My Christmas spirit is eluding me

I'm writing this post on my phone.

Between Trump's increasingly bonkers behavior (even more unhinged than usual) and the worsening dystopian hellscape of coronavirus, it's been hard for me to give much of a shit about Christmas. The holiday spirit is eluding me. 

I managed to throw some lights on our shrubs outside yesterday, but it was even more haphazard than usual. It was a miracle that I even found the Christmas lights amongst the chaos of our garage. But they were located and I took the improvisational approach to decoration. I somply grabbed whatever strand of lights was next and plugged them together. I suppose it turned out acceptable. Just call me the Jackson Pollack of exterior holiday decoration.

A somewhat non-political post

This will not be a political post, I promise. I'm sure all three of my readers might be tired of my rants. (But honestly, the Republican Party has lost its fucking mind?).

In mundane personal news, I set a modest goal on Goodreads of reading 15 books this year and I finally reached that goal. And now, I've padded that total one cartoon book (does that count?) to make the total 16. Maybe I can cram in one more book before the end of the year.

I must admit that the book that got me to 15 was volume 2 of the One Piece manga. However, I did read a "real" book that I finished reading on Monday. The book is Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell: Here is the review I wrote on Goodreads:

A breezy and often humorous diary of Shaun Bythell, a second-hand bookshop owner in bucolic Wigtown, Scotland. Bythell's book shop (and small community) is populated with eccentric employees and customers.

Beyond the lowkey humor, this is an illuminating view into the difficulties second hand book shops (or all brick-and-mortar book stores, for that matter) have in surviving a world dominated by online shopping and retail behemoths like Amazon.

Recommended for book lovers and anyone who has worked in the book business.

What I didn't mention was that as of last Saturday, I only had two days left of my library checkout period and couldn't renew the book, so I had to read about 300 pages in two days, which I somehow managed to do. It was a miracle.

Well, seeing as how I am writing this at work and I am off the clock and should be heading home, I will cut this short and--maybe--return later.

Big surprise, another rant

Well, we're into December and it's looking increasingly like Trump will have to be dragged out of the White House by the Secret Service. He's in denial about the election and has convinced his cult that his "victory" was stolen. I will give Trump credit in one area: he is a master of manipulation. His followers will believe anything he says. 

Otherwise, Trump is like a shit stain in a pair of underwear.

The worst aspect of this whole election denial is what it says about the current state of our country: One reality doesn't exist anymore. People feel free to create their own "realities" based on their own skewed worldviews. I blame a lot of this on social media and the world wide web. "News sources" are created to cater to whatever political view one has. These "news sources" are of varying degrees of legitimacy, with the majority being illegitimate. This extends to social media, where people live in their own bubbles and shout in their own echo chambers. When there is political discourse (if it can even be called that), it's people SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER IN ALL CAPS, expressing opinions and anger that they'd never do in person. I don't know how we get out if it.

At some point, I will actually write about something else other than politics, but this Trumpian cluster fuck is pretty much constantly on my mind. This motherfucker lost the election and just will not go away. He is a pox on our country, as much of a virus as the coronavirus.

Speaking of coronavirus, people are dropping like flies at a pace more furious than anything seen since the early days of the pandemic and Trump clearly doesn't give a single shit--and he's convinced his cult not to give a single shit either.

I continue to go to work every day, as I have done since June 11. I am fully masked and only remove the mask to eat or drink. In the late summer and fall, when the infection and death numbers were down, I was venturing to record stores (Flat Black & Circular in East Lansing, The Record Lounge in Lansing). But now that cases are spiking higher than ever, I'm taking a break from that. I don't want to get sick and potentially get others sick because I was so desperate to browse through vinyl. I've put the blinders on and am aiming straight forward to 2021, just trying to stay safe until the vaccines come and we can get beyond this shit show.