FERRERMAN- AGAIN?

 Had a minor kerfuffle with a longtime mutual on the Bluesky the other day. It was interesting in how it played out. Amelia Earhart had been in the news and this person wondered why. Had she been a spy or something? I answered that I had  heard that over the years and that I had also heard that the Japs had shot down her plane, captured her and maybe killed her. I don't know. That's what I've heard. She liked the post and thanked me for the info. This was in the news because Trump was releasing the Earhart Files to deflect from his steadfastly refusing to release the Epstein Files, which, BTW, he is NOT in, and he can prove that by saying so. One might think that releasing files one is NOT in might be proof that one is NOT in the files and be a better move towards proving one's innocence that not releasing the files, but one doesn't know Trump, does one.  Within a couple of minutes, I received a meme from a woman I did not *know* expressing her contempt at my use of...

 Can't you just feel the hate on Facebook when you are dealing with a maga? Or Twitter, if you are still on that shithole site. They really hate us. Many want us dead. That's really weird. I used to always say, "Nobody hates Americans more than Americans", but in the last ten years I'd have to say, change that last "Americans" to "republicans". It is like they think of democrats/liberals as a race rather than a political affiliation. Genetic, you know. Got that "woke virus". I'm sorry not sorry, but is it any wonder why we think they are stupid?  The difference is that we don't think being republican is genetic. It's a choice. One that stupid people make, regardless of genetics. There are a lot of technically intelligent people that are republican, as well. You can buy them books, send them to the finest schools and really think you've set them on a good path in life, but then they'll turn right around and argue ag...

 I used to wonder if I was wishy-washy. I'd go back and forth on that, and that east-west maneuver would seem to prove I was  wishy-washy! Or did it?  It didn't. The ability to open your mind, tweak it a little according to current conditions and feelings turns out to be a very valuable trait. It means you are thinking, know how  to think are adaptable to current information. You still have guy instincts and first-takes, and they may well be right, but you are not fucking married to them for the rest of your life. This is why most of us quit believing in Santa Clause when we were 6 or 7. Conversely, it's why so many of us still believe in the Biblical God, so many decades later. "You free your mind; your ass will follow". Or it won't.  If you've been around women (and, boy, I have been around women! ) you might believe they think differently than us fellas. Some do. Some don't. It's been my experience that women are every bit as good, bad or indiff...

 Read this morning that the FTC is suing Amazon for deceptive practices with their Prime membership. Evidently, they were signing people up for Prime- I think- by offering them the *free* Amazon store card. Pretty sure that's how they got me. I know  I didn't sign up for Prime because I know me  and I couldn't recall agonizing over whether to part with $139 dollars for *free*delivery. Earlier this year when I was still receiving Prime delivery, I thought it might be a holdover from when I had Prime membership when I was on my late mom's account. At NO point did Amazon advise me that my membership was ending, nor ask if I wanted to renew. They just took it upon themselves to renew me and put it on that store card. I didn't begin to suspect anything until I started getting email bills  telling me to pay like $23 and change on that card. Emails. Not bills or statements. I assumed I used the card once, bought something small, and never used it again. I had quickly reaso...

 We have been trained to distrust government, by people who are in  government, or are trying to be. In reality, it isn't (necessarily) government that is bad, but rather, the politicians who make up government.  How many times, of late, have we witnessed fiery democratic senators totally rip apart the fucking lunkheads Trump has put up for positions in his  government? Pretty much every time, as it has been one unqualified bozo after another. Well, they are qualified to be bozos- you know what I mean. However, in the end, they vote to confirm these clowns. How do you rip somebody a new asshole, and then vote them into the fold? You have to be a politician, is the answer to that.  Politics is Hollywood for ugly people. It's a performance. It keeps people like Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham out of the unemployment line. Could you imagine most congress or senators in any job in the private sector? Sure, you can. You probably have worked with feckless idiots no m...

