140/86
The waffle is not about anything. It's just a picture I took of a waffle I made. It was very good. I had no other photos that would sum up my scattered thoughts.
According to the nurse at Kaiser this morning, my blood pressure is slightly better than it was a few weeks ago, but still not where it should be. I was there specifically for them to monitor my blood pressure. It's higher than it should be.
Did I drink coffee this morning, asked the nurse. No, I drank black tea. (side note: I just learned that internet MAGA men hate to see other men drink tea. This amuses me and it gives me the big idea to switch from a mug to a dainty tea cup and hold out my pinkie and put that on social media and become a dainty pinkie tea influencer)
Am I experiencing any unusual stress, asked the nurse. Besides the fact that ICE went to a friend's apartment complex yesterday – perhaps looking for more five-year-old children to kidnap – and fortunately some very angry and brave women screamed at them until they went away and the news of this sent me into a shaking rage, no, everything's fine.
Well, also I've recently watched the documentary Ordinary Men on Netflix, which is about the regular bakers and taxi drivers and non-military men of Nazi-era Germany who were drafted into a special killing unit and how so many of those men took to the task quite readily. It's based on the book by historian Christopher R. Browning, so now I need to read that. I'm also watching The Sorrow and The Pity (Marcel Ophuls, 1969, 259 min) for the first time. I didn't go into all that with the nurse, and I am not in the medical profession, but one might assume these things contribute to stressful blood-pressure readings.
Last night as I drove us over to Century City for the press screening of Send Help, I I got Alonso to read aloud to me about the Labor Management Relations Act, aka the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.
In short, too many workers were striking so Congress passed this over Truman's veto to keep labor unions from getting too powerful. It's one significant reason why large scale general strikes don't happen in the U.S.
Of course, Minneapolis and others in Minnesota have a general strike planned for today, and I hope it has its intended effect. I think attacking capital with refusal to participate, for short or long strikes, is our best plan. It's non-violent, which I'm for. Well, unless refusing to participate with corporations – who are legally people – counts as violence. A Republican will probably try to tell us it is and outlaw it. Money is really all they have, having sold their humanity to get it.
Meanwhile, several Democrats voted to keep funding absolute madness. And most of the rest of them have their thumbs up their asses. I've engaged with my electeds, telling them they get no vote from me going forward until I see some backbone, some fight, something.
There's a review embargo for Send Help so I cannot yet discuss my very important dum-dum thoughts on that film's approach to a critique of corporate domination or how any of what happens in the film is connected to real life. That'll be for later, and it will be a short journey to its relevance, anyway.
Now back to 4+ hour documentaries about collaborators.
