And fired salutes with the captain's boots in the teeth of the booming gale
So, yes, we got home tonight and saw that John McCain waited to take life-saving advantage of the ACA before he voted, along with fifty other Republican senators whose careers I hope will be even shorter-lived than it seems they want their constituents to be, to proceed with killing it and quite a lot of other people. These are highlights of the day I had before that.
1.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch met me after my doctor's appointment this afternoon; we walked up the Esplanade to Back Bay (willows, cormorants, a blue reflected hollow in the overcast rippling in the river's wind-waves; I climbed a tree and developed a hole in my sock) and had dinner at the Cornish Pasty Co., where the chicken tikka masala pasty was approximately half the size of a human head and the toffee pudding with crème anglais arrived in a crucible. These are both endorsements. We had not planned on a book-gathering trip, but first there were the book sale carts at the West End Branch of the BPL and then there was Rodney's. I now appear to own Jack Weatherford's The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (2010), Jean Potts' Home Is the Prisoner (1960), Derek Jarman: A Portrait (1996) edited by Roger Wollen, and Cicely Mary Barker's The Lord of the Rushie River (1938), which I freely admit I bought because "Traveller's Joy" appears in the text as a folk song. The clouds had broken up by the time we were walking back over the Harvard Bridge and the Charles was full of white and pink sails, including a small flotilla circling one another and then crocodiling back to the MIT boathouse. Rob took a couple of pictures of me on the Esplanade. I am not all right with photographs of myself right now, so I am trying to make a point of them.
Backlit, in a tree. I am holding a rather nice reprint of Margery Allingham's The China Governess (1963), which is the sole book I left the house with. I came home with a large brown paper grocery bag.
Less backlit, on granite. Rob has determined I was sitting on part of the Gloucester Street Overlook, since the nearest monument was the enormous compass rose dedicated to the generosity of the Storrows in 1948; it is carved with the cardinal directions and a map of the Charles River in its course through Newton, Brookline, Watertown, Cambridge, and Boston and we didn't take a picture of it. I had just been adjusting my sock.
2.yhlee and telophase have developed a hexarchate Tarot. Specifically, a jeng-zai deck of the era of Machineries of Empire. You can ask it things. There are no illustrations as yet, but I ran two spreads from different factions and even allowing for the pattern-making capacity of the human brain it gave me scarily decent readings both times. Fair warning: it comes from a dystopia. I'm not sure it knows how to advise on light matters.
3. Courtesy of Michael Matheson: from the archives of Robot Hugs, Gender Rolls. I'm not sure why we don't seem to own any dice, but fortunately the internet provides. I got non-binary femme-type dandy. I . . . can really live with that, actually.
We bought food for the cats. We bought ice cream for ourselves. I guess tomorrow I make a lot more calls.
1.
spatch met me after my doctor's appointment this afternoon; we walked up the Esplanade to Back Bay (willows, cormorants, a blue reflected hollow in the overcast rippling in the river's wind-waves; I climbed a tree and developed a hole in my sock) and had dinner at the Cornish Pasty Co., where the chicken tikka masala pasty was approximately half the size of a human head and the toffee pudding with crème anglais arrived in a crucible. These are both endorsements. We had not planned on a book-gathering trip, but first there were the book sale carts at the West End Branch of the BPL and then there was Rodney's. I now appear to own Jack Weatherford's The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (2010), Jean Potts' Home Is the Prisoner (1960), Derek Jarman: A Portrait (1996) edited by Roger Wollen, and Cicely Mary Barker's The Lord of the Rushie River (1938), which I freely admit I bought because "Traveller's Joy" appears in the text as a folk song. The clouds had broken up by the time we were walking back over the Harvard Bridge and the Charles was full of white and pink sails, including a small flotilla circling one another and then crocodiling back to the MIT boathouse. Rob took a couple of pictures of me on the Esplanade. I am not all right with photographs of myself right now, so I am trying to make a point of them.
Backlit, in a tree. I am holding a rather nice reprint of Margery Allingham's The China Governess (1963), which is the sole book I left the house with. I came home with a large brown paper grocery bag.
