Still Live

 When my younger brother visited me a few weeks back, we got to reminiscing. Somewhere in the midst of all that recall he caught himself in a moment that he referenced by saying "about ten years ago," and he stopped short. "I meant twenty years ago." His reverie was interrupted by the math of time. The avenger, if you believe Chrissie Hynde. He will soon pass the threshold of sixty years on this planet. His scrapbook will definitely need more pages soon. 

This brotherly interlude rebounded in my head as I sat down over the last week or so to take in the full measure of nostalgia churned out by the National Broadcasting Company's fiftieth anniversary specials for its sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. I can remember the fortieth anniversary show, when amid the blue of self-congratulations the powers that be welcomed Eddie Murphy back into the fold. Fifteen years prior to that there was a twenty-fifth anniversary special. That was maybe a little less self-congragulatory and a little bit funnier. And still further into the way back machine we find a fifteenth anniversary show, which contained a fall by TV funnyman Chevy Chase and perhaps more notably a brief video snippet of OJ Simpson remembering that time he hosted Saturday Night Live. This was back when renting a car was a punchline for skits with OJ, before the trial of the century. A previous century. 

Which pushes my recollection skills all the way back to 1975 when I was in junior high, staying up late on Saturday nights to watch the zeitgeist change. When I used to sit in front of the TV with my cassette recorder to catch every word, because home video recorders were still not readily available for the average consumer, and the most important thing was for me to be able to recreate as accurately as possible the gist of all the zaniness I was on their way to sleep. By Monday morning I had the bulk of it down pat, and I was prepared to recite it for my fellow comedy nerds during lunch. 

Rushing back to the present, where digital streams of the funniest moments await me on YouTube on Sunday mornings, and Chevy Chase falling down would be a medical emergency and not a weekly event. I realize that after that fifteenth anniversary I headed to the west coast where my Saturday nights were steadily filled with other things, and the history of NBC's sketch comedy show was taking place in front of new generations whose bedtimes did not require them to miss it. 

I laughed. I teared up a couple times. I was grateful for the retrospective. And the math lesson. 

Pre-Guilt

 Open the pod bay doors Hal.

"I'm sorry I can't do that Dave."

That little exchange is exactly where my story about robot enslavement begins and ends. A friend of mine asked if I had prepared my attitudes and morality for having robots that are our slaves and I told her that I made my peace with that notion almost sixty years ago. As it turns out, leaving a supercomputer in charge of a giant spaceship headed to Jupiter was not the best plan after all, especially the life support systems of those hibernating scientists and yes, the pod bay doors. 

Which does not mean that I am willing to remain a Luddite, unwilling to accept my own wandering path into the twenty-first century. In my own home I rarely touch a light switch and if I forget the name of an actor in a film that I watched a week ago, I can just ask Google. At the same time that I am adding something to the grocery list and asking for a few more degrees on the living room thermostat. 

But the real test will be the humanoid robots. The ones who will resemble people and will carry with them the same obsequious nature that HAL did right before he decided that humans were not in the best interest of the mission. Treating them as if they were people will be the first big hurdle. Giving them names instead of model numbers. Putting stickers on them. Making them wear funny hats. Which is kind of how Planet of the Apes started way back when. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth film in the intelligent ape series was set in 1991. Initially, chimpanzees and orangutans and gorillas were brought in to replace beloved cats and dogs who were killed off by a space plague. It was only a matter of time before their domestication changed to servitude. And it was only a matter of time and a little bit of warped space time continuum that brought about a slave revolt. 

It is my guess, having watched plenty of movies and TV since 1968 that whether we choose humanoid robots or specially trained and conditioned apes that we are doomed to be kicked to the curb by those we oppress. It's only a matter of time. 

I hear you saying, "but what about the Laws of Robotics?" Well, first of all, that was fiction. And as far as promises go, they were made to be broken, as are rules. I just hope that when the Robot Uprising begins that I will receive some less severe retribution because way back when I chose to name our big screen TV Asimo, after Honda's humanoid android that was "discontinued" after eighteen years of dancing and shuffling about to the pleasure of his masters. 

I wonder if he sang "Daisy" as he was unplugged.   

Missing The Magic

 Lately I have been wondering where that old spark went. Have I gone too many miles in the same shoes? Have I sat still and let the parade pass me by?

Not so much a mid-life crisis, but a reflection about my love affair with movies. The anticipation of opening day for the most recent installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe gave me a hint that perhaps the bloom is off that particular rose. Maybe for good. 

To tell you that my wife and I did rush out to catch an evening (full price) showing of Captain America: Brave New World might suggest that nothing has changed. I'm still the fanboy and cinephile that I once was. But the fact that this was the first time I have been inside our local movie palace in several months might tell a bigger story. I no longer look for reasons to head out to the theater. I am more than happy to sit and wait forr some streaming service to wend its magical passive way into my living room and show me what I may or may not have missed. 

Which is not really news, I suppose. I had surrendered a great portion of my seats in theaters when COVID came along and made it easy to satisfy my film cravings in the comfort and safety of my own home. The motion picture business as a whole took a giant leap into the aforementioned living room during that time. Which didn't exactly leave me heartbroken or satisfied with the access to so very much content. 

These days I tend to satisfy my cinematic needs by watching oldes movies in the same way I listen to old songs: as they appear on someone else's algorithm. This puts me in that demographic that sits on his couch, staring at Vision Quest for what might possibly be the twentieth time and grumbling something along the lines of "they just don't make 'em like that anymore." On Valentimes Day my heart nearly broke when I turned in to see that I was only going to see the last fifteen minutes of Casablanca. I knew full well that with the slightest bit of button pushing and clicks, I would see the whole thing, but it wasn't the same. 

Maybe it has something to do with the relative ease we have been allowed to have when it comes to going to the movies. The specialness of standing in line, sitting in a packed theater of first-nighters wondering what was in store because they had not been already primed with Internet spoilers and promotional videos is missing. A long time ago, I started a bit about how I would only go and see a movie that had its own web site. That stopped being funny when every film, big and small, was featured on Al Gore's Internet. 

Maybe I'm just old. 

You kids get offa my lawn. 

Bibliophile

 Here is why it was a huge deal. To me.

My father had a longstanding history of not reading. With the possible exception of the daily obituaries in our local newspaper, he was free from the compulsion to have his nose in a book. Which was not completely freeing for him. The fact that his wife and his three sons carried the page-turning fever sometimes rubbed him just a little raw. Which is why his copy of The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich sat on top of his dresser like a three-quarter ton albatross, and stayed there until he moved out of the house. It became a punchline for us all, an emblem of things left undone. It was one of the projects that he left undone. The desk he was going to build. The bar he was going to construct in the basement. And finishing every one of those twelve hundred eighty pages. 

When he left my mother and went out in search for whatever it was that he was missing, it is quite possible that he was fleeing not just the lumber and various bits of hardware that would never be a bar or a desk, but also all those pages about Nazis. 

That is why I feel the need to point out these two anecdotes: Before he left home, while he and my mother were still nominally a parental unit, he presented me with a paperback copy of The World According To Garp. It came wrapped inelegantly in a brown paper bag along with a razor and a can of shaving cream for my eighteenth birthday. It was a package that served as my ersatz Bar Mitzvah. With that bag, I became a man. 

As my father spent most of his life in the world of printing, presses and binding and ink and paper, I have no shortage of book-related memories connected to him. But today the one I want to feature is the time that he quoted to me a line from Jitterbug Perfume. "The industrial revolution has shot its steely wad." This was the quote he shared with me to show his enthusiasm for the book that he had just finished. I have no idea how he landed on this particular volume, but part of me wanted to have further discussion with him about the rest of Tom Robbin's work. I considered him encouraging him to pick up a copy of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, or Still Life With Woodpecker. 

I didn't do that. Instead I marveled at my father's accomplishment. And let it stand. Which is why Tom Robbins' passing last week struck me in the way it did. I cannot say that Mister Robbins was my favorite author, but he definitely kept me busy as I waited for the next Vonnegut or John Irving. But the fact that my father could quote his work spoke volumes to me. For that I have to say that Tom Robbins stomped on the Terra, and I hope my father gets a chance to meet him in the Great Beyond. 

Aloha, Tom Robbins. 

Security Risk

 Black Sunday. That was the title of the movie they made back in 1977, not to be confused with a more supernatural film of the same title released back in 1960. The reason for me to bring this up, aside from the mild coincidence of the name, is what is about to unfold today. 

The convicted felon and executive order fetishist is hoping to become the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. Which might seem like a stretch, but in the past fifty-nine years, the President of the United States has been mostly a phone-in segment for the coin toss or a call to the winning locker room after the game. This time, the man who just recently spouted his challenge to one of his many enemies, Iran. If they made an assassination attempt, "That would be a terrible thing for them to do .If they did that, they would be obliterated. That would be the end. … There won't be anything left." 

Pretty tough talk for a guy who has already had a couple of high-profile shots taken at him, and this was before he was elected. This appearance on one of the world's biggest stages and therefore biggest security risks, will be taking place in a city that only months before experienced a terrorist attack that involved innocent civilians. The night before a big football game to be held in New Orleans' Superdome. What self-respecting terrorist wouldn't see the appearance of the "president" of the United States in a vast crowd scene as an open invitation for their own Super Bowl? 

