Rock My World

 Sheena is a punk rocker. 

Susie is a headbanger.

Maria was formerly a financial reporter for Fox News.

Not many Fox News correspondents can put on their resume, "I was the subject of a Ramones song." To be completely transparent, the song "Maria Bartiromo" appeared on a Joey Ramone solo album, so there's that. With lyrics like, "I watch you on TV every single day/Those eyes make everything OK" and, "I watch her every night/She´s really outta sight" it is apparent that Joey, at least, was a fan. As for herself, Maria was flattered. Joey went so far as to invite her down to CBGBs to hear the song in person, but alas their schedules conflicted, what with Joey being a night owl and at the time Maria had to get up early to be on her show, which at that time was on CNBC. 

Joey didn't live long enough to see his financial crush turn to the dark side when she joined Fox News in 2014. There she dug herself out quite a little following among the foil-hat crowd, who of course exchanged those for the red baseball caps in 2016. When it came to whom her allegiance truly belonged, it turns out that it wasn't Rupert Murdoch bur rather the convicted felon currently squatting in the ruins of what used to be the White House.

It seems that last July, when the former game show host took to the prime time airwaves to spin his web of lies regarding election interference by China in 2020, the powers that be at Fox News decided to distance themselves from such fabrications, having lost a rather large lawsuit to Dominion voting machines, and how they were supposedly used to undermine the MAGAt agenda. Seven hundred eighty-seven million dollars later, Fox News decided to start getting out of the election-denier business. 

But not Maria Bartiromo. Her bosses told her one thing, but her heart said another. She secretly sent texts from Fox News' higher ups laying out their plan to ditch the 2020 election as "news" to the Second Trumpreich. This turned out to be the contractual straw that broke the camel's back. She was let go, abruptly, but Fox. 

As a female journalist, Maria stood in contrast with her counterparts from other outlets. The adjudicated rapist referred to her as "fabulous" and "fantastic." Maria may not be a punk rocker, but she is currently unemployed. Don't be surprised if she ends up running the press circus for a former slumlord turned tiny-handed despot. 

Oh, how the headbangers are fallen. 

Gloria In Exelcis

 If there is a heaven, Gloria Steinem is walking there, perhaps catching up with Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan, talking about the old days when women were held down and were only allowed to make seventy-five to eighty cents for every dollar a man made.

Last year. 

Gloria Steinem took the notion of stomping on the Terra to heights previously unseen or heard of in the past century. Her life spanned ninety-two years of struggle and change, with the elusive notion of equal rights for women as her standard. She co-founded Ms. Magazine in 1972, causing one of the more amusing moments in my family's sexual politics. My mother announced that she was going to get a subscription to Ms., then added demurely, "Can I?"

While my mom fought bravely on our home front, surrounded by boys who made an effort to understand her struggle, Ms. Steinem took to the streets, the airwaves and any place that would give her a word in edgewise to promote the idea that all men and women were created equal, in spite of the somewhat truncated version floated out there by (checks notes) Thomas Jefferson. Two hundred fifty years ago. It took one hundred forty-four more years for the Nineteenth Amendment to be passed allowing women the right to vote, which was a big step, but there was still a long way to go. Baby. 

Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs. Women started showing up in the House of Representatives and in Governors mansions across this great land of ours, but the struggle continued. She campaigned vigorously for both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, much in the same way she had done for Shirley Chisolm way back in 1972. It is unfortunate that Gloria Steinem did not live long enough to see a women take the oath of office for President of the United States. 

Would that mean that her work as finished? 

Not really. 

There is still a long way to go, but thanks to Gloria, we know the way.

She will be missed. 

Nom De L'eau

 As many of us are aware, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

In this same way, a lake or a gulf, would be as wet.

Why then would it matter what we called them?

I believe the answer lies somewhere in the slapdash manner in which these chores were undertaken. Monuments are not men, after all. They are only put there to mark the achievements of those who have gone before us. For instance, there is a street that encircles a portion of Mile High Stadium in Denver called John Elway Drive. The guy won two Super Bowls for the Broncos, and it was under his leadership that the team appeared in three more prior to that. It was not John's decree that made this happen. The Denver City Council chose to honor one of the city's favorite sons to acknowledge his accomplished. 

