This is the blog of Kelly Jennings, science fiction writer.
For today, I'm trying really hard not to doom-scroll.
For tomorrow, I plan to stay off the internet except for work, and to track my kid as he flies back from the West Coast (where he and the boyfriend have been attending a wedding). I will read and I will grade papers and I will breathe very, very deeply. I may take a Xanax I have squirreled away for an emergency. There is also chocolate.
See you on the other side.
The internet has now been out at my house, and in a two block radius around my house, since Thursday afternoon. (Almost three days now, but who's counting?)
AT&T sends me useless updates, or lying updates, every 24 hours or so. They have no idea, currently, when I will once again have internet service.
As I said elsewhere, I am finding out what people did before the internet. A lot of reading and baking, apparently. I read an excellent book by Isaac Fellman all in one day, and two books by Naomi Novik, and I have baked apple crisp and banana muffins, and am currently making baguettes.
My kid says at least I can't doom scroll. There is that.
Once again, I have had to drive up to my miserably hot office to access the internet and grade my students' submissions.
At least it's cool enough today that I can open the window and get the temperature in here down from 74 to 70. But still, UGH.
AT&T says they have no idea when internet will be restored to my area.
The internet has been down at our house, and in a three block radius around our house, since yesterday.
This is torture.
I've had to come up to my very hot office at dawn to grade. UGH.
Why does it have to be so hot in my office? It's SO HOT.
I had the window open for a while, which helped, but now the leaf-blowing guys are out, and the exhaust from those things is unbearable, never mind the racket.
What exactly was wrong with rakes again?
I used to subscribe to the New York Times, but their policies became so openly transphobic that I dropped their subscription. After that, I subscribed to the Washington Post, until this past week, when they let their billionaire owner dictate their content, and became, thus, no better than Fox News. I cancelled my subscription and told them why.
Now I have subscribed to The Boston Globe and The Star Tribune. I also read The Guardian, mostly for what it has to say about international events.
If democracy is to survive, the nation needs reliable, trustworthy, non-partisan journalism. That doesn't come free. People have to be willing to pay for it. But also, the newspapers themselves must be willing to stand up to billionaires and wanna-be fascists.
As I said in 2020, I didn't think the downfall of America would be quite this boring and depressing. But here we are.
I mean, no surprise, but his post is worth reading nonetheless.
A pull quote:
I am deeply tired of Donald Trump and everything about his shitty, selfish, criminal and hateful self, a man whose only lasting legacy to this point is encouraging the worst parts of the American public to free themselves of any social bond to their neighbors and to be be just as awful as their idol. Kamala Harris fucking laughs, and seems happy, and actually appears to like people, not just tolerate people she needs something from. It would be too much to say she embodies the better idea of what the US could be — that’s a lot to put on anyone — but I will say that at least when I look at her, I know that there’s a chance that the better idea of what the US could be is possible. I can’t look at Trump at this point and see anything but hate and anger, and the worst of what we are as a nation.
I agree 110%, obviously. And when I look at Trump supporters, that's what I see too: hate, anger, lies, and cowardice. They are America at its worst.
I have voted. Dr. Skull has voted. The kid and his fiance have voted. If you haven't voted, do it now.
I am so anxious, y'all.
 |
| Ten days, now |
The drought is so bad here, I put two big ceramic bowls (Heywood's water dishes) out in the yard and I'm keeping them filled with water.
So now my yard is filled with birds -- bright red cardinals, sparrows, doves, mocking birds, and dozens of others I don't recognize. The squirrels like the water too, but the birds keep yelling at them and chasing them away.
I might get bird seed next.
Straight blue ticket, as you might imagine. I voted against the casino and for medical marijuana.
My credit score is so good.
It comes from paying off my credit card four years ago now, and then not taking on any debt (or none I didn't pay off within six months) until I bought this car. Taking out a car loan actually improves your credit score, which, who knew? Also no foreclosures or evictions! Go me!
The loan guy actually congratulated me.
It's like a thing among MAGAts to pose the question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
I am, but only because COVID killed my father and I inherited all of his money. (He had dementia, but it was getting COVID that killed him.)
Which is the thing they're forgetting -- four years ago we were in the middle of a pandemic that has killed over a million Americans so far.
I suppose I shouldn't say "forgetting." They deny the epidemic ever happened, and if it did happen, it wasn't any worse than the flu (which killed somewhere around fifty million people in 1918), or if it was worse than the flu, then it only killed the weak. Like my father. Or immunocompromised people, those losers. Or diabetics. Or....
THERE WERE SEMIS FILLED WITH DEAD BODIES BECAUSE THE MORGUES WERE OVERFLOWING.
— L O L G O P (@lolgop.bsky.social) October 22, 2024 at 6:33 AM
[image or embed]
And that's not even taking into account the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the attack on the Capitol which he orchestrated, his malfeasance, the separation of children from their parents at the border, his fucking the Supreme Court for the next 40 years, the eight trillion he added to the national debt, the inflation that kicked off due to his mishandling of the epidemic, his encouraging the Right to become vaccine deniers, his endless lying....
All of which MAGAts also deny, so it's no good trying to point it out.
