Project 2025

 By now I hope that you've had the opportunity to do something that most members of Congress apparently don't: Take a few moments to look over a document. I am referring to the very concrete agenda put forth by the convicted felon's cronies, the one they so cleverly titled Project 2025. This binder full of hate and fear shows us all a path the former game show host plans to take after he slithers into office. 

I know. Mnny of us figured this was just a lot of ballyhoo created by the evil offspring of Leslie Knope, Binders full of angry screeds against "the way things are" and hyperbole and excess that hope to return things to "the way they used to be." This was the group that the twice-impeached one insisted he had no knowledge of while he spouted stories about choosing between electrocution by electric boats and shark attack. In between platitudes for his "dear friend Hannibal Lecter," he would often fend off questions about Project 2025 as if it were some long ago issue of Vanity Fair that painted him and his son-in-law as racist slum lords. 

At that time, the racist slum lord was angling to become the first convicted felon to run for the highest office in the land. And win. Those of us living in the quiet bubbles known as the coasts never imagined the appeal of "the Weave." While the Republican candidate stood up on stage prattling on about how he still hadn't lost the 2020 election, his dark minions were preparing the plan for 2025. 

Even now, as the seemingly immortal idiot rambles on about the annexation of Panama, Greenland and Canada, the work is beginning to make good on those promises put forth by the playbook called Project 2025. Checks and balances that have kept federal agencies from being used as simply an arm of the executive branch will be dissolved. While it would be easy enough to assume that the current brain trust involved in bringing this plan to fruition will more than likely fall apart even as they make their way to the goal line, we would all do well to pay attention right now. 

It starts tomorrow. 

One Hundred Reasons Why

 I suppose I consider it a kindness from one of the very few gentlemen to ever hold the office of President of the United States that he chose to put his passing on at the tail of a year that saw so much unkindness. James Earl Carter Jr. lived to be one hundred years old, and managed to do more as an ex-president than most manage in two terms holding the office. To say that his passing was inevitable cheapens the moment. A few months back, when we were all excited about him living long enough to help elect the first woman Commander In Chief, there was an element of certainty. That moment came and went, and now we are stuck with the gaudy comparisons of how one man chose to live his life and lead our nation while another comes slithering in to take his place. Something should be said about being able to pass a certain litmus of moral integrity to be the leader of the free world. 

My mother sent me a book authored by President Carter, Jimmy to his friends. He wrote quite a few. The one I read was Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis. I can say that I am not generally one that takes well to being preached at, but Jimmy had me by the lapels and I read every word. Because he didn't just talk the talk. He walked the walk. He was a fundamentalist who didn't waste your time by judging. He did his work through example. He wasn't exclusionary. He wanted to put everyone on the same side. 

Nowhere was this more in evidence than in his work with Habitat for Humanity, an organization for which Jimmy didn't just cheerlead and fundraise, he pounded nails and lifted bricks. He was doing this well into his nineties. I defy you to imagine this kind of activity being undertaken by the bloated sack of protoplasm about to take the oath of office for a second term. Jimmy Carter was a man who felt he was put on this earth to serve his god and country. In that order. 

He was handed a mess of a nation back in 1976. It was his job to put the country back on track after eight years of Republican bumbling that led to a massive recession, for which his predecessor Gerald Ford was only able to muster a campaign that included a clever button to remind us all to "WIN - Whip Inflation Now." It was Carter's job to remind us all that it wasn't up to the government to dig us out of our lethargy. That responsibility rested solely upon our disillusioned shoulders. If you haven't had a chance since maybe you weren't alive back then or maybe you couldn't be bothered to listen to a political speech back in 1979, I offer this one, referred to somewhat blithely by historians as his "Malaise Speech." 

It was this moment that many point to as that which allowed Ronald Reagan to steamroll his way into power in 1980, leaving the ideals and morals of a generation unchallenged for another decade while we sat back and waited for Dallas to come on and Gordon Gekko to remind us that "greed, for lack of a better word, is good."  

