Tis The Season

 I have the Denver Broncos National Football franchise to thank for giving me the better part of six months of distraction from "the outside world." During this period I watched only bits and pieces of the games that they played, eighteen of them during this past season, due to my inability to stare directly into the glare of the actual competition. This did not keep me from feeling the tension and anxiety associated with spectator sports that many individuals experience by actually watching their favorite team play. Amongst the seemingly endless quirks about my character is this odd fascination/avoidance combination. It makes for some strange behaviors on any given weekend from August through January. 

This past weekend, I enlisted the help of my very patient wife to stare at the goings-on in Mile High Stadium. She understands the significance of the decade that has passed since "our team" has been to the Super Bowl. As I sat in the office, looking for ways to distract myself, she watched the entire second half of the Broncos/Bills game, encouraging me every so often to "come and look at this." Every so often I would stray out of my self-imposed cocoon and watch a play or two. Just enough to feel that creeping pain in my neck from the tension created by caring about a group of men playing football in a city in a state where I used to live more than half my life ago. 

Why should I care? I have been disappointed far more often than I have been brought joy from this association. It is a condition that I was actively attempting to address even as the Denver Broncos continued to find a way to make me care. 

It's just a game. 

The joy I felt when "our team" prevailed was cautiously out of scale for the outcome. There were still games to be played for the victors. Contrastingly, there were tears in the eyes of the quarterback for the Buffalo Bills as he addressed the media. The Bills' coach was fired two days later. For taking his team all the way to the doorstep of a championship. This is, after all, big business and losing is not the way to hang on to a job in the National Football League. And in the midst of the mildly ridiculous euphoria that was my home came the news that Denver's quarterback had suffered a broken ankle and would not be able to participate in any of the games left to be played this postseason. 

Once again I felt relief from having to care, but mired in the past with a heart that somehow continues to bleed orange and blue. This is a legitimate medical condition I can assure you and may be the root cause of all this madness. 

At least that's what I will continue to tell myself for at least one more week. 

Definitely

 I know. There is a convicted felon in the White House whose cognitive abilities have been measured by the ability to identify various sorts of wildlife. "Hey, I know that one! My son shot one of those!"

But maybe, just maybe, we're measuirng the wrong thing. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment is used to detect mild cognitive impairment. 

There is nothing mild about the cognitive impairment found between the ears of the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He seems to actually believe that because the winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize handed it to him, that it transfers to him. This is a guy who openly campaigned for the prize by threatening anyone who had the temerity to disagree with his whimsical notions about international and domestic affairs with military force.

Sure. He knows what a giraffe is, but peace? Please. 

Instead, maybe we should focus on testing for sociopathy. You know, "a pattern of behavior characterized by a disregard for societal norms, lack of empathy, manipulation, deceit, and impulsivity." Does that sound like anyone we know? A sample question: "I’ve always found it easy to convince people to do favors for me." Or how about, " Other people make so many stupid mistakes compared to me." 

I don't know about you, but I would happily take a person who struggles to identify the animals in the zoo as our nation's leader instead of one who would easily agree with the statement, " Some people just aren’t meant to succeed in life, and that’s not my problem."

Convicted felon. Demented? Maybe. Sociopath? Definitely. 

Boldly Going

 A lot has been made of the potential failings of the overwhelmed muscle situated between the "president's" ears. A great many headlines begin by mentioning that this specimen is seventy-nine years old. The wandering off to peer out the window during a meeting at the ruins of the White House with oil executives is a matter of fact. Or the addition of a gold script sign reminding the occupant that they are standing in what used to be "The Rose Garden," to go along with the sign that shows the occupant where the Oval Office is. The fact that there is a sign labeling The West Wing seems particularly ridiculous since there is no longer an East Wing on the White House. Are these literal signs that the convicted felon needs assistance as his mind continues to deteriorate? 

Or maybe he's just stupid. 

But let's not pick on the doddering old pedophile. Instead, let's pick up the thread of dumb at the social media account of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen "Goebbels" Miller. After taking the time to make very specific threats against anyone who stands in the way of the ethnic cleansing he is overseeing, As frightening as this continues to be, the noted Nosferatu cosplayer extended his own particular brand of hate to the Final Frontier. He took to what was formerly Twitter to announce his displeasure with the new Star Trek spinoff, Starfleet Academy. The issue for proto-nerd Stephen is the galactic "wokeness" of this new generation. Ignoring the historic facts of the interracial and gender acceptance found throughout the decades of the Trek-verse, Little Stephen chose to take issue with the three women on the bridge of the newest starship. "Beyond parody," he fumed, and then went on to insist, "But it’s not too late for @paramountplus to save the franchise. Step 1: Reconcile with @WilliamShatner and give him total creative control.”

Nobody mentioned, apparently, to Miller that William Shatner is ninety-four years old, and his last time he showed up on the bridge of any Enterprise was 1994. I would expect that every so often, Bill gets up and stares out the window, imagining there's a holodeck out there. At least he doesn't need a lot of gilded signs reminding him where sick bay is. 

Flock You

 The one finger salute. 

Give someone the bird.

Flip the bird. 

Flip someone off.

Flick someone off. 

Give someone the finger. 

Once, when shown this signal by detention-mate Claire Standish, young John Bender was shocked: "Obscene finger gestures from such a pristine young girl."

Which is essentially the approach I take when I see the bird taking flight on my walks across the elementary school playground. Most of them have no working knowledge of what gesticulation implies beyond the obvious naughty implication. They have seen someone else do it, and they have heard the gasps. They might be years away from uttering any of the variants of the meaning behind that middle finger, but they know it's dirty. Kids flip the bird at each other. They wait until the grownups' backs are turned and they give them the finger. One of the upsides to all this digit manipulation is that it gives a pretty accurate reading for basic motor skills. 

Which brings us to the "very stable genius" who is capable not only of identifying a giraffe, but also capable of maneuvering his fingers into the aforementioned salute. The convicted felon's supporters/handlers must be relieved to know that he is capable of such dexterity after months of concern over the bruises on those tiny little hands. He was able to signal his previously mouthed response at a Ford auto worker who had called him out as a "pedophile protector." 

The Ford employee was suspended directly after this exchange, and shortly after that two separate GoFundMe accounts was set up for him and his family. Donations added up to just over eight hundred thousand dollars. 

I don't know if we can afford to pay off every offended third grader on our playground like that. 

The Wonder Years

 While rambling on about my work history earlier this week, I neglected to give any quality time or words to the five years I spent helping to run a book warehouse in Oakland. This enterprise had begun in Berkeley, and as an employee-owned company birthed in the height of hippiedom, there were plenty of ways in which the business never quite managed to escape its granola roots. I say this with love and affection as this was the first job I had in California, having missed my opportunity to continue my career standing behind the counter of a video store blocks from the apartment where I landed. 

As mentioned in prior posts, my ascension in the ranks from the packing line to assistant warehouse manager was achieved in less than a year. I had arrived at a time when change was on the rise, and I caught that wave, eventually landing in the weekly managers' meeting and then a spot on the Board of Directors. This put me in the position of being part of the team that was going to select the company's first general manager since they had thrown off the yoke of oppression way back in the seventies. Five of us were entrusted with the task of bringing in someone who would steer the ship but always be able to hear the folks back in steerage who were complaining about the direction. 

Thus began a months-long creation of a job description for this duckbill platypus of a position. Eventually we ended up talking into the night about the expectations for our creation. It all came down, for me, about the difference between "power" versus "authority." In my very Jimmy Stewart view of the world back then, I felt that authority was something that was given, while power was often something that was taken. 

I think about those late nights often these days. I wonder how we ended up giving away so much authority to one person, never imagining that this might give that person the chance to grab more power. 

Eventually, we hired a guy we thought could do the job. His salary was, by the metrics set by the hippies who founded the place, enormous. To his credit, he hit the ground running, coming up with all manner of ways to make the book warehouse work. It was not long after that when I left the book business to become a teacher. It was not long after that the book warehouse died of "natural causes." Not enough money. Sometimes I wonder if I didn't hasten that end with my part in the devolution of the employee-owned model. 

And I wonder now about how we ended up picking this new General Manager for our country, even as it tips at the brink of collapse itself. Somewhere in all those high-minded ideals, do we all really secretly want to be oppressed? To have something or someone to blame for our misfortune? 

I do wonder. 

Wheels

 Up until very recently, a law in Los Angeles read:  “No person shall play ball or any game of sport with a ball or football or throw, cast, shoot or discharge any stone, pellet, bullet, arrow or any other missile, in, over, across, along or upon any street or sidewalk or in any public park, except on those portions of said part set apart for such purposes.” If you read that statute and thought, "Hey, this is a law that forbids me to play catch with my kid," then you were paying attention. Violators could be fined up to one thousand dollars and face up to six months in jail. This law was believed to have been enacted some eighty years ago, and fast-thinking City Council members voted to repeal it. 

Something about the wheels of justice turning slowly and all that. 

Right about this same time, Stephen "Nosferatu" Miller issued what he labeled a REMINDER to the goons under his purvey: “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity. Anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one—no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist— can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.”

It's kind of a shame that he didn't finish up by outlawing hopscotch or touch football. That way the ridiculousness of his pronouncement would have fallen directly in conflict with the hard work of the Los Angeles City Council. Little Steven and his Disciples of Cruel were announcing their position above the law. No city, state, or civilian interference with their stormtrooper tactics would be permitted moving forward. The newly minted notion of "weaponizing vehicles" is not something suited for a Mad Max sequel, they're talking about a Honda Odyssey trying to get past a bunch of masked nincompoops as they terrorize the neighborhood. 

Did I just mention "terror?" Well, yes I did. It was conjugated, but it was the term I used to describe what the Department of Fatherland Insecurity is doing across this land of ours in hopes of making it "great again." 

Great as in, "The stormtroopers are here. Oh, great," with a derisive roll of the eyes. 

The next step for the LA City Council should be to declare its sidewalks sanctuaries. For balls and human beings alike.  

Worst Of The Worst Part Deux

 Jonathan Ross, the ICE goon show shot and killed Renee Good last week, had a GoFundMe page set up on his behalf by supporters who felt that shooting an unarmed civilian three times in the head at close range was an act of heroism. Folks like hedge fund billionaire Bill "Yunz" Ackman and Megyn "You can't spell Megyn without a Y - oh wait yes you can" Kelly promoted the fund because they figure "Officer" Ross might need to buy some more ammunition. 

Ross is alive, by the way, and has yet to see any sort of disciplinary action. He is being kept away from motor vehicles. 

But he is alive. 

And in the middle of the tirade connected to the plea for money for this "victim of domestic terrorism" we find this little bit: "But this didn’t happen in a vacuum — it’s the dire result of anti-American traitors like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (who is Jewish) fanning the flames of resistance. Frey blasted ICE after the incident, telling them to ‘get the f— out of his city,’ signing executive orders banning federal agents from using city property for deportations and even warning that ICE agents could get ‘kilted’ if they keep removing invaders from his sanctuary cesspool."

Hold on. Why does it matter if the Mayor Minneapolis is Jewish?

Oh. Just because you walk like a Nazi, talk like a Nazi and quack like a Nazi doesn't you a Nazi, does it?

Which is probably why some of "officer" Ross' neighbors were surprised to find out that he was an ICE goon. He was telling neighbors that he was a botanist. He worked with plants. 

Right.

Fiercely proud of his service to The Party. 

Who knows how many ferns died under his watch?

Retirement Plans?

 I have been employed since 1974. That was back when I was mowing lawns to make enough money to buy a waterbed. Since then my work history has been many and varied, with an emphasis on staying employed to make sure that I always had gas money and a few extra bucks to buy albums. 

Albums. Records. Vinyl LPs. Like the kids play these days. 

I am not naïve enough to imagine that I would have been fighting for scraps out in the streets if I hadn't kept working all those years. I had a pretty amazing safety net in my parents' support. Room and board would be taken care of, but that official John Chambers Planet of the Apes gorilla mask did not fall into either of those categories. So I saved up my pennies, nickels and dimes and eventually dragged all of those wadded bills and clanky bits of change to the magic shop on the Pearl Street Mall and made a point of wearing that furry chunk of latex out of the store. 

As my teenage years dragged on, it became increasingly important for me to remain nominally employed in order to keep gas in my car and the latest audio configuration in the dashboard. When I was a senior in high school I had a girlfriend for the first time and became abruptly aware of just how expensive being in a relationship could be. 

The "gap year" I ended up taking after I bailed on college in Santa Fe brought my parents to the mild brink of an ultimatum: I was not to be allowed to sit around the house all day waiting for my girlfriend, who was still in high school, to be free. I was told to get a job. 

Full time. Working at Arby's. 

It was probably this experience that hastened my return to academia, and after taking a year way I was off to my freshman year with the good graces of my parents who felt that I should concentrate on being a student. For that year, I was not required to have a job. I lived a life of relative privilege along with my fellow dorm mates, spending freely on the things that make college life. Mostly beer. 

When I woke up from that drunken brawl of a liberal arts education, I returned to an apartment in my hometown where I picked up where I left off: at Arby's. Now I was a dual threat. I was a student by day and the closing manager by night. 

It would be another decade of installing steel office furniture and running a video store before I was ready to launch myself into adulthood, and another five years after that before I stopped doing "jobs" and started my career. When I stopped being paid by the hour and started getting a salary. 

Now, all these years later, I find myself wondering how I might possible retire. Stop working? What if I need a gorilla mask? 

Maybe Arby's is hiring. 

