Category: crime

Frida’s Theme Music

The work week is at its end. That’s what we used to call the Monday to Friday gig. Don’t know if that’s still the handle.

Yes, today is Frida, July 18, 2025. Today in Ashlandia, we’re at 73 F and expect a high of 95 F under skies that go on forever blue and steady sunshine.

More sucky news fills the cyber pages. I’m one who prefers to skim the net and read the news rather than turning to streaming or OTA tv. A news piece touched me with serendipity. From the 1440 Daily Digest was a summary of a new procedure to reduce disorders in newborns.

Mitochondrial disorders, affecting about 1 in 5,000 births, are transmitted via the mother and can cause vision loss, diabetes, and heart issues. Six of the eight babies showed a 95% to 100% drop in mutated mitochondrial DNA, while two showed reductions between 77% and 88%. All eight remain healthy; one experienced and recovered from an irregular heartbeat.

I had read the news elsewhere before. On the same day that I read the news, Jill Dennison shared the song, “In The Year 2525” from 1969. One stanza struck me from the song in connection with this news:

In the year 6565
Ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube, whoa

I guess my point is that I have always felt that’s the general direction we’ve been headed: manufactured people, whether it’s through cloning or genetic manipulation, or some other technology. I always think there will be dire unforeseen and unintended consequences. Time will tell, right?

My morning mental music stream music is much lighter than that other song. “Take the Money and Run” by the Steve Miller Band, is a 1976 offering about robbery and murder, but with a peppy pop beat. I’s about whims and things that go wrong, and how the consequences. A detective chased them and they remained on the run forever. But to me, the song was always about opportunistic criminals, like those populating the current GOP. Do what you can and need to get yours and screw all others. Yeah, you knew I’d turn this political. LOL. That’s me. At least, that’s why I think The Neurons put it in the morning mental music stream.

Have the best Frida you can. That’s my goal. Here we go again. Cheers

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

Happy Wenzda. Jumped out of bed (it’s an expression), and went to the windows and —

“Alexa, what’s the air quality?” I asked. Because looking west, smoke sheathed the view. What fresh hell was this?

Alexa told me the air quality was good. Yes, I did not smell smoke. Windows were open. Cool 66 degree F air was flowing in. But that smoke was turning the blue sky gray. Must be from one of the nine fires burning west of us. Or one of the several blowing along mountain ridges from the fires burning south in northern California.

Supposed to be 97 F today. That’s what we saw yesterday. Ashlandia summer is in place.

I can become obsessive about things. My routine soon incorporate sniffing the air for smoke smells and looking out the window to see if the smoke was becoming better or worse. Some crow was yelling something the whole time. Another was responding from further away. I don’t know what it was about. I don’t speak crow.

Reading about Trump’s irritation with the Epstein files. While he’s still burning down the U.S., his base is upset about the Epstein List. Trump, being true to his core of caring only for himself and lying and throwing aspersians at others when he gets upset, lashed out on a lie-filled text. I read a good rebuttal with a timeline and a reminder, Presidents Obama and Biden didn’t have anything to do with it. It was during Dubya’s administration and Trump 1. Staunch Republicans Barr and Acosta were involved. Indisputably, though, Trump and Epstein were runners together. Photos exist. Trump talked about Epstein in glowing terms. No doubt, Trump is in that file.

Today’s music is a 1998 Eve 7 offering, “Inside Out”. The Neurons had it playing in the morning mental music stream for a bit, slowly turning the volume up. Finally hearing the part that goes, “I’m not as
Ugly sad as you. Or am I origami folded up and just pretend, demented as the motives in your head.” Knowing some lyrics makes the modern net useful for finding the song’s details. Once those details were rehoused in my awareness, some memories about where and when I often heard it — in the car, driving around the bay area, Alex — stacked.

Now I’m feening for coffee. Off we go. Have a most excellent day, as we used to say. Cheers

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Satyrda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Yeah, look how Trump has ‘made America great again’.

This is a classic Trump product: rolled out with great fanfare, but basically a piece of shit.

So that’s Trump’s thin, shallow idea of greatness. Build crappy places. Abuse other people in the name of religion and patriotism. Sell cheap goods for marked up prices. Tear lives apart. Destroy and enshittify. It’s mindless. Senseless.

