Did you know? "Stars and Stripes Forever" was selected as a sign of unity to mark the transition from the Trump administration, as it is traditionally the song that is played when a circus catches fire.
The second part of the preceding tweet is true. The first part is a joke.
It worked as a secret signal because there's no particular reason a circus band would ever *need* to play it, but as a peppy and upbeat popular march none of the audience would question it, giving the circus time to take control of the situation.
Outside the context of a circus, the song has no such association and is a very common song for any kind of patriotic or civic observance. So, yeah, no hidden meaning today.
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I have let the water out of the bath but I cannot yet summon the energy to get out of it and go to bed.
Okay, I made it out of the bathtub but I had to go to my office to get my night pills and I made the mistake of sitting down so I am once again forced to gather my energy before I actually go to bed.
Two people have responded to the original tweet to ask, in a perplexed way, if I wasn't cold in the bathtub and the thing is, I know that's not advice, but this is why I keep saying don't offer strangers advice: you don't have the context necessary.
So in Batman & Robin, there's a dinosaur statue in the museum.
Okay, but it's in the antiquities wing.
Of what is specifically an art museum.
So it's not there because it's a dinosaur, but because it's a statue.
An ancient Mesopotamian dinosaur statue, I guess.
I know dunking on this movie is old and boring, but everybody dunks on the "ice age killed the dinosaurs" line and I've never heard anyone question the dinosaur's presence, I guess because museum. I had never thought about it.
Having recently watched both Batman Returns and Batman & Robin, I think among the reasons the Tim Burton movies are more fondly remembered than the Schumacher ones is that we the target audience were younger, more trusting, and less too cool for school when Burton had his run.
Because the presidency is such a singular thing and a president is supported by people who are effectively wielding the president's own delegated power, Trump was able to get a a surprising amount of stuff done just by fiat declaration (or tweet).
Marjorie Taylor Greene, having followed Trump's example in going into government, probably assumed that being a legislator worked about the same way. If you wanted to do something, just say you were, and someone would figure it out for you.
One thing the Little Red Button made me think of was the story about how Trump would order a diet coke in his own private business office by just speaking the desire out loud, which demonstrated that he had his own office wired for sound at all times.
I imagine he had a fight with his aides when he moved into the oval office about getting a similar set up, with the arguments against being a mix of national security issues and "That's how they got Nixon, sir." and the Little Red Button was the compromise.
I don't remember who the story was from or where I read it, but it was somebody doing a meeting or interview in his office and at what point, Trump asked them if they wanted a diet coke and then just said, without touching anything, "Okay, 2 diet cokes." and they came in.
Still re-watching Better Call Saul and seeing Mike sit in a diner is making me wish I could go to a diner and sit there.
(This is not an open call for ideas on how to "compromise" or "substitute" for that experience.)
Mike's comeback when Jimmy asks him if he's reading the annotated rules for parking validation ("No, the rules for parking validation are quite simple. Most people get them right on the first try.") is a solid burn.
It seems like one of Mike's longer non-expositional lines but it's very precisely formulated and targeted.
This week I am focusing on child reunification. I am contacting the White House and my congressfolk about this to let them know it is a priority for me, and should be for them.
I know that President Biden has that on his schedule; I also know it has slipped from "day one priority" to January 29th and it's the kind of thorny problem that could very easily be perfect-is-the-enemy-of-good'd into oblivion.
Donald Trump's regime deliberately made sure the simple and obvious solution of just getting the kids back with their families is not on the table. They didn't bother capturing or preserving the information that would let us do that.