I have nothing against Texas. I have nothing against any state, really. Each and every state has a collection of terrible and wonderful people, although some of them need to DO BETTER, as the kids say these days. (Looking at you, Idaho. And several others.) Texas is the same as any, but yes, often it makes me weary.

It’s all that yee-haw Texas crap they’re always pulling. Yee-haw, we’re a nation unto ourselves! Yee-haw, we’re ruggedly independent and self-reliant! Yee-haw, let’s secede!

See, I’m old enough to remember the “let ’em freeze in the dark” Texas of the ’70s and ’80s, when they sneered at Michigan residents who were refugeeing to Texas like Okies; the auto industry was on its knees, the weather was awful and they’d heard there were jobs to be had in the oil industry, or the awl bidnis as it’s known down there. Michiganians were called the “black tag people,” as I recall, after the license plate colors of the time. Basically, Texans behaved like Texas-size assholes. I have not forgotten.

Later, when the tables were turned, when the awl bidnis fell on hard times, I don’t recall any of them getting an attitude adjustment. But let’s not be petty. I will be the bigger person here. I will say I am perfectly fine with helping Texas as it suffers through Michigan-like weather it is utterly unprepared for. Only it turns out we cannot help them because the Texas electrical grid is a closed system and why? Because yee-haw Texas, that’s why:

The separation of the Texas grid from the rest of the country has its origins in the evolution of electric utilities early last century. In the decades after Thomas Edison turned on the country’s first power plant in Manhattan in 1882, small generating plants sprouted across Texas, bringing electric light to cities. Later, particularly during the first world war, utilities began to link themselves together. These ties, and the accompanying transmission network, grew further during the second world war, when several Texas utilities joined together to form the Texas Interconnected System, which allowed them to link to the big dams along Texas rivers and also send extra electricity to support the ramped-up factories aiding the war effort.

The Texas Interconnected System — which for a long time was actually operated by two discrete entities, one for northern Texas and one for southern Texas — had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules. “Freedom from federal regulation was a cherished goal — more so because Texas had no regulation until the 1970s,” writes Richard D. Cudahy in a 1995 article, “The Second Battle of the Alamo: The Midnight Connection.” (Self-reliance was also made easier in Texas, especially in the early days, because the state has substantial coal, natural gas and oil resources of its own to fuel power plants.)

I’m told Texas is, in this emergency, getting a helping hand from Mexico, and brothers and sisters, that is hilarious.

I have only really visited Texas once. We drove across part of the panhandle some years back, passing through Amarillo, home of the American Quarter Horse registry. I recall lots of flat landscapes and…not much else. And I visited Houston for a job interview in 2004. It was…fine, I guess, although I was appalled by the local attitude toward fossil fuels. At least three people told me they’d mastered “air-conditioning the outdoors,” explaining how the roof on the baseball stadium was partially closed, then giant A/C ducts turned down on the spectators. Also, there was something in the parks, I forget. (Yes, I believe I’ve told this story before.)

“I don’t really like hot weather all that much,” I offered, weakly.

“Aw, you’ll change your tune after you spend your first Christmas in shorts!” one editor said. Yee-haw, Texas!

But I understand suffering, and I’m sure that single-digit weather in a place that is absolutely not built for it is miserable. Frozen pipes are miserable. Not having heat because of rolling blackouts? Miserable. Dangerous, even. People will die because they lack coping skills, and as I write this, I believe at least two have already perished from CO poisoning, trying to stay warm in a running car.

But I won’t say let ’em freeze in the dark. It’s a new era, and we need one another. But I will not forgive Ted Cruz. You Texans have to fix that one.

Also, stop building houses in reservoirs, you greedy idiots. You get hurricanes! JFC.

As for the actual dark, here in the land of the black-tag people, we got hammered overnight. The drifts were four inches up the back door this morning, and Wendy was super-bummed about that. I shoveled her out a little pee patch, cleared the back steps, failed to get the snow blower to start and left it to Alan, who is doing it now. More on the way, too, on Thursday, although it’ll be a little warmer. But we have insulation and long underwear and snow plows and know not to let a car be your furnace.

We haven’t air-conditioned the outdoors yet. And I prefer our bearded senator.

OK then, here’s the midweek update, a little early. Gotta start putting the DD newsletter together.

Late again, sorry ’bout that. I could tell you I was waiting to drop a link to my story on Mellissa Carone, but in truth, we were watching “Judas and the Black Messiah” on the telly, and also, I am weighted with pandemic February shut-in syndrome, the symptoms of which are extreme inertia and an ability to stay all the way indoors for…two days now.

Also, we are having a snowstorm and I should blow away the two new inches before six more arrive overnight.

Also, I am making tacos tonight. And that’s about all the news from Lake Wobegone.

But please, start by reading about Mellissa. She could use some media skills as she starts her journey toward the Michigan House. I learned that when she is challenged — I believe I asked why she found it so hard to believe that later-counted absentee ballots from a heavily Democratic city simply outnumbered earlier results from the state’s rural areas — she is the sort of person who says, “You’re lying” and calls you fake news and shuts down further contact.

Lordy. But then, with the news from this weekend, well, what else can you say.

I gotta go out and blow dat snow. Thanks for stopping by.

I keep thinking about the boat parades.

There were several around here that I can recall, and in and around our marina many docked boats flew Trump flags all summer. Part of me can understand why so many Trumpers from that neck of the woods — which is to say, “can afford a boat and a place to run it” — were so stunned by Trump’s loss. The proverbial Pauline Kael effect on the water.

We saw the remnants of a few once or twice when we were out this year, and we all saw the videos. Give them this: They sure looked like the were having fun. It was the Beach Boys formula: Sun + water + friends + air horns + beer + what-have-you = Fun, fun, fun ’til Joe Biden takes the White House awaaaayyy.

I still hear the bewildered, often pouting, comments here and there: But how could Biden have won, when we had huge rallies and boat parades? The idea that some people made up their minds and didn’t feel the need to stand in an airplane hangar for hours listening to the Village People was simply incomprehensible to many Trump supporters. I was plenty enthusiastic about Barack Obama in 2008, and he made a Detroit stop, on Labor Day. Let’s go see the future president, I suggested; as I recall, Alan’s sister was in town, and we all went. By the time we got parked and walked over to Hart Plaza and stood there for-fucking-ever in the hot sun and estimated the bathroom lines and would it be possible to get something to eat with all these people downtown, and, and, all to see him from seemingly miles away — I remember thinking that political speeches without a press credential were simply not worth the trouble, no matter who was speaking.

But that feeling of togetherness you’d get from standing on the deck of your own boat and seeing someone who looks and feels the same way you do in another one, and you’re both blasting “Macho Man” and wearing sunglasses — I could see where that would be powerful.

And it all culminates with the violent sons and daughters of those people ranging through the Capitol, the creepiest ones yelling Naaaaancy. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

So with that transition, a few links, then I’m going downstairs to work out.

Monica Hesse on that creepy call for the Speaker of the House:

Oh, Naaaaaaancy is a very specific scene from a horror movie. Oh, Nancy is what the protagonist hears when she is hiding in a parking garage, or in a stairwell, or crouched under her desk, or pressed flat on the ground in a damp cornfield. Her terror is played out for entertainment, whether that means a narrow escape or a bloody death.

Oh, Naaaaaaancy is said in a singsongy voice. It is the same voice that a child would use to say, Come out, come out, wherever you arrrrre in a backyard game of hide-and-seek tag. It is playful. It is sinister. It says, I am planning to take my time, and it will not be pleasant, and it will not end well for you. The men looking for Pelosi in the Capitol were strolling, not running.

…Some women — and I won’t say all, but I think it is closer to all than none — have heard their own first names called out in this singsong tone. Maybe a woman heard it when the front door clicked open, announcing the homecoming of the boyfriend who hits her sometimes. Or maybe she heard it intoned with flirtation and menace by the unnerving guest at a party; maybe she was hiding in the pantry at the time, concocting her excuse to leave. Or maybe she heard it while lying in bed, eyes wide-open, wishing she hadn’t told the pushy date he could sleep it off on the sofa.

Yup.

Trump was sicker than he, or his handlers, let on last fall:

The people familiar with Mr. Trump’s health said he was found to have lung infiltrates, which occur when the lungs are inflamed and contain substances such as fluid or bacteria. Their presence, especially when a patient is exhibiting other symptoms, can be a sign of an acute case of the disease. They can be easily spotted on an X-ray or scan, when parts of the lungs appear opaque, or white.

