I don't think his voters care about the stock market. Well, not 99% of them, anyway.

Steph, I just saw that Will Burkart is doing a stand up comedy show in Cincinnati on Thursday. [link] I went to one of his shows back in December; he's hilarious.

His voters do have 401Ks and IRAs, but his money supporters are getting screwed even worse. Although many of them may have exited the market before his takeover knowing what would happen.

There is a part of me that thinks most voters across the spectrum are like the kids in the TV focus group on the Simpsons. They/we want relatable problems AND robots.(Although progressives rule and fascists drool, of course.) But no, don't think anybody asked for this. Not really. Oh and #FuckElon.(Just getting it in before it could send me to jail.) Or, in the words of a guy that was in the pharmacy when I was getting vaxed once: "Fuck his mama...fuck his daddy, fuck all his dead relatives...(pause) And, he overweight!" Not sure why that was the coup de grace of that excellent maledictum--just being all as it happened-ish.

I should say I think of the voting public that way after *this*--it used to be I thought there was a logic I didn't always follow. Split the difference on the work thing...sort of declined to go the extra mile on it. Put in a lot of work, but nobody really appreciates when I act like Ms. Fix-it anyway. (They might take my Inspiring Cripple card away, but that way I stand a decent chance of being alive at the end of the movie.) It used to really bother me how often disabled people did die at the end, but when I put my writer hat on and try to think like a soft abled guy, it makes some sense. They just don't like thinking of us Facing Conflict And Obstacles as many times as it takes to live as we do.(Maybe they literally don't believe it's possible, which, at times is a viewpoint with which I share some sympathy, much as I hate to admit that.) And, you know, actors love death scenes.

The condo high-rise building 2 of my friends live in is essentially catty-corner to JD Vance's house in Cincinnati. Those friends post pictures whenever any kind of protest activity happens (like, immediately after the sham of a meeting with Zelenskyy, there was one man just walking back and forth on the sidewalk in front of Vance's house, waving a Ukraine flag). Apparently today there's a protest to save public education (from what I can see in the picture, it's at least 25 people). It gives me hope to know that people are speaking out even though Vance isn't in town (but his location isn't the point).

Having spent three days driving to VA while simultaneously trying to rescue our mortgage from the mortgage company's incompetence, I can't say that shopping for internet at the new house is the most painful thing I've endured recently, but it's fucking close.

Got my run in this morning, and hit Whole Foods on the way home for piggy veg, and found Hero Bread. Thanks for pimping it, Laura! I'm going to have a Patty Melt for lunch and life will be very good for exactly the amount of time it takes me to eat it.

I drive by Vance's house on my way to and from work. So far, I haven't seen any protests, but I'm often there are weird times. There was another protest on campus today, though. I stopped to listen to the speakers for a little while, and one of them brought up a really great point -- some of the programs that the university proposed eliminating as part of "get rid of DEI" are programs that started years ago, before the university even started using the "DEI" acronym. The programs then became part of that label when the label became a thing, but any sort of "We want to go back to how things were before DEI" would mean keeping those programs. (But we all know that, when people are talking about "get rid of DEI," that's not what they actually mean.)

Ugh, Dana

That is heartening, Tep! Btw (this is extremely tangential if not completely separate) our new copywriter apparently lives in Cincy so I of course wondered if you knew her because surely editors and writers all probably know each other, right?

Guy whose last day is Friday called out sick today. His cubicle is all cleaned out, we may not see him again. And now my boss is feeling bad and going home for the rest of the day. I feel like I should run amok