Into The Black

 I never saw Ozzy Osbourne play live. Solo or with Black Sabbath. When I did finally get around to seeing Sabbath in 1982, Ozzy had gone off on his own and I watched Ronnie James Dio front what many believe is the masters of heavy metal. Or is that monsters? 

That show only convinced me of what I already knew: Ozzy was Black Sabbath and Black Sabbath was Ozzy. No disrespect to Mister Dio, who brought his own fire to the proceedings, but he was holding down a spot for the True Prince of Darkness. I wore my copy of Paranoid out. Besides the title cut, this album included gems like Iron Man, War Pigs, and Fairies Wear Boots. 

Across the hall from my freshman dorm room was my connection to what Ozzy had been doing since he left Black Sabbath. My pal Darren had been keeping up with his Ozzness with Diary of a Madman and Bark at the Moon. It was those two albums that got us up off the couch and into the arena to see the Ozzyless Sabbath. I tried not to mention what all this scary music might mean to the soul of an Oklahoma Baptist, since it all seemed like such good cartoon fun at the end of the day. 

Which is pretty much how I viewed Ozzy Osbourne. When he signed on to star in a reality TV show about his family life in 2002, this suspicion was confirmed. Perhaps my favorite moment came when cameras caught the Prince of Darkness taking out the trash. It stood in stark contrast to the legend of the demon who bit the head off a bat on stage and snorted a line of fire ants on a dare from Motley Crue's drummer, Tommy Lee. Whatever the case, this guy was one rock and roll icon who didn't need Spinal Tap for inspiration. 

One of the things Ozzy's later years did do was let us all know just exactly what can happen when you don't manage to burn out. Which doesn't mean he was content to fade away. Just a couple weeks ago, Black Sabbath reunited for what turned out to be their Farewell Concert. Lost of other bands have made a second career out of making their "final appearance," but Ozzy knew his time was short. So he and his mates put on one last show, with the Prince of Darkness singing from his throne, having given up stomping about as he filled the night with scary stories. Back in 2020 he gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times in which he said, “I’m not dying from Parkinson’s. I’ve been working with it most of my life. I’ve cheated death so many times. If tomorrow you read ‘Ozzy Osbourne never woke up this morning,’ you wouldn’t go, ‘Oh, my God!’ You’d go, ‘Well, it finally caught up with him.’”

This past Tuesday, Ozzy boarded the Crazy Train one last time. He stomped on stages across the Globe, and made us all do the same. Raise a pair of devil's horns for Mister Osbourne. He will be missed. 

The Real Thing

 I suppose I could use this moment to be grateful. There was a time when I held one particular vice above all others: My addiction to Coca-Cola. Not just the idea of having a soda. Or any particular cola product. After I had given up adult beverages and other illicit substances, my drug of choice became The Real Thing. Happily for me, I had lived through the "New Coke" debacle of 1985 while consuming mass amounts of Lite Beer from Miller. I hardly noticed. 

Had the Coca-Cola company tried something like that just ten years later, I would have been at the gates in Atlanta, calling for someone's head. Happily enough for me, by the time I had become first and foremost A Coke Drinker exclusively, Old Coke had been restored as the rule. When I popped the tab on a can and poured it over ice, I knew what I was getting. 

Or did I?

In 1984, Coca-Cola had fully transitioned from making their traditional recipe with high fructose corn syrup instead of the more expensive alternative of sugar. As it turns out, I was living, or rather drinking, a lie. It wasn't until much later that I discovered that there were still ways to get The Real Real Thing. Mexican bottlers of Coke were still using sugar, and after some research so were certain bottlers in the United States during Passover. 

As it turns out. I wasn't quite the loyalist I had imagined myself to be. 

Now, decades later, a twice-impeached former game show host is having his way with the world's favorite soft drink. “I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” the orange bloviator wrote in a social media post last week. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”

While it pains me to agree even tangentially to anything the slides out of the slit below this man's nose, he may be on to something. I won't be finding out for a couple of reasons: Buying a Coke now would be surrender to the chief MAGAt. I would also be inviting my body to rebel by returning to an age when I used to generate kidney stones with a like clockwork due to the phosphoric acid and other poisons found in every bottle and can. 

This is yet another version of the unhealthy hyperbole that issues forth from a man who only consumes Diet Coke, sweetened with aspertame. This is the same guy who has recently insisted that the Cleveland Major League Baseball team and the Washington National Football League team go back to their "original names." The ones he says Native Americans are "clamoring for." Not really.  And he wants you to believe that he's the reason that Stephen Colbert lost his show. It's just more nonsense to obfuscate the reality of what is really happening outside our carefully managed media bubble. The guy whose brain was partially consumed by a worm who was put in charge of America's health would like us to believe that this switch to sugar will make us all healthier. 

Of course it will. 

Wars continue to rage on. ICE continues to kidnap people and send them to concentration camps. Prices continue to climb. 

Even on that six pack of Coke. 

Time to wake up, America. This is the real thing. 

Check In

 Mannie was promoted this past May. 

He's headed to middle school, a place where stronger spirits are forged and I hope we did all we could at Horace Mann to prepare him. It is a concern mirrored across the ages that I have taught, "Have we prepared this kid for the heightened realtiy that comes with the sixth grade?" 

Mannie certainly gave us every reason to believe that he would be capable of managing the transition, not simply because of what we had done for him at the elementary level. He has a very strong presence at home both as a son and as a big brother. He walked to school every day with them. Mom would make sure that both her boys were in their classrooms, ready to learn and would be there when the bell rang at the end of the day to make sure they got where they needed to be after school. This doesn't always denote success, but rather a parent who frets about the trajectory of their child's education. 

Mannie was not one of those. He is a good student, conscientious about his work and, lucky me, excelled in technology. As his computer teacher, this often led to him getting the added responsibility of helping his classmates get signed in, or navigating the interwebs to the assigned spot to begin the hour's work. His skills sometimes put us at odds, since he could find holes in the net I had prepared as a lesson. As a fifth grader, he found himself at times on the challenging end of the behavior spectrum, mostly because he was a fifth grader and needed to test some boundaries. 

But I never worried too much. Partly because we both knew that I would be seeing his mom sooner rather than later, but also because he had a quirky habit of finding those loose threads I have left in old lesson plans. Mannie would return to old Google links that I had used, as far back as first grade, to connect with his class during COVID distance learning. He would send "the class" messages, but after five years no one but he and I were reading them. 

Thus began our correspondence. Sometimes months would pass without a mention. Then I would receive the smallest update on his video game progress, or thoughts he had about some of his classmates. I would reply, often making a mental note to take down the ancient links to make room for new ones. But I didn't want Mannie to be cut off.

