We got the tunnel replacement for the viaduct because West Seattle and Ballard wanted to drive back and forth between each other. Now West Seattle wants aerial cable cars to get to and from the International District. Since I live in the International District, I’m naturally concerned. Where will all the West Seattleites go when they debark? Please let it not be any of my favorite restaurants. I’m looking at wait times for tables when the pandemic settles down.
I was here for the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, so I rode the aerial gondola across the Seattle Center one time. Only once, because that was as many times as my parents would pay for it. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it even that one time had the fair been in 1980 and had I seen the fight scene between James Bond and Jaws in a cable car in “Moonraker.” Since seeing that, all I can think of is that if I were in a cable car, the cable would break and I’d plunge to my death.
I think about things like that a lot. I always get nervous riding ferries or the water taxis. What if my ride sinks? Puget Sound and Elliott Bay are really cold. I don’t like crossing Lake Washington by the floating bridges either. There was one floating bridge that sank. Nobody ever remembers that but me. I remember. What if I’m on a floating bridge when it’s the next floating bridge to break apart and sink to the bottom of Lake Washington? Wouldn’t that just be my luck? I never get a break.
Speaking of not getting breaks: Thanks to our president, I don’t get a stimulus check until A) the Democratic House passes a revised covid-19 economic stimulus bill with $2,000 stimulus checks written into it; B) the Senate passes the House bill, so that Trump might sign it, and C) Trump doesn’t treat Congress the way Lucy treated Charlie Brown and snatch away the football at the last second. “Haha, I said I would veto the bill with the $600 amount. I didn’t say I wouldn’t veto this one, too. Losers.”
Trump is becoming more unhinged than ever. What possible good is there to declare an executive order that all government buildings have to be beautiful and classical henceforth and prohibit “modern brutalism?” Whatever happened to the GOP call for less bureaucracy? Now we have to have a bureau of building beauty. Buildings will have to have classical decorations. This is not in alignment with the philosophy behind The Fountainhead. Where’s Paul Ryan when we need him to call out this sort of nonsense?
We’re going to have to have a Ministry of Silly Facade Ornaments. A Department of Fake Doric Columns and Non-Functional Arches. A Bureau of Standards of Architectural Anachronism.
Too bad he didn’t order government buildings to all be Gothic in the future. I love a good flying buttress now and then — I think you all know what I mean — and I’m always in the mood for a fine gargoyle.
It’s no surprise he didn’t reference Renaissance architecture. Too humanist. Not Cthulhu-friendly enough.
Cthulhu comes to mind for this circumstance, of course, because our presidential administration is most similar to H.P. Lovecraft’s horror sci-fi universe than, well, anything.
The economic stimulus bill already passed included an extension of government funding that would avert a government shutdown. If Trump doesn’t sign it as is, another bill extending funding has to be passed and signed by Trump.
The way Trump has been acting lately, I wouldn’t be surprised now if he just didn’t bother to sign a stopgap bill and let a government shutdown begin. He’d probably like Biden to take over the presidency during a government shutdown.
Or, all of this could be a bluff and he might sign the bill with the $600 checks.
I’m watching all this play out from Christmas Eve, and there have been articles saying that if Trump vetoes the current stimulus bill, Congress would probably be able to override the veto. So yet another possibility is that Trump might simply choose to not sign the bill making the bill law when his ten days to veto run out, without having to go on record as approving it. That would happen around New Years Day and mean about three days of government shutdown. Just enough to rattle everybody.
My head hurts from thinking of all the possibilities.
Read more of the Dec. 30, 2020 - Jan. 5, 2021 issue.