After many fruitless efforts to get my ear infection seen by a medical professional, we finally found a clinic that agreed to see me tomorrow.

“Make sure you arrive 15 minutes early so that the nurse can take your urine sample,” the receptionist informs us.

I’m so beaten down at this point that I’m thinking, hey, urine sample, bone marrow probe, fingerprints, retina scans, I’m ready for all of it.

Then it turned out that the receptionist doesn’t associate ear infections with adults and when she heard my age she deduced that my infection must be a UTI. Because adult women don’t have ears.

I swear I got fetus. Please don’t tell me I’ve been targeted for it and nobody else has. Any other fetus Wordlers here?

The NYTimes politicized Wordle today, and that is not OK. We all knew it would happen, and now it did. It took them a very short time before they messed with the pure, apolitical joy of Wordle.

Dirty bastards.

“But Ukraine should just capitulate and let Russians do this to the entire population of the country,” say braindead peaceniks on both sides of the political spectrum.

Yes, it’s true that the Biden administration is trying to revive the US economy by pouring some fuel on the military-industrial complex. I am not opposed to doing something good for the US economy that simultaneously prevents Ukrainian children from being raped and dismembered in front of their parents.

“But nobody is trying to end the war,” the cognitively impaired weasels moan.

The only way to end a war with a bunch of bloodthirsty, enraged maniacs is by beating them. They don’t go away on their own.

This feeling of “nah, uh-huh, nope, this isn’t right” that you experience whenever I say we need to quit abortion debates is exactly what an addict feels when told to quit the drug.

“It isn’t harming me! It helps me cope! I can quit any time!”

And as any addiction, it bleeds you dry, makes you powerless and easy to control. But it feels so good while you are taking it.

The Democratic Leadership Council, the organization that produced such figures as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman and Terry McAuliffe, has long been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. The larger interests that the DLC wants desperately to court are corporations, capable of generating campaign contributions far outweighing anything raised by organized labor. The way to collect the votes and — more important — the money of these coveted constituencies, “New Democrats” think, is to stand rock-solid on, say, the pro-choice position while making endless concessions on economic issues, on welfare, NAFTA, Social Security, labor law, privatization, deregulation and the rest of it.

— Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? (2004), p. 243

He says the same about Republicans. It’s a good book, I highly recommend.

What’s the name of the political party that is offering to do anything about the inflation? We are on the way to seeing a $100 tank of gas. It’s already a reality in Canada, so why not in the US?

What’s the name of the political party that has a plan to stop supranational corporations from buying up housing and land?

What’s the name of the party that promises to stop the funneling of even more taxpayers’ billions to the pharma industry over COVID? Does anybody even mention the new pharma handout that Biden is preparing at this very moment?

They aren’t doing any of it because we let them. We take the happy pill of sex debates and forget to care about anything else. The only freedom neoliberalism guarantees is the freedom to have sex. It’s everything else that gets taken away. But we don’t notice because we are fixated on sex.

We can stop any time. It’s addictive but we can quit. We can refuse to participate in this con. And we can help our friends quit the drug of sex debates. Whenever anybody on either side mentions abortion, gently veer the conversation towards inflation, gas prices, your grocery bill, and the affordability of housing.

Drugs work because they give pleasure. We have to be ready to sacrifice the pleasure we get from being conned this way, and that won’t be easy. The question is, can we even try? Or are we too far gone?