Post Toasties

 Maybe it's time to scrape a little of the veneer off the illusion that the convicted felon who seems to run the Second Trumpreich via social media. 

Who writes this stuff? "All of the SLEAZEBAGS, like Third Rate 'Reporter,' Kaitlan Collins, of Fake News CNN, a truly unhappy person, said they weren't going to be covering me. Then why were they ranting and raving like Lunatics, in the Press Area, at the United Nations?" 

A cursory look at the Orange Worst's "Truth" account suggests that the use of unnecessary capitals and epithets such as "sleazebag" smells an awful lot like the venom spewed for the past four years on that platform and featured in many and sundry occasions in person. The logic used to demean Ms. Collins and her fellow reporters is similar to the stretches made by the adjudicated rapist, since it was he who banned CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House in the first place. That reporter and her cohort were at the United Nations hoping to report on the latest issuance from Our Dear Leader. 

The ranting and raving was all on the part of the guy clutching the podium. 

The assembled press was waiting for their opportunity to give the former game show host and his handlers an opportunity to explain their cockeyed vision of the world. And maybe to sort out his pondering, "Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we will make a deal right after the election, because it doesn't make sense for them not to."

Making sense.

That would be nice. But since this is an eighty year old man who has a documented difficulty staying awake during public events such as the 9/11 Memorial Event at the Pentagon, it does raise the question about those late night bursts of barely coherent text messages and images that pour out of his account in strange waves. 

One answer would be that this is the way he chooses to use what little energy he seems to have for things other than golf and the destruction of our nation's capital. Like the triumphant arch he plans to erect that has become a strategic necessity because it will “house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

Now wouldn't you feel just a little safer thinking that some poor underpaid staffer is toiling away on those social media posts while the "very stable genius" sleeps? 

No?

Me either. 

Through The Haze

 It's a little tough reckoning on things that are fifty years old. 

I know them. 

And what's more, I remember them. 

The pop culture in which I cut my trivia teeth was pervasive. Movies were not released in waves. New music appeared in the record store with regularity but not without warning. I will say this: It was easier to be the Beatles back then. They were the face of rock music, and therefore popular music lined up to mirror their presence. Television had a number of channels that might best be described as limited. The firehose we now experience as "streaming" did not exist. Summer reruns meant that you could comfortably go outside and do things other than stare at your cathode ray tube for a few months while networks crafted their New Fall Lineups. 

Cable TV and home video were initially repositories for "adult entertainment." My older brother and I shared a habit for reading the new issue of TV Guide from cover to cover in hopes of memorizing the schedule, anticipating those opportunities to stay up late to see that Universal horror movie that we had missed the last time it made the rotation on our local station. 

Back to the top forty. There was one. Just one. Fifty years ago was fertile ground for the beast known as The One Hit Wonder. If you were going to put out an album, chances were that you might be asked to put more than one song on it. This meant that the one song that was totally worth our attention would get played on the radio while the rest of that slab of vinyl would go unscratched. The world wide capacity to spread media these days allows even the trifles to have a longer lifespan than "Afternoon Delight." 

Though I should point out that it was during those dark times some fifty years ago that allowed the Starland Vocal Band not only to have a number one hit, but opened the door for the members of that group to host their own summer replacement variety show. 

It was a simpler time. 

I didn't say it was a better time. 

At Least

 Wilber Rafael Garcés Perez. 

That's the name of the twenty-eight year old man shot by ICE morons this past Sunday in Austin, Texas. 

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Wilber had entered the United States illegally and was stable and was in federal custody pending removal from the U.S. Mister Garcés Perez was working for Door Dash at the time of the shooting. There was no response to the question as to whether the goons' bodycams were operating at the time of the shooting, nor was there any immediate information available as to the status of the order that was being delivered. 

So here's my question, aside from what was in the order that the goons felt the need to interrupt: Why use deadly force? If the underlying mission of these "peace officers" is public safety, why are they involved in vehicular pursuits that involve ramming other cars and shooting through windows and doors? It is an established fact that ICE is working on a quota system, with a target of three thousand arrests a day. In August, DHS reported more than fifty thousand arrests had been made. A record!

And the number of deportations held steady at approximately twelve hundred. This disparity is best understood when you take into account that record number of arrests included a vast majority of individuals with not criminal record. 

