Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I apologize, but neglected to give a shout out, so I need to correct that.
The United States went through a time change recently. It seems like it went off without a hitch. In this Age of Enshittification, when minor things are routinely screwed up by PINO Trusk and his regime, we should acknowledge when things go right.
Because it’s becoming pretty rare, in the Age of Enshittification that began January 20, 2025.
I’m telling you now, get ready.
Trump ‘disappointed,’ vows to ‘fix’ Kennedy Center after first tour
The enshittification of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will now commence in earnest.
Are you surprised? Elon Reeves Musk pushes the falsehood, Hitler didn’t kill millions. Sure, and guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Same sort of empty sophistry. Musk says, “Their public sector workers did.” Right, and armies didn’t kill people during the war, it was the soldiers. Next, Musk will be telling us that he didn’t do anything, he was just following orders. Oh, that’s right, he already said that.
Are you surprised? ‘No pain, no gain’: GOP tells Americans to suck it up as economy worsens Emily Singer has a sweet wrap of how the GOTP are trying to tell their constituents that the pain is good for them.
Take Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Please.
“No pain, no gain. That’s what we used to tell our football players. There’s gonna be some pain with tariffs. But tariffs got us back as a strongest economy in the world when President Trump was in the first time. He knows what he’s doing. Democrats get out of the way. Shut up,” Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said on Fox Business.
Yes, because a football game and working to keep you and your family from starving and safe from bad weather is exactly the same.
Senator Tuberville also gets a A in lying, saying that Trump’s tariffs got us back to the strongest economy in the world. But he is GOTP. Lying is as easy as breathing.
Are you surprised? American consumer sentiment plunges on trade war fears Americans continue to grow worried over President Donald Trump’s escalating and haphazard trade war, according to the University of Michigan’s latest consumer survey released Friday. Consumer sentiment fell 11% this month to a reading of 57.9, a preliminary reading showed, down from last month’s reading of 64.7 and reaching its lowest level since November 2022. That’s a sharp retreat from December, after the US presidential election, when sentiment rose to its highest level in months.
Most of us saw this coming but there was a large segment of the sheeple who were eager to fuck around and find out. Now, here we are.
Are you surprised? “Trump Shutters ‘Voice of America'” Trump has closed down the Voice of America, the government-run radio service that has brought news to 420 million listeners around the world since 1942, during World War II.
Who benefits by closing the VOA?
Russia. China. North Korea. Iran. And every other authoritarian regime.
Yes, and those are Trump’s buddies.
Gosh, who could have predicted that shit?
Are you surprised? Black Medal of Honor recipient removed from US Department of Defense website Page honoring Charles C Rogers for his Vietnam war service is now defunct with letters ‘DEI’ added to website address.
So, this man, who actually served his country (unlike Donald Trump and Elon Reeve Musk) and was wounded in combat and was honored for his service, has been dismissed. That’s a slap in the face to every veteran who risked their life and spent time in the trenches to defend the Constitution of the United States.
But then, that is the Trusk Regime in a nutshell. Unsurprising in their inability to understand truth and principles. Dedicated to only furthering their own wealth, no matter how much they must lie, like that jackal, Tommy Tuberville, no matter how much the laws, history, and heritage of this nation, of this world, must be twisted and ignored. Trump claims to respect our military and veterans, but with his actions, he demonstrate otherwise.
I, for one, am not surprised.
It’s FOFFing* outside in Ashlandia, where the voters are liberal. Munda has fallen on us and can’t get up. A later winter storm is driving through the valley and the temperature is sticking to 35F. Supposed to rocket up to 48 F but that rocket might not get liftoff, if we use those clouds for our reasoning. If we use history and experience, the weather could go in any direction from here.
This is Munda, March 17, 2025. Which is, yelp, St. Patrick’s Day. Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you. Are you wearing green to draw some Irish luck your way?
*FOFFING: Fat Ol’ Flakes Falling
Watching those flakes reminded me of a cat experience. This is about Jade. She came to be with us in Okinawa. She belonged to the people up the hall in our apartment building. They had a toddler, and Jade didn’t take shit from anyone, telling them so with claws and teeth. So she came to us and was with us for 20 years more.
When she was four, we moved from Okinawa to the United States. This would be January, 1985. We were in San Antonio after landing to visit family. Jade was with us, as we’d just flown into the country. It began snowing. Jade had never seen snow, so she went out to experience it. She would take a step and shake a foot. Step, shake. Step, shake. Finally fed up of it after a minute, she returned to inside the motel room. I still grin, remembering her reaction.
Been catching up on the news. Hear there was some wicked weather across the United States and that the Trusk Regime thumbed their nose at a judge. It’s enough for me to groundhog back to bed for six more weeks. But I’ve served myself coffee so that’s not a current option.
Out of all that news catchup, The Neurons direction Twenty One Pilots to play their 2016 song, “Heathens”, in the morning mental music stream.
We don’t deal with outsiders very well
They say newcomers have a certain smell
You have trust issues, not to mention
They say they can smell your intentions
You’ll never know the freak show sitting next to you
You’ll have some weird people sitting next to you
You’ll think “How did I get here, sitting next to you?”
But after all I’ve said, please don’t forget
h/t to Genius.com
The coffee is doing its function. Take it slow and roll through Munda, St. Patty’s Day. Here we go. Cheers
Winter blahness continues its hold here in Ashlandia. Yeah, it’s a low key sprinter day. Cold rain pelts the world. I know it’s cold because I stepped out to call in Papi, aka Butter Butt. Butter Butt refuses to accept that it’s bad weather outside. He heads out there as if there is nothing wrong, and then darts for cover and huddles. Fifteen minutes later, I check on him and he sprints in. After three episodes like this, he finally announces, “I’ve decided to stay inside today,” and curls up like he’s ready to read a good book.
Papi never looks up and see the ominous layers of clouds. He only knows that the wind is blowing, there is no warming bit of sunshine to be found, and rain is splattering beyond the porch. Those clouds tell me it’s going to be a cold, wet one, and we’re not discussing beer. Temperature is holding at 37 F but never fear, it’s gonna crowd the low to mid forties before beginning its late afternoon descent back into the mid 30s.
This is Sunda, March 16, 2025.
Locally, we’re cheering on the Southern Oregon University women’s basketball team. Undefeated, they’re progressing through the NAIA championship seedings. We’re hopeful that they’ll take a national championship. I hope I haven’t jinxed that by putting it in eprint. The fates often get irritated with me and end whatever makes me happy. Maybe it just seems like it.
Today’s song is in honor of MAGA America. News of tariffs being levied on the U.S. in retaliation for tariffs PINO Trusk put on others, along with stock market drops and growing unemployment has The Neurons playing “Love Hurts” in the morning mental music stream. Although covered by Cher, Jim Capaldi, the Everyly Brothers, Emmylou Harris, and Roy Orbison, the song in my head today comes from a group called Nazareth. Nazareth is a Scottish hard rock band. I knew their work and songs like “Hair of the Dog” and “Broken Down Angel”. When they released “Love Hurts”, I was taken back. Yet, it works. Well, for some.
Anyway, “Love Hurts” was put into place because every time complaints about being fired from a job, falling stock prices, cut benefits, or dissatisfaction in general emerges from MAGA land, PINO Trusk quickly reassures them that yes, there will be some pain, but they’ll be great in the end, so great, you won’t believe it.
Coffee is consoling me again. Hope your day goes well and features some pleasant weather. Here we go, one more time, eye on the clock. Cheers
Rose early, read some stuff. I finished reading a novel, The River We Remember. Then it was to the ‘puter. Normal bidness was planned but I was thinking slow (no coffee yet, you see), and I had a Slate article up already. I delved into it.
Luke Winkie wrote the article, I Wanted One Day of Peace on the Internet. So I swapped my feeds for a dose of what it’s like to live in the certainty of MAGA land.
I go into MAGA land to see what they’re reporting every other day. Luke Winkie is stronger than moi. I get in there and become enraged about the PINO Trusk lies and fawning. Can’t take it at all. Luke Winkie did, though, and wrote about well about why I couldn’t stay in MAGA land.
And while existing inside of MAGA land may be a reprieve from thTrade War Retaliation Will Hit Trump Voters Hardeste horror of existing outside of it, this is not a sane place to be either. The constant reaffirmations of loyalty must grow tiresome, even for the most committed of Trump accessories. We’ve become desensitized to the ritual by now, but slobbering over an elected official—of any stripe—is, and always will be, unbecoming. With my patience for the groveling wearing thin, I yearned for my ancestral home of belligerent progressives. I do not consider myself a person at risk of being red-pilled, and no surprise, but the propaganda did not work on me.
Second came a NYTimes article, Trade War Retaliation Will Hit Trump Voters Hardest. Ah, yes, I wanted to see that. FAFO, all that.
China has targeted corn farmers and carmakers. Canada has put tariffs on poultry plants and air-conditioning manufacturers, while Europe will hit American steel mills and slaughter houses.
