Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Jill Dennison has done it again. She’s collected some memes that definitely need to be shared with more folks. Some made me swear, some made me cry, and some were rewarded with heavy sighs. Sometimes, I did all of that at once. Here a few to whet your interest. They show, with these simple words and images, how far we’ve been twisted by Trump’s alternate reality in the United States. Head to Jill’s site to read ’em all. Cheers
A still, flat Ashlandia morning, a time of broken clouds and dissolute sunshine. The ticking clock competes with a far-off crow cawing a morning song. Satyrda, September 20, 2025. Two days before autumn but autumn feels like its taken control. 70 F, 86 F is speculated as the high. Summer is taking its last breaths.
Today’s song filling the morning mental stream is “Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie. I’m not sure why The Neurons laid down the 1975 song today. Nothing in my dreams point to this as the dream’s closing song or soundtrack. Nothing in my empty head points to why The Neurons have it playing as I do the morning deeds.
I enjoy the songs’ lyrics about confusion and rebellion, acceptance and dismissal. This live version plays with the melody. As with anything Bowie, he does it with unique style and fashion.
Hope grace and peace finds and keeps us. I know a lot of us are dubious that will happen anytime soon, if at all. I’m logically in the same arena of thought, yet, as an optimist, I still dream of a better time coming. Cheers, M
From Diana Ravitch’s Blog, “Stephen Colbert Responds to Kimmel Affair with Hilarious Video“. I think we owe it to ourselves to laugh and mock Trump’s cancel culture.
Trump’s BFF, J. Epstein, would have probably enjoyed it.
The headline about Trump pitching an alternate reality irritated me. This is nothing new. Trump has always pitched an alternate reality as a politician. He pushed and supported the idea that President Barack Obama was not a United States citizen. He damned the 2020 election that he lost as stolen. That alternate reality caught on with his MAGAfans and lured more of them in. Facts and court cases consistently reveal this as an alternate reality. Many of his supporters still live in that alternate reality. Trump went after “Sleepy Joe Biden”, disparaging him as too old and uninvolved, selling the alternate reality via hysteria about inflation that President Biden’s presidency was a disaster. He sold the alternate reality that he would “fix it on day one”, and now claims that’s what he’s done.
Trump continually bellows about what a terrible deal the ACA is for Americans, selling the alternate reality that he would have a big, beautiful replacement. He used to talk about that coming out in two weeks. Then he swung to an alternate reality that he had the concept of a plan. Now that he and the GOP control both houses, Trump doesn’t mention replacing ACA much. It played its part in his alternate reality that he had something better.
If you can cast your mind back to earlier this year, Trump and the GOP eagerly spread the alternate reality that not passing the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would cause economic disaster, would not change Medicaid, would not cut SNAP, and wouldn’t add to the national deficit. As the truth about the OBBBA has emerged, enraging voters, elected GOPers are hiding from their constituents, refusing to hold live townhall meetings because of OBBBA blowback.
In Trump’s alternate reality, companies or other nations pay tariffs and they won’t raise prices, because in his alternate reality, companies aren’t profit driven, and other nations were always ripping off the United States. Even in the deals he made, Trump claims in his alternate reality that they were terrible deals and the other nations were taking advantage of the United States.
United States citizens are catching on. Republicans Say Country Not Heading in the Right Direction.
“More than half of Republicans now say the country is heading in the wrong direction, a new AP-NORC poll shows. The new survey conducted between Sept. 11 and Sept. 15 found that 51 percent of Republican voters say the country is heading in the wrong direction, up from 26 percent in March. What’s more, less than half of Republicans (49 percent) now say the country is heading in the right direction, down from 70 percent in June. Republican women and individuals under 45 are more likely to say that America is not on the right track.“
And it’s spreading.
The greater problem now is that corporations are deciding that they’d rather support Trump’s alternate reality than risk upsetting him, because upsetting Trump could jeopardize their business plans and money-making intentions.
