Who doesn’t enjoy a month-long vacation?
Well, me, for one.
Whenever Darlene and I went on vacation, back when we were still married, she enjoyed the exotic shopping opportunities and ordering strange dishes in unfamiliar restaurants and letting the kids play all day long in the motel swimming pool.
I worried, the whole time, about how we would ever pay off the credit cards.
A wasted effort… worrying, I mean. We never did pay off the credit cards. I’m still paying them off, ten years after the divorce.
But at least I never worried about a government shutdown. Sure, every four or five years, the Congress got its panties in a wad and the government would shut down for a few days, or maybe a week. I suspect the federal workers were happy to have a few unexpected days off from work, and for a writer like myself, it was fodder for a couple of humor columns.
Needless to say, I wasn’t worried this time around either. At first.
When the previous shutdown lasted a whole month, from December 2018 through January 2019, that was a bit of a strain. 35 days, actually. We had the same president back then, but he was new on the job, and I think he didn’t really understand how the federal government operated.
Some of the people in Congress were also new on the job, although the head honchos had been in Congress, like, practically forever. And should have known better.
But this time around, we’re going to have fun with this.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said so himself, on Friday, that of course President Trump is posting outrageously funny (if mildly racist) videos on his social media accounts, of Democratic Congressional leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a mustache and a sombrero.
Speaker Johnson:
“Is he trolling the Democrats? Yes. I mean, yes! Because that’s what President Trump does, and people are having fun with this. But at the end of the day, the decisions are tough ones…
“So, the effects are very serious on real people, real Americans. We support federal employees who do a great job in all these different areas. But what they’re trying to have fun with, trying to make light of, is to point out the absurdity of the Democrats’ position. And they’re using memes and all the, you know, tools of social media to do that.
“Some people, you know, find that entertaining…”
I will admit that I’m among those who find this type of trolling to be entertaining. Enormously entertaining
How anyone can be serious about millions of people losing health care, and rural hospitals going out of business, and thousands of federal workers out of work… well, I just don’t understand all the fuss. America is supposed to be a place where we laugh all the way to the bank. If the Democrats aren’t laughing along with us, that’s their problem. Get a new bank, folks.
When Vice President Vance was later asked about the mildly racist memes — emphasis on the word “mildly” — he told reporters that the President will stop posting funny memes when the Democrats stop shutting down the government.
That doesn’t seem fair, to those of us who are enjoying those funny memes.
Sure, the effects are very serious on real people, real Americans, like Speaker Johnson says. But funny memes help us all get through the tough times, except for those people who are offended by mild racism.
Also, I don’t think Vice President Vance should be predicting what President Trump is going to do when the Democrats finally give in and approve the budget measure. Part of the fun of having a president like Donald Trump is, you can never predict his next move, which is almost always another way to make us laugh.
Which brings me to the news I wanted to share this morning. Ear pulling. More specifically, pulling on your ear lobes.
I heard about this online — a form of acupressure with roots in traditional Chinese medicine. Reportedly, pulling gently on your ear lobes quickly shifts you into a calm, harmonious state. They are even doing this in Finland.
According to Erica Schwartzberg, LMSW, a psychotherapist at Downtown Somatic Therapy, earlobe pulling is more than just a quirky self-soothing trick. It’s also a gentle way of working directly with your nervous system, like somatic release massage and other vagus nerve hacks.
I think we can all use some self-soothing tricks, right about now. But this is more than that. It’s a quirky way of working directly with your vagus nerve system.
I’m just mentioning this, in case the racist memes stop showing up, for some reason.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.