An Equal and Opposite Reaction

That big drama playing out now, aside from wondering if TFG gave Alaska back to Russia, is whether Texas will forcibly extract five new Republican districts via gerrymandering even more severely than they already have. The president asked for it, so the Big Bad Tough-guy Texans immediately rolled over and began rigging our government even further in their favor. Texas Democrats went on the lam, which sounds like chickenshit but is, in fact, the most effective thing they can do, given their minority status. Their best chance is to deprive the process of the minimum number of participants to hold a legal session (aka, deny a quorum).

The problem there is that they can’t run forever, and eventually, Texas will either reel them in or change the law to allow further business to take place without the runaway legislators. It’s not like it will be hard to find a sympathetic judge in the area. So if they’re as determined to prop up the Cheeto in Chief as I think they are, this is going to happen. The question is what to do next.

Ben Sargent, TexasObserver.org

This is where Governor Gavin Newsom of California strode into the fray and declared that if Texas pulled such a stunt, his state would too, thereby nullifying the new advantage. I know that there are some in the Hell Yeah camp, and others in the Don’t Stoop to Their Level camp, because we don’t know where it will all end.

For the record, I hate gerrymandering. If it were up to me, every state would be required to appoint a bipartisan panel in charge of creating a district map that’s logical for geographic reasons, with an outcome that’s consistent with the state’s political makeup. In other words, you can’t do what Wisconsin and North Carolina did and produce a map that creates a majority of Republican representatives in a state with a majority of Democratic voters.

My state of Maryland is one of the few states that’s heavily gerrymandered Democratic. We only have one Republican representative, the noxious Andy Harris, whose district is made up of the entire eastern shore. The current map was actually put to a referendum a few years back, and passed easily.

And I voted for it as well, because while I’m against gerrymandering in general, I’m even more against being a sucker and letting Republicans pull every trick in the book to amass and consolidate power that will last for generations, while we righteously take the moral high ground straight to a permanent minority status. I say, if they stop their gerrymandering, we’ll stop ours. And the same goes in California.

I don’t want this to happen, and every effort should be made to stop them in Texas. I just don’t see how that will be done, not with the field tilted so far in their favor to begin with, and the ultimate backstopping of the current SCOTUS, who blessed such gerrymandered atrocities in the first place. So the only alternative is to fight fire with fire. I want Democrats to actually put up a fight and DO something. Use what power they have without shame, just like the GOP does. They never apologize, they don’t care if something is “unpopular,” (in which case they go on Fox “News’ and MAKE it popular) so it if helps get them the power they want, whether it’s putting a hold on an opponent’s Supreme Court seat, or expediting one of their own in the same situation, they just do it. All the critics eventually forget about it and move on to the next week’s outrage.

Meanwhile, they come out of it with a much stronger position. To them, everything is fair game in the pursuit of power. In fact, it’s not only fair game to them, it’s God’s will.

I’d like to see the Democrats borrow a little bit of that chutzpah and play some hardball themselves. I’m tired of being the noble but losing warriors fighting the good fight. If we don’t step up our game, the fight will soon be over, and we’ll be locked out of the ring for the foreseeable future and then some.

Republicans are working to cement themselves into the only positions of power. Once they do, politics will no longer matter because they won’t need to curry our favor. They’ll be running the country forever, and we’ll be the commodity they buy, use up, wring out, and dispose of. Our elections will have the same certainty about them as Russia’s do.

And the counter-gerrymandering may not work anyway… Remember that SCOTUS can no doubt find a way to rule that Texas’s map is legal, but the other blue ones aren’t. It’s not like they have any consistency of standards, other than “Whatever Republicans want.”

I hate the gerrymandering too. But we at least have to slow them down. While the reliably blue state of Maryland may have to sit this one out, because there’s only one seat to be gained, no matter how they draw the maps, it will be up to California, Illinois, and New York to hold the wall against the MAGA horde. I will support their efforts and hope that it can all be reeled back in later, once cooler heads appear on the horizon.

Retirement clock: 10 days and counting…

Compare & Contrast

Since my days at work are numbered now (and today that number was 15), I’ve been going through all the non-business electronic files I had on my slice of the company's shared drive. While everything got deleted, there was some stuff I emailed home for various reasons, and this was one of the items, which I hadn’t looked at in over 18 years. (This Word doc is so old it still has blue font.)

In April of 2007, I started compiling data for a prospective blog post (2 years before I even started this blog). I wanted to be sure I didn’t forget how big a clown the current president was, nor the evil he was conducting.

Little did I know that one day there would be another president who would make this guy look like Winston Churchill. Still, it’s interesting to see the similarities. The principles are similar, with the differences being a matter of intensity. In other words, they’re doing the same kind of things today, only worse and more obvious.

So with that, I give you this look at a time-capsule item from 2007:

 Reasons to Loathe George W. Bush

(not including the Iraq War) 

• Firing US Attorneys for political gains / politicizing the Justice Dept.  Includes an item allowing “emergency” appointments via the Patriot Act, as to end-run Senate confirmations. (TFG upped this from installing party hacks to hacks loyal to him.) 

• K Street Project- turning the Lobbying Industry into yet another arm of the Republican Party. (In addition to the Oil, Gas, Auto, Coal, Nuclear Power, Banking, Insurance, Pharmaceuticals, and Tobacco industries, et al.) 

• Ignoring the problems at Walter Reed (and problems with Vet Care in general) until it actually got some publicity. (New philosophy: Who needs Vet care? 

• Further politicizing the Justice Dept by running out anyone involved with/ Civil Rights Dept, and filling the spots with/ inexperienced cronies and hacks. (Same here, only more so. They’re running minorities and women out of the government and military.) 