Mr. Trump’s blood oxygen level alone was cause for extreme concern, dipping into the 80s, according to the people familiar with his evaluation. The disease is considered severe when the blood oxygen level falls to the low 90s.

More lies. I am so, so surprised.

The Bidens on the White House lawn, embracing V-Day with their dogs. What a strange and unfamiliar sight.

And now, into the weekend of romance, or at least our weird version of it. See you when it’s over.

Man, that was hard to watch, wasn’t it?

I’m speaking, of course, of the daylong testimony in the impeachment trial, culminating with the last hour or so, when the videos from inside the Capitol were shown. With the very compelling graphics that demonstrated just how close to the senators and representatives that the mob came, you’d think this would be a slam dunk for the Democrats, but as we all know, it won’t be.

Nevertheless, I found myself almost incandescent with fury watching, and I thought I’d already pegged the needle on this one. Worst of all was the police, the outnumbered, overtaxed, why-the-hell-didn’t-they-get-more-backup police, their panicked voices on the radios. For them to be terrorized by this gang of scraggly-beard, stunted-penis, mouth-breathing, misusing-who-and-whom-and-never-mind-less-and-fewer bunch of terra-cotta-toothed* shitheads? It’s enraging.

And they’re going to vote to acquit. Because they suck so, so hard.

Seriously, though, how could anyone watch that and not believe Trump was the architect of the whole thing? I was almost physically sickened by it, and yet, just a few days ago, the majority leader of the Michigan Senate called this whole event “a hoax.” I wonder if he’s nauseous today. My guess is not.

Then, at the end of the day, Larry Flynt died, and I was moved to tweet. This is the first of a long thread, so if you want the rest, click on it and read it on Twitter:

RIP Larry Flynt, son of Kentucky and Ohio, who is known for so much more than can fit in a tweet. I will remember him most for something he said when I saw him speak in college, c. 1976: "I think a woman's vagina has as much personality as her face."

— Nancy Nall Derringer (@nnall) February 10, 2021

Obviously he was more than a colorful punchline. His porn could be incredibly gross, but he had a certain guilelessness that I always liked. And he was a legit First Amendment warrior. He made political satire safe for everyone. Gotta respect that.

I can’t wait to see how the defense answers what was laid out today. That’s a reason to get up in the morning.

* Original witticism credited to Brett Butler. Apologies for not doing so sooner.

Virtual Vince Lombardi was pretty stupid, no? It reminded me, however, of J.C. Burns’ occasional comments about the computing power necessary to display the virtual line of scrimmage. We could use these powers for good! (The virtual line of scrimmage.) And instead, we use them to dig up a dead coach and make him walk and talk.

Happy Super Bowling, all. It’s now halftime, and all I have to say is this: The Weeknd is no Prince. Or even Katy Perry. And certainly not Lady Gaga. At least it was a break from non-stop holding penalties and uplifting commercials. And the underpants-on-their-head dancers were…different.

Another weekend — a real weekend, with its third E, not this clown howling instantly forgettable music on my TV at the moment — come and gone. It was OK. The cold kept us indoors for much of it, but the errands still have to be run, and they were. It wasn’t so bad — high teens, bright sun, I’ll take it.

Sunday we went to MOCAD, Detroit’s contemporary-art museum, to see a small show of photos by Leni Sinclair, John Sinclair’s ex-wife. She is not a particularly talented photographer, but she had great timing and luck in her relationships and the right-place-right-time thing. The photos are of the counterculture/underground scene in Detroit and Ann Arbor in the ’60s/’70s. It didn’t take long to get through it, so we took a long drive home, including a lap of Belle Isle to look at the ice and watch the kids playing pond hockey.

Like I said, a pretty quiet one.

Anything to recommend you read?

Here’s Margaret Sullivan, the WashPost ombudsman, pointing out the obvious: Jeff Zucker bears a lot of responsibility for Donald Trump.

The Zillow sketch from this week’s SNL. Very funny.

When I get my vaccine, I hope it will be at Ford Field, because that would be a big win for lots of people, which is more than the Lions provide, most weeks.

