Dingus of the week: January
Here's to you, Lily, the rights of man, and international revolution!
According to my calculations, it’s January 65, 2025. Somehow, in 31 days we’ve all aged two decades. What is time? What are days? January 1 to January 31 took approximately 75 months.
Maybe it was the dark cold weather. Maybe it’s because this is the month we are all supposed to be dry, get healthy, set goals, set intentions, set resolutions. We have to looksmaxx, drink water, no alcohol, never alcohol, lift weights, and calculate macros. Listen, are you even getting enough protein? According to my Instagram algorithm, you need to eat 5011 grams of protein per pound that you weigh. I’ve been trying, but every night I fall asleep face-down into a pile of chicken breast and cottage cheese after weeping and begging the gods of fitness for relief.
(Also, while we are on it, when did cottage cheese become so trendy? Like, girl, who is your PR rep?)
Add into that the constant cold gray weather. The dirty snow berms1. And there was something else? What was it? Let me think…
Oh yes, the horrors.
Humanity keeps trying to move forward, but we trudge on against the current of history's horrors, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
(And listen, that isn't even the worst thing that's been done to F. Scott Fitzgerald, so I won't be apologizing.)
Just this past week, we’ve had RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing, with his voice that sounds like an old haunted door. Even if you didn’t listen to it, what was spoken at that hearing collectively made America drop 50 IQ points. Let me try to summarize: Vaccines made your wife leave you, made your truck break down and turned your Bud Light gay.
He will, of course, be confirmed.
Which brings us to another January horror: All the Democrats grabbing their pearls, covering their mouths in shock and horror, telling us, TRUMP CANNOT DO THIS, and then voting to confirm his cabinet anyway. Like what is happening? Is the Democratic party enacting a policy of appeasement? Did you stop reading history past 1930? Are we just rolling over and getting conquered? Who is running this show, Neville Chamberlain? If it’s not Chamberlain, did an opossum write this strategy?
Guys, Donald Trump is not a brown bear; we simply do not have to curl up in the fetal position and protect our vital organs. Also, given that RFK is going to be on the cabinet, faking being roadkill is gonna backfire when he loads us up in his truck and lets us rot while he dines at a steakhouse.
Where are the Democrats? In the Thursday newsletter chat, subscriber Amy Cee postulated2, “They’re huddled in an office building discussing the possibility of forming a committee to appoint a commission to consider potential responses.”
As if that wasn’t enough, there was the 48-hour period of sheer panic where Trump attempted to stop federal grant money, threatening childcare, arts programs, food aid, and so many more vital services. A judge issued an injunction. But then the administration was like, “We rescind. But that doesn’t mean we lost.”
There is a lot to say about that. But one thing that occurred to me is that the president is doing exactly what he said he would do. He’s putting his plans into action. And he’s not waiting for permission. He’s smashing and grabbing. Sitting around yelling “You can’t do that!” is about as fruitful as telling that to a man breaking into your home. Armed robbery is illegal, but that doesn’t mean people don’t do it every day.
And I don’t like it, but I wish Joe Biden had at least attempted to smash a few windows to secure some of our rights. The windows were gonna be goners anyway. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked, but it was worth the shot given what we are facing. Would have been nice to know that the one guy in power before it all went to hell did literally anything.
This week, there was also a plane crash, a horrible tragedy whose causes are still being investigated. There are no jokes to make about the loss of life. But of course, our president immediately blamed the crash on DEI.
Which makes sense. DEI also killed Jon Benet Ramsey, caused the Black Plague, was the Black Dahlia murderer and the Zodiac killer, destroyed all of Ireland’s potatoes, and stole the Lindbergh baby.
But here we are, as you read this, it is still January. And the ONE THING that we’ve all been looking forward to is the return of a television show about how society is awful and jobs are terrible. Make escapism great again, I beg of you.
Live-action shot of me trying to escape January.
I hear that January is supposed to end tomorrow, but I don’t believe it. But on the bright side, if we make it, it will be February. *sobs*
But at least we will never run out of dingii. Like a hydra, where if you cut off one head, two more appear. It’s a hydringus if you will.
For example, if you were a subscriber, you’d know that the brain worm from RFK’s head was dingus last year.
Or that last year, I made people who say “New year, new you” the dingus.