Imagine if Mister Elway had decided to demand, as part of a contract negotiation during his career, to have a lane or boulevard or circle to be renamed in his honor. Or if he had insisted that the franchise replace the twenty-seven foot tall Bronco mounted on the scoreboard at the stadium with a statue of him leading that now infamous drive back in 1986. That's not the sort of thing that real heroes do. That's the kind of thing that Kim Jong Un and Saddam Hussein would do. 

It is probably worth noting that the surge in the placement of statues and monuments to the Confederate States of America began in the 1950s and 1960s, not directly after the war that they lost. 

Google and Apple would concede this reality, if you asked them, but they seem completely willing to go along with the charade regarding the vainglorious attempts to remake maps in the twisted vein of the failed "president" currently occupying the ruins of the White House. 

And while we're on the subject, it seems that the "Supreme" Court is more than happy for the defacing of our capital to continue, allowing the construction of the ballroom/bunker combo to continue on the east side of "The People's House." They did not, by the way, decide that the construction was legal. Instead the opinion came down that the challenge to the project "lacked legal standing." An oblique turn to keep the felon in chief moving forward without having to appear biased. 

Except they did. 

Meanwhile, its up to the rest of us without Sharpies to argue the point that Lake Ontario is still Lake Ontario and The Gulf of Mexico is still the Gulf of Mexico. The justification is our problem now. 

And the Epstein Files remain unreleased. Maybe someone should sneak into the Department of Justice and label all those boxes "Golf Course Plans." That might get someone to open them. 

New Power Generation

 "The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign." 

This was the advice from a former real estate tycoon and convicted felon. Odd combination, you might think, but it seems to suit the Beast With Tiny Hands just fine. 

The suggestion that you would be stupid not to let some faceless corporation build two to three acre monstrosities that will suck up your community's natural resources so that the real estate convict can continue to generate ugly memes that further his vision of how the world should be. 

Like all con men, the current resident of the ruins of the White House would rather that you di/n't take too long examining the "details" of any and all plans to plop one of these energy vortexes into the vacant lot near you. Each one of these server farms use as much power as one hundred thousand homes. I'm not sure if you've noticed that lately gas, electricity and so on have all become more expensive. Americans paid ten percent more for electricity on average in 2025 than the year before. The Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory reported that by 2028, data centers could be sucking up twelve percent of U.S. electricity. 

And how about water? Estimates put daily use for AI could reach thirty-two billion gallons of water a day for the creation of funny cartoon versions of your family photos. And if you have taken a look at a map of where these centers are popping up, you may have noticed that they are frequently popped into locations that are already water stressed like southern Arizona, the Colorado River Basin and Texas.

Then there is the matter of powering them. Gas and diesel powered generators are used to keep your cat memes coming. These are the ones that show up before the public has a chance to react. They tend to spring up long before environmental impact statements can be prepared or the Supreme Court can give their personal okey dokey on the continuation of construction on the ballroom that is way out of scale for the hands of the oligarch making those funny videos of ducks. 

The only reason communities would not want a data center n their back yard is because they want to have a say in how their community's resources are used and/or abused. If some of this money and energy were put into universal health care, maybe the aforementioned community might be willing to take the risk. Just think of the number of servers you could slide into the space occupied by the average golf course. 

Just sayin'. 

Burnout

 My morning commute was interrupted by a pair of blue cars, with a third one waiting by the curb. As I approached the intersection, the first one roared to life and began spinning donuts. After a couple passes, the second joined in behind the first, sending clouds of burned rubber into the pre-dawn sky. 

I had a number of possible responses. The first was to try and ride around the intersection. I didn't feel like going out of my way. Nor did I feel that making any sort of attempt to disrupt or disturb their absurd ritual. 

Both cars had a passenger hanging out of their window, documenting the ridiculousness on cell phone video. It did occur to me that taking my own pictures or video might cause these young men to pause in their revelry. Their stinky, hot, testosterone-infused revelry. 

I kept my phone in my pocket. 

As they finished up a third and forth circle around the intersection, I was the only bystander to this showcase. I wondered if this was merely a rehearsal for some later occasion when they might be cheered on by a larger crowd. I stood there, hands resting on my handlebars, standing astride my bicycle, waiting for the show to end. 

The sideshow. 

