Less is Still Less

When I was a kid, I heard this “educational” story; I don’t know if it was part of school or just something that went around. But the gist of it was:

A struggling olive company was trying to figure out a way to save money. No one could come up with anything actionable until they asked an old hand from around the factory. He said, “Just put one less olive in each jar. It’s not enough that anyone will miss it, but over time it will add up to a lot of extra jars to see from the same amount of produce.” They did and the idea saved the company.

At the time, this seemed like some good old folksy wisdom. Unfortunately, the modern business culture has put that story on steroids and turned that into a core business principle: Always provide less than what people expect.

Earlier today, I looked at a bag of potato chips Sweetpea brought home from the store. It struck me that the bags used to be so much bigger. This was a standard bag, not the big “family-sized” version. I checked the net weight and it was about 7 ounces. I don’t remember the actual net weight from years gone by but I know it was a lot more than 7 ounces… 12 at least, maybe even a pound. But here we are, paying the same price (or higher) for half as much.

I also remember from my childhood when they first introduced “Fun-Sized” candy bars. I don’t know which evil executive at Nestle thought a tiny, two-bite version of what used to be a quality candy bar would be considered “fun.” As a kid, my idea of “fun-sized” would be a Snickers the size of my head. And they still shrunk the size of the regular candy bars to about half of what they were. I used to be able to get a righteous candy bar for a quarter and even then I thought it was a rip-off. (I preferred the 15-cent boxes of Spree, Lemonheads, or Sweet Tarts. You could really make those stretch for a while.) All the candy bars now are punier versions of their former selves and go for about a buck or more. They’ve taken so much value out of candy that Almond Joy might as well be called Almond Ennui.

It’s like that with everything now. The Powers That Be look at us as walking dollar signs; just one more commodity to be used up for every bit of currency they can wring out. They track our whereabouts and spending habits with internet browsers, phones, apps, credit cards, and reward cards; monetizing our very existence.

I went to KFC the other day and got a 3-piece box. The leg was the size of a wing-drum. Each thigh was about the size of a hockey puck. And the little round container of mashed potatoes that's smaller than the old cup they used to use? The bottom is concave, further reducing the size.

I went to the freezer to get some ice cream. We had a package about the size of the old half-gallon containers. Now, instead of 2 quarts of ice cream, there's only 1.44 quarts. And do you know how they do it? The packages have rounded ends rather than the old cubic rectangles. When they round off the corners, they reduce capacity. When was the last time anyone wanted less ice cream? The shrinkflation is out of hand!

They’ve turned air travel into an ordeal of finding out just how much discomfort and inconvenience we are willing to accept and still go through with it. Leg room and seat width are decreased until we’re jammed into the fuselage, cheek to cheek, without decent food and with minimal drinks. I think the only reason most airlines even offer beverage service is to distract us from how uncomfortable it is. Everything we used to get as a courtesy, food, blankets, pillows, are gone. If you’re lucky, some airlines offer to sell you these things. And then they want to complain that people are rude and cranky.

And we just lap it all up. We’re the proverbial “frog in the slowly heating pot of water,” too unconcerned with the big picture to change the trajectory of our doomed existence. They feed us celebrity bullshit listicles, and news factoids while we slowly become frog soup.

We’ve been dumbed down as a culture to the point where we just elected a president as a response to high prices, yet his only announced policies are guaranteed to make prices soar. And won’t these same people be surprised when 95% of the much-hyped next round of tax cuts goes to the super-rich and once again, the rest of us get the scraps?

It makes me want to go out and have some business cards made that say, “I fucking told you so.” I’ll give them out to anyone who voted for the new regime and then wonders whose fault it is when they can’t afford a cold 4-pack of beer. Or are in shock when the price of gas they see up on the sign is calibrated for quarts. Or someone turns BOGO into BOG0.

Yep, right after I post this I’m gonna order me a new 425-count box of cards. I heard they’re on sale for the holidays.

This has nothing to do with anything. It just makes me laugh and I need one.

Cabinetry for Dummies

So we’re a couple weeks out from the Big Reveal and I’m trying not to be bitter.

I said I’m trying… I didn’t say I was successful.

