Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

The overwhelming emotion of my day has been relief. Just garden variety relief with a small side order of “why couldn’t we do this two years ago?”

But I’m glad the people came through, that there were so many “firsts” – especially Georgia & Texas.

Elon Musk basically setting a fuckton of money on fire is also a pleasant thing to think about.

There is so much work to do. We need REAL accountability – Representative Garcia, who will be leading the Oversight committee in the House telling R’s to LAWYER UP – that is the energy we need and have to carry through on.

Dems need to pass every damn piece of Good For The People legislation they have ever thought about – let Trump veto every last one. Carry “these are the things you could have had if we had a Democrat in the White House” all the way into 2028.

Republicans seem to be becoming unhinged at the results – I can only guess they’re worried they’ll get treated the way they’ve treated everyone else. Well, they’re going to have to sit with that. I am no longer in the business of reassuring them that this isn’t the end of the world.

I am not to the point of hope yet. I’ve seen Dems piss away opportunities more times than I can count. But I am at the point of making demands and I’m working through my list of “shit you need to do” to send to my electeds.

If they thought I was annoying before…

I recently had 13 glorious days away from the office where I didn’t hear a single corporate buzzword and my levels of “Bitch, please” when it comes to corporate nonsense are still delightfully high.

I need you executive teams to stop thinking that whatever it is you make or sell is “important” and demanding that your employees be “passionate about your mission” – it’s a bit ridiculous anymore.

Now, just because what you make or sell isn’t important, it can still be useful, and that can be enough! Case in point – my own employer – we make financial software. VERY useful, but not important in the grand scheme of things.

• We don’t save lives
• We don’t grow food
• We don’t make that food into other foods.
• We don’t house people
• We don’t make sure little kids eat
• We don’t make art
• We don’t protect or preserve natural resources

We just make financial software. And let me tell you – no one is passionate about financial software.

Your developers enjoy coding, your QC people like trying to break things, your salespeople – freaky extroverts that they are – love to talk to people. But the chances of any of them being actually passionate about what you make and sell are extremely low.

AND THAT IS OK.

Stop pretending what you do is important and demanding “passion” from your employees when we know that six days a week and twice on Sunday, you’re trying to figure out how to replace us all with the cheapest, least regulated, and most compliant labor force you can find.

Just be happy you have a workforce that shows up and has the self respect to do their job and do it well, even if they don’t care about the actual end product. All despite the fact that you aren’t paying enough, claim “the budget” is the reason none of us are keeping ahead of inflation, demand loyalty when you’d have people out the door on 5 minutes notice, and generally gaslight everyone.

Just get over it.

PS: We hate the damn AI tools. We have better things to do than chase around the digital equivalent of Chad the drunken intern who thinks he’s god’s gift to the universe. Chad sucks.

Look, I’ll be honest, my level of investment in the World Cup has mostly been, “I hope everyone has a good time!” (And I still don’t think we deserved to host it.)

But when the final came around and one of the few countries that has a government that has told our shithead in chief to pound sand is there?

Well, Go Spain! (Yes, I am petty!) And well done! You were well within your rights to edit Trump out your celebration photos. Cheating bastard never should have been there in the first place. (And looked so out of place and awkward that it looked like he’d photoshopped himself into the photo, and poorly at that.)

As far as the cheating…JFC. We should have been disqualified from the tournament the minute he picked up the phone. Belgium absolutely whooping our ass in the next game was the best possible outcome there.

For everyone that couldn’t come because of our crappy, racist government – I’m truly sorry – it shouldn’t have been that way. To the Iranian team – having to play in the US and sleep in Mexico was completely unacceptable, but you handled it with so much grace.

To all the fans that came and saw that we are more than our terrible government – I’m so glad you were able to see and experience that. Watching you try all our food (and love it!) was awesome. I hope that you left knowing that the reason we have all these amazing culinary traditions is because we are a multi-racial, multi-ethnic society, despite our own government hating that.

The Tartan Army! Drinking Boston dry is a hell of an achievement, and I don’t understand the traffic cones on statues, but I love it.

Erling Braut Haaland – please do not milkshake duck on us!

Mexico & Korea fans! I know your game was down in Mexico, but watching y’all have so much fun did my heart good.

To the sportscasters today: The first line of Lionel Messi’s obituary isn’t going to be “lost the 2026 World Cup” so just chill a bit on that.

Found out this morning that Ornery Beer is closing their Fairfax location, which suuuuuuuucks.

It was our go to anytime we were in Fairfax city – awesome selection of beers, fantastic food, great service and people.

But, rent and operating expenses have become too much, and everything is expensive and no one has any money, so yeah, I get it. And better to close one location and be able to keep the other two open than have the losses from this one take down the entire company.

But it still sucks.

Then I had to go to Staples and the location just down the street from here is also closing in mid-August.

I *loved* having that Staples so close by and convenient!! Sure, 30% off on everything in the store to help get it emptied out, but I’d rather have the damn Staples.

I have no idea what could go into either of these spaces. A restaurant would be the logical next tenant for the brewery, but the Staples? I mean, it’s big enough for a grocery store I suppose, but there is already one in that shopping center. No idea how that space could be filled.

Honestly, I think we’re just gonna have some empty spaces for a good long time, because I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind either opening a new business or expanding an existing one in this country with it’s psychotic leadership. How do you even operate when a 50% tariff on some critical supply you use could happen at any moment thanks to a presidential temper tantrum, and wages aren’t remotely keeping up with inflation, and disposable incoming is becoming something of a fairy tale?

