Supervision

 My mother used to talk wistfully about how if Child Protective Services were alerted now to the things that she had allowed her three sons to do once upon a time, they would have swooped in and taken us all away never to return. Especially in the helicopter parent reality of today. The tired bit I do about how disappointed she was when all three of us would return from an afternoon of playing with foot-long steel-tipped lawn darts. All three of us were allowed, encouraged, to zip up and down the dirt road in front of our mountain cabin for hours on end with only the promise to wear a helmet as our safety guidelines. These were the things that regularly occurred with complete knowledge of the parental units. 

Were there other things that we dared to do for which my parents were never fully apprised? 

Yes. There were. 

Plenty of them. 

Like the multiple occasions a bunch of us neighborhood kids trekked up the hill to another street with a looping slope to their street and experimented with various ways of riding our skateboards in tandem. The one that was the most exhilarating involved sitting on our boards facing one another, legs and arms intertwined. Steering was accomplished by leaning back and forth as we gathered speed on our descent. Usually, there were no cars on that suburban stretch of street to dodge. 

Usually. 

Close calls were badges of honor. Scrapes and bruises were walked off because anyone returning home early would potentially send up an alarm. Like the epic dirt-clod fights held at the construction sites within a bike ride's distance of our home. Every so often, one of those clods contained a little higher rock content and created an owie that might have shut down the battle. "Suck it up," we encouraged one another, since the alternative was going home.

I was showing off the scar on my left forearm to my wife the other night, explaining how I got it from a spiral staircase in the University of Colorado Fieldhouse. Not in any place where we should or been allowed to be, but rather creeping about in the abandoned corners of a facility that we accessed by crawling through an open window. Telling mom about the cut on my forearm might necessitate telling the rest of the story, and then the jig would be, fundamentally, up. 

And yet, here I am. Sixty-two years old. More or less in one piece. With a whole bunch of stories about how things used to be. Mom, if you're reading this somewhere, I'm pretty sure you had an idea all along. 

What Is That Whining Sound?

 What's that sound I hear? 

It's not bells on bobtails. It's not the crunch of footsteps in new fallen snow. It's not the vibration of the filament in Rudolph's nose. 

It's the Voice of America. Voice of America, or VoA. is an international broadcasting state media network funded by the federal government of the United States of America. Not to be confused with National Public Radio, or NPR, which is a bunch of radical leftists discussing the next Delicious Dish. Which all right thinking Americans know is just radical leftist propaganda to ween us off McDonald's. 

Think of VoA as "state radio." The "state" in question here is the United States, and for more than eighty years it has been the Voice that folks in other countries have heard when they needed to hear some good ol' American common sense. There are those who insist that the Voice of America was part of the erosion and eventual fall of the Soviet Union. 

That, and blue jeans. 

With the installation of the second Trumpreich, it is certainly important for us to maintain our foothold in the ears of the rest of the world, so picking the right person to head up this endeavor is a big ask. Which is why the former game show host picked the only person who has contested more elections than he has: former TV host Kari Lake, fresh off her "triumph" in the senatorial race in Arizona. 

If you're not familiar with Ms. Lake's resume, she was the lead anchor for KSAZ-TV for more than twenty years. She bailed on that job in 2022 to run for governor of the Grand Canyon State. She lost. Not that she would admit it. She followed the convicted felon's denial playbook and argued that verdict right up until she made another run, this time for Senate. She lost that one too. 

But because she's such a good little MAGAt, the man who kept endorsing her to no particular avail picked her off the heap to lead The Voice of America. The fear from inside VoA is that the voice of freedom might sound a little different when strained through the limited vision of one of the "president" elect's most ardent followers. It could, dare I say, start to sound a lot like the propaganda that the Voice of America was created to counteract. You might be wondering how the rest of the world's opinion of us could sink any lower. 

Me too. 

Carry On, Carry On...

 "...as if nothing really mattered."

Those of you who know the score understand the beginning of this song. "Mama, just killed a man..."

New York City sees plenty of this. King Crimson, not Queen, would remind you that it's "a dangerous place." People die there. A lot. Of course there are plenty of cities across this great land of ours in which people die a lot. But recent events have caused me to wonder if there isn't something even more dangerous about New York City for which any musical group could prepare us. 

Just a few days ago, Daniel Penny was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man who was "acting erratically." Apparently acting erratically enough that Mister Penny saw fit to put Mister Neely in a choke hold. For six minutes. Jordan Neely did not make it to the next subway stop. He was dead. A jury found Daniel Penny not guilty and dismissed a more serious charge of manslaughter. 

Daniel Perry killed a man. But it would seem that the death of a homeless street performer suffering from schizophrenia did not seem to tip the scales of justice in any particular fashion. 

How about the other end of the spectrum? Let's say the CEO of United Healthcare was gunned down in broad daylight on the streets of Manhattan. That would surely get some folks up in arms, wouldn't you think? Yes, but not necessarily in the way you might think. Even as the manhunt for the killer of Brian Thompson, public sentiment skewed in a rather unsettling manner. Like to the tune of "that guy deserved it." The life of a millionaire executive working for a healthcare firm was deemed an acceptable loss. "Send a message," was the suggestion that many people made. 

Mister Thompson's killer, sorry, alleged killer was apprehended at an Altoona McDonald's. Luigi Mangione has become something of a folk hero here in the land of the brave and the home of the free. The same country that loves its Ten Commandments also loves its "sic semper tyrannis." For my own part, I do recall recently suggesting that no one "deserves" to be killed. That, as I understand it, is not under our purvey. 

That is for the Lord to decide. 

Or a bunch of podcasters and keyboard trolls. 

Prepping

 I am sure that if I looked back over the years, a feature that I can access just to the right over there, I would find that my attitude in the days and weeks leading up to the Winter Break (also known colloquially as Christmas Break) that I am desperate for some sort of adjustment. I thought about this as I was taping up my now traditional door decoration for my classroom: The Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville. 

I do my best to be a Who. I want to love Christmas and all things that point in the direction of holiday cheer. Shortly after the Halloween Parade that our students embark on once a year, the questions abound regarding how many days until the holiest of holy. This curiousity is not limited to our Christian kids, but it exists in those whose faith might be found in another district. The countdown until that two week vacation is one that takes on the air of a nuclear device that is ticking down with our hero given the barest instructions of how to defuse it. 

Just don't cut the wrong wire. 

Meanwhile the business of being at school continues. Grades are given, report cards are handed out, and work continues to be done. Nominally. The grownups who are in charge of leveraging the ethic that suggests that we aren't closed until Santa comes for a visit are hard-pressed to keep the fires burning for themselves, let alone being able to spread that passion for learning out beyond the corners of their increasingly festive classrooms. Expectations shift mightily in these days of advent. 

Again, nothing particularly new about this. I can recall being in grade school myself once upon a millenium ago. There was a lot of red and green construction paper. There was a lot of cotton balls. And there were gallons of Elmer's Glue used to affix bits of those materials to one another. Which left precious little time left over to practice singing Jingle Bells at the top of our tiny lungs. 