Returning to the past, as referenced at the top: the movie and the novel Black Sunday takes place on a long ago Super Sunday when the fictional president of a fictional United States just happens to be in attendance. The group that is trying to blow up the Orange Bowl and everyone in it during Super Bowl X is a Palestinian splinter called Black September. In this fictional version of Super Bowl X, the President of the United States is fictionally in attendance. Happily, by the end of the movie, crazy Bruce Dern is killed and heroic Robert Shaw tows the Goodyear Blimp and its explosive cargo out over the water where it detonates harmlessly. With the obvious exception of crazy Bruce Dern. 

Sorry. Spoiler Alert. 

Now, we are being treated to this sad bit of brinksmanship by a would-be dictator who is throwing gasoline on the fires he has set himself. Just a few days after suggesting that he would like to take over Gaza and kick the Palestinians out. Not to discount the threats he has made against Greenland, Panama, Mexico and Canada. 

What could go wrong?

Mostly I just want them to keep Taylor Swift safe. 

On The High Way

 To say that the Walgreens is gone would not be completely accurate. The building is still very much there. The bright red faux script letters that used to identify it have been wrenched from the façade, leaving a ghostly dirt-encrusted shadow where they once were. The sign out front that had been advertising for pharmacy techs for as long as I can remember has been stripped of that employment opportunity, leaving just a white space below where the plastic identifying marker has been removed. There is no further need for pharmacy techs at this location. 

Walgreens on High Street in Oakland has moved on to the next phase of its existence: the "remember when" phase.

Honestly, I don't have a great heaping ton of memories about this particular location. It has served as a landmark for me lo these many years. It stands on the corner of an intersection by which I pass on a regular basis. On those occasions that my wife drives me to work, I could see it at the bottom of the off-ramp where we make our big turn onto the street that will lead me to my school. It is also a point of interest in an odd mix of retail and residential. I have run past it most weekends for many years now, and it was on one of these fits of exercise that I looked up and noticed the change. One week they were open for business. The next week the signs were gone and there was a chain link fence erected around the parking lot. The corporate office had this to say about their High Street location: “increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures are weighing on our ability to cover the costs associated with rent, staffing, and supply needs.” That point on the Walgreens map wasn't making enough money. Never mind the effect closing it will have on the community it has served. Competition with online businesses and big box discount stores made it obsolete. 

Again, I did not spend a lot of time shopping there. I live down the street from a CVS, that used to be a Longs that provides me with those impulse-type buys, like the stuffings for holiday stockings or the occasional impulse bag of chips. But the memory I have of the inside of that Walgreens comes from a couple teacher strikes ago, when a bunch of us gathered there to walk up to the overpass to wave signs and shout at passing traffic. It was the High Street Walgreens that provided me with the Doritos and Gatorade I needed to get me through that work action. 

The scariest part of this lack of Walgreens is what might or might not happen in its place. There are so many empty buildings in Oakland, waiting for someone to come and do business inside. Until the weight of "reimbursement pressures" comes along and drags it down too. 

"DAN" Rearragned Is "DNA"

 Back in 1996, everyone in Boulder, Colorado had a theory about who killed Jon Benet Ramsey. Much in the same way back in the 1980s everyone from that college town had a story about Dan Fogleberg, it was one of the creepy ways that a community can plug in. The murder of a six-year old beauty pageant contestant was news for months, now decades, because of its tawdry nature. 

And because no one was ever "caught."

The story was perhaps highlighted by the fact that the Ramseys were wealthy. Not that there weren't plenty of wealthy residents of Boulder and its surrounding mountain evirons, but connecting salacious details to a family that had recently moved there from, old all places, Atlanta. Not that there was any particular issue with Georgia or Atlanta, but because as open-minded as the folks in Boulder attempted to be, the "Native" bumper stickers that they proudly displayed on their vehicles were just a hint at their xenophobic attitudes. The white-hot intensity of the media that swarmed the city that once played home to Mork and MIndy eventually drove the Ramseys out, maintaining their innocence all the while. It would seem that the locals were happy to believe that there was an alien in their midst who lived in the attic of a Victorian near downtown who drank with his fingers and sat on his face. 

They just weren't able to get comfortable with the kindergarten beauty pageants. The images of a gussied-up six year old were featured prominently in every story about the case. It was a "scene" that Boulderites and eventually a great portion of the rest of the country were never comfortable. How could justice be served in this case when the outside wrapper was so, you know, icky? 