• The obscene sweetheart deals that were made to benefit Halliburton. The Iraq War alone houses enough shocking, greed-encrusted deals to make even a Trump disciple blush. Worst of all, the actual troops can’t get sufficient body armor, armored HumVees, or even the minimum levels of training. (Now the deals all sweeten the president himself. The big corporations will have to make do on their massive tax cuts and leave it at that.) 

• Catchy-named initiatives that actually undermine what the name infers, like: 

• Clear Skies Initiative which was written by the oil and coal lobbies, which weakened controls on toxic emissions.
• No Child Left Behind, that creates mandated standards, but provides no dollars to pay for them.
• Death Tax, which is tearfully held up as an unfair burden to these unfortunate families in their time of need. What no one mentions is that estates are only taxed when they total over 2 million dollars, so that rich fucks can leave their fortunes to their spoiled rich-fuck kids. These are exactly the people who should be picking up the tax bill so that there can be Head Start and After School Care programs. While the “Death Tax” may be technically accurate, the “Rich Fuck” tax would be a name that’s much more in line with the spirit of the thing. 

• The Valerie Plame leak, which just shows that not only did no one in office care that they were outing a covert CIA agent as a form of political payback, but they didn't even care if they got caught. Along with the US Attorney thing, it's just another example of the Changing Story Scenario. (also see “Reasons for the Iraq War”)  The basic premise is “Yeah, we’re lying… so what are you gonna do about it?” (Personal payback for disloyalty. Sounds familiar…)

 

• Scientists being overruled on scientific matters by conservative policy hacks.  See Plan-B birth control, HPV vaccinations, “intelligent design,” and anything on global warming. Also see the appointment as manager of the administration’s federal family planning initiatives, of a guy who opposes birth control in favor of an “abstinence only” approach. On the bright side, said guy apparently resigned last week. (Now we have wholesale elimination of any department that might cost big business a few bucks by doing its job, plus the Dept of Education, without which, future president-criminals will have an even easier time getting away with the grift. And any scientist who doesn’t produce the government-desired result becomes an unemployed receptacle for death threats.) 

• The appearance of gay marriage issues (or other social hot-button issues) that predictably surface during election season as so to scare up support from the far right, only to disappear immediately upon completion of the election. (There’s always a Boogieman they use to scare you, whether it’s gays, groomers, or gang members.) 

• The unprecedented power grab by the executive branch, aided by the Republican Congress enablers. (I don’t remember what this one was about, but we sure have that now, as Congress willingly gives up any spending supervision, taking the much easier stance of “Whatever Trump wants.”) 

• The unprecedented secrecy of this administration has generated more classified documents than any president ever, including existing documents already in the public domain. (The current Administration would love to maintain that kind of secrecy, but they’re just not smart enough to keep their nefarious plans off of WhatsApp.) 

• The merging of religion with government. See Faith-Based Initiatives, or in other words, paying churches to administer to the poor, while spreading the “Good Word.” By the way, only Christian Organizations need apply. (The president doesn’t give a crap about this stuff but his handlers and donors do, plus his enablers in the Supreme Court.) 

• Cloaking voting restrictions targeted at minority, low-income, and elderly people (read “Likely Democratic Voters”) by calling it Protecting Against Voter Fraud.  While at the same time championing paperless voting machines manufactured by Diebold Inc., whose chairman declared in 2004 that he was going to do everything in his power to see that Ohio's electoral votes were delivered to Bush. On the bright side, this schmo also resigned in scandal, although a tad too late to do us any good. The voting irregularities in Ohio alone should have grounds for a national recount of every tight race.  It was Joseph Stalin that said, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” (Has not changed a bit. They know they don’t have a winning hand, so they’re working furiously to rig the next game with gerrymandering and attacks on the voting process. They will do literally anything to remain in power.) 

• The FBI using Patriot Act powers on pretty much whatever they want. And not just the ones from a couple weeks ago, it’s been going on for some time. (The current ICE Gestapo doesn’t need to rely on any Act, just the say-so from Hair Fuhrer.)

 I guess I ran out of enthusiasm before we even got to Hurricane Katrina.

So Much for Easing Off Into the Sunset

Early last month, I wrote a post about my hopes and dreams for retirement, which is that I can finally take it easy and do things that I want to do. Of course, my time frame was about two years down the road. Looks like that’s not happening.

Remember when I wrote about telling my boss my feelings about a prospective forced return to work? It’s not prospective anymore. They want us back in three days per week, starting right after Labor Day. Months ago, I heard it would happen when my company moves to a new building in January. But last week, my boss said the directive would be early September instead. I hoped there would be some kind of appeal process or other wiggle room to negotiate because I have no intention of complying.

Well, the memo came out yesterday and there was zero wiggle room. It’s happening to everyone, even those who don’t live near our offices. (I have no idea how that’s going to work.) It came from our CEO and contained lots of happy talk about enhanced collaboration and teamwork. They’re offering us two more personal days too, and two weeks in the summer when we can work from anywhere (just like I can right now).

As I mentioned before, I’m the only one who does what I do. If I were to disappear, they would be truly fucked. There are complicated processes and details surrounding my world. I have some self-written procedures, which I may or may not share. Without my guidance, no one would have the slightest idea what to do.

My first instinct was to nuke the whole thing from orbit, but after conferring with my brother, he convinced me I should offer the 90 days the company wants before retiring, on the condition that I do that time at home. He said I’d regret going out in a bad way. And if they don’t go along, I can retire effective the day after Labor Day, the first day we’d have to go in.

