done, it's done, he's fucking done
Holy shit, what a week! Joe Biden is the "projected" winner of the 2020 election in the United States, and the collective relief among slightly more than half the country—how depressing that proportion is, is another conversation—cannot be overstated.
I got on FaceTime for a little bit with Gabriel on Saturday, and I realized talking to him that I really should have spoken to him on election night. He could have talked me off a cliff, as he knew even then not just what the projections were, but that due to how the ballots would be counted, Trump would likely be ahead initially and then Biden would pull ahead once all the mail-in an absentee ballots were counted. Apparently he even had some people to comfort and attempt to reassure that night, to little to no avail; I think this was largely residual PTSD from the 2016 election, when we all went in so optimistic and then got clobbered. I honestly don't know how much of a difference talking to him on Tuesday might have made, but it's possible I would have gotten at least a slightly better night's sleep. As it was, I went to bed that night with the absolute mindset that a Biden victory was a long shot and we were looking at not just four more years of President Fuckwit, but literally the end of America as we know it. I literally felt ill.
That turned around before the night even ended on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, but the call was not officially made until three days after that: Saturday was a truly unusual day in American history, people nationwide literally dancing in the streets, less over who had won than over who has finally been vanquished, in a way no other attempt had succeeded at doing (even though it absolutely should have). And to have such election victory celebrations on a Saturday when all elections are actually held on Tuesdays, that was a little weird. But still good! Honestly Saturday was a great day, and much of it recalled the public jubilation of Obama's win in 2008. The key difference, of course, being that currently we are in a pandemic, the effects of which our current president is willfully and spitefully ignoring. Thank God Biden has already announced a COVID Task Force consisting entirely of doctors and public health experts; it's just too bad it can't be implemented right now, as President Fuckwit's spiteful neglect continuing over the next two months will needlessly cost lives.
Gabriel was almost bizarrely optimistic on that call on Saturday afternoon, not just about a Biden Presidency but about the future of the country beyond, and even about our chances of taking the two Senate seats going into a January runoff, and giving us the Senate majority. I remain a bit cynical about it, given a multitude of factors, not least of which is the fact that Trump actually did still get more votes this time around than he did in 2016—we just managed to achieve higher turnout. So, I said, "I guess we'll see." He just laughed and said a facetious "Thank you."
I mean, let's get real. When it comes to climate change, without truly radical and dramatic changes, we're still basically toast. We're just going to get fucked at a slower pace than we would have been otherwise. It's already common knowledge that we're past the point of no return with many effects of climate change even if we start doing everything we should be doing right now, and even with Democrats in charge we know that's not happening. I'm just happy we have democracy surviving a little while longer, even as the planet continues to fall apart around us.
Climate change is the most important thing we face right now, and yet we still have to prioritize it after things like the coronavirus and election integrity, and arguably even police reform and criminal justice reform. I just can't bring myself to picture that rosy a future for humanity. This election makes me feel like we've just been giving a chance to gasp for breath for a minute, before we simply continue slowly sinking, while we feel gratitude for the sudden absence of some douchebag deliberately shoving our heads under the water.
And the current state of the Supreme Court remains a big, big issue by the way.
On the flip side, I have no patience for the people—even among the left—acting like Joe Biden is somehow some terrible choice. Give me a fucking break. My niece remains convinced he's literally a pedophile, a claim for which there is no evidence. I wouldn't call her "left" or "right" per se, but she is clearly certainly (and unfortunately) susceptible to targeted and organized social media manipulations. We all are, actually, but some of us a lot more than others. Anyway, even many on the left who don't go so far as preposterous accusations like that still demonize him merely for being more of a centrist, which is precisely why he fucking won. He was never my first choice either, but I have a pretty clear understanding now of why my favorites (namely Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, arguably even Amy Klobuchar) would not have carried the swing states Biden so narrowly won.
And frankly, his announcement of the Coronavirus Task Force today is a beyond promising start. I actually do have high hopes for his administration and what he and they can do with what they have to work with. My bigger issue is climate change and how much damage is beyond what they, or anyone, can work with.
I did have two instances of socializing over the weekend, both of them virtual but whatever works. Laney and I watched a movie together over Skype on Friday evening, utilizing the system was have fairly well perfected now: She has me on Skype on her phone while I have her on Skype on my iPad; she plays the movie on her laptop and I play it on my desktop, each of us using headphones or ear buds (AirPods in my case) to listen to the movie's audio, so we don't hear the slightly off-sync playback from each other's Skype feeds. We simply press "play" on three, and this works just fine.
We watched the movie Girls Trip, which came out three years ago and all this time I have been waiting in vaib for it to become available on a subscription streaming service. No such luck, so we finally decided it wasn't the end of the world if we just both paid the four bucks to rent it on Amazon Prime Video, and still were able to watch it streaming that way.
The movie is far from perfect, but it is also very funny, which Laney acknowledged: she called it "super corny" several times, which is true, but we still both also laughed a lot, for the most part because of Tiffany Haddish. Hence the solid B I gave it back in its initial release. I would never have watched it again otherwise, but I just always thought Laney would have a good time watching it, so I had long wanted to do a Movie Night with her and this movie. Now we have.
We also spent a fair amount of time talking after the movie ended, about lots more than just the movie. Keep in mind the presidency had not yet been officially called at that point.
Aside from that, Gabriel and Lea and I got on FaceTime last night just before 5:30 to do out 2007 Movie Draft. I did something new this time, deciding I wanted a bigger view of them than I can get on my iPad, and since I was not using the desktop for anything else, I connected using FaceTime on my computer. This was so, so much better.
It was enough better, in fact, that I am now considering doing the same thing for my next Virtual Movie Watch with Laney. That gets trickier, though, because to use both a movie streaming player in a browser and Skype, to see them both at the same time I would need to resize their windows. It might still make the video feed of Laney bigger than on the iPad . . . the downside is it would make the movie screen smaller than when I have it maximized. Or, I could just maximize both windows and toggle back and forth. We have one more movie scheduled in December before she starts her retirement travels in January, so I may try it for that.
Anyway! It was nice to be able to fill my computer screen with Lea and Gabriel, them sitting on their couch in their gigantic Federal Way home I've still never been inside of. The problem there was, there wasn't enough light for them to see me very well. I decided to use my standing lamp I haven't used in years and set it next to me to cast better light so I would not look like I was in shadow. Unfortunately, the lamp did not have a light bulb in it. I found a 3pk of the spiral shaped energy saver fluorescent bulbs in the condo's entryway closet, which was still unopened. This was after 5 p.m., mind you, so I was trying to rush as Gabriel had suggested "around 5:00." I didn't expect him to call on the dot, but had no idea when he would. I cut open the bulb packet just enough to get one bulb out, and it fell to the floor and shattered into a zillion pieces.
Had it been like two inches to the left, it would have just bounced off the carpet. I even watched it fall not that worried about it. But, then it barely hit the edge of the kitchen's hardwood floor, and that was it. I then had to sweep up what I could into a dustpan, and then vacuum the area; we can't have any straggling shards that could be stepped on by feet or by kitty paws.
And all of this was while my dinner was being heated in the microwave and I had just made myself a drink. It was very chaotic. And after I told Gabriel all about it I said "It was a very Gabriel kind of chaos." He didn't like that, calling it "backhanded" and basically saying "fuck you," although he was laughing while he said it. Hey whatever, this shit happens to the best of us, right? I mean obviously since it happened to me.
Soon enough we proceeded with our Movie Draft and it was lots of fun as always. I had suggested 2007 and Gabriel did not like this choice. It worked out well for me: after sending the three lists to Evan she finally chose mine; in the end Lea's brother did the same, in fact ranking the three lists in exactly the same order. Gabriel's brother chose my list second, but this did mean that for once, I won a Movie Draft! Hooray!
I'm so glad we're doing this, and regularly—I must give Gabriel credit as it was his idea. He doesn't give a shit about my Social Review but it's a big part of what's making me happy: this is giving us far more time spending together, albeit virtually, during this pandemic than we would be getting otherwise. In fact it's Danielle who I'm seeing much less of, as opposed to the other friends with whom I've got regularly scheduled programming: movies and monthly Happy Hours with Laney; twice-monthly FaceTime lunches with Karen; and now regular Movie Drafts with Gabriel and Lea. These are great ways to prevent feeling too isolated and I appreciate all of them.
I did spent some time with Shobhit over the weekend too, of course, although he did work all three days. But we are now working our way through the Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit and loving it; we also watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver last night, and while it was very pragmatic about what the future holds, it was also an episode with a kind of joy in it that we really haven't seen in about four years. There's nothing wrong with celebrating while also recognizing the work and the fights we still have ahead.
[posted 12:23 pm]