And, while the Roberts Court seems to be taken in by Trump’s alternate realities, many other judges and courts are still rejecting them.
I hope all of us could hold out long enough against this onslaught of unnatural realities and get rid of this plague on the world, aka, Donald J. Trump.
Otherwise, it can become very surreal.
Muted sunshine and faded skies greet Ashlandia. New chills float through. It’s Fridaz, September 9, 2025. 68 F, rain’s short shadow hovers the mountains. 86 F will be the high but a sense that it’ll be a cool 86 pervades.
Speaking personally, slumber and I were good friends last night. Residual abdominal pain haunts me. My gallbladder matter tracks in a worsening trend. Each cough and flex ushers in uncomfortable spasms. My gut makes noise like a pen full of feeding hogs. I look forward to my surgery in November. Until then, like others, all I can do is endure and work around the issues.
Political news casts no happy sunshine. Trump and his conservative army of dunces remain bent on Making America Poor and Stupid. Oh, the top 1% will be the richest in the world. On paper, we’ll compare pretty good. Into the trenches of life, most will live the lives of Les Miserables. Hate and stupidity is an ugly brew but it addicts many.
Reading on of Peter Sage’s post this week left me with more dispirited headshaking. Peter writes about politics, often addressing it from the southern Oregon point of view. Peter writes,
“Pence, along with Reagan, both Bush presidents, Dole, McCain, and Romney, are the old establishment, the America that isn’t great, the one that paid unnecessary respect to the wrong people. The old GOP leaders accepted laws and norms. That defined “conservatism.” Trump is different. Trump is a rebel. He smashes those laws and norms because they were tacitly part of the oppression. The old order didn’t protect and reward normal White guys and their wives, good Christians.
“Trump is stomping on the symbols and policies of the old order. Stop wind and solar projects. Erase monuments to civil rights. Fire Black leaders in government, the military, and the universities. Cancel medical research grants. Question vaccinations. Stop the slow-motion, checks-and-balances process-dominated government. The establishment respected the wrong people: foreigners and immigrants. It respected diversity, and “diversity” is just part of the groupthink that benefits everyone except people like my correspondent.”
Many of us understand that Trump has used people like Peter Sage’s correspondent as political pawns. They think he’s going to make life better for them. He won’t. We will instead all be interred in a dark existence of poverty and illness. All those regulations which kept the essentials safe for the Joe and Karen average citizen will be swept away in the name of trade and commerce. This will benefit the wealthiest, but not the commoners. And with Trump’s direction, the commoners will be largest, fastest growing segment.
Today’s music is by Hall & Oates. My wife and I went to have our eyes checked. We did this at Costco. Not wanting to be late, my wife guided us there twenty minutes early. Shopping was done in six minutes, leaving time to waste. We did this by drifting through the book, snack, and clothing regions. Quickly bored, I drifted, and when I turned back to my wife, she was gone. That prompted The Neurons to reboot the 1973 Hall & Oates ballad, “She’s Gone”. A short while later, I heard her call out, “Cah, cah.” That’s how we get one another’s attention. So she wasn’t gone. But The Neurons were so amused by this whole turn that they’ve kept the song going in my morning mental music stream.
Time to get up and get out. Hope peace and grace finds you and keeps you standing.
Trump keeps trying to dodge the truth. The UK won’t let them.
The cool night air feels like autumn. But a summer sun gets up and flexes. Blue skies clear of cloud debris help. It’s about 60 F now but we’ll cruise into the low to mid 80s F today.
It’s not just the temperature that informs on the warring seasons. Trees are shifting their leaves. The sun’s approach comes through the southeastern windows in the dining room, then leans back toward the east as the sun clears mountains and trees. Yes, it’s Wenzda, September 17, 2025, and autumn is coming.
I spoke with Dad yesterday. He sounded much better. As he probably wouldn’t survive surgery, he’ll need to recover from his fall injuries through rest and time. He told me that they project that will take six to eight months. In the meantime, he can’t put any weight on his left foot due to the pain it causes.