Over the summer, Mannie has reached out a couple of times. He wondered if he was the only one who was still connecting from his old first grade meta-classroom. I told him yes, he was the only one. Then he got a little wistful, wondering if he was feeling nostalgic for the "good old days." I suggested that he could now start referring to fifth grade as "the good old days." His reply: "I suppose so."

I went on to suggest that it was only a matter of time before he started to look back at middle school as "the good old days." His response was a very Mannie-like, "I guess."

I think I'll leave that cyber door open for just a little while longer. Just in case Mannie wants to check in with me one more time. 

PDA

 Depending on where you sit in the auditorium, those three letters PDA may mean something different. To many of our tech-savvy readers this three letter acronym may refer to your Personal Data Assistant. This would be especially true if you were still holding on tightly to your Blackberry. If you happen to be seated in our special psych section, you might be thinking of Pathological Demand Avoidance. Not that I'm into labeling or diagnosing or anything like that. 

The rest of you know. PDA stands for (say it with me!) Public Display of Affection. You know. Those moments in which we find ourselves watching uncomfortably close moments shared by two people who are in love and/or need to get a room. Most of us have at one time or another been on the receiving end of such a sight. And maybe you've even been on the transmitting side, swapping a little tongue swab or playing slap and tickle while waiting for the bus. Sometimes we all forget where we are. 

Andy Byron knows exactly where he is, now. He's out of a job. If that name doesn't ring a bell, you may have been away from all manner of media over the past week and a half. Andy was, up until recently, the Chief Executive Officer of Astronomer, a tech company that  specializes in data workflow management, particularly with Apache Airflow. Andy won't be reporting to work anytime soon because of PDA. And the way that some data got managed. 

Specifically the image of Andy at a July 16 Coldplay concert at which he was caught on a "kiss cam" and projected on a screen for thousands in attendance to see. The mildly intimate moment was cut short when Andy and his PDA partner ducked out of view. At this point, lead singer Chris Martin suggested, “Oh, what? Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.”

Or both. Thanks to the ever-lengthening tentacles of social media, that moment went, as the kids say, "viral." The identity of the woman captured in that awkward moment turned out not to be Mrs. Andy but rather the head of his former company's Human Resources Department, Kristin "not Byron" Cabot. 

Oops. 

If you are unfamiliar with the "kiss cam" trend, before you head out to your next major sporting event or concert, you probably want to consider your options when the leering eye of social media comes calling. As for yours truly, I make a point of kissing my wife whenever she comes to visit me at my school. Nothing too salacious. Just enough to gross out the kids. And anyone else who might get it into their heads to post it on TikTok. 

How We Do Things Downtown

 It is a decidedly different landscape. 

This past weekend, a man who ran his car through a crowd of people waiting to enter a nightclub in Los Angeles. Thirty people were injured, but the driver was pulled from the car by the rest of the bystanders. And shot. 

Some might call it karma. Others might call it justice. Whatever you'd like to name it, the crime and punishment was meted out in rather abrupt and some might suggest efficient terms.

This kind of event sets an interesting counterpoint to the ongoing discussion of The Epstein List. It surprises me that the country seems to need some sort of documented proof that the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who paid hush money to a porn star to cover up his affair with her while his wife was pregnant with his child might be involved in the illicit goings on with one Jefferey Epstein. 

The hoops through which those seeking verification of illicit conduct on the part of this morally bankrupt individual seems ridiculous in the extreme. "Oh, those files? I know right where they are. On my desk. You'll have them in the morning."

When morning comes: "What files?"

None of the families of the underage victims of the Epstein client list are dragging the perps out into the street and shooting them. Or naming them. They continue to stand by and wait for the wheels to turn ever so slowly while consequences are meted out for much less egregious offenses at the hands of less famous, infamous, or rich defendants. 

698 out of every 100,000 Americans is currently incarcerated. Events like the one in Los Angeles last week probably won't move the needle very far one way or another. The courts won't be bogged down with a lot of pleas and motions since the punishment has already been handed down. What about this guy, wandering around the country, playing golf and dropping bombs on other countries with an extensive rap sheet? Why can't we find a cell for him?

Is it because we don't have the will to put a president, even a truly awful president, in jail? 

I think we should get over that. 

Soon. 

Not Pretty

 Remember just a few days back when I suggested that you might all be concerned about my well=being if one day you should stop by this corner of Al Gore's Internet and find it empty? At that time I was practicing a little technique called "hyperbole" in which a writer uses exaggerated statements not meant to be taken at their full face value. For those of you who don't "write," you may experience this in your everyday life when you are "just kidding." 

I am currently kidding just a little less about this becoming a blank corner of cyberspace. It comes about as Stephen Colbert, host of the Columbia Broadcasting System's program The Late Show, begins the slow ten month slide into oblivion. Previous iterations of this move has seen networks shuffle in fresh blood to the challenging apres-news slot on weeknights. This usually ends up with the cast and crew of the old guard being shown the door while some brash newcomer comes waltzing in to set up shop behind the desk with a brand new band and the opportunity for celebrities to explain their new movies, shows, books or failed relationships. 

There is a natural cycle to these things. 

That cycle ends as the "front office," as late night host David Letterman used to put it, is going scorched earth on The Late Show. No new host. No new desk. No new band. No more Late Show. The suits insisted this was, "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night." They called Colbert irreplaceable and said the show's ending was "not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount." 

"Other matters happening at Paramount." You mean like the merger with Skydance Media? The one that caused CBS to pay out sixteen million dollars to pay off a frivolous lawsuit brought by the former NBC employee who ended up winning the 2024 election in spite of the editing of an interview that took place on Sixty Minutes. Many felt this was Paraount, the owners of CBS, selling out Sixty Minutes and the First Amendment to grease the wheels at the FCC so that the merger could take place. The FCC that is controlled, as much as anything the former game show host controls, by the "president." 

This payout was referred to as "a big fat bribe" by Paramount employee (checks notes), one Stepehn Colbert. Just a couple of nights later, Mister Colbert got the call from "the home office." That was right about the time that Paramount employee (checks notes again) Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert's former boss at The Daily Show, began to ponder his own future as part of Skydance Media. The aforementioned "future" does not appear to be bright for a talk show host who has been even more openly critical of the former game show host than is protege. 

Which makes things back in South Park just as tenuous. The animated series about the periodically whimsical and sometimes scatological adventures of a bunch of kids in a moderately fictional town in Colorado is also under scrutiny as billions of dollars get shoveled around in order to turn one little company into one great big one. If you're part of that "home office," then you would rather that things were easy and compliant. 

That is not the best way to foster free speech. As a matter of fact, that's a really great way to shut it down. People are losing their jobs because of it. The Late Show, or as we may now refer to it, The late Late Show was the highest rated show in its time slot this past year. How many minutes before they come for Kimmel and Fallon? It seems likely that after being forcefed the news of the day, Americans will be subjected to infomercials for gold sneakers or perfume that smells like golf towels. The powers that be like to toss around the phrase, "changing demograpic." I believe this is mostly true if their target is the TV that never gets turned off at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

When comedy is outlawed, only outlaws will do their standup in the lounge by the airport. 

Get mad, America. 

Things Are Bad

  "I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it."

This was the speech that went through my mind just before I sat down to write today's episode of how bad things are. If you don't recognize them, it is the preamble of TV newsman Howard Beale. Fictional TV newsman Howard Beale, from the film Network. If you've never seen it, or perhaps you've seen it and have forgotten it, I can tell you that it was prescient. If you're not sure what "prescient" means, I'll give you a few minutes to do your research, but promise to come back here. 

I'll wait. Things probably won't be much worse by the time you come back. 

Okay. 

So if that movie was made back in 1976. Almost fifty years ago. It accurately predicted the coming of infotainment, reality TV and a world that seemed happy to do whatever their television told them to do. If anything, it might have come up a little short, not having the TV personality become President of the United States. 

Howard continued, way back when: "It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad!"

Fifty years later, are you mad? There is a saying, often attributed to Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against The Machine, that goes, "If you're not angry, you're not paying attention." Tom quite likely is not  the original source of this sentiment, and it may predate the ravings of Howard Beale. But I agree with Howard and Tom. Now is not the time to sit quietly in your living rooms. It's time to get up and go to your window, open it up and stick your head out. 

And yell. 

If you're not sure what to yell, I'll give you another couple of minutes to review. 

Let me know if you heard anyone else yelling. 

Never?

 Incredulous. 

That was the reaction I received from my wife. The woman who has known me since Ronald Reagan was president. A great portion of that time we have shared meals, bills, and lists of household repairs. How could it have slipped her notice that I do not have a passport?

Well, as it turns out, I am currently in the process of acquiring one. That didn't keep my wife from exclaiming at each juncture along the way, "How can this be?"

Never smoked a cigarette. Never had a cup of coffee. Never used Chapstick. You can go ahead and add having a passport to that list.

Then take it right off because all of that is about to change. The passport stuff, not the cigarettes, coffee or Chapstick. I have officially applied for a United States Passport. I made the appointment at my local post office. Or a nearby post office, since as it turns out part of the many hoops through which one must jump in order to attain that little blue book is to find a place that will assist in procuring this very important document. 

In the days leading up to my appointment, I kept pestering my wife about the location of my birth certificate, and if she wouldn't mind so very much taking a two inch by two inch photo of my head to past on the application. Each of these requests was met with a pause, and then an exasperated repeat of the phrase, "You don't already have a passport?"

Well, no. I have lived a rather full life safely within the boundaries of those places where I would not require additional documentation to go. When I went to Mexico, and I have been to Mexico, On four separate occasions. All of these excursions took place before 2008 when the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was put in place. The same can be said of the detour my brothers and I made with my dad on a road trip home from New York that found us spending a few chilly but amusing hours in Canada. 

No passport. 

Can you believe that? 

My wife, the seasoned and veteran traveler has smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of coffee and used Chapstick. She also has her very own passport. So much so that she found herself in need of getting hers renewed. Renewed to the tune of it having been expired. 

Can you believe that? 

So, a few weeks from now with the good graces of the U.S. State Department, we will find ourselves aligned once again. 

No Chapstick for me. 

Name That Tune

 Sooner or later, God'll cut you down

These are lyrics from a song that come from a traditional American Folk Song entitled "God's Gonna Cut You Down." It has been recorded in various versions by artists from Elvis to Moby. Into this mix, we toss Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, who took Johnny Cash as their inspiration. And of course it might go without saying that all of these interpretations had their beginnings in The Bible. 

Which is probably how some clever media influencer working for the Department of Homeland Security decided to lift a verse from the Book of Isaiah: "Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I, send me.' " The audio was lifted from the 2014 film Fury, set in the war torn European theater of WWII. Behind the dialogue supplied by Shia LaBeouf the yingyangs in the DHS recruitment office chose the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's version of the aforementioned folk song. Then they put all that audio behind footage of  ICE agents patrolling a river, flying over the border wall, and looking through night vision goggles at "the enemy." With the ominous reminder, "God's gonna cut you down." 

No word yet from Shia, but like so very many artists have already done, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club asked the goons in charge to cease and desist. In part, their response: “It’s obvious that you don’t respect Copyright Law and Artist Rights any more than you respect Habeas Corpus and Due Process rights, not to mention the separation of Church and State per the US Constitution. For the record, we hereby order @dhsgov to cease and desist the use of our recording and demand that you immediately pull down your video.“ Then they went ahead and gave them a suggestion about what they might do with their free time once they had deleted the video. 

The selection of Isaiah for the Trumpreich's self-righteous attempt to cloak the kidnapping and torture of immigrants as some sort of Holy Mission isn't a surprise. The Old Testament offers plenty of vengefulness and wrath. However, many theologians would disagree with ICE Barbie and her masked minions. Pastor JK Forateros wrote: "...ethnic nationalism was not the message God called Isaiah to deliver. As the Bible makes clear, God’s message delivered through Isaiah was one of impending judgment, precisely because the people of Judah ignored God’s calls for justice and instead were continuing to oppress people who were poor, widowed, orphaned, and refugees."

Yup, even the Old Testament God believed in social justice. And yes, sooner or later, God's gonna cut them down. 

Top Down

  Will the last one out of the Department of Education please turn off the lights. 

If, that is, the building has not been burned to the ground. 

Being away from my classroom for the past month and a half, I have been able to keep my mind on the other tragedies that are befalling our nation as Project 2025 begins to take hold. While it is true that the ongoing siege by masked thugs in our cities and on the farms of this great land of ours reminds me that the families that I have served for nearly thirty years are at risk of being torn apart, I find myself wondering what I will be allowed to do once I get back there.

I suppose it would be easy enough to surrender to the seemingly inevitable end of the United States Department of Education. The very Republican ideal of turning the reins of education policy over to individual states wouldn't affect me abruptly, living as I do in the People's Republic of California. Here in the Bay Area, land of the Black Panthers and all things LGBTQ+, I expect it would take some time for the wokeness to be turned back. Here in Oakland, our hearts bleed proudly and profoundly. 

Sometimes to distraction. 

There are times when our push to be progressive gets in the way of our ability to affect change in our students. It's a forest/trees problem. But I am grateful to be working in a place where my profession is not bogged down by the dogma of a bunch of uptight bureaucrats whose focus is on the way things used to be instead of how things should be. 

