Tweets That Always Come Back To Make Him Look Stupider And Staggeringly More Inept If That's Even Possible: Chapter 8,492

OMG

Melania! Melania!

I have to say, you look fabulous as always ... and you really know how to work the wet carpet. But all your drowning fans are literally dying to know: Who are you wearing?

Meanwhile, back in I'mTooBusyPresidentingToWatchTVLand ...

Because "lotters will be shot" kinda rhymes, and that's totally faggy

Community challenge:

Troll Joel Osteen HARD on Twitter until he blocks us all, which he apparently has spent the day doing instead of ... oh, I dunno ... HELPING anyone.

#YouWillBeFound

I try to maintain a pretty strict policy of not listening to the cast album or reading the plot or knowing anything else about a show so I can enjoy it tabula rasa the first time I see it. I even try to audition for shows under that policy -- having zero clue what I'm doing, basically -- so I can enjoy them fresh when I see them if I don't get cast. Which is why the witness testimony from the Fun Home Audition Massacre of 2017 has been sealed by a federal judge until 50 years after my death.

In any case, I recently read a New York Times profile of Ben Platt, the star of Dear Even Hansen, and without warning it pretty much blurted out the entire plot of the show without even a hint of a spoiler alert. So since I know it and since there's no chance I'm going to see it anytime soon, I'm relenting and listening to the cast album now in violation of the natural order of the universe. And so far I find it kind of ... meh -- and very redundant in the way every song by The Police sounds the same. But I'll give it a few listens. Then I'll very hopefully be able to make sincere "Waving Through a Window" references so I'm legitimately caught up with the modern landmarks of Broadway.

Ugh

I think sneezing violently eight times in a row just temporarily surpassed trump as the thing I hate the very most in the world.

How did civilization not die out entirely in this era of procreation-repellent attire?

(Note: Shoes are sold separately on page 442.)
(Also note: When I posted this on Facebook, it did not recognize any of the faces in this photo as people in my friends list.)
(Also also note: WHEW.)

How to make congealed product snot. And prevent blemishes for free!

1. I didn't know hair-product containers could melt into deformed shapes in your Dopp kit in your gym bag in your hot car.
2. Only gay men say "product."
3. Only gay men and men over 70 say "Dopp kit."
4. I now know that hair-product containers that melt in your Dopp kit in your gym bag in your hot car leak melty hair product all over everything in your Dopp kit.
5. Then it congeals into snot-like grossness.
6. Product.
7. Dopp kit.
8. Also: When someone leaves his or her (we have private showers at my gym) (or do we?) (I'll never tell) blemish control apricot scrub in the gym shower, I'm going to spend my day without the heartbreak of blemishes.
9. But my toothbrush is still gonna taste like congealed product snot.
10. Dopp kit!

"I will also be going to a wonderful state, Missouri, that I won by a lot in '16."

This POS "president" claims defiantly that Twitter is his "modern day presidential" channel for getting his unfiltered messages to the American people on his schedule and on his terms. He's tweeted a lot of his usual toddler vomit in the last 24 hours, but not once in that time has he used Twitter to even show a passing interest in acknowledging the human scale of suffering and devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey -- or even in offering the thoughts and prayers that everyone knows he doesn't think or give. Yet he's used Twitter to announce that he'd pardoned a convicted racist and murderer who is coincidentally a political crony, to endorse a book that was ghost-written for someone who is also coincidentally a political crony, and to brag about a 10-month-old election win.

There is no clearer manifestation of his combined arrogance, ineptitude and catastrophic failure as a human being.

I finally picked my script-highlighting colors

Moral concern: I'm pretty sure that highlighters purchased from the back-to-school aisle were meant for respectable, upstanding, proper-educational, non-trumpy-grabby literature.

Practical concern: How am I supposed to hold my script until we're off book?

I've been in bed all day with a monster headache

And I haven't accomplished anything I'd intended to do today -- like maybe go for a training run or something since I'm running a 10K in a week -- but my language geek book arrived this afternoon so you'll know where to find me serif you're looking for me.

We're here. And we salute you.

For all the irrational hatred and the isolationist hypocrisy and the manipulative demagoguery our pathological failure of a president and his ethically grotesque party are using to tear this country apart morally, socially and intellectually ... for all the ignorance they've perpetuated and the lies they've parroted to shore up their base ... for all the ugliness and hostility and racism and sexism and phobias they've unleashed from the dungeons and the shadows and the basest instincts of humankind in the last weeks alone ... they've ironically and unintentionally and no doubt regrettably inspired something quite beautiful: a mass uprising of love and support for every person they vilify and every minority they oppress and every demographic they scapegoat in their bloodthirsty quest to dehumanize and destroy us all for their own gain.