Now we’re at the “Holy Shit, He’s Really Gonna Do It” stage as he’s rolling out his cabinet nominees. Each one seems more heinous than the last. I mean, Gaetz for AG? That’s certainly putting the fox in the henhouse. I just hope there’s some way that the findings from the Congressional investigation into his sex abuse charges make their way public. Someone’s got to leak it. Dirt that good always finds the daylight, eventually.

RFK Jr in charge of  Health and Human Services? That’s like putting a Christian Scientist* in charge of the Food and Drug Administration. It’s not going to be pretty. In this case, people will likely die as a result of the new regime, especially if a new pathogen makes an appearance.

Elon Musk in charge of a new department dedicated to governmental efficiency? This guy forgot to keep some engineers on hand before decimating his Twitter staff.

I can’t wait to see what he throws MTG’s way… maybe she can be the head of NASA and build a defense system to use against those Jewish space lasers.

Perhaps he’ll name Lauren Boebert to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. She’s probably got all the research material she needs, right in her den.

These are all just preliminary nominations but I think they’re going to stick. There may be outside circumstances that do in one or another but it won’t come from Congress. After his big win, do you really think any Republican Senators are going to buck him? All TFG has to do is bark at them once and they’ll roll over and show him their bellies. They are not going to cross him, especially now when he’s got more power than ever and has free reign to legally torment anyone he chooses. These guys will be the rubberiest of rubber stamps.

I saw that President Biden met with him at the White House, a courtesy he never extended when the roles were reversed. I’ve seen people say that maybe he’ll learn something this time around for when it’s time for him to go.

First off, I don’t think he’ll ever just “go.” His nail marks will be on the door frames before he’s finally drug out of there unless it’s on a gurney. But more to the point, he won’t learn a damned thing because this is the way he thinks it’s supposed to be. People cater to him, he caters to no one. He sees such courtesies as a one-way street, always running in his direction.

The only solace I take from this sideshow is that so many of his nominees will be incompetent. His administration might as well be a homage to the Peter Principle, wherein everyone rises to their own level of incompetence. These fools won’t be able to get anything done because they’ll have fired all the people who knew how things worked.

Elon should feel right at home.

 Director’s DVD Commentary: I vacillated a bit on whether to include this explanation because I hate to explain jokes, but since these people aren’t in the headlines anymore, many may have forgotten about them or never knew.

The Christian Scientists were a slice of Christianity that didn’t believe in modern medicine. Whatever illness befell you was God’s will so the only remedy was prayer. Then if someone died, it was because they didn’t pray hard enough or were otherwise unworthy.

I first heard about them in a comedy bit by 60s satirist Tom Lehrer. When introducing a new song he mentioned that it’s been a nervous year and people were “beginning to feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.”

90-Days to the Dark Ages

I still can’t get over how Muslims were moving over to voting Republican. This is even though TFG’s first move last time was to ban all immigration from Muslim countries. Well, except from Saudi Arabia. Even though they provided 19 of 20 9/11 attackers, he thought he could get a tower with his name on it built there. Money always wins out over prejudice with these guys.

Anyway, I was watching some more of those 90-Day shows last night when it all suddenly made sense.

Back in September, I wrote about getting hooked into the 90-Day Fiancé world. I even mentioned one storyline where a 41-year-old American woman was going to Jordan to marry her 22-year-old beau, who immediately began putting restrictions on her dress and behavior. (And somehow, despite the existence of the internet, she never saw coming.)

I’d only seen the first installment of their story when I wrote the post, but it’s continuing as one could foresee. The guy’s demands generate all kinds of conflict, while this woman who is old enough to be his mama is expected to do as he tells her and stop questioning him about it.

I told Sweetpea last night that they need to let me write her a speech to deliver. Something like, “Listen Anand, I was a 19-year-old woman on the day you were delivered screaming in your diapers and knew more about the world outside your insular little bubble than you’ll ever know. You did NOT gain superior wisdom by the mere happenstance of being born with a dick. Now treat me like a grown-ass modern woman or you can take that dick and find someone else for it to disappoint.”

Yes, I know she’s never say that, because she’s got “feelings” and shit about the guy, but I can dream.

