Danger Dead Ahead

 I used to attempt to annoy/frighten the people with whom I was riding on most any carnival or amusement park attraction. Generally, my bit went something like this:

"Wow. Did you ever consider the potential of catastrophe on any one of these rides? How many people a day do you suppose get on one of these things without a care in the world, not knowing that there is a loose bolt or a faulty weld? Some sort of hidden defect that will eventually fail under the stress and strain of repeated use. The kind of breakdown that could only happen when a scheduled maintenance was skipped or a simple check was overlooked."

I would pause, for effect. Then after looking up toward the structure that would soon be hoisting us up and jostling us about, I would continue: "But that type of thing happens so infrequently." A sigh. "I guess that's why they call them 'accidents.'"

Inevitably this would lead to moans and groans from those trapped in the cattle chute that would eventually lead us to our destiny. I am sure that at some level this was a way that yours truly could deal with his own morbid fears and anxiety. Speaking them aloud, especially when the ride was located in one of those dodgy parking lot fairs that seemed to spring up in front of K-Marts, one step ahead of the state inspectors. 

Inspectors like the ones who uncovered maintenance issues, such as a train derailment, faulty restraint bars and guest injuries including dislocated joints and concussions. These concerns were not found in any traveling carnival, but rather at a dozen different Six Flags parks across three states. The latest "infraction" resulted in the death of forty-two-year-old Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem who fell to his death and several others were injured while riding the Goliath rollercoaster at Six Flags Over Georgia. 

Additionally, the powers that be at Magic Mountain, a Six Flags park in Valencia, California permanently closed their X2 Hypercoaster after more than a hundred riders reported brain injuries after experiencing the flips and twists and high speed turbulent turns generated by this three hundred foot tall beast.  

Whee. Sounds like fun. 

I just like a little vertigo with mine. And when the actual effects of the ride turn out to be more perilous than the ones I used to spout in line, I guess the thrillmeisters have won the day. 

Impressions

 There are days like this past Tuesday when I realize I am making the correct decision to retire from teaching. 

The image I hold in my mind of a classroom filled with expectant upturned faces, hanging on my every word is a fantasy. I should know that this is precisely the reason for the gentleman who interviewed me for the credential program to laugh when he asked why I would make a good teacher and I replied, "Because I'm good with kids."

For the record, I maintain this opinion of myself. In groups smaller than five or six, or one on one, I am able to run rings around the average five to ten year old. These are the opportunities I have begun to anticipate over the course of what we are currently describing as my final days. 

Aside from the concern of being outnumbered, I have surrendered to the idea that my own experience has yet to prepare me for the children I encounter on the mean streets of Oakland. The life they have lead in their first decade of existence makes my own childhood look like a boring fantasy. 

You want complications? How about the looming threat of ICE descending on your neighborhood? How about food insecurity that makes every morning an opportunity for moms to stop by their kids' classroom to see if there is a little leftover breakfast that they can take home with them. It's not stealing. It's survival. How about housing insecurity? We have a large percentage of our students who either leave before a year is complete or show up at our school midway through a term because they had to move. 

Had to move. 

That one sticks with me. "Will I have my own room at the new house or will I still have to share with grandma?"

I am not making this up. 

So I have tried to make a safe and sane landing place for these families. A place where they can feel comfortable if only for six hours a day. Three more if they are enrolled in the after school program. With another meal tossed in for good measure. You don't often get families to come to events like Science Fair unless you promise to provide them with pizza. 

It has not taken me thirty years to come to all these revelations. When I started, after I was able to brush off the mild derision of being laughed at for being "good with kids," I truly believed that I could make a difference. 

Now I believe that anyone who steps into my place will make a difference. It's time to get some fresh blood. Someone who is good with kids. And the lives they lead. 

Frosty

 "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

Those are the words of Robert Frost, of which there are many. These just happen to be the ones that struck me on this particular morning. 

Probably because the night before I had spent a good long while talking with a very good friend who is in the midst of having to pack up and sell the house in which she and her family have lived for the past thirty years. 

That's a long time. A lifetime if you happen to be either of our sons who happened to be born almost as part of the exercise of their parents becoming grown-ups, real and true. The homes each of us built were on opposite ends of California. We have spent the last three decades making a nest for our brood, a place to settle down. 

