News and Updates

1. So we’ve had yet another mass slaughter of the innocent in the United States this week, which differentiates this week from any other week in the United States not one iota.  And, as predicted, an army of the stupid, the ammosexuals and the reality-challenged has come out swinging with their insistence that the solution to the problem of too many high-powered weapons in the hands of too many people like them is to put even more high-powered weapons into the hands of people just like them.  I wouldn’t mind it if they were the only ones who died – there would be a certain justice in that, really – but the fact is that they represent a clear and present danger to the rest of us and really ought to be treated accordingly.

2. But who am I kidding?  My side lost.  Gun control died in the United States the day we decided that the slaughter of the innocent was an acceptable price to pay for the free availability of firearms, and I see no mark on the wall that says, “When the pile of bodies reaches this high things will change.”  Watch your back, my fellow Americans.

3. The hole in Kim’s office ceiling has now been fixed.  It no longer rains plaster down onto her desk, which is a good thing.  This did mean getting a new toilet in the upstairs bathroom and marveling over the installation job done on the old one by the previous owners of the house. 

4. I feel kind of bad for my Ancient World History class, since it’s the fifth class I teach in the day and ends nearly ten hours after my first class begins, and by that point I’m pretty fried.  At least they’re nice students.

5. It’s finally fall, which means that it is cool enough for tea and cider donuts.  Life is good.

6. Commuting an hour and a half each way to campus has its interesting moments.  Yesterday some idiot stopped dead in the fast lane for no apparent reason.  I can now scratch “laying rubber on the interstate” off my bucket list.  Nobody so much as dinged a fender, but it made the day far more interesting than it needed to be.

7. People who think that putting scare quotes around the word “historian” is a clever way to insult me and deal with arguments they can’t refute are just the most adorable little things.

8. Once again we’re on the Identify Theft carousel because other people cannot be trusted with our information.  This makes four times in the last decade, none of which can be attributed to carelessness on our part.  It does make you question the merit of a totally linked-up world.

9. This is the last week for the roosters, since we need to merge our hen flocks and roosters are like the Highlander in that there can only be one.  Although we’re going to try two, since Rosie is basically an overgrown pigeon and might not get too huffy with the new one coming in.  It will be a shame to see the rest of the roosters go, though – they’re beautiful birds. 

10. It only took a week for Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) to resume his fanatic assault on the State of Wisconsin.  That was the one nice thing about him being on the presidential campaign trail – it kept him out of our hair.  His latest scheme is to gut the civil service laws that have kept Wisconsin government relatively honest and open for the last century and reinstate Gilded Age patronage.  Can’t say I’m surprised by it, but the sheer arrogant stupidity of it does give one pause.

11. The Republican Party is doomed.  At least that is the impression I got from listening to the unmedicated ramblings of a nationally-syndicated right-wing radio host the other night, anyway.  I spent half an hour while driving home listening to this guy “blasting conservative fire!’ – which, boiled down to its essentials, was a breathless and nearly uninterrupted rant on the unmitigated evil of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Rand Paul, the GOP Establishment, and pretty much anyone on the right who has ever said a negative word about Ted Cruz in particular or the Tea Party in general.  He did give a shout-out to “the Marxist Left” running the White House (yes, that’s a direct quote, and I almost drove off the road laughing at that point), but mostly he was angry at the GOP.  When people that unhinged are a) your base, b) angry at you, c) given air time to spread their opinions, and d) popular enough to be nationally syndicated, you’ve got problems that are more serious than anything the Democrats can give you.

12. Naturally I am reading a 3-volume collection of linked post-apocalyptic short stories during this parlous time.  It makes the days interesting.