My name is Michael. It’s supposed to mean ‘he who’s like God’ in Hebrew. I don’t know how I got the name. Mom blamed Dad; Dad blamed Mom.
I’m mixed about it as a name. Overall, it’s a good name but there’s just so many of us out there.
I’ve used different names at different times for different reasons. Just the other day, I used a different name when I was talking to my wife. I was on a DIY project to fix the oven. As a dedicated Budgeteer, I’m not a noted handyman. But man, I sure do try. So, as my wife was going out the door, I told her, “I vow that this oven will be fixed upon your return, or my name’s not Patrick J. Carpenter.” My name is not Patrick J. Carpenter, of course. That’s the humor of it. I hope.
As a stumbling novelist, I often consider adopting a different name. There are many writers out there known as Michael Seidel. Many are successful and popular. Some are German. There’s also a weather man named Mike Seidel. I think he might be retired. Either way, all those other Michael Seidels cast a shadow over this Michael Seidel. I since speculated, maybe I’ll seek publication as Taylor Sands. Except I looked up Taylor Sands, and that’s a porn star.
Back in the think tank, I changed Sands to Rush. Taylor Rush is a successful doctor. Other options were chased, like Taylor Chase, and rejected after research. For instance, there are 90+ profiles for Taylor Chase in LinkedIn. I finally came up with Taylor Booking.
Another meaningless irritation has crowded my thoughts. I read a headline:
21-year-old sailor Angelina Resendiz goes missing from Navy barracks in Virginia
My thoughts traveled the well-used circuits of curiosity and concern along the lines of, what happened to her, and I hope she’s alright.
Another part of me rose up with irritation about ‘goes missing’.
I know. It’s a well-established idiom but it annoys me. It’s right up there with ‘I was thinking in my head’. I’ll spare you my irritation with that one. ‘Gone’ missing and its companion phrases like ‘went’ missing irk me. They’re added and unneeded words. They’re unthinking words to me and don’t add understanding. If anything, using that idiom distracts from the news being imparted because some of us pause to note they’ve used the idiom, which is pretty lazy writing.
Anyway, I hope the culinary specialist is found safe. I would add, ‘unharmed’ because that’s what I often read. But…well, you can probably guess why I don’t.
Here we go. It’s Frida, June 6, 2025, memorable as D-Day in the big one, WW 2, which was finished with an atomic bang. Trump, meeting with the German Chancellor, gave us more cringespeak while discussing the war and D-Day.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attempted to provide President Donald Trump with some positive reinforcement by crediting Americans for ending a war in Europe during his visit to the White House on June 5.
He reminded Trump their meeting was taking place a day before the 81st anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces, most of them U.S. troops, invaded Normandy, France, marking the beginning of the end of World War II and the defeat of Nazi Germany.
We are having June 6th tomorrow, this is D-Day anniversary, when the Americans once ended a war in Europe,” Merz said.
“That was not a pleasant day for you,” Trump responded. “This was not a great day.”
WTF, PINO TACO? Guess that’s why the United States and most of the world remembers and honors D-Day. But not you, TACO, no. Honor, courage, and sacrifice are outside of your awareness. So is history. There’s no room in you for these things because your oversized ego pushes everything but greed, malice, and lies out.
Back to local deets. It’s cloudy but sunshine from somewhere still streams in. Current temperature at 11:30 is 80 F. We expect 91 today. Rain? No. Wildfire smoke from somewhere? Maybe. We’re tracking that shit. Gotta stay vigilant.
Today’s musical inspiration was incubated with highlights about the growing Musky TACO rift. Noted weird hair spokesperson Steve Bannon jumped in to urge PINO TACO to seize little Musky’s SpaceX toys. That’s in accordance with the Retribution Clause in the Constitution: “If a business pisses off the royal President, said President may seize assets from the pissee.” The pissee would be little Elon Reeve Musk, of course.
I was chuckling to myself, wondering if this is dinner theater to distract us from some other Musky TACO monstrosity but still had the bandwidth to mutter, “What fucking losers.” Hearing that from me, The Neurons jumped in with the 1994 Beck song, “Loser.” Remember 1994? Much better person in the White House back then. Not perfect but about 10,000 times better than the meatbag currently in the Oval Office.