An even longer time ago, we were teenagers fumbling through high school together. We had grown up in the same town. Our parents had gone to that same high school together. So many things brought us together that when, after we had both graduated, she decided to move away to the Golden State, it was a challenge to us both to imagine how life could ever be the same. 

And yet, once I settled into the idea of her visits and our connections over the phone lines, it seemed natural. Once had my own love affair that drew me west, we were able to renew our connection. It was at her home that I had my first California Thanksgiving. After dinner, we took a ride in her convertible to the movies. 

In November.

With the top down. 

Once she packed up again to head to the southern end of California, we had another in a series of fond farewells. We made promises to stay in touch. And we did. Our sons became fast friends. Our dogs never fully reconciled their relationship, but it was always nice to have a Canine American to visit on one end of our journey or the other. 

We listened and consoled one another as our parents aged and eventually passed on. We avoided imagining what the next chapter might be. 

Now that chapter has come, and while I sort out my own landing spot in retirement, she and her husband have become victims of an unforgiving economy and the realities of being "of a certain age." 

We are that. Now they are in the midst of downsizing and preparing to move to the other side of the country. Which makes me terribly sad. But I am heartened to know that we will always have a place where we have to let the other in. 

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

 "It's amazing when you stand up here. It's just, like, the love," he told the crowd. "I could say the stupidest things and you clap."

This, my friends, is not the worst thing the convicted felon has said in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections. It would be easy to paint this as desperate, but it seems to be all part of some glorious improvisation that began with a ride down an escalator more than ten years ago. 

Since then he has made a regular habit of taunting not just members of the press, most of them female, but visiting heads of state with whom he felt the need to disagree in front of that same press corps. Even as the legions of applauding MAGAts continues to shrink, he feels emboldened to stay "the stupidest things." He lies about the progress of the war he started and cannot end. He lies about the price of everything and insists that this will all go away after the midterms. He is now asking his red-caps to pretend that he is on the ballot. Because, he will tell you, if you don't then there will be no border and no tax cuts.

And if you don't vote for Republicans, he will be impeached. 

If you don't vote for Republicans, the votes needed to remove him from office might finally be there. 

If you don't vote for Republicans, all that "great work" that the worst "president" of our lifetime or anyone else's might end up in jail. 

That's not so stupid, is it?

I would applaud for that. 

Naturally

 It's artificial. It is a stew made of scrapings from Al Gore's Internet. There is nothing truly "super" about it. Are you ready for the weird part? I've been using something like it for the past twenty-some years to write this blog. 

When I sit down and start to expound on the little things that gnaw at me, or the big things that consume me, I oftentimes turn to the search function of the program most of us know called Google Chrome. For example, if I wanted to know how many gallons were in a ton of diesel fuel, I would do a search for the answer, rather than going to the set of encyclopedias I keep in my office. 

I don't keep encyclopedias in my office. I use Al Gore's Internet. You may remember the Internet. It was a "series of tubes" according to Senator Ted Stevens. When I ask Al Gore's Internet how many gallons in a ton of diesel, the network of computers all tied together in a series of tubes or "a net" gives me a whopping great list of responses, topped off by a summary of those responses labeled "AI Overview." A cursory peek at that paragraph lets me know not only the answer to my question, but keeps me from moving down the list to look for an answer I might have clicked on myself before 2024 when the engineers at Google decided that poring over a list of responses might be too tedious for users. Why bother checking on those thousands of potential links when you could have the answer handed to you on an artificial platter? 

Maybe because of my inherent distrust of machines, first introduced to my by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The HAL 9000 on board the spaceship Discovery was not giving the best answers to astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole. Even though HAL kept saying that he had the utmost enthusiasm for the mission, the computer sends Frank out to fix the AE-35 unit only to ram him with a pod and send him spinning off into space. Then, when Dave goes out attempts to retrieve his fellow astronaut's body, HAL refuses to open the pod bay doors. 

I didn't have to look that stuff up. 

It was in my brain from all those years ago. 

But now I feel as though I need to check myself, to verify those tasty bits of infotainment for you, dear reader. I have to consult the oracle of intelligence because I really need to know that there are two hundred eighty gallons of diesel in a ton, and that the "deal" made by the self-proclaimed very stable genius with Russia provides the United States with three hundred thousand tons of the stuff. That ends up being eighty-four million gallons of diesel. Which seems like a lot. I used old-fashioned AI for that one: a calculator. Then I checked with the oracle once again to discover that the United States uses approximately one hundred thirty million gallons of diesel a day. That means that the deal the convicted felon and Russian asset trying to distract us all from the miserable job he's doing isn't going to cover one day's use of diesel fuel. 