The first car peeled off and sped down the street with his partner close behind. I waited for a moment before proceeding on my way, making sure that these early morning chuckleheads were not going to come screeching back as I made my way across the street. To my mild relief, they had begun to tear around the corner a block down, allowing me to continue on my way to work. 

Through the stench and mess they had just created. 

It only occurred to me when I got to school that any one of the chuckleheads involved could have been former students of mine. So very proud. 

A Look Into The Past

 I miss my mom.

This is true just about every day, but it was felt acutely by me last Saturday night. 

While flipping about the channel lineup on our television box, I landed as I often do on Turner Classic Movies. I did this as part of a routine that has me patrolling the hundreds of possible stations by leapfrogging over the flotsam and Hallmark to land on the islands of movie outlets that will still offer us commercial-free watching. TCM is an oasis of sorts since their internal promotions are generally for their own extensive library of films without spending too much time promoting Bill Maher or a bunch of dragons. It is also where my mother spent a great deal of time in her golden years, watching the movies of her youth.

On this particular evening, my wife was feeling just a tad out of sorts, and so as we finished up dinner I rolled on down the dial to that spot where I figured we might find some quiet satisfaction. 

We did. 

Cover Girl, starring Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth had just begun. The all-singing, all-dancing feature from 1944 was just the ticket for pushing the current event malaise away, returning us to those days of yesteryear when movies were escape. Showbiz was a hard-luck chance that every boy and girl was willing to endure for that one chance at stardom. And love. Rita and Gene danced and sang in glorious Technicolor to songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin. It was, as the name of the channel suggested, a classic. 

I longed for the opportunity to share our experience with my mother, who would have been able to supplement the TCM host's rapturous memories of the production. She would have been so happy to have shared her own account of that bygone era, and remind us all of "the good old days." 

When it was over, after a quick break, Fred Astaire joined Ms. Hayworth in another musical romp called You'll Never Get Rich. By this time, my wife was transfixed. Her mood had escaped the cellar from which it had been dwelling, and she went to bed with a goofy smile. 

I could thank the folks at TCM, but I would also like to appreciate the tutelage of my mom, who opened that door for me so very long ago. 

I miss her. 

Trial

 It could have been the setting. 

Leaning back in the padded chair, pillow behind my head, and a needle stuck into each arm so as to immobilize me for just over two hours, this seemed like the optimal position in which to subject myself to Nuremberg. The 2025 retelling of the events of 1945 in post-war Germany was something that I had initially avoided going to my local cinema to endure. Hadn't we just decided that Nazis were bad and deserved to be punished? 

At that time, there were more than a few winks to be shared about how "history repeats itself" all while watching history repeat itself. But this couldn't really be. It's one thing to allude to fascism. It's another to make one to one correspondence to the Second Trumpreich to the Third Reich. 

Yet, as I lay there, strapped to that comfy chair with my blood making its slow progress from one arm through the platelet stripping machine back into my other arm, I bore witness to the trial of Hermann Goring, portrayed by Russell Crowe. I watched U.S. Army psychiatrist Rami Malek, portrayed by Freddie Mercury, work to understand and then reveal the hidden weaknesses of Hitler's second in command. 

Spoiler alert: It turns out that the best way to get inside this slab of a Reichsmarshall was to appeal to his vanity. It seems that he, along with a great many of your big Nazis, were narcissists. Far more concerned with their places in history and on the pecking order to the head pecker than actually solving the problems of their country. At one point, the prosecution that has put Hermann and his goons on trial lists the countries and territories invaded by Nazis in their insistence that they had been their all along. Like Putin with Ukraine. Like the convicted felon and his Sharpie. 

As I watched history play out in front of me, with my bleeding under the strict observation of a medical professional, I began to wonder why I hadn't selected a binge of Gabby's Dollhouse instead of this two and a half hour reminder of just how awful human beings have been and apparently still can be. 

When it was all over, and Goring avoided the hangman's noose by ingesting cyanide, the psychiatrist, now discharged returns to America, where he writes a book and becomes an alcoholic and spends the rest of his life warning about the potential resurgence of a Nazi regime before he commits suicide. By cyanide poisoning. 

The medical professional pulled out the needles and put band-aids on my arms. I surrendered my headphones and went back out into the world, less a few billion platelets. And happy to have my reality grounded once again in what could be.