64 Comments

Six Things That Are Worse than Trump Winning…

Leprosy

Carrie: The Musical — a Broadway musical based on Stephen King's novel Carrie

Global thermonuclear war

American voters

Putin winning

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Uh, Putin won this election.

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Indubitably. And that is worse than Trump winning.

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Leprosy is curable now, right? You can't cure stupid.

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But the ballcaps sure make it easy to identify.

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I have seen Carrie: The Musical, and it is much, much, much better than Trump.

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Next up: "Trump: The Musical"

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Part of my job is reading scripts of musicals in development, and a couple of years ago I received a TRUMP: THE MUSICAL, which came with no music because the score was intended to be improvised every night to reflect his disordered mind.

It was funny then, less so now.

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This makes me think of "John Walker, the Musical" which a cousin of mine co-wrote for the NY Fringe Festival in 2004 (John Walker being John Walker Lindh aka the American Taliban)

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The only thing worse than t***p being elected is t***p actually taking office.

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I’m coming to terms with the fact that 13 million people decided to sit this one out. It’s devastating. Since the 2016 elections I’ve handwritten at least 1500 postcards to voters in various states. I’ve talked about voting to anyone I have any influence over. And yet, here we have millions of people who apparently just could t be bothered.

Also, I had to drive by JDVances house today (he’s in my neighborhood of Del Ray) and he is back at this home with about 10 government vehicles clogging up the streets. How is this unqualified jerk now our VP elect?

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Uhm. Votes by ignorant, bigoted bugwits?

Or was that rhetorical?

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He was out for a morning stroll a couple of weeks ago along Commonwealth with eight of his buddies wearing earpieces, including a K-9 handler and black SUVs with government plates every other block along the route. I would not want that life.

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Creepy crawlers: Spider crickets, aka camel crickets.

Daddy Longlegs are in the words of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, mostly harmless.

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Camel crickets are also harmless, even as it doesn't feel that way when your basement is full of them.

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And yet I have to rescue my spouse from them whenever they make an appearance.

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They are horrific, agreed. But still: harmless, other than the harm one inflicts on self in efforts to avoid.

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I'll see your camel crickets and raise you a bunch of mutant centipedes that the exterminator said were the "largest I've ever seen."

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As Andy Borowitz wrote in yesterday's Borotwitz Report:

"Could Tuesday’s election results have been any worse?

"Well, what if, instead of 51 percent, the Republican nominee had won 59 percent? Or 61 percent? And what if he had won 49 states?

"Those aren’t hypotheticals. Those were the results of the 1972 and 1984 landslides that reelected Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

"With thumping victories like those, what could possibly go wrong for the winners?

"If history’s any guide, some nasty surprises await Donald Trump."

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And the public will suffer the consequences. Shit flows downhill.

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The trickle down effect!

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Kudos to someone who knows how to use quotation marks correctly! (And probably knows that "kudos" is singular.)

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"Kudos" is/are both singular and plural as are many other dual or irregular nouns thanks to the crazy quilt of English rules and exceptions.

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I refuse to acknowledge a plural. :)

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From Merriam Webster:

"Kudos looks like it means “more than one kudo,” but it didn’t begin that way. Kudos is one of a number of Greek-derived English nouns ending in -os; like pathos, kudos is a mass noun. There are no subdivisions in the idea of kudos, and the term is used with some, not a. What separates kudos from pathos, however, is that it is often interpreted as plural, with its -s getting clipped off and kudo being applied as a singular noun, as in “a kudo to anyone who remembers that kudos is not a plural noun.”"

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While MW is not the ultimate authority, I do note this entry for "kudo" there elsewhere: "Some commentators hold that since kudos is a singular word it cannot be used as a plural and that the word kudo is impossible. But kudo does exist; it is simply one of the most recent words created by back-formation from another word misunderstood as a plural. Kudos was introduced into English in the 19th century; it was used in contexts where a reader unfamiliar with Greek could not be sure whether it was singular or plural. By the 1920s it began to appear as a plural, and about 25 years later kudo began to appear. It may have begun as a misunderstanding, but then so did cherry and pea."

In any event, in actual usage "kudos" has come to be regarded as both the plural ("accolades") and singular ("honor/glory").

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Thanks! I actually had to think a sec before I put them in.

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What I see more often (incorrectly, of course) is quotation marks just at the beginning and end of the entire quote or at the beginning AND end of every paragraph.

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I just thought, "How does a multi-paragraph conversation look in a book?" and went from there.

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Provided you read the right books. I have the misfortune to read a lot of books evidently written (and edited, if at all) by people who've either never read a book or never paid any attention to how books are put together.

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I did not know this rule. Thank you both for the grammar lesson.

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"I love and respect you all of you, and fear none of you, except one of you, and you know who you are." Is it Pat? It has to be Pat, right? Pretty sure it's Pat.

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It's Pat. She owns me.

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I regret that nobody thinks it's me.

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It's also you.

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I wouldn’t want people to fear me. They might then set up defenses and take precautions to make it harder to get at them. I’d prefer they think of me as harmless and amiable right up until that last moment.

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I like the way you think.

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I assure you, they’re just the friendly thoughts of a guy who wouldn’t hurt anybody.

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Oh, look over there! A squirrel!

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Yeah, most of us aren’t having a good week. Hang in there - we’ll be here when you get your sea legs back. SEA legs, not see legs

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Fear of Daddy Longlegs? Oh, my.

In slightly related news, at age 8, my eldest daughter called, “Dad! There’s a spider in my room!”

I replied, “I thought you weren’t afraid of anything.”

She explained, “Yeah, but I don’t like arachnids.”

She was always precocious. Now she is a PhD.

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Not really sure why Gene was terrified by Fred Astaire. Daddy Long Legs being in love with Leslie Caron seems rather charming.

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I'm going to disagree with number one on the list. The end of the age of the dinosaurs led the way towards the Cenozoic Era and the age of mammals with an incredible rise in diversity. Why all the hate?

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Instead of hating on the dawn of the Cenozoic Era, why not focus on the dawn of the Disco Era?

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If the dinosaur era hadn’t ended there would have been no mammals, and without mammals there would have been no Trump.

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Sorry, don't think he has actually been classified yet. Last word is taxonomists are leaning toward Reptilia.

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Or feces.

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Some are leaning toward the Diptera order. In particular, chochliomyia homninivorax.

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After reading about this little lovely, perhaps RFKs sweet little worm will invite a few in to share his B&B

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Mammals and dinosaurs co-existed

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Thus...?

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The supposition that if dinosaurs had continued to exist, there would be no mammals is flawed.

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And there is evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

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Strikes me the Orange Scourge is of a magnitude to deserve his own "Age." You know, like the "Dark Ages." "Age of Age," comes to mind. "Age of Treason" also works, but I have to give a nod to the metaphorically apt and nicely succinct, "The Period."

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Trump is invertebrate.

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As big as your head??? Could that be true?

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He didn't specify which anatomical head.

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Good point!

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MORE bad to the week - ffs, karma, ease up on the people we really need to be here right now and forever.

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Remember the difference between a spider and a daddy long legs (or “harvestman”): Spiders have 8 legs and two body segments; daddy long legs have 8 legs and one body segments.

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So, not all vertebrate life died with the dinosaurs, and things went on (birds being among them), so yes, it was the end of the world for the big lizards but not all of us… and somehow this gives me comfort. Things may be terrible for a long time and awful for our children and it may even be the end of civilization or humans… but somewhere some little animal will make it through and become… something?

Right now it feels like unmitigated disaster and perhaps it is, for me and mine and us. And yet often someone somewhere finds a way.

Yes I am one of those analytical types to just has to chew and chew on something. Particularly if the something is not the big terrible thing I’m actually anxious and sad and furious over.

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