had to get my alaska license & register to vote. for the first time in my life, i am a registered democrat. i have been a republican and a libertarian (back when i thought libertarian meant republican without being an asshole to women and LGBTQ and minorities, and then realized they are basically ferengi who don't let their biases get in the way of making sweet profits) and most recently independent, and now it is time to be counted as a D. not that i'm so hot for the democratic party of aggressive mediocrity. i think the "let's pile on more complicated laws and regulations to fix things instead of addressing the root cause" strategy is bullshit, but at least they have decent motives in there somewhere, or find it useful to pretend to.

i've voted mostly third party. it's great because you know your candidate will never win, so you get all the moral superiority of voting, but none of the responsibility if your person gets power and turns out to be a disaster. people say you're throwing your vote away - no i'm fucking not, i'm sending a message. telling someone they picked wrong in a shit system (why don't we have nationwide ranked choice voting? because decent candidates might win?) is roughly as offensive as republicans howling about stolen elections because they don't like the outcome. i voted. just because you don't like my pick doesn't mean i did it wrong. "oh, if you didn't vote for hillary then trump is all your fault" - no no no, i would have voted for bernie. the democratic party thought they could force us to vote for hillary. they fucked us all, not third party voters.

i hate "legacies" in american politics. if you've been that close to the seat of power once, don't be greedy, fucking move over and let someone else have a turn. it says something ugly about the core of the person when they feel entitled to cling to the highest seats of power, because it's supposed to be about what's good for the nation, not the individual. she was a senator and secretary of state (a brilliant political career by any measure) and it wasn't enough? she had to live in the white house a second time? such a fisherman's wife. she could have found someone with promise and mentored them, but she had to have the big seat for herself. bushes, clintons, kennedys, whatever. normally i wouldn't vote for biden because he's been vice pres already. you had your turn, go away now. so much talent and fresh perspectives in this country and we keep picking from the same tiny pot of potentials because they are "name brands". it's so anti-american, like we recreate the same monarchy we rebeled against. i wouldn't vote for any of the obamas and i like them! michelle seems great! no legacies when it comes to president or vice president. no kids or spouses. fresh meat. so i didn't vote for hillary, but trump was such an obvious clown show i would never vote for him either. and i'm not a bit sorry about my choice, even though trump turned out more horrible than i could have imagined in 2016.

hillary would absolutely have been a more technically competent president, yes. but she was/is incapable of addressing the deep festering desperation of the working class that makes trump, a political noob and professional jerk, seem at all attractive. the stagnancy of the govt and inability to take action on behalf of the poorest citizens while saying placating nice things for decades is the real enemy here. the system obviously serves the rich and corporations, not the average joe/jane, and hillary is enmeshed in that system. clinton would have been like a coat of fresh pink paint over black mold in a basement. (shoot, obama ran on hope and change and he won, because that's what the people were hungry for. and then he could not deliver and that ratcheted up the desperation to make Trump possible. we def weren't going to get real change with hillary, even if she would have been the first pres with ovaries.) might look good for a bit, but that mold is still there. for all his godawful faults, trump is at least forcing the nation to take a hard look at some very real ugliness because he doesn't have that professional politician polish (nor does he care to fake it, because he cares for nothing but himself). hey, check it out - we're riddled with bigots and science-deniers and narcissists because we have left people behind and made corruption and loopholes the "secret ladder" to wealth and success. our sources of news and information are bought & paid for and we can be led by the nose by conspiracy theories on social media pushed by outrage algorithms designed to get the most clicks. lookit all that ugliness.

i wish katie porter would run for president. she'd be an awesome choice, i think. she's got good teacher energy. i'd write her in. i'll do it, too, if they try to foist some lukewarm garbage candidate on us.

spouse says he's not ready to wear the big blue D yet. fair. he also pointed out a lot of people pick independent because they don't want political junk mail. i forgot about that and i hope we don't get too much.

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other bitch eating crackers rant:

i secretly think those little lending libraries people try to put up are incredibly stupid. i get that it is supposed to be a nice gesture, but it is a dumb nice gesture that is mostly performative and so oblivious upper middle class. but it's a faux pas say that little lending libraries are a total garbage idea, like you're some kind of mean book grinch. surely more access to books is always a positive?

1) they tend to be in neighborhoods where people have no problem getting themselves to a real library, or have plenty of means to buy their own books. kinda ruins the "here you go, disadvantaged people who desperately need access to emergency books" vibe. let's have a food garden to help with food deserts, but let's not put it in the icky poor part of town. anyone can participate! as long as they have a car to get there! and spare time during daylight hours!

2) the selection tends to be a grab bag of "here's the books i don't like enough to keep on my own bookshelf and i don't care if they disappear", which means the books are a mediocre schizophrenic mish-mash.

3) "lending library" implies some unspoken obligation to trade a book or bring a borrowed one back, otherwise it will be empty and someone's going to get huffy about people not respecting their book guilt box.

