Month: April 2025

Twosda’s Theme Music

The weather disappoints me. Sunshine awoke me. That’s faded. Clouds rolled in. Yesterday afternoon turned into a rain marathon. I hoped it rain itself out.

It’s not raining now. It’s just not my idea of ‘nice’. That term for weather has gained a narrower scope as I age.

Not just the weather disappointing me. Papi fractured my sleep with his complaining and in-and-out capades. “Are you getting revenge because we took you to the vet yesterday?”

The cat miaws back. Not his usual sound, which is an extended, “Eeeeppp.”

“I didn’t want to do it,” I tell him. That’s true. “It was for your own good.” Just as Mom used to tell me about almost everything upsetting me as a child.

The vet wants us to have the cat’s teeth worked on. “She’s aggressive about having his teeth worked on,” my wife says.

“She was the same with Tucker.” Tucker had all his teeth removed. “Poor Tucker.”

“He was happier after his teeth were taken out.”

Papi’s teeth estimate is $1900. It shocked us. “Should we do Papi’s teeth?” I ask.

“Let me think about it.”

That’s just how Mom used to say no.

Besides those things, recent SCOTUS rulings have me wringing my hands. Also, I read an article about how surprised financial advisors and stock brokers were that Trump actually went through with the tariffs.

“We’re stepping into the most pro-growth, pro-business, pro-American administration I’ve perhaps seen in my adult lifetime,” gushed the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman in December.

“I don’t think this was foreseeable,” a mournful Ackman posted on X on Monday. “I assumed economic rationality would be paramount.” What an odd assumption to make about a man who bankrupted casinos.

But it was foreseeable. Those of us who didn’t vote for Trump readily foresaw it.

I’m disappointed that Ackman and his kind didn’t foresee it. I’m disappointed that he didn’t believe us when we told him this was going to happen.

BTW, this is Twosda. April 8, 2025. It’s 52 F outside. Partly cloudy. It might rain.

The Neurons are playing “Lithium” by Nirvana in the morning mental music stream. The song was released in 1991. I was still a military member then. Just arrived back to the U.S. in Feb. that year after almost four years in Germany. I was assigned to Onizuka Air Station in California. Some good years were had there.

Nursing coffee, I hear a squeegee sound. The cat runs his wet pads on the door glass when he wants in. “Swqueek swqueek swqueek swqueek.” Sunshine is up. So is the wind. I let in the cat. He turns to me and says, “Merow?”

2

It’s One or Another

Daily writing prompt
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
View all responses

I write fiction. I love writing novels. I don’t work so much on publishing them afterwards. Writing them is the fun of it. Fiction writing always lets me be other characters.

Today was typical. As I worked on the novel in progress, I was several characters. A mashup of genres, I told the muses that all genres are welcome in this tome. So, today, one of the principle characters in the scene was the talking dog, Sly.

Sly is a small dog. His name is short for Sylvester. Besides talking, he’s a thought reader. His owner is Instant, a rock and pop star who uses magic to enhance her performances and control her fans. They live on a starship named the Stellar Queen.

When Sly was introduced chapters ago, he came in to give specific warnings and revelations. When I thought about his voice and tone, I began imagining my father’s words coming out of Sly’s mouth. Thereafter, Sly’s behavior model is my father. Later, I realized with a start, Dad’s nickname among some of his friends is Sly. Kind of trippy. I named the dog before ever thinking about his behavior.

I think my favorite character in the novel, though, and the one who I would prefer to be, is Ari Four. As part of his modelling,another fictional character inspires him. That’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg, son of Uhtred, played by Alexander Dreymon in a television series called The Last Kingdom. The television series is based on a series of novels by Bernard Cornwell. Uhtred is based on some history, and Cornwell’s distant forebear. Besides sometimes acting irrational, staunchly adhering to principles when others urge him to abandon them, Uhtred is bold, loyal, and decisive. He’s willing to fight.

Ari Four is always urging, “We must do this now.” He speaks forcefully, as Uhtred would. If someone else is about to pull a sword, Ari Four will pull his first. That’s the thing about fiction writing. Like fiction reading and watching movies, plays, and television shows, you can let yourself be someone else for a while.

Even if it’s just your father, the dog.

0

Munda’s Wandering Thought

I visited Ashlandia’s Rite Aid. I haven’t been there in months. My Neurons go on an Easter egg hunt to remember when I was last there. “Before Christmas,” they suggest. They’re not sure.

