Three times since the November election, I have observed in person crowds that have descended upon Washington DC in support of President Voldemort. And then today the Trump mob stormed the Capitol as Congress was in the process of certifying the Electoral College vote. As the District locks down under a 6:00 PM curfew, I want to share some observations.
Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
“Mother, 2020 is the year where all the old Christmas traditions get thrown in the dumpster fire,” Olympia said. “But at least we have a fake Christmas tree,” her mother responded. The final installment of the short-story series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
Silver could not escape the feeling that listening to Taylor Swift made her want to break up with Louis and listening to Joni Mitchell made her want to marry Louis. The eleventh installment of the series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
Louis Guidry received an unexpected phone call from the father of his girlfriend, Silver Tilley-Blandin. Louis did not know if her father was the Tilley or the Blandin, and it seemed to him to be the family joke that neither Silver nor her siblings knew, either. The tenth installment of the series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
Between the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the ongoing threats to her and her family from the unceasing COVID-19 pandemic, and enforcing the short-lived, horrific PPE Act of 2020, Officer Alexandra Sykes felt broken. The ninth installment of the series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
Hopper Tilley-Blandin paused at his latest crossroad. This time, the choice was not between this random thing or that random thing. It was not even a choice between the two women, his ex-wife Ingrid Brzezinski or Charlize Theron, the girlfriend who had been on-and-off ghosting him since the onset of the pandemic. No, his choice: retreat to the safety of his family or move forward with someone outside the protective, insulated shell provided his family. The eighth installment of the short-story series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
Reese Witherspoon is hosting a Zoom call with Edward Norton, Charlize Theron, Hopper Tilley-Blandin, and Hopper’s parents. The working title of the movie they are discussing is “The Living Canvases.” Hopper hates the title. The seventh installment of the series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
Silver, Olympia, Hopper, and their parents received an unexpected message from Mia Gottschall, a New York attorney who represented mostly artists and writers and their families. Among Gottschall’s clients was the singer Fiona Apple, whom Silver and Olympia called “Mother Apple.” The sixth installment of the short-story series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
The following text exchanges were captured from the mobile devices of Huey Newton Wallace, Huey’s ex-girlfriend Olympia Tilley-Blandin, Ingrid Brzezinski, Ingrid’s ex-husband Hopper Tilley-Blandin, the actress Charlize Theron. The fifth installment of the short-story series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
"Christmas? What's that? I guess that I we can do some kind of Facetime or Zoom with Birgit. Exchange gifts over Amazon. Pray that we stay healthy while we wait for the vaccine." The fourth installment of the short-story series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
How very glad and relieved she was that Reese had not let slip to anyone where she was located. She was also glad that she did not celebrate American holidays like Thanksgiving. It would have only disappointed the expectations of her friends and agent that she did not land a photo on TMZ for her sumptuous, envy-inducing feast. The third installment of the series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas."
On the day before Thanksgiving, while on their daily stroll through a section of Washington, DC that this nauseatingly cute, white hipster couple had dubbed the “Death Zone,” Silver Tilley-Blandin turned to her boyfriend Louis Guidry and said, “Your name came up again on the internet.” Thus begins the second installment of the series, “The 12 Days of the Tilley-Blandin Coronavirus Christmas.”
Following the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and looking forward to a holiday season like no other, we take another look at what's going on within the Tilley-Blandin universe.
“I love Christmas more than anything -- other than shooting at things and making lethal contact,” the older white man said into the recording studio microphone. “Just got myself a Christmas present, a new Remington 7600. Santy Claus better wear some blaze orange when he comes around just to be sure.”
Because of financial difficulties, he will be forced to sell Mar-a-Lago. To the Obamas.
I feel as though I am about to exhale after holding my breath for 3 years and 360something days. Many people are calling for a return to normal, but who’s normal are we discussing? I suggest that we are going to have to create a new normal for ourselves, regardless of the outcome of the election.
We turn our attention to how some so-called leaders of Christian faiths have conned their followers into supporting Donald Trump.
We turn our attention to Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s attitudes toward immigration and immigrants and I ask you to take a quick quiz.
We turn our attention to Donald Trump’s suitability to lead the most powerful military apparatus in the world. Our Commander-in-Chief’s relationship with our armed forces is, at best, complicated. Would you want to frag him?
You cannot achieve law and order at the end of a gun barrel. Not in this country. We are way too ornery to go stand in the corner just because someone told us to. We are a nation of people who have succeeded when we sit down, look each other in the eye, and talk through our differences.
For many Republicans, the idea of pulling the lever for a Democratic president can hurt. I feel your pain, but it’s not too late to save your party by voting for Joe Biden. Donald Trump is certainly the leader of a movement, but he is not a Republican, nor does he represent the traditional Republican values of respect for tradition, hierarchy, fiscal conservatism, parliamentary government, social stability, and continuity. Does Donald Trump remind you of Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, or George Bush the father or son? Donald Trump has painted the Republican Party into a corner where nothing matters except power.
Joe Biden has a full agenda for women based on a simple premise: his daughter is entitled to the same rights and opportunities as his sons. As the father of daughters, I get that.
You always worry about your children. Always. It doesn’t matter if your child is 5 months old, 5 years old, 25, years old, or 50 years old. It is part of your job description as a parent to worry about your kids. Here is a Top 10 list of priorities in your life once you became a parent.