Beck’s “Loser” was not about others. The weird rift reflects how low he felt at the time. But such logical distinctions escaped The Neurons, as it often does. So I have Beck performing “Loser” in the morning mental music stream, and I’m gifting it to you as a Frida special.
Time to kick it. Wishing you the best of days in always and all times. Coffee has been ingested. Here we go. Cheers
My fellow Terrans. Today is Thirstda, June 5, 2025 in Ashlandia. Some refer to the day as Thursday.
Summer is rising in Ashlandia. Ridiculously blue skies have us covered like a fine duvet. Sunshine is showing up early and staying late, putting on a bright display. Today’s high will be 82 F, about 8 degrees north of our present temperature. Humidity is not bad, and light winds lazily stir the leaves and brush past.
Papi is happy as a floof can be, chirping around the house in the early morning before floofsconcing into a nap nest. My wife isn’t as happy. Although her various ailments are easing, mosquitos are finding her irresistible. Their bites swell on her which is an annoyance. As for me, I’m embroiled in an agent hunt put my personal happiness and satisfaction both at 7.5 on the scale, where ten means it’s all awesome. That might just be coffee influencing my spirits.
The world continues its status as fascinating but complex. For example, forecasters and personnel at NOAA. We’d heard that DOGE took its usual cleaver to NOAA. Meteorologists vacated the business, taking early retirement, etc. But there was U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at a Senate hearing telling us that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is “fully staffed” with weather forecasters. Meanwhile, a search for news updates about NOAA tell multiple other stories.
Those stories were all posted a day ago. Lutnick testified last week.
There’s always been news churn where politics encumber how facts are related. But vetting those facts with the TACO Regime is increasingly challenging. We do understand that. Trump is a dedicated liar and butchers facts. He’s willing to make up anything to make himself look good. The people he hired are right off the same cookie sheet.
Today’s music is by Billy Joel. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is Joel’s musical recitation about facts and history culled from his lifetime. The song came out in 1989. From Wikipedia:
Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon who said “It’s a terrible time to be 21!”. Joel replied: “Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y’know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful”. The friend replied: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties”. Joel retorted: “Wait a minute, didn’t you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?” Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song.
Looking further back in U.S. history, there’s been multiple awful times to be 21 years old, a truth known around the world. Some irony creeps in for someone from a privileged background, Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon, making that observation back in 1989.
The Neurons brought the song into the morning mental music stream after I read about actual wildfires in the United States and Canada. I feel for the people and animals in those places, as we’ve worried about California and Oregon wildfires for much of the last twenty years.
But the song is a good song for today, mostly because it strikes me that the TACO Regime is trying to fan the flames rather than fight the fires. As others note, it’s increasingly evident that TACO is tearing down the world order to make it easier for the wealthy to take over, rule, and make more money. Anyway, here is the song.
Got my coffee. Hope you have your beverage of choice. Let’s do the best that we can today. Here we go. Cheers
This is a reblog of Jill Dennison’s post, “Time To Stop Kidding Ourselves“. I tried using the Reblog button first, but that WordPress feature continues to fail for me. I ran down an article to answer fix it but the fix didn’t work. So here I am.
That aside, Ms Dennison points out that we’re already living under an authoritarian regime in the United States, and our behavior needs adjusted to face that fact.
The article is worth a read. Here’s a taste to push you over there.
Ithink it’s time to stop kidding ourselves. I am as guilty as any when I say things like “we are on a slippery slope leading to a dictatorship”, or “the Trump regime greatly resembles an authoritarian government.” No, folks, we’re not “on a path” to an authoritarian regime … we are already HERE. Most of us in this nation have zero representation in our federal government today – the only ones who truly do are those who are still foolishly applauding a dictatorship, who have somehow been convinced that it will make their lives better.
