Fractally Speaking

I have a deep and abiding respect for physics. You can see it in the title of this blog: Entropical Paradise. Not just a clever play on words, but a solid description of the world in which we live. Things continue to move from an ordered state to a less ordered state seemingly without fail. You could tell yourself that you're staying on top of chaos by sweeping up on a regular basis, but those dustpans full of debris have to go somewhere, and the bristles on your broom eventually wear down until you need to get a new one. And what do you do with the old one? 

More debris. 

There was a time when I was more of a fan of the world breaking down. I found myself rooting on the gradual breakdown of our place in the galaxy. I was amused by the idea that we might somehow slow the disintegration of our planet by conserving or taking care of the nice things we have. In the 1980s, hedonism seemed to have reached some sort of logical extreme, and the notion that the Berlin Wall came tumbling down for freedom was tempered by the need for free enterprise. It was the poet and philosopher Notorious BIG who suggested, "mo' money, mo' problems." Mo' anything means mo' problems. 

We knew about global warming. We knew about polluting the land, the sky, the water. America led the charge: Go big or go home! 

Except we were home. Which might explain all these vain efforts by billionaires to flee our third rock from the sun in hopes that we could find another rock to abuse for a few thousand years. 

Now that I am a parent with a sense of just how badly I have messed up the earth for my son to take it on the next leg of our tour of expiration, I feel bad about every plastic bag I wasted. I wish that I would have considered mortality more fully when it still seemed hypothetical. Like the fact that we are running out of helium. Humans consume it far faster than it can be made. When I think about all the balloons that I inhaled only to make my voice rise momentarily while that precious gas disappeared into space, it gives me pause. It makes all that terror of Mylar balloons seem a little ridiculous since soon there won't be anything to put inside of them.

And someday I expect that I will have a moment left to apologize to my grandchildren and their friends as they sit around their birthday table stacked high with Soylent Green wafers and decorated with worn out brooms. Sorry kids, I'm the reason you can't have nice things. 

Hidden From View

 I have it on very good authority that one cannot cause a pot of water to boil by staring at it. 

I re-learned this immtable fact, save for the stray Kryptonian wisegu.y who might beg to differ, by sitting in front of a screen for several hours last Friday night, watching a Livestream of a crew of workers assemble a scaffold. Along with several hundred thousand others, I started at my computer screen in hopes of seeing something more: The removal of the Orange Worst's name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 

Crowds began to arrive before noon on June 12 at the actual site where the defenestration of the MAGAt in chief was taking place. Onlookers were initially quiet, but as the deadline of midnight on the east coast approached, those who had committed to be there when the defacement of a national landmark was eradicated grew more unruly. The expectation that the court order that had mandated the handful of words to be physically stricken from the record approached and then passed. 

I sat at my desk as I watched the minutes tick by. A rainstorm blew through Washington DC, hampering the efforts of the workers for a spell, then they returned to their task. Surely but slowly. It became increasingly apparent that there was another force beside a court order and weather involved. There was this matter of waiting for the paperwork to be completely crossed and dotted with no room for last minute appeals. 

Shortly after midnight arrived, the crew began to drape their very impressive scaffold with an equally impressive white and blue tarp. Not American Flag Blue as some might have expected, but a screen to keep the crowd from seeing what was inevitably going to take place. 

It was at this point, approaching eleven o'clock in my neighborhood, that I took my leave of the situation. The schadenfreude I was hoping to experience would have to wait. The minor exultation I might have enjoyed would have to be of the more vicarious sort. The next morning, I reflected on the mild assurance that there are still limits to the authority of the Orange Worst. Even if those limits need to be shielded by a tarp. 

Proof

 As I sat in my seat enjoying the storytelling talents of Mister Steven Spielberg, I found myself once again struck by how many movies you can cram into one. Not unlike my experience watching Project Hail Mary back in March, I was struck by just how many hours I have spent in darkened movie theaters and in front of a television set staring at other people's notions about what lies out there in the vastness of space. 

There's a lot of it. Space, don't you know. 

It's been nearly thirty years since this same guy, Steven Spielberg, had me transfixed with a story of a visit from visitors outside our solar system. That was the first time that I considered the possibility that extraterrestrials might not be looking to vaporize us, or worse yet, to lecture us like Klaatu in The Day The Earth Stood Still. We had all just better wise up and start getting along or Gort would come back and vaporize the lot of us. Which is what those nasty aliens did on Independence Day, with little or no provocation. Maybe that was just pent up aggression left over from the first time they were able to catch reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show. You know, like when the space guys caught Hitler's first televised speech in Contact. Who'da guessed that the space guys were antifa? 

When I was much younger, I read local newspaper accounts of cattle mutilations, and the potential for them to be committed by little green men or great hulking purple monsters was never fully discounted by the reportage I could find. What would happen as soon as the otherworldly travelers got tired of their bovine experiments and decided to move on to more complex organisms? I had seen It Came From Outer Space by then and I had hope that whatever shape they came from that aliens were maybe just misunderstood, frightened and just trying to get home. 

Spielberg gave us one of those. ET just needed to phone home. And just like Roy Neary, the government wasn't going to let anyone here on Earth get in the way of us figuring out exactly what these voyagers were after. Were they here to enslave us? To make room for the galactic throughway? 

I confess that I tried to take in some of the recently released UFO files. I find it patently ridiculous to believe that "the truth is out there" when it's coming from the Trumpreich. Why not hand over the Epstein Files while you're at it? 

Someday, maybe Steven Spielberg will direct a movie about it. I'll believe it when I see it. 

Summer Reruns

 Flag day. This may or may not be Sheldon Cooper's favorite holiday. 

It just so happens to fall on the same day that some narcissistic twit celebrates his crawling out into the light. I hesitate to refer to this as a "birthday," but will entertain references to spawning or being disgorged in some way or another. I would like to rise above the need to wish this convicted felon anything but the most standard returns of the day. I have plenty of issues with what he is and the things he does and his capacity for making everything he touches turn to the sludge previously referenced from whence he crawled. A happy birthday would be a stretch, but I do hope that he is aware of just how much life goes on in spite and without him.

Flag day. Which causes me to wince remembering the image of this adjudicated rapist fondling the Stars and Stripes. Is his overt attraction to a piece of fabric a window into his soul? Every year on is birthday there were flags flying everywhere, all for the spoiled little prince. And certainly his ability to show interest or affection for other things and people is certainly suspect, so maybe this makes some sort of horrible sense. 

This summer will be full of celebration. World Cup. The Sesquicentennial of the United States. Prime Days. All of these events will no doubt be sullied by the continued existence of the man with the sludgy touch. The New York Knicks were on a thirteen game winning streak in the NBA playoffs. Then the Orange Worst decided to take a nap at Madison Square Garden during game three of the Finals and whaddya know? Knicks lose. 

How about last summer when he sat in the nearly empty grandstand watching squeaky tanks roll by while the rest of the country took to the streets to remind ourselves that we are a country without a king. 

So this year, he didn't bother to make any pretense. It's really all about him, mostly because that noise that you hear is not squeaking tanks this time but the wheels on his clown car coming off. Yes, sports fans, the winner of the one and only FIFA peace prize spent the weeks leading up to the World Cup bombing one of the competing nations. 

Change cannot happen fast enough for some of us. Because this summer will sadly still be all about him. 

I want our flag back. 

Summer Camp

 It is quite possible that what with all this fuss about war and inflation and the petulant slob inviting himself to basketball games to nap that you may have missed the continuing saga of ICE detention centers. 

You remember ICE, don't you? They are the ones who got their boss fired because they couldn't make the excuses for killing American citizens stick? The masked goons who terrorized the streets of Minneapolis, Portland, and Los Angeles over the past year, just to name a few of the municipalities that experienced the occupational force of the poorly trained posse of Stephen Miller's schock troops. 

Perhaps you thought that since they spent a couple months without being paid for that their mission had been blunted in some way. Maybe they got tired of abusing the rights of Americans and went back to playing Superman on TV or simply quit after their puppy-killing boss was let go.

Nope. 

They're still out there, trampling on the Constitution. A recently released report from theNo  Government Accountability Office outlined a myriad of problems and abuses found in the largest Camp East Montana, oddly located in Texas. Three detainees have died there in the past six months, and in one case the evidence regarding the death of a fifty-five year old Cuban migrant who was being held down by ICE goons went missing. Justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti has been painfully slow, but at least there were witnesses and cell phone video to contradict the "official narratives" put out by the goons. 

Inside Camp East Montana, this kind of oversight has been tough to come by. Construction of the tent city was rushed by all accounts while contractors made millions without ever providing safe and sanitary facilities for the detainees. One such error in oversight had inmates filling out a written questionnaire to check for tuberculosis, rather than an actual medical test. This resulted in an outbreak because someone carrying the infection into the general population. No effort was made to accommodate those in wheelchairs in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which I assume can only have happened because in the goons' accounting these were not Americans, wheelchairs or not.

So, you can rest assured that while the rest of the country continues to fall apart, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is doing everything they can to uphold the pathetic standard set by their convicted felon of a boss. 

Sleep tight, America.

What's News?

 A former reality TV villain running as a Republican is not news. The fact that this same "Republican" chose to run for mayor of one of the most predominantly Democratic strongholds in the country and did not win is not news. 

Additionally, another former reality TV villain who managed to get elected twice to the highest office in the land chose to show his face back in his former home town after making ugly noises as he fled for safer waters in south Florida got lustily booed by fans of his former home town's basketball franchise is not news. Nor is the fact that he fell asleep while "watching" the game that had been specially secured for him to find a seat while lifetime fans of that team had been shut out is not news. 

Here is some news: About a week ago after the party I hosted for the staff of my school, I noticed that the ice maker on our refrigerator had stopped working. As is my custom I went straight to YouTube to see if there was a troubleshooting video that would help me sort out this problem. 

There was.

This is not news.

I followed the directions carefully and fiddled with the control panel inside the door of my very fancy fridge. Lights blinked and beeps were heard, but I could not get the ice maker to start back up. Somehow I had managed to lock up the functions of my refrigerator to the point where nothing I did made any difference. I even went to far as to take the troubleshooter's suggestion of unplugging the appliance, waiting five minutes and then starting fresh. I tried this twice and got the same parade of lights with no change in function. At this point I surrendered. I scheduled an appointment with a technician to service my machine. 

This is not the news, but it does qualify as a revelation, of sorts. 

So I waited. 

A whole week. This is not the news, but it does give you a sense of how the tension built for me. In the meantime, our ice maker decided to start working again. The lights inside on the control panel: no change.

The night before the scheduled appointment, I did not sleep. I dreamed of all the ways that this could go wrong, from waiting for the tech in the middle of the street outside in the rain to discovering the expense of the replacement of that one sticky button. 

When the tech finally arrived, he apologized for making us wait until almost noon for him to show. I ushered him into the kitchen and introduced him to the refrigerator, along with a short dissertation on all the attempts I had made to revive it. He thanked me and opened the door where the control panel sat there, all lit up. 

I left hi to his work. 

Moments later, I heard the tech call, "You're not going to like this." I hastend back into the kitchen, fearing my dreams had come true. He pointed to the control panel. "All fixed," he announced. 

This is not the news, but we're getting there. 

I leaned in, surprised and embarrassed. "What did you do?"

He showed me the button combination that I was sure that I had tried a number of times before giving up. His magic touch had returned our appliance to normal function. 

I thanked him profusely. Now here comes the news: He didn't charge me. Normally a house call would run at least one hundred eighty dollars, but he didn't feel like he could do that to me. We agreed that if the company called that I could say that he talked me through the fix over the phone and there would be no charge. 

No charge.

That's the news. 

If this guy ever runs for office, he's got my vote. 

Putting Up Streamers

 I do remember the Bicentennial of the United States. I was old enough to enjoy all the red white and blue of it while maintaining a certain degree of cynical skepticism about it. 

Back in 1976, our country was still licking its collective wounds brought on by a war in Vietnam and the searing revelations of Watergate. We were limping toward what we assumed would be better days, but not without reservation. 

Still, there were lots of parties. Lots of ways to celebrate. There was a quiet understanding that we could argue with each other after the big barbecue, but the summer of 1976 was going to be a special one. 

Now, fifty years later, we find ourselves on the brink of another great celebration, but this one feels more like the kind where you get fifty percent off that mattress you've been looking at. Not the kind of feel-good experience where we can set aside our differences for a few days and take a look at all those crazy new quarters. 

The summer of 2026 finds us in the middle of a very unpopular war. The corruption in the White House is laid bare just about every single day, with hourly reminders of just how awful things have become since we last gathered together to look at all those crazy new quarters. The spectacle that might have been hosting the World Cup soccer extravaganza has been dulled by the stream of racist and xenophobic attempts to keep the world from coming and sharing their cup with us. The outdoor concert on the mall has been turned into your hateful uncle's vision of how such and experience "should be." 