I did that last bit in my head. The former game show host is trying to keep the pod bay door closed. Use your own intelligence. You don't need anything artificial or super. 

It's all natural. 

Shocked And Dismayed

 "I have not seen anything like this in my twenty-eight-plus years," Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah told a local news station. "I'm not sure that the city of Erie has ever seen the loss of life and the devastation that we just witnessed."

Why do we keep saying things like this? This statement comes from a guy who might consider himself a "peace officer" who goes to work each day with a gun strapped to his hip and wears a bulletproof vest as part of his uniform. 

Which is by no means a slight on Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah. I would guess that even the Sheriff of Mayberry, North Carolina would expect his deputy to carry more than one bullet in this day and age. 

Meanwhile, back in Erie, the scene described by Chief Lorah was one in which eight people were shot and killed before the idiot with a gun turned it on himself, bringing the grand total to eight. Reports in some quadrants are noting that one of the victims was pregnant, so the math may need to be amended. Additionally, there were children aged one and five years old among the dead. According to reports, all of the victims were related. 

So here's my quandary: SWAT teams were dispatched to the scene after reports of gunfire were made. Authorities said that by the time the heavily armed "peace officers" arrived, all the killing had been done. I wonder what might have happened if an emergency call had gone out to that family for counseling in the days leading up to the shooting? What if unarmed social workers had made their presence felt in the runup to the murders? If a mental health check had been made and the guns in the house had been removed as a precaution?

I'm guessing that's not anything Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah has seen in his twenty-eight plus years. Because we tend to solve our problems with guns. Immigration. Diplomacy. And as an added bonus, we can livestream the firing squad death sentence being carried out after the fact. 

If we do, in fact, 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 then maybe we should check in with the guys who wrote that Second Amendment and see how that squares with the Declaration of Independence. 

I hate to think that Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah might continue to witness mass shootings anywhere int he land of the free and the home of the moving targets. 

Worst Of The Worst

 Federal immigration officers opened fire on a Dominican man whom they were trying to arrest in New York because they believed their lives were in danger. Twenty-eight-year-old Oscar Belgal was shot in the neck last Thursday as he drove his car with a five-year-old boy inside. 

That's their story, including the part where Federal officers "were not aware" that the five-year-old was in the car. Oscar "was aware," according to the story that ICE goons issued, and yet he chose to evade officers, including the now familiar refrain about how officers used vehicles to block him in as he attempted to drive off,  then he accelerated his vehicle toward officers, smashing some of their vehicles. At which point the goons shot Mister Belgal "superficially" in the neck. 

Quick aside: I don't know if you've ever been shot "superficially," but I would expect if feels a lot like being shot profoundly. 

As this armed assault took place in New York City, Head ICE Goon Markwayne "Two First Names" Mullin took chose to remind everyone "Sanctuary politicians, they create an environment for criminal activity to thrive, not for the American citizens to be safe." 

Safe? Well, it seems like having plainclothes idiots with guns firing seven times into a vehicle on city streets does not seem to meet that distinction. I would categorize such an action as "unsafe."

No matter. The politician alluded to in "Two First Names" Mullin's statement was, most likely, New York City's mayor Zohran Mamdani. Mayor Mamdani's comments ran somewhat contradictory to the Goons of ICE: “There is no justification for what we have seen today." He also said the federal officers who surrounded the vehicle wore construction vests and masks, making it difficult to identify them as immigration officers.

This makes some sense, since in recent months New York City has been making an all-out effort to rid their streets not of dangerous immigrants, but potholes. The five-year-old in the car witnessing his father being shot by construction workers may flavor his perception of men wearing orange vests. Or the trauma suffered by the child may simply be slopped onto the shelf ICE likes to refer to as "collateral damage." 

You have the right to remain silent. In this case, I suggest we all go in a different direction. 

Gone

 Somewhere out there, baseball is being played. 

The major league playoffs are in, if you'll pardon the expression, full swing. 

I could care less.

A large and somewhat immovable chunk of this apathy can be traced from the hometown Oakland Athletics moving to (checks notes) a pasture somewhere near Sacramento. Another big piece of this mildly held disdain stems from the lack of having a team which I would root for when I was growing up. Colorado was without a major league franchise until 1993, the year after I moved to California. At that point, I was dropped into a decided wealth of baseball. I was just a BART ride away from the Oakland A's or a slightly longer BART ride and a couple transfers to various other public transit options to watch the San Francisco Giants play.

Seeing as how I had a slot open in my vicarious sports thrill menu, I latched onto the scrappy Athletics, winner of four World Series and tenants of one of the least attractive concrete bunkers in which any major sport was played. We made our way out to the ballpark on a number of occasions over the course of any given summer, with a keen eye toward which home games provided the best giveaways. This is how I collected a number of bobbleheads that now exist in basement boxes, waiting to be unearthed in those future days when we need to see what grandpa was up to all those years ago.

As a fan, I got to take the ride on the Moneyball express, those halcyon days that eventually starred Brad Pitt, and Oakland went on a twenty game tear back in 2002 winning twenty games straight. A modern day record that stood for fifteen years until it was bested by, of all teams, the Cleveland Guardians. For a couple of decades, I had a team. 

Then they moved away. Ostensibly to Las Vegas, but first a stop in that pasture outside of Sacramento. They never did win a World Series while we were together in Oakland. 

Now I hear that the playoffs are taking place again. Without Oakland. Without the Athletics. 

Without me. 

The Whole Shebang

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

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

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

So there was a big party. 

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

Celebrating homecoming. 

A time for reflection.

A time for senseless killing. 

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

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

The investigation, along with the mourning, continues. 

Ugly

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

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

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

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

"A small price to pay."

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

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

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

Don't forget to vote.

Olden Days

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

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

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

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

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

Super Intelligent

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

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

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

"Danger Zone. Yes sir." 

"And those ducks? That was hysterical."

"They were geese, sir. Canadian geese." 

"But you called them ducks."

"Yes sir. Donald ducks."

"Heh. Priceless."

"Yes sir."

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

"Me personally? Just under two hundred."

"Two hundred dollars?"

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

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

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

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

"Like AI Commander?"

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

"How about Commander of Artificial Intelligence?"

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

"Fake?"

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

"How about 'Super Intelligence?'"

"Oooo. I like that!"

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

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

"Yes sir."

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

"With or without poop, sir?"

Danny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Wave Dave hopes not. 

Toxic

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

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

No criminal charges were filed. 

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

Unless they've got beards.

Generation Execute

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

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

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

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

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

Just in case. 

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

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

Birds Of A Feather

 It's a little trifle of a trivia quiz. I use it to pep up a conversation when I am stuck waiting for something else to begin. I ask, "What teams have mascots that are not animals?" This tends to get a ball rolling that includes such "easy" answers as The Yankees, The Reds, The Phillies, The Mariners, and so on. There are plenty of examples outside Major League Baseball, but it provides even those without an encyclopedic knowledge of sports an opportunity to stretch their memory. 

I will pause for a moment while you begin your own search function.

I hope that was satisfying. Now, the next time I encounter this situation, I change the parameters of the question. Instead of asking for non-animal examples, one of the other participants asked if we might try and come up with as many bird teams as possible. Orioles, Blue Jays, Cardinals, top the list if you start with baseball, but you might have found yourself discovering the bird thread available in Atlanta. The Falcons and the Hawks both call the ATL home.

My guess is that this is where Senator Eric Schmitt stopped in his inquiry cycle, Which might explain why he went to all the trouble to head on over to Kinko's to get a big poster printed up for his chance to humiliate former prosecutor Jack Smith. The Missouri Republican attempted to put Mister Smith not in Washington but in Atlanta on the night of February 3, 2024 when the NBA franchise Hawks were hosting the Golden State Warriors, who qualify for the non-animal category. 

“So your testimony today is that you did not go to a Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024. Is that correct? What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warriors-Hawks game on Feb. 2, 2024?” The hope was to catch Mister Smith lying about being in the Big Peach at the same time that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was facing scrutiny for her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special state prosecutor she hired for the county’s election-interference case against a certain convicted felon. 

There was some head-scratching moments as the connection was finally made: Jack Smith had attended a women's basketball game in Maryland. In that collegiate contest, the hometown Terrapins hosted the Iowa Hawkeyes, featuring the phenomenal Kaitlan Clark. This game was taking place some six hundred fifty miles from the location suggested by Senator Schmitt's posterboard allegation. 

Hawks. Hawkeyes. Easy mistake to make. Especially if you're in a rush while standing at the Kinko's "Gotcha" Counter, waiting for your order to be completed. 

But he won't be invited to play in any of my trivia time-sinks. 

Bought And Paid For

 "I just don't think it's right to be using taxpayer money in that way, particularly if it's tied to political campaigns," says South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds. "I think they need to rethink that strategy."

Is he talking about the Reflecting Pool? The Triupmal Arch? The Ballroom Bunker?

Nope. Senator Mike, who happens to be a Republican, is referring to the advertisements that ran during college and pro football games over the weekend, as well as in their native habitat, Faux News Sunday. If you happened to be fortunate enough to have missed these bits of cinema triste. The feature the lumbering bulk of the convicted felon shambling down a hallway, along with this audio taken from a campaign speech he gave back in 2024: "This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state, we will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists." All capped  off by the disclaimer at the bottom of the screen: Paid For By The U.S. Government.

Hey, wait a gosh-darned minute. We are the U.S. Government. Our tax dollars at work and all that. Had this been an actual campaign ad, it would have been captioned differently: Paid for by the front for tiny-handed former game show hosts. Or maybe: This message made possible from a grant from the Epstein Foundation for human trafficking. 

Or perhaps you'd like to spend a few moments reading the Hatch Act, a 1939 federal law which bars government employees from participating in partisan political activities while on the job. I'm not sure if there is additional legislation that bars government employees from sleeping through meetings, but I would expect he would be found guilty of that on several occasions. 

The bottom line for me, however, is that first and foremost, the Orange Worst is not running for any office currently, nor would he be allowed to pay for that sort of advertisement with taxpayer funds. What's even more egregious is that he could write a check for those TV spots out of his insider trading slush fund he has amassed in the first two years of this term. But why do that when the people's money is sitting right there on the collection plate? 

So now we have yet another instance of members of his own party tsking the adjudicated rapist with "harsh words" for his conduct. Illegal conduct. And that bar that he continues to slide under and repeatedly clang his soft skull against seems to have little or no effect. We are all shocked and dismayed by his behavior. His illegal behavior. Senators from his own party acknowledge that he is committing crimes and the best we can hope for is a strongly worded letter and another round of hand wringing. 

Arrest him. Impeach him. Remove him. Let him walk the dimly lit hallways of Mar-A-Lago until the authorities come for him. 

I would gladly watch that. 

Know Your Rights

 What if we started calling it The Bill Of Privileges? 

You have the privilege of Free Speech.

You have the privilege to keep and bear arms. 

You have the privilege to deny the quartering of soldiers in private homes without your consent.

You have the privilege to avoid unreasonable searches and seizures and requires warrants to be based on probable cause.

You have the privilege of due process, protection against self-incrimination and double jeopardy, and requirement of grand juries for capital crimes.

You have the privilege of a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, along with the right to legal counsel and confronting witnesses.

You have the privilege of a jury trial in certain civil law cases.

You have the privilege of avoiding excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments.

You have the privilege of other unlisted privileges not explicitly written in the Constitution.

You have the privilege of knowing that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people.

Kind of changes the whole tenor of the discussion, doesn't it? Well let me tell you something: I've seen the actual thing, this Bill of Rights, behind its protective glass case in the National Archives. Written by James Madison and eventually approved by the First Congress of the United States. Back when Congress used to vote on things and pass laws. 

These chuckleheads who want to drive around the parts of the law of the land that doesn't suit them need to go. Election Day is a month away. Vote. It is your privilege. And your right. 

Lessons Learned

 My mother kept a Tootsie Roll bank in her dresser. She put quarters into it whenever she found a few laying around. This was her stake. On the relatively few occasions that she found herself in Las Vegas, this was the money she used. Exclusively on slot machines. She expected to lose her little nest egg twenty-five cents at a time. 

I understood that every game of "chance" that the kid down the street from me ran would end up in his favor. I learned not to bet on anything ever with my older brother as well. If there was a wager being made with either one of these two, I figured that the best choice was to keep my money in my pocket. 

Even if it was just a quarter. 

Much later in my youth, I was part of a crew that was sent to Las Vegas to install office furniture at Nellis Air Force Base. The fellows I travelled with decided to try and get to Sin City a day early so we could have some time to do the things that one does in Sin City. I wasn't interested in the casinos, given my predilection toward keeping my money in my pocket, but I did stroll down the strip to take in the sights. One of the sights I took in was, at high noon, every single light was on. No need to conserve here. No need for sales tax either. 