Because this is the time in which the progress through the year slows to a crawl. How much we want it to be the end is inversely proportionate to the speed with which the calendar pages fall to the floor. 

And once again, it's just not filling me with joy. Maybe one day my tiny heart will grow three sizes. Til then I'll keep an eye on what's going on down in Whoville. From a distance. 

Verisimilitude

 The takeaway from this year's Vice Presidential debate for me was "Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check." That was the incoming second-in-commmand speaking in response to having his rant about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio being there illegally and eating neighborhood cats and dogs. 

Julius Domingus Vance was incredulous that adult human beings, "moderators," would question the veracity of something he chose to scoop up from Al Gore's Internet and spread as if it were gospel when he knew that it was not true. Currently there has been no blanket apology sent along to the Haitian community in Springfield who are there legally and without supplementing their diets with pets or geese from local ponds. 

Prepare yourself for four years of shrugging and apparent frustration for having the veracity of claims made by the incoming Trumpreich. The "dictator on day one" gave an interview to Meet The Press where he felt free to spout his usual dose of made up rhetoric for the press he was meeting to pick through. Things like saying that the United States is the only country with birthright citizenship. Canada, Mexico and most of the countries in South America allow someone born in their country to be granted automatic citizenship even if their parents are not citizens. 

That's a fact. 

"Crime is at an all-time high," insisted the convicted felon. Easy mistake for him to make since we have never elected a convicted felon before, but violent and property crimes have fallen steadily since the early 1990s here in the nominally United States. 

That's a fact. 

He also declared that the tariffs he imposed on China "cost Americans nothing" during his first stint in the White House.  A study from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission found that Americans bore almost the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products.

That's a fact. 

It's going to be a long four years. 

That's a fact. 

What's News?

 So let's say the folks in Virginia were sick and tired of being pushed around by their governor, the same on they've had for twenty-four years and the son of the guy who had been running the place for thirty some years before that. Tired enough that they would take up arms and start shooting up the place, eventually taking their guns and their cause all the way up to Richmond where they managed to frightened the powers that be right out of town, leaving the rabble to take over. 

Then imagine how comfortable the folks in Maryland and Delaware, not to mention those living in North Carolina and West Virginia might be feeling. Especially if traditionally over the past few centuries none of the citizens of those neighboring states they hadn't gotten along too terribly well not just with Virginia but each other as well. 

Things could get messy pretty quick. 

Which is essentially what happened across the ocean in the Middle East this past weekend when rebels overran Damascus and sent Syria's former "president" Bashar Al-Assad escaped to Russia to avoid being arrested, maimed, tortured, and otherwise humiliated by those aforementioned rebels. That sucking sound you hear is the power vacuum created by an authoritarian dictator fleeing up his strings to his puppet-master in Moscow. 

Currently, neighbor Benjamin Netanyahu is taking credit for Israel's military strikes for loosening the hold the Assad family has had over Syria for the past fifty years. Netanyahu also directed his troops into the previously disputed "buffer zone" on the border between their two countries. You might remember Israel's military has been pretty busy fighting with other countries and factions in and around their collective neighborhood. 

Wouldn't that get messy pretty quick? 

Business as usual in the Middle East? 

And the big story this weekend? Who's going to be in the College Football Playoff?

Silly Americans. It's not a World War unless it includes you, right? 

Demise

 For nearly fifty years, the wags and whiners have been making the oh-so-clever knock on Saturday Night Live by referring to the late night comedy show as "Saturday Night Dead." And yet, week after week, year after year, the Not Ready For Prime Time Players continue to trot out onto the stage in Studio 8H and put on a show. In those five decades, even when things were not their brightest, it was still one of the things that everyone could come together on Monday morning to talk about. "Did you see Saturday Night this week?"

For clarity's sake here, I will concede that my days of watching Saturday Night Live in its advertised time slot have passed me by. Sunday morning YouTube rehashes is the best I can hope for. I cannot confess to being a big fan. If you asked me to name the cast members for the current season, or if I stayed up to see the musical guest over the past fifteen years, I would respond with a pretty solid, "What? I'm old."

With this established, I will turn to the article from the Atlantic my older brother sent to me a few days back. It was a thoughtful piece that recalled the various swings from liberal to conservative, from blue to red, and back again over the past century. The suggestion was made that we were witnessing the end of a progressive era of politics, highlighted for many by the presidency of Barack Obama. Since then, the dominant political figure in United States politics, for better or worse, has been the convicted felon and former game show host who seemingly defied the odds and all manner of convention by becoming the president-elect without once being out of the public eye for a minute since he packed his bags and left way back in 2021. 

Four years ago there were those who were in the process of writing the obituary for the Republican Party. So much dysfunction, so very little cohesion. And yet, here we are just a few years down the pike staring at executive, legislative and judicial control of the federal government. By those left-for-dead Republicans. 

One might argue that this is not the Republican Party that so many of us remember. Not the Watergate Party, nor the Reagan years of glory, but rather the Orange Surge that managed to grab the nation by its limbic system and shook it hard enough to find its way to the top of the heap. Leaving all of us to begin to wonder about the health of "our side." 

Which is what brought me around to Saturday Night Live. Reports of its death may have been greatly exaggerated. At leas this is my hope. 

Stay tuned, America. 

Watch Out, 'Cause Here It Comes

 This past Thursday, I had a couple of hours to contemplate my life. It did not rush past me in a flurry, but instead I had the opportunity to consider my choices and my overall vector through my time on Planet Earth. This came about as a direct adjunct to the Tsunami warning that was issued for the San Francisco Bay Area after a 7.0 earthquake rocked the little town of Ferndale, California. The geological and weather powers that be scrambled to come up with the worst case scenario. 

That scenario included the city of Oakland, California being crushed under a wall of water resulting from the sudden and violent displacement of the earth's crust near the coast. Suddenly, everyone's cell phone began to sputter and shout as one. What was not immediately clear from all the trumpets and sirens that came from our devices was just how seriously to take this warning. 

Abruptly, I became a resource for worried staff members who had not considered the conditions that would need to be in place for the announced catastrophe. To be fair, Tsunami warnings are not just handed out like those for "bomb cyclones" and "atmospheric rivers." This kind of natural disaster takes a high degree of specificity. The magnitude of the earthquake, the proximity to the coastline, the height of the tide are all points on a line that figure into the potential destruction. 

Standing on the playground of an elementary school, I did not have access to all these bits of data, so when panicked parents began to call us for suggestions of what to do next, I found myself called to the office to reassure a frightened staff. My calm take was that it was a warning, and that if an evacuation was necessary authorities would notify us along the same system that had sent out the initial scary cell phone alerts. This wasn't enough for one mom who drove the two blocks down to the school to pick her son and daughter up. It was not clear what her plan was after that, but there was still forty-five minutes left on the warning, so maybe she was heading for the hills.

The rest of us waited. I texted back and forth with my wife, who did me the favor of sending me the map of potential devastation from the USGS web site. It gave me a moment, mentioned earlier, to consider all those things that a tsunami could ruin. My house and home among them. 