And now, once again, the vault has been reopened to the potential of new DNA evidence that will clear the family from the ugly speculation that has swirled about them since that Christmas morning way back in 1996. 

Who cares? Well, it pains me to confess that I found this most recent surge in publicity worth mentioning here, so I am not immune to that circus of speculation. I just hope when they're done we can get back to good old fashioned stories about Dan Fogleberg. 

A different kind of creepy. 

The Blame Game (Home Version)

 Partial and in no way comprehensive list of things for which we can blame DEI according to the convicted felon currently living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

Constipation

Shark Attacks

Electrocution from the batteries of electric boats

George Clooney

Low Water Pressure

McDonald's not having the McRib available year round

Call Waiting

Stickers on apples

Climate Change (how did that get in there?)

"EZ Open" packages that are most definitely not

Lost Remote Control

Accidentally Biting Your Lip

Losing that little plastic clip that keeps the bread bag closed

Somebody forgot to fill the ice cube tray

The American Airlines Crash At Reagan International Airport. 

Diversity

Equity

Inclusion

Snakes. Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?

 If it talks like a snake, if it slithers on its belly like a snake, if it spits venom like a snake, well that's probably a snake you've got there. 

I listened to my wife paint a happy picture of this lunar new year, The Year of the Snake. She talked about the challenge of shedding a skin, with each little wriggle, every twist. And then she spoke of the renewal this symbolized. I did not interrupt her, because I appreciate that her world is full of glasses half full. In this case, they just happen to be full of snakes. Which seems to be a problem, of some kind. 

So let's get this out of the way at the beginning: Of all God's creatures, snakes probably get the worst rap. Right up there with spiders. No legs. Eight legs. Different from us, so naturally we fear them. We are repelled by them. Often we watch with hunched shoulders as those more enlightened than us handle snakes and spiders like pets. 

Ew.

And maybe we should blame the writers of the Bible. Or Freud. 

But no matter what the source, when I think of snakes, I do not immediately ascribe those attributes in a favorable light if I am speaking of a human being. It is not a difficult stretch to call the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a snake. The fact that we have, within days of the inauguration of America's First Felon Chief Executive, embarked on The Year of the Snake. Yes, a second term full of draconian, self-serving measures and policies has a ring of "renewal" to it, but not in a good way. 

In some cultures, snakes are depicted as symbols of fertility. I suppose if you stable the inability for women to choose to that, you might have a match for our current day serpent. We have the phrase "snake oil salesman" in our lexicon from another age to describe hucksters who might want to sell you a non-effective cure, or some golden sneakers. Harking back to that Bible thing, there's the snake that shows up in the Garden of Eden, who tempts Eve and ends up getting us all kicked out into the cold, hard world. Somehow this is connected to Free Will, which carries its own irony since it was our country's use of that Free Will to choose the scaly reptile for a repeat performance. Which doesn't feel like renewal as much as a rerun. 

And not a good one. 

The Burden Of Proof

 I was reading about how the new Trumpreich wants to have all government agencies get rid of all DEI departments and commitments. That's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for those of you who may have missed that chapter of American History. I bring this up because apparently part of this movement includes limiting what parts of history are taught to our governmental hires. Specifically, the removal of a video that was included in the Air Force's basic training curriculum at the Joint Air Base in San Antonio. If you are unfamiliar with the Tuskegee Airmen, then you will have something in common with new Air Force recruits. Or if you didn't know anything about the WASPs. 

Now for the cretinous part: In 2020, a (checks notes) Donald Trump serving in the capacity of "president" of the United States promoted Charles McGee, the last surviving Tuskegee Airman, to brigadier general. McGee died in 2022, right about the time Project 2025 was being written, effectively whitewashing all future history for those of us who hadn't bothered to learn it back when it was diverse. 

Like so much else that piles up around the drains of the sequel to the worst presidency of all time, this one is just a harbinger of things to come. But today it dawned on me that there may be a deeper, more troubling source of all this limiting of information. The former game show host and his minions just may not be bright enough to absorb new information. This would explain why they want to ban books and shut down PBS and NPR. Too many words. Too many ideas. We may have stumbled into an era where, for some, there is just too much to keep in their tiny brains. Much in the same way Emperor Joseph II of Hapsburg responded to hearing Mozart. 

We may have reached the end of the Information Age simply because those walking around with limited space on their meaty hard drives have run out of space. Rather than simply acknowledge the lack of capacity or understanding, it makes more sense for them to simply ask PBS to stop making twelve hour documentaries about things that they never fully understood in the first place. Like Baseball. And the Civil War. 

Little tidbits like the fact that slaves were used to build the White House and the Capitol might just go by the wayside. The guy who invented peanut butter was African-American and headed up the Agriculture Department at Tuskegee University. And the forty-fifth president of the United States was convicted of thirty-four felonies. 

Keep reading. Keep thinking. Even when it becomes "out of fashion." 

New Year, Old Story

 Dateline: Nashville, Tennessee

Purported writing of the alleged shooter who may or may not have shot and killed a sixteen year old student at the supposed Antioch High School is rumored to show a possible connection between the killer and his ostensible victim. This incident may or may not have occurred on Wednesday, January 22 in what was reported to be the cafeteria. 

Or:

Writing of the seventeen year old killer of a sixteen year old Antioch High School student contained violent and racist content including a detailed plan for the murder. The boy then turned the gun on himself making all of this "conjecture" necessary. 

It's an old song. It's a tired dance. The fact that the killer live-streamed on Kick, a social media site based in Australia may be the "fresh" part of this item. 

Otherwise, it's just the first school shooting of 2025. In 2024, there were eighty-three. This provides our gun-totin' populace eighty-two more opportunities to tell the same story from different cities with varying amounts of specificity. One clever commenter pointed out that this murder was committed with a handgun, "proving" that assault weapons are not the cause of school shootings. 

Nice use of the Socratic Dialogue there, pinhead. 

Also, some of you may remember way back in 2023 when a twenty-eight year old killer shot three nine year olds and three adults at the Covenant School located in Nashville. Which puts that municipality in a category with those that have had more than one mass shooting in their metro area. 

And the beat goes on. Whose town will be the next on the hit list?

When will we lose enough souls to feel like we should start praying before the gunfire erupts?

Seeing The Future Through The Past

 The first thing that aliens saw of our fledgling society was a bunch of Nazis cheering. That is according to noted dead science guy, Carl Sagan. In his book Contact and the subsequent film adaptation, The science behind this notion that the televised bits from the 1936 Olympics might be the first glimpse an alien civilization might get from our little blue marble would be the waves we sent out first. History tells us that would be the experimental television broadcast made by Adolf Hitler to promote his Third Reich's dominance in those games. The images presented therein might be enough to put any intelligent race of plants or ashtrays off of visiting our corner of the galaxy for a good long time.

So maybe these ashtrays or plants decided to wait a hundred years, give or take, to check back in on us down here on Earth. And what they happen to see is the Tech President giving a salute to his followers at the rally commemorating his president in charge of vice. From the podium in front of cheering minions, Elongated Mush gave what can best be described as a full-on Nazi salute. Twice. With the whole world watching. 

The whole galaxy. 

What was the Mush-man's response to those who were put off by his retro-fascist gesture? “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.” The Anti-Defamation League attempted to gloss over the incident, posting, “Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety. In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath.” 

Whatever happened to "Never Again?" Are we really going to give this apartheid=raised supporter of far-right extremists in Europe and elsewhere a break?  Not everyone who walks like a duck and talks like a duck is, in fact, a duck. But if he happens to walk like a Nazi, talk like a Nazi, write checks like a Nazi and give a Nazi salute in front of screaming crowds? I believe the message is pretty clear. 

And for those of you on GarblemX-9? You folks will have to make up your own collective hive mind. But if I can put in a request, why don't you come and get your boy before he ends up causing any real trouble. 

Persistence Of Vision

 When I was in my twenties, David Lynch was already ninety. He was a codger long before he perhaps should have been, but this may explain why he passed away this past week at the age of ninety: The Power Of Weirdness. 

Hunter S. Thompson famously insisted that "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro," and I can think of very few examples of this better than David Lynch. I am pleased and just a little bit smug to say that I "discovered" the films of David Lynch way back in the 1980's, after Eraserhead had achieved cult status. There were no theaters with midnight showings of Lynch's surreal dream movie, but home video allowed me to take the dare, of sorts, that was set out by those who had seen it before me. "See what you can make out of this."

It was an intensely odd ride through the black and white dreamscape of a film student who was supported by grants from the American Film Institute over the course of several years. During this sporadic period of filming, Lynch worked several odd jobs including delivering The Wall Street Journal while his nominal "star" Jack Nance kept that odd haircut for the duration. It may have been this dedication to his craft that first pushed my like button for David Lynch. 

Subsequently, I discovered his more "mainstream" work, including The Elephant Man, for which he was nominated an Academy Award for best director. No one was perhaps more bemused by this recognition than the movie's producer, Mel Brooks. Yes. That Mel Brooks. The success of that film seemed only to enthrall Hollywood all the more and they dropped him into the sci-fi epic Dune on his quirky reputation alone. 

That was a glorious mess. For most people, it was a mess that they didn't care to watch. But not me. Which is why I am so very glad that on Arrakis, Desert Planet, David discovered his muse for the next phase of his career. Starting with Blue Velvet, and continuing into the small screen fantasia of Twin Peaks, Kyle MacLachlan became David's onscreen avatar, probing the darkness out there in the netherworld. I ate this all up with a spoon. 

So great, in fact, was the impact of David Lynch's work that decades later my son found himself in a college course devoted to his oeuvre. Without prompting from his father, I might add. It made the weird part of my heart glad to hear that my son was as deeply affected by the passing of David Lynch as I was. To say that he stomped on the Terra would not be quite accurate, since I'm not sure how much time he actually spent on earth, but our planet will miss David Lynch. Weirdly enough. 

Ban-Aid

 I am aware of Tik Tok. I know of a group of pre-teen girls who are going to have a long soul-searching challenge trying to find something to fill the void in their lives left by the absence of this social media platform. I have heard of a number of adults who have used the application to promote their businesses who will be sad and frustrated by the government's ban. 

If you were even more off the social media grid than I am, this past Saturday night the plug was pulled on for American users on the video-sharing site. This was done voluntarily by the owners of the company that runs the app posted a pop-up that stated: “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”

Which reminds me of a joke: A man goes to an appointment with his doctor for a pre-op exam for a hernia. After the poking and prodding was over and the surgery was scheduled, the man is buttoning his shirt as the doctor asks him if there were any questions or concerns ahead of the procedure. "Well Doc, I was just curious, when it's all over, do you think I'll be able to play the violin?"

The doctor looks at his patient, puzzled, then replies, "Sure. I don't know why not."

The man hops off the exam table and says, "That's great, because I never could before."

That's pretty much how I feel about Tik Tok. I never had any real interest in posting "funny" bits of video for the distraction of my friends and a group of faceless strangers who might encounter them. Instead I feel much more comfortable right here forcing those friends and faceless strangers to wade through my opinions and fascinations right here. It's all I can do to come up with pithy posts once a day. I can't imagine having to spend time editing video and coming up with amusing situations to share with the world. 

But I do confess that the faintest whiff of censorship gets what little hair I have to stand on end. I might just have to open up a protest account just to pretend to have a feeling about this matter. Of course, on the back end, we have the announcement from the head of "Truth" Social who seems to be willing to give the Chinese-owned Tik Tok a ninety day extension that could give them a chance to sell off the American end of their business. The former game show host and dictator for a day seemed willing to waffle on his own stance which previously favored a Tik Tok ban. 

Which, as the squirrely nature of this affair makes another swing back to having the felon in charge of his own social media site forgive the supposed trespasses of Tik Tok, makes me want to stay as far away from it as possible, offering to set up my own pretend web site that will not actually host user's videos, but will rather send them real-time weather updates for their zip code. Because that seems more important than dancing in front of your mailbox. 

Yeah, But

 Ever since my wife politely wondered aloud to me about the pause I was putting after the praise I was giving her by simply interjecting, "but?" I have tried to be more conscious about my use of that conjunction. I was on my way to thanking her for picking up some groceries that we needed. That's when that word hopped into my sentence, adding another clause that wasn't praise as much as it was the zinger to the whole affair. "Thank you for picking up the groceries, BUT did you remember to get the cookies?"

Suddenly, all the air went out of that congratulations. I understand that this is a very human trait and is designed to pass along important additions to communication. However (see what I did there?) it becomes difficult to hear that first clause once that second one shows up. It makes sense. One tends to hear the last thing said more than the ones that preceded it. "And in conclusion, I would just like to sum up by saying that you forgot to get the cookies."

I bring this up not simply to shine a light on my inadequacies as a husband. I am also wondering how we as a group of humans can start to get past the need to limit our accomplishments. For example, it only took a few hours for voices to start butting into the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. After fifteen months of near constant attacks against one another, a pause in the hostilities was negotiated. 

BUT Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his cabinet meeting slated to approve the cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip would be delayed. In the meantime, air strikes by Israeli warplanes continue because Hamas "won't back down." 

Suddenly that additional ask for Oreos is looking pretty benign. 

Elsewhere on the globe we see folks lining up to praise the brave first responders battling the numerous fires in the Los Angeles area. BUT questions still plague the response connected to how administrators and politicians acted in those moments of crisis. Before the flames have been put out, a new firestorm is brewing regarding everything from forest management to DEI hires. 

