Apologies for light blogging this week. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, which isn’t helping anything. This morning I was drowsy after three cups of coffee, but still had to go feed Kate’s kitties (short tour for the girls), so I stopped at Starbucks and got the Not Quite Dan Campbell Cappuccino (three shots) and feel somewhat fortified. At least until the next crash. Onward!

As I’m the approximately twelve millionth person to note, the firehose of shit coming out of Washington and the Middle East is nearly impossible for a mortal to keep up with, but one relatively minor story pushed its way into my peripheral vision, and that is the insanely toadying federal arts commission(s), all of whom are hand-picked for maximum ass-kissing, and you probably already heard this, but are you fucking kidding me:

For nearly two centuries, the White House’s main entrance — framed by a row of graceful Ionic columns — has been a signature image of the seat of American power.

Now the Trump-appointed head of a federal arts commission is proposing to replace them with a more ornate style favored by President Donald Trump. Those more decorative columns, a style known as Corinthian, are considered the most luxurious in classical architecture and appear on buildings such as the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court. They have long been deployed on Trump’s properties, and the president has handpicked them for his planned White House ballroom, too.

“Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have,” Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the Trump appointee who chairs the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal panel charged with advising the president on design matters, said in an interview last week. “Why the White House didn’t originally use them, at least on the north front, which is considered the front door, is beyond me.”

Really? It’s beyond you? The story goes on to say the president hasn’t asked for this, and Cook hasn’t discussed it with him, but like all good whores, Cook knows how to give the customer what he wants before he asks:

Cook’s proposal to overhaul the front entrance to the White House, known as the North Portico, reflects a common dynamic in Trump’s Washington, where the president’s deputies and allies often anticipate and implement his desires — and frequently upend decades of tradition and norms in the process.

This is Rodney Mims Cook Jr.:

He looks exactly like the kind of guy who’d prefer a Corinthian column to an ionic one. The difference, for those of you who forget your Comp Arts slides, below:

Ionic:

The ones at the White House are simpler than this, just the scrolled top and no fluting on the uprights.

Corinthian:

As you can see, Corinthian columns just cry out for gold leaf, don’t you think?

Anyway. That wasn’t the only lamprey-level ass-kissing for the week. Here’s what the Commission of Fine Arts committee on coins wants to do:

The proposal calls for a 24-karat gold coin depicting Trump leaning on a desk with clenched fists, based on a photograph taken by his chief White House photographer and now displayed in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Such gold coins from the U.S. Mint typically sell for several thousand dollars.

The proposed design:

Dig those cheekbones on Pigface.

I know that compared to the increasingly probable WW III, this should be minor stuff, but it’s especially grating, and I want these people humiliated and punished, then humiliated and punished again. Etc.

And I want them to leave the White House columns alone. Haven’t they ruined it enough already?

OK, to the TRX straps, then a shower, then a nap. I can feel the fatigue gathering behind my eyeballs already.