CAN THE ADULTS. PLEASE. SMOKE.

Happy 74th birthday to Kelly Bishop, the 1976 Best Featured Actress Tony winner for her sexy, aggressive, profoundly wounded and oh-my-GOD-that-voice belty creation of Sheila Bryant in A Chorus Line.

Though I'd yet to have seen the shows, A Chorus Line and West Side Story were probably the first two Broadway cast albums to capture my awkward-early-teen imagination; stare deep into my soul; imbue me with a reverent fascination with the production, performance and storied legend of musical theater; and open in my brain an unquenchable black hole of need to memorize every lyric, know every composer, belt every harmony, own every cast album and see every show even remotely related to the glorious, unexplored world of show tunes.

Sheila Bryant is the character in A Chorus Line who launches the despair-into-illusory-beauty trio "At the Ballet" with the pack-a-lifetime-of-pain-into-eight-words lyric "Daddy always thought that he married beneath him," which Kelly Bishop delivers on the cast album with a weary, matter-of-fact defeat and an old-school, over-the-orchestra belt that positively transfixed me as I made solemn vows to my early-teen self to one day captivate audiences with my acting, thrill them with my dancing and throw them against the backs of their seats with my big bold brassy Broadway belt.

I've had the distinct and unstoppably goosebumpy pleasure of playing Bobby--Sheila's bescarfed neighbor in this picture--in two productions of A Chorus Line, neither of which was on Broadway but both of which still fill me with pride and awe and that one singular sensation that precious few people are lucky enough to experience in all its glittery, full-orchestra'd, grinning-elatedly-to-the-top-balcony glory.

And Kelly Bishop was one of the thousands of belty Broadway voices on the hundreds of memorized Broadway cast albums who inspired me to start the journey to get there.

I'm not pregnant!

Plus I don’t have a fever! Plus (most of) my skin stopped hurting!

The good news is my doctor said I’m not contagious (or pregnant!) 24 hours after my fever breaks. So I’ll be back among the living tomorrow! (Woooo! The crowd goes wild!)

The bad news is my fever didn’t get me down to my goal weight or give me discernible abs. (The crowd abandons me in search of a better weird friend who has discernible abs.)

Bitch Kitty isn’t as dumb as she looks

She’s already figured out the new chair is for Dad, and by the transitive powers of Because Bitch Kitty Says So That’s Why Now Feed Me Some Kitty Snacks Before I Hiss At You For Counterproductive Reasons, the new chair is also for Bitch Kitty.

50 shades of WHY DOES MY SKIN HURT?

My fever is spiking but my hands are freezing. My skin hurts but OH MY GOD DID YOU HEAR ME WHY THE HELL DOES MY SKIN HURT. My eyes ache in places I didn’t even know I have eyes.

But! I am soldiering on with my WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH MY SKIN and my frozen thumb that makes typing on my phone as fun and productive as running through Jell-O to provide you, my beloved readers, with a vital update on painting my bedroom:

I have recently been persuaded by a decorator more color-savvy than I that there is no shade of dark blue on this or any other planet that will match the rich reds and golds and blacks in my rug, and that a deep gray is really my only viable option if I want dark, masculine, devastatingly handsome walls. I had time to get gray paint chips from only one store before I got sick—and we all know that the time-honored 10 Steps/ridiculous-numbers-of-stores rule applies doubly to picking paint colors, right?—so I don’t yet have the requisite 50 shades (ahem) to pick from. But I feel like I do have some viable options here, though I have a fever and freezing hands AT THE SAME TIME so what the hell do I know?

And while all your paint-chip-color votes are always greatly appreciated, even in my fevered haze I can see that these gray paint chips look vastly different in this picture than they do in real life. Which means that this photo is mostly just a record of the fact that I didn’t have the strength to stand up and get a new cold compress. Thankfully, my cold, gray corpse hands have helped immeasurably in making my forehead feel less on fire. So I’ve found at least one gray that works for me.

My. Skin. Hurts.

