This may be the last newsletter you receive from me.

In a couple of hours, I'll be going under the knife, having major surgery performed. The Mayo Clinic says an upper endoscopy is "a very safe procedure" and "definitely not major surgery, Josh," but of course the Mayo Clinic would say that, being in the pocket of Big Endoscopy.

A mildly interesting thing about me is that in 48 years, I have never undergone any kind of serious medical procedure. Never had general anesthesia, still have my tonsils and appendix and wisdom teeth. Haven't even broken a bone. I swallowed my favorite marble when I was 8, but the doctor just told me to "check my stool" until it showed up. (It never did, which was too bad, because it was a lovely greenish blue.) And Molly Christianson's dad removed a mole from my neck when I was about 11, but he just numbed the area around it. He was a dermatologist, to be clear, but I like to think he would have done it for me even if he weren't.

All this is to say: If I don't make it, and this is the final edition of Having a Normal One, (1) it's been a good run, and (2) you should contact Julia about getting your money back. Do it fast, because she will be drinking on a boat in the Caribbean as soon as the twins are enrolled in boarding school. (She is saying to me now that my life insurance payout "is not big enough to make killing you worth it," which is comforting, because she is driving me home from the endoscopy.)

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This is a long, thoughtful piece about why Democrats lost the presidential election a month ago, which notes that many people who voted against Donald Trump in 2020 apparently did not come out to vote at all this year. The upshot of it is that Democratic leaders have focused on trying to simply maintain the system that has been in place for decades, while many Democratic voters—having been through the first Trump term, covid, and Black Lives Matter protests—want to see real change. (Longtime readers know I would agree with this.)

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Oh, apparently, the president of South Korea just declared the country is under martial law? I have to go get my endoscopy now, so I hope they can get that figured out without me.

The Fun Part

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