That was one heck of a right turn, way back then. But it didn't keep Jimmy Carter from doing the work he was put on this planet to do. He packed up his Nobel Peace Prize and went back to work. When he wasn't building homes, he was helping to eradicate Guinea Worm Disease, only the second disease after Smallpox to be eliminated from the planet. And he was the guy who finally gave Panama back their Canal. 

And now this Bozo wants to take it back. 

That's down here on earth, where the footprints of where Jimmy Carter stomped on the Terra will be visible for generations to come. He's probably up in heaven now, checking in on affordable housing for the cherubim. Godspeed, Jimmy Carter. 

Lost Boys

 There was a time when Christmas centered on the happiness of children. Not just the one who was then living under our roof, but the crew of kids with whom he grew up. This was a herd of boys that all attended the same preschool at roughly the same time. Ours was the only child among the group, so he was gifted with a room full of brothers. We joined forces with the parents of this band of boys and began a series of playdates that escalated into family gatherings that culminated in a yearly trip to what snow could be found in the mountains above Tahoe. 

It's been quite some time since we made that annual trek. Boys have a way of growing up. Priorities shift and nests have a way of emptying. What was once a close circle of friends became a group of names on a Christmas card list. These boys are young men now with lives of their own. They no longer need the orchestrated push from moms and dads to connect. Our son stays in touch with those with those he was closest through social media. It's hard to imagine what ubiquitous cell phone use might have looked like when we were trying to hold all those little minds' attention back in the day. There was a time when screen time was a thing that all those parents believed they could control. 

The good news is that these were all good boys. Herding them from one activity to another was made easier by the skills we all learned together at their co-op preschool. We were all teachers back then, and we were gifted with a number of prized students. Sure, there were tears and hurt feelings, but the underlying message of all of this was that they were all friends. We never mentioned that this was coincidental and convenient for the grownups. It was simply how we moved through those pre-teen years. 

Eventually, of course, all these boys grew up and out of the structures created by their parents. The found their own friends and with the advent of drivers licenses, they all became able to pick and choose their own tribes. Some of them hung around longer than others. Whenever we run into members of that group in the grocery store or coming out of a movie theater, we chat briefly about the times we used to have. 

Then we're off to discover our own path, grateful that we had that starting place. We were gifted with a group of peers for launching that new generation. The one we lovingly referred to as The Spicy Tacos. 

What Matters

 Creeping around the edges of social media as I do, I have become aware of two very distinct and competing trends. The first is a lot of folks weighing in about whether or not audiobooks "count as reading." The second is a longstanding feud about what makes a movie a "Christmas movie."

I know that many of you who eschew these forums of public opinion are probably anxious to let me know what you think, but first you want to be careful not to stomp all over the sensibilities of the person who brought you to the brink of having to generate a feeling one way or another. 

I have good news: You don't have to worry about that. 

Instead, take delight in what I have constructed here as a template. First of all, pick a side. You need not worry about who is right or wrong, but your argument should not be devoid of details. For example, if you insist that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie simply because it takes place during the Yuletide season, let me remind you of the paradox you have created here. "Only the true messiah denies his divinity." Just as an atheists paint themselves into a corner by discussing the very thing they insist does not exist, claiming that John McClane's adventures in Nakatomi Plaza just sets the mind to racing. Why else would NYPD officer McClane be in Los Angeles visiting his ex-wife and kids unless it were Christmas? Aren't the events that unfold over the next two hours all part of a Christmas miracle that bring Holly and John back together again? And let's not forget how "Santa Claus" brings John a machine gun right at the moment that he really needs one. And how about the convenience of that holiday wrapping table that supplies the mistletoe tape that allows him to conceal his pistol with his last two remaining bullets in the climactic scene? 

Spoiler alert. And apologies to those who may still be trying to come up with their own feelings about this weighty matter. It's not that important. 

