Hello! To quote Bob Dylan, Everything Is Broken! Last Monday, I ran over my phone. Not on purpose, although that would be a fine and understandable thing, but because it fell out of my hoodie pocket as I was helping Harvey get into the car after our walk. I backed right over it, drove off and realized thanks to my elderly fancy Japanese luxury car (Harriet. Her name is Harriet the Chariot.) that I did not have my phone. Harriet puts a message up on the screen but it takes a while for her to get up to speed, so I was halfway across the bridge before she told me. I went right back and found my phone. I was afraid it had fallen in the long grass, which made me generally afraid because the coyotes come out at dusk. They have escorted me away from that trail more than once. This is nice of them in a sort of Nice Face Be a Shame If Anything Happened To It way, but also terrifying. However, it’s the 21st century and cars are much scarier than coyotes: the tall grass would have been fantastic. The screen was smashed.

This would be a depressing, slightly amusing mishap except that it is the second time my phone has been run over. In August 2025 in a fluster of preparations for the Regatta Parade, I left my phone on top of the car. 2 blocks away it flew off and I did not notice, even though Harriet duly notified me. I went off to the parade anyway, since we were late and I was sure it was in the house somewhere. Welp. Famous last thoughts, as it were. I clearly cannot be trusted with cars and phones somehow.

Both of these phones were Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultras. Replacing the screen on one of those is apparently damn near impossible and extremely expensive, as I learned last August and again on Tuesday. There’s a guy who works at the mini storage behind the Wal Mart who fixes phones and he told me that they often don’t work and he couldn’t guarantee it.

My brother has an iPhone he is no longer using. He has a Raz Senior Mobility phone now, by the way, and I mostly recommend it should you be in the market for such a thing. So he said, take my iPhone, and I did. I took it down to T-Mobile and they transferred my phone number to it and all good, right? No. Not all good. I never had an iPhone before and I don’t like it. And, because of this cursed century and walled gardens and tech billionaires, once you assign your life to one ecosystem or the other, changing over is no small matter. My calendar. My contacts. All my apps. It’s probable that none of those things will come back, but at least some data might return with an android, whereas with an iPhone I’m starting from scratch. Then, there is the emotional wallop of facing deleting all his stuff off his phone. We both know that he will never be able to use it again, but actually deleting his stuff? His phone? It’s just another fucking nail in the coffin and I hate it. I hate this disease so much. It just robs you of your dignity bit by bit and then it takes your podcasts. And, to be selfish, I hate the camera. Hate hate hate it. Let’s face it, I use my phone as a camera much more than I do as a phone. So I emptied my paltry savings account and ordered yet another refurbished phone. I’ll get it this week and start the process of transferring and in the meantime, if you think you were or should be in my contacts, please email me your digits and I will put them in my new phone. And if we were supposed to hang out, please please PLEASE email me because if it was in my calendar, it’s gone.

On to the Photos of the Day! This is a photo of the day blog. Supposedly. Anyway, on Sunday Five and I made fabulous bleach dyed Halloween shirts. It is surprising how difficult it is these days to find just a bag of plastic spiders. And I hate it when people blank out their children’s faces but this is a public blog and MY GOD WE LIVE IN THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS THESE DAYS. I just. Words fail me. So you will not see Five’s beautiful face on this blog. On Monday I took her to school in the morning and this is one of the views on the way to school. Truly we live in the most beautiful place in the world. Even if it is sometimes somewhat annoying. Last photo from my old phone, she wept, and thank the gods for dropbox. Tuesday, here is the first photo from my brother’s iPhone, taken from the car at a standstill on the Youngs Bay Bridge on the way home from T-Mobile. No clue why everything is green but I rather like it. Wednesday, the afternoon dog walk at the port. Thursday, I went to see Iron and Wine! It was incredible! Shamanic! Transformative! He did not play the song I was afraid he would play but I cried anyway and it was okay! I bought a t-shirt! And my bank card got hacked but I think that was coincidental. Friday morning I went to work – everything during my hell week went very smoothly and it turns out that by and large I am pretty good at my job, and also, more importantly, I have amazing wonderful colleagues who are extremely good at theirs and kind enough to help me out. Anyway, on Friday morning I discovered that my bank card had been hacked. I freaked out a bit but Wauna found it quickly, so no harm done. Except I thought I wouldn’t have a bank card for weeks, but it turns out that they can just print them now, so even that went okay. Now I get to figure out what subscriptions I actually have and get rid of most of them. And then that afternoon: benediction – river otters by the sawmill trail. You can barely see them and I’m irritated at myself for not lugging the good camera with me every day. But there they were, two of them, and you can zoom in and kind of see their little faces. I only see them about every two or three years and every time, I tell you what, it’s a blessing and a glory.

Then Saturday, yesterday, another day, another No Kings protest. I am done, now, with these protests. I usually feel good, after them, like wow! Things might change! Not this time. I mean, I ran into some friends. We talked about cats. And I met somebody who asked me if my blog title was an Incredible String Band reference and ya know what? It kind of is! Nobody has ever noticed that! As a teenager I really loved weird old hippie music and you just do not get weirder or hippier than the Incredible String Band. Thanks to my brother and my hippie aunt, I had all the records. So that was the week and that was the good part of the protest. A beautiful day, some friends. But. You should leave now if you do not want to hear some ranting.

Here are a couple of angry political paragraphs. Fuck No Kings. This is so pointless. It achieves exactly nothing except making old liberals feel smug. If you people think we can hold signs and vote our way out of this I have a bridge or two for sale. We are fully in fascism now. This is a fascist country. The president is a traitor. The billionaires have our entire congress and senate and supreme court firmly by the balls. Feudalism 2.0 is well on its way. You’re not a lord or lady in the castle and neither am I. We’re all of us so much closer to being houseless than we are to being millionaires and if you think that isn’t true, I’m sorry, but you’re an idiot. In the future that they are building, we are penniless serfs IF WE ARE FUCKING LUCKY. If not it’s the death camps. I’m not exaggerating. The only way out of this is general strike, revolution and yes, almost certainly some violence. They are not going to just hand over any power. Climate change is accelerating and they fully intend to ride that wave to total domination of a broken and ruined planet. They would rather reign in hell and they don’t want too many subjects: just a few broken survivors will be enough.

I look around and I feel nothing but despair. A blue wave isn’t going to do shit. I wish it would. But all it will do is bring back the curtain to hide the deals that the Epstein class lives and dies by. Meanwhile, more school shootings: they don’t want school and they don’t want the post office and they don’t want us healthy. And we are all so broken that we are not rising up, just keeping on pretending that everything is normal and everything is fine. I am just as bad as everyone: I keep going to work and trying to pay my increasingly unaffordable bills and buying my unaffordable possibly toxic groceries and meekly accepting that I am thousands of dollars in medical debt despite my supposedly stellar health insurance. My congressperson – who I quite like – says that voting will be fine and she’s investigating the post office and I think, yeah, sure. Sure you are, but no matter what you find, you won’t DO anything, because your net worth keeps going up and you’ve had this job for years and you do not want to rock the boat. Their boats are floating; ours are sinking; here we are and I’m pretty sure it’s the end of the road for the USA. So here comes the election. And if you don’t think that Elon can rig an election, again, I hope you’re right and I’m wrong. But I also have bridges to sell and if you buy one, I’m taking the money and leaving the country.