This is no longer a celebration for the land of the brave and the home of the free. This has turned into an exercise in self satisfaction and self aggrandizement for one man. Who cares if no one else wants to see any of this? Who cares if no one can afford a plane ticket much less a tank of gas to travel across this great land of ours to take any of it in. 

We are stuck in the Orange Worst's vision of America with nearly constant reminders of just how far away we have drifted from the ideals we once held dear. Trapped like rats on a sinking ship, we can only hope that we can scare off all the billionaires who have stolen the American Dream and take back our country and run it like the good Democratic rats we know we can be. 

Who's Got The Button?

 Do as I say, not as I do. 

I can tell you as both a parent and a teacher how empty this guidance is. 

For me, this shows up most often as I find myself staring at my phone while I stroll across the playground. This behavior is verboten among my young charges, in spite of the fact that we live in a world where cellular devices are as prevalent as kickballs. They're everywhere.

But I am busy checking my emails and texts, making sure that all communication is going on as it should. These young people with cerebral cortexes that are still developing cannot begin to understand how important my phone is to me. Compared to theirs. 

Moments like these are the ones that make me reflect on our country's insistence that no other countries acquire atomic weapons. Certainly the world becomes exponentially more dangerous each time another nation becomes the proud owner of a nuclear device. 

But who are the real threats here? The fledgling territories who are seeking to protect themselves through the threat of having bombs that will destroy their enemies in a much larger capacity, or the one country that has used such weapons in war already. 

Twice. 

There was some wild talk a while back about limiting our own nuclear stockpile. That turned out to be mostly talk. The United States sits on an estimated five thousand nuclear warheads, some of them actively targeted while others lay in wait. Another group is scheduled to be dismantled. We have so many atomic bombs we hardly know what to do with them. 

Just don't let us catch any of those kids fiddling with plutonium or they'll be grounded. Or bombed back into the stone age. 

Which crazy authoritarian regime do you feel comfortable having their finger on the button? 

If You Build It, They Will Come

 When I was born, there was already a professional football team in the area for which I could root. I grew up rooting for the Denver Broncos because they were literally the only game in town. I lived through more than my share of ups and downs with this franchise. By the time they reached their first Super Bowl, I was seventeen years old. 

The Denver Broncos did not win that Super Bowl. Through the 1980s, they struggled to remain relevant and flirted with success, appearing in three more championship games before finally coming out on the winning end of things. 

By this point, I was no longer a resident of the Denver Metro Area. I had moved to Oakland, California where I wore my orange and blue with pride and a little bit of fear in the heart of Raiders Country. Just for good measure, the Denver Broncos went ahead and won a second Super Bowl the very next year. I felt pretty smug about having a hometown team with those credentials. 

If you've spent any time poking around here, you've probably heard this song before. Again and again. But what struck me this week was the news that the Chicago Bears were moving ahead with plans to relocate their team to Hammond, Indiana. For perspective's sake, the Chicago Football Bears were founded in September 1920. For more than one hundred years, "da Bears" have been a cornerstone of what we understand as the National Football League. Those first couple of years, they played their games in Decatur, Illinois, so they weren't exactly Chicago Bears. In 1922, they moved to Wrigley Field to play their home games on the same grass where their ursine baseball counterparts on the North Side played. 

That's where you would find them, most autumn Sundays since. Until they move to another state. 

I have a great deal of sympathy for fan bases that lose their sports teams to new locales. Oakland has a somewhat tragic track record of misplacing their football, basketball and baseball teams. The Raiders have left Oakland twice, once for Los Angeles, and once again for Las Vegas. There are still plenty of folks hanging on desperately to their silver and black gear with the notion that the team somehow owes them something. Or they owe the team something. 

Like loyalty? 

When the 2026-27 NFL season starts, the Chicago Bears will still be the Chicago Bears. The Denver Broncos will still the Denver Broncos. The San Francisco Forty-Niners play in Santa Clara. The Baltimore Colts now play in Indianapolis. The Cleveland Browns now play in Baltimore with a new mascot: The Ravens. St. Louis had the Cardinals but gave them up to Arizona. Then St. Louis had the Rams, but they gave them back to Los Angeles. Houston has their Texans, but they probably don't notice that the Tennessee Titans bear more than a passing resemblance to what used to be the Houston Oilers. 

There is no crying in baseball, according to the guy who used to sell hot dogs at Oakland A's games. But I'm guessing a few tears will be shed in Chicago. 