There’s another storyline where a woman went to see her Arab boyfriend in South Africa for the first time but was so nervous about flying she brought her ex-boyfriend with her, which was an unbelievably stupid idea, guaranteed to cause a major fight. And it did, leading to the boyfriend storming off, shouting profanities, and wanting nothing further to do with her.

As it usually goes, they coaxed him back to talk with her, and they ironed out that little wrinkle with a heart-to-heart talk. But last night, she got to meet his friends, who immediately called her out for having bare arms and midriff and tattoos. They told her she’d be expected to become Muslim to continue to date the guy, which was not something that had previously been discussed. 

They always wait until they feel the woman is hooked before telling her about their primitive expectations.

So, now looping back to the election...

Last night it all made sense. This is why the Muslim vote is migrating to the Republicans. They’re not just a “socially conservative” society, but one that would gravitate to the kind of medieval society Republican bible-thumpers are pushing. They want women on their backs and failing that, in the kitchen. They want them docile, obedient, pliant, and unquestioning, like a pet retriever. One who lives to serve the man. They certainly weren’t going to vote for one for president.

I’m sure they also like the persecution of gays, heretics, and liberals as well; anything that cements the notion of male superiority. However, they probably underestimate the degree to which they will never fit in with the MAGAs. Even if they agree with all the policy points, they’ll never be anything more to MAGA than another raghead to deport.

“Thanks for the vote, though!”

Dark Times Ahead

Well, this one was a real kick in the sac. I think I’d rather have had the presidency stolen than accept that a majority of the country voted for a self-proclaimed Day One Dictator.

In 2016 I wrote this following that election:

November 8th, 2016 will go down in history as the day we stood up and declared that we are a small, fearful people, who would rather literally build walls than solve philosophical and economic problems.  It’s the day we rejected calm, well-reasoned decision-making for a carnival sideshow of bluster and bravado.

Why is it always the people who wrap themselves in the flag and venerate the Constitution are the ones who want to completely undo the very freedoms the Constitution provides?  They “love America,” but want to change her basic nature.

This time, it’s going to be worse because he will be surrounded by yes men, with nary a grownup to be seen in the room. There may be no stopping the damage he’s prepared to do to this country in pursuit of his own glorification and vengeance.

I know I had a bad feeling early on while watching the numbers come in. They kept saying to wait for more of the votes to be counted, but even where she was cruising, she always lagged behind Biden’s numbers. The longer it went on, the more dread amassed in my guts.

I kept waiting for that lifeline to appear, while all the peeps on my Twitter feed were saying, “Just wait, this is where we were last time and the late votes save us. But it never happened.

I went to bed around 12:30, right around the time they were saying that TFG’s lead in PA was more than they had votes left to count in Philly.

Director’s DVD Commentary: I guess I’m going to have to adopt a new non-name for “him.” For the moment, I’ll continue to use “TFG” only the F will mean something else.

Everyone’s asking the same thing, “How did this happen?” I know a lot has been written about this already, in the mere two days since Election Day. I intended to write my follow-up post on Wednesday, but I just didn’t have the heart to do it. Additionally, it doesn’t much matter now, does it? It’s done.

But here we are and I feel like I should put something out there, just to put an ending on it.

Here’s what I think happened.

The media delivered this victory to the GOP’s doorstep, by the constant sanitizing (or sane-washing) of TFG’s speeches and messaging. They never called a spade a spade and while propping up this maniac, demanded that his opponent be practically perfect, or at least cleave to the version of perfection they wanted.

Plus, the Right Wing Media outlets like Fox “News” were doing their thing to trumpet every perceived fault, blame everything bad on Democrats, and whitewash the bilge coming from their guy. These were military-grade persuasion techniques used on people who desperately wanted to believe their message. I spoke with people over the weekend, GOP supporters, who insisted that the economy was in the toilet and only TFG could fix it, all evidence to the contrary. Every argument he provided was straight off the Fox list of talking points.

They created the image of her as “Border Czar,” a position that never existed and a responsibility she never had, and spent her entire campaign attacking her for it.

