The Whole Shebang

 Homecoming. A time for celebration. A time for reflection. A time for senseless killing. 

Authorities in South Carolina are still looking for a suspect who shot and killed nineteen-year-old Jaliyah Butler. Eighteen-year-old Matthew Daniel McCoy was arrested and charged with Pointing and Presenting a Firearm at a Person, and Carrying a Weapon on School Property last year, but the other eleven people who were arrested for possession firearms on campus during the shooting did not net the killer. 

Fast forward a year, shifting focus a couple hundred miles to the south, we find two dead and thirty-five injured when gunfire erupted early this past Sunday morning over a four block radius of a neighborhood block party. A party celebrating the Dooly High School win in their big Homecoming Win. They beat the team from Wilcox County.

So there was a big party. 

Two twenty-year old men were killed. The injured ranged in age from fourteen to fifty-one. An incident like this might suggest that the twenty-somethings were the "targets" of all that gunfire, and the thirty-five others covering that wide range of age were collateral damage. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Celebrating homecoming. 

A time for reflection.

A time for senseless killing. 

“I’ve been doing this for forty-two years,” Dooly County Sheriff Craig Peavy told reporters. “I’ve had a lot of cases I’ve been on, a lot of bad situations, and I think by far this is the one that has caught me off guard.”

It could be that Sheriff Peavy's experience has not taken him far from his home, since Georgia has experienced one hundred fifty-five mass shootings since 2020, and guns continue to be the leading cause of death among children. 

The investigation, along with the mourning, continues. 

Ugly

 Speaking at a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska the past week, the doddering old fool said, “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” This suggestion was met with applause from the assembled Cornhuskers, who had gathered in their red-hat frenzy to support whatever cockamamie notions that might leak from the slit just below the Dear Leader's nose. 

If, for some reason, it was unclear these are two cities in California that continue to be part of the United States. The convicted felon's handlers reminded us that the adjudicated rapist was "only kidding" when he mentioned these two cities in a deeply blue state. He did not offer up a target within the borders of the country that we are currently at war with, Iran. 

Perhaps because as those overtaxed frontal lobes continue to deteriorate, more of the "truth" seeps out of that tiny little brain. He sent American troops in the form of National Guard units to California back in June of 2025 to "keep the peace." Never mind that their presence violated the Posse Comitatus Act and cost more than one hundred million dollars. It all falls into the category of "a small price to pay," a phrase he used to describe the high cost of putting gas in our tanks and groceries on our tables during yet another endless slog in the Middle East. 

The pile of angry misstatements and poorly imagined plans for the country he claims he wants to be "great again" continues to grow. Fact checking has become a fool's errand these days since the fool in charge seems completely comfortable saying whatever pops into his tiny mind. At another recent rally he claimed that his IQ was 1775.  Again, the people behind the podium rushed to spin that their boss was trying to riff on the amount of the checks he was hoping to give to America's service members, a "warrior dividend" of one thousand seven hundred and seventy-six dollars. 

"A small price to pay."

And the beat goes on. No day passes without some level of affrontery to the country that incomprehensibly elected him "president." Twice. Just a few days ago he worried that the frat-boy rapists at Cornell might not get "a fair shake" from prosecutors and that he felt "badly" for their predicament. 

A small price to pay for living during these unprecedented times. 

I agree with my son, who suggested some time ago now that he would like to start living in precedented times again. 

Don't forget to vote.

Olden Days

I lost interest in the evening's football game, so I decided to travel up the dial to see what might be showing on Turner Classic Movies. Lo and behold, the 1976 Classic Movie, All The President's Men, was just beginning. I saw it first when I was an impressionable fourteen year old all those years ago. I have come back to it over and over again, but I confess that I have not given it my full attention in the past decade. 

Because it seems so incredibly quaint now. A group of burglars who broke into the Watergate Hotel back in the summer of 1972 getting caught while attempting to bug the Democratic National Headquarters feels like a bit out of the Keystone Cops. Except this one didn't end in a pie fight, but rather the resignation of the President of the United States. Following the trail of bread crumbs in a world that did not include Al Gore's Internet, cell phones or word processors, these two young reporters helped topple a corrupt regime that was attempting to stay in power at any cost. Woodward and Bernstein exposed the links between the bungling burglars and the Oval Office and brought down a sitting United States chief executive. No gunfire. No special effects. No love interest. Just journalism.  For me, this was as close as I tend to get to a "feel-good movie."

When it was all over, and those clever programmers at TCM began unspooling The Manchurian Candidate, I decided to head off to bed, where on my dresser sat my most recent nighttime read: Regime Change. Written by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, it tells the tale of the second Trumpreich, contrasting it to the somewhat more benign version that ended just four years prior. It would be nothing short of an understatement to say that these two had an easier row to hoe than their Washington Post predecessors. Except that the Washington Post is now owned by one of the Chief MAGAts, while Haberman and Swan's reporting is still supported by their left-leaning publishers. Woodward and Bernstein worked feverishly back in their day to stay ahead of The Times. And TV News. And all the other ships at sea. 

These days, all the dirty dealings are laid out for everyone to see, and it is left up to anyone with half a brain to connect the dots. Haberman and Swan were able to put out a book in a matter of months encapsulating just the first year and a half of dirty tricks and dealings by all the convicted felon's men. As a point of timing, I should point out that the publication of Woodward and Bernstein's book was followed by the resignation of the Head CREEP, Richard Nixon, by two months. Haberman and Swan's book came out this past June. 

So my question is this: Why is it taking so long? 

Super Intelligent

 "Say, do you remember that crazy cartoon you guys did a while back that had me dropping poop on those protesters?"

"Yes sir, the 'No Kings' protesters."

"And you had me wearing a crown and all that with that Kenny Loggins tune in the background."

"Danger Zone. Yes sir." 

"And those ducks? That was hysterical."

"They were geese, sir. Canadian geese." 

"But you called them ducks."

"Yes sir. Donald ducks."

"Heh. Priceless."

"Yes sir."

"Which brings me to the reason I called you in here. How much are you getting paid?"

"Me personally? Just under two hundred."

"Two hundred dollars?"

"No sir . Two hundred thousand dollars. A year."

"Hmm. Well how would you like to double that?"

"Well, certainly, sir. What would I have to do?"

"Nothing that different. We would just have to come up with some clever name for your new job."

"Like AI Commander?"

"I like that, but it's not grand enough."

"How about Commander of Artificial Intelligence?"

"I'm not sure I like the 'artificial' part. It sounds so..."

"Fake?"

"Yes. That was what I was thinking. Why don't we call it something more intimidating?"

"How about 'Super Intelligence?'"

"Oooo. I like that!"

"So I get the raise and I get to be in charge of Super Intelligence?"

"Yes! Yes! I'm so glad I though of it!"

"Yes sir."

"Now can you get me one of those videos of me blowing up the refineries in Iran?"

"With or without poop, sir?"

Danny

 When I showed up to my freshman dorm, I had a number of DEVO albums in my record collection along with an Elvis Costello record and a couple by the Cars. Little did I know that I was on my way to earning my sobriquet, New Wave Dave. 

The year was 1982, and the world was just beginning to embrace punk's nerdy cousin, which they referred to as New Wave. It was into this world that I found myself plunged via a hallway full of nerdy young men whose own music tastes spurred my own record renaissance. Across the hall I heard Talking Heads. Four doors down someone else was playing The Pretenders. Most of us laughed at the idea of Flock of Seagulls, whom we referred to as "that haircut band," but that didn't keep us from listening to "I Ran" over and over again. I found myself in a time and place where I could find the new Thomas Dolby album being played right after Def Leppard. It was magic. 

Somewhere in there, I encountered the kid at the end of the hall brandishing an album whose cover art was enough to pique my interest: Only A Lad. It was the first full-length release from a band called Oingo Boingo. Listening to it was its own special treat for me. It was fast, and dark, and witty, and you could dance to it. My fascination with this new entry into sounds I needed to hear was confirmed when I purchased my own copy of the album and proceeded to wear it out. Imagine my excitement when that summer rolled around and their second release, Nothing To Fear, appeared in my local record shop. If you can't imagine it, just substitute your appreciation of a musical birthday cake that you could play over and over. 

Thus began a love affair that would continue through the 1980s, highlighted by the release of Dead Man's Party in 1985. I have written before of the eerie confluence of events that surrounded the appearance of this record in my life. The songs from this record will forever be linked to my personal introduction to tragedy, and that connection continues to this day. 