Today’s music comes from pulling threads. First, I was pulling threads on a dream, asking what a cheetah in a dream means. Then I pulled threads on the plot and characters in a novel in progress. Out of all that came No Doubt’s 1995 song, “Just A Girl”. I see exactly why The Neurons pulled the song into the morning mental music stream after entangling with the Writer and Dream Neurons.
In political news, Trump is in Europe. Well, UK. Polls show he’s growing tres unpopular. That, along with his increasing instability, which we’ve repeatedly witness, will cause him to lash out more and pretend more, like he did when releasing another image of himself as a superhero, which is 180 degrees from who he is. TACO will abuse his office of power more, threaten his enemies and allies more, and tell us all how great and wonderful he is, that he’s our favorite president. Deep down, he knows he’s a piece of garbage but doesn’t care because, thanks to being POTUS, he’s growing richer and more powerful. Some think he worries excessively about the Epstein files being released. I speculate that he knows all the soft and hard data on the economy is pointing to an ugly truth, that he was wrong, and he’s going to be proven wrong, and as that happens, even his most staunch supporters will quietly abandon him.
Coffee is dashing through my bod, delivering its caffeine goodness. Hope you make acquiantance with peace and grace today and it turns into a long relationship. Here we go, into the great wide open. Cheers
Channel 4 is welcoming Donald Trump to the U.K. with a special program: an unbroken catalogue of over 100 falsehoods, distortions and inaccuracies he’s come up with since taking office in January.
The U.S. President will come to London for a second state visit this month, and the British channel has vowed to put a spotlight on his “prolific oeuvre of untruths.”
On Sep. 17 from 10 a.m. local time, Channel 4 will broadcast Trump v the Truth, the longest uninterrupted reel of untruths running over several hours. The statements will be punctuated by “brief text-based fact-checks, offering viewers the truth behind the tweets, speeches and soundbites.”
Of course, watching this would require me to watch and hear him. That’d be like the tenth circle of hell, TACO’s own circle, combining the worse elements of the circles of fraud, greed, treachery, lust, gluttony, and anger.
But I admire Channel 4. Go, Brits, go!
My thoughts are drawn to our local political scene. Ashlandia is a small town, dependent on tourism for most of its business revenue. Ashlandia is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which puts on several plays from March to November. A local university, Southern Oregon University, supplements the employment base by hiring people for its needs. Adjacent to rivers and a ski resort helps draw more tourism for us. We also have multiple local breweries and wineries. Other than that, we’re mostly restaurants, coffee shops, a couple bookstores, head shops selling THC and CBD products, and several grocery stores.
With tourism down, we’ve been struggling as a town. Tourism was driven down over ten years ago by droughts which lasted several years ago, deepening into a serious problem which called for water rationing, followed by smoke pollution from wildfires. Plays were cancelled due to these threats. Outdoor activities were curtailed. Then the pandemic struck, with all that it delivered to the table. Finally, Trump has struck. Just as tourism was beginning to rebound, his xenophobic policies and tariffs take another axe to our numbers. Local services were also curtailed due to grant cuts and budget cuts. SOU enrollment is down…again. Tuition is up…again. SOU programs and classes were cut…again.
With all this afflicting us, the city was strapped for cash and has a budget deficit. Besides those issues, we also have a homeless problem. Trump’s cuts did us no favors on that front.
Into this cauldron of difficulties come our local government leaders. Their solutions.
They even, from time to time, talk about doing away with the police department because it costs too much.
The city manager states, without evidence, that the new park will draw tourists. Ashland already has Lithia Park, Hunter Park, Garfield Park, Clay Street Park, and a half dozen more. Their facilities are being closed because of budget deficits. Sure, the water park shut off the water this summer because we lacked the funds for the water and staff to run it, and Mountain Park is mostly closed for the same reason, but let’s build another park to draw more tourists.
That makes a lot of sense. Not.
Michael Seidel, writer 