The right wing likes to call out TDS: Trump Derangement Syndrome, a perjorative whenever people label Trump’s actions and words as negative. But the real TDS is their inability to see the truth. Or, with many, their preference for what he is doing: tearing down; destroying; enshittifying. Dehumanizing others. Dehumanizing themselves.

Why do that to a nation you profess to love unless you’re deranged?

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Satyrda’s Theme Music

Welcome to Smoky Satyrda in Ashlandia. The smoke isn’t heavily visible but the smell of sodden wet wood hangs in the air and shifts my sinuses into overdrive to flush the crap back out. Yeah, poor me, right?

It’s 77 F now in Ashlandia with 99 F projected. The local troposphere looks up to it with blue skies gleaming down and a mighty sun raising up. Wouldn’t surprise to break 100 F; that’s the forecast for the valley overall.

A friend has fig trees on her land and gifted us with about five pounds of fresh, ripe figs. These things are huge and gorgeous. I’m married to a fignatic. We just spent $11 for a pint of figs the other day. They weren’t the best of figs but my house’s fignatic was happy to have them. You can imagine her joy from this gift. The figs are also a great addition to my morning diet. Yum. Pairs well with bananas. No so good with coffee.

I subscribe to multiple newsletters about books, writing, and publishing. One email subject said, “New Horror for your Summer”. I was like, no thanks, I have enough of that crap in the MAGALand daily news. For instance, when Trump’s gestapo rounds people up, their pets are often left alone in homes and apartments to die of thirst and starvation. This is Trump’s United States: cruel, mindless, thoughtless, heartless. Should I add greedy? That’s pretty fuckin’ self-evident when Trump brands and hawks new trinkets and consumer goods every month. Beyond that, there’s climate change and growing natural disasters around the world. As a couple nations war on each other and the wars threaten to engulf more geopolitical regions, TACO cuts back on the State Department and retreats.

Trump also announced he’s rolling out new tariffs. Will he or won’t he? TACO loves getting attention from making these announcements. Project 2025 goons installed in his regime loves him to do it, as they continue to operate under the distractions he generates with his blithering dithering — or is it dithering blithering? Trump makes announcements as the world burns and crashes around him, and the MAGAts clap in approval.

All that brings me to the morning mental music stream offering. After a surprisingly restless night and just one remembered dream (but a good dream), I found myself in the kitchen with a specific chorus echoing in the MMMS.

“Never free, never me, so I dub thee unforgiven. You labeled me, I’ll label you, so I dub thee unforgiven.”

Yes, that’s Metallica with their 1991 offering, “The Unforgiven”.

The Neurons were dubbing ICE agents as unforgiven. The entire damn Trump Regime is dubbed unforgiven, as are those senseless MAGAts who rolled this mess into existence. They’re unforgiven.

Have the best Satyrda you can. I plan to do the same. Cheers

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

It’s Wenzda, July 9, 2025. It’s a difficult day for people like me, who like to complain. I have so much to complain about. I’ll start with weather, although it’s not bad now, 77 F, soon to be 88 F. No, it’s the thunderstorms from the other day, which torched multitudes of fires. The storm was like Jesus making more out of nothing. Smoke now tints the blue sky and white clouds with ugly shades of dirty, old concrete. You smell the burning wood; it’s inescapable. The air quality isn’t bad now, 67, enough jab your eyes into itchiness, tease your nose into irritation, stuff your sinuses into running, and bully your throat into scratchiness.

Neil Creek is the closest fire, right off I5 at mile marker 10. Ashlandia’s first northbound exit is 11. One southbound lane of I5 is closed for two miles.

Neil Creek fire, southern Oregon, July 9, 2025.

We’re also trending up in our temperatures. TV weather guy gleefully told us we’re going into the low 100s this week, well over the historic average, but not as bad as last year, when we were running 108 plus. It’s the prototypical 2020s Ashlandia summer. I’ll have a lot to complain about.

Over in politics, it’s a complaint smorgasbord. A complaintasbord.

Like, Trump promised 200 trade and tariff deals by now. He has 3. He’s batting .015. If he was a major leaguer — no, if he was batting that on any time, he’d be pulled from the field and find himself fast out of the game as a never was, never will be. That abysmal performance doesn’t keep the MAGAts and GOP that fill his Greedy Ol’ Trump Party, known in its shorthand as the GOTP, from declaring his Donnie the greater player ever, even greater than Babe Ruth. They don’t mention people like Hank Aaron, because, their heroes are only white.