And now for something good:
Time to read the Simple Sabotage Field Manual!
Greyhound is not allowing ICE agents on buses.
Hell yeah, Chicago. Everyone, end your Dry January with a shot of Malort.
The Quakers are suing the administration over ICE raids in churches. (Also, two years ago, my son, who was 9 at the time, did a family tree project and found out that one side of his family — mine — used to be Quakers. And when I told him about the Quakers, he was so pleased. And for a whole year, he went around telling people he had “Quaker blood in me and this is why I am a peaceful guy.” Although, one day he came home from school sobbing, because, “Kids pick on me because they know I am genetically a Quaker and a man of peace!”)
The Alt National Parks? THE ALT NATIONAL PARKS.
And Bernie Sanders.
Something I am enjoying:
I was homeschooled until high school, which is a whole story that I won’t be telling here. When I finally got to high school, one of the places I finally felt like I belonged was on the speech and debate team. I was thinking about the team this week as I put together a new running playlist for 2025. I was thinking about songs that inspired me. Songs that made me want to fight, and I remembered my speech coaches, Jim and Peggy Dimmock, playing Black 47 on the school bus on our way to tournaments.
Being homeschooled, I hadn’t heard much rock music. When we weren’t listening to Christian pop, my parents' secular tastes veered mostly into folk music, like Carole King, James Taylor, and Pete Seeger. But on the bus to speech tournaments, people brought CDs they burned at their houses, making free use of Napster and Limewire. I heard Warren G, Smash Mouth, and Black 47.
Black 47 was an American Celtic rock band, named after the year 1847, the worst year of the Irish potato famine. The band was from New York City and formed in 1989.
The song Jim and Peggy played often was “James Connelly” — a song written in honor of the union leader who was executed for his role in the Easter Uprising of 1916. The song glorifies the struggles of the proletariat in the face of the “bosses and the screws.” Near the end of the song, Connelly shouts, “Here’s to you Lily, the rights of man, and international revolution!” I think about that song a lot.
I think about sitting on a bus going to Aberdeen, South Dakota, for a speech tournament, awed by all the kids who knew so much, embarrassed by how little I knew. It’s how I learned about class struggle, imperialism, and international revolution.
This year, my daughter, who is just a year younger than I was when I started high school, started wearing a pair of jeans I saved from my freshman year. They’re jeans I bought with babysitting money from a thrift store and began writing on with Sharpie. They’re covered with communist and socialist slogans, and the hammer and sickle, along with the phrase, “Here’s to you Lily, the rights of man, and international revolution!”
She loves those jeans. And I love them too. They remind me of how our fights are always with us and our hope for the future.
Happy one year anniversary to be getting dumped at 3am at the Cedar Rapids airport in front of the Avis car rental booth and then having to dig my car out of a snow embankment in -30 weather! This story is paywalled now.
Every Thursday, I host a paying subscibers-only chat where we nominate a dingus of the week.
That crash was right up the road. I drive by there almost once a week. Words fail to accurately describe the revulsion Trump’s deranged post-crash interview caused for me. I am glad that Kaitlan Collins pressed Trump about his insane allegations that DEI and Democrats caused the crash. But when he attacked her for asking the question I would like to see one goddamn moment of humanity and spontaneous rage at a billionaire bully attacking the smarter woman AGAIN. How about “your answer is rude, stupid and unpresidential. You have no idea who was in the plane, the helicopter or the tower and you already pass blame to minority and disabled hires to push your culture wars. You are a historically awful president.”
But she just smiled.
When will media understand that they are not neutral players anymore? Pick a f_cking side, because he already has.
Chicago and the decent folks of Illinois are proud as hell of our governor. He works. He fights for justice and he doesn't put up with any shit from this garbage administration. (Also, he initially ran promising to legalize weed, and he got that done immediately, which is nice.) And Chicago is a favorite target for the orange shitbag because he knows we hate him. They made a big point of starting the ICE raids in Chicago, with Phil (I'm not calling that asshole doctor ever again) riding along with cameras to catch all the fun. They started here because the city has fought and mocked orange shitbag at every step. The renown hotdog stand, Weiner Circle, occasionally promotes the trump footlong special: it's a 3-inch hotdog on a bun.