The Bit

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

I know I was. 

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

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

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

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

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

Smiles, everyone, smiles!

Born To Be Mild

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

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

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

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

And apparently, neither has my wife. 

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

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

Home Team

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

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

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

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

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

Like baseball stadiums. 

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

Go Ask Alice

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

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

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

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

Curiouser and curiouser. 

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

Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

Get Away

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only The Best People

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

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

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

This position requires some groveling.

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

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

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

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

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

Longview

 I am no stranger to losing. 

I had an older brother, after all. 

I say this not in any particularly spiteful way. As a matter of fact, hindsight suggests that the competition that I felt was natural between us turns out to be more of a delusion on my part than anything else. At the same time, this didn't mean that I wasn't often on the short end of the stick when it came to most of the trials that presented us. Again, if anything, my older brother showed some remarkable patience with me when it came to my need to try and assert myself beyond the bounds of our birth order. He had a three year and nine month head start and my best efforts to usurp that advantage were generally met with frustration. 

And then there was the kid down the street. The one who I latched onto as my best friend starting in kindergarten, but couldn't imagine leaving behind until I was in eighth grade. For him, the world was a staged version of Survivor before reality TV ever existed. Collecting prizes from cereal boxes, playing basketball on his driveway, board games of any stripe, and anything that might have appeared to include an element of chance became a way to impress his domination over me and most of the other kids in the neighborhood. I was his patsy. I worried that if I declined the chance to be humiliated in the contest of his choosing that I might lose my tenuous standing in the overall scheme of things on our street. 

What I never took into account at the time was the reason for this kid's compulsion to be in direct competition with his peers. Upon reflection, it seems that the distance between him and his older brothers were both more than eight years older than he was, leaving him little in the way of traditional sibling rivalry. On those rare occasions when his older brother would come out to the back yard to play football with us, he took special care to pound and humiliate his much smaller kin. I can remember one instance that ended up with the smaller one in tears, causing him to take a lap around the house and upon his return he suggested that we do anything else but play football. 

He wasn't there to be humiliated. 

However, it seemed that I was. And so for years I kept showing up thinking that I could somehow get the upper hand in some game or tournament. It never occurred to me that I was more than a match for him academically, and if his world was so great, why was he always hanging around my house looking for a handout of Snickers bars and Kool-Aid? Never, that is, until my world began to open up to kids with similar interests and backgrounds when I moved on to junior and senior high school. 

By this time, the challenges I had once felt between my older brother and I had dissipated into a much friendlier rivalry. A supportive version that brought me to where I am today. I don't mind losing so much anymore because I have discovered that on a long enough timeline, it all evens out. 

What a relief.