Less backlit, on granite. Rob has determined I was sitting on part of the Gloucester Street Overlook, since the nearest monument was the enormous compass rose dedicated to the generosity of the Storrows in 1948; it is carved with the cardinal directions and a map of the Charles River in its course through Newton, Brookline, Watertown, Cambridge, and Boston and we didn't take a picture of it. I had just been adjusting my sock.
2.
yhlee and telophase have developed a hexarchate Tarot. Specifically, a jeng-zai deck of the era of Machineries of Empire. You can ask it things. There are no illustrations as yet, but I ran two spreads from different factions and even allowing for the pattern-making capacity of the human brain it gave me scarily decent readings both times. Fair warning: it comes from a dystopia. I'm not sure it knows how to advise on light matters.3. Courtesy of Michael Matheson: from the archives of Robot Hugs, Gender Rolls. I'm not sure why we don't seem to own any dice, but fortunately the internet provides. I got non-binary femme-type dandy. I . . . can really live with that, actually.
We bought food for the cats. We bought ice cream for ourselves. I guess tomorrow I make a lot more calls.
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If it helps any, the later vote on their most comprehensive attempt to replace Obamacare according to the NYT went down in flames: 43-57, they didn't even get the bare minimum 50 votes (they needed 60 after the parliamentarian decision).
The Tuesday night tally needed to reach 60 votes to overcome a parliamentary objection. Instead, it fell 43-57. The fact that the comprehensive replacement plan came up well short of even 50 votes was an ominous sign for Republican leaders still seeking a formula to pass final health care legislation this week.
I honestly think that's a lot more meaningful than the piece of theatre they enacted with John McCain showing up to give a speech and get a pity ovation and pre-emptively stave off any criticism. I mean, that was a hard fought 50-51 vote to start debate. Like Maddow said tonight, they don't have a particular bill, they don't have CBO figures, they don't have amendments, it's basically vaporware. I think it was a huge exercise of dick-swinging to try to convince people Republicans still have the power, but they don't. This repeal/replace crap is MASSIVELY unpopular and it's not going to get any more popular and the politicians are (rightly) getting terrified because the protests and calls keep going.
Senate Republicans still have no agreement on a repeal bill that they can ultimately pass to uproot the law that has provided health insurance to millions of Americans.
Anyway, don't mean to try to talk you out of feelings if you're feeling bad about it. Yeah it sucks. Yeah the fight is not over by a long shot. They could still fuck everyone over. But I am just personally enjoying the thought of Mitch McConnell sobbing into his pillow, because this was his baby that he worked on and revised and called in favours for.
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Thank you. My hair has been known to eat combs, if it helps.
John McCain showing up to give a speech and get a pity ovation and pre-emptively stave off any criticism.
Going by the reactions of my various friendlists, I don't think it worked.
But I am just personally enjoying the thought of Mitch McConnell sobbing into his pillow, because this was his baby that he worked on and revised and called in favours for.
I appreciate the information. I know it was a vote to open the debate, not the repeal and replace itself. Even as a piece of political theater, however, I don't like it, I have no good thoughts for the people who voted for it, and I hope it blows up in their faces in ways that don't require a die-off in the American population first. It moves the window of what is acceptable to advocate and practice in government. Getting even this far as a serious effort was wrong.
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I know it was a vote to open the debate, not the repeal and replace itself. Even as a piece of political theater, however, I don't like it, I have no good thoughts for the people who voted for it, and I hope it blows up in their faces in ways that don't require a die-off in the American population first. It moves the window of what is acceptable to advocate and practice in government. Getting even this far as a serious effort was wrong.
Yeah, absolutely. It was terrible.
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No! Is it what it sounds like? I wash my hair every other night—every night in really hot weather—sleep with it in a braid and comb it out in the morning. It's not exactly what I would call a regimen.
Yeah, absolutely. It was terrible.
At this point it's like: look, I know the people in this government are terrible, all right? I'm happy to take their word for it! They don't have to keep proving it! Any time now, they can stop!
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And then of course today there was the probably illegal and certainly unenforceable policy change by Twitter that oh hey gotta throw all the trans troops out of the military! I can't even. I don't have words. No words. None.
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I made an icon.