Mr. Trump has argued that tariffs will help boost American jobs. But economists say that retaliatory tariffs can cancel out that effect.
Robert Maxim, a fellow at the Brookings Metro, a Washington think tank that has done similar analysis, said that other countries had particularly targeted Trump-supporting regions and places where “Trump would like to fashion himself as revitalizing the U.S.” That includes smaller manufacturing communities in states like Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan, as well as southern states like Kentucky and Georgia, he said.
The message foreign countries are trying to send, he said, is, “You think you can bully us, well, we can hurt you too. And by the way, we know where it really matters.”
But, you know, will MAGA land ever learn about this? I’m doubtful. Go into MAGA land and see how rosy it often looks.
Besides, I doubt the veracity of any organization led by a known, documented liar. In example, the CPI report released the other day said that inflation cooled in February. But this is PINO Trusk’s Department of Labor. DOGE has been in there. I think if PINO Trusk or his minions see a report with information that will render PINO Trusk and his economy less that awesome, they’ll just change the numbers.
This all leads up to the depressing aspect of PINO Trusk and their approach. They polarize. Divide to conquer. Foment distrust of each other and of the press, and now, the Federal government. It unites them in MAGA land because it keeps looking like the future’s so bright, they gotta wear shades. But for those of us outside of MAGA land, the future is getting dark.
It’s a blah day outside our windows. Winter is singing its final stanzas. Bleak ropes of gray clouds are strung together. Mists cling to the snowy mountain tops. Rain has fallen off and on, and the temperature has crept from 34 F to 41 F as a sharp wind whistles and moans.
This is Saturda, March 15, 2025, in Ashlandia.
My wife has been busy doomscrolling. She mostly goes onto Reddit and hits different forums. People who worked for the Federal government have set up many of them to tell about what’s going on in their offices around the nation. She shares tales with me. She also passes them on to her friends; they suggest that she needs to do less doomscrolling because she’d acting so dark, depressed, and pessimistic. I agree with them. But, it has a hold on her. Despite her statements that she wants to do less doomscrolling, she keeps feeding on the darkness, and it feeds on her.
The newscape is fucking bleak out there. How cheerful are we expected to be as PINO Trusk and the GOTP guts the government, slashes services, burns the U.S. Constitution, and talks about using American troops to invade other places?
How much cheerfulness should we offer as the stock market drops and drops, wiping out years of gains?
How cheerful can we be as PINO Trusk tries moving the country backwards in regards to air and water protections, civil rights, especially minority rights, trade and defense agreements?
What level of cheerfulness should we convey as greater discussions of a financial recession become more frequent?
Cheerfulness is a hard-won currency in this era. Maybe it’s just me and my wife. Maybe we’re too invested in following the news and doomscrolling. Perhaps we’re in an information silo where we’re only fed bad news, and it’s really much better. Inflation is dropping, and despite the stock market declines, people are growing happier and more satisfied. Maybe the erosion of freedoms isn’t as great as we fear.
Out of all of this, The Neurons have employed a song called “Unwell” in the morning mental music stream. “Unwell” was released in 2003 by Matchbox 20. The group’s lead vocalist, Rob Thomas, wrote the song.
On the live DVD Show: A Night in the Life of Matchbox Twenty, lead singer Rob Thomas states that he wrote the song as a metaphor for humanity in general, a song for people who are “messed up and feel alone like that. We all feel a little messed up sometimes… you’re not alone.”
h/t Wikipedia.org
I think many of us ar feeling messed up and alone. We’re also feeling frustrated, disappointed, and depressed. The future does not look good as we try to see what is to come. As the song’s lyrics go, “I’m not crazy, I’m just a little impaired.”
Coffee and I have reached another cooperative agreement. Hope your day is strong, filled with hope and optimism. Here we go. Cheers
In this corner, we have Oblivious Man.
Oblivious Man, whose superpowers are obvious, is Richard Grennell. Mr. Grennell made the news in wake of JD Vance being booed at the Kennedy Center.
Apparently taken back by the booing, Mr. Grennell responded.
Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump named as the center’s new president, posted on social media on Friday morning that the video showing Mr. Vance being booed “should challenge us all to commit to making the Kennedy Center a place where everyone is welcomed.”
“It troubles me to see that so many in the audience appear to be white and intolerant of diverse political views,” he wrote. “Diversity is our strength. We must do better. We must welcome EVERYONE. We will not allow the Kennedy Center to be an intolerant place.”