Much in the same way this printer's son was always happy to receive the gift of a few books each Christmas morning, eager to sit under the tree and pore over the pages of some new compendium of horror movie posters or encyclopedia of film. The visceral memory of turning those fresh new pages is one that still rings true to my sense of smell and touch. But that was part of another century. Long before I sat in front of a streaming version of a yule log and listened to my favorite carols pouring out of a digital music delivery system. I understand the time savings permitted by acquiring your words through your ears rather than your eyes. I understand that my insistence on reading one book at a time to its last page before moving on to a new one makes me a freak compared to my wife whose bedside is full and overflowing with books she continues to wend her way through. Add to that mountain of knowledge the potential of immersing oneself in a river of someone else reading to you and you've got bedtime wrapped up for all eternity. 

So I give you the gift of complacency. And let's save our strongest opinions for those things that truly matter. Like is the hot dog really a sandwich? 

Doing Their Job

 I suppose you all remember how worried we were about Joe Biden's cognitive decline. Members of his own inner circle met with him and eventually changed the course of history by talking him out of running for a second term. Democrats including the author of this blog were relieved when we suddenly had this young, fresh face to carry our party into the next generation. 

I suppose you remember how that turned out.

The free-flowing rhetoric coming from the slit just below the convicted-felon-elect's nose this past week stands as a stark reminder that Republicans, for the most part, rather than fretting about the obvious cognitive decline on their candidate's part chose to explain it away. "What he meant was," became a refrain unworthy of the most amateur spin-doctors. Meaning was secondary to the muck that could be raked up in a single appearance, let alone a constant traveling freak show that featured the biggest freak of them all. 

This past week the person named to move back into the White House announced that “it will be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.” The pre-impeached "president" elect also said that he would also sign executive orders to “get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools.”

No one bothered to make excuses for this seventy-eight year old man who has an imaginary friend named Hannibal Lecter. They did feel the need to clarify the incoming idjit's stance on Panama and Greenland. It seems the feeble mind that does not understand how wind power works has his eyes set on taking the Panama Canal back, as well as annexing Greenland. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity." As for the canal, the orange one seethed, “The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama by the U.S. This complete ‘rip-off’ of our Country will immediately stop.”

How do the minions of Goober explain this away?  Corey Lewandowski: “This is a president who is making out-of-the-box announcements to put the world on notice that once again the United States is the dominant world superpower, and we have a president who understands what that means, and is not going to kowtow to our foreign friends, or our foreign adversaries.” 

Nobody is rushing down to south Florida to try and talk the imbecile elect out of embarrassing the nation with his lunatic ramblings. They are all donning tin-foil hats in solidarity. 

That, it would seem, is their job. 

Let It Go

 She had moved away some time ago, leaving her son to reckon with his childhood home. She moved north to the part of California that was still nominally frontier, where the land was cheap and the opportunities for putting down a new set of roots was made appealing by real estate developers. 

She was back, visiting her son and her grandchildren who remained across the street from me. I stopped my run just in time to engage in a conversation that caught us up initially. The she asked the question: "What do you think of our new president?"

I didn't make the retching sounds that I might have with associates close to me. Instead I opted for, "I didn't like him the first time."

This seemed to put her on guard. "What do you mean?" Now I could tell that I had stepped in it. That puddle of MAGAnesium that exists in places that I do not frequent. Yet here it was, right across the street from my house, where my wife and our bleeding hearts continue to suffer with the realization that we are lurching backward into the tar pits of fear and loathing. 

I persisted: "I mean that he's a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist who preys on the weaknesses of others and demands allegiance." Perhaps I wasn't holding back as much as I had imagined. So I opened the door for her. "What do you think?"

"Well, I like him," she replied. 

"What about him do you like?" 

"He's better than those others, that's for sure."

I was having a hard time making that leap with her. "How so?"

"Well," she began then trailed off, " You know."

Trying to maintain a respectful stance, I replied, "No. I don't think I do. What should I know?"

At this point, her tone shifted to more of a conspiratorial hush. "I'm not going to go into it."

I gave her a little nudge: "No. Please. I'm interested." I really was. This was a woman who had lived across the street from us for a decade, raised a son who had parties in their back yard and continued to be a mover and shaker in the local hip-hop scene. How could their paths have diverged so greatly?

"I'm just not going to go into it."

