Category: Information

Thirstda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Spinal Tap should be proud.

Preppers are in a tizzy.

Several CEOs met with O2. That’s the One Orange. Frequently living in Florida, he allows time off from his busy golf schedule to sign executive orders. Many of those EOs are about tariffs. That’s what has the preppers wringing their hands. The CEOs run big box stores. They’re retailers. They were warning Trump that the tariffs would soon cause empty shelves, falling sales, and failing consumer confidence so Trump needed to back off tariffs. Which, despite declaring that he never would, Trump did. Because the CEOs are wealthy O2 backers. If not for them, and other millionaires and billionaires, Trump may not have made it back into the White House to bless the world with chaos. Now, this chaos was completely predictable. Trump said he was going to tariff every jot and tittle entering the United States. So it is tres amusing that these big box stores are worried.

The preppers were worried because, doom buying. They wanted to know what is not going to be on the shelves.

The preppers should talk to the truckers and the west coast ports. Because Trump isn’t worried about it.

Stuff enters the U.S. through those ports. Port authorities, freight companies, and dock workers say the ports are gonna be ghost haunts. Nothing is expected in. As critically, little is getting shipped out from the United States. Thanks to sharp price increases caused by the tariffs, orders for U.S. goods are being cancelled. These cancelled orders and empty ships are causing a productivity slow down. People are being laid off or terminated.

Gee, that worked out swell, didn’t it, MAGA?

Sanity was the first casualty of Trump’s personal economic war.

Stability was the second.

Third are workers, soybean farmers, and truckers. All are facing layoffs, or increased costs and decreased profits, or business shutdowns. Trump did the same thing in his first term. Enjoying that experience so much, he’s turned the craziness up to eleven.

Yes, that is a Spinal Tap reference. Spinal Tap used Trump logic to explain why their music is louder.

The phrase was coined in a scene from the 1984 rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap by the character Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest. In this scene, Nigel gives the rockumentary’s director, Marty DiBergi, played by Rob Reiner, a tour of his stage equipment. While Nigel is showing Marty his Marshall guitar amplifiers, he points out a selection whose control knobs all have a highest setting of eleven, unlike standard amplifiers whose volume settings are typically numbered from 0 to 10. Believing that this numbering increases the highest volume of the amp, he explains, “It’s one louder, isn’t it?” When Marty asks why not simply make the 10 setting louder, Nigel hesitates before responding: “These go to eleven.”

h/t to Wikipedia.org

Fortunately for truck drivers, the UAW, soybean farmers, Boeing, and big business in general, they supported Trump’s re-election campaign. He told them he would raise tariffs. They supported him and his positions and voted him into office. They now have what they wanted.

Right?

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Thirsta’s Theme Music

The n’umbers are adding up. Several fours reside in today’s date: 04/24/2025. It’s Thirstda. The week’s fourth day. Depends on how it’s counted.

More eerie is the temperature. It’s 47. The high today will be 74. The low will be 47. All in Fahrenhei.

Alexa’s recital captivates me with all those fours and sevens. I graduated high school in 1974. Childhood was over. Joined the military. Went on my first flight. Slept with 49 other guys in two open bays for the first time. Had my head shaved to peach fuzz for the first time. Shaved off my mustache for the first time.1974 was a year of many first times.

I listened to a melange of radio rock and pop in 1974. I was driving a 1964 Mercury Comet sedan. Stout as a Sherman tank. Forest green. Automatic. 289 V8. And a cheap AM/FM stereo with after market speakers mounted on the parcel shelf behind the back seat. Awesome sound for untutored ears. Delivered diversions by Al Green, Deep Purple, David Bowie, the Eagles and the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Joe Walsh, Elton John, Queen, Harry Chapin, the Doobie Brothers… The list of performers and music goes on. Good time to be young and listening to pop music.

