Anesthesia

 What a time to be alive! The more you think about it, the more those dusty quaaludes in the back corner of the medicine cabinet beckon. Know what I mean?

If there’s any word in the English language that triggers anxiety, it’s chaos. The name of a bored God! But He sure isn’t bored anymore. His name is plastered all over everything these days. You can’t read a news story, or even a headline, without seeing the dread C word. Chaos! And WHOOSH! The old anxiety just rears up its head and shouts BEWARE!!!

That’s no way to live. Time for some dependable anesthesia.

You see, Mummers parades are few and far between. Gotta have something regular. Preferably something that costs money, so you feel compelled to do it.

For the purposes of this blog, “anesthesia” is defined as anything that makes one forget, however briefly, that Donald Trump is president.

One might say this is not a good thing, that Anne Johnson, the Grand Wazoo of the Independent Republic of Johnsonia should be hyper attentive to the zeitgeist. But dang, reader. Do you see how shabby they are treating any world leaders they don’t like? And if they invaded Johnsonia, they would overrun it in five seconds. And then, who would feed the cat?

Anesthesia. Highly recommend. Look around you. Everyone is using it.

I have two types of anesthesia that I have been using to great effect. I think I will split them into two different posts, since I am still pecking away on my phone.

ANESTHESIA #1: The Baltimore Orioles

When I was a little kid, my mom made me go to bed every night at 7:30. I don’t know why. Maybe she got the idea from Dr. Spock or some such moron. Let me tell you, when you’re a little kid, and it’s summertime, hence broad daylight at 7:30, you sure as fuck don’t want to go to bed. My father couldn’t override Mom’s strict edicts, but he did something at least. He turned the radio on and set it to the Baltimore Orioles.

My first and forever love, the Baltimore Orioles.

If you didn’t know, the O’s are a baseball team. And in my childhood they rocked and rolled. They were on the map. Three World Series appearances before I was 12 years old!

Fast forward, and as luck would have it, I enrolled in a college that was six blocks from the Orioles ballpark. Imagine. I could walk to games. And in those enlightened times, the club had a student ticket priced at $1.75. In the summer of 1979 I went every night. And when the games were away, I watched them in a campus pub. I was young then, so the West Coast away games didn’t faze me.

That year the Orioles returned to the World Series.

I broke up with a boyfriend who said baseball was stupid, the opiate of the unwashed masses. And I petitioned Aphrodite to give me a life partner who loved the O’s. By golly, She did just that.

It sure doesn’t cost $1.75 to watch an Orioles game anymore. But a few years ago, Mr. J splurged on the MLB t.v. package, so we could watch Orioles games every night. What a goddamn godsend it has been.

This year, before the tariffs, before Mr. J broke two teeth, before our 401K crashed, Mr. J bought a Sunday package of two seats at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. 

Mind you, we live six miles from the Phillies and can get to that ballpark on mass transit. But hell to the nope. Baltimore or bust! It’s only 100 miles one way!

Last Sunday was our first game. Our seats are padded. The weather was beautiful. And to be perfectly honest, Orioles fans are positively choir boys compared to Phillies fans. (I’m sure you already knew that.)

Anesthesia! A baseball game every night until October! 12 more live games! The “Birdland” perks doled out to season ticket holders! Crab cakes on the stadium menu!

Honestly if I didn’t have this, I would be lost.

I know they say that Hitler came to power because ordinary German citizens weren’t affected by his machinations at first. But my household has been affected. My daughters’ lives are being affected. My students’ lives may be profoundly affected. So to use a baseball metaphor, I’m on the DL but ready to spring into action if my team summons me. I just can’t even, right now. My elected officials are wringing their hands. So what can I possibly do myself?

Call me if you need me. I’m blissed out in Birdland.

PS - The only time I cried over the passing of a celebrity was when Brooks Robinson died. I’m tearing up even now, thinking about it.

Johnsonia Announces Reciprocal Tariffs

 

Special Statement from the Independent Republic of Johnsonia 

In response to the 10% tariffs imposed by the Trump administration upon the Independent Republic of Johnsonia, our nation hereby will impose a 35% reciprocal tariff on the products exported by Johnsonia. Expect to pay more for white cat fur, pine needles, pinecones, carpenter bees, and milkweed seeds.

These tariffs will commence immediately.

We apologize for the hardship this will cause in the realm of international trade, but it is not a decision we arrived at lightly. We must do what is best for the citizens of Johnsonia.

Special statement by press secretary Taffy the Boardwalk Cat

April 5, 2025

Laugh or go mad.

Staring at a Tesla until My Eyeballs Explode

 O pity poor me, readers! I really mean it this time. Here in the Independent Republic of Johnsonia I am besieged by a Swasticar constantly! Or at least whenever my rich neighbor isn’t at work. It’s excruciating.

Some of you long-time fans might recall that a developer demolished the house across the street from mine (as well as four beautiful mature trees), I guess about six years ago now. In place of the one house and four trees, the developer built two ugly McMansions. These atrocities were quickly snapped up at a cool million each.

I have never been rude to my new neighbors, but I never baked them a pie either. I sit on my porch with my back to their hideous homes. Guess that speaks volumes.

Some time ago, an electrical contractor spent the better part of three days at the house right across from mine. Part of the work was creating a charging station. Soon thereafter, a gleaming white Tesla sedan appeared on the right side of the double driveway.

Even then I wouldn’t have swapped it for my 2001 Saturn. Looked to me like status and conspicuous consumption.

One day I happened to be on the sidewalk when my neighbor came out to get into her fancy machine. I said, “Do you like it?”

She said, “Yes.” Got in and drove away.

Longest conversation we ever had.

Election season arrived, and the Tesla family peppered their lawn with Harris signs. Hey, this is the Great Blue Northeast. A Trump sign would have surprised me more.

Now the election has come and gone, with disastrous results. And there sits that goddamn Tesla sedan, day after day, an assault to my eyes every time I venture out my door.

Oh reader. How my hands tingle as I flex my keys on their ring. How my lip curls! How my nasty thoughts turn to the gold spray paint in my cellar!

Thank goodness I have achieved a modicum of common sense in my dotage. Twentieth century me would have been hard pressed to show such restraint. Even now, the ghost of badass young Anne says, “But you could at least fling a little roadkill behind it…”

No worries. I have finally (mostly) grown up. And it’s hard to find roadkill in Haterfield.

From time to time I think of my terse young neighbor. (She’s a surgeon.) No doubt she purchased the machine for its carbon impact and its subtle hint that she earns some serious ducats. But now she’s stuck. She’s in the Great Blue Northeast behind the wheel of a loathed automobile. I wonder if anyone has bad-mouthed her at a stoplight yet. It’s bound to happen.

There is no moral to this story, no takeaway lesson. I’m just very bummed that I have to stare at this piece of shit car right outside my house. I do take some solace that the thing doesn’t belong to me. Nor will it ever.

I had a jaundiced view of Tesla before 2025. Let your imagination run wild on how I feel about it now.

My Very Famous and Influential Cat

 Hi there, “Gods Are Bored” peeps! It’s me, Anne Johnson. Don’t leave that “e” off the end of my name. It’s posh!

I have to put the photos at the top, because I am still using my phone to do this.

This is my cat, Omega, aka Taffy the Boardwalk Cat. She is on page 42 in the just-released, soon-to-be bestseller “How to Rate a Cat.” Look! There she is, with a solid rating of 1000/10 for her Jersey Shore cattitude!

I entered Omega in an online contest with a cat influencer, and lo, she got chosen! It went to her head before the cheery little tome was published last week, and since the volume has arrived she has been insufferable.

Then again, this is a feline who puts the suffer in insufferable, so it’s hard to tell whether fame has changed her or not.

The Cat Distribution System saw fit to stick me with this animal after my dear Gamma cat crossed the Rainbow Bridge, leaving behind a hole in my heart and a floor needing repair in numerous corners. Omega did indeed come from the Jersey Shore, Neptune, NJ specifically. She is exceedingly tidy in her bathroom habits (something I sure was ready for), but she’s cuddly as a rock pile. Doesn’t even know how to make biscuits.

And while dear Gamma was nothing less than a trophy cat, 16 pounds of luscious orange floof, Omega is just one wacky white package flecked with tabby spots. But it is the name and that goofy appearance that got her noticed by a premiere Internet influencer!

I can’t put more than one photo on a post using my phone, but the title of the beguiling little book, again, is “How to Rate a Cat.” And the beauty of its publication history is that my cranky feline is in it, but I don’t have to promote it. I can just sit back and peruse page 42.

Her blog name is Omega because I hope she will avoid my caresses and bite my knuckles until my days of cat stewardship end. She is three years old, and I can add.

All hail Taffy the Boardwalk Cat, page 42! I’m proud of the little wretch.

Possum Position

 A little background for any newcomers to “The Gods Are Bored”: In 2017, at the beginning of the Reign of Terror, I decided to secede from the United States of America and form my own nation, the Independent Republic of Johnsonia. For awhile I waited, fortified with provisions, for an attack by General Sherman or Attila the Hun, but the attacks didn’t materialize. Johnsonia has enjoyed modest prosperity and peace.

I’ll dig out the national anthem when I return to work. Wrote it a bit ago, and must say it was a solid effort.

Even in the smallest of nations, there will be opposition parties. It is to be expected, and I don’t mind the give and take.

Earlier this week I gave a state-of-the-union address. You can read it right below. Now it’s time for the opposition response.

Possum Opposition to the Grand Wazoo of Johnsonia 

Folks, our Grand Wazoo makes Johnsonia sound like Heaven on Earth. But that depends on who you ask. The chipmunks, being dealt an endless supply of peanuts and seeds all summer, and protected from harm by keeping the stupid cat indoors, are still sleeping off the winter with full bellies. THEY love Johnsonia. The songbirds, kept satisfied by a year-round subsidy of high-end bird seed, LOVE Johnsonia. Oh yes, for these populations everything is just great. Just great.

But for us possums, Johnsonia has become a land of privation and cruelty. The Grand Wazoo’s environmental policies have put the whole possum population at danger of extinction!

I refer to the policy that the Wazoo calls “composting.”

Three years ago the Wazoo came home from her travels with three small green buckets with air tight lids. She began to throw her food scraps into the bucket and take the buckets SOMEWHERE, who KNOWS where, when they were full. Our food source evaporated overnight! And when it began to sporadically return, she bought … [shudders] TRASH CANS WITH LIDS! And put bricks on top the lids!

Since then we have been mostly thrown back into the USA, in desperate search of provisions. We can’t let our children starve! Once a land of plenty, Johnsonia has become, for us, a [dramatic pause] food desert.

So say what you like about Johnsonia, but you can’t say it’s a country with no discrimination. Great for chipmunks, a bitter disappointment for possums. Do better, Grand Wazoo. This is a disgrace.

Thank you.

State of the Union: Independent Republic of Johnsonia

 What a way to celebrate a birthday! Home sick with the flu! Every symptom under the sun too. As dear departed Jackiesue was fond of saying, I feel like hammered sh**.

But life goes on. As Grand Wazoo of the Independent Republic of Johnsonia, I have to make my annual State of the Union address! The wildlife has assembled, and many of the plants are waking up. So here goes:

My fellow Johnsonians,

[uproarious applause lasting 5 minutes]

I come to you tonight committed to maintaining the independence of Johnsonia and its beloved Constitution (which I haven’t written yet, but it’s all in my head). Now more than ever, with the whole world reeling around us, we must take a firm stand for our sovereignty!

[more applause]

Please rest assured, mammals, birds, and English ivy, I will NOT require you to show proof of citizenship to visit or inhabit Johnsonia. You are free to come and go as you see fit!

[applause from mammals, birds, and ivy. Native plants hold up little paddles that say UNFAIR.]

As your president, I vow to keep Johnsonia as diverse, equitable, and inclusive as possible. This might be a period of transition for the ivy, but this is necessary to insure the growth of butterfly-friendly plant life.

[Ivy boos lustily, native plants remain sullen.]

Look. I have never sought to eradicate the ivy, but we have to hold all in balance. So please expect some belt-tightening. It will all work out. You’ll see.

