Thursday

Who is that piece of cake?

"What? What was that?"

A picture in the paper. There's a story about the Republicans ending the filibuster rule to allow Supreme Court nominations to pass by merely a majority vote. In the picture there was a blonde political-aide type of person who is kind of hot in a somewhat mature and formal kind of way, an office fox.

"Sounds like Monk alright."

Really! I have been feeling so down lately that I was surprised by that spark of life spontaneously arising from me. Maybe porn is my answer for meaningfulness.

"Wait, is this supposed to be a new insight?"

Lately, I've been so down, I haven't even cared to look at any porn. I've been feeling so unmanned. Moreover, just the thought of looking at porn made me feel my 'loser' side.

Maybe I need to force myself to look at porn and lose myself in that hopeless fantasy of Sexual Paradise. All those angels spreading their wings!

Pop

I've been focused on my self-esteem, and I just got a reminder that there is a bigger game here. Kay was calling me. Pop is not doing okay. He is in his room trying to get dressed, but he can barely talk, much less put on his clothes. He turns down what used to always be a sure answer to his low ebbs: he doesn't want orange juice. Despite his frail condition, he even gets a little upset over the offer of help. He says, "I just got to get my brain to function." But that doesn't seem to be going well.

This is a new one on me. His two worst episodes have been when Kay is here. She seems to take it out of him. He finally accepted some lemonade, and one can only hope that he just needs to gets some sugar in his blood and everything will go back to normal. Yet, it's hard not to think that the end is much nearer than I would care to realize. Like maybe this weekend.

It's not as though we are just talking about the loss of a father. It promises to be the end of me as well. We might as well be Siamese twins: if he goes down, what can I do?

Porn

See what I mean? By just watching a little porn, an edition of "Czech Streets", where a co-ed earns some fast bucks in a car, I threw away 40 minutes like they were nothing. At this point in my life, that might be the best thing that I can do with time. I cannot do anything better with it.

I mean, sure there is reading and chess, as well as Solitaire, but I cannot concentrate all the time. With porn, I don't have to try. I can just go on auto-pilot and relax. One is naturally engaged and fully absorbed.

Trump

Trump is lobbing missile on Syria this evening, after Assad unleashed another chemical attack on his people. It is very surprising, since Trump made a point of being against such military missions, and this is something that Putin most definitely does not want. So, Trump is going well out of his way to aggravate Putin.

It's kind of a mystery what is going on in the administration. This also comes after Trump demoted Bannon, the premiere white nationalist guy in the administration who had been considered to be Trump's brain in the government.

Maybe Jeet Heer has it right when he tweeted earlier today, "Trump's economic policy is to hand over power to Goldman Sachs; his foreign policy is to hand over power to the Pentagon."

It was sort of clear early on that Trump was becoming your basic supply-side guy on economic policy, and it now looks like we might be in for a complete reversion to basic hard-right Republicanism. It is as if Ted Cruz won the election. That would be a relief in some respects, as the KKK types become disappointed, but this is not what anybody wanted either. His own base was looking to strike a blow against the plutocrats as well as the dark races. Of course, poor whites should be used to being hustled by the Republican Party. So, rinse and repeat, I guess.

* * *

Next day

Maybe there isn't such a big shake-up going. The air-strikes one broke up some runways, and Assad's forces are using them the next day. Maybe Krugman has it when he tweeted, "So what was this about, other than changing the subject for a couple of days?" Maybe Trump is just redirecting the media's attention.