The Supreme Court ruled that the Executive Branch  has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies. This decision allowed The Trumpreich to cut staff in departments across the government. Nowhere is this more true than at the Department of Education, which is currently being razed in anticipation of the Secretary of Education doing exactly what her boss asked: To put herself out of a job.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the role of the Department of Education, this is the body that ensures equal access to education, and distributes federal funding for educational programs. It also works to enforce civil rights laws in schools and supports research to improve teaching and learning. More simply put, this keeps the playing field level across the aforementioned great land of ours. City to city. District to district. County to county. State to state. 

School to school. 

I would be lying if I said that I believed that public education in the United States does not need to be reformed. There has been a constant need for tweaking and revamping since the Boston Latin School opened in 1635. It continues to prepare students for college and the world beyond grades seven through twelve, and it's worth noting that it only became coed in 1972. The school where I work was opened in 1912. Things in Oakland were very different back then. What we teach has changed right along with who we teach. Over the past fifty years the additional federal funds have helped us continue to offer our best to the kids in our neighborhood. The money that came from the Department of Education. The Federal Government. 

The same Federal Government that just decided to double the budget of the Immigration And Customs Enforcement, just as they empty out the offices of the Department of Education. 

Something about that stinks. I take that back: All of that stinks. From the top down. 

For Whom The Bells Toll

 Blame, according to Texas governor Jim Abbott, is "the word choice of losers." This comment was buried somewhere in the midst of a football analogy he was constructing in the aftermath of the floods in Kerr County that killed more than one hundred people with one hundred seventy-one additional still missing. By Governor Jim's reckoning, only teams that lose have to look for blame. Since he's not interested in that, we can only assume that he feels like the loss of hundreds of lives in his state was "winning."

Meanwhile, everyone's favorite Puppy Killer and titular head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Kristi Noem was doing her own sideways shuffle to avoid any finger pointing. While debris and death was everywhere in Central Texas, Kristi was busy conducting an Instagram poll asking her followers to choose which portrait she should hang in the South Dakota State Capitol. This, along with personnel cuts within the agency she has been tasked to dismantle, was the reason why it took three days to get FEMA support to the flood victims.  

Then there's the head of the snake, everyone's favorite convicted felon, who insisted the Ms. Kristi had done a :"great job" handling the disaster because he saw her on TV. Never mind the carnage at Camp Mystic, Kristi showed up on the television, assuring us all that everything was fine. A few days later, The former game show host made his way down to the Lone Star State to make his own video presence felt. He brought along his posse, including severe weather expert (checks notes) Doctor Phil. 

When he returned to his coop in Washington, the head chicken sat down for a chat with his daughter-in-law Lara, who happens to have her own show on Faux News. She asked daddy-in-law, ”What is your message to the people who are suffering down there, to the parents of the young girls at the camp who were killed?”

To this, the self-professed "very stable genius" replied, ”There can be nothing worse than losing a child, and the way this happened… there was very early warning, they warned the day before, they warned even two days before, they warned four hours before.” Then he suggested, ”Maybe they should have had bells… or something, go off. But it’s pretty dangerous territory when you think of all the times they’ve had this problem.”

Except any sort of "bell system" was rejected by voters in Texas, even though the Guadalupe River had been the subject of great concern. 

Which brings us back to the top of the circle once again. No blame. Just needless death. 

Situation normal. 

Nice

 If one day you click on this link and you see a blank space it could very well be that the Gestapo has come for me. At last. After all these years and all these blog posts, I am certain that there is something in there for the Secret Police to find offense. There are, for better or worse, plenty of folks ahead of me for the MAGA Police to scoop up ahead of me, but regrettably it feels like the walls are closing in.

This past week the convicted felon who is currently making a mockery of our system of government and justice declared a new threat to his new society: Rosie O'Donnell. He referred to Ms. O'Donnell as "a threat to humanity" and said he was "seriously considering revoking her American citizenship. 

A couple of things here: First of all, I wasn't aware that Rosie O'Donnell was not American born and raised, not that this is something that would stand in the way of the former game show host's draconian measures for making America "great" again. I had forgotten that she had moved to Ireland shortly after the 2024 election. Because of the results of the 2024 election. She was born in New York, just a few months before I entered the world via Colorado. Her parents had emigrated to these shores from Ireland, so her path to Irish citizenship is a pretty straightforward one. 

The second bit is the sudden interest in revoking individual's citizenship by the (checks notes) President of the United States. To be certain, this is an individual who does not shy away from hyperbole, but "threat to humanity?" The woman that once proudly bore the nickname "Queen of Nice" while she hosted her own talk show in the late 1990s? 

Well, she wasn't always that nice to the former game show host. Back when he was still just a slumlord who got his own TV show, Rosie took issue with his "moral authority." This was back in 2006 when she was a regular on The View. Over the past two decades, these two have not had a chance to make any significant inroads in their relationship. To wit, Ms. O'Donnell responded to the adjudicated rapist upon hearing that he was considering revoking her citizenship:  “The president of the usa has always hated the fact that i see him for who he is – a criminal con man sexual abusing liar out to harm our nation to serve himself – this is why i moved to ireland – he is a dangerous old soulless man with dementia who lacks empathy compassion and basic humanity- i stand in direct opposition all he represents- so do millions of others – u gonna deport all who stand against ur evil tendencies – ur a bad joke who cant form a coherent sentence.” The creative spelling and capitalization comes from the Instagram post she used to return volley. 

I confess that my personal feud with the Orange Oligarch does not go back as far as Rosie's, but now that I have put out reminders of just how little she thinks of him on top of my own firmly established disdain, I can only hope that the masked agents knock on the door before busting it down. 

Young Man's Game

 "Hope I die before I get old." 

I have quoted these words here in this spot more times than I can count. Which is probably connected to some sort of early onset memory decline on my part, but it points to the way that youth is wasted on the youth. When Roger Daltry first started singing those lyrics, he was twenty-one years of age. That's a pretty snarky bit of angry young man angst to be hurling about, but to be fair it they were written by a much younger man (checks notes), Pete Townshend. Pete was a mere twenty years old when he wrote My Generation. If I have done my math correctly, at least three more generations have piled up behind these gentlemen while they have staunchly refused to "f-f-f-fade away." 

I bring this up because the remaining half of the band that claimed they would not get fooled again continue to tour. The last time they performed the anthem in question was just a few months back, and they are setting about to tour "one more time." Without a trace of irony, they have named this "farewell tour" after yet another one of their hits: The Song Is Over. 

Now seems like as good a time as any to mention that the boys of Spinal Tap are preparing a sequel to their mockumentary, slated for release around the time Roger and Pete will be appearing on The Budweiser Stage in Ontario, Canada. All of which is fine with me, since the surviving members of DEVO and the B-52s will be taking that same stage a few days after the remaining members of The Who bring their show to the Great White North. 