It was all paid for. And then some. 

Which is why I am currently kicking myself, metaphorically, for spending thirty dollars on an NFL "Survivor Pool" being run by a friend. I have participated in a number of seasons of Fantasy Football, but never for money. It was always for that odd sense of vicarious community that it invites. All of the vagaries of the current professional football season left me bewildered not only in our friendly no-money league, but abruptly out of thirty dollars when I chose the Green Bay Packers to beat the Atlanta Falcons this week. 

It seemed like a sure thing. 

It wasn't. 

I forgot the lessons I learned all those years ago. Chief among them, never bet on anything that is not in your personal control. Not suiting up for Green Bay myself left me out of control. Which brings me to the other reminder from my mother's Tootsie Roll bank: Don't bet money you don't have. All of those ads that surround any and all sporting events on television inviting you to put up that pittance that you might have left over after buying a tankful of gas on the outcome of a game being played by a bunch of strangers, many of whom are millionaires already, and all of whom are prohibited by their employer from betting on sports. Which is essentially the case for NBA players. And then there's the strange tale of Pete Rose and Major League Baseball. 

I'll bet he never gets into the Hall of Fame. 

Progress

 Here's an interesting thing: My wife and I own a Fiat. It has been a godsend lo these past few months. It is an electric vehicle. It is tiny. We are able to make our way in and around our various destinations in and around our municipality by the grace of our solar panels and the used battery within our Fiat. 

The old joke that I remember from my youth: What does Fiat stand for? "Fix it again, Tony." The happy news here is that after a year and a half the only maintenance we have needed on our little marshmallow of a car was self-imposed. Trying to upgrade the stereo, my son and I both forgot to check to see if the power was securely seated in the back of the unit, causing it to lose connection whenever we drove over a speed bump or other obstacle. Once we fixed that, we were free to scoot on past all those gas stations whose prices have done nothing but climb since the convicted felon decided to start a war to get us all to forget that he was a convicted felon and pen pals with the world's most notorious human trafficker. 

Now comes the fun part: Do you know what you call an official order, a decree, or command made by someone in authority without needing discussion or agreement? No? 

The method that the former game show uses to run our country is by fiat. This term originates from Latin, meaning, "Let if be done." This term found its way into English somewhere around 1630, back when fiats were more a part of everyday governance. 

As for our car, it's origins are an acronym: Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, or in boring old English, Italian Automobile Factory Turin. 

But as it turns out, the Orange Worst's fiats are exactly who spurred us on to buying our own Fiat. Every day that the prince of gasoline zips on past six dollars a gallon, my wife and I were happy to have had the shove, arbitrary or not, to go out and commit to a new lifestyle. We continue to be grateful in the most convoluted way for the madness of the mandarin molester. 

However, I do look forward to a future where we can make choices with a little less fear involved. 

With Great Power...

 "Are you the principal?"

"No," I answer, "I'm just the guy who worked here long enough to get a master key."

I have worked for the same school district at the same school site for my entire career. As I begin to wind things down, it occurs to me that I have scratched and clawed since the late twentieth century to stay exactly where I am. 

"Are you still the computer teacher?"

"Yes, I'm still the computer teacher."

This one gets lobbed at me by former students, some of whom are returning as parents of new students. Somewhere in there I managed a four year stretch of teaching my own fourth grade class, but mostly I have been ensconced in that corner right next to the south stairwell, next to the library. 

Waiting for my big break.

Over the course of a couple years it felt like I might want to take my act on the road. I could teach math in middle school. At least there they might get more of my "jokes." I studied for months to take my single subject exam, but eventually my confidence wore down because, as it turns out, my expertise in mathematics stops somewhere just shy of the requirements for middle school. 

It was, as I suggested once to my son who was in the fourth grade at the time, "Better get your help now. After this year it's all on you."

Nevertheless, there are those days when our principal is away from campus and circumstances lead the folks in the office to call for the one person who carries some mild authority, or at least a master key. 

That would be me. 

I am not the principal, nor do I play one on TV. Somehow I have managed over the course of three decades to evade anything that would have pushed me into an actual administrative role. I know where everything should be, and I can open just about any door in the place. Sometimes I will take on the complaints of an angry parent, when I happen to know that my principal is busy elsewhere taking on the complaints of another angry parent. Or maybe they want to talk to an "old-timer," since I can remember how things used to be.