 White House Faith Director, Jenny Corn, is thrilled that nurses, teachers and talk show hosts, are losing their jobs "for publicly celebrating the deaths of people". By "people" she means Charlie Kirk. She does not mean people like you, me or that guy. Just (for the moment) Charlie Kirk.  Religion has always been about numbers and market share. Numbers equal money, money equals power. Power equals control. Pretty simple math. There's no mistaking that this is a business model, just like selling widgets or whatnots. Obviously, every business wants as many customers as possible. Makes sense and cents. However, sometimes you can make additions with subtractions, and I think this is the business model of Christians in the US now. Curiously (or not...) it's the same business model as the republican party. When you are not attracting new voters because of your policies being unpopular, eliminate the competition's voters. Make it harder for them to vote via ge...

 When Elvis died, we were at a get together at Jimmy H's house. Just another night of socializing with beer and weed. No one was happy he died. It was more like they simply didn't care. His music was not our  music of the time. The only person who took it hard was Karl K. He was drunk and belligerently upset. Damn near combative, like he was looking for a fight. I recall thinking it was kinda forced sadness. A lot of times when people are upset about one thing- but embarrassed about it- they go in another direction. Karl had never portrayed himself as the World's #1 Elvis fan. Why was he taking it so hard? He lashed out at us for our Billy Joel fandom. "Why is Billy Joel alive when Elvis is dead??!!" Not exactly a question that requires an answer, The boy was drunk. He'd get over it.  If the Kirk death has shown us anything, it's that the maga world will not  react well when Trump passes. No matter how naturally he passes, there will be hell to pay. I have...

Watched another interview with a pornstar. I didn't seek it out- it showed up on my YouTube feed. I'm serious mom! I accidentally saw one and they sent me more. I don't like that stuff! I'll call them tomorrow and make them stop! No, YOU don't have to- I'll take care of it. I promise! So, this one was about a guy named Joshua who made over a thousand films. I had never heard of him, but that many films is a lot of bonafides. A lot of boners too. There was some vagary about his name, so I haven't looked him up yet. It might be his real name and not his porn name, so it would be hard to look him up. They didn't even discuss his dick, which struck me as odd, but after seeing a million interviews with ball players, I don't recall any of them being asked, "How big a bat ya swinging there, Clete?" I guess it's one of those, "if ya know, ya know" things.  How he got into porn was typical of the story you often hear about actresses. Y...

 Does anyone really know how to argue? Many people say Charlie Kirk was good at it, because he prepared extensively for debate, yet he often got schpanked by his opponents, who were generally younger college students. Kids today, huh! He was 31. Though a college dropout himself, when you have ten years on somebody, you should be able to take them. You should , but that doesn't make it a given. Evidently, when up against a superior opponent, Kirk would resort to the gish gallop  which is a fancy way of saying, "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, dazzle them with bullshit". That's the internet. Many applauded Kirk for taking debate to the people, going from campus to campus, and be debating young minds, perhaps capturing those young minds for his side. Eh, at best he got some kids on his side that were probably already there anyway. More theater than debate. Performance art. A lot of it made as much sense as a rap battle to me, though I could generally keep u...

 Now that Charlie Kirk has been deified by corporate media as some sort of civil rights icon for the oppressed majority of white males, I wonder how they will misremember Trump. They have had quite a head start these past ten years. Take the Epstein Files. Will that be repackaged as him being a man so gifted at pleasing women that teen girls sought him out for their deflowering? After all, pornstars and Playmates had sought him out for their sexual satisfaction; pleasure that they could not get from mere mortal men.  Was Trump a God on earth? Do you hear the Biblical God saying different? Didn't think so. Kind of says it all right there.  Surely trump will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, thanks to donations from loyal fans. That's probably how that will work. He'll do some redecorating, lots of gold leafed this and that, that though it might already have been there, didn't look right to his gifted eye. Heaven won't be a dump anymore like his former workplace.  There wi...

 I'm really beginning to see Kirk's death as a hit more than an assassination. The elevation to political icon even by two of the nation's major sports leagues is- I believe- unprecedented. It's weird. What does he have to do with any ballgame? They are so corporate. Isn't it odd that they treat him like a great politician when he was neither great nor a politician? They didn't have to mention it at all. Or did they. They are  corporations. People too, it has been decided, presumably with hopes, dreams and emotions.  Somebody  wants this to be as important as the Kennedy assassination and the MLK assassination, perhaps all rolled into one. Only bigger. Why? The guy never got this much attention when he was alive- and I certainly get that getting murdered is a big change for anyone- but he just wasn't all that.  I don't want to be mean, but I just don't see why he was worth whacking. He was a racist, misogynist asshole, but there are millions of them ...

