Thumbs down

A lot of people have been asking how my social media cleanse is going. At least I think they have. I can’t go online so I don’t actually know.

I’ve been at it, or not at it, for five days now and I have to say it’s going pretty well. But it’s a lot harder than I thought it’d be.

Clearly I was much more addicted to making snarky comments, pithy observations, endless and endlessly deserved Cadet Bone Spurs bashing, posting Tweets I thought were funny, clever memes, pictures of Ace and Lucy (world's greatest dogs), being the first to break news about recently departed public figures and celebrities, and racking up the likes than I thought I was.

It is nice to give the old scrolling thumb a rest. It’s also nice to reclaim time in the mornings and evenings to make a dent on that stack of new books piling up on my nightstand, continue bingeing The Sopranos and getting to bed earlier so there’s more night to wake up in the middle of.

At least now when I’m up in the night I’m not reaching for the phone.

The other frustrating thing is, to paraphrase Steve McCroskey, it looks like I picked the wrong week to quit social media.

What with the search at Mar-A-Lago, Cadet Bone Spurs taking the fifth over four-hundred times in his New York trial, Republicans losing what little was left of their conspiracy-theorin', propaganda-believin', election-denyin', Nazi-lovin', cult-joinin' minds over everything even more than usual, I can only imagine the cleverness, wit and belly laughs I'd be contributing as well as appreciating on social media right now.

I did make a minor modification in my program. Originally I was going to delete the social media apps from my phone. But I've discovered it's easier to reload the apps than it is to log back on once I've logged out. So the apps remain, but I'm logged out of all of them. And honestly, with my fat fingers and bad eyesight, logging in is much more of a challenge than I'm looking for right now.

Of course I am getting a low level thrill from the fact that, as promised, I’ll at least get to do a quick breaking and entering to put up my Rotation and Balance posts. Don’t worry, there’ll be no cheating.

Log in. Post. Log out. No one gets hurt. I won't even stick around or check back to see if anyone gives me any likes.

At least there’s light at the end of the tunnel. This trial run is only going to be somewhere between three weeks and a month, and then I’ll reassess my scrolling ways.

Like losing weight, exercising more and paying for an upcoming wedding, I’m sure this will get easier.

On second thought, those might not be the best examples.

Rain on his parade

It's hard to get out of bed every day, knowing there's not a chance you'll escape the ginormous amount of monumental stupidity and ineptness being inflicted daily on our once great nation from the shithole president. Here's the latest: he wants a military parade.

Apparently Toys R Us didn't have life-size toy soldiers, so the fake president has decided to play with the real ones. Allegedly, his reason is so the American people can have the opportunity to show their appreciation for our men and women in the armed services. But back on earth, Mr. Liar Liar Pants On Fire isn't fooling anyone. We all know the real reason is so the military can show him their appreciation, salute Cadet Bone Spurs, and demonstrate their allegiance.

Maybe if just one Democrat had clapped at his state of the union address, even by mistake, we wouldn't be talking about this.

It's hard to imagine another reality-show-star-turned-politician whose ego is so big, and dick is so small, that he feels the only way to make himself feel better is by having tanks and missiles parading down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Of course, knowing what the liar-in-chief's definition of "very fine people" is, I'm sure he feels like he'd be in "good company" if he gets his way and squanders millions of taxpayer (which doesn't include him) dollars and resources on his parade. After all, it's not like that money could be used for anything else like, say, helping homeless veterans get off the streets.

His portrait, once color corrected for his skin tone which is not found in nature, would be perfectly at home in a rogues gallery of leaders who've had military parades. Besides the Charlie Chaplin impersonator at the top, look who else insisted (and in one case still insists) on having them:

In the unfortunate event this exercise in ego inflation comes to pass, which like all sane Americans I'm hoping it doesn't, I'm sure the real warriors, the brave men and women of our armed services, will approach it as professionally and effectively as they approach every mission. Which means as they march past the presidential viewing stand, they'll raise their right hands and salute the orange carpetbagger using all five fingers.

Though my guess is they'll be wanting to use just one.