Not very different, as it turns out. 

Reading Is Fundamental

 For thirty years I have fought the good fight: teaching kids how to read. 

Like so much of my career as a teacher, my experience skewed greatly from that of my days as a student. I was a very nervous kid. I worried that I might not be able to achieve, and I pushed myself to get the grades I hoped for: I wanted to succeed academically. 

When I look out on the sea of young faces for whom I stand as an authority, it has so much to do with getting kids to buy in on this whole "learning thing." This does not mean that I don't see those children with open eyes and ears, waiting to be led to the kingdom of literacy, but I can see all around those kids the ones whose interest lies anywhere but the classroom. 

Each year we begin with students, many of whom are multiple years behind their grade level in reading, and get behind to push. A lot of intervention and practice and more opportunities to read and understand what they are reading takes most of them on a lengthy ride up the hill to where they ought to be. 

At or near. 

Then comes the summer slide. 

We take our young charges where we find them, mostly, back at the bottom of that hill. 

I understand that growing up as I did in a highly literate home, going to school in a suburban school where economics were not a factor in determining the outcomes of standardized tests. The night before I took those tests, I worried and stressed about how I might show up. I had been told that this was an important thing I was being asked to do, and that it would be the basis for my permanent record. 

You remember your permanent record, don't you?

No?

Well, as it turns out, the notion of a folder that would follow you from cradle to grave is a bit of a fabrication. But it definitely worked on me, back in the day. 

That little secret seems not to carry the weight it once did for children, at least the ones I teach. They have intuitively judged the whole thing as a bit of smoke and mirrors, with the expectation that the real onus falling squarely on the grown-ups in this equation. Teachers, administrators, entire school boards, superintendents are the ones who seem to truly have the most to lose. 

I have been fortunate enough to hang around long enough to watch the potential outcomes of kids not learning to read. The kids keep coming back to school. Sometimes the grown-ups in charge don't. 

It's not getting easier. 

Post Toasties

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

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

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

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

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

Making sense.

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

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

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

No?

Me either. 

Through The Haze

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

I know them. 

And what's more, I remember them. 

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

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

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

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

It was a simpler time. 

I didn't say it was a better time. 

At Least

 Wilber Rafael Garcés Perez. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing to fear.

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

At least. 

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

Access Hollywood

 Where do you get your news?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay tuned, America. 

GOAT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wishing

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

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

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

Pretty ingenious. 

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

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

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

Wait. "Just in time for the holidays?"

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

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

Not Quite

 Playing out the string. 

That's what I want to avoid. 

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

I want to go out on top. 

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

That void. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hate Speech

 Free Palestine. 

Now I hope that Robert Kraft doesn't come and kick me off of my blog.

Just so I'm clear: What is so utterly devastating about the suggestion that there be a free Palestine? A majority of Americans favor a free state for Palestinians. Fifty-seven percent. Admittedly it's not the kind of clear cut mandate that are against the war in Iran. That rings up to fifty-eight percent. 

Sure, we could get into the weeds and aske Americans if they support Israel. They are our allies and have been for quite some time. Of course, current the current diplomatic landscape does not seem to require that we maintain these tried and true connections. America is currently waging a trade war with Canada. 

Canada. They're supposed to be the bad guys. 

Meanwhile we seem to be in a trade war with (checks notes) every other nation on the planet. 

But this Free Palestine thing. What is the hard line that has NFL Franchise Owner Robert Kraft keeping a rapper from being allowed to perform at his stadium, and in stadiums across America because of his "hate speech."

Free Palestine. 

The rapper in question, Macklemore, got the crowd at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to chant along with him. 

Free Palestine. 

I know. He's "an artist," and he should just stick to singing quirky bits about thrift shops and get off the stage. Better yet, just get off the stage before you embarrass international treasure Ed Sheeran. Oh, and maybe Macklemore's new song Hind's Hall, which proceeded that chant may have been a problem. You know what it's about?

Free Palestine. 

Like many Americans, Macklemore has chosen to make his views known. Mark Ruffalo, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Incredible Hulk, has ruffaloed more than a few feathers for his repeated calls for a free Palestine. Mister Ruffalo has been accused by a great many very angry voices of spouting antisemitism. Hate Speech. 