All of this is fine with me as a fan of the somewhat overstuffed category called "classic rock," but I feel like it bears mention that the most recent iteration of the touring band called The Who will be going on the road without their replacement drummer. Zak Starkey, son of Classic Rock legend Ringo Starr, was fired not once but twice from The Who in recent months, bringing the total number of percussionists for the group to four, pending the hiring of a new drummer for this most recent jaunt across North America. Mister Starkey, a sprightly fifty-nine years old, was sacked for his "overplaying" at a pair of charity shows back in March. At the time, Roger complained to the crowd, “To sing that song I do need to hear the key, and I can’t. All I’ve got is drums going boom, boom, boom. I can’t sing to that. I’m sorry guys.”

Apparently this did not live up to the very high standards set for the group. Which must have been set sometime after Keith Moon's time behind the kit, since he once died during a gig in San Francisco back in 1973, and had to be replaced by a member of the audience to finish out the set. Keith was revived and managed to stick with the group for another five years before his chaotic life really did catch up to him. He was joined in rock and roll heaven by bassist John Entwhistle in 2002. Kudos to Pete and Roger for not buying the clue set out in front of them. 

In a time when the Piano Man Billy Joel is cancelling dates because of a brain disorder, and even The Cure can only muster up one original member to go on tour, who can blame the guys left in The Who for showing off their continued relative vitality? Though I do think the next Farewell Tour should be called The "You Kids Get Off Of My Lawn Tour." 

Did I mention Neil Young is on tour this summer? Irony can be so ironic sometimes. 

The Look

“A man who Photoshops his picture is a woman." - Jesse "Holdyer" Watters

Last Wednesday, Bill O'Reilly Lite used his post on Faux News to reference a picture of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries that appeared to have been altered. Altered in such a way as to make it appear that Hakeem was taller, or his hips were thinner, or maybe it wasn't "fixed" in any way and he just happened to be leaning up against a peculiarly warped park bench. 

Please understand that I am not above ridiculing anyone for their vanity. This would include things like comb-overs and fake tans. Or someone who insists that they are six foot three inches tall and weigh two hundred twenty-four pounds when rumors of his booking information in New York City had him shorter and wider than that. Should we be judging a man by the size of his jeans or by the content of his character?

But what makes it all the more galling is that Jesse "Shallow" Watters seems quite comfortable in 2025 ascribing certain affectations to women and not to men. Understandably this comes from a "man" who works for a company that has made a practice of denigrating women, he probably feels he is simply upholding the standard set by his predecessors. Like so many of his male brethren, he has scars that are aggravated by his daily return to the makeup chair before he goes on the air, preforming a job that a whole host of women do without ever questioning outwardly his own masculinity. 

It's more than a little absurd that this denizen of the infotainment business feels so free to assign gender roles to situations that are so obviously native to his own livelihood. Image is everything, and appearing hale and hearty while lambasting others who seek to do the same is hypocritical in the extreme. Rules, it should be remembered, were made to be broken. 

The Past Should Stay Buried

 I woke up with this word in my head: capitulation. 

If you are a fan of Rowan and Martin's Laugh In, I might suggest you look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls. If you are not privileged enough to have lived long enough to internalize that catchphrase, then I would simply ask you to Google it. If you are not prone to breaking the spell of this wondrous moment of literary engagement, then I will tell you that capitulation means to succumb or yeild to an opponent. 

Surrender. 

You may be unfamiliar with such a concept because it is very much not in vogue right now, nor has it been for many decades. We can trace the death of this idea back to around 1968 when Richard Nixon, a truly awful human being who happened to become President in spite of how awful a human being he was. One of the ways he countered this public perception was to go on Rowan and Martin's Laugh In to show what a regular guy he was. This was not capitulation. This was manipulation, which was much more in line with the way Dick Nixon did business. When it became apparent to the rest of the planet that America's involvement in the Vietnam War was essentially unwinnable, the notion of "peace with honor" was floated out as a stopgap between escalation of the conflict to straight up admitting that we should surrender. This strategy stayed in place through the election of 1972, which allowed Dick and his administration to avoid actually admitting that defeat. For you students of history, specifically those who come here to learn about the distant past, Nixon won that election in a landslide, and in January of 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed, bringing an end to one of the longest and bloodiest wars in America's history. Three days after Richard Nixon was inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States. The one that didn't end so well for Dick. A little thing called Watergate? 

And why am I bringing all of this up right now? 

Look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls. 

You Just Made The List, Pal

 The question to everyone's answer is usually asked from within: If there is no Epstein Client List, what is Ghislaine Maxwell doing in prison? Twenty years for something that suddenly does not exist? 

Ms. Maxwell was tried and found guilty, a verdict that was upheld on appeal, of sex trafficking in 2021. A jury determined that she was involved in helping to procure minors to be sexually abused by Jeffery Epstein. The guy who may or may not have killed himself in jail back in 2019 while he awaited trial for, you guessed it, sex trafficking of minors. Not everyone remembers that "Mister" Epstein had already pled guilty to charges of procuring a child for prostitution way back in 2008. Back then he served thirteen months of a sentence that included a great deal of work release. 

Those thirteen months are, by an overwhelming margin, longer than any of the "clients" that he and Ms. Maxwell spent in jail for solicitation of the teenaged girls that were procured by them. According to reports dating back to 2006 there was extensive video records made by Epstein and his staff for "insurance purposes." This is TV cop lingo for keeping evidence on hand for blackmail in case there was ever anyone who wanted to poke around in the billionaire's affairs. Video evidence of many of the high and mighty who might be brought low for their part in such activity along with their pal Jeffery. 

So how about this client list? With all that investigation going on for all those years, someone must have access to documents that could be used to uncover the rest of all this unsavory business. Back in February of this year, the "president's" lawyer Alina Habba told TV "personality" Piers Morgan that,  'We have flight logs, we have information, names that will come out."  When reminded of this issue a short time later, Attorney General Pam Bondi assured us that those files were, "sitting on my desk right now to review.”

That was back in February, when Presidental Pal Elongated Mush was hacking and slashing with his DOGE posse, and tariffs were just a threat just like our bunker buster bombs in the Middle East. 

Then things blew up. When the billionaire bros broke up, Mush suggested that he would deliver on the accusations connecting the adjudicated rapist to the ugly goings-on in Epstein-land. A claim he has reiterated as part of the ongoing feud between boys with too much money and not enough self-restraint. 

Meanwhile, those files and lists seem to have gotten misplaced at the Department of Justice. There's nothing to see here, move along. Nothing but a convicted felon hiding his tracks with the aid of a system rigged in his favor. 

But I will leave you with this: Given the way the former game show host has spoken of his own daughters, don't you think that's evidence enough? 

Little Victories

 As someone who periodically suffers from insomnia, I can say that I am eternally grateful for the evolution of television.

