Friends, WE MADE IT. It’s only four days until we turn Trump into history as the most corrupt, criminal, treasonous, bankrupt, half-witted, psycho, mean-spirited, lying piece of shit ever to occupy the White House. We did it. We made it through Trump.
Top Cat and I voted! The line was long, because even in Sure Thing New York State, people want to vote against Trump just for the soul-cleansing experience of adding one more droplet to the Blue Wave.
Usually, voting here in this little town on the north shore of Long Island is a matter of strolling into the gymnasium of the rec center near the train station, letting the elderly poll workers fuddle with the registration logs (for some reason, our address always confuses them), and then marking a ballot for immediate scanning. We’re out in 10 minutes, tops, and there’s no cut thing as a line. This year we were going to bring our folding lawn chairs, a thermos of vodka, umbrellas, and sandwiches. We expected to be on line for at least an hour. It took 20 minutes, because we waited for the worst rainy day all year.
My stomach does a little flip-flop when I think that in just four days this nightmare will be, at least technically, over. I am literally sick with anticipation and fear. Word is that the Republicans can, and probably will, steal a certain percentage of votes, but if the margin of victory is huuuuuge even they can’t steal enough votes to nullify the will of tens of millions of Americans. I have champagne in the fridge and by god, I better be able to uncork it in celebration in 2020.
This time last year I was in Los Angeles, blissfully unaware what was coming down the pike, enjoying my first Dia de los Muertas in downtown L.A., shopping in KoreaTown for imported CDs of K-pop, hanging out in our lovely Air BnB where I opened my first bottle of soju. I treasure those memories.
Good times.
I like this time of year.

Illustrations from my book, When Wanderers Cease to Roam, the chapter is called October is the Coyote Month.
November 1, 2019, All Soul’s Day, is the start date of when I became ARMY, that is, unreasonably obsessed with the Korean band BTS. As of this Sunday I will no longer be a baby ARMY (it’s a thing in this fandom); I will be a veteran. Go ahead, ask me anything about my 7 Korean husbands…what I don’t know about RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook isn’t worth knowing.
The other great thing about being ARMY is that you get to hang out with other wonderful ARMYs. Like Omer:
In case you can’t read her dissertation, it’s called Development of Highly Efficient Bismuth Telluride Based Thermoelectric Materials. I, too voted for BTS @ the American Music Awards.
I am still taking Korean classes because I need a hobby that makes me feel stupid and ineducable. This is my study hall:
I was in my conversation class and the instructor gave us a few minutes to jot down some ideas for a dialogue that we would present to our fellow Zoomers. I am the worst student in that class, but I picked up my pen and wrote this in five minutes:
I know! Right??
Korean is the fifth foreign language that I have learned: French and Spanish in high school, when it was so easy that I never did homework; Hebrew while I was living in Israel for a year so I lived and breathed it; American Sign Language in college night classes with my BFF Renee and we’d do extra homework together and drink wine. Learning Korean is like nothing else I’ve ever learned. It’s not just that Korean is hard, it’s that I am 64 and I can barely remember my own phone number and Renee isn’t taking the class with me and I don’t know any Koreans and jesus, nothing sticks in my brain these days.
So I have to go the extra distance to learn Korean verbs. For example, 찍다 means “to take a photograph” (yeah, that’s one of the aggravating things about Korean — they have a seperate verb for EVERYTHING). “찍” , the first syllable, is pronounced “tcheek“, which reminds me of the sound that a camera shutter makes, so that’s how I remember “찍다“.
I have to do this for almost every verb I memorize. To remember the verb “to be far away“, I have to remember that the country of Malta is far away. To remember the verb “to be near” I have to remember that it sounds like the verb “to be clean” and when something is clean you want to be near it. For the verb “to teach” I have to remember that the last syllable sounds like the “ch” in “teach” and work backwards from there. For the verb “to be different” I have to remember that in written form it’s not different, as it’s a very symmetrical verb — its front end and its back end mirror each other — and bingo: I got it. For the verb “to choose” I say to myself “between a mountain and a molehill” because the Korean word for “mountain” is a homonym for the first syllable of the verb “to choose“.
As far as its being an efficient retrieval system this is not the fastest method to pull information out of the brain, but it’s the only way I can learn new vocabulary and, if you give me a few seconds, it works every time.
Does anybody else have a tip for memorizing?
Has anyone else seen the new Borat movie in which the actor Sasha Baron Cohen film Rudy Guiliana in an “interview” with boat’s 15-year old daughter? Top Cat and I watched it last week. It’s hilarious, and contrary to what Rudy claims he was doing in the bedroom with Borat’s 15-year old daughter, he was not “tucking in his shirt”.
Let’s check in on Rudy’s boss, the leading deplorable, as he holds rallies to try and overcome Joe Biden’s huge lead in the polls:
Let’s take a closer look at what the Trump campaign did to its own supporters there in frigid Nebraska (although, to be honest, if they are dumb enough to support Trump, frostbite is the least of what they deserve):
The Lincoln Project, a group of high-profile Republicans who are campaigning against Trump, put up a billboard in Times Square in New York City:
In response to Javanka’s lawyer’s letter threatening to sue, the Lincoln Project sent a one-word message: NUTS!
The Lincoln Project knows history.
Next, let’s check in and see what’s doing over at the Supreme Court:
So, yeah, it’s just another week in Trump’s shithole country.
Right, that lady (above) talking about what a bad example the Democrats are giving to the children is this lady (below):
Thanks for reading, Dear Ones. Have a great weekend and don’t forget to be good to yourself. Whatever happens on November 3, you can take heart: You’ve gotten through most of 2020, and you’re still here. That’s not nothing. In fact, that’s everything.
ONE
LAST
TIME:
Fuck Trump.
In Brooklyn: