Thursday, January 18, 2018

New Poll. Which psychiatric disorder is behind the President's compulsion to build the #GreatWallOfTrump?


Monday, January 01, 2018

The Easiest Possible New Year's Resolution: WWDTD?

WWDTD is, of course, a simple mnemonic for "What Would Donald Trump Do?"

My resolution for 2018 is to remember to ask myself this question, and do the opposite. On the simplest level, asking myself WWDTD will keep me from golfing; praising myself inordinately; whining for an apology every time I feel my name, appearance, or intelligence has been slighted; hanging out in meetings with crowds of sycophants in suits and ties; looking for questionable ways to cheat on my taxes or otherwise gain money for myself and my family through schemes and shortcuts; creating a fraudulent 'university'; making a profit by raising the cost of admission to my annual New Year's Eve party at my own club; belittling people of a race, gender, or nationality that differs from mine; attacking people who express their patriotism differently or worship a different god, or no god; etc.; etc.

But those are all the obvious negatives inspired by the WWDTD resolution strategy. There are positive steps I can take too, by proactively doing the opposite of what DT would do. Last night, for example, rather than hanging out with billionaires in monkey suits and being bored to death at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate New Year's Eve, I watched (at extremely high volume) all four hours of the Grateful Dead's New Year's Eve show at Winterland as 1978 became 1979 while reading the latest issue of The New York Review of Books and drinking ginger tea with turmeric. That's not something DT would do.

I woke up this morning and went directly to a New Year's Day yoga class. That's not something DT would do.

I'm working on turning my vegetarian diet into a vegan diet. That's not something DT would do.

I want to read even more books, and read more widely, than I did in 2017. I stumbled on a couple of things this morning that are geared toward that goal, the Los Angeles Times' "How to read more books in 2018" and the New York Public Library's "Read Harder in 2018! NYPL's Suggestions for Book Riot’s Annual Challenge." Personally, I have found that signing up with Goodreads and taking their Reading Challenge for the past few years has kept me reading more than 40 books a year. That's not something DT would do (I doubt if he has read 40 books in his life).

WWDTD should provide guidance throughout the year. I'm going for a long walk now even though it's 12°F outside. That's not something DT would do.