My administration will also seek to increase the number of insects in Johnsonia, since all of our neighbors laden their lawns with insecticide.

[birds chirp with joy, plants hold up paddles saying UNFAIR]

Insects are a crucial element of the ecosystem, and they are WELCOME IN JOHNSONIA!

Now I know that you, my citizens, feel threatened and extremely anxious about the absolute freefall of the USA, due to its unstable and basically insane leadership. As your leader, I am suffering constant, nearly debilitating anxiety myself. But you are SAFE here! I am committed to tightening my OWN belt rather than sacrificing YOUR bird seed and YOUR peanuts and YOUR tasty trash can treats! I know some of you don’t like the policy of composting…

[possums and raccoons boo lustily]

… but I PROMISE to leave behind enough scraps to satisfy your appetites!

[possums hold up signs saying LIES]

Now I turn to your domestic enemy, the terrorist known as Omega. 

[widespread boos]

I vow before the Gods, to do everything I can to contain the terrorist within the confines of the presidential palace. The cat should NOT go outside, I KNOW it, and trust me I am doing everything I possibly can to keep her indoors!

[tepid applause]

My final item tonight is the nuisance on our border. I’m referring to the Tesla we all have to stare at in the neighbor’s driveway.

[five minutes of universal booing]

I beg you to remember, citizens, that the owner is a brain surgeon, and her yard signs indicate that she doesn’t support the USA’s current regime. She bought the car for its status and carbon footprint, and no doubt she now feels saddled with the goddamned thing. So I would ask you to show some restraint and not vandalize the offending automobile. Birds, you are exempt from this requirement. Have at it!

[and the birds go wild with glee]

In closing, I want to assure you that Johnsonia is a stable, peaceful land, and I will defend it to my final breath. Gods bless us, and Gods bless Johnsonia!

[applause, standing ovation from the birds and squirrels]

The opposition will address the nation tomorrow, with statements from a possum and the English ivy.

In Solidarity with Congressman Green

 Not gonna lie, “Gods Are Bored” buddies. I’m a stick shaker. I sometimes resort to colorful language as well, especially if the situation warrants it.

And if ever there was a situation where some sticks needed to be shaken, it was at the ridiculous 100 minute Blab by the Blob on Tuesday night.

I was not invited to this Address to Congress, and frankly, I am affronted by that. My independent nation, Johnsonia, is completely surrounded by the USA, and I benefit from some of that nation’s services. You would think that the U.S. government would be more gracious to a Head of State, even if her national borders are a quarter acre in New Jersey.

But if I had been there, I would have indulged in Bronx cheers, hand gestures, and, yes, stick shaking. The only Democrat who gets it is Congressman Green.

Times have changed. The Orange Menace—old, ugly, vulgar, and stupid as he is—has provoked a sea change in the USA. My students, most of whom are 17, have grown up with Trump as either president or a top candidate. This is what they have grown up seeing as presidential behavior.

Let that sink in for a minute.

The blustering, big-mouthed boaster is now our norm. Behaving with decorum only makes people look weak in the eyes of today’s young voters. Wearing pink and holding up little paddles? Really? Where is that getting you?

If I learned anything from 2017, it’s that pussy hats don’t cut it. It’s time to elect leaders who will call bullshit and shake sticks!

I’m sure one or two of you disagree. Heck, there are only one or two of you anyway! And it’s not like I would opt for hooliganism if everyone else was sipping tea. But the young people of the USA now have been weaned on ugly politics and the adoration of perhaps the most detestable human on the planet. They would not “get” affable Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. Presidents are supposed to be big and loud and combative!

Now is the time to meet this menace with some pushback from the other side.

So if some senior citizen congressman wants to vent his spleen, I am all for it! On a couple of notable occasions I have successfully smacked down attempts at bullying by big, loud men. Not by being cordial, either. Basically by shaking a stick.

Democrats, appoint some stick shakers! And then watch while they rise in politics because the young folks think this is what politicians do.

Not that any of this matters to me. I’m the Grand Wazoo of the Independent Republic of Johnsonia! Next Tuesday I will give MY State of the Union address. I hear the possum is planning to wear pink.