Then, as abruptly as it had come, the warning was cancelled. No wall of water was making its way toward our city. We could go back to what we had been doing: playing and learning and working and waiting for the next calamity. The desperate mom drove her son and daughter back to school, but we didn't get to see how sheepish she might have felt, since she just dropped them at the curb and went back to her busy day. 

A day mercifully free of tidal waves.  

Danger Zone

 Any thoughts about America's gun problem going quietly into the night now that the Trumpreich has been installed can be put away. Two kindergartners were shot at a school in Palmero, California this past Wednesday. The children were in extremely critical condition, as any five year old experiencing gunshot wounds should be. The gunman, as de rigeur, then shot himself in the head. He will not be experiencing the lifetime of trauma and recovery that his victims will. The school, which serves about thirty-five students, is affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventists church. No security guard was posted at the school. 

They put their faith in God to keep their children safe. 

Across the country, in the screeching metropolis that is New York City, United Healthcare's CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in broad daylight on the streets of Manhattan. Authorities referred to the shooting as a "premeditated, preplanned targeted attack" outside the New York Hilton. The masked gunman didn't do everyone the favor of taking his own life, but escaped on an electric bicycle.

Maybe it's just me, but it's that last detail, about the electric bike that brings the whole scene to its most surreal point. The juxtaposition of this movie-like execution coupled with the environmentally conscious getaway vehicle is, to some degree, laughable. 

Which brings me to the third installment of "Who's Shooting Whom" in which California Highway Patrol officers were fired upon during a high speed chase early this past Monday morning. Authorities say the suspected stolen vehicle was being pursued along highway 880 when the bad guys turned off on to city streets where the passenger leaned out of the speeding Honda Civic on three separate occasions to shoot at the pursing officers. The chase was abandoned due to the “driver’s reckless and dangerous driving as well as the passenger’s obvious disregard for the safety of the public.” The stolen car was later found ditched somewhere in the city. 

The bad guys with guns got away. 

Come to think of it, so did the guy who shot two kindergartners. 

Not a good week for the good guys. 

Help Line

 A first grade girl called 911 from a phone in a classroom of her after school program at our school. It wasn't a freak accident, but rather entirely reminiscent of all the times that boys and girls had used one of the school's phones to dial the number they have heard about since they were tiny. 

What would happen?

Well, on this particular day, her little friends ratted her out almost immediately in addition to the internal response call we get in the office when an emergency is called in from one of our extensions. She was not going to get away with it, and it was then up to us to let her know what a potentially bad thing it was that she had been messing with a system put in place to keep her safe. 

Then came the abrupt left turn when, upon interviewing her, she tearfully explained why it was that she had made the call. "I wanted my mommy to be safe," she sobbed. She explained that over the Thanksgiving break there had been trouble at her house, with her older teenaged sister attacking their mom. "I wanted someone to help." 

Suddenly the adults involved switched their tone and became infinitely more sympathetic. We rallied around her and assured her that she only needed to reach out to one of us to get her the help she and her mom needed. The incident she described was not out of character for her family, and the decision was made almost immediately to trust the child. 

Right up until mom was called to let her in on what had been happening at the school. She rushed down to pick up her daughter, and on the way in stopped to let us all know that she was sorry for the large but totally believable fabrication. Her teenaged daughter had not been living with them for the past several weeks. The building blocks were certainly there, with trauma inflicted on everyone involved. 

Several weeks ago. 

Then the path switched quickly back to the first grader mimicking the funny thing she had seen her classmates do several months ago. On a dare. We left mom and daughter with the stern reminder that 911 was for emergencies only and we were there to help but making that call was something else. 

Then they left. 

A few minutes later, my principal and I wondered together if we still knew the complete story. Would mom smooth things over for appearances and maybe daughter felt threatened still and was making some sort of desperate call. For help. 

We couldn't be sure. But we will keep our collective eyes and ears open. 

The Real Thing

 Coca-Cola, or as we have come to know it, "America's Favorite Liquid," is getting criticism for what consumers refer to as "soulless" holiday commercials to commemorate the Holiday Season. Wait a moment, strike that, nobody is silly enough to believe that Coca-Cola or its many subsidiaries need to shade anything more woke than rubbing our collective noses in Christmas. Because we love it so.

But back to that "soulless" issue. The concern is based primarily on the use of Artificial Intelligence to generate these self-referential red and green advertisements pointed directly at our limbic system, specifically that part that breeds nostalgia. But they didn't bother to hire animators or actors to do it. They just poured a two liter bottle of America's favorite beverage into the processor and let the bots do their work. The result, "Holidays are Coming" is filled with references to previous wintry ad campaigns for the soft drink that goes well with anything. All the time. Forever. 

You may not remember a time when Coca-Cola ran afoul of the world's sensitivities by promoting their elixir with polar bears. They've been doing that for more than one hundred years, but it wasn't until 1993 that they truly got behind these endangered carnivores and pushed. That's when the Coke behemoth unleashed "Northern Lights" on a parched public. State of the art computer graphics were employed to bring a sloth of polar bears together to have a Coke and a smile while they take in the Aurora Borealis. Each one of those commercials took twelve weeks to create. 

Fast forward to 2012 when the King of All Things Soda decreed that they would be helping support their nominal mascot by selling cans of Coke decorated with the animals they picked to represent them who were dying by the hundreds on ice floes in a diminishing arctic. They campaign raised two million dollars to save polar bears. I leave you to figure out the percentage of Coke's eleven billion dollars in profit that works out to be, but at least they were doing it in some manner of good faith. 

Which brings us back to the hastily manufactured images presented in this year's ad. All those good vibes created by making donations to the World Wildlife Fund start to fade into the Artificial Intelligence maelstrom. Consider this: Generating one thousand images using AI creates as much carbon dioxide as driving a gas-powered car four miles, and a study found that data centers may require the same amount of electricity needed to power a small nation by 2027. "Real Magic" is the tagline being bounced around at the end of Coca-Cola ads. What do the Coke Powers That Be have to say about it? "The Coca-Cola Company has celebrated a long history of capturing the magic of the holidays in content, film, events, and retail activations for decades around the globe. We are always exploring new ways to connect with consumers and experiment with different approaches."

In the interest of being completely transparent, I used to drink a lot of Coca-Cola. Kidney stones put the kibosh on that addiction. I wonder if AI could create that experience for me? 

Beg Your Pardon?

 There is a moderate furor going around currently about how President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter. 

There are those who will insist that President Joe broke his promise when he excused his boy from facing federal charges over any crimes he possibly could have committed over the past decade. I suppose we might all benefit from this kind of insulation, but this is essentially the parting shot of a man who has given his country and party for more than fifty years. 

To which I say, "So?"

Coming from a man who served the United States faithfully and honorably as a senator, a vice president, and most importantly a palate-cleansing sorbet between the first and second Trumpreich, this feels like a very fitting parting gift for all his efforts. 