So I spoke to my boss this morning, and as I suspected, this is a universal edict. Even knowing the barrel I have them over, they would not let me run out my time training my replacement at home. So, I told her I’d be retiring on September 2^nd. I didn’t yell, didn’t get pissed, and just remained calm and resolute. I could see the panic set in as she realized that I couldn’t possibly train anyone fully in only 18 days, without devoting eight hours a day to it. And if I did that, all my real-time duties would remain undone. It’s not like I’m going to kill myself accommodating them, not after robbing me of two years’ work.

Yes, I know I could just go in, but I don’t see it that way. I feel like they changed the deal. They gave me 100% work-from-home status for the last five years, and my life is fully adapted to that. Going into the office again, with the 90-minute round-trip commute, lack of lunch options, and having to work in the middle of an open-walled circus, is not my idea of fun.

My dad always said he’d work as long as he enjoyed it and his boss didn’t bug him. I’ve been using that as my guide all along. I’m lucky that I have the option to retire. In fact, I told the boss this morning that if this had happened 10 years ago, “yes, I’d go into the office, but I’d be resentful and probably do a half-assed job.” All positive feelings about my work and the place would be gone; just as gone as the likelihood I’d ever take a call or answer an email after hours, like I do now.

She wanted me to talk to an HR guy and gave me his name, so I could “ask questions and learn about the process,” and I emailed him immediately. He never responded, which was not a surprise. I do want to hear what they have to say before I do anything irreversible, which is the only reason I didn’t submit my plans today. I wonder how many people are doing the same. Maybe I’m an outlier, maybe I’m part of an open rebellion. And maybe cooler heads will prevail, and accommodations will be made.

However, until then, my next task is to determine the maximum pressure my printer/scanner can withstand when I sit on the glass, to create my resignation letter.

A Cut to Higher Education That Really Hurts

We’ve had a lot of noteworthy deaths recently (sadly, not him), but none really hit me hard. There was Ozzy Osbourne (Prince of Darkness) followed by Chuck Mangione (Prince of Flugelhorn). I liked a couple of Ozzy songs, but he wasn’t a big favorite, and that Mangione song was pretty nice, back in the 80s, so I was like, “Whatevs.” Then Hulk Hogan went and again, no big deal to me. I figure the biggest impact his passing has will be on the sales of tear-away t-shirts and spray-tan supplies.

Then today, I got word of a passing that really hurt. Many people will be like, “Whatevs,” and many more will be like, “Who?” But today, I must mourn the passing of a legend of musical satire and wordplay, Tom Lehrer.

Lehrer was a Harvard math professor who, in the 50s and 60s, became an underground musical hit, mostly in academic circles. (Full bio in the link above.) He was what you’d get if you crossed William F Buckley with Weird Al Yankovic. He played nightclubs and auditoria, and toured the world performing low-brow humor for high-brow crowds. He also wrote a couple of songs for the old kids’ show, “The Electric Company.” This is a bigger hit to academia than the destruction of the Department of Education

My parents had a Tom Lehrer record that I remember from when I was in first and second grade, simply called “Songs by Tom Lehrer.” It was just him and a piano, and I loved listening to it because it sounded like so much fun. He frequently used different accents when it suited the song, and the music could be quite rollicking. Back then, I mostly had no idea what the songs were really about, so I’d ask questions.

“Mommy, what does plagiarize mean?”

That was from a song called Lobachevski, about a Russian mathematician who encourages and celebrates the copying of others’ work. He sang it with a Russian accent, which I could identify because I often heard it from “Boris Badenov” on the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, and it had a marvelous Russian-style rhythm to it, often punctuated with cries of “Aye!”

I learned a lot of other words that were far from standard lower-elementary vocabulary lists, and I’m sure it contributed to my lifelong pursuit of wordplay, clever turns of phrase, and tortured rhymes. But more on that in a minute.

It also began honing my appreciation for the taboo, like with the song called “Be Prepared.” If that sounds familiar, it got name-checked in the classic action movie, Speed, when Dennis Hopper tells Keanu Reeves, “Be prepared, Jack, that’s the Boy Scouts’ marching song.” That’s ripped right from the opening line of the song, which goes on to cast aspersions upon the hallowed scout troops:

“Be prepared, that’s the Boy Scout’s solemn creed,

Be prepared, and be clean in word and deed,

Don’t solicit for your sister, that’s not nice...

Unless you get a good percentage of her price!

[Snip to the big finale]

“If you’re looking for adventure of a new and different kind,

And you come across a Girl Scout who is similarly inclined,

Don’t be nervous, don’t be flustered, don’t be scared,

Be Prepared!”

I read that this was the one that got him in the most trouble. In fact, there were some markets where they wouldn’t allow him to play unless he omitted Be Prepared.

That album also contained songs about drug dealers (The Old Dope Peddler), a tribute to effete Ivy League football (Fight Fiercely Harvard) which is sung in an accent Charles Winchester III would later use on MASH, a folk song parody (An Irish Folksong) in which the main character kills everyone in her family, and one even my 6-year old self could understand, The Hunting Song.

“I always will remember, twas a year ago November

I went out to hunt some deer, on a mornin’ bright and clear.

I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow,

Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

[snip to the bridge]

The law was very firm, it

Took away my permit,

The worst punishment I ever endured.

It turned out there was a reason,

Cows were out of season

And one of the hunters, wasn’t insured.

 

People ask me how I do it and I say there’s nothing to it.

You just stand there looking cute,

And when something moves, you shoot.

And there’s ten stuffed heads

In my trophy room right now,

Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Gurnsey cow!”

 Notice the “firm, it/permit” rhyme. I loved those. This guy was a master of creating rhymes out of nothing, bending and combining words into rhymes, the more tortured, the better.

One more tawdry excerpt from this album was a bit from The Weinerschnitzel Waltz, lovingly played in traditional waltz tempo.