The Neurons disappear into 1974’s dark storage in my brain. Remember those bellbottoms? And that paisley top? Oh yeah, and the worn brown leather spur boots and the white high-top tennies painted dayglo orange on a whim? Heck, yeah. My girlfriend and I often ate at Dairy Queen. It was the only place that was close, and even it was miles away. We married the next year, after she graduated. Still together.

The Neurons come out with Elton John and “Benny and the Jets”. We loved singing that refrain with EJ, “B-b-b-b-b-Benny and the jetssssss…” So here we go, reliving the past all over again.

Sunshine and clouds are waltzing ogether. Alexa said we’ll get rain showers. The clouds look like they’re willing to back up that prediction. Coffee is settling into my 2025 body. The kid from ’74 never saw it comin’. Here we go, rocking on into another year. Cheers

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Infloofminate

Infloofminate (floofinition) An animal who does not have a name. Origins: Circa 1999, Internet.

In Use: “They variously called the infloofminate stray visitor, the orange boi, kibbles (for his love of food), the visitor, and window cat (for his habit of appearing at a window and staring in, especially when it was cold and wet) before they officially adopted him and dubbed him Cheddar.”

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Wenzda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I liked the article’s headline.

 Trump, a ‘humiliated clown’ who always pretends he never backs down, backed down again

That’s Lawrence O’Donnell’s take on Trump. Trump is a clown. I so agree.

Trump was reversing himself on tariffs. Again. Trump claimed before that leaders of all these other nations were calling and begging him to make deals. No evidence of that emerged. If anything, Trump’s claim was 180 degrees from the truth.

You got to ask: if his high tariff approach was working so well and all those leaders wanted deals, why is Trump singing a different song now?

The short of it seems to be business. Stock market losses have people remembering the worse April since the Great Depression. The sliding dollar isn’t reassuring anyone, either.

Trump’s tariffpause is like menopause. Has people running hot and cold and getting emotional, irritated, impatient, and easily annoyed.

His tariffpause seems to come from CEOs warning him about empty shelves and declining sales.

The CEOs of Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Lowe’s, all of whom delivered a blunt message about interruptions in the supply chain and its effects on consumers, were invited to the White House as part of an ongoing internal campaign to make the case to Trump about the real-world impact of his policies, administration officials said.

Trump’s tariffs have placed significant pressure on the retail sector. The business leaders warned that store shelves across America could “soon be empty,” two people familiar with the meeting said, as they presented a dire economic picture that could come into sharper view within weeks.

Gosh, no one saw that coming way back when Trump brayed about imposing tariffs.

Yes, that’s some 24-karat snark.

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Wenzda’s Wandering Thoughts

“Priscilla wants Peeps. She’s providing them.”

My wife informed me of these things as we shopped for Easter Brunch ‘garnish’ last week. Chocolates, jellybeans, Jordan almonds, gummi Easter treats. Quite a cornucopia of sugar.

I was glad we weren’t buying Peeps. I dislike the marshmallow concoctions. Recent flavors like Dr. Pepper doesn’t sell them to me. My sister loves them. Especially stale Peeps. Gads.

I joke about Peeps flavors with friends. None of them like them, either.

“What if they were beer flavored?” I asked.

My friends seem horrified and mystified. “How will that work?” one asks. “Will they be sweet?”

“Yes, marshmallow beer,” I answer.

Eye rolling and groans meet this answer.

Priscilla provided a bowl of neatly organized Peeps. She’s always organized. Just her way.

I was staring at the bowl. She joined me. “I don’t see any of the new-flavored Peeps,” I said.

“No.” Priscilla frowned. “I only buy traditional Peeps.”

Hours later, clean up began at the Brunch. It looked like the bowl of Peeps had lost one. I had not seen anyone eating any.

“Want to take some Peeps home?” Priscilla asked.

“No, thanks,” my wife and I sang together.

Priscilla nodded. “We’ll probably just throw them out.”

But I wondered: will she really eat them in secret later?

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

The Ashlandia spring churn has us in her grip. Chilly to cold nights. Depends on your body’s personal heating and cooling system. Was 39 F in the night. Now it’s up to 54 F. Heading to 68 F. Wind loaded with mountain iciness regularly clocks in. It’s sharper in the shadows.

