Good morning from my Hunker-Bunker in West Seattle. It is dark outside and the light is starting to fade in. Soon I should be able to see the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains as the sun illuminates the area.

I spent most of the day yesterday procrastinating. Fiddle-fucking around when I should have been chained to my Hunker-Bunker Control Desk here coding until I become cross-eyed. Instead, I went out among all you human beings, and all the stupidity that comes with it. Sometimes I wish I could wake up like Rick Grimes and find the world has gone haywire and most of the humans have disappeared. Can you imagine what it would be like if ninety percent of the population were to suddenly vanish? Thirty million people in the US versus three hundred million?

Maybe we missed an opportunity with COVID? LOL. Well it is still out there. I’d probably get it again if it wasn’t for the fact that my blood/vaccine ratio is somewhere around 1:1. It’s looking more like transmission fluid than blood. 😉 But seriously…

Apparently Joe Biden delivered his “LBJ address to the nation” speech last night. I didn’t watch it because I was more interested in arguing with ChatGPT over a coding issue than hearing an old man reminisce about his lifetime career and how (his) “decision” to not ‘seek or accept the nomination’ for re-election was for the “good of the nation” and to “protect democracy”.

If you step away from the political filter for a moment and just look at this in plain, human terms, this has got to be a hard thing for Joe Biden to accept and come to terms with. The fact that he may no longer have the facility to continue on in political office too much longer.

There are a shitload of us getting too old to continue to work. It is certainly something that is constantly on my mind right now. I could have ‘retired’ almost a decade ago and chose not to. I feel I still have the mind of a young person and I tend to think I have the physical strength, agility, and stamina of a 19-year-old decathlete. I wonder what I would feel like if someone were to call me in, sit me down, and tell me that I was “no longer able to” do my job because of a declining mental or physical issue. Would it feel like a death sentence?

I remember when I had to take my father’s driver’s license and car keys away from him at the age of 99. That devastated him, and this was a couple of years before his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

At any rate, it’s ‘official’ for anyone who didn’t think that a letter published on Xitter was ‘official enough’. Whether you agree with any or all of his ‘accomplishments’ or not doesn’t really matter in this kind of address. This was more about JOE BIDEN coming to terms with this than whether you accept it or not.

I had already waved goodbye, and so long. I had no need to watch his address. If he had delivered a bombshell, I’m sure I would have heard about it by now. None of my communication devices is bashful about telling me all the bombshell news of the moment.

But enough of Joe Biden.

JD Vance and his Couch

About a week ago, memes started appearing in my memebox and throughout social media with JD Vance and a couch. For a couple of days I didn’t really pay attention, but then I Googled ‘JD Vance + Couch’ to find out the story behind it.

THIS IS WHAT STARTED IT ALL:

Immediately, the InterTubes blew up with JD Vance and couch memes similar to these (and yes, it’s fun to show them, since I had to Google them…):

Trust me. I did the searching for you.

She is a pretty sturdy one…

More cushion for the pushin’

For Sale: Well-loved and taken care of.

Okay, now she’s just askin’ for it…

Oh, there are hundred, if not thousands of variations on this theme, but you get the gist. The Internet went crazy with the “JD Vance had sex with his couch” story.

A TINY SMALL PROBLEM:

It’s demonstrably not true.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis pages 179-181 does not contain a story about JD Vance and a couch. He’s never written such a story. But that’s not stopping the memes from coming. It’s quickly becoming a mythical ‘fact’ along the lines of Richard Gere and a gerbil. That one is forty years old and still pretty much a ‘fact’ in the minds of many. Right up there with the Paul Bunyan, George Washington chopping down a cherry tree and other myths and legends that just aren’t true.

Sadly, JD Vance has been “Richard Gere’d”. The name “JD Vance” will forever be associated with ‘couch fucking’. It’s probably a good thing he has two or three other names he’s test-driven before, he could easily become someone else again with another name change.

[It’s a clever way to ditch a bad driving record if you change your name more than x times and then circle back and apply for a new license/ID under your original birth certificate.]¹

This is probably true. Word and name associations are usually formed and maintained by a unique set of markers — in this case, “JD Vance” and “Sex-with-Couch”. This is how your brain will forever retain this, and why it will be the first thing that pops into your head when “JD Vance” is mentioned.

And yes, you will hate me for pointing this out to you.

THESE ARE THE TWO FACTS WE CURRENTLY KNOW:

• There is no proof JD Vance had sex with his couch;

• There is no proof JD Vance didn’t have sex with his couch.

Both are true as of now.

If this were a criminal trial, the Rule of Lenity would give the benefit of the doubt to the defense in an ambiguous situation. The absence of proof is not proof.

So did JD Vance have sex with his couch?

Who the fuck knows?

Better yet, who cares? As a male human being who was once a horny hormonal teen age boy? I’m sure I’ve probably entertained the thought a time or two. Boys have been dry-humping things since … well, forever. Is it possible that JD Vance could have done something like this?

Sure, like any other boy looking for different ways to get the ol’ rocks off.

Which is part of what makes this story somewhat believable, if not gross, and probably something that you would never admit to either. I mean, think back on all those times you’ve wanked the wienie over the years…

… no, further back than just last week…

See what I mean? We didn’t always have Fleshlights around. But hey, a fleshlight in the crack of a sofa cushion?

Overall, who cares one way or the other?

It’s a distraction. A funny one based on nothing more than a wild internet thought that caught fire. To me, that’s the interesting part of this whole story — how nothing became something on nothing more than something that could be believable sans any evidence of any kind.

It is also illustrative of how easy people can hard-fast believe something with no evidence and from then on can never shake them of that belief. People believe what they WANT to believe first and foremost — even if there is no proof supporting it.

Okay. That’s it for me today. I’ve got coding to do here in my Hunker-Bunker and the sooner I finish this the sooner I can get to it.

Have a great day, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. (It’s a fairly short list)

___________________________________________________________________________________

Foot Note:

1. I’ve deliberately left a couple of minor details out, but this does work, and it is pretty easy to do. It’s even legal, and it’s taking advantage of a glitch in the system. ↩︎