They also worked hard to make people forget what a cluster-fuck his first term was, culminating in the deaths of over one million Americans due to his botched handling of COVID. By the time Fox was done, people actually believed those were the “good old days.”

Misplaced anger over the war in Gaza probably lost Michigan for the Dems, even though the next administration will be even worse for them. TFG doesn’t give a shit about people in Gaza. He’ll give the Israelis all the support they want.

Abortion wasn’t the factor we all hoped it would be and I called that out months ago, when the Red States were passing reproductive freedom guarantees. I said at the time, “There’s a big difference between voting for a single, stand-alone issue versus a name with a D beside it. You can vote for an issue without crossing a party line but not for a lousy Socialist Liberal Commie Democrat.” Modern team politics dictates that, as evidenced by seeing people pass abortion guarantees while electing the very people from whom those rights need protection.

I will never understand the women who just voted to reduce their own standing in society, giving up the right to determine the use of their own bodies.

Latino men moving en masse to TFG is incomprehensible to me. I see all the analysis about how they come from a socially conservative culture but you’d think self-preservation might weigh heavier when the guy they’re supporting wants mass deportations. Do they think voting Republican somehow spares them? They’d better have their documentation stapled to their underwear when the troops start rounding up all the brown guys. I don’t think they’ll be too particular about who they detain. I’m envisioning a “pick’em all up now and sort’em out later” kind of vibe. But this feeds what I think is the primary issue.

Too many people won’t vote for a woman for president, especially a woman of color. You can see it in the results. She kept coming in below Biden’s numbers. She was his GD vice president! They make up the same Administration. Sure there are some minor differences but considering the opponent, how important were they?

The biggest difference was that of gender and there are too many people for whom that’s a deal breaker. I’m sure that was a factor in the Latino shift. In addition to being socially conservative, the ethos is patriarchal, so I’m betting that a lot of these guys feel that voting for a woman would make them less of a man. Less of a caveman, anyway.

Like many others, I’m not sure what I will do with this space. This political intrigue and coverage over the last decade has been a grind. Maybe I’ll do like my pal Hackwhacker and lay low for a while. Or maybe I’ll find something else to write about. Like the rest of us, I will have to figure it out as we go. We’ve got two months of sanity remaining.

See you on the other side.

Apocalypse Eve?

Welp, here we are on another precipice. Tomorrow night we’ll get a good look at what our future may bring, if not certainty. We’ll get to see who’s been right all along and who’s full of shit. Are the polls right and this will be a photo-finish horse race? Will the Libs be correct that large pockets of undeclared Blue Voters have been keeping their leanings to themselves? Or will the MAGAs be right (shudder) and their guy wins in a landslide?

And if the Left is right, how far will TFG guy go to overturn the election, and can such an effort possibly be successful?

Last week, Martin Longman at Progress Pond wrote one of the scariest “What-ifs” I’ve seen to date, outlining the most likely chain of events that would lead to The Former Guy becoming The Returning Guy.

The basic idea is that the Republicans win the House and then with voter fraud accusations being thrown around (by themselves and their proxies) stall on electing a speaker. We KNOW they won’t have a problem with that, given how long it took them to come up with a Speaker under ordinary circumstances. If they can stall until January 20^th, when the current administration expires, there will be no president or vice president in office. Then they elect TFG as Speaker and the chain of succession elevates him to the presidency. (There are other sub-factors, like having to win some court battles, but that’s the gist of it.)

I find this scenario terrifying, not only because it follows established law, but the GOP would have no qualms about seizing power this way. The one giant snag here is that they have to win the House and that’s a big IF. I’d be surprised if the Dems hold the Senate, but the House seems attainable. Over the past two years the gap has narrowed so it won’t take that many flipped seats to change the control. And because every House seat is up for renewal every year, there can be big turnover when there’s a major change to the status quo, like the Dodd decision.

Suffice it to say that every seat is important in this election. Every win will be huge and every loss, devastating.

I don’t know what more there is to say about it; we just have to wait to see if sanity will reign or we’ll be plunged back into chaos.

I expect that I’ll have another post out on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on how and when things shake out. Although in fair warning, if TFG wins, my post won’t be anything more than withering profanity and guttural howling.

See you on the other side…