The Worst Of The Worst

 That phrase, "the worst of the worst," is the one that the current regime in Washington uses to legitamize their stormtrooper tactics. In spite of everything that has been witnessed by those of us with two eyes, two ears and a brain, the Department Of Homeland Terror continues to grab primarily innocent victims of the streets, many of them citizens of this country, and disappear them. 

Those who oppose these actions are subject to arrest, or being tear-gassed, or shot in the head. 

I understand that there are those who may have voted for this particular solution to be put in place. Frightened individuals who need the ostensible comfort of likewise tiny minds in which they can collectively fear those things that do not feel cater directly to them. These are the ones who truly beileive that there is a Great America out of the amusement park chain. These are the ones who bought all the stories about how "those people" were ruining it for them. It helps a lot to think of "them" as muderers and rapists. Gang members or the very worst kind. These are the ones who are taking the jobs and the health care and all the greatness that used to be found on every street corner. Those are the ones these tiny minds believe are being removed from our borders. 

Like the six year old Chinese boy who was separated from his father after an ICE "check-in."  Or how about the more than one hundred seventy U.S. citizens arrested and detained by the Trumpreich's Secret Police. Meanwhile the entirety of the insurrectionist mob who swarmed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 have been pardoned by (checks notes) a convicted felon. 

Who, just by the strangest coincidence, happens to be the worst of the worst. 

Go figure. 

Pleasant Valley Sunday

 The sun is out. Somewhere they're playing football. It's a January weekend in the United States of America.

People are out shopping. They're going to movies. Sitting on park benches. 

They're going to protests. They're doom-scrolling. They're wondering how they're going to find healthcare. 

They're watching videos in endless loops trying to determine exactly how a thirty-seven year old woman ended up shot through the head. 

They're doing research on probable cause and the twenty-fifth amendment. They're scraping together the money for groceries. 

They're trying to remember the way things used to be. 

They used to disagree with politicians. They used to argue with their neighbors about politics. They used to joke about how you could tell if a politician was lying because their lips were moving. 

They aren't laughing anymore. 

It's not "funny ha-ha" anymore. It's "funny because I lived through it."

We are going through the motions of living in America right now.

Because we don't know how much longer we will be allowed to do just that. 

Sleep tight, America. 

Reckoning

 Against the backdrop of this country slipping into ever more chaotic states, I continue to do the job for which I was hired: teaching elementary school. Into that pot there have been a few recent updates that have made it necessary to stir to keep the whole thing from turning into the hot mess just like the rest of the planet. 

To no one's surprise, the Oakland Unified School District is wringing its institutional hands over a lack of funds. It's a simple enough thing to point at the military budget that was already an ungainly one trillion dollars, but that number has been "requested" to be bumped up to a trillion and a half. Meanwhile, the privately schooled golf cheat has ordered the Department of Education to be dismantled. 

"It's a shame if our kids are dumb, but our bombs are smart" - Oingo Boingo

In the thirty years since that song was released, working in education has not become what I would call a more financially stable decision. I have participated in a number of protests, work actions and strikes to keep reminding the public at large that we continue to bring children into a world in which education is still deemed a necessity. 

Just not compared to building more of the aforementioned bombs. 

So the cry has gone out to the educational community that we need to demand better conditions in which to make this magic happen. Teach kids to read. Prepare them for a world that is changing by the minute. Give them a chance to manage their existence in a world that seems bent on making it more difficult. The current regime would like to pay people to have more children, but I have yet to see any suggestion of how to pay for the infrastructure necessary to make those new Americans' lives possible. 

I had hoped that I might sail through to my somewhat illusory retirement without having to live through another strike, but this is where we find ourselves in 2026. No one at the top is suggesting that we might need another trillion dollars to educate our kids. And don't go thinking that taxing the billionaires will solve the problem. They'll just take their tax-free lifestyles to another state where the test scores are lower and all that whining about "the kids" can't be heard. 

I'll think more about this later, but right now I have to make sure that the fifth graders whose teacher just died have a teacher and a classroom in which they can learn. 

Death Of An Unpopular Poet

After watching her appearance describing the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by her ICE goons, I wondered if Kristi "ICE Queen" Noem had children of her own.

She does. Two daughters and a son: Kassidy, Kennedy and Booker. 

I wondered how she might describe any event that resulted in the injury or death of one of her kids. I'm not guessing that she would immediately point the finger of blame at them and call it "domestic terrorism." 

That's how the ICE Queen referred to the death of Renee Nicole Good who was shot and killed by an unidentified ICE Goon just blocks from her house.  Ms. Good's mother described her: “Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”

Renee had a son whose father died two years ago. That six year old now has no mother or father. The ICE goon who shot Renee is somebody's son. His father insists  his son as a “tremendous” person of whom he is deeply proud. Which I suppose is what parents ought to say, even if that parent's son just shot someone through the head. 