That was that. Conversation over. We wrapped up with holiday pleasantries and she was off, grandchildren trailing behind her, unaware that grandma supported someone who did not support mixed race unions like their parents. They crossed the street and in my mind I wanted to pursue the discussion to show her just how full of contradictions her life was, but it was so much easier to just let it go. 

I let it go. 

Sage Advice

 War is over

if you want it.

That's a pretty deep sentiment

coming as it did

from a Liverpool kid.

When he sang about

Happy Christmas

we remember he was the one

who said they were bigger

than God's only son. 

It makes perfect sense

if enough people believe. 

The struggle continues to be

who really wants that

and who still has money

on the table.

It's a decision we make

to do the right thing. 

To open a new door

the one that has stayed 

closed for so long. 

There is peace

just waiting

on the other side. 

The Opera I Was Too Lazy To Write

 Just to the left of me is a pile of cassette tapes. Audio tapes, almost all of the ninety-minute variety. They tell the story, or part of the story, of a relationship which I entered into some forty-five years ago. These were the mix tapes I made to chronicle the love affair I embarked up on in my senior year of high school. 

Spoiler alert: I ended up marrying someone else.

Spoiler alert part deux: I am still good friends with my high school sweetheart in spite of the overarching incredulity of those tearful sentiments like "we'll always be good friends." 

Always has yet to arrive, but the decades during which we have traversed the ups and downs of our now separate lives stand as a testament to the healing and staying power of music. At least from the standpoint of documentation. These tapes provided a soundtrack of sorts to the fluctuating rhythms of our time. Initially there was a pressing need to gather all the disparate music and comedy cues from our courtship and related endeavors. Not content to merely have "our song," I felt compelled to try and squeeze all those memories into an hour and a half. 

Then I made another. 

And another. 

I kept making them through the eighties and the nineties right up until the moment that I ended up getting married to someone else. 

Along the way there were echoes of past and sentimental refrains of possible futures. The stack of cassettes has shifted over time as I have worked to digitize all the noises that have been dormant since the advent of compact discs, and streaming services. The ability to simply type Flying Lizards in a search box allows me to return abruptly to that land of yesteryear. Zipping back and forth pushing the rewind and fast forward buttons on a tape player to zero in on that one song isn't actually the point. These were little operas I put together in hopes of making an impression. 

In this way, the tapes presaged the coming of this blog. A seemingly endless stream of consciousness, with plenty of stops to reflect, remind and return to those things that I hold most dear. The woman I ended up being married to thought enough of these musings to bind them together in collections. Someday they may end up being copied to whatever media seems appropriate to the era in which they are commended to the anecdotal history of my travels through space and time. 

And I suppose it's a good thing that there will be plenty of music to go along with it. 

Who's In Charge Here?

 At the end of the day, the working week, payday, anything associated with earning anything comparable to a living, why would Elongated Mush care if you and yours went without for a few weeks? 

“We have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”

An interesting perspective from the man in charge of the 2024 version of Space Force, the Department of Government Efficiency. This new advisory commission lives somewhere outside the bounds of irony, headed up by two billionaires with no prior government experience, unless that includes receiving healthy government subsidies for their capitalistic endeavors. Mister Mush's partner in crime, since it's only a matter of time before either one of them is charged with some sort of anti-trust boondoggle, Vivek Ramasway spent millions of his "own money" to buy himself a tiny percentage of the Republican primary vote. Mush's vaunted private Space X continues to crash and burn, not unlike his vaunted Cybertrucks, since something about being vaunted makes them more flammable. 

And these are the two nimrods the convicted felon wants to show us the way toward government efficiency. 

Why not just turn it off for a few weeks? Then when we turn it back on again we'll see if it's fixed.

Holding the government hostage is nothing new. Midnight meetings just before all those folks on Capitol Hill go off on holiday have become something of a tradition. The fate of things like social security checks, furloughs, federal employees might go to work without pay while others stay home. 

Elongated Mush makes more than fifty million dollars every day. 

Every day. 

Whether the government is shut down or not. 

This is the guy who would like you to experience a little temporary hardship.