While Productive Cough and the Why Does My Skin Hurt When I Move Pestilence would be a catchy name for an Eastern European boy band, it’s an even catchier description for how I woke up this morning. But I’m too miserable to go on a boy-band tour right now. 

I did just go on an emergency-clinic-to-pharmacy tour though. The clinic was only taking walk-ins and I was told I’d have a 35-50 minute wait when I got there but I was called right in and after the nurse took my vitals and left the room, the doctor came in and OH MY GOD HE WAS HANDSOME and he looked in my ears and throat and did other things that I’m sure in some cultures count as pitching woo but WHY DOES HE ALSO HAVE TO HAVE A SHY SMILE AND A SELF-EFFACING DEMEANOR he had on a jet-black wedding ring THAT MADE HIM EVEN SEXIER IF THAT’S EVEN POSSIBLE which I took to mean he piloted jets or something because that makes sense right AND HE WAS WEARING KICK-ASS RED RUNNING SHOES BUT HE KIND OF IGNORED ME WHEN I COMPLIMENTED HIM ON THEM BUT I’M SURE IT WAS BECAUSE HE WAS HUMMING “TRUMPET VOLUNTARY” IN HIS HEAD BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT HE WANTED FOR OUR WEDDING PROCESSIONAL and anyway STOP IT WITH THESE INSANELY HOT DOCTORSCEDAR RAPIDS BECAUSE I’M RUNNING OUT OF CAPITAL LETTERS TO SWOON OVER THEM.

His verdict, unfortunately, was the flu.

You might say I opened the window and influenza.

But you shouldn’t say that. Nobody should say that. Ever.

So anyway, this week brought us Mom’s aggressive UTI and Dad’s COPD exacerbation plus pneumonia plus staph plus MRSA plus five days and counting in the hospital and the only thing our family was missing on our sickening scourge scavenger hunt was the flu so now our punch card is full and we all win a chalupa.

Speaking of chalupas, the pharmacist told me I needed to eat before I took my Tamiflu and it’s almost like we were having a cosmic mind meld because I’d picked up a package of Chips Ahoy! on my way to the pharmacy counter partly because I like using exclamation points in the middle of sentences and partly because pestilent people deserve partially hydrogenated pastries but mostly because I was stocking up on food items to be a responsible Tamiflu taker and WHY ARE YOUR DAMN BLISTER PACKS SO DAMN HARD TO OPEN, TAMIFLU?

So now I’m home eating cookies and drinking Gatorade and listening to Sunday morning 88.3 kcck jazz, which is the balm that cures all ills, but I’m still coughing up hearty chunks of lung and I’m still so feverish that I’m unsteady on my feet and I’m modeling the latest trend in face masks which makes me catnip to the ladies but can you really blame them and MY SKIN HURTS WHEN I MOVE WHY THE HELL DOES MY SKIN HURT WHEN I MOVE?

There IS no Step Two ...

My family buys nothing—NOTHING!—more important than a package of socks without first going through the Ten Steps of Painfully Indecisive Covetousness:

1. Oh, look! There’s the thing I’m actively looking to buy and it’s right here in front of me right now so my search is over and I’m going to buy it.
1a. or: Oh, look! There’s something I just stumbled on in a store that two seconds ago I didn’t know existed and now I desperately want it so I’m going to buy it.
2. But am I sure about this?
3. Maybe I can find a cheaper and/or better version of it somewhere else.
4. But first let me take 72 pictures of it on my phone so I can remind myself in perpetuity that I don’t have it every time I scroll through my photos.
5. It’s totally worth it to drive to five similar stores scattered across town and then to spend 30 minutes researching it online if I can save five dollars when I inevitably buy it.
6. It goes without saying that it’s also totally worth it to go back to visit it nine or fifteen times at the store where I first saw it, just to be sure I really want it or to see if it goes on sale.
7. But I’m not obsessing about buying it or needlessly delaying this inevitable purchase or anything.
8. OK, two weeks have gone by and my life is empty and chokingly meaningless without it so I’m just going to go buy it.
9. Well, shit. It’s gone.
9a. or: Now that I have it home, I’ve decided I really don’t like it so I’m going to return it.
10. I’m just going to run in to Target for a few quick things.

