This morning’s title, plus a maybe a few choice obscenities, were some of my first words yesterday morning when the shower definitively confirmed the suspicion underlying much of the previous week:

The hot water heater died.

Yes, “hot water heater” is rather redundant, but that’s what said device is indeed called on all the websites of the various services selling it, so that’s what I’m going with. In any case, after shopping around a bit, I’ve got one ordered and it’s set for install on Monday (dammit), and said purchase has, regrettably, killed the forward momentum of my personal savings/debt elimination program for this month (dammit again), but that is, I guess, what savings are for.

The “Monday” bit adds one final “dammit” to the proceedings, because the showers are going to be cold for another couple of days, and knowing my body chemistry and exercise schedule, showers are absolutely necessary.

And that, dear reader, is pretty much the icing on a crap cake for this week; a week where my nerves and brain have basically given up in the face of this ridiculous world and country we live in where dear friends have serious medical emergencies, others dear to us get isolated due to viral panic and security theater, my efforts to get ahead of the fiscal year game regarding program packages gets rebuffed because the process is ridiculous and ever-changing, and the nominal leader of the nation refuses both to accept the republic’s two centuries’ worth of tradition of peaceful transfer of power, and denounce white supremacy and virulent racism in a public forum.

That last one deserves special mention; as that sort of action is kind of a deal-breaker in civilized society. As I (and many others have similarly) posted on social media recently:

In a good and just world, this would go without saying, though as it’s painfully obvious that we’re not in one of those, I shall say:

I condemn white supremacy. Emphatically. No conditions.

…if that’s something you can’t say, perhaps we might need to re-evaluate some relationships.

Yeah, it’s that simple. In cases where I have any kind of choice, I’m not gonna deal with folks who can’t simply say “Racism is bad, mmmmkay,” because I have enough garbage in my life right now as it is.

So, anyway, this post got a little more serious than I’d originally intended, but frankly, that’s where we find ourselves in this world right now. And one of the few things we have individual power to do anything about it is to vote for the non-racist, non-denier-of-science, non-asshole candidate in the coming election. I’ve already done so. I hope you do too; and if you choose to vote for the other guy and enable that kind of crap? Please reference the previous paragraph.

Also, “both-sides”ing it doesn’t really apply here. The other guy may not be perfect, but he’s not a racist jerk. Also, “Antifa” isn’t really a thing; never was. There’s legitimately no proof that I’ve seen that it isn’t a made-up straw-man organization; at most, it’s a general sense of opposition to right-wing authoritarianism. Also, even if it was real, if you have a problem with being “Anti-Fascist”, you’re not exactly on the side of the angels.

I really wish I wasn’t this distraught, stressed and angry about everything, but as that is where we find ourselves, I might as well channel some of those feelings into, well, something.

Here we are. I’ll go back to taking cold showers for another couple of days.