This morning, I wrap up my semester by giving a final in cell biology. Immediately after, I start grading through the afternoon.

I don’t expect that I’ll get everything done, though, and will have to finish it tomorrow, and possibly get all my grades submitted by Friday evening. In part the delay will be because it’s going to be a lot of papers, but also because my evening is going to be interrupted by my attendance at the Morris premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

I’m going in with serious trepidations. This franchise has been an inconsistent mess benefiting from an epic beginning that has favorably colored our views of the subsequent slipshod sequels, and honestly, some of them have been so bad that they belong alongside Battlefield Earth in the hall of terrible science fiction movies. They don’t get ranked there only because they always make money.

I’m only going to attend because I still remember fondly the glow I felt one sunny afternoon in 1977 that I spent watching the original movie twice, unwilling to leave my seat (which explains how bad sequels still make money), and also because, well, it’s a professional requirement now.

Don’t tell me if it’s good or not. I want to cling to my delusional optimism for just this one day.

I accomplished several things this morning.

• I wrote the final exam for my cell biology class, and got all the photocopying done.
• I put up our Christmas tree!
  
  Mary left me in charge of decorating it. I think it’s very tasteful.

We’re back on track here at Freethoughtblogs now that we’ve stomped a SLAPP suit into the mud. We’ve streamlined the lineup a little bit, archiving some of the blogs that haven’t been updated in a while (non-judgmentally, of course — their authors can get their blogs reinstated by dropping a note to us.) You can visit any of the listed blogs and find recent stuff.

We’ve also added 4 new blogs, with possibly a few others on the way. You should visit…

• Andreas Avester. You may have noticed them commenting around these parts, and now they’re doing an art & philosophy & politics & social justice blog.
• Impossible Me. Another familiar face: Abbeycadabra, writing about social justice, mental health and trans issues, broadcasting from her lair in Canada.
• From the Ashes of Faith. Megan is a long-time blogger who is new to us, writing about mental health & parenting & atheism, naturally.
• Scalpen. Raniel Ponteras is coming to us from the Philippines, and will be writing about the history of science and medicine.

We’re open to new applications as well, although it will be several months at least before we do another review. You can read our about page to get an idea of what we’re looking for.

Freethoughtblogs is open to new bloggers, upon approval. To apply, fill out our application form.

Don’t be discouraged if you have little blogging experience; we’re interested in providing opportunities to new voices. If you are inexperienced, we may give you a temporary account on our guest platform to give you a chance to try it out. However, samples of your writing are the most important criterion for acceptance.

What we are looking for: people who can contribute regularly, where “regularly” is loosely defined as at least once a month. We won’t be keeping close track, but we’ve noticed that those who write occasionally tend to easily lapse into those who don’t write at all.

We demand that our contributors are in favor of social justice causes. If you’re not for feminism, or racial equality, or trans rights, you are going to clash with our values and won’t last long here.

We also appreciate diverse voices. Atheism has been and still is dominated by white male voices, and while that is not a strike against anyone, we’d like to provide outlets for others, too.

Below is a response to a question on Quora: Why does President Trump move and stand so strangely? I thought it was insightful, because I’ve also wondered why he persists in painting himself orange, why he has such weird candy floss hair, why he constantly makes those strange gestures as he talks. Hasn’t anyone told him that they make him look strange and freakish? I suppose it’s good that one doesn’t feel constrained by fashion, and is bold about facing the world as he wants, but he always seems to act as if he thinks he’s a beautiful, brilliant golden god. This explanation seems more likely.

Trump has some odd ideas about how he appears to the world, obviously. He dyes his skin a strange color, and does some very strange things with his hair. He knows that this makes him a joke in the eyes of the world, which is not the intended effect – he’s vain, thin-skinned and very publicity-conscious. So there’s some weird processing that happens in his head that makes him say “The fake news makes fun of me, but it’s because they’re jealous. Sad! Women want to grab my pussy!”

It’s a kind of dysmorphia, like Michael Jackson turning a perfectly good face into a Phantom-of-the-Opera physiognomic tragedy, while thinking he was getting closer and closer to perfection. Or like the body image of an anorexic, where everyone is saying with increasing urgency that they’re wasting away, and yet they see themselves as not thin enough.

Trump has an inner vision of himself that is exaggerated beyond any version of ‘normal’ – you can extend this to his psychological self-assessment – but in his mind he’s beautiful and sexy and he doesn’t have an alternate self-image. His orange skin and strange hair-art are cleverly covering over his weaknesses, he thinks.

In some degree, this isn’t so uncommon. Men with beards often brush off helpful comments like “Beards are so aging …” because they see themselves as mature and wise, perhaps, and their weak chin and vague jawline as something they feel needs to be hidden from the world. Women with strange Flashdance haircuts originating in the wayback time see their look through the same eyes as when they were 16. They know it isn’t contemporary, but it’s kind of locked in – they ‘look like themselves’ to themselves. When you look at that self-inflicted mess that John Bolton has for a face, you wonder what he thinks he’s playing at, but he’s like Trump – he looks in the mirror and he sees ‘intelligence’, perhaps. Some sort of a cunning disguise for the underlying ordinariness.