SO! Imagine my surprise when—mere hours after we realized that we’d probably need to buy an easy-to-use recliner with a tall back for my dad because he’ll have problems sleeping in a flat bed when he comes home from the hospital so we were going to split up and start multiple Step Ones at all the recliner stores in town this afternoon—Mom sent me an urgent text telling me to come to the first recliner store she’d visited because she’d found the perfect recliner and she’d put a hold on it and wanted me to come test it before she bought it.

Which I did. And then which SHE did.

Let me type this slowly for you so you can comprehend its tectonic shiftiness: My mother, the High Priestess of the Ten Steps of Painfully Indecisive Covetousness, BOUGHT AN EASY-TO-USE-RECLINER WITH A TALL BACK ON JUST THE FIRST STEP. Without even blinking.

I’ll give you a moment to lift your jaws up from the shifting tectonic plates beneath you.

What’s more, our awesome, truck-having neighbor Dan just happened to be free and willing to transport the recliner home for us ... and within 90 minutes start-to-finish we became the proud owners of a new easy-to-use recliner with a tall back. WITH NINE UNUSED STEPS JUST HANGING OUT IN SPACE IN A FOG OF ABANDONMENT AND CONFUSION. But maybe I can sell them individually on Etsy.

Anyway! I had to do some major furniture shuffling to fit our new easy-to-use recliner with a tall back into our living room, but I think it’s now in a primo spot where Dad can be comfortable and not feeling like he’s jutting out into the room as he entertains visitors. And he has a bunch of medical stuff—in addition to his boombox for his books on tape—that he’ll need to keep near him, so I repurposed some decorative chests to become decorative side tables for him. Plus I cleaned them all with Liquid Gold, which those of us who like our wooden antiques to be alarmingly shiny know takes 17 days to dry. So that’s why I’m posting this artfully composed, judiciously-cropped-so-you-can’t-see-what-a-mess-the-rest-of-the-room-is photo at 7:42 instead of 4:00.

But doesn’t my dad’s new man-corner look handsome?

(It’d look mega-more handsome without that butt-ugly quilt and that why-the-hell-do-we-have-a-genuine-oil-painting-of-a-stranger-holding-a-gun-in-our-living-room painting. But rectifying those situations opens a whole new Ten Stages Of Painfully Indecisive Purging process. So let’s all just admire my alarmingly shiny wooden side tables for now.)

No, haircut person

Don’t give me bullshit ominous warnings that washing my hair with bar soap will make it brittle and fall off LITERALLY AS YOU’RE BUZZING MY HAIR TO THE SCALP.

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

I KNEW IT

Dad’s “COPD” is a LIE. His “pneumonia” is a LIE. His “staph” is a LIE. His trip to the ER that he staged with the sexy-forearmed doctor and his last four nights in the hospital ... all dirty LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES.

You want to know the tip-off that made me a Mueller to his trump? He “doctor” finally, conspicuously casually, said OUT LOUD and CONVENIENTLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME that Dad “can’t breathe dust” ... especially from CAT LITTER.

So here’s the scoop: This whole clump of coughy lies lies lies is all just an elaborate ruse TO MAKE ME HAVE TO CLEAN BITCH KITTY’S LITTER BOX EVERY WEEK INSTEAD OF HIM.

Poopy. The whole thing is just poopy.

Ginger Lime Diet Coke and mannequin butts, yo

Good morning!

Flashback Friday: Say Aaaahhhh Edition

Here’s my dentist and me at some boring dentist-and-patient social event long ago in Chicago. We were so afraid to have fun back then. Or wear glitter.

DAMMIT!

I usually avoid watching the Olympics because I get too nervous for the athletes and worry that they’ll fall or something and then feel guilty when one of them does.

So I just got home and walked into Mom’s bedroom where she’s watching Olympic figure skating ... and the poor girl who was skating on the TV promptly fell.

