Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Making English muffins won't add a second to the Trump administration


   

     Maybe we're doing this whole Trump thing wrong.
     Maybe liberals—horrified, rapt, gazing fixedly at each new jaw-dropper through latticed fingers, only tearing our chalky faces away from the endless slow motion train wreck to grab each other hard by the shoulders and screech, "Can you believe this?"—have fallen into a rut.
     Shock gets old. On Monday Trump lied that Barack Obama never called families of fallen soldiers. On Tuesday, trying to wriggle out of that lie—or sincere delusion, what does it matter?—Trump asked whether Obama called Gen. John Kelly after Kelly's son was killed in Afghanistan in 2010, using his chief of staff's personal heartbreak as a tissue to blot the mendacious froth from his own lips. By the time you read this Wednesday, Trump will have sailed off into new territory with some unimaginable false tweet, callous remark or cruel policy.
     Must we flinch at each one?
     Maybe we need to step back, breathe, take a break, consider the big picture. Yes, this is an ordeal. We've also sailed off someplace strange and have to live there for the foreseeable future. Exiles in Crazyland. Everything this president says is still important, but not in the traditional, reflect-reality sense of importance. It's important in the yet-more-evidence-of-unfitness sense. But who really needs more evidence? At this point, either you get it or you don't. I certainly get it, and bet you do too. If you don't, well, instead of writing to me in all caps shouting how much you don't get it, consider this: just because you don't perceive something doesn't mean it's not there. Can you get that?
     For those who grasp what's happening, a ball peen hammer on our skulls, a thought: this nightmare is also an opportunity, a chance to be better people, ourselves.
     What should we do? Nurture your own non-Trump reality. Because otherwise, he can poison your whole life and you go mad, and there's too much of that already.
     Work at making your non-Trump existence richer. I did something recently that I've never done in my entire life and, I would bet, none of you have never done either, or even contemplated doing.
I made English muffins....

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17 comments:

  1. Lord knows we all need occasional respite from the horror show. But I can't say I like English muffins nest enough to put in that kind of time and effort. There isn't even any chocolate!

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  2. We can't spend our days being consumed by Trump and his idiocies. You're right.

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  3. The smell of bread, english muffins, or pastries baking is certainly a huge stress reliever. The aroma is like aromatherapy, a sure cure for many a psychological malady. As always, I prefer having a guaranteed rate than have my favorite baseball team put butterflies in my tummy. Have them ready to go. Thursday morning you can pop some fresh baked english muffins in the toaster and you will feel right as rain.

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  4. If only some baking could end this nightmare...

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  5. Great article, great advice. But, Trump is unique in America history, a low grade fever that is always present, threatening to turn into a fatal disease at any moment. If you are a thinking, feeling human being, you can't stop thinking about this lunatic. You know that he is not just relentlessly odious and inhumane, you know that he is a threat to perhaps the most important institution in the world, the United States of America. What kind of man lies and uses a friend's dead child to slander a good man and to make himself look better? No one. No one in human history - until Donald Trump.

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    1. Ah, but you know "Hillary would have been far far worse, because everything would look to be in order on White House stage, whereas off stage she would be consorting with all sorts of evil characters to bring down our beloved country that Donald Trump is attempting to make GREAT AGAIN. Nasty evil woman." Betcha can't beat that argument! As I ride off cackling into the sunset.

      john

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    2. You could have used an emoji on that one, John.

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  6. Well I know what I'm making later. Those look fantastic! Baking is a great way to get your mind off the craziness that keeps spewing out of DC, you really need to pay attention to the recipe and the dough or its shot. The British Baking Show is also a soothing break.

    Coey, that's what Nutella is for.

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    1. I'd love Nutella if not for the hazelnut. Probably just as well!

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    2. If not for the hazelnuts, it'd be oily, cocoa-flavored, sugared lecithin milk. Might make for a soggy muffin... ; )

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  7. Yes. At first I thought the Great British Baking show would be just another forum for a celebrity chef throwing tantrums, but got hooked. I hope there will be more editions.

    Tom

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  8. Mmmm... English muffins! I think I'd even prefer one of those to the cookies from yesterday.

    And, yes, an absorbing, tactile project like that with a swell olfactory bonus sounds like a fine diversion from Dolt 45's daily lies being fire-hosed at everybody.

    Still, I'm having enough trouble keeping from turning into a Michelin-man-muffin myself during this anxiety-inducing Rump regime without the blog turning into Every goddamn carb! ; )

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    1. I go for daily walks to fight off the carbs and the Trump's.

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  9. Probably no longer the case given the globalization of food and everything else, but I saw no evidence of things called English Muffins during the four years I spent in the U.K. The crumpet (yum), a delicacy reaching back to Saxon times, looks much the same but is of a softer consistency. My grandmother made a traditional Welsh (I won't attempt to spell it) flat bread made from fried bread dough, which had the consistency and taste of an English Muffin.

    It is possible that what we know as the English Muffin originated in a particular British locality and is still consumed there but called something else. As in the case of what they call Chinese food in China.

    Tom

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  10. 70% of republican voters believe that negative media reports about president trump are deliberate falsehoods intended to trick the credulous into voting for a democrat. The man can do whatever he wants. White country peoples' fear of being bound more tightly to the Other overcomes any appeal to reason.

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