And if you're a trans person -- especially if you're trans military personnel -- we want you to know we're here.

There are legions of us who have been and who currently are and who will continue to be your friends and allies and champions with no judgments, no condemnations and no barriers. We may not have been as visible to you as we'd have liked in the past out of consideration for your privacy or lack of a forum to communicate with you or out of concern that we might inadvertently say or do something awkward or uncomfortable or insensitive or even uncloseting around you. But we're here. And it is now our moral and social and just simply human imperative to make sure you know who we are.

Whether you're just coming to terms with your need to transition, beginning to comprehend the emotional and physical and social journey ahead of you, taking the first tentative steps in changing your persona and your presentation and your name, or standing bravely and confidently and proudly at any point on the transition continuum ... our primary interest in your trans identity is that you are safe and healthy and happy and treated as the human -- the FULL human -- you are.

We may never fully comprehend the extent of what your personal or collective journey has entailed -- and we may ask a lot of questions both out of curiosity and a sincere need to better understand where you've been and where you're going.

But we're here. And we stand with you as proud and grateful citizens and in our public restroom and at the dawn of a new sense of community. And we want you to know we are profoundly grateful for your service and we love and respect you just as you are. Or just as you need to be.

We're here.

#TransBan
#TransRights
#TransMilitaryBan
#TransRightsAreHumanRights

85. Year. Old.

"85 year old" is the most meaningful, relevant compound adjective you could come up with to describe a racist convicted criminal in a tweet you send just as the biggest, potentially most deadly hurricane to hit American soil in over a decade makes landfall?

#PieceOfShit

#Harvey

Flashback Friday: Art Isn't Easy Edition

Chicago Art Institute. 2011. We may not have been smart enough to stand in decent lighting, but at least I was mart enough to flex when I knew there was a camera pointing at me.

Seizing the day

I was supposed to leave this morning for my annual summer vacation to visit friends in D.C. and stay at their best-porch-on-the-planet beach house in Rehoboth, DE, but I had to cancel a few weeks ago due to work issues. A lot of cool things have popped up on my calendar here in Cedar Rapids this weekend though, so I'm more or less OK with missing my trip.

But I still missed work this morning thanks to a rough descent into a bipolar depressive episode that started last night. I talk a lot about being bipolar on here and on social media, and every time I think I should stop someone messages me out of the blue to thank me for being so open and honest about it. Enough people have confided in me the stories of their struggles with mental illness that I sometimes worry I won't remember everyone in my mental checklist of kindred, struggling spirits. I've developed close, supportive friendships with a lot of these people though, and our check-ins and conversations and even drives across town just to give hugs are so dear and so valuable to me that I'll probably never stop talking about my own struggles.

So here's this morning's report: I woke up at 6:00 in a motivational black hole with a fiery headache and enough disorientation that I knew enough to skip the gym -- which is huge because some days working out is the only thing that keeps me human -- and to let my boss know that I'd come in after lunch, if at all today. Then I went back to the kind of non-sleep that feels like you're staying awake getting more and more exhausted compounded by the stress of feeling worried about getting more and more exhausted. But when I woke up around 11:00 my head was clear enough that I could look at the episode objectively and summon the coping and pushing-through skills I've learned over the last decade and I showered and ate and made it to work, where I've been surprisingly productive ... albeit profoundly exhausted.

So to all the people I know who are dealing with mental illness and to all the people I don't know who are dealing with mental illness and to all the rest of you curious enough about my struggles today to have read this far: You will fight this battle all your life. You will get meds that don't work, you will get meds that actually make things worse and you will find meds that you'll notice start to make improvements ... though you'll spend ages waiting cynically for them to fail you. In the mean time, learn what helps you stabilize yourself and what helps you push your way out of the wet wool blankets and the rolling fogs that trap you. As soon as I felt coherent this morning, I texted one friend who right now is in a bottomless depressive episode so we could both not feel alone in our struggles and I texted another friend who as far as I know is not having an episode just so I'd know that someone who deeply understands what I'm going through is at the very least thinking about me. And then I picked out a shirt that says carpe diem on it and I know that it's totally goofy bordering on stupid, but if I'm wearing a shirt that means something to me on a certain day or in a certain situation, I feel compelled to go out in the world and show it to everybody. 

And after what my head put me through this morning, I need everyone to know -- no, I need to SHOW everyone -- that I'm seizing the hell out of the rest of my today.

#PronounsVsAmateurnouns

Eatin' Chinese in a strip mall

Six words: honey black pepper chicken with noodles

Six other words: watching teenagers try to use chopsticks