"My order is shoot to kill you. I don't care about human rights, you better believe me." — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte

Most of Trump's economic advisers run hedge funds or are major figures in the real estate industry. Oh, and he has a couple of actual economists, one of whom advised both Reagan and GHWB. Trump basically wants a group of foxes to watch the henhouse. So maybe I'm wrong. Trump isn't a fascist. It looks like he's just a straight-up wannabe kleptocrat.

I've wasted lots of time arguing with climate change deniers, but maybe they'll go swim in a lake someday.

I don't know what I did to deserve getting an Iggy Azalea earworm stuck in my head.

This is no way to live: always fearing the future
Hope is the only thing that will get me through this
unfounded faith better than drifting unmoored
on the uneasy sea where nightmares dwell in the depths
        and still I drift

Maybe I need to find something else to do with my free time besides play games. I dreamt that a cadre of undead businessmen and their zombie minions were trying to strong-arm the mayor of my Sim town into letting them build a sprawling mall-and-parking lot complex that would cause untold ecological catastrophe. While the Sim mayor tried to stall during negotiations, a detachment of space marines from Starcraft landed in drop pods and annihilated the legions of undead.

Somewhat inspired by this diatribe about 2008 thus far on a random blog I clicked through to, I realize that I had pegged my hopes on three things to happen this year, in order of estimated probability from highest to lowest:

Is it a bad sign that I have to keep reassuring myself that it's not going to kill me?

As I sit here typing this early morning—it’s just me and my ever-faithful dog awake—I think I’ve figured out one of the key components of my ongoing depression. The fact of the matter is that I don’t have much hope for the future. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you all the fucked up shit going on in America today—the country that I live in seems to be the greatest force of evil these days.

What I have forgotten is how important it is to actually go in the water when you go to the beach.^1,2 I haven’t gone in the water for three years, ever since that time I went by myself to Puerco Beach and let the massive waves pummel me, leaving me gasping and breathless. Contemplating the infinite ocean and its instrinsic power just seems to put everything into perspective. I guess I’ll figure out all this bullshit someday, even though that day is not likely to be today.

On the other hand, there is the fact that all suffering comes from desire. But I think that I've been reading that all wrong. When it comes down to it, I don't think that the goal is to stop wanting. I mean, think about it, if you stop wanting because you want to stop suffering, you are still wanting something. To not desire is either to be dead or schizophrenic, and I doubt that schizophrenia is what the Buddha had in mind when he was talking about enlightenment.

Quote out of context: