1. No doubt I'm touchy, but those signs displayed prominently on grocery store shelves announcing, for example, "3 for $10!" annoy the shit out of me. You can regard this as a very modest public service announcement if you don't know that by the unpromulgated terms of this "deal" the first item costs $3.33, as does the second, and that the third, if you choose to buy it, costs $3.34. Let me say, in order to justify being upset over a penny, that people generally agree that it's bad "deliberately to mislead others," occasionally called "lying" by the unmannered, but for some reason you get a pass if you lie in order to advance the business interests of your employer. Call me a bad word, "socialist" or "Marxist" or whatever, but it seems the purpose of the corporation is largely to dissipate responsibility of the moral-legal variety, as evidenced by the fact that no Wells Fargo executives are in prison, since "technically speaking" they probably didn't break any laws, just as, I suppose, 3-for-$10 isn't "technically speaking" a lie, since if you buy three it really does cost ten dollars. But these kinds of evasions and equivocations don't work if you're getting high in north Minneapolis.
2. I don't think Instagram users get enough credit for being attractive, affluent, and kind to cute animals. Kudos!
3. I see that Rush Limbaugh thinks the massacre in New Zealand might be a false flag operation. Is he too far gone himself to realize that's nuts? Or does he just know the mind of his audience of millions? In a similar vein, our president is this morning by tweet urging Fox to reinstate Jeanine Pirro, their house nut-job who thinks hijabs (pronounced heeeeeee-JOB) are antithetical to our Constitution. You know you're "out there" when Fox bumps your Saturday night show in order to rerun "Scandalous: The Trial of William Kennedy Smith"--an evergreen of the documentary genus, admittedly. "Bring her back!" tweets President Trump, the day after his vanilla tweet expressing sorrow &c over the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand. He should go to church if only to inhibit his tweeting for an hour or so.
4. I think at this point I support the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, for president. I won't learn to spell his last name till he wins a primary, but his first name is Pete, and I believe his last name is pronounced "Buddha-judge." My enthusiasm was kindled when I read that he had taught himself Norwegian--because he'd been impressed by the only work of a certain Norwegian author that's been translated into English and wanted to read more of his stuff. I'm Norwegian, and it's my dad's first language, so maybe my regard is explained by "identity politics," but seriously, if you're looking for the-opposite-of-Trump isn't an interest in books and ideas and languages a more compelling credential even than being a sentient, sane woman with some melanin in her skin? Pete B is moreover a gay former Rhodes Scholar who served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. There might not be a white guy in America more unlike Trump.
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