Ecuador?? Fucking Ecuador???

I'd just like to point out the screamingly obvious here: Kamala would not currently be bombing Iran, kidnapping foreign heads of state, or doing... whatever the hell it is we're doing... in Ecuador -- Ecuador? Did I even read that right? Nor would she have CBP murdering citizens in the street.

 

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad," sure, but right now the President is visibly succumbing -- on live TV, yet! -- to both Dementia and physical health issues, and simultaneously being directed and channeled by some of the worst people on Earth. And if we're being honest, he was neither all that bright nor principled (aside from self-interest -- I guess that's a principle) before his health started going.

 

Would a lot of bad shit still have been happening, out of sight instead of out in the open? Yes, absolutely. ICE and CBP should both have been dissolved after Trump's first term. Do we now know the names and faces of a bunch of horrible, evil people who need to be stripped of wealth and influence and relegated to financial and social exile -- Homan, Bovino, Musk, Miller, Rubio, Bessent, etc.? Absolutely. 

 

Look, if you voted for Trump and are now regretting it, well... welcome to the party, I guess -- but I need you to sit with yourself and take a long, hard look at how you got there: who you were listening to, what information you trusted, which predictions you took seriously. And I need you to seriously consider how you got it so wrong, so you don't fucking do it again. I don't want to hear "nobody could have predicted--"  or "I had no way to know" or anything like that, because there were voices worth listening to that were absolutely screaming that this -- exactly this -- was going to happen. 

 

And the ones who were opining -- on major news networks or opinion columns, for example -- that it really wouldn't make any difference who got elected? They need to be ruthlessly mocked, remembered for their failures and enabling of all this, and faced with consequences for helping this happen. (I'm not saying murder them, but, like, when you get something this wrong you shouldn't still have a job where you get to tell a large audience what's what.)

 

Meanwhile... if we do manage to put American boots on the ground in Iran, it's going to be the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq all over again, but on steroids. If -- may the gods help us -- we move against Spain for refusing to host us while we're conducting an illegal, unconstitutional war of choice , we're now at war with NATO and that is absolutely going to end badly. (Yes, that was an exercise in the fine art of understatement.) If, if, if... and all the people in charge seem determined to make the worst possible choices.

 

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. There's a lot going on out there. 

No more adventures!

Okay, so these were pretty cool people and I was happy to help them... until now. I mean yeah, okay, a wood elf with glowing runes imprinted on his face; a dragonborn berserker who thought he was a lizardfolk; and a humanoid frog with poisonous skin who acted as their priest. It was a weird group. But they saved me when my magic ran wild and the insects I was enlarging became huge instead of just big. So I threw in with them. 

It worked out pretty well. I could enlarge the dragonborn and let him do his thing with the flaming sword, and  then hang back and throw the easier spells that didn't require my concentration. That was right up until we went down into the Sunken City, and started dealing with all the mechanical beings they'd left behind. 

Alvedes was the guy who'd hired us, and he was pretty cool but he wasn't a warrior in any sense. He wanted Ahriman's Tome, the grimoire of the long-dead witch-king.  He led us in, directed us to the Planetarium and took the mapping crystal from it. Then we discovered the Sunken Palace, where we found several useful things, but also a lot of mechanical defenders... and for the most part, we were doing well, until we got close to the King's Library. 

A thousand tons of fallen stone had closed it away, and a Steel Predator roused itself to chase us out. I've never come so close to dying in my life. 

We made it back to Riftguard. I'm going to join the college here, and stay the hell away from any ruins in the Rifts. 

Iran

And now we're bombing Iran. 

I'm just sitting with that.

We're not At War, because the President can't do that by himself, and Congress hasn't even been informed, let along declared war. Instead, we're just... at war. But at least we have good reasons for going to war, even if nobody's actually managed to say what they are or what the plan actually is. 

And of course the first reports I'm hearing is that we've already managed to bomb a primary school full of little girls, with eighty-five dead.

I hate this. I hate it so much. It's going be Iraq all over again, on steroids.

The things I would be doing right now if I had Vast Supernatural Powers... 

Update: the air strike killed more than one hundred children.  

Friday morning thoughts

In addition to the sleeping and dreaming issues, I've just generally been off this week: not feeling entirely well, stuffy head, and difficulty concentrating. Turns out cedar pollen is back up, plus we've had some high winds, and that certainly explains a lot. 