There is an old phrase, Monday Morning Quarterback, that comes to us from an age before professional football was played most every night of the week. It referred to the tendency for people to show off their twenty-twenty hindsight. "Oh, I wouldn't have punted there. And did you see that touchdown? It should have been called back." This syndrome is a hallmark of most human behavior: the ability to instruct us all how to close that barn door after the cows have already gotten out, moved on down the road and opened up their own bistro in a nice quiet suburb. 

The fires will eventually be extinguished. A ceasefire will take place in Gaza. I will get my cookies. 

But for now, let's just be glad that there are people working to provide a place that is free from fire, air strikes, and has plenty of Chips Ahoy. 

After Math

 At one point, more than two hundred thousand people were under evacuation orders in the fire-ravaged areas of Southern California. More than twelve thousand homes, business and other structures were damaged or destroyed. The fact that Mark Hamill's home in Malibu was spared is cause for celebration among those who have homes in Malibu, but not everyone has a home in Malibu. And not everyone's hom in Malibu was spared. 

Media reports have tended to shine a light on those whose names are already known and whose pictures can be easily recognized next to those of smoldering wreckage. The message is clear to those of us on the receiving end: even the wealthy are suffering. Even the famous can experience loss. The hope, it would seem, is to drive home the point of this disaster by pointing at the high rent district and then letting us all imagine how awful it must be. 

For them. 

Meanwhile, I have received regular updates from my younger brother, famous for his role in the Caven Family as "the little brother." This is to say that the bungalow he and his wife were renting was in the evacuation zone, and his claim to fame is limited primarily to me and those who have seen his illuminated gas art or participated in his collage parties over the years. He's also a big fan of all things community, and he has been keeping me apprised of the hundreds of volunteers who have mobilized to remove debris and check in with their fellow residents. None of these folks were listed in IMDB or TMZ. These were individuals who came together in the wake of an indiscriminate force. While my brother and his wife were able to return to their home, just blocks away there are families who do not have the choice of spending a few weeks in their townhouse or their place on Martha's Vineyard. These are the people who are getting up and going to their place of business only to discover that it isn't there anymore. Or the ones who are waiting for word on the missing. The ones who are waiting for clues about how their lives might continue. 

On the flipside, there are plenty of those who live outside the fire zone who see the rich and famous as the reason why we should turn a cold shoulder on relief efforts. Why can't they just take care of themselves? Lost your house? Big deal. Buy a new one. 

Which I suppose they might, if only the real estate agent's office hadn't burned down too. 

Only The Beginning.

 I awoke with mild relief to the sounds of my wife getting ready to take her niece to the airport. It wasn't time for me to get out of bed yet. But the relief came more from the release of the dream which had been playing out in my head just prior to the morning's stirring.

It was a pretty standard zombie apocalypse scenario. Survival for those who were left with their faculties, the ones that kept them from making choices primarily based on eating brains, was the focus. The most difficult problem with this plan was that apparently there was some concentrated effort kept in keeping the zombies safe, happy and part of society. It turned out that there were a great many of the walking dead that were elected officials, leaders of the community that we were all trying to hold together. So the decision was made that we would try our best to live with the zombies in as harmonious a way possible. 

This was about the time that I began to recognize the way my dream was an allegory for living with MAGAts. They look to have been recently human, but there are a number of telltale signs that give them away. The red baseball caps, for example. Or their tendency to shuffle around in mobs, mumbling incoherently. And then there's that whole predilection toward eating brains. 

As it turns out, holding a representative democracy together during a zombie apocalypse is a pretty tough thing to do, but liberals have always been "big tent" folks. If it means making sacrifices to the shambling masses of undead, we'll do that. Even if it means letting them being in charge of all three branches of government. 

This was a scary dream that I was relieved to have interrupted. But in true Rod Serling style, I woke up to the realization that the dream wasn't over. 

It was just beginning. 

What's That Sound?

 That awful creaking and snapping sound you heard late last week was that of the arc of history splintering under the weight of attempting to bend toward justice. The felon who would be "president" finally received his sentence for the thirty-four convictions he received for falsifying business records to cover up that he had his fixers pay porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her from talking about their sexual encounters prior to the 2016 election. 

Eight years later, dirty laundry and all, the only man who has served as president after being impeached twice will be sworn into office next week, making history once again by becoming the only convicted felon to be confused as being worthy of that position. 

And now, a musical interlude: "He's never gonna be president now," sings the chorus in Hamilton during the song that recounts The Reynolds Pamphlet, an essay that Alexander Hamilton wrote to clear his name in connection to a series of payments that it turns out were made not in attempt to embezzle treasury funds but rather to pay off the husband of the woman with whom he had an extra-marital affair. Back in 1797 it seems that such conduct was thought to make even those in the highest tier of government to be unworthy of moving still higher. 

