Mayhem is in da house

Good morning everyone and happy Saturday once again! And… Happy Birthday to Ron – not just my husband but my best friend. I baked his cake last night timed with the full moon and eclipse from first stir of the batter, to frosting it and then tucking it into the fridge for after dinner tonight. He’s a pretty easy-going guy without too many wants – just a yellow cake with vanilla frosting. I realized I hadn’t bought any icing to write his name on it, so I joked I was going to pick up some yellow and “write his name in the snow”. Hey, it’s something I, someone with that new-fangled indoor plumbing, will never be able to do in real life, so I may as well have fun playing with the novelty in cake form. It would also allow me to get away with doing a crappy job of spelling out his name, as I’m not even at beginner level of cake decorating. Yeah, I just might do that today and take a picture of it, too. I’m sick like that.

So much has happened in the last week which has caused me to sit here for the past couple of hours to think about which topics to cover first. The annual Columbus Day wincing? Both the end of the shutdown and the overall “Crisis Averted” deal? A Congressional stenographer going nanners in open session and on live TV (but we didn’t know about it until after the fact)? The talking in circles during session? Or how about the douchebags who toppled down a rock formation that took tens of millions of years to create? Oh, and The Walking Dead is back and South Park missed their deadline (which we’ll cut them some slack and chalk it up to the Mercury retrograde’s already dark shadow).

Did I cover everything? No? Oh yes, that’s right – the Wild Hunt 2013 Fall Funding Drive! As of this writing, they’ve collected $8,197 of their $10k goal with 38 days left to go. Not. Too. Shabby. but we can do so much better. There are still four $1500 donation slots available to sponsor new columnists which would be really nice to see happen. That would mean four more people would have small, part-time jobs writing about what’s up in Pagania (is that a word?) in the next year, and it would up the ante that much higher next year to afford keeping them on staff, providing more voices and coverage. So dig deep, folks! Even if all you have to spare is a dollar, that dollar can mingle with thousands of others, surpass the $10k goal, which can also help in gaining more writers.

And now, back to dissecting all that happened recently:

The biggest thing I found interesting with the shutdown is how the average American finally gave a shit about politics. Why? Because in small and large ways, it affected each and every one of us. It wasn’t “just” the nearly 1 million people who were furloughed. It screwed up people’s vacation and travel plans, which at first sounds like a #firstworldproblem until one factors in losing lots of revenue for people who depend on tourism dollars. (Yeah, and pissing off veterans is never a good idea, considering they’re a huge voting bloc – double that for senior vets.) People trying to buy homes were left waiting around, as were the agents who sell them and all the revenue that revolves around buying homes (even “little things” like updates and new furniture and accessories). Really sick people were unable to get the urgent medical care they needed. But hey, at least we can’t blame the shutdown on people’s food stamp cards not working, right? Right? Aw c’mon. Not everything is ________’s fault, even though __________ got to keep getting paid during all that hot mess.

What did you learn?

So that’s what I’m being optimistic about – that people finally gave a shit. It’s sad it took a government shutdown, a last-minute effort for the people we voted for and screwing up our overall debt-worthiness to actually do the jobs we pay them to do. I don’t know how long that will last though – that giving a shit thing – but at least people paid attention for a little while. Sure, the can got kicked down a couple months, and I’m thinking it won’t be as hard of a go at it being so much closer to an election period, so that’s good, too. After all, they got babies to kiss, damnit!

Dude!

So where does this leave us? Well, Mercury officially goes retrograde on Monday, which has already proven to be a nasty one since its shadow started on the 1st. So, the first thing I would suggest to everyone is to whip out those flash drives and back up your computers. Yes, yes, you have everything on the cloud, but what if that fails? Even the mighty (scary) NSA is having problems. Any important documents you have need to be scanned and saved, too. Oh, and yeah, you can’t trust the stores to have full shelves, so make sure you have at least your three days of food and supplies on hand, and actual cash not locked up on a debit card, because it seems to me that Mayhem guy on the commercials is all but gearing up for hosting a family reunion.