So easy to complain about Trump. Donnie boy makes ridiculous speeches. He sends ridiculous letters. Transmit absurd texts. Like his latest embarassment he sent out to other countries regarding tariffs. If he was a businessman, people would trash it or post socially about it, mocking it. Oh, yeah, they did.

Another complaint about Trump is the promise of how little he cares, how little he pays attention. Texas was struggling with death and destruction from flash floods. He went off to golf. Said he’ll visit there Friday, a week after it all unfolded. FEMA finally got there. It surprised me that the Trump Regime FEMA bothered to show at all. But it is gerrymandered red MAGALand.

I simply must laugh and complain about Trump being nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. International war criminal Netanyahu nominated the convicted felon and genuine idiot for the prize. If Trump is awareded that prize, the Nobel Committee might as well close up shop and slink away in disgrace. The black mark against them won’t wash off for generations.

The Neurons called up a dedication for Epstein and Trump. Trump wants us to forget about his relationship with Epstein and the parties they attended together. Says he barely knows the guy. With his weaponized DOJ loaded with MAGAts to defend him, the Epstein List suddenly vanished. What a Trumpian way to handle things. Why didn’t he just say the dog ate it. Oh, probably because dogs don’t want to have anything to do with him. They’re too smart.

Thanks to janewiedlin on Instagram.

So, this song is dedicated to Trump, Epstein, Maxwell, and their shared past. Fresh out of 1997, here is Marcy’s Playground with “Sex and Candy”, from my morning mental music stream to yours.

Coffee is being consumed and the writing position is being assumed. May your day give you all you need. Cheers

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Twosda’s Wandering Thoughts

A new scam is out there. “Scattered Spider” is behind it, according to the FBI, and they’re targeting airlines and airline passengers.

The FBI said the hackers, known as Scattered Spider, use “social engineering techniques” like impersonating employees or contractors to convince the target company’s IT help desks to grant them access to internal systems. “These techniques frequently involve methods to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA), such as convincing help desk services to add unauthorized MFA devices to compromised accounts,” the FBI said. “They target large corporations and their third-party IT providers, which means anyone in the airline ecosystem, including trusted vendors and contractors, could be at risk.”

I first learned about it a few weeks ago. Friends reported they’d been scammed. After struggling to get airline tickets, they called the airline. On the phone for about forty-five minutes, they finally were able to purchase their tickets.

None of it sat right with them. They called the number back and got air, so they decided to go to our local airport in Medford and address it at the ticket counter. There, they were told, “You have seats but no tickets.” That confused the agent as much as my friends. Further research was pursued with phone calls at the airport, and then the agents leaned in to my friends across the counter and said, “I’m afraid it appears that you’ve been scammed.”

Since that first time, two other people were scammed in similiar ways. All thought they were dealing with the airlines; but they’d been redirected without their awareness. People pretending to be the airline helped them out. The end, except it wasn’t.

Credit card companies were contacted. As their credit card numbers were now out there in con artists’ hands, new cards were needed.

All of this may or may not have been the ‘Scattered Spider’ group. Could be copycats or just others acting in parallel. It’s a messy, ugly world. It doesn’t look like it’s getting any better.

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Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

This is from the ‘maybe-it’s-just-me’ book of thoughts.

When I read about the growing Wolf Fire in southern California, I immediately thought that PINO Trump’s response will be: “Let them burn.”

Which I think is totally wrong and an abhorrent way for the President of the United States to think. But it’s completely in line with the policies and behavior of the TACO Regime of the Disunited States of Chaos.

Trump’s golf club is Nero’s fiddle.

