Your “Dear Lord, How is it Already August” Sunday Evening Open Thread

As the title clearly lays out, I cannot believe it is August. Maybe it’s the enduring pandemic that we can’t escape due to variants and the defiant ignorance/selfishness of the freedumb crowd. Maybe it’s the fact I’ve been so busy at work that I can’t keep track of time. Maybe it’s my abandonment issues reinforced by PilsnerFellowRon leaving us. Maybe it’s just getting older and the inexorable march of time accelerating bringing each of us and the universe closer to the inevitable even faster today than yesterday.

Whatever it is, these truths are immutable–

August and deep sweaty Summer are upon us

You’re stuck with me tonight.

As has been previously noted, BGR has had to cut back on his posting duties, so a merry medley of miscreants will be stepping in for non-Football night open threads henceforth. If you would like to be one of those miscreants, speak up! We can’t hear you over the sound of scotchy preparing for the season. But if you’re game, try your hand at a post and if it isn’t offensive and/or incomprehensible, we’ll almost certainly take the free labor, I mean content input. In other words YOU could join the stable of Bubba Carpenter and Pep Harris-quality substitutes for the star content miner around here.

As for August, I don’t know what happened to the calendar, man. If you are in school or have kids, maybe it’s easier to track the time. But even then, it felt like we flipped the calendar from July 4th to July not faster than a teenager finishes looking at their first porn video. I, for one, was not consulted and am not yet ready for it to be August.

Anyhoodles…

What’s on tonight:

https://twitter.com/goldengateblond/status/1418782820349079553?s=19

Olympics

Lord knows I can’t figure out how to watch what I want on NBC.com, Peacock, bitmoji, or any other medium, but allegedly you can catch women’s diving, beach volleyball, the vault and uneven bars in women’s gymnastics, track and field, women’s badminton, and probably other stuff.  No sign of Brick’s dream shooting/surfing mashup event yet. I still say that needs more sharks.

Lesser Footy

Copa Oro Concacaf 2021, USA v Mexico, 7:30 PM DFO time

Toronto and Nashville also have some MLS action at 6:30 PM, but no one’s watching that, right?

Béisbol

Red Sox v Rays, 6pm on ESPN.  Bah.

I think that’s all she wrote.  The Cubs and Nationals will have finished playing long before this post goes live, and that’s a blessing given the Marlins-esque fire sales both those teams executed/excreted this week. Just fucking brutal.

Speaking of brutal, I’m just going to return to COVID briefly. But I’ll do it by way of pop culture.

For those of you that watched The Good Place, you’ll remember that the central question of the series, and especially the last season, was “What do we owe to each other?” In America, at least, the resounding answer from a solid chunk is fucking nothing. Not wearing a small piece of fabric to protect their neighbors, not getting a life saving shot to save themselves or their fellow Americans, not the least amount of effort educating themselves or fending off propaganda telling them one political party is evil and sucking the blood of children while the other loves America so much it has to subvert democracy. It’s made me (even more) pessimistic about my fellow human beings and our collective fate. The Idiocracy levels of stupidity have managed to get even worse and are now tinged with even more threats of violence and fewer rays of hope for breakthrough and change. Which has left me with (even) less patience for bothsidesing and baseless hate and stupidity.

I guess what I’m saying is when the answer to what do we owe to each other is “kindness and human decency” from some and “nothing but vitriol, rage, and stupidity” from others, the former is hard to sustain. What helps sometimes is a reminder of what is good and beautiful in the world, like the anonymous internet friends willing to ship beer to strangers or share an ear when times get tough; a beautiful hike; a reunion and a hug with a loved one; and the fact that both Herman Cain and Rush Limbaugh are still dead.

Oh, and I guess it being August means we’re closer to NFL opening kickoff, so that ain’t bad. The shield still can’t have my money, though, fuck Goodell and the owners.

Whaddyagot for optimism or at least amusing anecdotes? Stop being shy and throw them in the comments.