There are those who compare Hunter's pardon to that of Richard Nixon. Primarily because of the length and breadth of the document. The Nixon pardon was handed down by consolation president Gerald Ford, who believed that the country needed to move on from the unseemly mess that was Watergate and its attendant malfeasance. Much in the same way the Biden family feels like their black sheep deserves a break after ten years of being the Republican whipping post. 

Does it worry me that Hunter Biden now has a freedom that only a former president who resigned in shame was afforded? From a precedent standpoint, I suppose I could work up a hissy fit, but that will already be taken care of by all the rabid MAGAts who have been after his laptop and presenting lewd photos of him to Congress. Will this be the Biden legacy? Perhaps in another twenty years we will look back on this moment as the height of the skullduggery in this period of time. 

Check me on this though: When did the pardon for those thirty-four felony convictions come down for the "president" elect?

In Their Own Way

  "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

These are Tolstoy's words, just so there is no confusion, but I do agree with them. They were the words that came into my mind as I finished reading Mary Trump's book,  Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir. It comes fast on the heels of her previous tome, Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. My wife gave me the sequel, of sorts, just a few weeks before the election. As I tore my way through the accounts of dysfunction, I truly believed that I was watching history unravel. Until the results were in. 

The progress I had made stopped. For a couple weeks as the thought of this Dangerous Man becoming "president" once again made me unwilling to finish the story of Mary's traumatic childhood among some of the creepiest people this side of Anna Karenina. 

Then, after the reality of a second Trumpreich began to settle in, I picked put the book again, anxious to discover if the poor little girl found a way to usurp her wicked uncle's power. 

Spoiler Alert: Nope. Cheated out of her inheritance and kicked to the curb for trying to connect with a family that had all but disowned her, Mary has spent the past eight years trying to find the off switch to the machine that keeps the evil flowing. 

Then I thought about Tolstoy's quote. I thought about all those unhappy families that continue to promulgate and send their unhappiness out into the world to generate still more wickedness. For a moment I thought to insert the notion that money is somehow the root of all evil, but then again, so is the lack of money. Money can't buy me love, after all. Sometimes it creates a facsimile, something akin to comfort without any real understanding. You can buy comfort, or at least the trappings of it. Once you have all the stuff, you still want more because you're empty inside. 

I finished Mary's book, and let it go. Nothing could stop the unhappiness from spilling out into the world. All that sadness. All that pain. Painted over in bright orange. 

Not a happy orange, either. 

Funny Man

 The thought of telling jokes for a living stalls out with the memory of standing in front of a couch full of stoned Arby's employees. I was the new guy, but I was definitely the funniest one at the party. 

Or so I was lead to believe. By the voices inside my head. I was always making people laugh at work. Certainly my reputation as a class clown was cemented during my senior year in high school. Why wouldn't that continue on into my twenties? 

The lesson I learned that night was about being on stage. When you are presenting to a crowd, even a half dozen wrecked fast food workers, the expectations are different. I was not clear on that when I took my position in front of the coffee table to deliver what I assumed would be a killer set about being wasted on the job. It could have been that the material wasn't that good. I had not spent an adequate amount of time working up my routine beforehand. Like no time at all. I was making it up on the spot. I was, as the pros say, "riffing." To a couch full of blank stares. 

What I had not taken into account, but I realize now some forty years later, was the intrinsic difference between standing next to someone in a classroom or at the counter of a roast beef sandwich emporium gives you an anti-authority edge. The funny bits are coming from an unexpected angle. Who talks back to their Elementary Functions teacher? Who takes sarcastic glee in someone ordering two Beef 'n' Cheddars, potato cakes, a cherry turnover and a large Diet Pepsi? Who cracks wise when the situation is not specifically designed for such japery? 

Me. Me and a whole slew of funny people throughout history who were never able to make it past open mic night, or get their own sit-com. Or make a bunch of stoned Arby's employees crack a smile. 

Every few years my wife will wonder aloud why I never became a professional comedian. The simplest answer comes from just how sour those grapes turned out to be. The longer version has something to do with that story I just related along with my lack of understand of the gulf between being a wiseacre and a comedian. 

Or a guy who writes a daily blog. 

Used To It

 So there are those who knew me when I would never have imagined that I would allow a cat in my house. Then I got married. And I moved to California where many of the strictures and regulations that kept me and the pets around me shifted. My wife was an equal opportunity employer. She encouraged us to board a few different dogs and cats when friends and relatives found us as a place for their dogs and cats to hang out while they vacationed. Dagwood the dog and Max the cat were two visitors back in those days. As was my way back then, I connected immediately with Dagwood, while the time Max spent with me was limited primarily to cautious glances across the room. By both of us. 

I will confess some vague antipathy for the feline, highlighted in the Age of Maddie.Maddie was the dog we adopted when our son was still fresh and new. We raised them together, and Maddie was our doggie daughter. And one of the things she loved to do was chase the gray feral cat who would periodically creep into our yard. Much to the delight of our son, and the the everlasting dismay of my wife. 

Fast forward a decade and a half, when karma was served by the coincidence of that same gray cat coming to live with us while he rehabbed from having all his teeth removed. Maddie was sent to her eternal rest, so we had room. One day, that gray feral cat came sauntering out to our livng room like he owned the place. Because somewhere in the rehabilitation process Fluffy, as he became to be known, had become a part of the family. He had found a spot on our couch. 

And eventually into our bed. Now I am regularly awakened by a kitty paw on my forearm or forehead. It's time to begin another day. Another day with a cat in our house. 

And I don't mind. 

An Important Message

 So, apparently there are no new ideas. 

The Second Trumpreich is not only gearing up for mass deportations, inspired by Dwight Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" (the actual name given to the 1954 action), but is also hard at work trying to find just the right tone for their ad campaign created to keep Americans from using Fentanyl. The felon-elect spouted this on his social media platform named without irony "Truth," “I will be working on a large-scale United States Advertising Campaign explaining how bad fentanyl is for people to use. Millions of lives being so needlessly destroyed. “By the time the campaign is over, everyone will know how really bad the horror of this drug is.”

If you were alive in the 1980s, and certainly the former game show host was while he was busy suggesting innocent young black men should be executed for crimes they did not commit and being a slumlord's slumlord, you might remember when Nancy Reagan came up with the brilliant "Just Say No" campaign. Yes, boys and girls, everything old is new again, and while it's a pretty sure bet that Melania will be unavailable to give the new version the punch that Nancy did once upon a time, I'll be there are plenty of folks who are staring at that big bag of fentanyl even as you read this and wondering, "Hey. There's a big fat white guy who's addicted to McDonalds who doesn't want me to ruin my life with this stuff." And that will be, as they say, that. 

Of course now might be the time to open up that can of worms in which we find all the reasons for drug abuse. One that tops a lot of lists is mental health concerns. Which might be the target of its own ad campaign, since mental health services have had their budgets cut by millions over the past over the past decade or so. So making a few TV spots that no one will see because no one watches commercial TV anymore sounds like a much better plan than trying to solve the problem at its source. "Feel bad? Don't take drugs. You should try buying something you don't need instead. But not drugs." 

Which might come as a shock to newly ordained Czar of Government Efficiency Elon Musk, who insists that his prescription for Ketamine is to helpful :for getting one out of the negative frame of mind." which might also come as a surprise to TV funnyman Matthew Perry, god rest his soul. And to all those people in Mexico and China who are going to be tariffed into submission by a new administration that doesn't understand who tariffs work. Or drug dependency. Or windmills. Or solar eclipses. Or health care. Or a free and independent press. Or how toasters work. 

Sleep tight, America. 

Don't do drugs. 

Sacrifice

 Welcome to that part of the year in which an alternate universe would find the felon we elected "president" being sentenced for his crimes. The conventional wisdom I suppose was that the prosecutors didn't want to run afoul of any of that "presidential immunity" nonsense, so they steered clear of putting a guy who was found guilty on thirty-four separate counts of fraud in jail while he was trying to run for the highest office in the land. The original sentencing date was in July, just days before the Republican National Convention. That didn't happen in this universe. Nor did it happen at any point after that. As a matter of fact Jack Smith, once seen as the pit bull who was going to finally bring the big orange blob of nefarious protoplasm down, dropped the rest of the bag of charges against the big orange blob of nefarious protoplasm.

I think of Bluto Blutarsky, before he became a United States Senator, as he wondered whatever became of the Delta he used to know. This is the Democratic Party, not given to stirring up a fuss or insurrection, after all. It is quite likely that a strongly worded letter will be written on behalf of those of us left with the wreckage of what we believed would be the big push to locking up the former game show host. 

And if that leaves a sour taste in your mouth, feel free to join the club. For those among us who believe the chief reason for Hannibal Lecter's biggest fan to run for "president" in the first place was to stay out of jail, this comes as yet another reminder of just how awful the scales of justice can be tweaked for those in a position to tweak them. 

For us, the furious, I offer you the solace of seeing Rudy Giuliani chopped up into little pieces and fed to the masses. Never mind that this is the fall guy for the "president elect." The guy who once organized a news conference at a landscaping company to insist that the 2020 election had been "stolen" four years ago is not in jail. But he has had his money, his cars, his license to practice law and just about everything else of value stripped from him over the past few months. 

Because he seems to be the sacrificial lamb. He's the one that got left behind when the circus moved on to 2024. I am incapable of feeling anything remotely like sympathy for Rudy, but I do wonder how he got picked to take the legal beating for the rest of those crooks. 

In another universe, Rudy Giuliani decided to dump everything and turn state's evidence on his old boss. Before he ever had a chance to run for office. 

Another time. Another place. Maybe another landscaping company. 

Cost

 Shortly after the smoke from the election began to clear, my son announced that he was going out to buy himself a new television. As mentioned her on several occasions, he is a clever lad, and he is capable of seeing the forest for the trees. In this particular version of that metaphor, the forest was the tariffs proposed by the "president" elect, and the trees were televisions. Made in China. My son understood the basic economic principle that tariffs would cause consumer prices to rise, since the taxes levied on imported goods would be passed along to consumers. And if you know anything about my son, it's that he is a good little consumer. 

I'm writing this in case you were one of those folks who heard that Felonious Monk and his gang of MAGAts were going to use tariffs on foreign made products and you figured he must know what he's doing. 

Spoiler alert: He doesn't.

But that didn't stop him from promoting this like it was some newfangled notion that will solve our trade deficit. 

Spoiler alert: It won't.

So much so that Walmart's Chief Financial Officer, John David Rainey, announced that once these tariffs go into effect prices on "certain items" might go up. "We never want to raise prices. Our model is everyday low prices. But there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers." Sorry folks, but the Walton family needs new shoes too, and they don't do all their shopping at Walmart. They've got to put bread on the table, and neither the table nor the bread is coming from Sam's Club. If you're paying a little extra to keep the Waltons on the Forbes 400 list, well I guess that's just part of doing business in the dystopian hellscape into which we are about to plunge. 

And it's probably only an odd coincidence that in that same announcement, Walmart is now rolling back DEI policies like they used to do with prices. I guess that's just the price of doing business in Felonious Monk's Amerika. 

No Thanks?

 It would be easy enough

to say "thanks for nothing."

To forget all the amazing things

that happened before

and since

and in spite of.

It would be easy enough

to say "thanks for nothing" 

as we wander through 

the impending doom.

It is a bigger challenge to remember

things like silver linings

or the dawn of each new day.

Sometimes it's difficult to recall

that all things must pass

when you're standing in line

or waiting for the light to change.

It's time to do the difficult thing

It's time to dig down deep

Be glad you're a live

to face another day

And prepare for the next

Thank you for reading. 

Out Of Reach

 "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

I chose these words, not long ago, to highlight the indefatigable spirit of this great land of ours. I was echoing the sentiments of John F. Kennedy Jr. to remind us all what is possible when we set our minds and hearts together. We were on a mission. And yes, there were doubters, but we were coming together in a moment of strife. We did go to the moon. So many times that, for some, it became a bore. 

Fifty years later, we have a group of billionaires who, not unlike Charles Foster Kane, think "it would be fun to run a space program." The highlight of these excursions thus far has been taking the fictional Captain of the Starship Enterprise into outer space for real, and returning him to a massive fit of depression. Some might argue this is karma payback for all those times William Shatner, in the guise of James T. Kirk, thumbed his nose at convention and dared to boldly go blah, blah, blah. 

If it seems a little hypocritical of me to cast aspersions at Elongated Mush's lust for glory that is tied to the colonization of Mars, I can accept that. I can accept it because I will cop to just about anything that brings more attention to the fragile ego and overall creepiness of the man who never invented anything. He used his daddy's money to buy into growing concerns and acted like they were his ideas all along. 

This is why I was glad to have my favorite science guy and yours, Neil deGrasse Tyson make the following pronouncement on Bill Maher's show: “My read of the history of space exploration is such that we do big, expensive things only when it’s geopolitically expedient, such as we feel threatened by an enemy. And so for him to just say, let’s go to Mars because it’s the next thing to do. What is that venture capitalist meeting look like? ‘So, Elon, what do you want to do?’ ‘I want to go to Mars?’ ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘$1 trillion.’ ‘Is it safe?’ ‘No. People will probably die.’ ‘What’s the return on the investment?’ ‘Nothing.’ That’s a five minute meeting. And it doesn’t happen.”

Which, coming from a die-hard fan of space exploration myself, is still the kind of reality check that needs to happen a lot more often for puffy, arrogant know-it-all. Which reminds me of a quote from another great science guy, Isaac Asimov: :"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do."

Hey Elon: Go back to doing what you're really good at. Destroying Twitter and jumping up and down like a dork.  

Practice

 Okay kids, gather 'round the table. Let's all share the things for which we are thankful this year.

Crickets chirp.

A tumbleweed rolls by. 

Somewhere down the street, you can hear one of the neighbors drop a pin. 

This one is going to be extremely difficult. That's why I'm suggesting to look outward this year for the ritual that will be difficult on a day full of family and friends. You might even discover a previously undiscovered MAGA skeleton among your relations. 

"You know, having RFK Jr. in there will really help get our country's health back on the right track."

Or maybe, "I think it's high time we had a Department of Efficiency in our government, and who better to lead it than those two billionaires?"

You might even get, "I don't know if we gave Trump a chance back in 2016. Maybe we just need to be more open minded."

If these kind of conversation starters pop up during your holiday meal, feel free to do what I do whenever I see a Cybertruck anywhere in the world: Laugh out loud. Not just a "lol" but a full-on gut busting guffaw. One that might make the neighbors wonder if you might need to up your medication. As the freak show continues to assemble in anticipation of what will most likely be the most dysfunctional administration since the one headed by the convicted felon the first time. While I understand the impulse to mourn what might have been, please keep this foremost in your mind: Donald Trump has never won the popular vote in any election in which he has participated. The "mandate" of the people just isn't there. If that doesn't give you room for a hearty chuckle or at least another slice of pie, just remember Matt Gaetz no longer has a job. 

Signage

mace (noun 1) : an aromatic spice consisting of the dried external fibrous covering of a nutmeg

mace (noun 2) a: a heavy often spiked staff or club used especially in the Middle Ages for breaking armor

b: a club used as a weapon

mace (verb) : to attack with the liquid Mace

Mace (noun 3) : an irritant, used to drive people away and provoke unnecessary torment

Okay, with the definitions out of the way, let's talk bathrooms. Many of these meanings could and possibly will be important during this discussion. Let's begin with the election of 2024. You may be completely sick and tired of hearing about it, but there were a few bright spots. Sarah McBride became the first transgender person to be elected to Congress. Representing the Blue Hen State, ushering in a new age of equity and diversity in that august body. 

Sorry. I had to pause because of the sheer weight of the sarcasm inflected by that last sentence. 

Of course not. Suddenly everyone's concern went to the bathroom. The tired and ugly phrase "biological sex" was trotted out not just in an angry tweet or Facebook screed. This time it was a member of Congress who chose to make it her mission to cleanly avoid any discussion of gender and just plough straight into the hysterics about men invading "women's places." Her name is Nancy Mace. 

The representative from the Palmetto State decided to write a bill of her own to back up her position. Then she told anyone who would listen: “Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” adding that McBride, "does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop." Her plan, such as it is, invites the Sergeant At Arms of the House to enforce this petulant bit of legislation. It only took a few moments for the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, to fall in line with that and issued a policy that he was going to use his "general control" of the facilities of the House to bar people from using bathrooms that he and his pal Nancy don't believe they should be using. 

For her part, Ms. McBride responded, “This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars. Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.”

Sarah McBride will attempt to show us what happens when you bring a reasoned argument to a mace fight. 

People Who Need People

 I was, and continue to be, challenged by doing business with corporations and people and corporations who it turns out are people. I have struggled with the assertion made that ordering a new pair of work pants from Amazon is feeding the beast that is killing our country. I do not have a clever answer that tips the guilt out of that interaction. Clicking on a button that makes those simple transactions as easy as clicking on a button is hard to resist when you consider the time and expense of going to a real store and making that same purchase.

And not shoving more money into the overstuffed pockets of Jeff Bezos. 

Then there's the matter of our solar energy. Years ago when my wife and I chose to invest in the future of our planet by installing solar panels on the roof of our house, we picked Solar City to do the job. A local company that did a great job and made us feel like we were on the right side of history. 

Until they were devoured by Tesla. 

Suddenly, our troubleshooting calls were rerouted through a series of chutes and bots and real people were taken out of the loop. We were encouraged to try to find answers on the Tesla website which was much more geared toward selling visitors a new electric car than helping support owners of a product purchased by one of their subsidiaries. Worst of all, from my vantage point, the icon for the monitor of our system on my phone changed to that creepy satanic T that stands for Tesla and all the evil that it embodies. 

It was during this same wedge of time that I decided to join Twitter, seeing as how my blogs were such a hit with ten to twelve readers, why not take the opportunity to join a community where I could pass off my tiny bon mots as tiny modular bits of what you might find here if you looked. But Twitter gave me a group of fellow snarks with whom I could relate. 

Then came the dark times. When that same evil empire choked down that little blue bird in one gulp and turned it into a big black X. I told anybody who would listen that I was going to stick around and watch that house burn down around me. I watched as this purported bastion of free speech became a breeding ground for far-right parasites anxious to further their MAGAt aggenda. 

So last Wednesday, I packed up my metaphorical bags and left. I went to the much more tranquil cyberspread called Bluesky. Bye bye, Elongated Mush. So long ads for Bible Belt Buckles. Auf Wiedersehen Nazis. I don't think this is the kind of change that will make the world a better place, but at least my little corner will be a little less controlled by evil. At least that's what I want to tell myself. 

Learning

 As I prepare to wander off over the river and through the woods to my eventual Thanksgiving, I will try and set down the mantle of responsibility that comes with being one of the soldiers in the war against ignorance. I am one of those folks who stand by ready to correct the spelling of "restaurant." I can explain prime numbers. I know the three branches of the United States government. And how they work. 

It sometimes feels a little arcane, being a human hard drive, part of a meat cloud deployed across this great land of ours with the expressed intent of downloading my contents to those willing and able to sit still in front of me long enough to make a meaningful connection. Though it seems as though this was always my purpose, I had to grow into the position of oracle. Finding new and different ways to coax and cajole those shorter than me to stay interested in what I had to say turns out to be an art. All that time spent practicing turns out to have been a worthwhile investment. It's not for everyone, but the rewards I have gathered are the smiles I get at the end of the day and the fact that a former student of mine brought his daughter back to our school years after he attended my class because he remembered the lesson I had shared with him about being line leader. 

There are gifts along the way, and plenty of frustrations, but I keep returning to the promise of another chance to make a connection with those vessels ready to be filled with knowledge. 

Until someone comes along and tells me I should stop. 

The second Trumpreich comes with it a mandate, of sorts, to close up the Department of Education. This is ostensibly under the heading of curtailing all the "woke curriculum" being forced on the children of this not nearly great enough nation. Part of the way they hope to Make America Obedient Again is to make the Department of Education disappear. To do this, they went out and found the co-founder and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment Linda McMahon. Why wouldn't the person who helped come up with the idea of fake wrestling be the perfect choice for taking over fake education? 

The incoming regime would like to "send education back to the states." Which of course is just a little ridiculous since this is exactly how the folks in Oklahoma have become burdened with the need to put bibles in all their schools. States have been setting their own curriculum for their classrooms as well as the standards by which their students are measured. 

See? I knew that, and I'm happy to share even more about it. But not right now. I'm taking a week off. 

Okay...

 There are plenty of ways to encourage prayer in school. The first one that comes to mind is pop quizzes. Not about religion necessarily, but their mere existence tends to get students to ask for intervention from a higher power. Much in the same way indoor recess causes teachers to request the weather machine to change its course or duration of any atmospheric disturbance that might keep the little darlings in the room for prolonged periods of time. We'll figure out that whole drought thing later. Please let these little creatures outside. 

The less popular version of this exchange can be found in Oklahoma, where Superintendent of Public Education Ryan Walters has decreed that there will be a Bible in every classroom and insists that his "Prayer for the Nation" be played not only to all enrolled students but to any and all parents who would hold still long enough to take in all that glory. Religious liberty, as the narrow mind of Mister Walters describes it, will not be infringed in the Sooner State. Nor will he allow patriotism to be mocked. 

Hold on, Mister Walters, because here comes some mocking:

The state of Oklahoma currently sits just one step above the very bottom of fifty states ranked by academic achievement. If you aren't clear on the way that works out, that means that Ryan Walters' state is forty-ninth. The suggested solution to this trend is to spend money on bibles, preferably the ones printed in China and endorsed by Lee Greenwood, and producing videos to be played for the empty chairs in their classrooms. This will probably eat into the funding that all those woke schools had planned to use on sex change operations for their students, but this is just the beginning of the return to the past by Oklahoma's educational system. 

The Bible, as regularly pointed out by those who have actually read the book (including the author of this post) is chock full of sex and violence. And a whole lot of outdated dogma. Which did not earn The Good Book a spot on the list of books banned by Oklahoma public schools. 

And interestingly enough, those very expensive bibles touted by Mister Walters come with a copy of the United States Constitution tucked neatly inside along with the revealed word. The United States Constitution which includes an amendment that promotes religious freedom and allows all Americans to practice their deeply held beliefs in private and in public. Unfortunately, coming as it does just before the constantly touted Second Amendment, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution provides a separation between church and state. And last time I checked, Mister Walters, the office you currently hold is one created by the state. 

Not by god. 

Stay in your lane. 

Don't Panic

 When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

When in a clown show, do as the clowns do. 

I'm not sure I can follow that last bit of advice, but I can try to laugh.

Because it might be the thing that saves me. And the rest of us. 

Reacting to the flood of absurdity pouring in torrents out of Mar A Lago (literally translated, "Bad Log") one could continue to rail and stress over each new announcement and proclamation. Please understand that I feel this is a completely natural reaction to the suggested appointments and policy directions espoused by the once and future "president." It is a certainty that a percentage of decisions made by the incoming regime will disappoint, nay infuriate, the sensibilities of the American public. Even those hardcore MAGAts will no doubt end up in a lather because of something that issues forth from the brain trust currently being assembled. 

Whether it is mass deportation or tariffs, the removal of fluoride from our drinking water or the abolition of women's right to choose, someone's going to be upset. 

Because I believe that is the intent of the Second Trumpreich. There's something for everyone. To hate. And becoming incensed at those things that get trotted out expressly for that purpose seems like a surrender to the powers that be. Not that any or all of the things I have mentioned are not worth being upset about. But now is the time to start preparing an agenda for the future. 

I am a big fan of democracy and its resilience. It appears likely that our nation's sesquicentennial will be presided over the occupants of the clown car, and in the same way that I white knuckled my way through the administrations of Nixon, Reagan, Bush and the first Trumpreich, I expect we will come out of the next four years with the pendulum swinging hard back in the direction we who are currently fretting consider correct.  This is how I plan to get through until 2028. Laughing at the absurdity and making plans for the future. 

The Bit

 I believe that many of us were on the lookout for a win. 

I know I was. 

The past couple of weeks since the election have been filled with the kind of news that makes rational people shiver. That rattling sound you hear is what is left of my shattered nerves. As the parade of nitwits continue to file into the Cabinet of the Convicted Felon, all hope may have been abandoned by ye. Ye know who ye are, right? 

Then along comes The Onion. You may be familiar with their satirical online presence, or even the once upon a time print version that first appeared back in the latter part of the twentieth century. Perhaps you have a favorite piece or article, such as "Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness." It should come as no surprise that when Jon Stewart began his stewartship of the Daily Show back in 1996, Jon cherry-picked an Onion editor to be head writer for his "fake news show."

For nearly thirty years, The Onion has been one of the darkest corners of the humor universe, and during this time they have continued to grow. Book sales and movie deals have been accompanied by cash influxes and ownership changes, but all along The Onion has continued to keep its edge.

And this all came to a head this past Thursday when it was announced that together with support from the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims The Onion had successfully won the auction for the alt-right media empire that was Alex Jones' InfoWars. It was hoped that by doing this, the Onioners would be able to, in the words of CEO Ben Collins, make the former InfoWars "a very funny, very stupid website." 

The comedian inside of me wonders how the level of stupidity could be higher, but at the same time I have nothing but respect for The Onion's commitment to the bit. 

Smiles, everyone, smiles!

Born To Be Mild

 "They don't make 'em like they used to."

This phrase went through my head as my wife noticed the "New Mustang" zipping past us on the highway. "That's not a Mustang," she muttered. I agreed with her, and I was proud to have passed this sentiment along to her. Coming from a woman who still makes a little squeal each time she sees a Nissan Leaf on the road, it is a little surprising that she could maintain any kind of disdain for an electric vehicle. It is my conviction, and the one that I passed along to my bride, that if you've got in your head to make a fancy new electric car, come up with a fancy new electric name instead of trying to get us to fall for this bit of chicanery. A Ford Mustang is a relic of a bygone era, "Before the Motor Law" as Neil Peart once put it. A sports car. A muscle car. A beast that could only be made in Detroit during the 1960's. Preferably in red. 

But this is another age, and I understand that we are all making do with the reality in which we now live. Like in the mid-seventies when Ford unleashed the Mustang II. America was wrestling with an energy crisis, and the lines to buy gas went around the block. Something had to break. So they broke the Mustang. In two. After a period of time where cars like Camaros and Challengers started to bring back that big V8 feeling, the Mustang returned to a facsimile of its former size and shape. In red, even. But of course, this machine came with the asterisk of *fuel efficiency and the potential of purchasing carbon offsets to chase that climate guilt away. 

Then they went and did that EV thing, and I haven't been able to get past it. 

And apparently, neither has my wife. 

We are a one car family. That car is a pre-owned Toyota Prius. The fact that the Electric "Mustang" zipped past us in the fast lane may have had something to with the bad taste left in our collective mouth. Any latent drag racing impulses we might have were left behind us long ago. 

Which didn't keep us both from laughing out loud when we saw a Cybertruck ambling its boxy way out of the shopping center parking lot. They never used to build them like that, and they should probably stop right now. 

Home Team

 So, not for the first time, it occurs to me that my appreciation for professional sports may be misplaced. 

I was just reading how the repairs to Tropicana Field, those made necessary by Hurricane Milton, will not be finished until after the 2025 baseball season. The Tampa Bay Rays who have called Tropicana Field home since 1998. Now they will have to play baseball someplace else until 2026. 

So the Rays made a deal with the New York Yankees, losers of the most recent World Series, for fifteen million dollars to play their home games in the Yankees' Spring Training stadium. The minor league Tampa Tarpons (read that one carefully) will make "other arrangements" for their home games. 