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Sunda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Quisling: Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian army officer who in 1933 founded Norway’s fascist party. In December 1939, he met with Adolf Hitler and urged him to occupy Norway. Following the German invasion of April 1940, Quisling served as a figurehead in the puppet government set up by the German occupation forces, and his linguistic fate was sealed. Before the end of 1940, quisling was being used generically in English to refer to any traitor. Winston Churchill, George Orwell, and H. G. Wells used it in their wartime writings. Quisling lived to see his name thus immortalized, but not much longer. He was executed for treason soon after the liberation of Norway in 1945.

h/t to Mirriam-Webster.com

Trump, aka TACO, remains my favorite current political target. This is because he disgusts me. He’s brazenly yet defensively ignorant while posing as a genius. He lacks economic acumen and self-awareness, and pushes ridiculous ideas, often while acting ridiculous. Busy enriching himself at the expense of anyone poor, he’s a shallow individual who is unfortunately put into a position to severely damage the democratic republic known as the United States of America. He has and had helpers, though. One, as Andy Borowitz reminds us, is Mitch McConnell. McConnell was a major bad actor during the years leading to now.

Here’s a taste of Mr. Borowitz’s insights to kick it off:

America’s Top Traitor: Mitch McConnell

A brief review of McConnell’s disgraceful behavior during the Trump era—also known as the Fourth Reich—confirms that “mcconnell” would indeed be a worthy replacement for “quisling” in the dictionary.

Before Trump was elected, McConnell had already spent decades doing everything in his power to make the United States unfit for human habitation. Specifically, he worked tirelessly to ensure that as many Americans as possible were killed by guns.

Whenever gun control legislation was proposed in the wake of a mass shooting, you could count on Mitch to discourage his fellow senators from taking any action that might prevent similar tragedies in the future.

After a mass shooting in his home state of Kentucky in 1989, he warned, “We need to be careful about legislating in the middle of a crisis.” Yes, because… wait, why, exactly?

Continue here. Enjoy.

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Wenzda’s Wandering Thoughts

I’m on a doom-scrolling slowdown. I wasn’t even generally doom scrolling. I was just going through the news and blog posts. Too often when I did, I found myself muttering, “Bastard,” after reading something. Like, the tale of the manhunt for the father who killed his three daughters. “Bastard.” Or the Trump appointee idiot who doesn’t know the U.S. has a hurricane season. Is he American? How long has he lived in the United States? If he’s been living in the U.S., has it been under rocks in Utah or somewhere? “Stupid bastard.”

There is Trump, of course. Donald J. “Trump Again Chickens Out” TACO Trump. And Rep. Mike Johnson. Both are bastards. Unfeeling, uncaring, unprincipled bastards. Bastards who have sold whatever was left of their souls.

Johnson was called out for only citing CBO figures as accurate when Dems are in charge. Trump’s budget bill is called the OBBB. They say it means “One Big Beautiful Bill”. I believe OBBB means “Only Bullshit Being Boosted”. More and more constituents are calling their reps and senators on it. Not that the Republican side of things will care. See Joni “We’re all dying” Ernst, for example. More Republicans are reacting to criticism by claiming, “I didn’t know that was in the bill.” See Rep. Mike Flood and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for example.

Then there’s hate crimes like the murder of Jonathan Joss, unarmed and shot to death while mourning the loss of his home and pets. Shot dead by some asshole who hates gays. “Bastard.” The murderous bastard who killed Jonathan Joss probably won’t get the punishment deserved. There’s too much systemic hate, bias, and prejudice built into our judicial systems for fair trails when the victims are gay.

This is our nation now, bending over backwards, encouraging us to look away from the shit happening on our streets. People being disappeared by armed masked paramilitary who show no insignia or badges. People killed for being whatever disturbs thin-skinned, cowardly white people.

This is Trump’s America. The land the MAGAts want, a hateful place where the truth is spit upon, where science is dismissed and undermined, where murder and violence is called for by the POTUS against anyone deemed ‘his enemy’, where the past is being whitewashed of contributions by any person that TACO doesn’t like or admire, and that is a long list of honorable, intelligent people who refuse to kiss his ass.

“Land of the free and home of the brave?”

Not in Trump’s America.

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Happy Belated Reminder

This reminder comes to you courtesy of Mock Paper Scissors. I tried reblogging it, but, WordPress. So here it is, with a link to them. Respect to them for the reminder, this felon is the leader of the former GOP, which is now the Greedy Old TACO Party, GOTP. The Trumplicans who were once Republicans sometimes weakly mew with indignation have certainly demonstrated that they are, like him, racist, greedy, unprincipled, with little regard for due process, the oaths they swore, or most of their constituents.

LET’S GO, TACO.

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