Four day weekends are a lie

I’m still recovering from mine. These long weekends are a trap: you decide that hey, I can take a day or two off to play with a three year old or something similarly harmless, but the trick is that the work doesn’t stop flowing over the transom and through the keyhole and under the door, and suddenly you realize on the third day that you weren’t actually supposed to stop working when you find yourself buried up to the nostrils in obligations. The last couple of days have been ugly, frantic efforts to catch back up, and today I find myself back where I started, with the worst over with and just the usual accumulation of too-much-to-do.

I’m never going to fall for the myth of the long weekend ever again. It’s how they get you.

Two weeks until the semester ends. Or, that is, until I stop piling assignments on the students and the work comes home to roost on my desk (Christmas break: also a lie.)

My new holiday greeting

I’m gearing up for the Christmas season.

Other steps: smashing the radio so I don’t have to suffer with those damn Christmas carols. Digging up my Santa hat so I can wander the streets of Morris telling excited children that I’ll be bringing them spiders. It’s a good time of year to be a curmudgeon.

I’ve got my booster shot, have you?

While we’re possibly out visiting family and friends on this traditional family holiday, I hope you’ve done what is necessary to protect yourself.

Also keep in mind that we’re probably going to see a surge of infection among the unvaccinated in a few weeks. Stay home if you aren’t up-to-date on the vaccines.

Thankful that justice is occasionally delivered

Good news just in time for a too-brief Thanksgiving break.

The three White men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery in coastal Georgia last year were convicted of murder Wednesday in a case that many saw as a test of racial bias in the justice system.

Travis McMichael, his father, Greg McMichael, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were found guilty of felony murder in the shooting of Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man. Travis McMichael was also convicted of malice murder, or intent to kill. All three men, who still face federal hate crime charges, could receive life in prison without parole.

That whole assault was a horror show, as were the Rittenhouse murders. It’s exhausting that the law in this country so abjectly panders to armed white men and their sense of entitlement that whether one of them goes to jail after killing someone is a crap shoot. The dice came up for justice this one time.

What your turkey looks like to a vegetarian

Yuck, this abomination is making the rounds again.

I’m going to see my granddaughter tomorrow. Should I bring her one of these? I don’t really want to see her brought up as a serial killer or a Frankenstein…although it does suggest some cool experiments. If we hook it up to the wall socket, can we make it live?

Unfortunately, as vegetarians, neither I nor my daughter have the spare parts to craft one. We’ve got leeks, and onions, and carrots, and asparagus, and broccoli, and mushrooms, though, and I might be able to concoct a vegan nightmare out of all that.

Alas, the chicken teddy is fake news.

The raw chicken teddy bear, which went viral for the first time in 2013, is actually a piece of art by Russian artist Viktor Ivanov, who said at the time, “On the whole, it made me feel disgusted the entire time I was making it.”

He added: “One should not know what it’s like to sew through skin.”

What? I know what it’s like to sew through skin. I had no idea it was a forbidden art.

Thank you again, President Ulysses S. Grant

Besides out-generaling the treacherous Confederates and putting down one rebellion that split the country, Grant also was an advocate for an important law after the war: the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

President Ulysses S. Grant asked for the law after the rise of the KKK following the Civil War, and it was passed within a month with broad support. The law targeted Klan activity, making it illegal to use force, intimidation and threats to prevent people from voting, serving on a jury or testifying in court. The law specifically makes it illegal to “go in disguise upon the public highway or upon the premises of another” and allows victims to sue perpetrators in civil court.

Grant’s administration then used it to almost completely dismantle the KKK in America for years, bleeding them dry with civil suits.

That sounds like a good law. Maybe we should go after the Republican party with it. But for now, I’ll settle for the fact that it’s being used to dismantle openly Nazi-affiliated groups, like those that rioted in Charlottesville.

More than a dozen of the nation’s most prominent white supremacists and hate groups conspired to intimidate, harass or commit acts of violence during 2017′s deadly Unite the Right rally, according to a jury that also decided the men and their racist organizations should pay $26 million in damages.

The 11 jurors couldn’t come to an agreement on two federal conspiracy claims, but they found that every defendant — including former alt-right leader Richard Spencer, rally organizer Jason Kessler and Christopher Cantwell, dubbed the “crying Nazi” after sharing a video of himself weeping — was liable under Virginia law.

“We think that is a resounding verdict today and frankly a good sign for the future on the remaining counts,” plaintiffs attorney Karen Dunn said, referring to the allegations that the men conspired to commit racially motivated violence and failed to stop it — accusations her clients might pursue again in a future lawsuit.

Twenty six million dollars. $26,000,000. That’s got to sting, and there’s the threat of further suits. Good work, Ulysses.

The lawyers who accomplished this worked hard and made personal sacrifices to corner these rats and bring them to justice, so good for them, too. When lawyers and judges fail, we get results like we’ve seen recently, with murderers walking free. This group did not slack in their duties.

They can’t think about what will happen if they aren’t successful. They see this case as not about one incident, but about all right-wing violence in America. Unchecked, we end up with more events like Charlottesville, and like the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

So, it’s all on the line: democracy, the ability of people to live without fear.

Plus, Spitalnick pointed out that they’ve already made it harder to be a Nazi in America ― or, at least, more expensive. Spencer has no attorney because he’s out of money. Defendants can’t raise money because they’ve been deplatformed from fundraising sites. White supremacist group Vanguard America has been ordered to pay $16,000 for disobeying court orders in the case.

It’s a slow bleed of access and money until what was once the dapper face of terror, illuminated in fire, is revealed for what it always has been: nothing more than hatred.

So raise a glass to President Grant on Thanksgiving Day. His legacy lives on.

Abolish marriage, or abolish Christianity. It’s that simple.

The most terrible force destroying the family unit, and therefore attacking all of Western Civilization, is clearly Evangelical Christianity.

In his sermon, Robinson says, “In this matter of submission, I want you to know upfront ladies, that once you get married, you are no longer your own. You are your husband’s. You understand what I’m saying? I emphasize that because I saw in court the other day on TV where a lady sued her husband for rape. And I would say to you gentlemen, the best person to rape is your wife. But then it has become legalized.”

We have a simple choice before us. Abolish Evangelical Christianity, or abolish marriage. I kinda like my marriage, so I favor the former, but I haven’t asked my wife yet. Maybe she’ll disagree. I don’t own her, so I’d have to respect her decision.