The Rite Aid feels like a perfect metaphor for Ashlandia. It was doing well. Then they decided to modernize it. They enlarged the space. Stock was added. Alcohol and frozen food sections tripled in size. The store is adjacent to an Albertson’s, and across the street from two other stores which provide these offerings at low prices. Apparently, Rite Aid, with its consistently higher prices, thought they could grab some impulse buys from their pharmacy business. It’s only one of two pharmacies in town.

I think Rite Aid guessed wrong. A graveyard silence greets me when I enter. I seriously wonder if there’s anyone else in the store. Ideas of finding a pile of dead bodies come up. I finally see another person. They don’t look like a killer. Neither did Ted Bundy, I hear.

Many Rite Aid shelves are empty, same as my last visit. A solid offering of wines is available. Decent prices, too. I don’t have any wine needs. I move on.

I’m not here to shop. Our household has a continuing need to get rid of used things. Batteries, light bulbs, paints, and outdated prescriptions are part of that list. We have meds that haven’t been used since Obama’s first administration. Containers holding them line several shelves in a hall cupboard. Getting rid of these things is another first world blues matter for us.

My wife initiated this visit. “They have new drug disposal drop off locations. Blue boxes. There’s supposed to be one in Rite Aid. We should take a look.”

I volunteer to do it while I’m out. Missions like these are milk runs.

Using store layout knowledge, I find the blue box without problem. Instructions are provided. Open door. Drop in meds. Close door. Easy peasy.

The door won’t open. I look for releases and additional instructions. Try again. And again. Three tries are a charm, I hear.

A pharmacist comes over. “The box is locked,” he says. “You need to see a store employee to drop something off.”

Very convenient. Not. “That’s not what the instructions say,” I say. I point to the sign.

“Each store is given discretion to handle it as they want.”

“Shouldn’t some instructions be put up that you need to have an employee unlock and open it?”

“Probably. We had to do it. People were putting trash in.”

No probably about it to me. That would be good customer service. I look around the empty store and thank the pharmacist. He returns to his fortress.

I think I’m starting to see why Rite Aid has so many empty shelves.

0

Munda’s Theme Music

Munda’s arrived, spinning to a stop in April 7, 2025 in Ashlandia. Springy wet weather still holds here. 51 F, sunshine is having it way, but clouds are galloping in, narrowing the sun’s effect, filtering the light, darkening the day. Rain is expected. ‘They’ say our high will be 68 F. That’s what we were told yesterday. 61 F was the highest effort clocked at our house.

Quite a Hands-off turn out on April 5, 2025. These were protests against Trump’s policies and actions thus far. He’s been racing into oligarch/dictator mode since Jan. 20 of 2025. That’s when he uttered, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Since then, he’s been doing anything but that. He’s ignored judges and rulings against him. He’s deported people without due process and is ignoring our system of checks and balances. So people went out there and spoke up to tell him that they don’t approve. Initial estimates said 3.5 million turned out. That’s been upgraded to 5 million.

I believe Trump went golfing in response.

BTW, Trump said in an interview that the protests have got to stop. Which means, they must be kept going.

The Neurons have parked “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” by ZZ Top in the morning mental music stream. That song was brought out of my mind’s dusty recesses when I was thinking about the nationwide protests. Ah, hah! See how clever The Neurons are? ZZ Top are a favorite group of mine. Saw them several times in concert. My enjoyment of them was kicked off with high school art class in 1973, when I was starting my senior year. We were permitted to listen to music as we did our projects. Scott brought in Tres Hombres. I never stopped listening.

Coffee has been re-introduced to my biosphere but more may be needed. Our ginger floof has an appointment to see how he is responding to treatment. Right in the middle of the bloody day. Oh, well. Gotta roll with it. May your day be right in all the good ways. Cheers

0

Stopping You There

Trump Said Auto Emissions Don’t Affect the Environment. That’s Not True.

President Trump announced on Monday that he planned to relax limits on pollution from cars, saying that the move wouldn’t “mean a damn bit of difference to the environment.”

But decades of science show that the pollution from automobile tailpipes has harmed the environment and public health, from the days when leaded gasoline sent neurotoxins into the air and soil to the carbon dioxide emissions that are heating the planet right now.

No need to read any further. ‘Decades of science’ means nothing to PINO Trusk. Those are facts. Facts do not count in Trumpworld. We’ve already seen that with vaccinations and COVID-19. Measles and vaccines. Anything and vaccines.

Trump’s vision for the United States is a dark and poisoned place.