It just sucks, and honestly, I put the blame squarely on everyone that put that fascist in office, because his wars and shitty economic “policies” are fucking everyone over.

ETA @ 7/20, 5:49PM EDT: Shithead announces 50% tariffs on Canadian products.

Taco Bell saw what was happening and started pulling fresh veg off the menu over a week ago.

I’m mad at the administration that cut monitoring programs for cyclospora.

I’m mad at Taylor Farms. Very Mad. They are huge, don’t have a great track record, and supply produce to a LOT more places than just Taco Bell.

Do you think there is just one contaminated irrigation system at one of their farms in Mexico? (Which makes for a very convenient “foreigners are bad” scapegoat to boot.)

I really hope it’s just that one farm, but do I think a venture capital backed firm would be cutting corners anywhere and everywhere, putting profits over safety? Hmmm…

Is Taco Bell perfect? No. But they don’t grow the damn lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and whatnot, but they at least pulled it because someone had two brain cells to rub together and said “there are already enough jokes about gastrointestinal distress, let’s not add to it” and did the right thing.

And while we may know *one* point of origin for this outbreak, I will be treading lightly on raw veg for a little while longer. Increased heat this summer means additional irrigation, which means more chances for a contaminated system to be in operation somewhere. It’s going to take a few weeks to see if we truly have gotten it out of the food supply chains.

Will I still eat some Taco Bell if the mood strikes? Hell yes, get me a sack of crunchy tacos and some pintos & cheese! Sure, let’s 86 the lettuce & tomatoes for a wee bit, but hell yes.

Taco Bell isn’t the villain here.

I would like to stop sending young people off to die for the sins of the rich and evil in this country.

We can crow all we want about our “all volunteer” forces, but if it’s the only way out of poverty or violence, then it’s not volunteering.

Stop putting people in office who view service members as nothing more than pawns in their sick games.

I recently saw a video where someone was responding to a comment that was along the lines of “The administration is getting away with fucking everything…” and the response was basically “Oh, but they’re not, they’re losing a lot in the courts.”

The response was given in good faith and the subtext was, “Don’t fall into despair” – but the fact of the matter is, they’re getting away with pretty much fucking everything and losses in court don’t seem to matter cause they keep going on their merry way.

I understand wanting to point out anything even remotely positive happening and yes, we should point out those wins. But also, just let people be livid about things, too.

Because they shouldn’t be getting away with anything, because they shouldn’t even be in power.

Because every damn institution out there has failed the people of this country.

• The courts. Lower court wins don’t mean much when you know the last step is the billionaire owned SCOTUS, and no one will take action on that corruption.
• Journalism is dead. Trading softballs for access and tax breaks, and fascism gets clicks.
• Corporate America sold out for tax breaks, and a chance to get back their “white boys club” roots.
• The last administration couldn’t even throw down a few speedbumps, much less any guardrails for us in 4 years.
• Merrick Garland was quite possibly the worst choice for Attorney General that could have been made, and I lost track of how many times I heard, “The wheels of justice move slowly” when time was most certainly not on our side.
• Biden put his pride before the country and insisted he could run for a second term.
• The left couldn’t put its misogynoir in the junk drawer for one fucking day and tick a box for Harris.
• The right couldn’t see past it’s joy in being hateful and just…not vote for Trump.
• Dems continue to throw marginalized groups under the bus hoping they’ll peel off 3 Repubican voters, which will never happen.

And now we’re stuck with the most fucking evil and corrupt government in modern US history. We voted, repeatedly. We yell at our representatives, even though the vast majority of us don’t have the pull to get anything beyond a canned response. We protest. We do what we can with what we have, and we know it’s not enough, but we try anyway.

Now we have a war, a president looting the Treasury, ICE and the National Guard are still in the streets, no one in the Epstein files is feeling any pain, gas prices are up over 50% in 3 months, the cost of everything else is going through the roof, activists for the rights and equality of trans folks are being branded terrorists, and the AI cultists really just want us all dead.

Forgive people if they don’t get overly excited about the good guys getting some wins in court.

I know, I know, they want us exhausted, and beaten down, and just done with it all. Some days they’re going to win on that count.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the MV Hondius and it’s hantavirus outbreak.

Now, I follow some very smart, calm folks in the medical field, and they are not panicking.

So, I am not panicking. But damn if my left eye isn’t a little bit twitchy.

The US doesn’t have the infrastructure or leadership to deal with a public health emergency of any scale.

Some folks got off the fucking boat and flew home almost two weeks ago with NO contact tracing. All over the world. The wife of the gentleman who died – she got on a COMMERCIAL flight – and though they decided to not let her fly – a flight attendant is now sick.

I keep hearing, “transmission by close, personal contact” – 5 confirmed, 3 suspected cases on the boat, plus the flight attendant. How up close and personal were all these folks? I know, cruise ships are heaven for viruses, but still, if it really requires super close contact, doesn’t this seem like a lot of people?

Then I think about how half the country just couldn’t be arsed when it came to Covid. Wouldn’t mask, threw temper tantrums because they couldn’t get a fucking haircut, and were generally complete assholes about it. A government that didn’t do jack shit for anyone, but sure as hell tried to profit off it all.

And I’ll admit, I didn’t enjoy spending so much time Not Doing Things for multiple years, but I didn’t mind, cause it wasn’t hard – I didn’t want to get sick or make other people sick. What was hard was watching so many people not giving a shit about anyone else around them.

Plus the bonus of fucked supply chains.

It’s just all bringing up a lot of unpleasant memories, and I don’t particularly want to do it again, and thinking about it all makes me mad, sad, and tired.