The Unpleasant Return of the Bathroom Wars

Good morning and welcome to this Thanksgiving edition of the Carnival of Fools! (I’ll get the promo out of the way up front: If you haven’t subscribed yet, at this point it’s an authentic national tragedy that only you have the power to prevent.) Yes, Turkey Day is drawing near, which puts your author in something of an odd position. You see, I typically accept the concept of “vacation time” as willingly as I do the concept of “low-sodium diet” — the sort of unpleasant imposition on habitual preference that a man undertakes only out of necessity, for the sake of his health or his family’s happiness. But for once, and in service of those worthy goals, I plan to test out the vacation concept.

No, it’s not that I’m going mad or anything — and let’s be honest: you don’t write like this without having been born slightly cracked anyway — it’s simply that while the Carnival only formally began back in September of this year, the political circus for which it was intended as a venue had been roaring along without a tent for well over a year by that point. In fact, you can relive my evolving goggle-eyed horror at every last agonizing development of it — often writing as if my eyes were pried open by the medical-grade forceps from A Clockwork Orange so that I must bear witness — here in my NR archive if you so desire. (It’s a wild, acid-infused ride. Though none would have predicted it in June 2023, whales somehow became involved several times.)