brainsplotch

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.

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...

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 i...