Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
It’s all about the power of the purse.
We’re a nation of games. How many of us play a computer game or two each day? I am guilty. The NY Times offers me Connections, Wordle, and Spelling Bee. I play them to keep my mind sharp *ahem*. I also play Sudoku at the Seattle Times, again to exercise my brain.
Online gaming is big business. People buy special chairs, headsets, computers and support systems to play hours online. Playing games on phones are an effective way to pass time while waiting for flights, buses, or meetings to begin.
Children begin playing games at a young age. Occupies their minds, helps their brains develop, and gives parents and caregivers a break. Games such as sports like football, basketball, and baseball are idolized as a way to gain fame and fortune. Television game shows offer you a chance for cash prices, as do lottery games. Besides a chance for people to add to their bank accounts, states use lotteries to raise money for education and projects. Indian casinos have increased in numbers, bringing money in for cash-starved tribes, and tax revenues and employment for communities.
The biggest games center in Washington, DC. Trump and the GOTP, along with complicit media, love playing games with The People. For instance, the cost of eggs.
Trump lies and claims that egg prices have dropped over ninety percent. In one speech, he claimed they’d declined over 98%! Ludicrous. Meanwhile, the Dollar Store has raised its prices to $1.25 and plan to raise them more. That comes and goes under the radar as Trump games people into looking elsewhere.
If you’re a coffee drinker, you know that coffee prices have increased. Initially, it’s not Trump’s fault. Weather affected coffee crops in important coffee growing places. This is just like the egg situation; it wasn’t President Biden’s fault that egg prices increased. Bird flu was causing it. Yet, we don’t hear nearly the screams about coffee inflation that we heard about eggflation. Because Trump and his campaign hammered eggflation. The game participants called the mass media picked up the ball and ran with it, trying to score points. But now, thanks to the Trump tariffs, coffee prices are percolating higher and higher. Little is heard, though. Trump has moved their attention to another game.
Meanwhile, funny enough, check out the egg prices on eggprices.org. Their chart shows egg prices have dropped.
But check below on the same page, at the highest price per dozen in the nation, and the lowest price per dozen in the U.S.:
Isn’t that odd? Virginia is cited as having the lowest price of eggs per dozen: $7.39. Yet the chart by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the average price of eggs per dozen is $3.43 a dozen.
Sure seems odd. Almost like someone is gaming the BLS chart.
Trump and Walmart are probably going to game us over prices. Walmart said they’ll increase prices to cope with the tariffs. Trump warned them, you’d better not, you’d better eat them. Walmart said, okay, will do, chief. What they’ll probably do at Walmart is subtly raise prices on specific sets of items and blame other factors. Trump will let them get away with it because they’re not blaming his tariffs. But customers will be paying more; inflation will increase.
In other gaming news, we have President Biden’s prostate cancer. Of course Trump and his surrogates, such as his son and the DOJ, jumped all over it with stories of coverups. They’re gaming the nation by feeding the media distractions, moving our attention away from Supreme Court rulings, Trump failures, and Trump scandals.
Among the failures are Trump’s pretended success with a Ukraine-Russia ceasefire. Check out multiple news sources on this continuing situation.
Trump Says Russia, Ukraine Will Start Ceasefire Talks
Trump says Russia, Ukraine peace talks to begin ‘immediately’ after Putin chat
Trump Backs Off His Demand That Russia Declare a Cease-Fire in Ukraine
What superb gamemanship! Trump is playing everybody…in the United States.
Likewise, with Trump’s potential scandal involving the Qatari jet offer, suddenly claims emerge that the Biden administration initiated that process. Ignoring all previous history on the subject, the press dutifully pivots toward that, bringing the Biden administration back into play.
The latest word game Trump is playing is his “Big Beautiful Bill” in Congress. This thing is loaded with strategically placed bombs to undermine the nation. It focuses on making the wealthy wealthier and sinking the poor deeper into poverty. As it’s based on Project 2025 and Heritage Foundation thinking and guidance, you know that this is about easing the burden on the wealthiest, thus encouraging them to create more business for the nation. These are the same people who offshored and contracted out manufacturing jobs. These are people who hoard wealth while others starve, beg, and are rendered homeless.
This is, of course, trickle-down economics. The theory has been disproven but the wealthy and conservatives love it. So we will not hear anyone calling it that this year. But that’s what Trump is leading the GOTP to do in his “Big Beautiful Bill”.
It’s not a surprise that Trump’s approval ratings have improved in polls. Too many people are too easily taken in by the games, or they’re busy playing elsewhere.
Now, I’m off. There are six pangrams today. Let the games continue.
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.
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?
Bold sunshine lured my eyes open. It’s summer, this hoople head’s addled neurons suggested.
It’s not summer. This is Thirstda, March 20, 2025. We’re stepping into spring’s threshold. I went onto the back patio with Papi the ginger blade, aka Butter Butt. The Butt did a little springish frolocking. “I agree,” I said. “It feels like a cold spring morning.” Daffs have pushed their yellow heads out. It’s 37 F but feels like 51 F, and is expected to climb to 45 plus F. Clouds have already hustled in, least we get too optimistic about the blue sky and sunshine. The weather ‘they’ couch their forecast with rain warnings. Not bad for Ashlandia’s first day of spring in 2025.
The addled Neurons have snuck a 2014 John Mellencamp song into the morning mental music stream. It’s a bit cynical. “Lawless Times” rails against the lack of trust that had begun emerging twenty years ago, the latest in many cycles of distrust – the trust in banks, business, goverment, trust in ourselves and one another, were all going down in flames, and here we are. It takes a certain amount of vetting to reach a point where you trust someone. Even though, you keep an eye on them. They might Schumer you.
The song started because I was in a Walmart the day before yesterday. My wife was looking for a kitchen item. Walmart was supposed to have it. I don’t think I’ve been in a Walmart in over a year. It’s not one of my regular shopping stops. Talk about a police state. Cameras everywhere. Signs at the end of every aisle reminding you that cameras are watching. And so many items were physically locked behind glass doors or in cages. Like all camping gear. Cosmetics. Vacuum cleaners. Is this the common American experience now? And that’s when “Lawless Times” first fired up. Walmart sure as hell doesn’t trust its customers. Of course, I do not trust PINO Trusk and his regime. I don’t trust the Roberts Court. I don’t trust the GOTP. I especially don’t trust Elon Reeve Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. I sure as hell don’t trust JD Vance and Tommy Tuberville, MTG and Lauren Boebert.
Well, I don’t trust myself
I don’t trust you
Don’t get too sick
It’ll be the end of you
Don’t expect a helping hand
If you fall down
And if you want to steal this song
It can be easily loaded down
My, my, my
These are lawless times
My, my, my
These are lawless times
So you might ask yourself
Hey, what can I do?
I can’t trust the future
What’s been promised to you
Learn the rules hard and fast
Take care of yourself
And keep your eyes open
On everybody else
Too much truth in that song but it has a catchy rhythm. You might end up, as I do, singing it to yourself as you go through your day.
I’ve invited coffee in again and it’s lit a small flame under The Neurons. Hope you day starts with promise and ends with satisfaction. Let’s rock it. Cheers
We’re witness to the Great Undoing. Anyone fired from a job or who suffers loss from a death that alters their routines know about the undoing. Habits and routines created by job needs or the deceased one are now changed. Those gaps yawn before you. You exercise mental thought processes… “Oh, I don’t need to leap out of bed at six AM, hurry through a shower, dressing, and breakfast to jump on the highway to commute to work to get into the office by — ” Fill in your times.
Likewise, when someone who is part of your regular circles passes, you’re face to face with the change: “Oh, they’re not there to greet me. I don’t need to stop and speak with them, or check on them. They’re not there.”
Many in the United States are working through forms of undoing. Federal workers are suddenly enduring the shock of not having to roll out of bed, dress, and do the morning work dance. They’ve been fired. Terminated. Let go by Imperial Presidential Executive Orders.
Around the country, the monies provided by U.S.AID are gone. The routines associated with getting children to school where they’re provided a meal are over. Churches and charities dependent on that fund stream are going through undoing because the money isn’t there. If the money is gone, so is the food and shelter. Workers and employees suddenly endure the undoing as the routines of helping the impoverished are ended by Imperial Presidential Executive Order. Not just in foreign countries but here in the U.S., too.
Contracts to provide new buildings and essential services have been ended by Imperial Presidential Executive Order. The great undoing commences as workers are released from those projects. Buildings stand unfinished. National Park Visitor Centers stayed closed and dark. Trash goes uncollected. Nobody mans the towers to watch for fires.
Trump’s Hiring Freeze Throws Wildfire Fighters Into Disarray
As anti-vaccination is encouraged the health and safety enjoyed by communities across the nation go through an undoing. Children and the vulnerable elderly are closely watched for signs of diseases long ago stamped out by vaccinations, more victims of limited intelligence, less compassion, and Imperial Presidential Executive Orders.
Air travel is adjusted as staff are cut. More undoing. Traffic congestion in New York leaps up again. Accident rates rise. Confidence in government systems fall, part of the undoing of having regulations and requirements slashed away, along with inspectors to see what went wrong to prevent it from happening again. People become skeptical, leery of these systems…use falls. Airlines see the results.
From DC to Arizona: Why are so many planes crashing in 2025?
Farmers study crop prices and markets and endure the bitter undoing. Veterans protected by DEI programs are released from work positions and begin undoing their daily functions. Students helped by grant programs begin undoing their education hopes and dreams. Children affected by the undoing no longer go into facilities to play, learn how to socialize, visit with friends, and hearing stories read to them, undoings of things just begun.
Billions of Dollars at Stake for Farmers Hit by Trump Funding Freeze, Pause on Foreign Aid
Financial and economic experts study revenue and spending trends, note the stability created by an intelligent network of regulations developed after previous financial disasters and begin preparing their clients and institutions for the undoing, unsure how it will play out, as this is early days. Stock prices drop.
Walmart stock tumbles after the retailer lowers its sales outlook: “We are in an uncertain time”
All part of the Great Undoing undertaken by a group of people dismissing the government’s influence as overbearing, dismissing history as wrong, insisting scientists and professionals don’t know what they are doing. They know better.
Science under siege: Trump cuts threaten to undermine decades of research
And so, as Imperial Presidential Executive Orders destroy the government’s ability to function, as the United States withdraws from treaties, alliances, trade agreements, and mutual assistance organizations, the Great Undoing spreads, fallout from the Great Shitstorm of 2025, the result of the 2024 U.S. elections.
As Imperial Presidential Executive Orders are issued, undoing the work of Congress and previous administrations, we will see what happens with our constitutional system of checks and balances. Will it hold?
Freshman Congressman tells constituent he is powerless to stop Musk’s budget cuts
Or will the Great Undoing be the United States’ undoing?
Floofmart (floofinition) – A large chain of stores devoted to pet care where the shoppers are generally housepets. Humans are permitted in as necessary to do business, by invitation only.
In use: “Her big pittie, Herc, kept urging her on, pulling on her leash and looking back as if to say, “Can’t you follow a lead?” She didn’t know what corner she’d turned but suddenly looked up and saw a glowing red sign, Floofmart. Herc rushed ahead to the glass doors. They slid open for him. She had no choice but to follow.”
Hear ye, hear ye, attend all ye interested in this news.
Anal bleach is now available at Walmart.
I find this news amazing for two reasons: one, who wants to bleach their a-hole? How do you reach that point, when you wake up one morning and think, time to bleach my a-hole? I can’t ever imagining awakening to that morning.
Then, they probably think, well, where do I get a-hole bleach?
Mind, I don’t know if that’s what it’s called. I don’t know what you say when you’re in Walmart and can’t find the a-hole bleach. What do you ask an associate? “Excuse me, can you tell me where the a-hole bleach would be?” Or do they already have them up on the little signs that tell you what’s in the aisle?
My number two to all of this is, a-hole bleaching is now so mainstream that Walmart is selling it.
Of course, I remember the ruckus raised when women modeled brassieres in the Sears catalog. It made the news!
A-hole bleach at Walmart didn’t make the news. Guess it wasn’t newsworthy. My wife read about it on some post. She shares my shock that people are bleaching their a-holes and the stuff to do it is sold at Walmart’s. It’s all about our age, culture, mores, and norms. Somehow, we just don’t think a-hole bleaching is going to turn out to be a good thing, but that circles back to our A-C-M-N, doesn’t it? I guess it’ll be real news when you can buy it at your local grocery store.
I think I’m going to go vape some green and think about what it all means.
He was in Walmart, a store that he detests and avoids, but here he was, because he was being supportive. While there, WTH, the thinking goes, look at the cat food offerings and prices to update his mental database of such things. This is mostly because the little cat is ill. Always a picky eater, his disease has exacerbated this, so cans are opened for the little feline to pick his way through. Some are more successful than others, but his usual favorites have been soundly rejected. New flavors are required.
So he’s in the aisle, examining prices and offerings beside a couple who are about fifteen years older than him (he thinks), making them in their late seventies. The woman says, “Chicken and waffle cat food.”
Before thinking can be processed, his mouth is engaged. “No way. Really? You have to be making that up.”
She points out the package and he examines it. The three agree, it’s an absurd idea. None of them are buying it,
They talk, of course, about their cats’ eating habits, and how all are picky eaters. The man relates a tale about one cat.
The man loves the shrimp he buys at Costco. So does the cat, who gets aggressive about it, trying to steal it out of his hand and off his plate when he’s eating. He gives the cat some, of course, because he’s a human, and the cat is in charge. Yes, clearly. We all know this.
But, here is the punch line. The cat won’t touch any cat food with shrimp in it.
“Figures,” the man says, walking away. “Cats, right?”
Does it bother anyone else that CVS and Walmart stores turned people away during the false missile alert in Hawaii the other day?
It bothers me. I heard it rationalized by business folks as a liability issue. You know, if everyone survived, but something happened to someone while they were in the store, they might sue the store or corporation afterward. I think that rationalization shows skewed — and flawed — priorities.
I did read two aspects of the alert scare which amused me. They came from the same source, an SFGate.com article about Duane Kuiper’s experience during the false alert in Hawaii. The article said, “The outdoor restaurant was emptied with breakfasts still on the tables.” Kuiper was quoted, “When people leave food, that’s not a good sign. Especially if you’re from Wisconsin. You don’t leave food.”
Too true. You know it’s serious when we’re all getting up and leaving our feed.
The second amusing aspect from that same article was, “The guards were yelling at swimmers to get out of the pool. An older man doing laps while wearing earplugs did not hear the order, so a guard walked into the pool fully clothed to drag him out.”
From the way I read it, it seems like they were concerned about people being in the pool during a missile strike, like the pool was a dangerous place to be when the missile hit. I know, it’s just me, and my warped sense of humor and perspective.
We can laugh about it now (or some of us, well removed from the threat, can), but it was an intense experience for those in the threatened area.
Michael Seidel, writer 