Once again, as the Fun Bus drove directly toward the cliff, the powers that be grabbed the wheel and made a last-minute correction. Avoiding that little temporary hardship. 

For now. But how much longer will Elongated Mush be allowed to throw others under the bus? 

This is the guy who along with his pony pal Vivek would like to shutter the government for a few weeks to teach us all "a lesson." And here's the lesson that you might want to take away: Neither one of these clever boys had to actually win any sort of election to be able to push the levers and pull the strings of government. They just had to pay for some pretend billionaire to get the keys back to the Oval Office so that they could continue to swim in their own specially heated pool of filth. 

Fuzzy On The Edges

 I can remember when my affiliation with the medical profession existed on two fronts: The first of which was my friendship with a guy in my freshman dorm who was pre-med. The second was the times I visited the emergency room. Once I had moved out "on my own," the need to see a physician on any sort of regular basis pretty much disappeared. The idea that I might want to monitor my ongoing physical health was something old people did. 

Well, now it seems that I am an old people. 

While I am still friends with that guy in my freshman dorm, who went on to have a distinguished career as a pediatrician, I have developed a deep but not completely fulfilling relationship with my primary care physician and the specialists to whom I am periodically referred. The first whiff of this newfound connection came about as I experienced the first of what would turn out to be several bouts with kidney stones. Spoiler alert: The kidney stones won. Eventually I tired of listening to my doctor tell me that all that Coca-Cola I drank was going to make it increasingly difficult to dodge the specter of those flaming hot specks of intolerable pain wending their way through my abdomen. The punch line was "you're not as young as you used to be." 

If you've been reading this blog for any period of time, you have doubtlessly stumbled upon my attitudes toward aging and the creeping deterioration of the vessel in which I live. My knees have become those of an older man, and though I continue to push them to what feels like their limit on any given day, I continue to call myself "a runner," and though I have taken a few unfortunate tumbles down the stairs of caught a toe on a sketchy city sidewalk, I persist. 

The most recent encounter with the looming presence of the clock ticking down on my original parts came this past week when I started seeing bright flashes of light in the corner of my eye. I must be tired. The following day I became aware of a blob resembling a paramecium gliding in and out of my vision in my left eye. I squinted and fussed, applying eye drops in the hopes of dislodging what I figured must be a stray cat hair. Stupid cat. 

A call to the advice nurse, who experience tells me is not just one person sitting in a cubicle 24/7 awaiting my complaints and concerns. Instead, there is a revolving group of trained medical professionals there to dissuade me and old people like me from falling in love with whatever Al Gore's Internet believes might be the problem. For instance, my cursory Googling suggested that I had finally succumbed to the cataracts that had plagued my mother, god rest her soul. Upon further discussion with the aforementioned medical professional, it was determined that I had a "floater," and that generally speaking I was in no great danger. The primary cause for such a malady was aging. 

So there it was. I was encouraged as ever to have an actual physician take an actual look at my eye. Which I did. The following day. After having my pupils dilated to the point of nearly turning inside out, a real doctor came and looked deeply into mine eyes, to check for holes or retinal detachment. None was found, but the vitreous gel inside my eye had begun to separate from the back of my retina, leaving the fuzzy glob through which I was now peering. 

What was to be done?

Deal with it. You're getting older. These things happen. 

I suppose the alternative is not getting older, which would mean my path through this mortal coil had come to an end. At which point convention suggests I will still need a doctor to make that pronouncement. 

Tone Defamation

 Sorry, but didn't we already cover this? 

Defamation: noun the action of damaging the good reputation of someone; slander or libel.

Damaging the good reputation of someone like, say, the leader of the MAGAts. A man who is a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist. A man who has been found guilty of libel himself for defaming the victim of that sexual assault. That made him liable for a five million dollar payment. 

Which is probably why he felt it necessary to go after ABC News for fifteen million dollars, plus an additional one million dollars in legal fees in connection with the "defamation" suit he filed because he didn't like the implication that he was a rapist. The price tag for not making a distinction between being found guilty for sexual battery and defamation? Sixteen million dollars. 