I'm not exactly clear on how we define "domestic terrorism" these days, but it seems that this loss of life should be considered a civilian casualty in the Trumpreich's attempt to weed out what they have decided is the scourge of Somalian immigrants in Minneapolis. 

Ms. Good was not a Somali. She was a poet, an avid movie lover, and former resident of Colorado. I can relate to that bio. 

I cannot relate to the continued resolve by Kristi and her goons to use unnecessary force to do a job that no one asked them to do. 

No one in their right minds, that is. Just the guy who screamed "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs..." He's the one who ended up in the White House. He's got kids too. 

But he's definitely not a poet. 

Cognitive Test

 I have tried, without any real success, to imagine the mindset of those who feel that the current regime here in the United States is Making America Great Again. Somewhere out there is a group of MAGAts that still believe that this country is headed in the right direction. 

As a point of clarification, I do believe that this country is headed in The Right direction. As in ever-more-conservative to the point of confusion and pain. To hear the pundits tell it, this is a march toward the cliff that reeks of fascism and we are supposed to believe that all of this over-the-top ultra-conservative energy is being used to protect our Dear Leader from being discovered as a pedophile. 

I think we've driven on past the point of cover-up. I think we are confronting something that no simple cognitive test can discern. The bar has been lowered so far that the qualifications for being the "leader of the free world" are limited to being able to identify a giraffe. To which Donnie Jr. insists, "Last night I shot a giraffe in my pajamas. How you get giraffe blood out of pajamas I'll never know." 

This disconnect between the actual capacities and the dementia of the individual in question keeps us all off balance as the latest outrage is unfurled. This is the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue speaking openly about taking over sovereign nations by use of military force. The twice-impeached "president" insists that we, or rather he, "needs" Greenland. This is the same tiny brain that needs a gold toilet and a ballroom constructed on the ruins of the White House. We have stepped so far out of the realm of frustration brought on by Project 2025 that your average citizen is hard-pressed to express their outrage before the next announcement on social media. Like the "thirty to fifty million barrels of oil" that the convicted felon insists that the money from the sale will be controlled by him. If you are curious about the leadership void created by the kidnapping of Venezuela's president, you've missed the point. It was never about regime change. It was about the oil. It was about the money to be made. It was about bringing the oil companies along for the ride, in spite of the fact that they seem less than thrilled about this "opportunity." 

Meanwhile the notions of affordability for the average American consumer, along with the promise of no new wars have fallen by the wayside. As we careen ever closer to the full-on dictatorship on which the seventy-nine year old golf cheat has his eye. 

At least he knows what a giraffe looks like. 

Making The Donuts

 On the first morning back from Winter Break, I woke with a start just moments before my alarm went off. 

I was dreaming of seeing our fifth grade teacher making his way down to his room, inevitably one of the early arrivals. He would be there early to set his day in motion. Somewhere in that flurry, we would stop at the top of the stairs, or in the downstairs hallway and catch up.

We talked about the sporting news. We talked about the movies we had seen. We talked about the concerts that he had seen or were coming to town. 

It was a human connection that took the edge off the rest of the day's strum and drang. 

That moment in the dark of my return to business as usual, the thing my wife and I refer to as "making the donuts," I felt the snap back to the reality without Joe Lynch. 

I knew that there would still be plenty of folks I could banter with and perhaps even bore with my set of obsessions. I would adapt and overcome.

Eventually. 

That moment was all about being alone in the dark. Then I remembered to share this feeling with my wife, with whom I have ridden the grief train together on so many occasions. Something about being at home and safe over the holidays kept the full weight of this loss from crashing in on me. Now it was time to embrace the new reality. 

I could tell you all about how I feel about the Denver Broncos getting the top seed in the AFC playoffs. I could share my ambivalence toward Marty Supreme. I am currently on the lookout for the next Dad Rock show to roll into my area. 

You'll probably get to hear a lot more about those kind of things.

Now that Joe is gone. 

Black Hats

 In the wake of the events of this past weekend, I have been quietly reassessing my perception of good guys and bad guys. 

I remember how I felt when terrorists attacked New York and Washington D.C. My general rule of pacifism was sorely tested when thousands of innocent lives were taken on September 11, 2001. When Tom Petty played "Won't Back Down" to a nationwide audience during the Tribute to Heroes broadcast ten days after the assault, I had a feeling that could best be described as righteous vengeance. I wanted someone to pay for the ambush on our east coast. 

For a while, we were the victims. The United States was this beacon of hope and these horrible people had tried to snuff it out. 

So we went to war with a country that had little or nothing to do with the actual attacks on that day. Two of them, actually. And somewhere in the midst of all that setting things right, we stopped being the good guys. We became the imperialist invading force that set up Burger Kings to fee the troops in the middle of a desert and made sure our interests (oil) were looked after. We were going to make it safe for Americans going to work in enormous buildings devoted specifically to the task of accumulating as much of the world's wealth as possible. 

Oh yeah, and to catch the bad guys who did that horrible thing. 

Just under ten years after the terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers, United States Navy Seal Team Six made a daring midnight raid on the compound of Osama Bin Laden, killing him and disposing of his body at sea. 

And that announcement tweaked that same vengeance muscle that Tom Petty got nearly a decade before. 

Rah. Rah. 'Murrika. 

That feeling hung around for a week or so, until I started thinking about the revolutionaries who had this clever idea to fight the King of England for their freedom. The Declaration of Independence has a place in our National Archives because we won that war. Don't ask me why there are all those statues hanging around commemorating the leaders of the losing side of the Civil War, but I can say that the big sunken black wall listing all the names of those who died in America's ill-fated involvement in Vietnam got it just about right.

What sort of monument will there be for the soldiers who carried out the raid that captured Nicolás Maduro? Maybe a stool at the end of the bar after the eighteenth hole at Mar A Lago. Given the draft-dodger in chief's penchant for plaques, this sounds like a sure thing. They'll get on that right after they finish trying to ruin the reputation of a retired Naval Aviator, astronaut and senator. With only a slight detour to rewrite the history of 9/11 with the convicted felon insisting falsely that he "predicted Bin Laden." 

I'm pretty sure we're the good guys anymore. 

Meditation

 When I grew up, I played with guns. 

Toy guns. Plastic replicas of all the weapons I watched the good guys shoot on movie and TV screens. 

At this time, there were the faint rumblings of what would eventually become a torrent of screams about violence on television and on film. There was concern being raised that having the Vietnam War piped into our living rooms on a daily basis with accompanying body counts and the sounds of helicopters and machine gun fire could have an affect on the young minds of a country trying to find its way out of a seemingly endless conflict in Southeast Asia. 

Somewhere in there, the war ended, as did the compulsory military draft for young men in the United States. Not surpsingly, right about this same time Hasbro Toy Company shifted their focus on GI Joes being war heroes to being Action Team heroes. They were no longer taking up arms against foreign nations, suddenly they were rescuing one another from giant rubber snakes and floating down the Amazon in tiny inflatable rafts. Another very noticeable change: these dolls, pardon me, action figures were no longer clean shaven. They came with a full head of hair, beard and mustache and their hands were no longer forever molded into a cupped left for supporting a rifle barrel and a pointed right finger for resting on a trigger. These little fellas came with Kung Fu grip, all the better for hand to hand combat with the aforementioned giant rubber snake. 

I grew up in the middle of this new wave of thinking, and though I was already too old by just a couple of years I can remember the appearance of the Joey Stivic doll. This was the first anatomically correct male baby doll mass marketed to a new generation of girls and boys to help them grapple with their nurturing side. I never owned one, but I can remember having impassioned discussions around our dinner table about why the likeness of Archie Bunker's grandson, the son of All In The Family's Meathad Michael Stivic, was a toy that should be honored and delivered to a new generation of more sensitive kids. 

Ours was quite the liberal household. This did not keep me from building model planes and ships used in war, nor did it keep me from growing up and having a very similar discussion with my wife about the guns we might allow our son to play with as he began to discover what his preschool teacher referred to as "power extenders." I felt trapped in a world that didn't want to force my son to play with dolls or to forbid him to play with guns. Guns that shot water. Or foam rubber darts. I wanted to have that elusive quality called "an open mind." 

I also wanted him to have "life-like hair" and Kung Fu grip. His room was full of Legos and action figures of all manner of super heroes. And a very substantial armory of Nerf weapons. The mock battles he simulated with his friends were not against foreign invaders but of armies of the living dead. He and his buddies created what they believed was their Zombie Apocalypse Plan. Even as a war raged on in the Middle East, he was less concerned about regime change than he was with having his brains eaten. 

There are still toy guns out there. I flinch every time I see a student of mine point his finger at one of his classmates and makes a slobbery sound like an AK-47. I try and dissuade them from killing one another, even in play, but I know that it's hardwired. They live in a world with unimaginable firepower generated via videogames. Their virtual world is far better armed than ours was running around the woods with sticks for rifles. These are the future drone operators for the next big invasion. 