Yes, a Free Palestine is for many an anti-Jewish notion. Describing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza using terms like genocide, famine, and ethnic cleansing is, for folks like Robert Kraft, anti-Semitic. The billionaires like Mister Kraft can force voices they deem "hateful" out of their stadiums. And consummate showmen like Ed Sheeran have some choices to make. Ed can keep the show going without any mention of a Free Palestine, or he can just pull the plug and go back to his ancestral home of Ireland where they know nothing of these kind of "troubles." 

Either way, Free Palestine. 

Feels

 I was writing in a previous century. I wrote, primarily for an audience of two or three, about the things that were on my mind. I snapped up a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: This is what life feels like to me. It came from the prologue of his novel Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! I read this book when it first came out, and it joined the long list of Mister Vonnegut's work that I took as my own philosophical compendium. 

That was fifty years ago. My audience has expanded by a degree, but I am currently reflecting on just how morose I was when I was a teenager. Back then, I would stare longingly out a metaphorical window, fretting that I could not imagine life after thirty. The cocoon in which I placed myself back then was definitely part of being an adolescent, coupled with the steady diet of science fiction novels and movies and New Yorker cartoons. 

Morose. 

Of course I did manage to live beyond age thirty. That little bit of melancholy would not play as well once I fell in love, got married, and had a son and bought a house. All of these took place after I turned thirty. It seems that I may not have been able to see all of this joy over the horizon because it would not have fueled that youthful angst. The tragedy that I had been setting myself up for never came to pass. 

Not that there wasn't tragedy. Death and sorrow came along. With it I found the novels of John Irving. More to the point, my father gave me a copy of The World According To Garp in a brown paper bag for my eighteenth birthday, This set me on the path to The Hotel New Hampshire, which would inform me and my dealings with Sorrow for the foreseeable future. 

Foreseeable. 

I had no idea that there would be so much joy waiting out there just over the rise. Watching my son progress from preschool to kindergarten to middle school to high school to college, I became aware that I was observing my own legacy taking a hard turn into optimism and hope. This became what life felt like to me. I was at some point in this era when I learned that John Irving was a student of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Mister Irving tells a story about how he once felt he was going to save the life of his mentor by giving him the Heimlich Maneuver. Through gasps of air, Vonnegut was able to squeeze out the truth: "Get off me. I have emphysema."

It's a sad story. But it's funny. 

And that's what life feels like to me. 

Getting Scrooged

 Prices at the pump. Gas is expensive. Consumers are making tough choices: fill up the gas tank or fill up the refrigerator.

Those are but a few of the hackneyed notions being tossed around currently regarding the cost of oil.  As the gas station around the corner seems to change their reader board on an almost hourly basis, there is not a lot of hope on the horizon. I can say with a solid degree of certainty that our purchase of an electric vehicle almost two years ago now seems like an expressly clever idea. In spite of all the tax incentives and deals going on out there, not everyone can make that leap. 

What does the Second Trumpreich have to say about all of this? "We spoke ​to Mr. ⁠Zelenskiy about it. There are plenty of other targets. Don't hit diesel fuel. That's hurting the ​world." This is especially rich coming from the architect of the "blockade" of the Strait of Hormuz. And the trade war with Canada. These two incomprehensible foreign policy decisions are at the very core of the current price surges in oil. It should be clearly noted that while it was the United States that attacked Iran to set off this latest in a seemingly endless series of crises, "Mr. Zelenskiy" was minding his own sovereign nation when it was attacked by (checks notes) a very good friend of the convicted felon, the President and Head Bear Wrassler of Russia, Vlad "The Goofaman" Putin. 

This latest deflection on the part of the Orange Worst continues to deflect the responsibility for the price of a gallon of gas rising above six dollars away from his despicable choices. Back in May, I took a bit of my pop culture education and suggested that if any or all of the oil companies, who continue to bathe themselves in wads of cash due to record profits from the sale of petroleum products, might take a few pennies off the price of gasoline just to prove that somehow we are all in this together. 

I am reasonably certain that most of the executives to whom this idea was lobbed are far too busy to take the time to read this blog, but maybe one of their underlings might sit at the edge of their enormous money tub and read my suggestion to them while they frolic in their profit plunge. Or perhaps one of them might look around themselves and have a moment of Christmas morning clarity: We don't have to make so much money that we can continue to take these baths in consumer's hard-earned cash. 

Bad news. Charles Dickens is busy with the most recent iteration of his holiday story the one that looks to "humanize" Scrooge. Which, wouldn't you know it, seems just about right for a fable of our times.