The price tag for the conviction on sexual battery and defamation? Five million dollars. 

"I may be a lot of things, but I'm no rapist."

ABC News will pay the million dollar court fees, and make a donation to to a presidential foundation and museum for the absurd legacy of the leader of the Second Trumpreich. 

At this moment, feel free to discuss among yourselves how you would spend fifteen million dollars for a library dedicated to a man who does not read.

I want to make sure you caught that distinction. I did not state that the former game show host and convicted felon cannot read. I said he does not read. That could be by choice, to avoid pernicious thoughts or ideas getting into his head. 

Like the idea that fifteen  million dollars might go a short way into making the lives of those he has harmed over the past several decades. Instead of constructing a warehouse where old copies of The Art of the Deal and Lee Greenwood bibles can be stored. 

That was sarcasm. Not defamation.  

No Way

 The fifteen year old shooter...

The second teacher who made the 911 call...

The school full of stories...

The ones who won't be returning...

The ones left in mourning...

The community in shock...

It's a tired old story. We don't even bother any longer to make bold postures like "this will be the last." As a country we have come to expect school shootings as a fact of life. A fact of the end of life for those who did not survive the other three hundred twenty-two times it happened in the United States this year. 2024 ranks as the second highest for the total number of school shootings in a year. That is since 1966, when records on this manner of execution started being kept. As a matter of scale, in that year there were nine school shootings. In 2023 there were three hundred forty-nine. 

Contributing factors such as increased population and demographic changes figure in, but even though crime rates continue to decrease, gun ownership continues to rise. That would be a comforting thought if all those guns were actually protecting people, but it seems that some of them are still being used to kill people. 

In schools. This past Monday a fifteen year old shooter killed a teacher and another student before turning the gun on herself at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. A second teacher made the 911 call that summoned police. "This has obviously rocked our school community," said Barbara Wiers, the director of elementary and school relations for Abundant Life Christian School. "But we know it affects not just our school community, but Madison and the greater area and all schools."

And so on. 

The satirical news outlet The Onion regularly posts the same story each time there is a school shooting. It starts with the headline: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens. 

No way. 

Newsletter

 Dear Friends and Family,

2024 has been a heck of a year. I don't know if you heard, but dad got his old job back! This is great news because it means he won't be hanging around the club, bragging about that nine foot putt he almost made. Oh, and also he won't be going to jail!

Sorry, buried the lede there. 

I've been staying busy with my podcast and attending all those amazing events my dad puts on. I've met all kinds of celebrities and junk like Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan. I know what you're thinking, but the Hulkster is really a complex guy. Did you know he pre-shreds all his own shirts? Also, as it turns out the campaign trail just may be the trail to true love for this guy. I met Bettina in Palm Beach, just a chip shot from Mar A Lago, and I can't tell you how relieved dad was to hear that even though Kim and I will always have a special bond, getting her a job in Greece will make this transition so much easier!

With my former fiancée off to Greece and the need to dispute vote tallies from this past election, I suppose you're wondering what yours truly will be up to over the coming year. Well, first of all there's a whole lot of endangered species that still need to be stuffed and mounted for display on the walls of the club, and while I'm happy to have some "bro time" with my "bro," it gives me a chance to take out my petty frustrations on innocent animals. Until we have to turn back the latest immigrant caravan, I'll just have to settle for the occasional white leopard or Mongolian sheep. 

And I know you're all waiting to hear about my ever-changing responsibilities in the family business, and I wish I could tell you more right now, but dad says that keeping an eye on his personal line of fragrances will be pretty much a full-time job. I suppose it will be a step up from bankrupting casinos and maintaining that perfect three-day's growth of facial hair that makes me look so darn cool and not at all like a vagrant. 

Vagrants are poor. 

I'm not. 

So that's about it from the top of the Tower. I hope you and your loved ones enjoy the Christmas season, unless you don't celebrate as God intended. In which case I hope you rot in hell. 

- Don Jr. 

Strained Verbosity

 Some of you may soon be receiving holiday cards. Some of them may be Christmas cards. Others could be less pointed, gesturing in the direction of the whole back end of the calendar year. If you are reading this, there is a distinct possibility that one of those pieces of mail in your box at the end of December will be from me. And my wife. 