I'm not sure if Kung Fu grip will make it easier to handle the controls. 

Stolen Moments

My brothers and I used to lie to my mother about how much we practiced the piano. The three of us teamed up in this subterfuge as we attempted to pull one over on mom. Hindsight suggests that the only ones we were cheating were ourselves. "Oh yes. I practiced for more than fifteen minutes. And Dan did his fifteen minutes. And Doug? I'm pretty sure he did almost half an hour." It did not occur to us that my parents were paying for the lessons we were taking, and our lack of progress would do nothing but sandbag that investment. 

I grew up with a piano in our living room. It was my mother's and having grown up with her own practice regimen she was able to play all manner of complex classical pieces. Meanwhile, her three sons spent their time plinking away at finger exercises and scales. These were building blocks that would eventually deliver the kind of seemingly effortless flourishes my mother performed. This was a path that may have been understood at some level by us boys, but the wealth of things that we would rather do than sit on that piano bench and do our due diligence. Not the least of these was in fact the least of these: doing nothing. Then shortly before mom was expected home, we would gather to renew of agreements and clarify the details. We understood that the youngest would probably be the weak link, with a propensity for telling the truth. All it would take was one little slip, and our whole story would fall apart. 

Decades later I find myself wishing that I would have afforded myself more of a chance to learn more piano. My Mother's piano now sits in my front room. Nobody is watching over me. I could take any of the spare moments and sit down to refresh those muscle memories from all those E-Z piano selections I memorized way back when. I know the keys. I know the scales. I appreciate that the only thing that is keeping me from playing just as wonderfully as my mother did for all those years is the guy not sitting in front of the keyboard. 

That guy who used to lie to his mom about how much he practiced. I would like to have some of those days of nothing back. 

Links

 “If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

There's your policy statement issued from the Southern White House/Golf Resort by the guy who spent the past ten days out on the links. Apparently word came to him somewhere between rounds of cheating at golf that Iran might be shotting or violently killing protesters. Which does bear some unpacking since the so-called-"president" of the United States is issuing fatwas from his golf cart without bothering to conjugate verbs or consider the fact that pretty much all the killing of peaceful protesters falls under the "violent" category. 

Then there's the matter of peaceful protest in his own country. It was over this same holiday week that “We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact.” Not constricted by a character count on his own social media platform, the twice-impeached golf pro finished up his rant with, "We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time!" 

What he fails to mention here is that he was forced to do this by the same Supreme Court that had once seemed to be rubber-stamping the fascist takeover of our cities. Perhaps the empty-headed threats being tossed around by the guy trying to get us all to ignore his increasingly obvious appearance in the Trumpstein Files is now standard operating procedure in what's left of the White House. 

And, quite possibly, policy decisions that involve the safety of the rest of the world should not be made between rounds of golf. 

This Episode

 Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were scooped up by "U.S. Law Enforcement" early Saturday morning and whisked away to an undisclosed location. Attorney General Pam "My Word Is My" Bondi insists that the couple will “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”

As the preamble to every installment of the ancient sitcom used to say, "Confused? You will be after this episode of Soap."

Expcept this isn't a sitcom. This is the very frightening state of United States foreign policy in 2026. Up until now, the goons have been content to attempt to kidnap foreigners in our country they suspect may have broken a law and send them to some other country. Now this has evolved into going to some other country to find foreigners who they think have broken some law and bringing them back to our country. Couple this with the complete absence of due process and respect for the institutions put in place by our Consitution, and you've got a mass of bad decisions made by a gang that can't shoot straight. 

In case we have all forgotten what this same crew that oh-so-very recently pardoned the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, releasing him back into the world after spending two years of a forty-five year sentence for (no need to check notes here) drug trafficking. Mister Maduro and his wife were spritied away from their country to New York on charges of (need to look at these notes) "narco terrorism." 

Speaking of notes, I just checked: Honduras has no oil reserves. Venezuela is sitting on the world's largest proven oil reserves. 

Meanwhile, countries are lining up to condemn the actions of the least popular "president" in American history. Russia, for one. "The pretexts used to justify such actions are untenable. Ideological hostility has triumphed over businesslike pragmatism," said Russia's foreign ministry. 

Russia, in case you've forgotten is currently at war with Ukraine because of ideological hostility, negating businesslike pragmatism. Which pretty much finishes off any possible credibility the U.S. might have running around their own hemisphere stirring up trouble. 

And what about Congress? Well, Little Marco Rubio did call Florida Representative Carlos Gimenez to say, "We got him." Which I suppose amounts to this administration involving Congress in the acts of war it feels the urge to carry out in lieu of releasing the unredacted Trumpstein Files. The orange buffoon says he'll be running Venezuela for now. He bankrupted three of his own casinos. What could go wrong? 