Now I feel terrible that I probably bumped her.

You know that expression “Nothing can come between us but a gray plastic tote filled with severed mannequin arms in a wide selection of sizes”?

My handsomely chiseled boyfriend Fulgencio and I coined that.

Pestilential parents update

Things have declined a bit since last night. Dad’s oxygen levels have dropped and his lung fluid has increased, which apparently doesn’t equal each other out. But he’s in a hospital surrounded by medical people who stick things in his nose for fun and profit, so we’re leaving him in their hands for the morning.

Mom developed violent shivers late last night so I slept next to her in case they got worse and this morning she had a temperature of 102.2°, plus I figured out how to make a ° on my phone so I’ll be reporting her temperature using little ° signs every f°ur minutes on here. I’ll als° be staying h°me with her f°r a few h°urs this m°rning instead °f g°ing t° w°rk, where I write t°tally g°°d w°rds.

Plus I just googled “doctor cat” and the Internet did not disappoint.

Two reasons I’m in a peaceful, happy, optimistic mood tonight:

1. I’m sitting with my mom right now after she’s survived a miserable day of 102°+ fevers and unstable standing and walking and multiple appointments with doctors and labs, and she now seems comfortable and stable and noticeably better. Actually, she’s just started snoring on the couch, so she’s clearly able to finally drift blissfully off to sleep.

2. We watched the CNN town hall together tonight, amid tons of texts and calls from well-wishing family and friends, and not only did trump and his fellow no-show cowards get eviscerated over and over and over on national television by teenagers who are exponentially more intelligent and articulate and BADASS BRAVE than they are, but Marco Rubio—who, to his credit, had the unexpected integrity to show up—got his corrupt puppet ass RIPPED OFF AND RUBBED IN HIS SMUG FACE by a kid who all by himself embodies everything I think our battered, destroyed country needs to kill off the trump and rubio cancers that are destroying us from within and then rebuild us to be the country that smart, rational, visionary, decent people like him can make it to be.

Best, better, good, worse

The EXCITING news is that St. Luke’s Hospital is constructing the Jake's Family Commemorative Wing And Frosted Brownieteria using the money that both my parents have hemorrhaged into its coffers today.

The GREAT news is that my mom doesn’t have the flu or pneumonia or even anything contagious; after a barrage of tests involving radiation and discreet little plastic cups, it turns out she has what we will politely call Something Feverish But Still Fixable With Lots Of Thumb-Size Antibiotic Pills.

The GOOD news is that my dad is stable and slowly improving, and he’ll continue to be under the incredible care of the incredible St. Luke’s medical staff for at least another day as he improves even further. But he’s still gold-medaling in Olympic Hacking Coughing.

The WHO THE HELL CARES? news is Bitch Kitty is noticeably lonely without my dad—the only person worthy of her fickle attempts at kindness—here. I laugh at her emotional pain.

The PROFOUNDLY EMBARRASSING news is that I’ve shuttled Mom around town today while she’s been mortifyingly bundled up in the ugliest, pilliest, polyeresterist, garish1970scolorsiest blanket we shamefully own. And since my parents’ health is unquestionably all about me, I. AM. DYING. INSIDE.

Dear Universe,

I know I whine relentlessly about how big my approaching-50-years-old tummy is getting, but I just took my mom to the doctor and then stopped at the grocery store on the way home because she wanted popsicles and raspberry sherbet and I accidentally walked through the bakery aisle on the way to the popsicle-and-raspberry-sherbet department and they had fresh cream-cheese brownies and I’m helpless around fresh cream-cheese brownies so what can you do but anyway I’ve earned a tiny little cheat snack so please don’t judge me for what I’m about to eat as my late lunch.

(P.S. I also wiped off the kitchen counter real nice for this photo.)

Remember the hot hot hot medical resident with the distractingly sexy forearms who sat in on my psychiatrist appointment a month ago?

I SAW HIM AGAIN LAST NIGHT!

Unfortunately it was in the ER.

Unfortunately it was because my dad’s COPD complications that landed him in the hospital last week got alarmingly bad enough yesterday that we rushed him back gasping for air.

Unfortunately he also has pneumonia this time.

Unfortunately they also found evidence of staph.

Unfortunately my mom is home with fevery, shaky flu symptoms so she can’t even visit him.

Fortunately though, my sister is able to take the day off to stay in the hospital with Dad.

Fortunately also, I’m able to take the day off to stay home with Mom.

So fortunately things are as under control as we can make them.

But unfortunately—and I’m trying to maintain my emotional composure here—the hot hot hot medical resident with the distractingly sexy forearms who first attended to Dad in the ER last night didn’t look at me with a flicker of either recognition or interest. On any the times he stopped in Dad’s room. ANY. OF. THEM. So our marriage is clearly over before we even scheduled a cake tasting.

So to lighten the mood, I’m posting something that the Internet gave me when I googled “funny sick cat photos.”

White. Pure. Floating.

When you finally find your most prized possession in a storage box and hang it in its rightful place as the pièce de résistance in your luxurious, not-unlike-a-delicately-bergamot-scented-indulgently-deluxe-spa bathroom.

#GymTales: Pipes And Tats Edition

There’s a guy at my gym who looks like this photo except he doesn’t totally look like this photo because he has a head and one of those ridiculous disgusting long Millennial goatherder beards but anyway he has massive pipes that are covered in tattoos which is total catnip to me but he always wears a hat and earphones and stares at the floor which are all international gymbro code for leave me alone so I always leave him alone because I’m a total gymbro but I still totally want to be his boyfriend just so I don’t have to be secretly subversive about using the mirrors to stare at his arms when he walks by me staring intently at the floor as if he’s fascinated by a sprinting ant or something but since I clearly will never be his it’s-not-creepy-to-stare-at-his-arms boyfriend I’ve always been at least hoping to get one of those imperceptible gymbro nods from him where your eyes accidentally meet so you do that a tiny spasm in the back of your neck that lifts your face one degree as if to say hey gymbro I acknowledge your existence gymbro and I guess I don’t totally secretly want you to die gymbro so here’s a perfunctory hey gymbro and now get the hell out of my way and never lock eyes with me again gymbro but my muscle tattoo pipes gymbro dude here never even gives me that polite gymbro courtesy so I assume I’m totally invisible to him so anyway I was minding my own beeswax doing deadlifts today while he was doing chest things halfway across the room and I was on my fifth rep when I heard someone shout hey from his general area and it had to be him because the only other person in the gym was a woman who clearly had done her hair up fancy and nice just to get it all sweaty on the treadmill which isn’t my problem but seriously what’s the point of going to all that trouble to fix your hair up nice in the morning only to ruin it a few hours later in a deluge of head sweat but like I said not my problem and anyway that big bellowing manly hey clearly wasn’t from her so oh my god my muscle tattoo pipes gymbro dude not only noticed me but he was actually heying me which made me panic and do a quick mental inventory of how my butt and lats might look in the gym clothes I was wearing because that was the view he had and if I had on my especially cool gymbro shoes which I did so thank goodness for that small miracle but anyway he was actually heying me and play it cool Jake play it cool because he probably wants a date so don’t look too eager or excited and even though it was technically rude and distracting and uncool and even kind of dangerous to hey me in the middle of a set of deadlifts he gets a pass because I mean just look at him and then he said hey again and I knew here comes the marriage proposal because he’s totally impressed with my butt and my lats and my especially cool gymbro shoes and my form which is especially hard to maintain when you’re doing deadlifts and he clearly thinks I’m a rockstar at it and play it cool Jake play it cool because at this point he’s all yours and there’s no way he’ll ever say anything bad or critical about you and here comes the marriage proposal here it comes here it comes but instead he yells pull your shoulders back you’re gonna hurt yourself in a voice that had the subtext of you’re a stupid idiot and stop it with your stupid idiotness and that’s pretty much the opposite of a marriage proposal and even though technically this meant he’d noticed me I was crushed and well shit.