From the mid-song interlude:

“I drank some champagne from your shoe, la la la

I was drunk by the time I was through, la la la,

For I didn’t know as I raised that cup,

It had taken two bottles to fill the thing up.

 

It was I who stepped on your dress, la la la,

The skirts all came off I confess, la la la,

Revealing for all of the others to see,

Just what it was that endeared you to me…”

I remember figuring out what he was getting at there, and being proud that I was now in on the joke like the rest of the grown-ups.

Later into my teen years, I obtained two of his other albums, both performed in front of audiences. Those were “An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer” and “That was the Year That Was.” The latter was a TV variety show called That Was the Week That Was, from 1964, in which he’d play a weekly song. While all of his songs were culturally relevant, these were right from the week’s headlines, and definitely some of his best work. A lot of people have heard his song, “Pollution.”

Pollution, pollution, you got smog and sewage and mud,

Turn on your tap, and get hot and cold running crud.”

The album opens with a tribute to “National Brotherhood Week,” talking about how once we behave for the special week, we can go back to being pricks to each other when it’s over.

“Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics,

And the Catholics, hate the Protestants,

And the Hindus hate the Muslims,

And everybody hates the Jews…

But during National Brotherhood Week

New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans ‘cause it’s very chic,

Step up and shake the hand of someone you can’t stand,

You can tolerate him if you try.”

I was delighted to see this run in the Baltimore Sun. The quote is from the introduction to National Brotherhood Week.

There was one about how our space program was being led by ex-Nazi, Dr Werner Von Baun.

With thick German accent:

“’Vunce ze rockets are up, who cares vhere zey com down.

Zat’s not my department,’ says Werner Von Braun.”

There was one I loved, called “Alma,” about a woman whose considerable charms allowed her to marry three of the top creative men in Central Europe.

“The first one she married was Mahler,

Whose buddies all knew him as Gustav,

And each time he saw her, he’d holler, (in German accent)

“Ach, that is the Fraulein I must have.”

Alma, tell us,

All modern women are jealous.

Though you didn’t even use “Ponds,”

You got Gustav and Walter and Franz.”

I still get crossword puzzle answers based on knowing who those three guys are.

Who’s Next was about the nuclear race.

(In Egyptian music rhythm)

Egypt’s gonna get one toooo

Just to use on You Know Who

(Now in Israeli music rhythm)

So, Israel’s getting tense,

Wants one in self-defense,

The Lord’s our Shepherd, says the psalm,

But just in case… we better get a bomb!

Who’s next?”

The masterpiece on the album was “The Vatican Rag.” That one shook some people up, but it was so happy and peppy, with its ragtime beat, theycouldn’t stay offended.

I was going to reproduce the whole song’s lyrics, but hell, I might as well just link a performance of the song. It’s short though, only 2:45, half of which is introduction.

Look at the rhymes in there… see what I mean? Want if/Pontiff, religion’ll/original. Great stuff.

The other album had the classic “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” as well as a tribute to college life, Bright College Days:

“Soon we’ll be out, amid the cold world’s strife,

Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life!”

How’s that for post-grad pessimism?

If you watched The Big Bang Theory regularly, you might remember an episode where Sheldon gets drunk before giving a presentation and starts singing the names of all the chemical elements. He’s doing a Tom Lehrer song, which is literally the names of the elements on the periodic table, sung to the tune of The Major General’s song from Pirates of Penzance. Sheldon only goes about half-speed. The original is an almost impossible tongue twister, zipping through all those quadra-syllabic names. He concludes with:

“These are the only ones of which the news has come to Hah-vahd…

And there may be many others, but they haven‘t been discaaaavahed.”

This song is similar to another of his called, New Math, where he goes through a subtraction problem, using the new method of teaching I suffered through at the time. From the intro,

“The idea is to know what you’re doing… RATHER than to get the right answer.

He goes on to repeat the problem, this time in “base-8.”

He says, “Base 8 is just like Base 10, really… if you’re missing two fingers!”

You know, I could probably go on indefinitely, calling out favorite bits and clever rhymes, but I think I’ve gone on about it long enough.

For the longest time, I never knew what the guy looked like. None of his album art featured his picture, and he was notoriously camera-averse. Eventually, with the internet, there is a wealth of pictures, lyric sheets, conversations, and whatnot about this slice of 60s talent and wit. If he’d have continued performing into this day and age, he could have dropped the wildest rap lyrics to date. There’s nothing he couldn’t rhyme… I even heard he was able to set up a rhyme with “orange.” (The article wouldn’t play on my browser, so I have to take the word of the headline.)

Whenever I’m in a crowd of unfamiliar people, at a party or whatnot, I can often find a like mind by dropping a line from either Monty Python, or Tom Lehrer. Whoever responded, I knew those were my people.

This is a guy who reveled in taking shots at the upper crust and the status quo, and always with a twinkle and an impish tone. His erudite lyrics padded my childhood vocabulary far beyond what the sisters at St. Euthenasius were teaching. Even though he hasn’t performed in decades, I can’t help but feel that the world is a dimmer place without him. From the halls of academia to the stalls in beer halls, he will be forever missed.

RIP, Professor. Play us out…

We Will All Go Together When We Go, about a nuclear war to end all wars. Check these wicked rhymes.

When you attend a funeral,

It is sad to think that sooner or'l

Later those you love will do the same for you.

And you may have thought it tragic,

Not to mention other adjec-

Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do.

(But don't you worry.)

 

No more ashes, no more sackcloth,

And an arm band made of black cloth

Will someday nevermore adorn a sleeve.

For if the bomb that drops on you

Gets your friends and neighbors too,

There'll be nobody left behind to grieve.

 

And we will all go together when we go.

What a comforting fact that is to know.

Universal bereavement,

An inspiring achievement,

Yes, we will all go together when we go.

 

We will all go together when we go.

All suffused with an incandescent glow.

No one will have the endurance

To collect on his insurance,

Lloyd's of London will be loaded when they go.

 

Oh we will all fry together when we fry.

We'll be French-fried potatoes by and by.

There will be no more misery

When the world is our rotisserie,

Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.

 

Down by the old maelstrom,

There'll be a storm before the calm.

 

And we will all bake together when we bake.

There'll be nobody present at the wake.

With complete participation

In that grand incineration,

Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak.

 

Oh we will all char together when we char.

And let there be no moaning of the bar.

Just sing out a Te Deum

When you see that I.C.B.M.,*

And the party will be come-as-you-are.

 

Oh, we will all burn together when we burn.

There'll be no need to stand and wait your turn.

When it's time for the fallout

And Saint Peter calls us all out,

We'll just drop our agendas and adjourn.

 

You will all go directly to your respective Valhallas.

Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollahs.

 

And we will all go together when we go.

Every Hottentot and every Eskimo.

When the air becomes uranious,

We will all go simultaneous.

Yes, we all will go together

When we all go together,

Yes we all will go together when we go.

Very late addition

I have to include this incredible three-way rhyme from So Long Mom, his rally song for the anticipated World War III, name dropping the famed Chet Huntley- David Brinkley evening news show.

"So long Mom, I'm off to drop The Bomb, 

So don't wait up for me.

But while you swelter, down there in your shelter,

You can see me... On your TV.

While we're attacking frontaly, 

Watch Brink-el-ly and Hunt-a-ly,

Desribing contrapuntally

The cities we have lost.

No need for you

to miss a minute 

of the agonizing holocaust. Yeah!"

  

Suspending Disbelief

I saw the new Jurassic World movie a couple of weeks ago, on opening weekend. I loved it, but that was a foregone conclusion. I loved all the Jurassic movies when I first saw them. Some have aged better than others, but I found them all wildly entertaining at the time.

I was one of a legion of Dinosaur Boys back in the day. The best thing about my family moving around from state to state and town to town was that each time we relocated, I’d get to check out a new school’s dinosaur books.

I remember visiting the Field Museum in Chicago and just being gob-smacked at the size and posed ferocity of the dinosaur skeletons. Even in my 30s, visiting New York’s Museum of Natural History was awe-inspiring. They had more skeletons there than I’d ever seen in one place. It truly made one feel insignificant, standing next to the remains of these enormous beasts.

When the original Jurassic Park came out, I was with my first wife, and her young son was around ten. We all went to see the movie, and it looked so realistic, we couldn’t convince the son that dinosaurs didn’t currently exist because he thought there was no way they could fake that so well for the screen.

Personally, I was so excited to see a photo-realistic version of what one could only have imagined. My most exciting frame of reference was the old Saturday morning show, “Land of the Lost,” which featured stop-motion animated dinosaurs. At the time, that was the coolest stuff I’d ever seen.

I could forgive that they made the T-Rex and Allosaurus roughly the same size, not to mention ignoring that they were separated by 85 million years, and they had these furry humanoid-things also running around from an even more distant time period. And then there were the “Sleestacks,” who made a mockery of everything for me. Even then, I knew there was no fossil record to back up those things.

I could never understand why the humans on the show were so afraid of them. All they did was hiss and lumber after you. The dad could have knocked one out cold with a good-sized tree limb. When you think about it, they shouldn’t have been there at all, for the mere reason that they were so slow, the carnivores could have caught and eaten them so easily. Maybe they tasted bad. Anyway, I digress.

While I enjoyed the new JP flick, I walked out of the theater with a major doubt in plausibility. See, I can buy that they cloned dinosaurs from DNA extracted from old mosquitoes. Our tech is steadily advancing to the point that I don’t think that’s an unrealistic jump.

In the story, they mention that all of the dinosaurs have essentially “self-deported” to the areas around the equator because it was the most like their own ecological atmosphere, and now, all such areas are off limits to human residence or travel. And I’m sure there’s a large give or take zone; I mean, the animals were not all arranged in a line around the world, right on the equator. I suggest that they settled in the area between the two tropics.

The blue lines on the left are where I drew in the tropic lines (without extending them), which was pretty good for doing it off the top of my head. When I looked it up later, I was bang on. Whoo hoo, when’s my day on Jeopardy?

So this is my main beef: Does anyone seriously think that the people who live there were all going to just up and move away? Especially in the resort areas! There must be millions, if not billions, of dollars tied up in beachfront resort real estate in the coastal areas between the tropics, such as Rio, Cabo, and Aruba. There’s no way these rich fucks are walking away from that kind of investment. They’d be on the horn to their governmental officers, making sure that their turf remains viable. 

And I’m sure these governments would listen, because they’re probably on the developer’s payroll in the first place. Our current Administration would be all-in because if there’s one thing this president understands, it's resort real estate.  He’d help them find a way to ship the dinos elsewhere, like to inland Africa. There are probably not many resorts located in the interior of the African continent. They’d stick them in Congo, Uganda, and Kenya. If they displace millions of citizens, they don’t give a shit. But those coastal resorts would need to stand. They’ll find a way to fence them off, one way or another, or just mow down the intruders with heavy artillery to protect the assets. I don’t think real dinosaurs would be as bulletproof as the ones in the movies.

I don’t think Indonesia would be too badly affected, though. Only the flying creatures could get there. I know that some of the big guys can swim too, like the Spinosaurus in Jurassic World-Rebirth, but why would it suddenly take off from Southeast Asia and head for some islands it doesn’t even know is there?