I recently came across a few articles published by the Open Dialog Foundation in Brussels about authoritarianism – what it is, how to survive it, and how to communicate with friends, co-workers, and family who have drunk too much of the Kool-Aid. I wanted to share the first one titled “Year One Under Authoritarianism; What to Expect?” with you – I think you’ll recognize many of the signs …
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.
Welcome to Wenzda, June 4, 2025. Blissful on the back patio this morning. 65 F and sunny, the backyard was vibrant with greenery, and absolutely still and silent, a perfect setting to sip coffee, catch rays, and rebalance my circadian rhythm. Papi the butter butt floof was my sole companion. Fresh from eating breakfast, he was content to clean himself with occassional passes against my calves. 80 is again the mark nature has set for us as a high in Ashlandia.
Happy Pride Month. June is Pride Month. Fools and charlatans in the Gold House, the place previously referred to the White House, contest the need to celebrate Pride Month. They prefer to believe that anyone who professes anything but straight genders and roles are crazy, making it up, or other ridiculous things. And I say, screw them. We will keep building and progressing. It might be on pause while they’re in control, but they are not moving us back, no matter how hard they try, no matter what they do. We will build an inclusive world where all people are equal without any qualifications imposed by anyone else. It’s strikingly hypocritical that the right will say things about God being the creator and giving rights and simultaneously deny that God created anyone who dares say, for example, my name is Michael, and my preferred pronouns are she and her. “How dare you,” these self-annointed arbiters shriek. I ask them back, “How dare you. Who the hell are you to decide who the rest of us are? Screw you.”
In honor of Pride Month, let’s begin with “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga. Wikipedia gives us a good summary of the song.
Lady Gaga said, “I want to write my this-is-who-the-fuck-I-am anthem, but I don’t want it to be hidden in poetic wizardry and metaphors. I want it to be an attack, an assault on the issue because I think, especially in today’s music, everything gets kind of washy sometimes and the message gets hidden in the lyrical play. Harkening back to the early ’90s, when Madonna, En Vogue, Whitney Houston and TLC were making very empowering music for women and the gay community and all kind of disenfranchised communities, the lyrics and the melodies were very poignant and very gospel and very spiritual and I said, ‘That’s the kind of record I need to make. That’s the record that’s going to shake up the industry.’ It’s not about the track. It’s not about the production. It’s about the song. Anyone could sing ‘Born This Way’. It could’ve been anyone.”
Got my coffee. I enjoy a cup in the morning. I was born that way. Have the best Wenzda you can. Cheers
First up, PINO TACO is poisoning Americans, followed by American Resistance.
It’s not enough that the TACO Regime is encouraging people to avoid vaccinations, which is helping measles stage a deadly return. Now the inept and ignorant TACO Regime is POISONING OUR FOOD SUPPLY!!! Yes, deadly tomatoes are out there! IT’S ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES!!!
My confession: I don’t know if this salmonella outbreak can be attributed to the TACO Regime and the DOGE cuts. A look back through history shows that these outbreaks happen. But PINO TACO would not hesitate to hyperventilate with all caps and exclamations points were a Democrat POTUS. So I’m really just emulating TACO’s style.
Does a post like this help with civil discourse and problem solving? Hell, no. But when the GOTP and TACO Regime stops doing it and get serious, so will I.
Next, American Resistance! This was posted over on Mock Paper Scissors. WP still won’t permit me to properly reblog from them, so here’s my work-around. Summary: Masked gunman are trying to round people up. Without badges and insignia, they could be anybody.
This should give us a little lift to start our day. Make no mistake, if you get the mellow beach bums of San Diego to rise-up, anyone can rise-up.
The thing that worries me is that without badges or other identifying insignia, any crack-pot militia can start playing this game and rounding-up people in white vans and disappearing them, and vigilantes are not exactly known for rules. We need more of this to stop the Gestapo/ICE (and maybe the Proud Boys).
As much as I hate saying this, IF you are white use your white privilege if you see this happening: it’s your Superpower against these fascists/racists. Demand to see warrants signed by a judge, and don’t let them disappear people.
(Hat tip: Scissorhead Purplehead)
Remember to resist this and other un-American behavior on No Kings Day, June 14th.
Michael Seidel, writer 