#8647 #Colbert I know they’re not programmed to be smart or honest, but it would be refreshing if the Facebook bots would post “Stephen Colbert made fun of my cult daddy” instead of this disingenuous bullshit about him not being funny or successful.

It’s bad enough having to live through President Skidmark’s attempt to dismantle democracy. Do I have to see a goddamn Royal Kingdom ad after every single round of Boggle?

#melania It used to be possible to ignore this amoral gold-digging complicit piece of trash. But the way she’s putting herself out there with her tone-deaf proclamations makes me despise her almost as much as her stach-raper husband.

#booksky #literaryfiction Here's what I'm up to in the old writing game. open.substack.com/pub/johnmdon...

New essay about the snack food police and "Christian" Nationalist sonsabitches. open.substack.com/pub/johnmdon...

Maybe I just don’t know my neighbors up the hill well enough. None of them seem to be the type to be blasting Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” on a Sunday afternoon, but here we are.

#caturday Nick Furry says hey.

#booksky "One of my first observations about traveling to a mysterious land was that the residents of the mysterious land don’t think anything is mysterious, and that they don’t immediately appreciate how much of a mystery the mysterious things are to someone who isn’t from the mysterious land."

#booksky #literaryfiction I just happened to look down at the word count on my novel in progress:

#Hungary Can we get JD Vance to go put the Trump kiss of death on Putin next?

#booksky #AImostlysucks I just wrote the phrase "dying embers in the fireplace" in my work in progress. Word double-blue-lined the word "embers" but I couldn't imagine why. I clicked. Word said "Double-check that you're using the right noun." And then suggested "embarrassing."

#8647 "I remain married to a felon who raped American girls and drops bombs on Iranian ones, but MY morality and integrity are above reproach." --complicit liar with a stupid little voice

This all could’ve been avoided if, back in 2016, enough people would’ve had the critical thinking skills to ask “what does Fox News have to gain by telling me that Hillary Clinton is a bad person?”

#booksky Update on my novel in progress: I just passed the 70,000-word mark and expect to have this draft done by the end of April. I've been wanting to tackle this one for a long time: It's one final shot at rewriting my first novel, Bob Smith, originally written in the summer of 1983.

#bobdylan open.substack.com/pub/johnmdon...

#cats Our tortie Etta with a protective paw around one of her new kittens.

Thinking about business names…

Uh--can we not post clues about Wordle until maybe the day after? I seriously didn't think I'd have to block anybody on this site.

#8647 Lost in the controversy about President Dickhead wearing a baseball cap to a transfer-of-remains ceremony is the absolute certainty that while he was there, it never crossed his mind that he was responsible.

#cats One of my cats is water. One is a roll of paper towel.

#movies Apartment 7A (2024) is not my usual movie fare, but in my opinion, it’s a decent little horror film and, if nothing else, worth watching just for Dianne Wiest’s impression of Ruth Gordon.

#8647 There’s bloodthirsty and stupid, like Trump. There’s bloodthirsty and sycophantic, like his administration and the vast majority of Republican legislators. Then there’s bloodthirsty and superstitious, like his cult. None of it bodes well for decent people.

#noem Noem out. I’d say this was the Peter Principle in action except that I don’t think she was competent at her previous job either.

#8647 I guess another regret I have is that the sonofabitch can only die once.

I only regret that when the son of a bitch finally dies, I will not have had an opportunity to call him a goddamn stupid child-raping piece of shit to his face.

You know, it’s kind of hard to talk about how the Scrubs reboot is off to a fun start when you’ve got a goddamn stach-raper fascist conman asshole deciding to start an illegal war to distract from his being a goddamn stach-raper fascist conman asshole.

#booksky Another line from my work in progress: She screwed up her face and appeared more puzzled than she would have if she hadn’t screwed up her face. * * * Alas, that book isn't ready yet--but the ones you can find at www.hillsboropublishing.com are.

#8647 I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There is not one member of this administration who behaves in the way mature, well-adjusted people behave.

#abolishice I know that not all the Gestapo-lovers on my Facebook feed are bots, but I also know that all the bots are Gestapo-lovers.

#8647 “Gosh, I can’t decide if I’m more of an expert on Venezuelan politics or Minnesota childcare!“ — Every other goddamn simpleton on my Facebook feed today

#booksky From my work in progress: "I wasn’t aware of a booming black market for documents from other universes, but maybe I just don’t travel in the right circles." Truly, I amuse myself.

#ChristmasSongs In the meadow, we can build a snowman We’ll pretend that he is Parson Brown He’ll say “are you married?” We’ll say “we don’t need a piece of paper to prove our commitment to each other.“

#ChristmasSongs And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas. Except at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and other places of similar altitude.

#booksky “In the end,” Gooding often said, “one person will own everything and not be punished for it.” Foam basketball Hall of Famer and avowed cynic Don Gooding gets philosophical for a moment in the hilarious novel Fluffball--still only $14.95 and a great gift for the holidays. a.co/d/gK0P3FD

#doordash If I follow the DoorDash navigation app's instructions to the letter, I'd be crashing through more barricades than the Duke boys.

#nokings #trumpisanasshole If Pavlov were alive today, he wouldn't need a dog. He could just observe all the MAGAs posting "Vote for the clean CR" every time a Democratic legislator mentions the shutdown.

#ihateAI Asked Google or Bing or somebody how many way you could arrange four different chess pieces on a chessboard and they put the AI answer up first: 576 ways on a 4x4 chessboard. My next question: "Have you ever seen a chessboard?"

All I wanted to do was listen to some music... open.substack.com/pub/johnmdon...

#nokings #trumpsucks Consider if you will everyone in this administration, from the President to the VP to the Cabinet to the White House staff. Since they've been in office, not one of them has done or said a single thing that would indicate they're normal, well-adjusted human beings. Not one.

#nokings #booksky I'm back after an accidentally long time away--please tell me Blue Sky is still a haven for intelligent people. I'm going to release a primal scream if I see one more Facebook MAGA asswipe pretend not to know what the No Kings protest is for.

#trumpfascistasshole Shout-out to Clem and Zeke, who have never set foot outside their home in Mud Holler but who know what's going on in Chicago better than any resident or the governor of Illinois himself. Thanks for keeping us informed, boys!

#booksky Almost 67,000 words into a new novel with the working title of Ripples in the Catfish Pond. I don't know what you're supposed to do with that information.

There are people who will give you the shirt off their back. But the odds of one of them being in close proximity when you need a shirt are not good.

#booksky I’m signing up to drive for a new service called DashDash. So if anyone needs any punctuation…

#booksky #noir If I had a nickel for every two-bit hoodlum I've put away, I'd have lost twenty cents on each one.

#booksky If you happen to be in Iowa this Saturday, particularly in the Des Moines area and even more specifically in the neighborhood of Beaverdale Books, please stop by and say hi and consider buying a book or two! I'm fun to talk to, I promise--and the new book is pretty funny.

One of the many nice that will happen when the sonofabitch finally dies is that his whole amoral brood becomes irrelevant. Don Jr--the poor man's Billy Carter--will be relegated to the septic tank of history.

#booksky Hey, it's a new Substack essay featuring a faux Bob Newhart take on Ozymandias--which are words that I'm pretty sure have never been used in that order. open.substack.com/pub/johnmdon...

#booksky Ozymandias: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Mighty: Ozymandias: Are you looking? You’re not looking. Just look on my works and despair. Or don’t despair, that’s fine too. But would it kill you to look on the works? Jeez, ye mighty think you’re all that.