Yes. Apparently the mission of getting rid of "the worst of the worst" has switched to something more along the lines of getting rid of people with Latino surnames. Mister Garcés Perez is therefore guilty as charged. Which explains why he was shot? Well, no. According to the goons, Wilber fled. 

Let's see: Unmarked vehicle appears, masked gunmen pile out and start shouting. Maybe most folks named Michael Smith will immediately comply with the goons' orders. Or if your name happened to be something painfully Anglo like Renee Good or Alex Pretti. 

Nothing to fear.

Except the potential exile to a foreign destination without contact with your family. Or detention for months inside a chain-link cage. Or becoming another of a growing list of individuals shot and killed by the goons. Wilber is one of the "lucky ones" to appear on a list that the public sees. The reported numbers of eleven deaths and forty-two shootings by ICE goons comes with the qualifier of "at least."

At least. 

That seems to be what our expectations are for the masked idiots. 

Access Hollywood

 Where do you get your news?

If your answer was "Here, of course," my apologies. I do not maintain the vast oversight necessary to keep all of the world's events in check. The other day I had to look up where the Strait of Tears is and try to figure out exactly how the Houthis were going to make life just another notch more difficult for us here in America. 

Another little revelation: I am most definitely not doing any of this live. I get up in the morning and sit down to digest the previous day's events before plunging directly into churning out my opinion on matters before posting them in the future. Three days in advance, if you're looking for a formula. 

This is why the expulsion of CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House is such a blow for me personally. Whatever ugliness takes place in the Oval Office tends to find its way to me via the Press Corps, those brave men and women who risk being shouted at by the doddering fool who claims to be "our president." 

The convicted felon announced last Friday that he was banning these three media outlets from the ruins of the People's House. On Saturday, a member of the press corps who was still allowed access pressed the Orange Worst on the upcoming visit from China's Xi Jinping, who regularly obscures reporter's access and distribution of information. The former game show host replied, "I don't know about that. I think we're repressive also," he said. 

Never mind that this probably comes as a relief of sorts for those reporters whose regular assignment was to stand in front of this fraction of a man who cannot keep his own lies straight. How will we know what absurd length this adjudicated rapist will continue to go to in order to stay out of jail? I would say that it does not actually matter, since the story here is that once again the combover commander in chief is disregarding the Constitution. First Amendment. Freedom of the Press. Someone in the lazy shambles of what is left of our government must want to take this up as an issue, right? Just because some eighty-year-old with access to a keyboard posts on their social media account that these three organizations are Fake News and should not be allowed access to the White House is no basis for ignoring the Constitution. Shouldn't Congress have something to say about that? Or the "Supreme" Court? 

By the time you read this, it is quite possible that the Democrats will have posted a strongly worded letter decrying this overreach. Lawsuits have already been filed and Sunday morning news shows have had Second Trumpreich minions like U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz on to argue that the Dear Leader "is absolutely within his rights to limit journalists to government facilities, particularly when, in his opinion, they’re not behaving as good faith journalists.”  This interview took place on CNN, suggesting that in spite of their lack of "good faith," CNN was willing to air both sides of the story. 

What then, does "good faith" look like? Maybe we should ask Fox News: "CNN stands fully behind our White House team and their fair and accurate reporting. We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do that reporting without hindrance or interference from the government. Should the ban which President Trump threatened go ahead, it would be an illegal assault on that fundamental and constitutionally-protected right."

Stay tuned, America. 

GOAT

 The Federal Bureau of Investigation would like for the somewhat recent hires for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be on the lookout for girls who would like to date them. The suggestion seems to be that anyone desperate enough to take a chance on one of these soulless ghouls in the first place must not be serious, and furthermore only made these overtures to make their lives more difficult. 

It's pretty hard not to see the logic in that. 

The memo read, in part: “as of late January 2026, a small group of women allegedly were creating fictitious online dating profiles with the purpose of attracting and then doxxing law enforcement participating in immigration enforcement.” In short, the only reason any of these goons would be getting any traction on their Tinder account would be from women who were trying to expose the men behind those tacky masks they wear. 

