I’m noticing that every time I turn on a TV news show the first words I hear are “Donald Trump…” Same with NPR. I don’t hear his name as a first + surname anymore, just “Donaldtrump”, or “Dontrump” or “Dontrum”, depending on the speaker and also depending on how hard I might be trying to postpone the inevitable arrival of that bloated, orange flesh melon image in my visual cortex after hearing his name—like a pizza hitting a windshield at 60 mph.
Cut to one of the best things ever. Don’t know if you have this running in your web browser but I recommend it as part of your Trumpocalypse Survival Kit. I installed it right after the election and it brings me joy. And oh…sweetjeezus, I’ll take a little joy right now.
This little extension reads the metadata of an image file or something—hell, I don’t care how it works—and turns pictures of “Dontrum” into kittens. That’s it. It doesn’t work 100% of the time or on every web page, and that’s fine. It does work often enough to provide an occasional reprieve, a tiny timeout, one less soul-stabbing reminder that there’s a very small, sad, angry, manchild in the White House—with the nuclear codes. Instead…it gives you Kittens in Chief. Yay!
Example. This morning, as I sifted through the 18 daily emails from progressive activist groups in my inbox asking me to sign their petition and contribute $3, I swallowed hard and clicked on a link from my daily New Yorker feed which popped open a Trump story (because I’m forcing myself to stay engaged and informed in spite of the aforementioned orange stain it leaves on my psyche).
This story was about a judge in Virginia criticizing Trump’s muslim ban so I know I’m about to wade hip deep into the Swamp of Eternal Peril and have to confront the latest evidence that there’s a tiny brained buffoon as a president and how this IS a Bizzaro World nightmare I can’t wake up from. So while I’m scrolling through this very cogent and insightful story by Amy Davidson and feeling my insides twist into knots and the light drain out of the world (with Steve Bannon’s gnarled, necrotic fingers on the rheostat) and the echo of that pasty, tweener sycophant Steve Miller spewing all serious-and-bigboy-like in the camera that Trump’s power “won’t be questioned” ringing in my ears, which makes me want to stuff the little rat-faced twerp back into his 7th grade locker and weld it shut with my molten tears…
Upside down kitten! Yay!
This little bowser extension doesn’t alter the depressing reality of the words that wrap around the pictures it converts to cuddly felines (although an app that changes “President Trump” to “President F—-face McPeabrain” would be cool), but at least we can occasionally be spared the optics that typically accompany our daily megadoses of existential pain.
P.S. When you think about it, in many ways they’re a lot alike—Trump and kittens. They both crap all over the place, but at least kittens are cute.
Get the extension here: https://tinyurl.com/h94tdd6