Weak tea today, but the week ahead yawns. And so am I, at this stupid lopsided game.

Every so often, perhaps when I’m waiting for a phone call, or I want to pick a scab but I have none on my body, I read comment sections. And sometimes, when I am filled with self-loathing in addition to a scab-picking urge, I also read Facebook comment sections. Consequently, I have developed some thoughts about memes.

Before anyone had ever heard of the world wide web, I first heard meme described as “a viral idea.” That is, those things that pop up overnight, that suddenly everyone is repeating, usually with a “you know, they say…” but you can’t really trace where they came from. When did we all stop sneezing into our hands and start sneezing into our elbows? When did we stop calling the seventh planet from the sun YER-inus when we all grew up calling it Yer-ANUS? Why is every newscaster suddenly pronouncing “negotiate” like a Brit, when we don’t say it that way in American English?

(I had an editor who liked to inventory cartoon memes, visual shorthand that we all understand, somehow: A character wearing a mirror strapped to a headband is a doctor. A body lying on a bench with crosses for eyes is dead. And ask yourself: When have you ever slipped on a banana peel?)

Then “meme” was overtaken by the internet, and now it means “a picture with words on it.” Preferably a picture of a cat. But not always! Some are very funny. I will never get tired of the woman screaming at the cat, and even the distracted boyfriend still dislodges a good gag from time to time. But others…aren’t. Anyway, I see a lot of memes dropped into Facebook comments, many so crude and stupid that I’ve come to the conclusion that memes are like a primitive form of language for some, generally people too stupid to write a simple sentence or think of a halfway creative insult or joke themselves. If I’m looking over a page I have admin privileges on, I will sometimes just delete them willy-nilly, if only to encourage people to have an original thought from time to time.

I should add this doesn’t work.

Change of subject: The news of Marjory Taylor Greene’s formal punishment broke a while ago. It made me think we need to talk about CrossFit. Greene, of course, owned a CrossFit gym — or “box,” as those people call them — in Georgia before she made it to Congress.

Some years ago, the owner of my gym subleased a corner of it to a CrossFit trainer for a while. His clientele all wore short-shorts and tube socks, and made a lot of noise — big roars when they lifted, that sort of thing. I asked a trainer on the regular gym staff what the hell was it with those people. He nearly sprained his eyeballs rolling them and said, “It’s a cult. And they’re assholes.”

The trainer eventually found his own “box” and took his tube-sock people with him. But I started noticing CrossFit stories in the media. One in the Wall Street Journal detailed how CrossFitters often had trouble finding pants that fit, because their quads were so big. Another was about how some CrossFitters get rhabdomyolysis, a potentially serious condition that can damage the kidneys, because they work out so hard. (They had a jokey name for it: Uncle Rhabdo.) And then there were stories about how the founders of the business had launched “the CrossFit Games,” an event people actually paid to watch in arenas and on pay-per-view, in which the contestants…exercise. Wow, how fun.

Now, I should add I’ve known some perfectly lovely people who do CrossFit and swear by it, but I’ve known more who were assholes. What is it about a workout that attracts assholes? Yoga has its constituency, combat sports have theirs, swimming has its own, Zumba/Pilates/powerlifting, etc. What is it about working out in a box that attracts — or produces — Marjory Taylor Greenes? We need to talk about this.

But the weekend is nigh. So let’s enjoy that at the same time. We’re having a snowstorm right now — fat fluffy flakes all night long.

Feared I was going to miss today’s blog. I was reading the New York Times’ long, long, suuuuper loooong tick-tock on the post-election madness leading up to the Capitol riot. Tick-tock is journalism slang for a story that’s told chronologically. It’s also a table-setter, which is slang for a story that lays the table for the meal to come — in this case, impeachment.

I got through the thing — it must have been a million words — and while I’m not sorry I did, it also revived some anger that was starting to fade. For all the talk of how the night of the inauguration was the return to normalcy, it was only step one. Trauma doesn’t just go away like poof, you have to heal, and that takes time. So while the doomscrolling has eased somewhat, along with the midnight anxiety, we’re still pretty fucking far from OK, as Marcellus Wallace would say. And reading that thing took me all the way back:

The week (after the election) was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge.