4) the boxes are usually not constructed well enough to keep the books in good condition. yeah, i want a bent up, rain warped, sun damaged copy of clan of the cave bear that's been languishing here for 6 months and has a spider nest part way through.

exceptions:

1) someone is an author and wants to make free copies of their books available to the neighborhood without going door to door like a weirdo extrovert. cool! very cool, would totally be into this.

2) i did walk by a lending library on embassy row in dc, stocked with that specific country's literature. narrow focus, esp meaningful to the homeowner, cool. like if my master gardener neighbor had a lending library with only gardening books. that would be cool, that's sharing a passion.

3) a church has one stocked with free bibles or something. i guess this is an extension of #2. totally appropriate for a church.

i can't think of any other exceptions. okay wait:

4) say fascism takes over or china invades or something, little lending libraries could be a way to coordinate a resistance network and pass messages in code. i mean, who would suspect a humble lending library? i would totally read a book where a bunch of placid homeowners coordinate an underground railroad by passing around old paperbacks when they walk their dogs.

so now and then i see a post where someone's lending library gets rekt and everyone chimes in all shocked pikachu about who could do such a heartless horrible thing?? listen, they are dumb twee passive aggressive book guilt boxes, what did you expect? they are put out to say, "lookit me, i'm a virtuous smart person gifting my castoffs to the neighborhood riff-raff (except i really want some kind of affirmation through partipation so you can't just TAKE my books and not give back, that's against the rules). also lookit, it's so cute it matches my house because i have the spare wealth to do that, but i don't want to just donate those resources because then how could i show off to the neighborhood?"

i feel like it's only middle class people who assume homeowning is the default living state who think lending libraries are a great idea. they don't rent - renters don't get to put up things. they maybe slummed it in a rental in college once, long ago. they probably say "blessed" all the time to make it sound like they are humble because they acknowledge that poor people exist and probably pray diligently every night that god will fix that pesky "poverty" problem. until then, the poor folk travelling through their safe middle class neighborhood (without looking sketchy and loitering or WE CALL THE COPS) can be grateful for that moldy copy of the second book in the twilight series. sure.

it's just a ludicrously terrible idea. if you want to be a book lender to the neighborhood, talk to your neighbors and find out what they might like and then just give them the fucking book. donate to the real library, for goodness sake.

(you do have to be a special kind of jerk to trash a little lending library, for sure. not excusing that.)

i feel like there's a germ of a good idea in there (sharing something with neighborhood passersby), but the execution is bad.

--

so the jb weld worked and i got the sprayer working. i made a holder for the gun and it kind of works, but it still wants to fling itself to the ground if given half a chance. between the awkward paint cup on one side and the hose at the bottom, it is nerve wracking every time i set it down. why they don't give you a decent holder is beyond me. there's no dedicated gravity feed holder available and it sucks.

i basically picked all the wrong things for a first project. do not do this:

1) the paint color i picked is roughly "metallic cardboard". i have cardboard put up behind to protect the work area. all my pieces are primed in a similar tone. the lighting in the garage is poor and all together i made it very very hard to see the paint spray and i can't tell wtf is going on with my settings. don't pick a neutral paint color to start, pick a bold color so it's easy to see. also i should have set up my workspace in a better lit area.

2) small things are extra difficult because the powerful air from the sprayer blows them around. it's like spray painting in a helpful wind tunnel. after much frustration i had to rig a way to hang them in place using a leftover screen door grate and extra hooks from the pegboard. it's okay, but i already got goobers from things not being anchored down properly, falling over when wet, etc. in general, suspending what you want to paint seems to be the best way to maneuver it efficiently and prevent smudges. a lazy susan might also be good. i need to put some hooks up in the garage ceiling. so start with something flat and largish, not small and fussy.

3) think about where/how you are going to put painted things to dry. if you can't easily pick it up and move it, you're going to twiddle your thumbs waiting for it to dry so you can do the next thing. i didn't think about this enough before starting. a few minutes of painting and then an hour or so of waiting just seems to drag forever.

so it's going okay, i just picked a bad starter project. i have green paint and large easy flat things i could/should have started with, but no, i jumped right in with the hard stuff. it's still looking good even with some application difficulties. once the paint dries, so far it looks fine. i can always sand and touch up if necessary.

i am very impressed with how efficient the sprayer is with paint. i only bought 6oz of the satin nickel to make sure the color was right, thinking i would need more for sure, but i might be able to get everything with just 6oz, and i'm painting many things. prob helps that the primer beneath is a similar tone so it's hard to see any uneven spots.

so i got these wood bifold closet doors at restore for $5-10 and i'm making wall shelves for craft supplies out of them (way cheaper than buying new lumber, plus yay repurposing). i removed all the hardware and cut them to size (they are hollow, i'm just hiding the hollow cut end against the wall, ha ha) and sanded them down, patched any holes from the door hardware with wood filler and i'm in the process of spraying them with that dark brown stain that i really dislike and just want to be rid of. well, my jb weld repair job is not holding up, i'm getting a dribble of stain leaking from the repair and i'm going to have to do a second, thicker application of the jb weld. (i can buy a bottom feed paint cup for the paint sprayer and convert it over, but that's another $55 and i'm sick of spending money on this thing at the moment.) the good news is the stain looks way better when applied as a spray, rather than with a paintbrush. it's fine, they're just craft shelves made out of old closet door, they don't have to be amazing.

