I don’t understand the passion for cars. If a vehicle can get me from point A to point B and not attract the attention of ‘Johnny Law’, I’m good with that.
I don’t understand why someone would spend exorbitant amounts of money on memorabilia. The only memorabilia I care to collect is memorabilia related to my life and my family and the friends I choose to call family. I’ve got enough clutter in my home. I don’t need Willie Mays’ headband, Joe Namath’s jockstrap or Ali’s mouthguard.
Or Shohei Ohtani’s plug of chewed tobacco, Tom Brady’s locker room water cup or Connor MacGregor’s ringside spittoon.
I don’t truly get why some art becomes priceless. I love art. Artists deserve everything they can get. They assist in making the world a much more beautiful place. I’m just flummoxed as to why someone would value an inanimate object that is non-functional at astronomical numbers I will never be able to wrap my head around.
The glitter of diamonds fails to move me.
As does the glint of gold.
Diamonds and gold have functional purposes and many industrial uses but humans unreasonably lust for them like every infant unreasonably lusts for the candy just out of reach at the grocery checkout. It’s our shiny objects addiction.
Ephemera. It’s all around us. We’re chasing immortality. Squandering money on the most unlikely objects and items and useless paraphernalia.
Kurt Cobain’s ratty, hole-filled jeans sold at auction for way too much.
What is the person who bought the jeans going to do with them? Display them on a wall? Wear them and bore every person they encounter with the knowledge they are wearing Nirvana’s tragically deceased lead singer’s worn out denims? Neatly fold them and put them in their jean drawer as some sort of mystically imbued talisman?
The things I don’t get about the world have been piling up for some time but the process is quickening.
I don’t get why the Pac-12 suddenly dissolved into nothingness. Ten of the universities fled to the east leaving two agricultural schools flapping in the wind.
Well, that’s not right. I know it was about the Benjamins — to put it in the vernacular anyone born after 1990 will appreciate — I just don’t get the irrational decision of having your university’s sports teams flying back and forth across the country multiple times throughout a year. Burning more jet fuel because the administrators couldn’t agree or decide how to fully monetize their athletes and compete with other conferences.
In fact, burning more jet fuel appears to be the answer to all the problems that beset college athletics everywhere. Once again, as far as money goes, enough is never enough. And money is the only reason everyone agrees on. No other reasons ever hold up to public scrutiny. “Spending more time with the family” simply means you are no longer competitive in whatever it is your moving on from, or you are moving on toward earning a greater salary acting as a pundit or lobbyist.
And, of course, I don’t — truly — get why your run-of-the-mill, garden-variety conservative citizen — one who loves the military, loves law enforcement, loves the rule of law, loves the Constitution, loves their freedoms and loves family values — will give their hard-earned vote, support or succor to a man who fails in every one of those categories.
I’m only talking about our fellow conservative Americans who know better. I’ve long since given up on those who attend the Fourth Reich’s pep rallies. I’ve long since come to grips with the indecipherability of America’s deplorables.
How can decent, conscientious people, in 2024, hold their nose and cast their lot with book banners, bedroom gestapos, backward focused, belligerent bigots? It makes no sense.
What makes even less sense is why a woman in the 2020’s would stand in the corner with those whose clear intent it is to smash the matriarchy trying to smash the patriarchy in order to turn the clock back to 1950? Tr*mp-loather voters, but faithful GOP members, want to keep today’s tax code while returning to the social heirarchy of the “good old days”.
You know what I think it is?
Clearly, that IS the GOP game plan. Return to the ‘thrilling days of yesteryear’ when white, cisgender straight males held the upper hand everywhere. They know the writing is on the wall with every passing decade.
It explains their vehemence towards immigration.
It explains their enmity toward women having sovereignty over their bodies.
It explains their animosity towards government programs.
It explains their unwillingness to cooperate or compromise — especially when the media if observing.
It explains their war on public education.
They’re willing to risk authoritarianism in exchange for the power to try and put Pandora — embodied by Roe, women’s liberation, the social safety net — back in the box. Those with consciences are bowing out.
Those with consciences but haven’t spoken up are wishing that no one has noticed that they never spoke up, or voted against popular acts passed by Biden which they were happy to take credit for when they visited their home town.
But, if they lose this power grab bid and Benedict Donald fades into ignominy, as he should, they will be stuck going forward bearing the burden of the American public being fully aware their political party is filled with irredeemable assholes and those who turn a blind eye to the irredeemable assholes amongst them.
Or, as Jeff Tiedrich likes to call them — a fucktangle of shitweasels.
So, maybe I do get THAT.
My mother-in-law sent me this and I just have to share it. On it’s face, it’s a feel-good story. If something untoward has come out since its brief internet notoriety, I don’t want to hear about it. I like their esprit de corps. Viva la France!
Also. . .
Uh oh. It seems we might have created a generation of homebodies. If you choose to read this story from The Guardian and writer Gaby Hinsliff, please consider leaving a donation. I love and support Guardian articles whenever possible.
Photo: David Yeo/The Guardian. Noah wears Paul Smith rollneck, Gap jeans, Falke socks and Ugg slippers. Eloise wears House of Sunny knit, & Other Stories jeans, Uniqlo socks and Birkenstock mules