Palace Revolution

 Where are the Epstein Files?

Where is the peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia?

Where is the replacement for the Affordable Care Act?

Where is that cap on credit card interest rates?

Where are those tariff rebate checks?

Where is all that affordable housing?

Where is the reduction to the country's deficit? 

Instead of those things, we've been given a flurry of construction projects designed not to improve any of the infrastructure of this country, but to pad and glorify the boor who needs constant validation to prop up his fragile ego. We have another installment of war in the Middle East. We have the repeal of the Voting Rights Act. We have a real estate agent in charge of National Intelligence. 

Seventy-seven million Americans voted for a convicted felon to be their "president," to end the war in Ukraine in twenty-four hours and to Make America Great Again. They bought the red hats. They drank the Kool-Aid. Now they are waking up and discovering just like the Whos down in Whoville that no Christmas is coming. The Grinch has stolen Democracy, and even if they gather together hand in hand and sing along with Lee Greenwood at the top of their lungs, they aren't going to get what they were promised. 

Instead we get a daily dose of social media rants and threats. We get more footage of the former game show host falling asleep during his own meetings shortly before he wakes up long enough to berate a female reporter or two. 

We'll keep reading about those voters who cast their ballot for damaged goods in 2024 who now regret their decision, but that ship has sailed. If we want our Democracy back, we're going to have to take it back. 

Hey, think the time is right
For a palace revolution
'Cause where I live the game to play
Is compromise solution

The Mass Of Media

 I am being asked to boycott the Columbia Broadcasting System and all its various media tentacles. This would mean that I would no longer be availed the opportunity to take in the pithy left-wing observations of Jon Stewart and those nutty kids from South Park. This is a conundrum for me since these voices are fundamental to the ongoing fermentation of my own particular world view. 

What message would eliminating these viewing choices from my menu? 

I suppose I would be saying that I do not approve of the corporate maneuvers that brought CBS and its aforementioned tentacles to this decidedly right-leaning position in the world. The cancellation of Stephen Colbert's Late Show is perhaps the most visible signpost on this road to ruin. The powers that be signaled the elimination of a thirty-three year late night television institution as "purely financial," but since that decision was made fast on the heels of Mister Colbert pointing out that his new corporate nannies had paid what amounted to a "big fat bribe" of sixteen million dollars to the big fat Orange Worst so they would be allowed to go ahead with their big fat merger, maybe there was some triggering. 

My bedtime has become a pretty standard nine thirty on weeknights, with the very rare exceptions for Bruce Springsteen concerts. The idea that I would be watching any of these programs live is a pretty amusing stretch. This includes the NFL broadcasts of my favorite team which can often be found on CBS, which I tend not to stare at not because they come on past my bedtime but rather because of my own ridiculous superstitions about fan rays. 

So what would I be missing? 

The relative freedom I tend to enjoy with all that content out there. Larry and David Ellison, the new father and son behind the controls of the Paramount Skydance Corporation have quite a laundry list of an Empire: Nickelodeon, Showtime, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, and the aforementioned CBS. Oh, and then there's the soon-to-be-finalized merger with Warner Brothers which will have the still further antagonizing effect of putting John Oliver and his wilderness voice crying out from under this seemingly endless corporate umbrella. 

No Loony Toons? No Turner Classic Movies? Will CNN be put through the same right-wing meat grinder that CBS News and Sixty Minutes has been? It makes the mighty Disney-ABC-ESPN empire look quaint by comparison. 

In the interest of transparency, I should let you know that Blogger, the platform upon which I mount the daily rant, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Google and has been since before I set up shop here. Google owns FitBit and Nest and YouTube and maybe even the phone upon which you are reading this. They are the reason that you get all those clever suggestions for gifts and services that you don't even remembering searching for. They are one of the leading purveyors of AI. 

It's only a matter of time before you all will have to be boycotting me. 

Last Bell

 After a week with sporadic meetings and check-ins with school, I have reached the point in my career that my wife has observed is my "last summer vacation." 

This hits harder than I thought it might, considering I set this Wile E Coyote process of retirement in motion nearly two years ago, and I am still a year away from making it in any way official. There is a part of it that I recognize in that I have always started off June with a certain amount of anxiety. How can I possibly fit all the fun and relaxation that I need into two short months? The sound of a ticking clock is hard to ignore, and I wonder if I will ever fully silence it.

