Yeah, so...sunny today. That was good. Our high was 82˚F, with a heat index of 84˚F. Which is our current temperature, at twilight.

I'm not eating again. Stress, fear, anger, overwhelming depression, all that good shit. My appetite evaporates, and then my weight drops even more, and I cannot afford to lose anything more. Someone called me "rail thin" today, and she wasn't wrong. But I cannot seem to figure out how to force myself to eat. And not eating, my cognition, my ability to think, is affected, and everything I do is thought. The novel I'm trying to write. The multiple scientific papers I'm working on. It is all pure thought turned to words and placed on paper, syntax and style and story and morphology and the mathematics of evolution, and without the requisite nutrition to be my very best, I'm screwed.

But you don't want to hear about that shit.

You don't want to hear this, either, but I'm gonna say it. To all those starry-eyed progressives, those disciples of Bernie and Marx and AOC, to those folks, this is not the time for idealism. This is not the time for making things better than they were before Trump became president. This is not a time when you can afford to disapprove of President Biden because he hasn't "defunded" the police or passed "Medicare for all" or what the hell ever. This is the age of holding the line, if we are lucky. This is the age of fixing what Trump broke that can be fixed. We will very likely lose legal abortion very soon, nationwide. That is the reality, and you can gauge what is and is not now possible against that. Then you set your expectations accordingly. We stand to lose a nation. We stand to live out the rest of our lives in the TrumpWorld dystopia that once was America. So, the order of the day is not to try and force Biden out on a limb, but to hold the line. Pray we don't lose big in 2022, that we at least keep the House. Pray Trump (or whoever Trump picks) is not president in 2024, because that person truly might be the last American president. Accept that utopia is not coming, and we will not all be treated equally in your lifetime, and be grateful if we come up with some shy of an utter hellscape.

And do not alienate the moderates. You need us, as we need you.

Anyway....

My picture today is a poster ("Sauropsids of the Niobrara Formation") by Gabriel Ugueto, a Miami-based paleoartist who is just astoundingly talented. He did a painting that will appear in one of the Cretaceous turtle papers I've done with Drew Gentry and Jim Parham. I got this poster in May, but only just hung it yesterday.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thanks.

Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast




10:29 a.m.