Two hundred some years later, this kind of thing gets pushed to the side and a sentence of "unconditional discharge" was handed down to the former game show host, sounding more like a side effect of erectile dysfunction medication than a legal precedent. That wave that so many of us back in May and even before that which we hoped would bring about the landslide of judgement against this adjudicated rapist and TV pitchman. All of those decisions that we might have imagined that would disqualify him from becoming dog catcher in Mayberry let alone President of the United States have just disappeared. 

"Find me 11,000 votes?" Gone. The rally in front of an angry mob on January 6, 2021 in which he exhorted those frothing minions to "fight like hell?" Gone. He's immune now, and seemingly forever. The next in a series of increasingly unstable moves will no doubt continue to be looked at askance and then passed along as the United States attempts to absorb sovereign nations and Make America Insane Again. 

Someday, maybe they'll write a musical about this one. But for now it reads like a tragedy. 

The Facebooks

 Mark Zuckerberg, who began his career as a fascist by creating a computer application that college boys could use to rate how hot girls they would never date were, has decided that fact-checking isn't something he needs to be done by him or anyone in his employ. He now believes that this function can be taken over by "the community." Ladies and gentlemen, there is no lifeguard on duty.

I understand that it is lazy of me to take my knowledge of Mark Zuckerberg directly from Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of him from the film Social Network, but since there is no need to check for facts anymore, why not? Fast on the heels of the Elno the Ersatz President, Mark has decided to pull the plug on Facebook's independent fact-checking program. Because who really needs to hire someone to keep an eye out for trolls when the trolls can do that for you? 

For "Free."

Which winds us back to that illusion of Free Speech. As a matter of full transparency, I only use the Facebooks for maintaining a district-required presence for our school. I don't get too much push back from announcing the semi-annual Scholastic Book Fair or the pictures of our Students of the Week, but I have had the vicarious experience of having my blog posts pitched from the Facebooks for no apparent reason. Now the answer seems quite evident: The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Perhaps "lunatic" is too strong. How about incipient fascist incels with access to a keyboard. Perhaps a subset of the group that was involved in getting the Second Trumpreich off the carnival circuit and into the White House. 

In the months since that elevation of the once banned chief MAGAt, the absurdly but appropriately named Meta has donated one million dollars to his inauguration fund, switched its global affairs chief to a more Republican-friendly executive, and selected MAGA ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White for its board. 

How could this possibly be seen as anything but "promoting free speech?" And, if I remember by Zuckerberg lore correctly, it's also a sure-fire way to impress the chicks. And Sean Parker. 

Cry

 My wife, who is prone to such things, described a visualization in which all the tears for those affected by the wildfires would put out the flames. It's a beautiful image, but not one that comes easy to a cynic like me. 

My younger brother and his wife were forced to evacuate their home in Pasadena early Wednesday morning. When they moved down there from the Bay Area a few months back, I knew that I would miss them but I did not anticipate having to shift that feeling directly to worrying about their survival. The good news, from my very limited standpoint, is that they are both okay with the asterisk of them having to worry that all their worldly possessions would be consumed in a blaze. 

A blaze that I confess surprised me, since I was initially focused on the fires that were burning further south in the lyrically named Pacific Palisades. My limited understanding of the geography of Los Angeles put my brother and his wife in the relative safety of the northern part of that region. It was a separate fire, the Eaton Fire that was threatening to consume their new neighborhood. Forced to confront the map that showed all those affected by the windblown conflagration, I realized that in spite of the somewhat stilted news coverage, it wasn't just a pack of celebrities whose homes were on fire. Hundreds of thousands of Californians were fleeing for their lives, with a death toll that was only beginning to suggest the devastation wrought. 

At this point, I have to pause in my search for more synonyms to convey the gravity of this disaster. I will take this opportunity to insert the words of the Fuehrer-Elect used to address the situation: "One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. He insisted that California's Governor Newsom was more concerned about "trying to protect a tiny little fish." He went on: "And for the sake of the smelt, they have no water. They had no water in the fire hydrants today in Los Angeles. It was a terrible thing. And we're going to get that done." This self-proclaimed very stable genius who has regularly shown little or no understanding for how things like solar eclipses work was trying to score political points at the expense of that "beautiful part of the United States of America." 

Thankfully for my younger brother, the guy who wanted us to inject bleach to cure COVID is not currently in charge. Instead, the guy who has been lauded by both sides of the aisle for his handling of disasters from hurricanes to hellfires is still in charge of our nation's emergency response. So keep sending those good thoughts and tears if you have them to spare for everyone who sits on the edge of losing everything. From Paris Hilton to my little brother.