#SundayShowTunes: Kiss of the Spider Woman

So build a palace where you're the shah
And we'll embrace in that Shangri-La.
If you run away ...
Some matinee ...
From where you are!

Proposed taglines for trump.dating

StrKKKts only!
Taking sheep breeding to the next level!
Swipe Reich!
Take a break from inbreeding!
Have sex for less than $130 million!
Three-wife limit!
Where “happily married people” count as “local singles”!
Date local married singles!
Grab him by the bone spur!
Red hats, white sheets and who cares if you’re already married?
A new way to fuck the whole country!
Where it doesn’t matter how small your hands are!
I do-tard!
Where shitholes meet!

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

Happy 127th birthday, Grant Wood!

EMERGENCY EDIT: My bad. His birthday is actually on the 13th. I've apparently had it on my calendar wrong for years. But my hearty birthday wishes still stand.

Grant Wood, best known for his iconic American Gothic, lived and worked most of his life in and around my home town: Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His legacy in the area—in addition to an exhaustive collection of his work in the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art permanent collection—includes an annual art festival, a grade school (my alma mater!) and even the entire region’s public education agency—all in his name.

Of course, no Cedar Rapids student’s education is complete without thorough coverage of Wood’s stylized, iconoclastic, humorous and sometimes political oeuvre. And this Cedar Rapids student came away with a lifelong love of his work.

Grant Wood was a pioneer in a loosely coordinated artistic movement called Regionalism, which eschewed modernist, abstract trends like Impressionism and Cubism in favor of stylistic, romanticized views of everyday rural life in the 1930s. The Regionalists were less concerned with the trendy politics of 1930s Social Realists than with renouncing the hegemony of popular European art and culture and celebrating the honest work ethic and modest demeanor of the Midwest.

In 1928, Wood received a commission to create a giant stained-glass window for the American Legion in Cedar Rapids. In preparation, he traveled to Munich to study ancient stained-glass techniques under Germany’s famed master craftsmen. The window he created, featuring a 16-foot Lady of Peace standing over six life-size soldiers representing the Revolutionary War through World War I, was a masterpiece of technique, form and color. Though as far as Google and every search term I can think of are concerned, it never had a name. But you can see it in all its nameless glory right here:

Fun fact: The model for the Lady of Peace figure was his sister, Nan Wood Graham, who was also the model for the female figure in American Gothic.

Despite the window's unmistakable American themes, it drew fire from misguided patriots who criticized Wood for studying with the Germans—the enemy!—so soon after the first World War. One of the most vocal groups was the local chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution.

Wood’s elegant response: Daughters of Revolution, a satirical painting showing three dour spinstresses standing self-righteously—one, pinky extended in haughty indignation, holding a teacup in my grandmother’s china pattern—in front of Emmanuel Leutz’s famous Washington Crossing the Delaware:

Wood’s point, lost completely on the knee-jerk reactionaries the painting so elegantly mocked, lies in the fact that Washington Crossing the Delaware—that beloved icon of American patriotism—was painted by a German.

I loved this painting before I even knew its story. The delightfully smug women drew me in because their spiritual progeny hung just a few branches over on my family tree. The Blue Willow teacup fascinated me because its cousins served as my grandmother’s everyday dishes. (Have you ever eaten green Jell-O from a blue plate? It looks very-not-deliciously brown.) And that shape—that relentless horizontalness—made the painting such a challenge to display in any setting.

My framed print of Daughters of Revolution—along with one of my grandmother's teacups that I've always displayed with it—are currently not challenging me to do anything but pay for their storage in a giant and impeccably tidy storage facility at the edge of town. But they are quite literally among my favorite possessions and they will see the light of day again as soon as I finish painting my bedroom. Correction: As soon as I find them in my vast storage room first. In the mean time, I am proudly and dutifully as a Cedar Rapidian sharing the works here so you can enjoy their oft-overlooked brilliance and awesomeness.