For now the clock is ticking, but make sure to tune into the next episode which will be every bit as infuriating and confusing as the last. 

Call Me

 Just for my own peace of mind, I went to the National Do Not Call Registry. I wanted to be sure that I hadn't mistakenly believed that I had signed up both my home number and my cell phone so that I could have "a choice about whether to receive telemarketing calls." I was happy to see my suspicions confirmed: I had signed up our landline more than twenty years ago, and my mobile number a dozen years earlier. 

How could it be that after all this time I still regularly receive calls with a bright red warning on the caller ID: Scam Likely? 

Well, sadly this notion did not occur to me until I was this many years old, but I don't think this particular government agency is actively working to keep my number from being called by telemarketers and robocalls. One of the three main links on the Registry page is "Report Unwanted Calls." While I appreciate this outlet, I do wonder how I have suddenly become the investigative arm of the Federal Trade Commission. In my voluminous spare time it seems that the FTC would like me to inform them when people with access to a list that includes my name call me, even though they shouldn't have my name on that list because I am on the Do Not Call List.

This is probably just me being naïve, but it seems like the volume of calls that I get on a daily basis should be enough to step up the enforcement end of this annoyance. 

Of course, it probably doesn't help matters that I tend to accept these calls primarily out of the sideways notion that I might be performing some sort of public service. If I am taking the call from the medical alert scams that are offering "free" devices to those who "need" it only to discover that there is a monthly fee to keep the device working, then perhaps someone a lot more gullible than myself won't have to take the chance of being sold something they don't really need. Usually I try to string the poor schnook on the other end of the line long enough with painfully obvious questions and revelations to the point that they hang up on me. The five minutes they spend with me is five less minutes they have to prey on the folks out there who have not gone through all that trouble to get themselves on the Do Not Call Registry. 

Did I say naïve? 

Hopelessly. The fact that Scam Likely, of the Connecticut Likelys, has the capacity to "spoof" local numbers giving you the impression that the droid at the other end of the line must be calling from a cubicle within your area code leads me to believe that I have two choices: Answer every call and enjoy the danger of signing myself up for a free box of anti-viral meds, or stop using my phone at all. 

If you have any suggestions on this matter, you can reach me at 1-888-382-1222. 

Pieces Of A Peace Plan

 By the way it's been more than (checks watch) twenty-four hours since the Sterile Cuckoo took office, so his promise to end the war in Ukraine seems to have been yet another limp attempt at a promise that he has not been able to keep. A little like the oath he took to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. To release the Epstein files. To make America Great Again. To make America Affordable again. To flush after hours of sitting on the toilet posting to "Truth" Social. 

Promises made, promises forgotten. 

This past week was particularly galling as one of those late night sit-downs with his phone resulted in the announcement that the United States had carried out strikes against terrorists in NIgeria. On Christmas Eve. There were also military actions against that "narco-terrorist" threat Venezuala. If this seems a little confusing to you since you know that war cannot be declared without consulting Congress, that may be because under the leadership of Mike "I hadn't heard about that" Johnson, the House of Representatives only worked eighty-seven days last year. But don't worry about those folks. They received full salary and health benefits while they let the Affordable Care Act subsidies disappear. 

Fret not, because there is a plan. Or so the Cuckoo promised. Concepts of a plan.

Meanwhile, back in Mar-A-Lago, marching orders were given and obeyed by the "peace team" by none other than the guy who invaded Ukraine in the first place. Vlad "The Inhaler" Putin called his minion the convicted felon just before negotiations were to begin with President Zelenskyy to make sure the concepts of that plan were clear. Putin later recounted that call for Russia's state news: The Kremlin further said that Epstein's favorite customer “was shocked by this news, literally outraged.” That news was the "terrorist attack" Ukraine launched against one of Vlad's residences. “He said he couldn’t even imagine such crazy actions. And, as stated, this will undoubtedly impact American approaches to working with Zelenskyy, whom, as Trump himself said, thank God, the current administration hasn’t given ‘Tomahawks,’” continued the only voice to which our twice-impeached "president" responds.

Shockingly, this is the same guy who won the recently invented FIFA Peace Prize. 

I suppose there's a lot about soccer I still don't understand. 

2026

 Twenty twenty-six

It's another chance

An opportunity

If you will

To turn things

not just left

or to the right

To change course

To make room

for all of us

To make changes

for all of us

To correct

some of the wrongs

To shine a light

To start to break free

Two hundred fifty years

It feels like time

To let freedom ring

For everyone

A new year

A very old idea

Let's begin again