As he met with colleagues to discuss strategy, the president’s deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, was urgently summoned to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was on speaker phone, pressing the president to file a federal suit in Georgia and sharing a conspiracy theory gaining traction in conservative media — that Dominion Systems voting machines had transformed thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes.

Mr. Clark warned that the suit Mr. Giuliani had in mind would be dismissed on procedural grounds. And a state audit was barreling toward a conclusion that the Dominion machines had operated without interference or foul play.

Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Clark a liar, according to people with direct knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Clark called Mr. Giuliani something much worse. And with that, the election-law experts were sidelined in favor of the former New York City mayor, the man who once again was telling the president what he wanted to hear.

This fucking moron. An Axios story is far shorter, but just as alarming, in describing a meeting Dec. 18 that went on for hours. Hours! And it wasn’t a pleasant one:

Flynn went berserk. The former three-star general, whom Trump had fired as his first national security adviser after he was caught lying to the FBI (and later pardoned), stood up and turned from the Resolute Desk to face Herschmann.

“You’re quitting! You’re a quitter! You’re not fighting!” he exploded at the senior adviser. Flynn then turned to the president, and implored: “Sir, we need fighters.”

Herschmann ignored Flynn at first and continued to probe Powell’s pitch with questions about the underlying evidence. “All you do is promise, but never deliver,” he said to her sharply.

Flynn was ranting, seemingly infuriated about anyone challenging Powell, who had represented him in his recent legal battles.

Finally Herschmann had enough. “Why the fuck do you keep standing up and screaming at me?” he shot back at Flynn. “If you want to come over here, come over here. If not, sit your ass down.” Flynn sat back down.

And he’s going to be acquitted, again. A just God would make a chicken nugget stick sideways in his windpipe and let the devil take him, but he’ll probably live to be 92. I can’t stand it.

Serenity now!

Anyway, it’s been a pretty good week so far. Got some work done today, closed my rings, lived another day. I hope you do, too. The hell with that groundhog — we gotta live through this.

Happy Wednesday.

You guys’ comment discussion about steak dinners that turn into sales pitches reminded me of the time my friend Jeff and I went to a speed-reading seminar. The Evelyn Wood method — remember her? The pitch was, you got one free lesson and then they leaned on you to sign up for the whole course.

As I recall, one of Jimmy Carter’s first actions after winning the election was to take a speed-reading course, which says so much about him — such an earnest schoolboy thing to do. But speed reading, as I recall, was total bullshit. The teacher showed us her technique, which involved sliding your fingers down the page, reading a page in about two or three seconds. And I don’t care how many classes you take, that isn’t reading, speed or otherwise.

I forget what we did after that first class, but I remember going outside and laughing uproariously.

What ever happened to Evelyn Wood speed reading? Let’s ask Professor Google:

Put another way, the problem with speed-reading claims is that speed-reading is really just another way of saying “skimming.” You can flash as many words as you like in front of your eyes, and though you may be able to understand each word on its own, they won’t mean much as a collective whole. Language processing just doesn’t work that way.

Yep. I read fast enough, although I never measured it, because who gives a shit? As a writer, I like to savor sentences, hold them on the tongue a moment or two to consider their flavors. No crime in that.

Boy, you can tell it’s bleak January, can’t you? Been indoors all day, except for a brief dog walk. Got the bathrooms cleaned, got a workout in, and now I’m too lazy to even take a shower. I did start the day reading this hair-raising account of a Canadian man — and many others — targeted by a mentally unstable “super spreader” of online slander. The perpetrator, a homeless woman, has targeted him and his entire family, as well as others who have crossed her in some way, for years, and guess what? Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The sites where she has proclaimed these people to be pedophiles, scammers, cheaters and worse? Say they can’t do anything about it.

This, more than anything, makes me insane. Lots of people make fun of newspaper editors for our once-quaint, and now-abandoned, belief that we were gatekeepers of information, but at its heart, it’s about taking responsibility for your use of a very powerful tool. That belief is absent in tech. Forgive the longer-than-usual cut/paste, but here’s the gist:

Many of the slanderous posts appeared on a website called Ripoff Report, which describes itself as a forum for exposing “complaints, reviews, scams, lawsuits, frauds.” (Its tagline: “consumers educating consumers.”)