When I was a mere slip of a lad going to bed on a Sunday night, I carried with me the troubles of the world. My world, anyway. With a head full of anxietiy about what might happen the following day at school, I would often lay in my bed, alternately staring at the ceiling of my room or closing my eyes tight to force sleep to come. Neither of these strategies worked very effectively. 

Then there was the "sleep" function the clock radio at my bedside provided. Twisting that nob to the left allowed me to have sixty minutes of soothing music from a distant station fill my room with distraction. For fifty-nine minutes. Fifty eight minutes. I was far too clever to let the passage of time go unnoticed and if I was still awake as that switch went off I knew that I had just lost another hour long battle with the voices in my head. 

That's when I called my parents. At the time this seemed like a reasonable request. Hollering from my room down the hall from theirs, my expectation was that one of them would hear my plaintive cries and come swiftly to my rescue. It was their job to bring me calm reassurance that would help me settle into dreamland. But not without listening to a flurry of my circular arguments for why I would never fall asleep again. Sometimes it only took one of these mildly exasperated visits from my father, who apparently felt responsible or was not as good at rock, paper, scissors as my mother. If I pushed it past a second or third intervention, I knew I was going to be on my own. 

What I hadn't reckoned was that I had fallen asleep every night for more than a decade, albeit with some difficulty, but I had made that transition to Dreamland eventually. It was the eventual part that continued to confound me. 

Fast forward fifty years. I continue to wrestle at times with the occasional sleepless night. I have lived through being the parent to a child who reminded me of those struggles with his own sleep challenges. Many times those visits to his bedroom would set off a similar wave of late-night agitation in my own head. Which is why I am grateful that we had a television in our room. 

No longer does the broadcasting day cease at midnight, leaving snowy static in its wake. Now there are hundreds of channels to wash over me as I attempt to calm my brain into rest. I do this without the sound turned on, so as not to wake my wife who has her own stirrings to consider. I lay there, flipping about the channels until I find something that takes me away from the anxious moments before dawn. Something without a plot to distract me, or one with a familiar story that allows me to get lost in the tide that will lead me to rest. Infomercials will also do, in a pinch. 

In my memory, I can hear my father's tired voice reminding me of the inevitability of sleep. I try and let go of the problems of the day and those waiting just over the horizon. At some point, I feel my head sink further into my pillow as my thumb pushes the power button on the remote control. I have done it again. 

Little victories. 

Whither Weather

 Sometimes when you arrive here at Entropical Paradise, I give you a body count. Mass casualty events are something, sadly, to which I feel drawn. People die every day, after all. Accidents, old age, disease. There are a myriad of ways to meet one's maker, but the ones that end up feeling unjust are the ones that move me to speak my mind. 

This wasn't a crazed lone gunman acting alone with a manifesto on his laptop. This one was what some might refer to as "an act of god." If your suggestion is that God, or a god has a particular score to settle with the people of central Texas then I'm not sure what sort of belief system to which you are connected. 

Instead, you might join up with the real nutjobs who believe that human beings are at the heart of this weather conspiracy. Kandiss Taylor, who is running to represent Georgia in the House of Representatives, posted on the outlet formerly known as Twitter last Saturday: “Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake.” This was her response to torrential rains and flooding in Kerr County, Texas that took the lives of more than eighty people. Dozens more were killed by storms in neighboring counties. What does Ms. Taylor believe? “This isn’t just ‘climate change.’ It’s cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation. If fake weather causes real tragedy, that’s murder. Pray. Prepare. Question the narrative.”

Thank, Kandiss, but I'll be over here questioning something else. 

Meanwhile, Georgia seems to be a hotbed for weather conspriacy. You might remember Large Marge and the Space Lasers from way back in 2018. That was one of the bells she clanged to become a member of the House of Representatives way back then. Not to be outdone by the new shining light of the Republican Party in Ms. Kandiss, Marjorie Taylor Greene Is introducing a bill that will track "weather modification." Florida, feel free to make your joke here, has already passed state legislation prohibiting anybody messing with the weather of the Sunshine State. 

Would it make any kind of difference to take a half-step back from this problem and say that I agree with the ladies from Georgia? Human beings can and have affected the weather patterns, causing more severe storms and drought. It's a little piece of science called "climate change," and it isn't practice on some island lab by Democrats with machinery invented to disrupt "real weather." The flood in Texas are brought to you by more than a century of industrial gunk, to use a scientific word, that has resulted in an atmoshpere that has warmed to a point of being capable of carrying more moisture and therefore creating meteorological nightmares like the one in Central Texas. 

It's not fake. It's completely real. And it's our fault. Everyone's. Republicans and Democrats. Christians, Jews and Muslims. We are in this together. So go ahead and make climate change illegal. 

I dare you. 

Social Studies

 It is difficult to feel bad for Elongated Mush. He spent three hundred million dollars on electing a convicted felon and all he got was that "Dark Maga Hat." Well, the hat and he briefly gained access to every American's personal data. Now that he's on the outs with the Dear Leader, he'll have to go back to blowing up rockets and trying to sell them fancy electric cars that nobody wants. Which will probably be fine, unless Dear Leader follows through on his threats to deport him. 

The late, great Martin Mull once suggested that, "Hollywood is like high school with money." If this is true, taking this notion and stretching it to fit over the thunderdome called Washington D.C. might suggest that our nation's capital is like Ridgemont High. This might explain the extreme cliquishness and the seemingly impossible depravity that goes on during the business of trying to run a country. Leaving aside for a moment the plight of the poor little rich boy who couldn't buy himself a president, we find Thomas Massie and Brian Fitzpatrick.  If you don't recognize those names, they should be remembered as the two Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted against the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill." Laura Loomer, the crazy girl who would really like to be the First Mistress was quick to throw out the threat: “Good luck against President Trump’s wrath and his current $1.4 billion 2026 war chest,” she posted without any sense of irony on the site formerly known as Twitter. 

And good luck getting a date to the prom. 

Even though the bill passed and was signed into law, these two gentlemen will most likely lose their jobs for voting the way they felt their constituents would want them to. That's the "representative" part. Unfortunately that is not how things are getting done in Washington D.C. these days. The big fat version of James Spader in Pretty In Pink runs things and he won't have anyone messing up his version of the way things would be. 

Especially not public opinion. Two thirds of those polled had an unfavorable view of the "BBB," in spite of all the lies and obfuscation surrounding its contents. 

All of which makes you think that maybe it's a time for a change in Washington. Which is exactly what (checks notes) a certain South African billionaire is suggesting. Yes, Elongated Mush is now suggesting that he will spend his next hundred million dollars creating a new party. His newly minted "America Party" is his answer to the bully who kicked him to the curb. So, will it be the pasty nerd with exploding rockets or the adjudicated rapist? The Democrats had better find their own billionaire sociopath to front their party if they want to keep up. 