This past Friday, my wife and I went out to San Francisco to see the lead singer and composer of all those songs from the eighties: Danny Elfman. Some forty years after the events I have described here I was sitting in a crowd, listening to the seventy-three year incarnation of this man who continues to go by the possibly diminutive "Danny." I was pleased at how well he and his music had aged, and glad that there were some new tunes to round out the evening. It wasn't just an "oldies" show. 

Not that I wouldn't have enjoyed that. I'm a bit of an oldie myself, these days. 

It was fast, and it was loud, and I felt like dancing and singing along. I did more of the latter than the former, and for me it was over far too quickly. Would I have to wait another forty years?

New Wave Dave hopes not. 

Toxic

 While the Secretary of War is prattling on about testosterone levels and the essential manliness of killing people abroad and here at home, he also wanted to insert the importance of faith: the newly minted  Office of Religious Affairs will have “a direct line to the secretary.” Pistol Pete insisted that, “Decisions about faith and religion were made by secular careerists in cubicles and lawyers running around with red tape.” Further more, during his speech last Wednesday he appointed Elon Musk to help develop the next generation of weapons and said he wanted to staff the US military with “patriotic cowboys. No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors,” he said.

The ultra macho surge continues in our nation's capital. while a few hundred miles up the road the ugly reflection of all this hyper-toxic masculinity is on display for all to see. At Cornell University, the investigation continues into the case of a woman who was drugged and then raped by a group of fraternity boys at Cornell University. It seems that back in 2024 Jane Doe was visiting a friend at the Chi Phi fraternity and was already intoxicated. The members then plied her with more liquor and a dose of what they said was Ketamine. From there, two of the frat boys proceeded to rape her, then sent out messages on social media that suggested that there was a girl upstairs who was "ready." Over the next few hours, five more males made their way up to continue the assault. Once the initial report was made, the university acted: two of the fraternity members were expelled, while five others received lesser sanctions including suspensions, workshops and writing essays.

No criminal charges were filed. 

I can't help but imagine that the two boys who were expelled would be right at home in Pistol Pete's new Armed Forces. Shoot first, ask questions never. I don't expect that those who were stuck writing essays would be considered manly enough to be a part of the future of the secretary's over-fertilized imagination. These are just the kind of "patriotic cowboys" he's looking for. "We need students of Western civilization and the pillars of our republic. Leaders who understand the faith of Jerusalem, the philosophy of anthems—Athens. The power of Rome, and the freedom of Philadelphia circa 1776." In case you missed it, Pete was trying to invoke the capital of Greece - Athens - somewhere in there. All the more reason to believe these frat boys might stand a chance in the recruitment office. 

Unless they've got beards.

Generation Execute

 Jello Biafra once questioned, "How do we teach 'Thou Shalt Not Kill?'"

Well, twenty-seven of our current fifty states have a death penalty on their books. As of mid-2026, there were nearly two thousand prisoners on death row here in these United States. States such as California have capital punishment, but the governor has placed a moratorium on carrying out any executions. 

As you may expect, the majority of the states that continue to kill their convicted felons can be found in the south. Tennessee would be one of those states. That is where, this past Wednesday night, authorities attempted to kill convicted murderer Christa Pike. The only woman on The Volunteer State's death row was injected, not once but twice, with a supposedly lethal dose of pentobarbital. These two injections came after the execution was initially paused as a stay was issued by an appeals court, only to be overturned a few hours later by the "Supreme" Court. 

At this point, I do not feel compelled to defend Ms. Pike, who never disputed her part in the 1995 murder of a classmate when she was eighteen. As part of the lengthy conviction and appeals process, Christa spend the next thirty-two years waiting for her punishment. At the age of fifty, she was scheduled to be the first woman executed by the state of Tennessee in two hundred years. I do feel the need to question how, after the first dose of drugs only succeeded in making her arm "feel funny," why officials didn't back up and try to figure out what went wrong before attempting a second dose. 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, for his part, expects "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred." It might have been a bad or degraded batch of pentobarbital. Or maybe Christa's veins were blown and unable to accept the injection. This was enough to get Tennessee state Senator Marsha Blackburn up off her chair, insisting a return to the electric chair, a method that had not been in use for the past six years. Since 1998, your standard Tennessee execution shifted to that of lethal injection, but "Old Sparky" has been available.

Just in case. 

In the meantime, Christa Pike has been taken to a medical facility to try and get her healthy enough so that she can be strapped to another device in hopes of finishing the job. 

I dunno. Sounds a little cruel, and if I may, not so unusual.