He started clicking around and eventually found a part of the site where Ripoff Report offered “arbitration services,” which cost up to $2,000, to get rid of “substantially false” information. That sounded like extortion; Mr. Babcock wasn’t about to pay to have lies removed.

Ripoff Report is one of hundreds of “complaint sites” — others include She’s a Homewrecker, Cheaterbot and Deadbeats Exposed — that let people anonymously expose an unreliable handyman, a cheating ex, a sexual predator.

But there is no fact-checking. The sites often charge money to take down posts, even defamatory ones. And there is limited accountability. Ripoff Report, like the others, notes on its site that, thanks to Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, it isn’t responsible for what its users post:

If someone posts false information about you on the Ripoff Report, the CDA prohibits you from holding us liable for the statements which others have written. You can always sue the author if you want, but you can’t sue Ripoff Report just because we provide a forum for speech.

With that impunity, Ripoff Report and its ilk are willing to host pure, uncensored vengeance.

When these greedheads lose their protection, this will be why.

Just as an aside, has anyone considered what’s going to come of the insane overuse of the charge of pedophilia? It’s one of the worst things you can label a person, and yet, it’s more abused than ever, which means sooner or later it will lose its power; I mean, when Hillary Clinton is called a pedophile, what does the term even mean?

Which reminds me: You fans of “Lolita” might enjoy “Lolita Podcast,” which I’m working my way through now, on the recommendation of my daughter. It suffers from some podcast bloat, but in general it’s well-done, thoughtful and thorough. The episode I listened to while cleaning the bathroom was about Lolita in psychology, as well as the treatment of both survivors and perpetrators of child sexual abuse. The latter, it seems, is lacking, and a pre-abuse recognition of so-called minor-attracted persons, i.e. pedophiles, who haven’t committed any crimes yet.

A few years ago, when a little girl was raped, murdered and dismembered in a Fort Wayne trailer park, we had a comment discussion about the result of restrictions on where sex offenders can live, post-release. Because they can’t be near schools and so forth, and because their names are public, etc., many find themselves with few options, and end up in scuzzy apartment buildings and trailer parks, etc. Who else ends up in this borderline housing where no one else wants to be? Poor people, especially single mothers with young children. Bad policy, maybe.

Man, this has meandered, hasn’t it? That’s what happens when you skip your shower to clean the shower. Anyway, soon it’ll be Monday. Enjoy yours.

Sorry I didn’t show up Wednesday. I discovered something Tuesday night: Alan’s purchase of my new Apple Watch gives us a year of Apple TV free, so of course I had to sign up and start binging “Ted Lasso,” which I keep hearing will restore my faith in humanity.

So far, it’s just a pretty good show, enjoyable in a very sitcom-y-but-not way, and probably what I need to get through the rest of January, which is…almost over.

And now, a few weeks behind schedule, winter has settled in. Temperatures in the 20s during the day, teens at night, snow on the ground, more expected. But with the arrival of February on Monday also means that we’re only days away from The Changing of the Light, which is to say, the moment in winter when you can see the first glimmers of spring. Weeks of terrible weather are still ahead, but the light is coming from a slightly different angle, the days are noticeably longer, and you know eventually winter will be driven from its fortifications.

Also, Groundhog Day.

Back to “Ted Lasso.” It’s nice seeing Hannah Waddingham in it, who looked so deeply, deeply familiar but it took a few minutes to figure out why: She was the meanest nun in that one season of “Game of Thrones.” Nice to see her looking all statuesque and beautiful and her age, but a really great version of her age. Strange to see an actress whose face is expressive and lined from all the expressions she’s made in her life.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, right: Late in the last post, LAMary said:

I also had a bug appear in my kitchen once that was so big and ugly my huntress cat wouldn’t go near it. Jerusalem Cricket is what it was. Hideous looking thing. I’ve seen quite a few since then (I was a newbie to LA then) and I’ve also explained to quite a few newcomers what the hell that hideous thing is.

When Kate was interning in L.A. last fall — or the fall before last, I guess — she came across one of those while cleaning someone’s garage. She screamed, and then took a video for us. It was horrible.

Finally, one link for all: We live in a golden age of cringe. What is cringe?