Gosh, Oblivious Man, you do know that you have your job after a purge by the intolerant individual who appointed you to your position, don’t you? You know, the one who called the Kennedy Center Board ‘too wokey’.
Yes, because PINO Trusk has been so fucking inclusive as he espouses his positions against diversity. So welcoming is PINO Trusk as he establishes a list of 43 countries whose citizens are not very welcome in the United States. So fucking tolerant is PINO Trusk as he investigates colleges for being too tolerant, too welcoming, too inclusive, arrests people for not thinking like him, while pursuing mass arrests and deportations.
Oh, Oblivious Man Grennell. I hope you wake up and smell the bullshit.
My primary time suck comes down to the three Rs: Reading, Riting, and Research. Yes, I spelled writing wrong, dropping the ‘w’. But it’s a silent ‘w’, isn’t it? Does riting sound that different from writing? Does riting sound rong?
Looks weird as hell, I admit.
I could have also just changed the title to The Three Ws, adding a silent ‘w’ to reading and research, creating wreading and wresearch.
I enjoy words. Their histories fascinate me. And I enjoy making things up. That’s why I rite fiction.
I also love reading, or, as some might rite it, wreading. The ‘w’ is silent. I read multiple genres, although I shy away from horror and wromance. Science fiction narrowly leads fantasy and historical fiction, but I enjoy thrillers and mysteries, too. I also enjoy non-fiction about history, economics, politics, quantum mechanics, and time.
Besides wreading and writing, I enjoy wresearch. Wresearch can easily become a time suck. Once upon a time, a show called Connections aired. The British science historian, James Burke, hosted the show. The show explored technological and scientific progress but veered off into tangents and side effects about how such advances were employed, resulting in surprising revealations. That sort of revelatory pingpong the show employed stirred me to continue such wresearch. The Internet is a tremendous catalyst to such wresearch.
My wresearch goes everywhere. Some of it is anchored to childhood memories of sports, politics, historic events, science, and pop culture. I remember things but often want to validate my memory. Verifying that I correctly remember matters causes me to delve deeper into details and background information, and often triggers side journeys into related matters.
When I was employed, my three time sucks secured me solid positions and helped foster my success. Now a retiree, I happily pursue them every day.
There are way worse ways to live.
Winter is perched in Ashlandia and its surroundings for another day. Yesterday, we sequenced through snow, sleet, rain, sunshine, repeat. Today seems like a duplicate effort. Snow is falling, the temperature is crowding 38 F with a questionable chance the air temp will light up 48 F. This is Frieda, March 14, 2025.
I read with serious dismay that the US Postal Service struck a deal to let DOGE ‘improve’ services.
That’s great news, innit? Yes, that’s snark.
I don’t find it great news at all. All that I’ve seen of DOGE so far is cutting headcount without having knowledge about what they’re doing. This has fed chaos in many areas of government. Facing outrage and backlash to the chaos, GOTP politicians have stopped holding townhalls and avoid meeting their constituents. Meanwhile, many agencies which had DOGE cuts had to hire people back, either because vital positions had been cut, or courts ruled that what DOGE did was illegal. Coupled with PINO Trusk’s tariffs, economic war, and imperial military interests, the stock market is rushing down, talk of a Trumpcession is heating up, and corporations are putting plans on hold and laying off/terminating employees due to ‘economic uncertainy and instabilitly’. Good times! So much winning!
Anyway, I’m not optimistic about what will happen to the mail system with DOGE’s ‘help’. The length of time needed for mail to be delivered has already increased. So have stamp prices. Post offices and satellite offices have been closed. We all drive further to wait longer to get postal business done. Our mail takes laborious, convoluted routes. Doesn’t go from A to B no even A to C. No, it now goes A to K and then back to H, up to P, back to D, and then, finally, B, it’s destination. Dog knows what DOGE will do to it.
Another series of uplifted dreams washed through my sleep. I awoke feeling rested, vigorous, and almost joyful. Weirdly, The Neurons inserted a 1986 song called “Mad About You” by Belinda Carlisle into the morning mental music stream. I have nothing against the song; I know it from the car radio. Driving in my car, doing errands, commuting to work, etc. It’s a bouncy tune with easily heard and appreciated lyrics, simple for a sing along, Maybe you know it and will sing along.
Coffee has established its presence in my system. I’m ready to get out into the snow and wind — didn’t mention the wind before, did I, but, yes, there is wind — and get down to bidness. Have the best day possible for yourself and yours. Here’s the music. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 