Galactic Housekeeping #11 (2020 Holiday Edition)

"It's snowing still", said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is".
"And freezing".
"Is it?"
"Yes", said Eeyore "However", he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately." -- A.A. Milne "Winnie The Pooh"

I. Update on the Cut-Big-Tech-Out-of-My-Life Project:

1. Still searching for a blog platform that is easily used by the html-challenged and which doesn't enforce some form of censorship or retro-active cancellation on the user, and which will allow me to port almost 20 years of blogging from multiple sites (more) easily.

2. The Gmail address currently used by this blog will disappear by the weekend. It will be replaced with a new e-mail address, yet to be determined.

3. The alternatives to Facebook all suck harder than Kamala Harris seeking a new job she isn't qualified for. Especially Parler, which seems to be little more than a storefront for Conservative, Inc. These may improve in functionality and utility over time, but I'm not holding my breath.

II. The GOOD news

This Christmas holiday restored my faith slightly in the millennial generation, though my example may only be an outlier or a circumstance where my true value as an uncle was proven.

I have four nephews. They are aged 24, 22, 19 and 15. These are my sister's sons.

The oldest has just recently completed his MBA. The second has just re-enlisted in the Coast Guard for another 4 years. The third is a red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist that would give Andrew Carnegie or J.P. Morgan a run for their money who is already collecting Rolex watches like democrats collect ballots from dead people. The youngest is a budding football star.

I have been proud of them all since the days when they were born.

But never as much as I was on Christmas Eve. For they slew the Dragon that haunts their generation (as it has mine), the Baby Boomer, right before my very eyes.

The Boomer in question was their own grandmother, my own mother. And it was glorious.

I've spoken at length about the Dowager Overlady of Freehold many times in this space and elsewhere, so for those unfamiliar with this particular hellion, I'll summarize: take all of the worst attributes of the Hippie Generation -- massive dumbass, poor decision making skills, self-absorption, Cognitive Dissonance, empty moral preening, excessive greed, selective memory -- and multiply them by five. Add a large dollop of victimhood. Season with heavy-handed pinches of Entitlement, self-attributed "wisdom" in all things, inability to mind her own business and a general moral, intellectual and physical laziness. Add 54 years of making her children miserable because "Mother".  Marinate in situational ethics, unhealthy levels of self-regard, inexplicable neuroses for 74 years, with two divorces from Honest-To-God mental patients added for flavor, and voila! -- you've got Mom.

The woman who complains she can't leave the government-subsidized apartment in the old-age "retirement community" to go shopping (because she doesn't drive: neuroses about automobiles) and who is always broke despite collecting Social Security, Medicare and Disability was bragging about how she eagerly, with great joy, with a spring in her (two knee-replacements covered by Medicare later) step, voted for the Lump of Protoplasm with Alzheimers and his mixed-race-penile-sommelier, too.

She always votes dem. Not because she has any interest in politics, or policy, or even understands the ideological viewpoint the left alternately professes and then denies based on immediate need, she's simply one of those who will vote for anyone with a "D" next to their name because she equates "D" with a dollar sign.

And then begs her children for money every month.

It was like watching tiger cubs finally get their first kill. The boys took to calling her "Sleepy Joe". They accused her of stealing their future. They -- all FOUR -- expressed opinions that were based on factual evidence of how bad democrats are for everyone, with copious historical examples and reasoned arguments founded in the expression of basic economics, fundamental political science, and fucking common sense, that it brought a tear to my eye.

I didn't have to say a word.

And then Grandma played victim again, claiming she was being unfairly attacked...and on Christmas, no less -- have we no decency? -- conveniently forgetting how five minutes before she was rubbing her palms together, bragging about the payday to come, in anticipating ill-gotten gains taken from the mouths of her own family.

Fuck Santa...she has the democratic party.

III. "Just When You Think You've Seen It All" Department...

Something, I guess, one will only ever see in the Age of COVID and its concurrently-running Age of Incredibly Outrageous Shit.

About two weeks ago, the Overlord made one of his nocturnal trips to the local bagel store to assuage his raging Pepsi and Marlboro addictions. Upon exiting the store, the driver of the car parked next to his gets out and makes an offer that even I, native New Yorker, veteran of Extreme and Epic Debauchery in his Salad Days, could just not believe.

"Hey, Buddy...I got strippers. You want one?"

A quick glance at his automobile revealed no one sitting in either passenger or back seats.

The Overlord began to wonder if he had said pole cats stored in his trunk.

This is where the street smarts that every New Yorker develops in the same fashion as a wildebeest on the Serengeti kicks in, and you realize you're either about to get mugged, killed, or witness something that approaches "Oh-Fuck-NO" territory. 

A polite "No thanks" and a quick entrance to my own vehicle was followed by the sound of rubber tires screeching on asphalt.

I am 54 years old and a former alcoholic who could entertain you for WEEKS with tales of the trouble and unusual circumstances that only a young drunk with a shitload of money, no boundaries, no impulse control, an exceptionally-functional penis and piss-poor-decision-making skills can get into, living in the literal revival of Sodom and Gomorrah on the Hudson, and this is the first time ever that someone has offered me an invisible stripper in a deserted parking lot.

I have not been so stunned nor so frightened in such a long time... and I survived 9/11.

This world gets more fucked up by the minute.

IV. Looking Forward

2021 will see me engaged in more writing, considering I have few other things to do, now that shutdowns and fake epidemics have ruined my business and might even force me to -- gasp! -- seek employment under someone else's auspices.

The thought of returning to the horrible life of a cubicle slave gives me gas.

I'm currently re-thinking my options and trying to figure out some way that I can do something I really like, do something I want to do, do something useful to someone and still get paid in the manner to which we've become accustomed here at the Death Star. Or as close to it as possible.

For that matter, we like working out of the Death Star rather than some sterile steel-and-smoked-glass monstrosity full of fucktards, too. That would be an added benefit.