So, yes, the basis of the whole new film is preposterous… just not in the way one might think it is. But don’t let that dissuade you from seeing it, if you like this kind of thing. It’s a great “popcorn” movie.

I mean, if you can’t tune out reality long enough to enjoy a movie, you might as well just watch the news, which is far more depressing than the idea of dinosaurs roaming around the earth.

Headline Newz

As one of the dozen or so people who still get a daily paper, I usually scan through the stories at lunchtime, on my way to the crossword puzzles, with an eye out for blogging opportunities, which I capture with my iPhone camera. There’s always something to latch onto, especially with my paper’s new ownership, namely the guy who owns Republican media mouthpiece Sinclair Broadcasting. They never fail to take the Republican side, not only on the editorial page, but throughout what’s supposed to be the straight news.

Very few of the stories are written by in-house staff. Most are farmed out to Sinclair and Fox News outlets. Like this one, from “The National Desk,” which is what Sinclair calls its national 10:00 PM news.

In a nutshell, this story gives credence to the Attorney General from Mississippi, who is complaining that AI is biased against conservatives. He goes on to blame fact-checking.

I can see where he’s got beef. When it functions properly, AI should deliver conclusions based on facts at hand. When these facts run contrary to Republican talking points, they must be “biased,” right? That’s how it works in the Republican media bubble. If the facts go against their dogma, the facts must be wrong. They’ve been believing their own bullshit for so long, it’s become second nature.

Pointing out what’s true and what’s false is not a matter of bias, but proof. And no proof will knock the scales from the eyes of these MAGA idiots.

Two weeks ago, there was a staff-written article about the Nation’s AG blaming lower courts for holding up too many of the president’s orders.

This could have easily been headlined, “President refuses to issue Constitutional orders.” Still, the paper takes the view that all those findings against the clearly unconstitutional executive orders coming from the White House are all a big conspiracy, rather than judges literally doing the jobs they are required to do.

It’s also rich that Republicans have used this very same machine to derail anything Biden or Obama tried to do, by filing lawsuits with judges known to be down with the Republican cause. See, when they do it, it’s fine. When it works against them, it’s a vast conspiracy.

Oh, and if you “have a tip” that makes Democrats look bad, be sure to hit up this writer, because they apparently can’t find enough news to report on their own, once they turn all the local Fox News stories into transcripts.

A couple of days before that last joke, they ran this one:

And this one is from the AP, so it’s presented fairly straight, as they quote someone labeling this attempt to re-categorize natural gas as green energy, as “green-washing.” This is just more Republican sophistry. The gas coming from the Louisiana swamps is cleaner than the hot air from those hyping this ploy.

Republicans are trying to repeat what they did when they created “clean coal,” something that never existed. They just changed what they called it and pretended they were actually doing something about climate change. Republicans understand that so many people never get into the weeds with details. They just skim the headlines and absorb the impressions contained therein. So it doesn’t matter if it’s really green or not; a lot of people will believe it is, which means Republicans have something other than an empty cupboard when their constituents want to know what they’re doing about the obvious weather volatility we’re experiencing.

“Hey, don’t blame us, we’re all-in on green natural gas. But the Democrats want you to give up your cars and ovens!”

Lastly, we have another AP article about one of the last remaining Republican wet dreams, getting rid of all limits on buying politicians political donations. 

As if Citizens United wasn’t bad enough, and to demonstrate how the rich are never satisfied with the billions they already have, now they want to remove all remaining barriers to literally buying federal policy that caters to them. Given how they’ve already ruined government, I have no doubt the Roberts Court will continue ransacking the government until we inevitably start putting the billionaires' pictures on our money.

Retirement Dreams and Reality

I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement. My goal is to wait about two more years and then retire roughly when my wife does. But it’s been on my mind because I’m so looking forward to it.

Of course, the recently passed Big Ugly Trump Tax Shift Act makes me wonder if I should act now.

With all the backroom finagling over Social Security, I don’t know if it’s more advantageous to get into the system now or wait until the dust settles. I understand that they’re unlikely to disturb the soon-to-be retirees, and instead put the screws to those who have to wait awhile. Maybe I should just get my claim in while they still have some money.

You’d like to think that they’ll figure something out once the insolvency date becomes a real threat. But somehow, I just don’t see this group of politicians doing anything to help average Americans. With these guys, I’m thinking the cure will be worse than the ailment. Because it’s the easiest fix in the world: just raise or eliminate the cap on taxable income for Social Security.  But that would negatively affect the rich, so Republicans will never go for it. Any my guess is that if the Democrats ever come into enough power to get it done, the Rich will buy off just enough Democratic votes to shit-can the whole thing. They want Social Security gone, not fixed. Or at least changed into a system they can skim. I’d love to be proven wrong here.

I’ve worked continuously since I was 16, save for a couple of 3-month periods when I was unwillingly unemployed, back in the 90s. So I am ready to chill.  When I retire, I intend to do NOTHING productive. No part-time jobs, no consulting, no nothing. If I do any volunteer work, it would be something like becoming an election official, like those old fucks you always seen checking names when you go to vote.

I want to take care of the house. I’ll finally have time to exercise.  I want to see more movies and ball games. I want to binge on all the TV shows I’ve missed.

I want to take a cruise; though I’m told I’ll probably hate it because they tend to be very “peopley,” I at least want to try one. I want to go to the beach in September or October, which Sweetpea has always wanted to do, but has been barred from doing because that’s when school starts.

I may write a book based on my own and my family’s stories. I definitely want to start writing crabby Letters to the Editor of our local Baltimore Sun, staking my claim as Local Liberal Crank. I want to ramble around the country and visit whatever friends and family I’ve got left.

 I’ve always been easily amused, so I don’t have to seek out big entertainment events. The simple stuff is fine for me.

