• I started watching Markwayne this morning, moved over to Tulsi, and turned it all off after about 10 minutes total. I just can’t. I wish I could tell you that this is a MAGA thing, but it’s not. It’s that these oversight hearings…aren’t. The legislators want their sound bites for the news, and the cabinet members/witnesses don’t answer anything. Also, they want sound bites too. I know, that’s the world we live in. That doesn’t stop me from wanting people to start getting held in contempt for not answering questions right there. Three or four cabinet members spending the night in lockup ought to start people thinking about their choices.
  
• Looking forward to seeing what Kat Abughazaleh does next. We need a lot more like her. A lot more. I know that may I lose some folks for that. That’s OK. Kat lines up more with my beliefs these days than anyone else. I’ve somehow found myself in the Bernie/AOC/Kat side of things, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
  
  Some of you will remember that I was a Republican in my 20s and early 30s. I am not a Republican today. There is a reason for that, and my moving to the left isn’t it. I didn’t move very far, if at all.
  
• What if I do a podcast of what I put here? I mean, I little more than that, but that sounds a little more reasonable, and maybe doable.

• Happy 1st bullshit excuse to get hammered day of the year to those who celebrate.
• I am never listening to these weather people ever again. Every single time some weather event gets hyped up as epic and dangerous and full of bad juju, it’s a wet fart in a hurricane. Nothing happened here in Virginia Beach that we don’t get in the Spring already. T-Storms, heavy rain, that’s it. No hurricane force winds, nothing. What bullshit.
  
• LINK: “Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story”
  
  Pete Rose was a fucking Boy Scout compared to these ghouls.
  
• LINK: The MacBook Neo is the fantastic new Mac for the masses
  
  I know a lot of people who have been waiting for years to see a “budget” MacBook. Looks like this knocks it out of the park, but I think they can go further. Make the budget iPhone (right now the 17e) the iPhone Neo. Make the Apple Watch SE the Watch Neo. Make Neo a whole new line of budget devices.
  
• I don’t know what had me thinking that something would change after Joe Kent resigned this morning, but El Naranja is going to play to type. Kent’s going to get doxxed, he’s going to get threats, and he’s going to get “investigated”. The man survives on Big Macs, Diet Coke, and petty revenge.
  
• Last thing for today: Being something adjacent to an Anglophile, I find a lot of UK stuff fascinating. Not the Monarchy, but other than that… I love watching the House of Commons, Prime Minister’s Questions every Wednesday, I have been known to flip on Sky News for something closer to news than what we get here. You may have heard of ITV, Independent Television. The history of it is amazing. Bob The Fish Productions made a series about the history of the various regional stations that made up ITV until they mostly merged under one name. I strongly encourage you to watch this. Partly for the history, and partly because the narrator is a fucking legend. BONUS: There’s a reference to Pat Robertson in this series that, as a resident of Virginia Beach and someone who had to tolerate his presence in this city, I wholeheartedly agree with. Also, look for a history of Margaret Thatcher ‘from someone that hates her’.
  
  Not just great, not just amazing, but amazingly amazing. If you know, you know.

• I’ve been giving some thought to something that I probably have no business doing: Going Live and figuring out the rest as we go along. There are a million reason not to do this, and I should probably listen to those reasons.
  
  The thing is…I’m the person that will listen to you tell me all the reasons I shouldn’t do something, and I’ll smile and nod and then do the thing anyway. I have always been this way, so let’s face a little reality. I’m 55, and I’m bloody well going to do what I want.
  
  As soon as I figure out where I’m doing this and…uh…how.

• Ostensibly this is a review about the MacBook Neo. It’s really more about what a kid who wants one will do with it. Worth your time.

• I don’t know who needs to hear this, but polling data is NOT Breaking News.
  
  Cable News. Cable News needs to hear this.

• At this point, I don’t know how anyone who considers themselves to be reasonable people can look at Minneapolis and think this is acceptable. If you’re keeping track of the accelerating fascism that is taking over, they are now trying to make the argument that simply possessing a gun is justification for execution. The man was on his knees, and shot in the back. If that’s not an execution, you tell me what it is. Minneapolis is being overrun by untrained and unaccountable thugs who think this is a giant game of Call of Duty. I used to joke about Reagan replacing the fired air traffic controllers with people who played Space Invaders. Comedy plus time equals tragedy in this instance.

• Don’t watch the news coming out of Minneapolis unless you want to get mad. Having said that, I have two questions
  • Do you think this is the kind of action that would result in the invocation of the Insurrection Act?
  • When do we say “Enough?”
    