The FBI went on: “These profiles were incorporating imagery of a ‘traditional wife’ aesthetic and listing specific interests in an attempt to appeal to … individuals in law enforcement. The objective was to lure affiliated law enforcement personnel into an online or in-person interaction under the guise of a date, after which the individuals would be publicly exposed and doxed online. The tactic is intended to generate public embarrassment and deter immigration enforcement activity.”

And to ensure to the rest of the dating pool that these individuals were morally bankrupt and had in fact already given up their souls in exchange for a paycheck and the chance to beat and detain innocent victims. Which, it seems to me, would put them in a rather special rather dark corner of the app. 

If you have read this far and are curious what possible connection the FBI has with the dating profiles of ICE agents, I point you directly to FBI Director Kash Patel's recent move to eliminate the restriction his agency had against bestiality. It seems party boy Kash didn't want anyone's sordid past to get in the way of them serving and protecting their country. 

Or maybe he didn't want anyone to regret choosing some pretend tradwife when they could be marrying a goat. 

Wishing

 You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. 

I want Three Wishes Toy Store. The crowded aisles stuffed and overflowing with things that I could only imagine having in my toy box. GI Joes. Hot Wheels. Models of tanks and planes and warships. This was the destination my brothers and I patiently awaited when it was time to head down to Crossroads Mall to buy school clothes. This was the scene of my ugly reality check when, as a child, I was taken there by my grandmother and told I could get "anything I wanted." I was alternatively admonished by my mother before I went that my grandmother was "not made of money." 

Alas, those Three Wishes were of limited duration, and it was bulldozed along with the rest of Crossroads Mall so that they could erect a very similar structure with a number of different chain stores with the inspired name of 29th Street. Only this new mall would allow you to walk outside from store to store. 

Pretty ingenious. 

Do that dream died. It was eventually replaced by Toys R Us, a warehouse-sized compendium of all things toy. It was at one time a litmus test for friends of ours. If you could hang for an hour or two walking the aisles of Toys R Us with us, you were worthy. As my son grew to relative maturity, we would often take a side trip to what had become "his" toy store just to look. "Need it. Got it. Need it. Got it." 

Then, about a decade ago, Toys R Us closed all of its retail stores and filed for bankruptcy. They could not compete with online sales. But that meant there was no place to go to test drive, to fondle, to covet. It wasn't the same thing. 

But now, the clouds are parting. With a new partner Toys R Us is opening one hundred twenty stores again, just in time for the holidays. 

Wait. "Just in time for the holidays?"

That means that these are essentially "pop-up" stores, with the focus on milking as many dollars from a toy-starved populace as possible before returning to its prior existence as a Bev-Mo. 

It's really hard to keep your inner child nourished in this world. 

Not Quite

 Playing out the string. 

That's what I want to avoid. 

I am retiring from teaching, but I don't want to do that slow slide into lethargy. I don't want to be that guy in the back of the classroom, reading his newspaper as his young charges busy themselves with the worksheets he has so vaguely printed out for them. 

I want to go out on top. 

To that end, I arranged a donation drive to purchase a bike rack for our students to be placed someplace secure so that when I have stopped riding my own bicycle to and from my home to school, others will be able to jump into that void. 

That void. 

It's the thing that my colleagues keep referring to: "What are we going to do when you're gone?"

My initial response would be that I am not planning on becoming incorporeal. I would be quite surprised if I did not receive a number of texts or calls within that first year of not having regular attendance asking for the password to this, or how you find the ladder that gets you up on the roof to fetch balls that have mysteriously found their way to the upper strata. 

It is something of a time-honored tradition here. With the possible exception of the tangled web of wires and missing codes I really could have used to sort out the computer lab when I first started working here. That I had to sort out all by myself. That, along with the best time to make the bike ride from my house to school to avoid the regular commute traffic. 

So here we are: Months left of a career that spans three decades. I have been a husband and a father longer that I have been a teacher. I lapped being a video store manager long ago, and my tour of Arby's is just a blip on my employment timeline by comparison. 

I never felt compelled to buy a bike rack for the video store. I never bothered to get a soccer ball off the roof of the Arby's where I worked. I will not go quietly unto that good night. 

Thank you for all of those encouraging words, and the donations to the purchase of soccer goals or headphones or whatever else I extorted out of you. 

Just to let you know: I'm not quite done here.