I know that not everyone can have such dreams. I’ve been fortunate to have found job stability late in life, to the point that after fumbling around in retail during my 20s and 30s, my last chunk of years have been the best-paying. And Sweetpea is situated similarly, so we’ll both have solid Social Security income (assuming original plans stay intact). I’ve been saving like a madman for the last 15 years, so with that, my 401k, and Sweetpea’s teacher’s pension, we should be OK. (Pending debilitating illness, economic or atmospheric collapse, of course.)

So, as I look dreamy-eyed into my retirement future, I see that the Powers That Be just won’t let me enjoy it. There were two stories in my news feed last week that tried to make me feel guilty about my unproductive plans. The first one started by mentioning how 71% of retirees have no plans to take part-time jobs. And that much is fine, but they go on to treat this as some kind of abnormality that needs to be explained.

They also mention how only 11% of “future retirees,” aka younger people, say they would do the same. Now, that’s really an apples-to-oranges comparison. Younger people have started out in a vastly different economic system from that of my generation. They know they may not be able to rely on Social Security. They can’t count on long, well-paying careers, especially with the onset of AI threatening to take over so many office jobs.

My thought on it, if all things were equal, would be that once they actually get to the finish line, they may think completely differently. They don’t know about getting ground down by life yet. They’re still young and their joint don’t ache.

Another article runs with the young person angle, with a story about a young person who was able to retire in her 30s, but went back to work out of boredom.

I don’t think articles like these appear in a vacuum. I think the Powers behind the scenes, the Rich moguls who guide what the media shows us, don’t want us seniors to just sit on our retirement laurels. They want us back out in the workforce. They still want us to retire so they can stop paying the full salaries we’ve earned over our many years, but they want us to come back again and work for a discount, without having to kick in for health care. They like that we’re experienced, hard-working, and reliable; they just don’t want to pay the going rate.

Then, once we accept their proposition that we should continue working, we would be less reliant on Social Security, pensions, and the like; employers can pocket even more of it.

Yes, I may be cynical, but it adds up.

Late Update 7/17/25

More proof that Republicans want to take our retirement away:

And note, it's totally NOT reasonable, even if you do sit behind a desk or a mic for a living. At some point, everyone should be allowed to enjoy life, rather than working for The Man every night and day. These pricks see no problem with working us right into the grave.

.

 

Making a Bad Thing Worse

The Senate is working feverishly to come to an agreement on the “Big Beautiful Bill,” AKA the BUTTS or “Big Ugly Trump Tax Shift” Act. It’s one of those things where even the people you’re hoping will kill the bill are doing it for the wrong reasons. (Like, it doesn’t cause enough pain, er, I mean, doesn’t reduce government spending enough.)

They’re under pressure from Lord Fuckface to get this thing wrapped up by July 4^th, so it’s crunch time and pieces are rapidly moving around the board.

They’ve made further cuts to renewable energy subsidies, just to show Elon their butts and the kiss those of the fossil fuel industry, who has owned the Republicans for decades. This makes it clear that Republicans want nothing to do with renewable energy until we’ve dried up every source of oil on the planet, which should give Big Oil enough time to figure out how to make a criminal profit from solar and wind.

They’re also looking for 18% cuts to Medicaid and 20% cuts to SNAP. That demonstrates, in the clearest way, what Republicans are all about… Taking money from the poorest and most desperate to make way for cutting taxes to the richest people in America. That’s it. Government for the rich, by the rich. All along, conservative talk about reducing government spending and lowering the deficit is really about not spending money on lowly citizens who aren’t sending 6-figure checks to their favorite PAC bundler.

George Carlin had it right decades ago when he broke down our society this way: “The Rich do none of the work, pay none of the taxes. The Middle Class does all of the work and pays all of the taxes. The Poor are there… just to scare the hell out of the Middle Class.”

Republicans have a 3-vote majority, but there happen to be three Senators balking at signing on. To illustrate the influence of oily politics, they slipped in an amendment exempting Alaska from the Medicaid cuts, which is Lisa Murkowski’s home state. Then the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that such action would nullify the “Reconciliation Process” they’re using to pass the bill. (Which nixes filibusters and allows passage on a simple majority vote.) That would usually sound like a victory, but the Republicans have shown that they don’t take Parliamentarian findings as anything but recommendations. I’ll bet that when the chips are down, they’ll ignore that particular ruling, like they always do when tradition stands in the front of the gravy train.

Unless they somehow get backed into needing Democratic votes, the bill still contains all that icky stuff that paves the way for our unbalanced president to preside until that last well-done filet does him in. It does everything to install an autocracy, but dub him King Midas the Second.

I’m out here hoping for a miracle but expecting the worst. When you have a group of people with unlimited money, no shame, and no more checks on their power, you know they will never stop themselves.

Iran (Still) Sucks

I apologize for not having something up earlier this week. Coming back from vacation, I had to swing into overdrive coming back to work, so by the end of the last two days, I was in no condition to make any sense. But today is closer to normal, so here we are.

Everyone’s been covering the “new and improved” Middle East war, but I want to add my two cents anyway.

Right off the bat, I don’t mind if anyone bombs the Iranian Theocracy back to the Stone Age from whence they came. They’ve been a thorn in our side for decades, whether pulling terrorist acts themselves, like they did back in my high school senior year of 1979, or sponsoring the terrorism against us by other actors.

The original Iran Hostage Crisis lasted from high school to college, and it was a big deal to my friends and me. We followed all the updates closely. Two of my buddies and I each had t-shirts made up that said, “Iran Sucks.” We used to walk around the mall together, wearing them, feeling all rebellious.

Yes, I still have it. No, it no longer fits. Note the size comparison to one of my current shirts. Those were the days!

