
Poets Seat, dusk on Tuesday

I can only imagine what a horror show the various town pages and groups are going to turn into over this story.
In general, I find it frustrating and depressing that so much local political conversation takes place on Facebook. I understand why it happens. When we struggle to pay for basic municipal services like public education, water and sewer infrastructure, and garbage removal, it is hard to argue that the town should also be on the hook for hosting and managing an online forum for civic debates. And even if they did, everyone would be on Facebook anyway.
Even if I took these claims seriously (and I do not take them seriously), they entirely ignore the electoral pressure on Republicans.
For decades, Republicans have harnessed the Christian right’s hatred of Roe to get votes. Now they are on the cusp of getting that done. A bunch of people have talked about how the GOP is the dog that finally caught the car, with the implication that they have now somehow gotten themselves into a sticky situation and are in trouble as a result. I don’t find this analysis comforting.
Assuming the Court does overturn Roe this summer, Republicans need to find the next issue to demagogue in order to keep the Christian Right angry, activated, and reliably voting Republican. That’s why none of their assurances that contraception, LGTBQ+ rights, and interracial marriage are safe following the Roe decision. They will pick one of these and go after that just like they have gone after abortion access, and they won’t stop there as long as it keeps their voters scared and angry.
I bought this album on CD when it came out, and I still pull it out to listen to every now and then. It is definitely a product of its time, but it is still quite good. It was really hard to find for most of the early 2000s, but now seems to be available on pretty much all of the streaming services, so hooray for the Long Tail, I guess.
It’s true, Johnny. No one likes jokes about beatniks.
While checking out Hoopla’s comics selection—it’s actually quite good—I noticed that they have a collection of the original run of Fantastic Four. I have read maybe two Fantastic Four issues in my entire life, so I checked it out for myself and have been reading it for the last day.
I kind of love how dysfunctional they are in the early issues. Maybe this continues throughout the series, but every few pages so far, one of them is pissed off at one or all of the others. Johnny Storm seems like an immature jerk (he’s supposed to be a teenager, I think, so that makes sense), and Ben Grimm is constantly resentful at having been turned into the Thing and has some serious anger-management issues.
Some other random observations so far:
Between reading this stuff myself and the kids getting into comics, I am considering re-upping the Marvel Unlimited subscription that I let lapse a few years ago.
“Because they’re clowns, that’s why!”
OMG how have I never watched this movie before?