I’ve been cutting stuff, pruning plants, weeding, trimming back grasses. Papi has taken to nesting in one of those spaces. Early sunshine washes it for a few early morning hours. Used to be Tucker’s spot. Before that, it was Quinn’s, and before them, it was the Scheckter spot. I think I still sometimes spot their ghosts curled up, sunning there in the early hours. I’ve always called it the cat’s sun nest.

Man, it was a clear and gorgeous night here last night. I traipsed out midnightish each to taste the chill and discovered a star filled black sky. Serenely quiet and fresh, a briskly solitary moment. After I was there about three minutes, Papi called out to me and trotted along to rub against my legs. “What do you think of the stars?” I asked. He purred.

Music today comes from the Beatles. The Neurons have “Helter Skelter” playing in the morning mental stream. Kicked off by a dream. I had the same dream before, but the dream went into an extended edition. Awakening, realizing it was a repeat — dream repeats already, so early in the year — The Neurons cranked up the song’s lines that go, “When I get to the bottom, I go back to the top of the slide, where I stop, and I turn, and I go for a ride, till I get to the bottom and I see you again.”

The song always called up ideas about going through the same thing again, again, once more, one more time, etc. A repeating dream was a natural dive board for The Neurons to use to jump into the song.

The song got stronger as a I read news accounts for Trump lies and declarations. “I never said that. I’d never do that.” Etc. Here we go again.

This video is Paul McCartney playing it in concert sans the other Beatles. I saw him perform it in Germany once. It’s lively energetic song.

That’s my opinion. Loads of friends and family were not “Helter Skelter” fans. When I played it on the stereo and cranked it to close to stadium levels, my little sisters’ expression looked like they’d just eaten candy covered with dog fur. “What is this?” the older asked. I laughed.

Coffee is lifting me higher again. Hope something is lifting you. Here we go, rocking and rolling on into the future. Then we’ll do it again. Cheers

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Twosda’s Wandering Thoughts

Time for some first world blues. I’m in the coffee shop. Music is playing. Business is booming and the baristas are scrambling, shouting out order details, clarifications, comments. Machines grind, hiss, and whirl with energy. Other customers are set up to chat, read, type. Conversations rise and fall.

Above it all is a man with a baritone theater voice. He’s on his cell phone. Although he’s across the room from me, his voice echos above all other sounds. Maybe it’s a matter of acoustics. He’s calling to different businesses to make purchases and complaints. He’s pedantic but polite. His first three calls are flavored with a condescending attitude toward the people on the other end.

“Do you have my email address?” he asks again and again.

“You have a screen in front of you, don’t you?” he asks. “Look at the screen. Does it have an email address? What is that email address for me? And my phone number. No, this is what you should have. 541111111.” This is repeated. “Yes, it’s seven ones in a row after the area code.”

I respect that it could be worse. I could be at home, typing on my computer, responding to my wife and cat, becoming annoyed with them. I could be trapped in an airport, waiting for a delayed flight, or in traffic somewhere, wondering why traffic isn’t moving. I could be sweating it out with an injury or disease, or fretting over a loved one’s health. I could be poor and homeless, hunting for a meal and a little relief from the elements.

I’m normally effective at filtering sounds out of my awareness. His voice and conversations are just one of those things annoying me today. That’s my problem, though.

That’s why I rant.

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Twosda’s Theme Music

At 4:07 AM, the cat announced, “Let’s go!” Yes, he batted and chatted me awake enough to sleep walk to the door and release him back into the wild. He didn’t stay in the wild long. Cold, wind, and hunger drove him back in. “Not that wild, are you?” I asked him. He meowed back.

Thus began Twosda, April 22, 2025, much as many other days begin. Twosda and Thirstdas are the worse for me in this regard. My wife gets up early on Mun-Wen-Fri to attend exercise class. She deals with the cat between 6:30 and 8 AM on those days. But today has Papi testing the limits, in and out. I suspect he has two twins and they’re taking turns at this.