i want these fucking shelves on the wall so i can get my supplies organized and out of the way - it's driving me bonkers that i don't have dedicated places for things and the lack of organization is wasting a lot of time and energy. i went to mount a toilet paper holder after painting some of the mounting hardware (this woman lived without proper wall mounted toilet paper holders for reasons i cannot fathom). first i tried to find proper fitting screws. then i remembered that the packet with the original screws from the manufacturer fell behind the dryer a month ago. i had ordered a grabber tool to get the screw packet without moving the dryer. then i couldn't remember where the grabber tool got put. finally found it after 10-15 minutes of wandering aimlessly around the house (i'd put it on the pegboard in the utility room where it should go, but it was hidden by some clothes on hangers). but in the process of using the grabber, the screws fell out of the packet and went everywhere and i ended up having to move the dryer anyway! like ... it's just so much wasted momentum. over and over. everything i try to do is stymied by a missing or broken something.

i had to make an appointment to get the driver's license and couldn't find my birth cert or passport or social security card. i was 99% sure they were in our file box of important papers, but nope. or maybe it is in there somewhere in the midst of the ridiculous mass of paperwork spouse keeps for his federal job stuff. he also packed random stuff in there to keep it from shifting around, like small framed photos and one of the star wars book vault things (why, spouse, why???), so i'm digging out random weird knicknacks just trying to find my birth cert. tore the house apart for the hour before the appt, couldn't find any of it. spouse doesn't know - he kept our passports together and i know he took his to dc, but he thought he put mine in the safe and it's not there and i know it wasn't in there before the painters because i had to move the safe out of the way for them and i checked inside. so my passport is in the house ... somewhere. i think they only let me get the ak drivers license because they already had me on file from earlier and i did at least find our marriage cert for the name change. like, i am so fucking tired of having to look and look and look for everything, every time, and not find half of it. nothing is where i think it is. absolutely infuriating.

so i have to get these shelves up, but now i have to wait another day for the jb weld to cure again so i can finish spraying ...

had a headache all day yesterday - figures, just when i get some decent momentum going. considering that i've been on and off with vitamins and not eating that well, i've been doing pretty good with headaches. still sucks but it is what it is.

oh, the youtube howlers were sure everything was going straight to heck after july 4 and i dunno about you, but things seem fine here. my best guess is that we are facing a bullwhip effect, but to the surface consumer it won't be as dramatic because stores have a lot of incentive to keep people's shopping habits stable. if stores are overstocked and need to clear inventory space in preparation for holiday product, they're going to advertise sales like normal. and if people see sales they'll think things aren't that bad and they won't have reason to change shopping habits. so right now we may actually see more "good deals" as stores try to liquidate, which seems contrary to the idea of shortages and inflation. the problems may show up further down the line as the stores feel the pinch of selling at little/no profit, and when they order less for the holiday season. those sales will dry up eventually and prices will have to rise.

i still think it's a good idea to have a stocked pantry and to buy useful items while they are available. i suspect there will be a lot of behind the scenes effort to smooth over supply problems and make sure consumers don't stampede. just like with toilet paper, if people all rush to buy something and create a massive shortage, it causes an artificial problem with supply/demand that makes things worse in the long term. eventually, the store will suffer when they overstock the item and nobody buys because everyone has plenty of supply tucked away already.

the problems will hit when/if the stores can't keep up appearances. if people catch wind that there are gaping supply issues and big price increases coming, then there could be a panicked bank run type situation, and that would be very bad for everyone, businesses and consumers.

the answer is still the same - keep a stocked pantry and try to anticipate what items you might need so you can coast though for a few weeks if things get bumpy. seems like a lot depends on consumer behavior. the "Apocalypse" may never manifest if people have confidence that it won't. but if people get stirred up, if the stores fail to keep up appearances, then things may get interesting. unfortunately, i think we have a rogue political party that is heavily invested in making the current administration look as bad as possible. what could look worse than gas lines and empty food shelves? yeah. so logically i would expect more/better attempts at provoking consumer panic as we get closer to november. unrest will benefit republicans in all ways - the more dramatic, the better. they'll either be inspired by the actions of fellow patriots or terrified by the radical left. (the problem, of course, is even if it's an artificial panic, nobody wants to be the one caught with no toilet paper.)

so i guess the probability of unrest hinges on the willingness of the republican party to keep their people calm and rational even when the opposite benefits them. ha ha ha ha ha. okay, i need more lentils.

i got the glass bottle cutter and the sandpaper and whatnot to smooth the cut rims. i also got some inserts to turn liquor bottles into tiki torches and lamps, for emergency light and cheap gifts. looking forward to recycling whatever glass containers we have. but first, i finish some house projects.