He’s just a monster.

1

Sunda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Donald Trump declared “Liberation Day” on April 2, 2025. The phrase was used in conjunction with his ‘retaliatory tariffs’.

It reminds me of George Dubya Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Given on May 1, 2003, six weeks after the U.S. led Iraq invasion, the Bush Administration backpedalled from the speech and the phrase. Dan Bartlett, Dubya’s communications director, said it was the ship’s banner. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed that he edited the speech and removed references to “Mission Accomplished”. Bush later stated in several different interviews that “Mission Accomplished” was a mistake.

History tells that the mission wasn’t accomplished as far as that disastrous war goes.

At the time of the president’s speech, Americans had yet to pay the main costs of the Iraq War. The years immediately following “Mission Accomplished” were the deadliest in the conflict, which has left 4,500 U.S. troops killed and over 32,000 wounded. American taxpayers can expect to pay nearly $3 trillion for the Iraq War through 2050 when factoring the costs of veterans’ care, war-related defense spending increases, and additional interest on the national debt.

On a strategic level, President Bush was even more pollyannaish. He declared that, in deposing Saddam, the U.S. had “removed an ally of al-Qaeda” and prevented terrorist networks from “gain[ing] weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime.” These claims reinforced since-disproven narratives that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to begin with, or that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction.

The key results of the invasion were two-fold: it empowered Iran to expand its influence in Iraq and across the Middle East by removing a check, and it aided our great power competitors, Russia and China, by distracting us in counterinsurgency operations for decades, delaying modernization programs, and wearing out our all-volunteer force and its strategic assets — such as the B-1 bomber fleet — from overuse.

In the days since that Bush speech, “Misson Accomplished” has often been employed in a mocking fashion. As in, “If you were trying to prove yourself ignorant, mission accomplished.”

As the Bush Admininistration did with the war in Iraq, Trump is using misinformation to convince us this is a great idea. Trump’s tariffs have introduced huge uncertainty. His thinking defies the lessons of history and economic theory. Trump will have you believe that the experts’ opinions that he’s wrong proves that he’s right.

I have doubts. Trump has always claimed to be the greatest. Evidence proves him otherwise. He says he’s a great negotiator. Evidence shows otherwise. He claims to be a brillant businessman. Multiple bankruptcies and failed businesses undermine that claim. Trump has instead proven that he’s an inveterate con man, master of spin, and consummate liar.

I believe that “Liberation Day” will join “Mission Accomplished” as a new mocking label in history. As it happened with “Mission Accomplished”, we’ll see in a few years what “Liberation Day” means to the United States and world.

1

Sunda’s Theme Music

It’s warmer but cloudier in Ashlandia. Like several other things that could be mentioned, I’m not certain what’s going to happen. For Ashlandia’s weather, it’s 57 F. Clouds have pressed blue sky into the background. Sunshine is a hopeful possibility but rain is in the forecast.

For the United States, markets are dropping. Our government systems are being deliberatedly sabotaged in an effort to ‘make them better’. At national parks, the Trusk Regime is telling park employees to do more with less. Measles are spreading. Vaccinations are down. Tariffs are up.

It’s just uncertainty in the air today, Sunda, April 6, 2025.

Despite yesterday’s outswelling of public protest about what the Trusk Regime is doing, nothing has changed. We remain at the same stuck place: one outraged side vehmently opposed to what Trump is doing. Another side supporting him with cultish fervor. A third side seemingly detached and uninvolved, showing questionable awarenss.

I’m read interviews again and again, and that’s where it lands. Given, I can’t vouch for their veracity. Written words on the net are suspect. Perhaps they’re AI creations to spin and confuse. But Trump voters still declare that DOGE is doing great things. That the tariffs are wonderful weapons in the fight to remake America. That Trump is looking out for the average person in the street. That’s what they claim they still believe.

I don’t know. I’m trying for a pragmatic tone but I’m jaded in a dozen ways. It’s still early. The tariff war’s ink is still drying. Results of many things still float through the air like shredded paper.

Without much surprise, The Neurons are playing “Land of Confusion” by Genesis from 1986 in the morning mental music stream.

Coffee has found its way into me again. Hope you find the energy and frame of mind to make this day what you need. Cheers

2

We The People

If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words …

I’m feeling a little fatigued from the constant shit storm called the Trump Presidency v. 2.0. The April 5 2025 Hands Off protests and demonstrations were a tonic for my soul. Thanks for the compilation of photos, Jill.

8

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