(That difficulty concentrating may be partly because of what I've been trying to work on, which is studying for a certification that I meant to complete back in December. The course material is this weird combination of helpful insights and way overthinking some pretty basic things, and the online course has been... fraught. Chunks of text that aren't in the right place, videos that won't play in the course, obvious typos... and really no excuse for it. It's just sloppy.) 

The other part, I think, is just moral injury from watching some of the worst people in the world trying their damnedest to break the country and everyone in it. (I did not watch the State of the Union, just followed along with some people who were commenting on it.) CBP and ICE -- our homegrown American Gestapo -- are still busy terrorizing anyone they can, some heinous fuckery just went through in Kansas, and  House Republicans are pushing for a national book ban. I'm trying to limit my exposure because being simultaneously heartbroken and incandescently angry isn't good for my mental or physical health. And it helps to help out where I can, even if that's largely been limited to donations for mutual aid.

I still think the whole thing falls apart as soon as Trump has a major medical event, and given how he's looked lately I can't imagine that will take too much longer -- but dear ye immortal gods, the damage that's being done in the meantime...

I'm so tired.

Sleep and Dreams

Had trouble sleeping earlier this week. I woke up a couple of times, which I don't usually do. I think I was having some stomach issues, and also I need to get back in the habit of using the CPAP machine. 

Weird, disconnected dreams, too. I was trying to get to some kind of family for dinner, for a holiday where I hadn't had the day off, only all I had was name of the place -- no directions -- and I kept forgetting the name. I had Secondborn with me, except much younger than she is now, and she kept wandering off. Then I got frustrated and went walking off into the pouring rain. (Not so much leaving Secondborn behind as just... she wasn't there anymore.) There was a Kung Fu fight, or at least a brief tussle in there somewhere, too. 

None of it made much sense, which I suppose isn't all that unusual, but my dreams are frequently pretty coherent -- more coherent that this, anyway. I think I'm just back to having a lot of frustrations in my life right now, and not enough spoons to deal with them.

DoT: Abomination

Lloroth turned in his cave, drifting towards the entrance before he thought better of it and stopped. The boy was dead, and his eyes sought to return to him, but their way was blocked. Cloth, he thought, remembering their last sight. Fear tore through him, unexpected and unwelcome; this was a danger he had never anticipated. Should he go to retrieve them? Should he wait, and send a bargainer instead? There were risks to waiting, but also risks to breaking his cover. 

He should have known better than to make a compact with the boy, he decided. For all his swagger, the child had proven weak and inept. He'd been desperate to bargain, though, and the idea of a dedicated servant, one he could experiment on... Lloroth had been unable to resist. 

The shock, when it came, was sudden and absolutely unexpected: blinding pain, and then the slow, throbbing ache as his two borrowed eyes reappeared at the ends of their tentacles. Dispelled, somehow. That was another risk he hadn't expected; how had the mortals managed it? If they'd done it to the boy's corpse, they could do it to any of his bargainers, and that was unacceptable. He'd have to refine his techniques, improve the magic he used for implants.

Trading out his eyes was only the beginning, a convenient way to gather resources and prepare. The lesser creatures on this island were not to be trusted; they might rise up against him at any time. No, he needed to continue his research, master his arts, and create better servants -- more loyal, more reliable, and better placed in what passed for local society. 

DoT: After The Job

"Ah, you made it," said Melia, as Werril opened the door. She kissed him quickly on the cheek, half shy and half secretive, then drew away. "Any trouble?"

Werril shut the door behind and heaved a massive sigh. Their hideout was a small set of rooms on the upper floor of a boarding house about halfway down the lowest northern spoke. "Gods-damned Red Blade," he said. "One of the cultists. I had to charm her to escape."

"But you made it, right?" asked Melia. 

"Yes, but she saw my face. My magic..."

"Your magic isn't the problem." Sairen said, stepping up behind Amelia. "Your control is."

Melia turned. "It's wild magic, Sairen. By its very nature, it's not controllable."

Sairen sniffed. 

"Worry about it later," Werril said. "I need a bath, and a good night's sleep, and I don't want to argue until sometime after breakfast."

"As you wish," Sairen said. "The job is done, and none of us were caught. Nobody followed you here?"

"No." Werril was fair certain of that.

"Then yes, we should discuss the risks and benefits of your sort of magic later on." The dark elf actually smiled. "At least you kept your wits about you."