I am used to answering the bell. One of my jobs at school is to stand out on the playground on most recesses and remind kids that playtime is over and it's time to line up. In this way I am the de facto bell. Will I be able to find my own snooze button? 

At one of the meetings I attended over the past week, I had the opportunity to introduce myself to a few of my fellow educators. We were asked by the moderator to share our school site and years of experience in the classroom, and when it was my turn, I told my colleagues that I would be starting my thirtieth year. Lots of appreciation for that number, and even more when I mentioned that all of this educating had taken place at one site. "This makes me something of a unicorn in this district," I confided. 

Then one of them asked me, "How much longer will you keep going?"

When I answered, "One more year," the reaction I got was resigned acceptance.

"What will you do then?" inquired the five year veteran across from me.

Then there was that flinch. The one that I am now confronting more and more. What will I do? Moving up into the mountain vacation home is out of the question since I don't own a mountain vacation home. Spending more time with the grandkids is currently a hypothetical since the grandkids exist in the same plane as that mountain vacation home. 

The easiest thing to do would be to keep rolling. Stay at my school until they cart me out on a stretcher. This does not seem that appealing, especially against the backdrop of this past year when my friend and fifth grade teacher was unable to answer the bell coming back from Christmas. Not his choice, I assure you. 

I want to have a choice. I want some life left to live. 

Now I just have to figure out what that might be.  

Comfortable

 Let's start with an easy one: Just about any sandwich someone makes for you. 

That's comfort food. 

Another seemingly universal component of this corner of the world's diet is the plate of crackers and ginger ale brought to you when you were sick in bed by your mother. 

A great deal of the food I was served by my mother qualified as comfort food. I grew up in a household where mom spent an hour or two each day in the kitchen, preparing a meal for my father, my brothers and me. It was a casserole-based menu that kept us boys running to the kitchen most nights, and I wish now that I had paid more attention to the recipes that passed by in front of us. 

I know that they were written down. I remember the tin box that served as her guide. Filled with three by five cards penned with her cramped but impeccably neat handwriting, the exact details of which were known primarily to herself and the occasional family friend who wanted to swap meal ideas for their hungry brood. 

I have never eaten a bowl of cream of mushroom soup. Not all by itself, but I know that the magic my mother performed in the kitchen on a regular basis had me ingesting gallons of the stuff through combinations of chicken and tuna and noodles and rice that made us come back for more. 

Most nights.

There were those dinners that turned out to be favored by one of my brothers, and I would patiently wade through those because I could expect with a solid degree of certainty that tomorrow night would be one of my favorites. 

Add to this steady stream of dinners the very unique and simple pleasure of buttery cinnamon toast on the occasional chilly morning. And the cakes. And the cookies. The output from my mother's kitchen would have had you believe that she was chained to the stove all day every day, but she managed to find time to escape to the living room on regular occasions to play piano and read books and magazines like they were the fire stoking the furnace of her mind. 

And occasionally, she might run across a recipe. 

And her legend grew. 

She also made a pretty amazing tuna fish sandwich. 

Art Schmart

 One of dozens of things that I find oppressively annoying is that this is the Bozo who put his face and name on a book called The Art of the Deal. 

I will not recommend this tripe to you, but I do think it's telling to take a peek at a few of the quotes from inside: “I discovered, for the first time but not the last, that politicians don’t care too much what things cost. It’s not their money.”

How about, “good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”

Perhaps, “The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.”

Or, “The worst of times often create the best opportunities to make good deals.”

Then there's, “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.”

So let's fast forward a few years, where all this business acumen will be brought to bear on the world stage, as the former game show host attempts to negotiate a settlement in the war he started in Iran. As things fell apart once again over the weekend, the dealmaker complained, “If they’re over, they’re over. If they’re not, you know, I think they took too much time. Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring.”

But what about, “Leverage: don’t make deals without it?"

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that this sad individual would not know leverage if it fell on his head and pretended to be yet another hair treatment. And to all those Bozo fans out there who opined, "That's what we need: a guy who will run this country like a business." 

Remember the ugly disdain this adjudicated rapist had for John McCain? Well, to paraphrase the former game show host himself, I like dealmakers who don't go bankrupt. Or community organizers from Chicago. 

Building Resentment

 You'll forgive me if I feel like the removal of the convicted felon's name from the Kennedy Center from the Performing Arts is a pyrrhic victory. 