Flashback Friday: Dilated To Meet You Edition

Seven years ago today there was fresh snow everywhere in Chicago, refracting every beam and glint of sunlight with laser focus directly into my dilated eyes.

Now when there's fresh snow everywhere in Cedar Rapids, there's fresh snow. End of story. Because I’m not stupid.

So this is happening in this year’s Follies

Tap shoes will reportedly be involved ...

The mental health issues lie clearly at the top, right alongside the accountability issues, the moral issues, the integrity issues and the leadership issues

Republican Mass-Shooting Emergency Checklist

1. Find out the color of the shooter: white = lone wolf/mentally unstable; dark = terrorist
2. If the shooter is a dark terrorist, make empty promises about travel bans and “extreme vetting”
3. If the shooter is a mentally unstable white lone wolf who couldn't possibly be described as a terrorist, well what can you do?
4. If an automatic machine gun was used for the mass murders, scream “Second Amendment!” every two minutes
5. If your name is trump, barely—if at all—acknowledge the shooting and hope that your next catastrophic moral, ethical or intellectual failure will make it disappear
6. Type “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter
7. Fire up the NRA we-need-more-guns spin propaganda machine that’s still warm from last week’s shooting
8. Create a distraction by committing treason
or: Declare that you’re fast-tracking never-discussed infrastructure legislation
or: Blame (in any order) Hillary, Obama, Democratic "obstruction" or the victims who didn't report the shooter's suspicious behavior
or: Bleat that this list is “inappropriate,” ignore that everything on it is documentable and scream that you are offended
or: Just wait for trump’s next batshit eruption, announcement or embarrassment to dominate the news cycle
9. Name all other possible weapons—especially knives!—that could have been used in a mass-shooting murder
10. If your name is trump, describe the murder victims as “beautiful”
11. Feign indignance and bleat “now is not the time” when anyone suggests the country needs to discuss and enact preventive gun control
12. Conspicuously do not declare the proper time to discuss or enact preventive gun control
13. Cite the above pre-packaged propaganda in interviews with news sources you otherwise scream are fake news
14. Type “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter
15. Do nothing meaningful, productive, rational, uncorrupt or humane

Republican Mass-Shooting Emergency Checklist

1. Find out the color of the shooter: white = lone wolf/mentally unstable; dark = terrorist
2. If the shooter is a dark terrorist, make empty promises about travel bans and “extreme vetting”
3. If the shooter is a mentally unstable white lone wolf who couldn't possibly be described as a terrorist, well what can you do?
4. If an automatic machine gun was used for the mass murders, scream “Second Amendment!” every two minutes
5. If your name is trump, barely—if at all—acknowledge the shooting and hope that your next catastrophic moral, ethical or intellectual failure will make it disappear
6. Type “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter
7. Fire up the NRA we-need-more-guns spin propaganda machine that’s still warm from last week’s shooting
8. Create a distraction by committing treason
or: Declare that you’re fast-tracking never-discussed infrastructure legislation
or: Blame (in any order) Hillary, Obama, Democratic "obstruction" or the victims who didn't report the shooter's suspicious behavior
or: Bleat that this list is “inappropriate,” ignore that everything on it is documentable and scream that you are offended
or: Just wait for trump’s next batshit eruption, announcement or embarrassment to dominate the news cycle
9. Name all other possible weapons—especially knives!—that could have been used in a mass-shooting murder
10. If your name is trump, describe the murder victims as “beautiful”
11. Feign indignance and bleat “now is not the time” when anyone suggests the country needs to discuss and enact preventive gun control
12. Conspicuously do not declare the proper time to discuss or enact preventive gun control
13. Cite the above pre-packaged propaganda in interviews with news sources you otherwise scream are fake news
14. Type “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter
15. Do nothing meaningful, productive, rational, uncorrupt or humane

Oh, nothing. Just hanging out in my little neck of the woods.

#ThursdayThings

Unnecessary Things I Bought Tonight At Target, Volume I

When you can’t get a date, hoard memes