After electing a businessman instead of a politician to drain the swamp and shake things up in Washington, we must come to the conclusion that the job of President of the United States actually requires a politician who can negotiate with both Republicans and Democrats, governors, leaders of other countries – and the business community. We need a president who will not pick favorites or stack the odds against American companies and small businesses based on prickly whim.
Pet owners who don't feel phony about their dogs, cats, rabbits, birds...you know who's got your back.
As an investor looking over the prospectus of Joe Biden and Donald Trump and their 10-K filings, where would you invest your vote?
Dear Banker: I believe you have serious doubts about a second Donald Trump term as POTUS and questions about how Joe Biden’s election would affect your bank. Here’s why I believe that it makes business sense for you to vote for Joe Biden this November.
None of us children could define -- much less see -- cooties. However, we understood that other children could be “infected” with cooties if they got too close to someone with cooties. And we never could explain the origin of cooties, other than through a simple declaration: “you have cooties.”
Maybe you should not share the announcement that you are taking a road trip to Florida two days after the national emergency was declared. Florida?!?!?
Kayleigh McEnany is not making the policy, only trying her best to defend the indefensible. Though her work may feed the media’s insatiable demand for content, Kayleigh McEnany is not fooling anyone. She is not convincing anyone, either. She is only wasting our time.
As I awake, the distance between my night and day feels like a demilitarized zone with hostile forces on either end defending their territory through hi-powered rifles loaded with fear and doubt.
This spring, when my wife suggested that I spent some of the pandemic in a useful exercise by writing short stories, I decided to write a short story set in the fall of 2020, based on what how a young woman would spend her $1,200 government stimulus checks. As I imagined her backstory, a family emerged. I decided to write a series of stories about this family, the Tilley-Blandin’s, set against the backdrop of a country facing several crises on the cusp of the Presidential election. The stories just emerged out of me.
So far this week, one of my favorite comedians, Amber Ruffin, has recorded three stories on YouTube about her run-ins with the police. In these stories, Amber recounts how she was doing literally nothing to arouse suspicion from any sentient creature, but she ends of being threatened by white police officers. Let me take you back to my own run-in with the cops to illustrate white privilege.
In early March, Jessie Andersen made the first phone call to her father, Stephen. He and his late wife Gwendolyn had raised four daughters, who were known as the Andersen sisters. The Andersen sisters followed simple rules, agreed upon and codified following the death of their mother. Please carefully re-read those first three sentences. It will make things easier for you.
Warerugoing? White House. Google Maps told you it is a 20-minute walk. It’s still OK to use Google. Amazon’s out. Google is still OK. Walkity-walk through our nation’s capital with all these early morning people walkity-walking to their important jobs doing important things for all the little people in BFE. Like you, the new White House press secretary.
Shortly after the Dot-com Bubble and before Monster.com and Indeed became popular, I found myself out of work, a situation not unlike 30 million Americans who have filed for unemployment compensation because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two weeks ago, Cillian Lynch opened his eyes for the first time in 12 years. And now it looked like I was his everything. Forty-two years old and I had to be the everything to someone who had not talked to me in 12 years.
In these times when it is critically important to know who we’re tweeting at and who’s tweeting at us, the blue verification check next to your Twitter handle will make a substantive difference to your online existence. Which, during these times, is more important that your real life.
The ampersand is the Bob Benson of punctuation. It tries too hard by half to please. “Look at me! I’m here,” it screams from the page. I see you, ampersand. Just go away.
Oscar Templeton and Lucinda Featherstone, who was known widely as LuLu, ate lunch at this ancient restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue because they were sure that no one they knew would see them.
For far too long, the word “your” has been widely used by figures in authority to unfairly establish and maintain hegemony of one person over another.
A few years removed from focusing on Rory Gilmore as the touchstone of the show, I have settled on the belief that the real heroes of the show are the characters of the musty, crusty, waspy grandparents, Emily and Richard Gilmore.
Martin had found the photograph three years ago, while he was going through divorce. Though the photograph was yellowed with age and blurry, he could still discern his features and those of the two women. They had met on the beach in Naama Bay on the Sinai Peninsula in 1980.
Friendships are not easy, especially when the friends are no longer in the same crucible of school, work, parenting, or city. They require intentionality. They require travel. They require shedding the very comfort zone that fostered the friendships in the first place.
Last year I volunteered to make phone calls for the presidential candidate I felt most capable not only of defeating President Voldemort, but who could right all the wrongs being inflicted on our country by a political leadership that cares only for what it wants. My candidate was Elizabeth Warren. I loved talking to strangers … Continue reading This Elizabeth Warren Supporter Will Stan for Joe Biden
Ruby O’Riordan had plans for her retirement. Travel, home improvement, playing with grandchildren, and then more travel. In her work as a management consultant, she had traveled by air or train to most states, all of Europe, and several countries in eastern Asia, advising corporate clients on how to streamline their personnel processes. Her husband … Continue reading Ruby and Teddy’s Coronavirus Adventure
At 3:00 in the morning, Renée woke up and felt the grip of a familiar enemy tighten around her sense of well-being. She rose out of her bed, walked down the hall to the bathroom, and gargled with a glass of water. She looked at herself in the medicine cabinet mirror. “Happy birthday, Renée,” she … Continue reading The Four Seasons of Renée