• I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Season 2 of The Pitt is coming out in the next couple days, and Season 1 was the best damn thing I’ve seen since Bosch was my obsession. You can keep your Stranger Things over there somewhere. I highly recommend getting up to speed on The Pitt. Just amazing.

There be blog here.

• I managed to go for almost 30 years without having to engage in the dubiously honored Christmas tradition of “some assembly required”. I am currently setting up a twin-size bed with a bookcase for my middle child. What have I become?

Things have been very busy around here, so much so that I have not been paying attention to the blog or anything else. I do have some things going as of yesterday, so stay tuned. I’m not going to add the little hotspot to this post because it’s only a little thing.

I am going to leave you a new photo that I caught today while I had errands to run in Downtown Norfolk. I had to go and update my credentials or my day job at the Federal Building. I was skeptical that anyone was going to be there due to the current government shutdown, but suprisingly the Federal Building was open. Not surprisingly, this meeting really could have been an email. It look less than 10 minutes to do, and I spent 15 waiting for the guy. On the plus side, I do enjoy riding the train into Norfolk, parking has never been anything I like messing with when I’m down there.

On the way back, we had to stop at the intersection before we got to the Civic Center stop, and I happened to look up. After a little light editing, here’s the finished product.

• This week has really turned into a clusterfuck, hasn’t it?
  
  So, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to leave the bullshit outside today, and I’m going to tell you that fifty years ago today, one of the greatest albums of all time dropped. It’s an easy one to get lost in and forget all the other stuff for 35-40 minutes. Put the headphones on and Shine On. #
  

Breaking radio silence for a moment to provide a proof of life. Still here, I’m doing things on the back end and by the end of the day I’m pooped. I’m still recovering slightly from my health scare in October. I’m ok, I just am managing some new expectations. Rest assured–or don’t–that I’m working on some new stuff. I’ll try to keep the blog open during the day so I can keep some content going, however, I do have to tell you it’s hard to function in this timeline, at least for me personally. Like the last go-round, the zone flooding wears you down. It’s designed to. I just have to take some dandelion breaks. i If you know what that is, you’re scheduling your prostate exam along with me.

Take it easy, back soonish.

Watching a lot of the Cabinet and other lemmings testify before committees, it’s apparent to me that these folks think because the President can act with impunity that they can as well.

I’m looking forward to the finding-out phase where if there is a shred of justice in the universe, each of them will be assigned new jobs working the third shift at a 7-11 in the places they screwed the worst.

A question that is absolutely positively not related to anything that just happened.

You receive a voicemail from a family member you have no desire to talk to, be in the same room with, or deal with ever again. In that voicemail, they sound sad and would really like to talk to you, but then they say something like “Why don’t you pull the stick out of your ass and call me?”

Are you:

A) More Likely to call?

B) Less likely to call?

C) Decide that the Heat Death Of the Fucking Universe will occur before you talk to that person?

Care to guess what answer I chose?

Biden Diagnosed with cancer.

It’s going to be very easy to identify who has lost their last shred of humanity for the next little while.

Take note of who they are.

Matthew Ström:

The invention of album art can get lost in the story of technological mastery. But among all the factors that contributed to the rise of recorded music, it stands as one of the few that was wholly driven by creators themselves. Album art — first as marketing material, then as pure creative expression — turned an audio-only medium into a multi-sensory experience.

The Fujita covers are old friends; my parents and my grandparents had many albums with that kind of artwork on the cover. Maybe they were all Fujita or inspired by him. I’ve been thinking about buying a turntable and starting a new collection, and it’s only because the convenience of digital media doesn’t afford you the experience of the art and the liner notes. Even the vinyl gives you that experience now. Back in 1981, the Styx album Paradise Theater had the Styx logo cut into the vinyl and at the time, I thought that was pretty awesome. Now they’re making all sorts of color pressings that could be framed on your wall, never mind listening to it. I miss that. In other news, I’m old and my back hurts.

Last night, I attempted to crosspost “Election Day, Eh?” to Bluesky, and I was shocked to see the formatting of that post. This is probably my fault, so some investigation is probably required. The post on Bluesky showed as the title, followed by as much of the post as it could, followed by an embedded link with exactly the same thing. It looked extremely ugly, and if I were a casual reader I wouldn’t click it. There must be a way to do this so that I can write a sentence in a preview message, and that posts along with the embedded link. I’m sure it’s got to be there, I’m just fulfilling my PEBKAC quota.

The fact that El Naranja doesn’t want Amazon to display the additional cost of an item because of the tariffs should cause all kinds of alarm bells.

It won’t. We never do anything until it’s just past too late.

We’re the children of Reagan’s America, where the money will get down here eventually. Any time now.