This one strikes close to home for me, since the ****Athletics fled Oakland not because their stadium was destroyed by a hurricane, but by its ownership. The stadium in Oakland is most certainly in need of a facelift and perhaps even a replacement, but just up the road in Sacramento there is a minor league baseball stadium where the ****A's can play their "home games" until such time as the folks in Las Vegas get around to building a new ballpark in which they will become known as the Las Vegas Tax Breaks. The plot of land upon which that Vegas stadium will sit is the former home of (wait for it) The Tropicana Hotel. 

Millions of dollars are being tossed around at solutions to the problems of billionaires who own sports franchises. New stadiums spring up because the public and those billionaires demand their sacrifice. Meanwhile, the Oakland Unified School District languishes in yet another budget deficit. Talks about how to eliminate the shortfalls once again center on the "need" to close schools in order to save money. The money and movements made available to professional sports franchises do not exist for public education. That kind of money is reserved for the really important things. 

Like baseball stadiums. 

Maybe we could open up a few satellite campuses in Tampa or Sacramento and teach the kids how to fill out a scorecard. 

Go Ask Alice

 "The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said, without even looking around." If these words sound familiar, you have perhaps recently been reading Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland or maybe you have merely been living through the past eight years watching this loud orange playing card shouting his "policy" demands at anyone within earshot. 

It is difficult to imagine how Mister Carroll, the right honorable Deacon Charles Dodgson, might have chosen to depict the events of the past three presidential elections. The easiest answer might come from Chapter Two of Wonderland in which Alice describes her initiation into her strange new reality with the words, "Curiouser and couriser." How else to describe a playing card that not only speaks but insists on the decapitation of those who make the offhand mistake of crossing her path? 

Or an former game show host and failed businessman who somehow gets elected "president." Twice. And then proceeds to defame and debase anyone and everyone who manages to disappoint him in the most ridiculous ways? Virtually all of the characters from that first attempt at a regime have been kicked to the side, not so much beheaded as "you're fired." This refrain is as easily associated with the convicted felon of a "president"-elect as "off with your head" is to the Queen of Hearts. 

What is even more troubling is that in this sequel, we find ourselves unwillingly shoved through the Looking Glass into a land devoid of rational thought. Picking Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum as a pair to run the newly imagined "Department of Government Efficiency" for example. Or appointing The Knave of Hearts, accused of sex trafficking along with years of unwholesome conduct and resigned from the Senate just two days before a House Ethics Committee report was set to be released describing said unwholesome behavior. Appointing him to head up the office of Attorney General. 

Curiouser and curiouser. 

So much so that online accounts of Representative Lauren Boebert being named Secretary of Education became oddly credible. This new stratagem of putting porcupines in charge of balloon factories skips right past being Orwellian and straight into Wonderland. 

Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

Get Away

 Back in the nineties, another century, a comedian once suggested that a kid looked like the barber had sais to him: "Look, I'm going to try and cut your hair. You try to get away." I found this amusing enough to keep it in my bag of go-to bits concerning the tonsorial arts. I apologize to the comedy powers that be for not remembering the laughmaster who gave me the bit, but I deeply appreciate it. 

That said, I found myself reflecting on these words as I tumbled out of the three day Veteran's weekend and into the following week. But I wasn't thinking about the various hairdressing choices of the students I teach. There have been a number of confounding choices made in that arena, but rather I was considering the art of education as it stands in the early twenty-first century. 

When I was in teacher school, I was told over and over about how important it was to have a vibrant, captivating curriculum in order to grasp and maintain your students' interest. Many of us took this with a grain of salt, coming as it was from a series of overhead transparencies delivered in an evening presented to a group of us who had already spent the day in our own classroom, in desperate need of some sort of spark. We found it ironic, but it still reinforced the need to keep things lively. 

As the computer teacher, I was in good stead since so much of what was being produced at that time was in the realm of edutainment. Mario Teaches Typing. Kid Pix. And everyone's favorite, "the shooting game," Oregon Trail. I did not need to be particularly captivating. I just needed to keep those CD-ROMs spinning. 

Eventually technology caught up to me, and I found myself scrambling to keep things fresh. Then I took a detour into fourth grade, where I discovered just how terrifying it can be when a group of nine and ten year olds stare at you as you try and make long division captivating. For the record, Dracula's Mother Sucks Chicken Blood. Reading Charlotte's Web worked, and continues to work. Leaving you with another four or five hours to fill in a day with children whose worlds are infinitely more compelling and trauma filled than young Fern and her adopted pig. 

Sometimes it felt like, "I'm going to try and teach you. You try and get away." Finding new and different ways to trick kids into sitting still long enough to stuff learning into their heads is a never-ending challenge. This is especially true of those who come to school with a chip on their shoulders about school, placed there by the parents who had a less than satisfactory experience with education themselves. 

So we show up each morning with the intent of keeping it fresh, but all too often get lost in the ruts that living in a world run by a bell system generates. Nevertheless, we persevere. Each new success is celebrated. New ideas are welcomed like a full canteen in the middle of a desert. As we continue along the path to knowledge, trying not to lose anyone along the way. 

Only The Best People

 Here they come folks: The Best and The Brightest*.

The new and improved MAGAt administration is forming as we watch, and I facetiously cannot imagine a more competent and well-rounded team. 

Let's start with former Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. She will not be returning to this or any post in the second Trumpreich. Even though she put her limited reputation on the line by making a late-stage endorsement of the convicted felon who was once her boss, she had already garnered his displeasure and was therefore ineligible for a cabinet level position. 

This position requires some groveling.

Like that of "Little Marco" Rubio. Little Marco has had the position of Secretary of State bestowed upon him by the tiny hands of the Orange One. Little Marco learned his lesson by running against his master back in 2016, and has had ample time to drink the Kool-Aid and get his mind right. He was one of fifteen Republican senators to vote against the Ukraine Aid package that went through Congress back in April. Look for the MAGAts to honk their diversity horn by pointing out that Little Marco will be the first Latino to hold the office of America's top diplomat, even as Latinos are herded into mass deportation stations. 

How about putting Kristi Noem in charge of Homeland Security? This is a comeback for the Governor of South Dakota who has years of experience dealing with border security what with all those North Dakotans sneaking down to catch a glimpse of Mount Rushmore. And we can be pretty sure that no recalcitrant puppies will be allowed into our country without the proper papers. 

An exception to the back-talking exclusion rule seems to be the "President" elect's Vice President, who will be remembered for his affinity for upholstery as well as his referring to his new boss as "reprehensible," an "idiot," and compared him to Hitler. Adolf Hitler. The fascist ruler of Germany during the thirties and forties. This position was famously left open by the former Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence whom the red-capped legions were (checks notes) ready to hang four years ago.

And the hits keep coming. I am not suggesting that ye should abandon all hope who enter here, but at least put your hope in a safe place until the fire and brimstone settles down a bit. 

*contents may have shifted during shipping but should be suitable for everyday use