The day began fairly crappy–there was a pointless meeting so I worked a double shift, which … means I slaved away three hours. I know, I know. Poor me!

As soon as the working week was over with a bang, I jumped in the car again, second trip out in ten days I think. Something was weird on the way out. There were three cars in a row lined up parked on the dirt road. Turning onto the slightly bigger road, there were five or six more. Baffling. I shrugged, I drove. Traffic was light and the border patrol checkpoint was absolutely overflowing with uniformed javelina with nothing to do except collect their government cheese paychecks.

I went the twenty miles to the interstate town and pulled out a big stack of cash at the ATM. Then I went to the grocery store and shopped the fuck out of that place. The bill came to $340, which I’m pretty sure is the most I’ve ever spent at one time on food.

In fairness, this included two really good bottles of wine, for twenty apiece. But still. I am STOCKED. For another ten days I’d say, and then some.

On the way back in, the slightly bigger road was blocked by cops, a LOT of cops, telling me to go around some other way. I did, and there were more cops on more dirt road intersections. They had directions to give out too. There were seriously dozens of cars full of these public servants locking down a square mile. My single pint of coffee ice cream was melting.

Finally I made it back, and unloaded the haul onto the front slab and started wiping it down and shuttling it inside, meat and cold stuff first. It took an hour. The whole time, I could hear one cop on a loudspeaker, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Best I can tell, they wanted somebody who was holed up in what used to be a church, but recently went up for sale, about half a block away from me.

I think the cars lining the road when I left were probably the undercover advance guard.

It’s a mystery.

Home and cozy and half a bottle of the Oregon Pinot is already gone, so I really mean it about the cozy. Treetop flying. A fine rare state for the cessna I am.

And another thing. About the Bern.

In episode 65, Mike Moore says don’t despair, but I don’t find his reasons for saying so compelling. Some of them are pure magical thinking (not, you know, that there’s anything wrong with that). The most grounded of them is that the DNC will be forced to pay attention to the hundreds of delegates Sanders does have–but if that was going to happen, why didn’t it happen in 2016?

Kindly forgive my pessimism. I hope I’m wrong.

He closed with advice to "Find your inner Bernie", which is sound and I think the only way out, and then with music from Leonard Cohen that completely contradicted his optimish, vide:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

But in digging that out, I came across a really wonderful site, leonardcohen.com, that includes the video for my maybe-favorite Leo song. "I don’t like what happened to my sister." Enjoy please.

Other angles.

Sanders Confirms Obama, Biden Conversations Before Ending Campaign

This is Bernie telling Chris Hayes that he got a call from Barack just before dropping, but he wouldn’t say what they discussed. Fuck.

He also says that Biden’s agreed to half-ass it on Bernie’s policies, including:

–forgiveness of certain student loan debt for teachers, which would relieve me of about 13K worth of obligation

–lowering the Medicare age from 65 to 60, which could save me five years of my lfe

… and some other stuff … It still doesn’t feel worth the vote, though, and that’s partly because Biden will happily lie to people with my politics, and partly because I don’t believe that Biden will even be the nominee in the end.

Here’s a fairly wild but articulate guy who says that Hillary was always going to be who they put up.

Bernie Sanders Drops Out as Biden Gets Ready to Give Clinton the Democratic Nomination

I’m half-convinced.

And whether Hillary is the puppet or not, there’s a good chunk of the smart money betting that Biden definitely won’t be:

Democrats Planning To Replace Biden, Sanders Spokeswoman Speculates, “It’s Coming”

That much I am more than half convinced-of.

I am still inclined to rally the masses around a write-in, and I have one more proposal to float for a name.

What do you say to Holden Caufield?