Roseanne. Hard Pass

I consume a lot of pop culture - more so than the average bear. Some people are impressed with my pop culture consumption, others think I must get absolutely nothing done. Here's a quick bullet list to how I consume so much:

• There are only a few shows a week that I watch while not doing anything else. Currently, those shows are Atlanta, RuPaul's Drag Race, The Americans (starts tonight!), Superstore and The Middle. These are the only shows airing that demand full attention. Some due to their extreme quality (Atlanta and The Americans) others because I just have a real good time with them (RPDR and Superstore), and one purely for the nostalgia (The Middle). Due to the great advances of DVR-i-tude, this only adds up to about 2.5 hours of television a week
• The other TV things I consume happen while I'm doing other things - I may watch The Goldbergs while I'm doing the dishes. I'll check into AP Bio during a workout. 
• I waste no time on cable news. I've long held the position that cable news causes cancer. It's bad for you in a million ways. I like Chris and Joy and Rachel too! If there's something really good on one of their shows, it'll be on Facebook the next day. Cable news is a terrible way to stay informed and a blight on America. The Sunday shows are worse. I get my news from the Crooked Media guys, Wonkette, Charlie Pierce and Josh Marshall. All these sources are proudly liberal, but free of bullshit. Recommend. 
• I follow pop culture blogs and twitter that recommend the good stuff to watch. My all time favorite of these is Pajiba. I've turned many of you over to them. They are smart and funny, staunchly anti-racist and feminist, and they have great taste. 
• Also, I fucking hate it when everyone is talking about something and I don't know what it is. I have never understood the sense of superiority that some people seem to feel when they don't know something that everyone else is talking about. Like, why do people show up on a Facebook thread about Game of Thrones talking about how they don't watch that show? What's the point of that? No one thinks you're cool, buddy. 

All of this is lead up to the Hard Fucking Pass I'm going to give Roseanne. I watched about 10 minutes of it last night and then clicked off. Jackie was like the worst caricature of a Hillary voter and Roseanne was like the gentlest NYT profile of the misunderstood Trump voter. And you know? Fuck. That.

You don't get to say 'I'm not racist! Look at my cute black granddaughter" and support Mr. "Very Fine People on Both Sides," Mr. "Get Those Sons of Bitches off the Field." You don't get to say "I'm not homophobic! I support my genderqueer grandson" at the same time you support the man responsible for the pointless, cruel transgender ban in the military. 

Trump supporters do not get a pass just because they come around with witty writing and a thick sheen of nostalgia. None of it should be normalized. 

There are not two sides here that can reasonably disagree. This is not normal. Don't watch it. Watch The Middle.  

Tupperware or Rubbermaid. I Don't Have Room to Care.

I bought a set of Tupperware from Amazon. It wasn't Tuppeware - it was Rubbermaid. But I don't  know the word for the things that I call Tupperware but aren't tupperware and I can't be bothered to find out or even whether it should be capitalized when I'm using it as a generic descriptive noun. Anyway, it looks like this:

I opened my fridge tonight to put the leftover pasta away and there it sat in its clear plastic container with a red top, right next to 6 or 7 other fridge things in the same, albeit differently sized plastic containers with red tops. It was beautiful. The order and sensibleness of all my fridge things stored in tidy, dishwasher-safe containers that all look the same, albeit differently sized? I enjoyed a palpable, authentic frisson of pleasure.

(This is not my beautiful wife.)

I almost never write in this blog anymore. I haven't played my piano in months. I had this plan to finally turn my novel into a proper eBook and even realized how it should begin (that only took 10 years or so). But I haven't done any of it.

Instead, I spend all my free brainspace stuffing it full of information about L'il Duce and the chaos he's engendered.

I don't want to know who Andrew McCabe is. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that liar and sociopath, doesn't deserve the space in my brain she takes up. Fuck Jefferson Davis Sessions, that racist old ferret.

God, I loved it when I only sort of knew who Eric Holder was.

I'm so angry at the people who live in that Fox News bubble (or, worse, just liked the cut of Trump's jib or something) who gleefully slouched us into this Bethlehem.

I had a Republican friend who really hates Trump tell me recently that she likes Paul Ryan. How could ANYONE LIKE PAUL RYAN!?!?!  Paul Ryan cares about nothing nothing nothing but increasing the wealth for the thinnest sliver of already wealthy Americans. He has no other policy position. No other guiding moral principle. He is a nice p90X body casing an absolutely depleted morality. There is nothing of substance about him at all.

But he says he hates abortion. He doesn't hate abortion. He doesn't care about abortion. But he knows he'll get votes from people who do and so people vote for him. The same people who, sorrynotsorry, can't be bothered to wrap their heads around the manifestly obvious truth that the only real way to reduce abortions is to increase access to birth control and sex ed.

See also the gun people, who just don't care that our children are being massacred at the altar of their gunny cult. They like it when Mitch McConnell fellates an AR-57 so much they don't care that he's the guy who keeps you desperately tethered to a corporate health care policy that couldn't give a shit about keeping you alive. Their concern begins and ends and how grossly they can profit off poor and middle-class people. The same people who keep fucking voting for them!

I don't want to know that Rex Tillerson laid waste to the state department that Hillary Clinton and John Kerry (but especially Hillary) spent eight years laying solid diplomatic ground on. HRC jetted around the world and worked her ass off to keep us safe. But to the folks who love Trump, she's Cruella DeVil meets Lady MacBeth meets an Ugly Stepsister, or some other bullshit sexist trope that the stupidest among us use to organize their lives.

I'm just so mad all the time. Aren't you? How does anyone have time to do anything but refresh Twitter and be mad (and be terrified and then mad again... mad is easier than terrified).

I soothe myself with bourbon, escapist tv and the calming, consoling, palliative joy of matching tupperware. Or Rubbermaid. I don't give a shit.

What has the American monster tweeted tonight?

By the way, don't give me any advice. Please. I am not soliciting advice. I'm venting. I'll give you advice instead: buy matching tupperware and fake orderliness in a terrifyingly chaotic world.