It was 39 F at 4:30 AM. If you trust Alexa. I asked it the temperature after Papi came back in. I was curious because it felt cold to my half-naked body. Like Sun & Mun, today features a clear blue-sky sauce and a glaze of sunshine with a tincture of wind and mild temperatures that lose their punch in the mid to upper sixties.

Trump continues to pile instability on instability, crazy on crazy, losses on losses. Like all great leaders, he sets ridiculous goals using ideologically-driven data, fails to take many details and factors into account, and then pretends it’s going great as everyone else prepares to get out the toilet plunger because this shit is overwhelming the crapper. He is consistently terrible and proud of it. Living in a Teflon-coated bubble, he’ll probably never recognize his insanity and the disastrous, negative impact he delivered to millions of people.

Unless, of course, his secret goal is to completely undermine and destroy the United States. That’s also possible. He could well be in collusion with Russian and oil oligarchs and are busy setting the table up to establish a powerful global cabal. Makes as much sense as any other shit he spreads.

They say that the Roberts Court is finally getting a backbone. “They’ll reign Trump in.” Ha. I think Trump is already smirking at the Roberts Court as he says, “Hold my Big Mac.” Harvard and other universities are suing the Trusk Regime. He doesn’t care. He’s already destabilized and disrupted our education systems and research programs. A third of the national NOAA weather offices have lost their leases. We’ll see what that does to the ability to warn about weather disasters. Then, Trump and Noem have been dismantling FEMA, so when these disaster squat on communities and drop a load, the state and community will struggle to recover and rebuild. Meanwhile, DOGE is raiding personal data and will probably weaponize that on behalf of Russia. He’s truncated international alliances and friendships that effectively worked for over half a century, isolating our nation. Besides all that, he’s been running due process over with a golf court.

And Trump and his supporters think this is just great. Anyway…onward.

When I first heard this Led Zeppelin song when I was thirteen, I thought, holy fucking shit. That was a startling development because I’d never sworn before that. That’s when I took up coffee, too. It all seemed to go together.

The song — “How Many More Times” — is in my morning mental music stream for reasons which The Neurons have sealed. They have better security than Kristi Noem and keep secrets more effectively than Pet (Pete) Hegseth. Not saying much, given how terrible and sloppy the Trump Regime has demonstrated itself to be, outside of the Musk-driven DOGE dogs.

Here is the music. When I listened to it today, my inner thirteen-year-old sat up and said, “Holy fucking shit.” This is a recording of a live show. Anyone familiar with Zep knows it’s gonna be a jam and will vary a bit from what was on the album.

Coffee has again insinuated itself into my body’s systems. I’m prepared to rock another day, at least until nap time later today. Hope your day is as purpose-filled as you need it. Carpe diem. Cheers

2

Munda’s Wandering Thoughts

The cat is sitting across the room by the open back door. His name is Papi. He’s either orange or a ginger. I’ve never given it much thought.

Smiling, I cross to pet him. He shouts out a plaintive and loud three-syllable meow.

I stop and looked at him. “That was annoying.”

His eyes shift. He’s making a mental note.

That confirms for me, that meow was part of Project Irritation.

I’m still putting Project Irritation together. I believe its overall scope is for the cat to try things and then document how I react. He can then put his findings to use to control my behavior.

I offer this with all seriousness. It’s the only idea that can explain the many meows he’s been employing in the last week.

Besides the Meow Phase of Project Irritation, I believe he’s also testing the limits of how often I will let him in and out of the house. He’s also conducting experiments on me by using differing reactions to his food. No doubt, he’s attempting to steer his food choices by indoctrinating me based on how he reacts to his food. He’s long sussed out that I’m his feeder and care giver.

Now he just needs to study me and take control.

It’s probably part of a more extensive cat project: “How to dominate the world”.

They already have the Internet close to completely in their paws. It’s only a matter of meows before they control the rest.

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