Bumpy Ride

 Fourteen years ago, on the Fourth of July, my family and I were visiting Washington D.C. In a rare outburst of Clark Griswold type energy, I gathered my wife and son and pushed them out into the heat and humidity of an east coast summer where we went on a forced march to the National Archives, where it was my hope that we would all have a chance to stand in front of The Declaration of Independence. On the Fourth of July. I confess that at certain moments throughout this journey I doubted my own commitment to our quest. Public transportation and our human frailties took their toll, but eventually after finding the end of the line and living through the time it took to finally take our place in full view of the one and only. For just a minute or two, I felt humbled. That piece of paper, encased in glass, was what started all this fuss in the first place. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

And that was without the aid of Chatgpt. 

This past Fourth of July I found myself wondering how those ideals had become so diffused. All men are created equal? Unalienable rights? The pursuit of Happiness? I have spent great chunks of each day over the past month taking in video accounts of masked agents who refuse to identify themselves shoving men, women and children into unmarked vehicles without any warrants or due process. Just relentless brutality against anyone and everyone who gets in their way. Meanwhile, in some of those same halls that my family and I toured fourteen years ago, the rich were given still more riches while those in need of food and health care were cut off from that promise of life and liberty. 

You can forget about the Happiness. 

I recalled a summer some forty years ago when the words of Bruce Springsteen pushed me into some of my first adult commitment to world politics. I joined Amnesty International in the hopes that I would be able to help those "prisoners of conscience" being held in gulags and work camps around the globe. I wanted to be a part of the evolution of our world. I put my faith an trust in people I believed who would elevate our worldview. We should all have those unalienable rights. Not just an ideal. A reality. 

 I could not have imagined that four decades later I would be watching the wholesale dismantling of all those hopes and dreams. Here in America. I listened again to The Land of Hope And Dreams, and was reminded that we are still on a journey together. Because that is what America really is, and we can't let go of that dream. 

This Train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This Train
Faith will be rewarded
This Train
Hear the steel wheels singin'
This Train
Bells of freedom ringin'

Hold on tight, it's going to be a bumpy ride. 

Up Yonder

 Upon reflectin, it seems as though the life and career of Jimmy Swaggart should have given us some inkling as to the depths of depravity Americans were capable. Not Jimmy himself, mind you. He was the same husckster he was straight along, but each time he was caught with his pants down, quite literally, he was able to wriggle free and find his way back to the pulpit. That million dollar pulpit. 

Televangelism is kind of a dying art, but in its heyday, Jimmy was top of the heap. His media empire kept expanding in the 1980s to include his own broadcasting network and a Bible college that bears his name. From his humble beginnings as a gospel singer and pianist on Colonel Sam Phillips' Sun Records (yes, that Sam Phillips), Jerry found his way to the airwaves on the radio and eventually television. By 1983, two hundred fifty television stations were carrying his weekly program. 

It was somewhere around this time that he told his followers, "The Media is ruled by Satan. But yet I wonder if many Christians fully understand that." That was kind of the setup for the moment that he was caught with a prostiute and summarily defrocked by the Assemblies of God. This led to his impassioned sermon where he wept and begged for forgiveness from his Father who art in Heaven and everybody felt like that would be a wrap for Jimmy. 

It wasn't. He took his show on the road to another network and got back to preaching. For about another three years when he got pulled over by police in Indio, California for driving on the wrong side of the road. With the reverend this time was Rosemary Garcia, who had this to say: "He asked me for sex. I mean, that's why he stopped me. That's what I do. I'm a prostitute." This time, Jimmy's response was less tortured and filled with grief: "The Lord told me it's flat none of your business."

Speaking of business, Jimmy's son and later his grandson picked up the family trade, but neither one of them won a Grammy like daddy did. Of course, neither one of them managed to have the Bible college they startedd change its name to deflect unwanted publicity. 

Jimmy passed on to that next phase of his evangelical path at the age of ninety, having spent most of the past thirty years off of the public radar, no longer able to reach out and beg for money from his followers. When he went to that big revival tent in the sky, he was still worth five million dollars. 

Rosemary Garcia was not available for comment. 

Aloha, Jimmy Swaggart, cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis. 

What Stinks

 Okay. That lasted a little less than a week. I have come to realize that I am simply not strong enough to ignore the chaos that swirls around me every single day. It is one thing to avoid low-hanging fruit, but another when that fruit continues to drop into your lap and onto your head with a frequency comparable to your respiration rate. 

The former game show host is currently selling cologne. The adjudicated rapist is no stranger to the fragrance market, having Unleashed his Fight Fight Fight scent back in December, and before that in 2004 he had a bottle of stink called Donald Trump The Fragrence on the market. The most recent addition to this line is called Victory 45-47, and it comes in a gold bottle that shaped like an action figure of the twice-impeached convicted felon. Since his daily activity is best described as stomping about and yelling at people, you're not getting a lot of "action" here. 

Which brings me to the point I feel I need to make. The "president" has made a point of how he is willing to forego his salary for ignoring the rule of law and thumbing his nose at the Constitution. That gig is just the front for his continued stream of side-hustles that circle around his stock in a company cleverly named Trump Media. All those forays into selling sneakers and phones, always with his predilection toward gold-plating things, are what he does to keep his other empire alive while he does his best to pad his nest in the Oval Office. If you believe that a sitting American President needs to take time out of his busy day to sell perfume, then maybe you haven't been keeping track of current events. 

And, if you are so inclined, you can feel free to take this opportunity to imagine what this eau de toilette smells like. I would imagine something along the lines of the cushion of the seat on his golf cart after nine holes. Or maybe the faint whiff of bathroom trouble. Perhaps it''s reminiscent of the smell of lubricant that should have been used to grease the treads of the tanks in his birthday parade. Some might suggest that they smell like napalm in the morning, which given the Dear Leader's fascination with bombs might make sense. 

Now I would like to insert my own feelings about cologne in general. I am not a fan. This additional aroma layered on top of our human stink is there to distract and confuse us. Some people are good at wearing just a hint of something to catch our olfactory senses off guard. I am not guessing that is what your average MAGAt will be doing with this junk, slathering it on in hopes of smelling like their cult leader. 

You can't cover up stupid. 

This Land

 This land is your land. 

This land is my land. 

From California to the New York Island. 

Thanks to Amerigo Vespucci, that is. If you don't have an encyclopedic memory for such things, Mister Vespucci was the guy who correctly pointed out that Christopher Columbus had not managed to sail around the world to Asia, but had run into a completely different continent. For his navigational cleverness, folks back then started calling this new place Vespucciland. Finding that is didn't have quite the ring they were hoping for, they went with his first name, anglicized to "America." He got two continents. His buddy Chris eventually got a city in Ohio named for him.

Then, for a couple hundred years things stayed pretty quiet. Back then it was a whole lot easier to "discover" places than to commit to actually living there. Probably the one star ratings from the folks in Roanoke just before they all disappeared had something to do with that. As it turns out, the best way to get folks to move to a new country is to chase them out of the places where they had overstayed their welcome. I'm looking at you, William Bradford. 

Suddenly, Amerigoville was open for business. Which came as a bit of a shock to the people who had been inhabiting hills and valleys for centuries prior, but heck, why not help the new kids out? Have a big dinner and invite everyone? A couple years later, another big party was held, but there were mostly white faces sitting around that table. 

And so it went for the next hundred years or so until the east coast of this "America" place was full up. So full in fact that rather than sending boats back with troublemakers to England and so forth, it was decided that we would start pushing west instead, "discovering" all kinds of strange new worlds and new civilizations to disrupt and overwhelm. We said goodbye to the King and set about making ourselves a brand new country. 

From the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters. 

And it's about there that most renditions of Woody Guthrie's song stop. They don't go on to that next verse: 

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
Sign was painted, said, "Private Property"
But on the back side, it didn't say nothing
This land was made for you and me

So here we are, nearly two hundred fifty years after Cornwallis handed his sword to George Washington and said, "You're a nation." and we're trying so very hard to make ourselves out to be "great." Again. And just how do we go about doing this? By rounding up immigrants who helped make this land and sending them somewhere else. This land was made for them every bit as much as it was made for you and me. That's what the voice was "a-sounding." You and me. 

Us. 

Get it? 

Strategy

 Seventy percent of the world's electric vehicles are made in one country. These cars "have far superior in-vehicle technology. Huawei and Xiaomi are in every car," Ford's CEO Jim Farley said. "You get in, you don't have to pair your phone. Automatically, your whole digital life is mirrored in the car."

"Beyond that, their cost, their quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West," added Farley. 

Wait a second. "In the West." This country that he's talking about, could it be the United States?

In a word, "no." In some more words, I have to admit that this post is not precisely the happy news promised earlier this week, but rather a side trip down "Warning Street." Ford's CEO has made several visits to China over the past several months and has returned "humbled," to use his word

"I don't like talking about the competition so much, but I drive the Xiaomi," Farley said of the Xiaomi Speed Ultra 7. The SU7 is Xiaomi's maiden electric vehicle. "We flew one from Shanghai to Chicago, and I've been driving it for six months now, and I don't want to give it up." For those of you unfamiliar, Xiaomi is the world's second largest producer of cellular telephones and a consumer electronics company based in Beijing. 

And they make cars. Electric cars. The retail price for the newest version of their "luxury high-performance SUV" is less than the Tesla Model Y. 

This is good news for a planet that needs more electric cars. It does seem a little confounding since Ford recently announced that they were shifting their focus away from all-electric vehicles and back to hybrid versions of those same cars, primarily SUVs. This announcement came from the Ford's CFO, John Lawler. Which made me wonder if John and Jim ever sit down and discuss business. 

The car business. The future is out there. It just may not be found in America. 

Stirrings

 It has not been a good summer for sleep. As I have mentioned here recently, I have had a head full of trouble and I suppose I only have myself to blame for the poor sleep hygiene. 

Unless I want to blame the cat. 

The feline with whom I live has a rather demanding schedule that includes a great many naps throughout the day. I tend not to notice these when I am working because I am working. Not checking in on his lengthy lolls about on the couch. Our bed. In the spot of sun in the back room. Back to the couch again. Onto the table that looks out on the front yard. He's getting plenty of rest. I know this because I am witness to it while I make my way through this "vacation." 

When he's awake and moderately alert, he will mince about the house, vocalizing his moderate displeasure with the lack of attention he is receiving. My wife and I alternate replies to his plaintive cries. She prefers to speak to him in her native tongue. I choose to greet him in his own vernacular. This does not have the effect of confusing or calming him. He seems to believe that we are carrying on a conversation. 

Which brings us to those late nights and early mornings, when he feels completely comfortable entering our room and shouting at the top of his lungs. It would seem that he is expressing his deep and abiding concern that we have forgotten about him. Not that we should be attending to his needs and feed at four in the morning. During the school year I can shut out his lamentations until six, when my day begins and there is some inkling that we are sharing breakfast. Have a good day at work, he murmurs before loping off to the bedroom to curl up on  my side of the bed. The space I have left empty for him to begin a had day's nap. 

But now it's summer, and I have this absurd notion that I should be able to catch up on the rest that I have missed. Couple this nocturnal predilection with my own inability to nap myself and we end up with loose ends of a sleep cycle. My recent bouts with insomnia have not helped me manage any better, and the cat seems pleasantly amused by my late-night ramblings. Whatcha doin'? Are we going to eat now? Sounds great! He has a running commentary for a time that I wish was only a dream. 

This too, we are told, shall pass. Soon enough the daily rituals will return to normal. Whatever that is. I suppose it has something to do with a cat sitting on my chest and staring at me, waiting none too patiently for me to use my opposable thumbs to open that new can of cat food. 

Sunshine!

 In keeping with my vision of a less-snarky Entropical Paadise, I would like to put forth the news of this bit of legislation coming from our friends in the Sunshine State.

Yes, I know this puts me at odds with so much of what goes on down in that pendulous appendage to the lower forty-eight, but when something good happens, I feel it bears mentioning. 

At least that's what I am trying to do. 

In a flurry of new Florida State laws set to go into effect over the coming year the lawmakers and governor have made many choices. I will steer away from some of those with which I wholeheartedly disagree, I will focus on the happy news: An education package that includes a ban on cellphone use by students during school hours. Once upon a time I am sure that visionaries imagined that encouraged a trend toward school kids having their own personal research devices were thrilled at the prospect of having a room full of Internet access. The immediate response of children with access to Al Gore's Internet was not to collect bookmarks to educational websites and content. They were in it for the YouTube. And the TikTok. And the games. Not unlike their adult counterparts. Most of all, they wanted to text each other. Not with the answers to this week's Algebra homework, but with the latest update on the happenings in the bathroom. 

So, I'm okay with that portion of the legislative agenda in Florida. The other educational themed codicil that allows those students who participate in marching band to receive physical education or performing arts credit. As a recovering member of the Boulder High School Marching Panthers, class of 1980, I might have graduated a semester early for all the time I spent hanging around in the band room. 

Okay. Then there was a whole lot of other mess much more in line with what we expect to come from Ron DeSantis and his lawmaking pals. But I'm not going into it now because I'm honorbound to try and shine a light on the good things. Even if they are very hard to find among the DeSantis Detritus.