So there was no love lost there, and I wasn’t terribly bothered when the news came out that Israel hit Iran. I was enthused that they targeted all military and nuclear-processing sites, leaving the civilian population out of it. I was less enthused when we sent our own planes over there. I thought Israel was doing a bang-up job all on their own. Maybe they needed our bunker-busting bombs.

OR, maybe TFG, after sitting through his lame little parade, wanted to see some real shit and put these things into action. (Well, the B-2s, at least. I don’t think they were paraded down the street.)

It’s one thing for these fragile male egos to merely see all their firepower and hear of its dominance. It’s another thing to watch shit go BOOM. I’m sure it tickled the boy parts of all the new toady military brass, as well as the Commander in Chief’s little mushroom cap. I’m sure he wants to be seen as a tough, wartime president.

Of course, it seems that his own insecurity (and I mean that literally) signaled Iran that something was coming down, giving them time to scurry away with their enriched uranium before the big ones fell, so in the scheme of things, they were mildly inconvenienced, rather than decimated.

Gee, when had this guy EVER done something that wasn’t underwhelming? He even gets “shot” in a ho-hum fashion.  (This guy was NOT shot. Guaranteed. If a bullet of that caliber even touched his ear, it would be gone, not nicked.)

But I digress.

Another angle not to be dismissed is that this gives the Republicans a chance to throw some more money at their defense contractor donors. We gotta restock the bombs we used, don’t we? Can’t let the inventory run low.

I also think this will be used as a pretext for civil rights violations going forward. Sending the military to squash protests, tampering with or canceling elections… It’s Iran, the all-purpose boogieman.

I bet TFG would LOVE to secretly sit down with the Mullahs and take some notes on how a tiny minority has been able to squash dissent and run roughshod over millions for so long. I don’t think he cares about the Theocracy part, but his enablers do. It’s one more tool in the box to appear righteous while simultaneously behaving like a disciple of evil.

Dirty Pool

I’ve got vacation coming up next week for our annual trip to the shore. We don’t take a lot of trips, and this is our one time a year to do something nice. Sweetpea and I have stayed at one particular hotel for the last five years because it has exactly what we want: a central location, free breakfast, an on-site tiki bar, a nice pool, and a balcony for watching the sunset over the water.

A sunset from last year.

Every year, it’s a big song and dance to arrange our departure; I make reservations in January and file for my time off, Sweetpea has to finish with school (teaching), and make dog-sitting arrangements.

Last Tuesday, I got an email from Hilton, confirming my reservation. But there was a little note included that dropped the bottom out of my stomach. It said that the pool would be closed during the entire month of June.

This, I knew, would not go over well. Sweetpea is a “pool” fanatic. If it were solely up to her, we’d have a pool in our tiny L-shaped backyard. She is all about vacationing at a site with a pool.

And I was right, this news went over like Al Sharpton at a MAGA rally. Sweetpea was ready to chuck the whole vacation if we couldn’t get a place with a pool. Sure, the beach is right there, but that’s more of a “stay for a couple of hours, then go” kind of thing. Plus, it’s a pain to schlep all the stuff with us… umbrella, chairs, blankets, towels, drinks, etc. The pool is the hub for our vacation life, whether we’re reading a book in front of it or floating around in it. And it’s right out the back door; no schlepping required.

I’ve already paid for an upfront, non-refundable reservation, so I’m not eating that without a fight. I knew I’d have to call the hotel in the morning to see what relief they might provide. I know the cost was non-refundable, but they moved the cheese! The pool was front and center on the hotel website when I booked it in January. I hoped our loyalty over the last 5 years would count for something. Last year, we had a small squabble over our room. (I say I booked one size, they said otherwise.) They mentioned that if I’d have booked through their website, as opposed to the banking and travel site I used, they would have some wiggle room. Lesson learned, I booked this year on their site, so I was expecting some of that wiggle room they dangled in front of us before.

I needed to call and see if they could either (in order of preference) find us a comparable place with one of their sister properties (there were 5 more in the area, but only two had an outdoor pool and one was sold out), refund our money so I could look elsewhere, or reschedule our reservations to later in the summer.

I was awake for 20 minutes in bed that night, trying to get straight in my head what I wanted to say. I was dreading the call, afraid I’d get too pissy with them. And it was a legit concern because I’m totally pissed off that a well-regarded property like this, in a well-known vacation site, would close their pool during prime season! It’s not like this is a pass-through like some Motel 6 in Peoria. This is a destination site in a resort town. The pool is a major component.

It’s always been my nature to respond to a fire by throwing gas on it, but I hoped I could remain calm and tactful. Being a dick never helps a high-emotion situation.

I didn’t want to talk to their main booking site; I needed someone in that building. Luckily, I still had the front desk number in my phone, after an incident from two years ago, when Sweetpea and I got locked out on the balcony. All the numbers I could Google from the balcony turned up the main reservations line; it took some digging to find the front desk, so I put it in my contacts list. (Yes, they got into the room and let us back in, with minimal embarrassment. But that was a close call. Our drinks were empty out there.)

So, once I had a break in my morning schedule, I called the front desk and told them I had reservations for next week but there’s a problem: my confirmation email said the pool was closed, and asked if that true?

She said, “Well, yes… the INDOOR pool…”

[Weight of the world lifts off shoulders]

“Well then,” I said, “I guess we don’t have a problem after all! KThankyoubye…”

We don’t give two shits about the indoor pool, that’s where all the screaming kids tend to congregate.

So now we’re back in business. We don’t have to rearrange our schedules or get used to a new venue, and I don’t have to boycott their chain for the rest of my life.

Wish us luck. Sorry you can’t come along. Please try to keep the world from burning down until we get back!