You may notice a distinct lack of specific sentiment written by yours truly at or near the lower right hand on the inside as you open our card. Just my name or a few words then my name but nothing in the realm of specific greetings for a holly jolly Christmas or Happy Holidays or a Cavalcade of a Kwanza. To that end, I am specifically apologetic, but here's something you may not have considered: 

It's December. I'm nearly out of words. The ones you are currently reading have actually been set aside months in advance in hopes of being able to make it all the way to the thirty-first. Happily, of course, there is a certain amount of recycling that goes on in my head as the nights get longer and the days get shorter. See there? I just cobbled together a sentiment about the winter solstice that echoes many of those that have come from years past. Plus, many of the diatribes I may spout about the incoming Trumpreich carry with them the stink of those left over from 2016. Only now they're four years older and perhaps none the wiser. 

Just stinky. 

Plus there's that element of drawing the actual card. Starting back in the days before Thanksgiving, I was busy scrawling on my sketchpad, trying to come up with something pithy to share for the nearly fifty years of coming up with something pithy to share. You know that whole bit about a picture being a thousand words, so let's just say I'm already several thousand words into the holiday season and having thought about it that much has made my brain hurt. 

Not a lot, thank you for your concern, but enough that staring at a pile of envelopes with the thought of having to be clever one more time makes me so very tired. Trying to find a way to sugarcoat 2024 is next to impossible anyway, so you'll have to take my collective words here for it.

I hope you're merry. I hope there's some jolly in it for you too. I suppose that I hope that the joy that can be found during this time isn't wasted by wiseapples like me. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to figure out how to rhyme something with "convicted felon."

Rotten melon? 

Bigger Than The Game

 You may not have heard about De'Vondre Campbell. He's a professional football player, but not in that upper echelon of professional football players that you see on television selling insurance or underwear. De'Vondre is a linebacker who played for the San Francisco Forty-Niners. "Played" because he will no longer be playing for that franchise. It is not clear if he will be playing for any professional football team in the near future. This kind of thing happens around this time of year, when injuries take their toll and careers begin to fizzle out. 

That's not why Mister Campbell's football future is in doubt. In the midst of a somewhat forgettable battle of field goals against the Los Angeles Rams this past Thursday, the linebacker who had started the game in front of De'Vondre injured his knee. When the coaches tapped Campbell to go in as a substitute, he declined. He chose not to play. 

The reason for this choice was initially a little confounding. Why suit up and head out in the wind and rain of December in the Bay Area just to turn down your chance to get a little playing time? As more of the story became clear, it seems that De'Vondre was unhappy with the way he was being treated by the organization, coaches and ownership. This was his moment to stick it to the man. Which got me thinking about another San Francisco Forty-Niner, a quarterback who led his team to the Super Bowl a few years back. 

You probably remember Colin Kaepernick. He was a star in the manner of Mahomes and Manning. Until he decided he wanted to take a knee during the National Anthem. Not during the game, mind you, just during the pre-game "festivities." This was in 2016. Kaepernick was using his non-presence as a statement against a country that he felt "oppresses Black people and people of color." Even worse, other NFL players began to follow suit, and eventually there were dozens of others joined in the protest. 

Cutting to the chase, Colin Kaepernick's career with the San Francisco Forty-Niners was over soon after that. Donald Trump was elected "president," and in spite of being in his prime a Super Bowl quarterback Kaepernick was not picked up by any other team. 

This memory sent me way back in the data files to a movie from 1987 called Amazing Grace And Chuck. It tells the story of a Little League pitcher who decides that he won't play baseball until there are no more nuclear weapons. A professional basketball player hears about this and follows suit. Eventually there is a house full of pro athletes taking this pledge, causing a national crisis. The president is played by Gregory Peck in this film, so there's a little more liberal tinge to the goings-on, and I won't tell you how it ends. But I can say that it makes for a good parable. 

I hope that De'Vondre Campbell gets to play football again. 

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.