sober enough to drive us home later. The results coming in across the nation were being shown on a big screen, and they weren't very good. We groaned as few horrible people (such as Ted Cruz) were re-elected. But then Pat Ryan came out and gave a victory speech, as he'd just been declared the winner. He said that his Republican oponent had even called him to concede, which is unusual given the post-democratic nature of the Trumpified Republican party. Pat Ryan said he still thought Kamala Harris would win the presidency, and there was a poll junky nearby who said that things were still looking good for her, but Gretchen and I were feeling uneasy. We left the watch party about 40 minutes before the cash bar closed. By then I was good to drive.
Back at the house, I briefly checked my news sites, one of which characterized what had happened to Democrats in Florida as a "blood bath." It was also looking like if she didn't hold the "blue wall" states in the Midwest, she was going to lose. After that, I thought it best to just sit on the couch with Gretchen and not check the news and instead begin the process of psychologically bracing for the reality of four more years of Donald Trump, one of the worst people alive, as President. I was sipping my whiskey and Gretchen was sedate from her xanax but also deeply alarmed. At some point she checked her phone. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin hadn't been called, but they were leaning Trump and most of the votes had been counted. "He's going to win then," I said. It was after midnight, so we decided to go to bed.
I slept fitfully for a little while and then woke up and could not get back to sleep. My head was filled with intrusive thoughts of a Donald Trump victory. How could this be happening? Any sense I had that there is inherent justice in the Universe was snuffed out by these thoughts. Donald Trump was failing his way into yet another Presidential term. He's run a terrible campaign, said numerous insane, demented, and insane things, and here he was winning. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, had done everything right and somehow she was losing. Was it sexism? Are people really that upset about the inflation that happened a year ago? It was utter madness. Donald Trump is the ultimate horror movie villain, always able somehow to come back from the dead to keep the horror alive. [REDACTED]


Pat Ryan (with his wife) on stage giving his victory speech at the watch party tonight. Click to enlarge.


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http://asecular.com/blog.php?241105

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