Trump takes a set of fashion faux-pas and private beliefs – that orange-dyed skin looks healthier, that his crazy greasy hair is youthful, that long ties make him appear taller and narrower, that suits cut too big hide his bulk and make him appear more impressive – and makes them into his superhero costume, his disguise.

Then he has ritualized ways of moving and posing that are part of the same scheme. You rarely see photos of Trump looking natural. He’s always posing, creating some look that in his own mind is as marvelous as his hairdo. When he sits he likes to get his knees apart to show off everything “down there”, then put his fingertips together between his legs in a sort of steeple, spire pointed down. He was probably told by someone a long time ago that this was an alpha position that symbolically shows that you’ve got a great big penis. When he talks he does that thumb-to-4th-finger thing, a variant of the A-ok sign. It means nothing, he just does it at random, but in his mind it’s an impressive gesture that indicates precision, perhaps, like a chef emphasizing just a soupçon. When he reads a teleprompter he slumps unhappily from one side to the other, tipping his head first this way, then that, like an animatronic figure in a Disney theme-ride. That seems to him to make it more casual, less stiff. When he stands he tilts forward, probably so that his belly isn’t the point of furthest advance, but perhaps for some other semi-magical reason.

It’s all of a piece – his weird look, his weird postures and movements, and his weird exaggerated sense of himself.

PS: I should add, to calm the angry legions of bearded gentlemen who feel they were materially harmed by what I said about beards, that it wasn’t about beards per se but about feedback. If someone says that beards are aging, they’re saying they wish you’d shave. That’s just them, and just you. Maybe all the really sexy ones think you look fantastico!! Who knows??

I picked beards as an example of anything-about-the-way-you-look because I have a beard. Instead of making mock of others I thought “What would Jesus do?” and Jesus would plainly have used a beard, long hair, and a crown of thorns as examples of things that critics might fuss about.

I can sympathize with that. I have my own self-image, and it shocks me every time I look in a mirror or hear my voice — only unlike Trump, rather than a golden god, I see myself as a schlumpy, homely, shambling blob, and the problem with mirrors is that they so accurately confirm my self-portrait.

Also, about beards…their presence or absence is just a thing. I keep mine because I’ve had it for forty years, and shaving it off makes me look so different that it adds an uncanny valley sensation to the expected schlubbiness. Our self-image is strongly built on prior experience and familiarity, you know. Trump likewise is accustomed to looking in the mirror and seeing an orange glow with pale rings around the eyes, capped with a wisp of pink floss. Anything else would seem alien to him.

He’s still creepy.

OK, enough contemplating homely old geezers. Here’s a palate cleanser, a little beefcake to put in your dreams.

Yeah, sure, that’s what all Americans think they look like. Right.

I consider myself an adventurous eater — you name it, I’ll try it. However, one thing has always repelled me: Brussels sprouts. Ick. Yuck. I haven’t had them since I was a kid, and even then then it was more a matter of rolling them around on my plate until my parents would give up and let me leave the table.

Well, that cannot stand. I can’t call myself a brave foodie unless I can defeat this challenge. Especially after reading this:

So tonight I made Brussels sprouts and mushrooms with cheese and a side salad.

They weren’t bad. Not the worst thing I’ve made, and I’d be willing to try them again.

It’s blood.

America is one of the only developed countries in the world that pays people to donate blood, much of it sold abroad (70% of the world’s plasma is of US origin), and as commercial blood donations have soared, blood now accounts for 2% of the country’s exports — more than corn or soya.

There’s more growth ahead for blood products, expected to “grow radiantly” according to an analyst who was cheering 13% growth between 2016-17.

I had a hard time believing that, so I checked the source, and sure enough, 2.3% of US exports are of human or animal blood and vaccines, and it’s more than the value of our corn and soybean exports. To put it in perspective, though, our exports of refined petroleum are worth more than twice that.

So, I guess, there’s a market for American blood and oil.

If inequality continues as it has, perhaps there’ll someday a market for other human biological products. Pig meat products are only .36% of our exports, we could expand that by adding long pig.

We could also hope for a big boom in the vampire population.

The mountain of papers have been graded! The grades have all been posted on Canvas! The students can now put down their pitchforks, and instead begin their pleas…”I’m only 0.2% away from a B+! Can’t you just bump me up a little bit?” Fortunately, I planned ahead: the final exam in this course is optional, and the score on it will replace their lowest exam score for the semester, so I can just tell them to go earn those extra points by doing well on the final. Then, after the final, I will vanish into a spider hole, they’ll all vanish to spend the break with their families, and I will be spared!

Now, though, I have to recover…I’m Christmas Caroled Out. I had to go to a dentist’s appointment first thing this morning — they were playing Christmas carols. I went to the coffee shop to buckled down and get my grading done — they were playing Christmas carols. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few essentials — they were playing Christmas carols. I’ve had enough. I hate Christmas carols, we’ve had enough of them for this year.

I have, at least, concluded empirically that the worst Christmas song to be forced to listen to while having your teeth scraped, or grading, or buying kitty litter is, without question, Ave Maria. Fight me.

We could probably dicker over whether the Andy Williams version or the Celine Dion version blows hardest.