In the simplest terms, the outrage that accompanied this nominal usurpation of a national treasure left me tired and hopeless. I believed that this would be the new normal, with the former game show host marking his territory in the only way that he and stray dogs do. 

It would be nice to feel some of that zeal that we all felt when those Confederate statues started coming down a decade ago, but it's more complicated than that. Like when that statue of Saddam Hussein was lassoed and yanked to the ground back in 2003. It would have been such a relief to connect that moment to the notion of "Mission Accomplished." 

But we knew this was not the case. It would be another eight years of suffering and confusion before Americans were able to extricate ourselves from this misguided excursion into the Middle East. 

Scraping the letters off the Kennedy Center that were placed there in a fit of pique by the Orange Worst will not remove the stain that it will leave behind. If the Second Trumpreich were to end tomorrow, there will still be years of recovery and plastering over the holes he has driven into our country. 

He tore down one third of the White House, leaving a hole and caution tape with nothing more than a curious set of circumstances that allowed him to legitimize his party palace when crazy people somehow got close enough to take a shot at him. Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe those crazy people wouldn't be shooting at him if he wasn't tearing holed in our country? 

So here we go: A UFC cage match will be held on the lawn of what used to be The People's House, along with the gaudy arena and lighting rigs that appear so inappropriate on what used to be a symbol of dignity and decorum. If we're lucky, maybe another judge will be able to step into the fray and be able to keep the Arc de Trump from being foisted upon us, dwarfing the monuments to real presidents whose reflecting pools have become sitcom versions of arguing with contractors. 

At the same time, he's having his attack dogs at the "Department of Justice" go after the woman he raped. 

And who is paying for all of this mess? 

I'll give you a hint: It's not King Pyrrhus. 

It's you and me. Hand me the paint remover. 

I Confess

 Confession Time:

I don't really believe that they asked only five dentists about Trident gum. I never bothered to chew it because it felt like a conspiracy of gigantic proportions. 

Not all things go better with Coke. Pepsi, for instance, does not go better with Coke. 

Happily ever after is a death sentence. Who really wants that kind of life? 

All that fuss about Malcolm Gladwell made about ten thousand hours isn't really that big a deal once you realize that adds up to just over a year. 

I forgot to water the plants last week. 

I thought the phrase was "for all intensive purposes" until I was over thirty. 

I have eaten tuna past its expiration date. On more than one occasion. 

There aren't enough days in the week.

Donating blood makes me feel superior. 

I have never blown the roof right off of this joint. Not once.

The Rolling Stones kind of creep me out. 

"Having it your way" at Burger King just feels like a lot of pressure to me. 

Don't wanna be an American Idiot. 

My sense of balance does not extend to my diet. 

If given a choice, I think I would prefer disorganized sports. 

I would be more likely to obey Stop signs if they asked nicely. 

The Big Bill

 Suppose you gave a party and nobody came?

The celebration being promoted by the convicted felon seems to be going the way of his big Birthday Parade from a year ago. Empty seats and squeaky tanks were the highlight of that particular escapade. The price tag on all this military hardware on display for the amusement of the Orange Worst cost was an estimated forty-five million dollars. 

Now, a year has passed, and the big deal we were all told about was the Great American State Fair, featuring performances by (checks notes) Morris Day, Young MC. Milli Vanilli, The Commodores, Martina McBride, and Bret Michaels. 

Oops. Pardon me. I'm just being told that this list is the performers who have, in some cases, politely declined the invitation from the adjudicated rapist's Freedom 250 cabal. Some not so politely. Which pretty much leaves MAGAt stalwart and music thief Vanilla Ice. 

Get your ticket now! I can assure you that operators are not standing by. 

Instead, stay at home and savor the irony of a concert promoted by the former game show host being connected in any way to the concept of Freedom. 

Or perhaps, as you look forward to the back yard picnic that you might possibly afford for your family this summer, you can be galled by the fact that Don "Junior" had his wedding paid for not by him or his mobster daddy, but by the local billionaires in Bermuda who are "very fond" of the second in a series of wives for little Donnie. It was a "charity" event. Like those celebrities who never have to pay for a meal even though they could buy the restaurant. These are not the folks who need free meals. 

Instead, we're sentenced to another summer of waiting for bad news to find its way to us as we look back fondly on the days when forty-five million dollars seemed like a lot of money. 

If the ballroom ever does get finished, I expect Vanilla Ice will set up a residency there. 

Get your tickets now!