Nope

The Trump administration’s NSS announces a dramatic reworking of the foreign policy the U.S. has embraced since World War II.

And that's not the most alarming thing about it.

so now I'm spending some part of my evening with another coworker instead of by myself, which means I can't just summarily turn off the TV. Other people are weird when they want the TV on even if they aren't watching it, but since they think I'm weird for preferring blissful silence I guess sometimes I have to compromise.

Which means that the other day my entertainment choices were either a long and frankly tedious piece on the JFK conspiracy theories, or HP1. Welp, JFK won't get any deader, and practically speaking, JKR won't get any richer. The choice wasn't really very agonizing, is what I'm saying. I feel like maybe it ought to have been, but no. (That place does not have enough channels. If I'm going to be stuck watching TV for even part of the night I really need to figure out how to get my phone on the screen.)

All this led me to realize something that I somehow don't think I ever thought about before, which is that the plot of book 2 doesn't make any fucking sense, like, right from the start. How exactly did Lucius set it up so that he'd happen to bump into the Weasley family? What if they hadn't gone shopping that day? There clearly was a lot of planning that went into this, so what was his backup? Really, none of those plots hold together if you look at them too hard. And that's not too unusual for fiction, but I'm not particularly inclined to be charitable about it.

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Honestly, if you ban somebody it ought to warn you before you comment on their posts so that if you forget or don't realize you don't end up in an awkward situation.

I have the distinct impression that Adrian Tchaikovsky doesn't like Donald Trump.

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I guess winter's finally here.

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I put my chicken in the oven and fried up the chicken skins and - listen, I gotta say, of all the food items I've tried because I read about them, fried chicken skins are fucking amazing. I don't mind saying that they are, hands down, the most brilliant thing Jews have contributed to the world, and I do hope my various Jewish friends take that in the spirit it's intended, because omg. I don't care if I find out later that you guys invented the wheel, this is better. I am very thankful.

Anyway, we've got chicken, creamed spinach, possibly creamed corn, maybe beets of some sort, maybe couscous, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (with marshmallows, contributed by a guest), stuffing, cornbread, cranberry sauce, and pies. I'm debating making some soup as well, buuuuuuut I think we may have enough food and not enough bowls. Oh, and there's green beans. Oh, and brussels sprouts and a salad.

(Maybe I should've made baked beans? I wonder if I have time to make baked beans. Oh, but the chicken is in the oven. Hm. Can you make not-baked baked beans? Is that a thing?)