Saturday, February 8, 2020

 Bleh. I am just not in the mood for the world today. Not in the mood for Trump's foolishness, not in the mood for the awful government Mississippi has to deal with, not interested in the foul rot at the heart of American identity, not interested in books, games, movies, none of it. I don't know why. I don't even feel depressed, just tired. We're just going to get our numbers and hope tomorrow's more worthwhile.



 It's a nice day today, too. For whatever reason and despite the actual full-night's sleep I got last night, I really didn't have much energy going into it, though, which is kind of a drag. I could've taken Otis for a walk out in the sunshine, which I really should have done since the rain is supposed to come back Monday. But I didn't, just holed up all day and tried to ignore it. Again, I don't know why. Maybe I'm just tired, as it's been a something of a week.

 Still, I need something interesting to write about beyond just how gloomy I feel. No one is interested in that apart from my therapist and psych doc, and they're getting paid for it. Twitter hasn't been interesting today. Once again, though, I will say the whole "[My Candidate] or Bust" mentality is going to get the anti-Trump forces beat like a red-headed stepchild. I'm not saying there is one candidate everyone should rally behind, for any number of reasons, and that's never really happened.

 One thing that's become obvious watching the 2020 elections play out is that the average "political expert" on Twitter has no idea what they're talking about. I don't know if it's they're too young to really have a grasp on how presidential elections generally play out - and every one we've had has played out at least slightly different than all the ones previously - or they simply have not been paying attention to politics until smart phones became ubiquitous and, suddenly, everyone was on Twitter.

 And since the strongest aspect of the American Psyche is that we're never, ever wrong regardless of how much time we've put into learning about a subject - or haven't as the case may be - it's generally a cacophonous gaggle of complete loons all honking at each other nonstop. This isn't social media's fault, it wasn't Twitter than made us this way. This is how we are, Twitter just gave us all a megaphone as loud as the President of the United States.

 Imagine that. I, a completely absolute no one who's never achieved anything particularly unique or special, can directly tell the President, the most powerful man in the world, that he's a knee-biter and a geek and probably smells like sour milk. And he can respond back to point out that I'm nothing but a "loser and hater". Brave new world, indeed.

 Again, this isn't Twitter's fault or social media in general, and there are a lot of great things once you get past the vile, blinkered greed that spurns on guys like Zuckerburg and Jack. I can keep up with my friends in Athens or my buddy in LA/Vegas or my brother in Oregon without having to actually talk to them on the phone. I hate talking on the phone. Plus, Twitter allows one to maintain on an ongoing feed of news and information on demand at the tips of one's fingers. Sure, there's a massive amount of misinformation floating out there - both intentional and due to laziness/ignorance - but if a person can't work out how to dig through that dog food to find the pony, that's is on them.

 So that's that. We've got our word count, so we can call it a night. I'm really not interested in digging into the News at all, so be my guest. I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the rest of the evening, so I might come back to this or write something that isn't quite so soppy. I wouldn't bet on it, though.