Cringe is best understood as a cousin of camp, though cringe differs from camp in that camp can still be enjoyable on its own terms. When you encounter cringe, you know it because you feel it physically: your eyes squint to avoid the grandeur of the discomfort a work induces.

Cringe made its national debut shortly after election night in 2016. You didn’t have to be a Trump fan in 2016 — Lord knows I wasn’t — to watch with horror as Kate McKinnon, one of the funnier performers on “Saturday Night Live” over the last decade, debased herself and the program by putting on her Hillary Clinton pantsuit and performing mournful, earnest rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It was a shocking moment, an abdication of comedic responsibility in favor of a decision to paint Clinton not as a politician but as a kind of conduit for grief the show assumed was universal, rather than partisan.

Trump fans embraced their own cringe artifacts; the cringiest was the work of painter Jon McNaughton. Consider “National Emergency,” in which Trump, hands clasped in prayer, asks for guidance while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) lift the Mexican flag while trampling on America’s. Or “Teach a Man to Fish,” in which Trump, not exactly known as an angler, shows a young man carrying a book entitled “Socialism” how to improve his lot in life. The suggestion that Trump is a religious and self-made man clashes with everything we know about him, but it does speak to the ideals to which Trump’s supporters nominally hew.

An amusing read.

Now to wait for the snow. Have a good weekend, all.

The other day we watched “Hunger,” which is not “The Hunger,” the sexy, vapid vampire movie directed by Tony Scott, and not “The Hunger Games,” the franchise I lost interest in after part two, but a grim, grim, incredibly grim account of the IRA hunger strikes of the early ’80s in Belfast’s notorious Maze Prison. I knew a little about this, having lived through that era and also, having read “Say Nothing,” the recent history of Northern Ireland, but there was something about seeing it on the screen that underlined just how bleak and ghastly that whole era was, pitting the bullheaded Margaret Thatcher against the even more bullheaded Irish Republican Army, and in the end 10 men starved themselves to death in a brutal prison, to get the attention of the world.

And succeeded, I might add. But what a cost.

Early on, we see the largely self-imposed, horrific conditions the men are living under. They refuse to wear prison clothes because, they say, they aren’t criminals but political prisoners, and won’t wear the uniform of criminals. They want to wear their own clothing. The warden won’t agree to this, so they’re sent to their cells nude, with blankets to cover themselves. That was the so-called blanket protest. Then they used the only weapons at their disposal — their excrement and urine — and smeared the walls of their cells with the former, and poured the latter out into the hallways from under the doors of their cells. This was the “dirty protest.”

(Excrement and urine and other bodily fluids are prison weapons of long standing, any guard can tell you. Or Clarice Starling, who has semen thrown in her face in “The Silence of the Lambs,” as you’ll recall.)

Anyway, I don’t recommend this film for a bleak January night, although it is very good, and Michael Fassbender really outdoes himself prepping for the role of Bobby Sands; he dieted himself down to a veritable skeleton.

Also anyway, I am not sure how to explain how I got onto this, but… oh, right. I was telling Alan that I find myself whipsawed madly between wanting to put on some damn nice clothes and go SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE AND KROGER, goddamnit, or just giving up putting on any clothes at all. Since it’s been cold, I’m wearing longjanes most days, and when I come inside, I take off my pants and go around the house in my underwear. My own little blanket protest.

The new, easier-to-catch Covid variant has now been identified at the University of Michigan, which means it’s everywhere, and we’re far from the top of any vaccination priority list, so now we wait. Through the rest of the winter and likely into the spring and who knows, maybe the summer. I hope Biden’s plan gets moving. Flood the damn zone with that stuff.

Because we all know the potential alternative. Condolences, again, to Dexter on the loss of his Carla Lee.

And condolences to anyone who is missing Larry King, even though I can’t imagine why. I was Googling around and found that I wrote about Larry in 2010, but I really wrote about James Wolcott’s hilarious Larry takedown, published after Michael Jackson died. It’s linked within, and I suggest you read it.

Of course Mitch Albom rose to bravely defend King’s moronic interviewing style, but I won’t link to that. You can find it easily enough.

I will link to this NYT piece, by their excellent health reporter, interviewing Dr. Fauci on what it was really like to work for Dipshit Don.

Time to rewrap my blanket and go rustle up dinner, then. The week awaits.