The Agrinautica

   Firstly of all you may have noticed there was a recent election in the United States. (Presumably?) unrelated, Attorney General Jeff Sessions then resigned / was pushed out the window. While he wasn't much beloved by most people I know, he had at least refused to fire Mueller and I'm assuming Trump is replacing him with someone rip roaring to do so. I posted a facebook post outlining my fears that this will happen, and well, it said this: "This of course paves the way for Trump to appoint someone who will fire Mueller and terminate the investigation, which will mean the president can literally get away with criminal activities. I feel like US democracy is on a collision course here. People say "oh he couldn't do THAT there'd be huge protests," but it's already plausible he could disperse those crowds with tanks and his supporters would cheer him."
   I bring this up here and now because I just want to thank myself for not unfriending my Trump supporter friends like so many of my other totally reasonable friends have done. If I had flushed them all away I would be sitting here thinking really seriously how can anyone really support him and is that nightmare scenario I outlined really plausible? Buuut out of the woodwork to bolster my fears no less than three of my Trump supporting friends commented in earnest seriousness that the investigation hadn't found anything criminal (really? how many guilty pleas is it up to now?) and really should be disbanded, as well as talking about what an uncivilized beast CNN's Acosta is, despite this having nothing to do with the argument at hand (since I think all their minds work in a sort of connect-these-very-disparate-dots-to-justify-my-worldview kind of way). Note to future self or anyone who lives deeper under a rock than I do, the Acosta thing is because Trump kept interrupting Acosta and a female staffer tried to physically remove his mic today.


   In other news, a sort of mini rant myself here. I got to talking to the wife of a beekeeper friend in the area today, I hadn't previously met her. She said she'd been meaning to talk to me because she is also interested in helping people in Guinea. When we got on the subject of how France has been intentionally holding Guinea back through exploitive corporate agreements she suddenly launched into me with "and this is YOUR fault too! You yanks are exploiting it as bad as anyone [insert anti American tirade]," and when it came out that my volunteer projects there are funded by the United States Agency for International Development she clearly curled her upper lip in a distasteful sneer. And then after all this she suggests when I go there again I could take her along as a "cultural attache" because she's "good at collaborating with people" or something. I just smiled politely because I am actually diplomatic but I was thinking "you know I actually have a degree in this, in international relations, and you have completely unnecessarily made me feel blamed and attacked in this very short conversation."


   In other news I've received many very positive comments to the short short little story I hammered out for last LJ Idol prompt. Thank you, I'll try to get back and reply to all the comments (I still have the houseguest about so am not sitting in front of hte computer alot). Many people have said they want to read more and indeed I'd like to make it longer (and I didn't intend to end it abruptly right there until I wrote it to that point and realized it was a natural stopping point), but the question is how?? Some ideas I've had are to introduce a young lady in the local town who is romantically interested in him but obviously terrified of the house. Also it occurred to me that I should have him have some happy rememberances of his dead friends earlier, at a point where we don't realize they died horribly in front of him, like he walks past the pub and thinks of some of their unique mannerisms and misses them but we do not then learn they're dead.
   In behind the scenes news, I left it kind of ambiguous but it's the Crimean War (1853-1856) (famous for the the Charge of the Light Brigade) and other conflicts around that time period that in my head he had fought in, and it's vaguely set in Scotland (all the names I took from the more normal sounding names on a list of common Scottish names). I welcome any ideas on what else to add to the expanded story!


   And finally, Cristina and I have an appointment (via whatsapp) to talk to a visa agent tomorrow (Friday) morning to discuss if she has any chance of getting here on a tourist visa and if not then a student visa and if not.. what hare brained scheme we can cook up. :-[]


   Also I have as yet no idea what to write for the next LJ Idol prompt of "Kayfabe" :-\