We should all be curious about this Kirk assassination. If Ted Lasso taught us anything in that one clip I saw of that show of the same name I never watched, it's "Be curious". It may be still early in the investigation, but there are already red flags to ponder.  Why'd the kid walk- with a limp- to the scene? He had a nice Dodge Challenger. That would make for a cool getaway car if one was needing to get away. Where was the rifle? The speculation that it was stashed down his pantleg (and thus the limp) is comical. It's about a 44" long weapon. That's nearly 4 feet. It doesn't easily break down like some rifles do, so no, it wasn't in the backpack. And again, why the limp that went away when he was shown coming up the stairs to the roof, sans rifle? Once on the roof, assuming he takes and makes THE  shot, when he flees, why doesn't he take the rifle with him? I could see a killer leaving the gun behind because he prepped for the kill by wearin...

One of the better interviewers you'll see on YouTube is Mark Laita of the "Soft, White Underbelly" channel. It's my understanding he is primarily a photographer whose interest has always been photographing the unseen segments of society- the street people, prostitutes, criminals and kinda freaks of life, that we generally ignore. Maybe it's all in the editing, but his success seems to be in letting his subjects talk without too much prompting from him. It's their story.  This episode was with a porn star- Addison Vodka. Well, that's what she goes by. Though I have seen my share of porn, I'm not on a first or last name basis with most of these people. So, I fired up the Pornhub to see what she what she was like in action. She does a good job for a girl with such a schpankable bottom. No doubt. But she was an enlightening interview. Twenty-five years old, super cute  and very engaging. Very pleasant. Just nice and very normal considering her path to porn...

 Charlie Kirk didn't just fall out of the pundit tree. He was at this game for quite a while. He's being eulogized now as a guy who was very good at his job, even some sort of leader. Interesting, but his job  was to be a divisive, rightwing asshole. OK, he was good at that, but why honor it? I don't get that.  Last night Yankee Stadium put his picture on the Jumbotron and asked for a moment of silence. To my knowledge they have never done this for the hundreds of innocent school children that have been murdered, and definitely not for the two Minnesota representatives recently murdered in their home. So, why Charlie Kirk? You don't have to look far to see what an asshole he was. Misogynist. Antisemitic at times. Tragically- and ironically- about the despicable gun carnage here in the US. He had a very practical, omelet-making take on guns which amounted to the Second Amendment being glorious- we are lucky to have it- and, if a few people die by guns in honor of it, so ...

Well, Charlie Kirk, eh? Word is it happened while he was saying the gun violence problem in America was street gangs. Not sure if he had covered transgenders yet, but he usually gets around to them. I'm certain street gang members didn't do this, and frankly it's a safe bet that it wasn't a trans man or woman. We don't know yet, but figure on a straight, white male. I didn't think of Charlie as an important man. I saw him as a grifter, one that was smart enough to get in on the prime grift market of rightwing extremism. That's where the money is and his *job* paid well. I enjoyed seeing clips of him getting smoked in debates by well-informed college kids. He kept plucking along though, declaring victory where there was none. He could always brush off detractors by saying they were "woke". We all know what that means! Well, no, we don't. Neither do they. Anyway, except for the ridiculous Trump hoax last year in Butler, Pa. republicans aren't...

 "Revenge" (2017) starring Matilda Lutz and Kevin Janssens is a very well done, bad movie. I watched it on Tubi TV after seeing a recommendation from a couple people on the Bluesky, none of whom I know or follow.  Now, it's only bad because of the story is one that you can drive a truck through at times without hitting any reality. I mean- the heroine gets pushed off a cliff and becomes impaled on a dead tree. That's not the end of the movie. She survives and quite well, all things considered. Well, not all  things. Come on now- you get a tree branch- near as thick as a baseball bat through your guts- and survive, well enough to get around for 24 hours without medical attention? She heals herself and we'll get to that, but no. What's wrong with falling off the cliff and just getting knocked out and then coming to and running off? It's been done a thousand times is the answer to that. This gal sets fire to the tree to get out of the predicament. Props to th...

 Read an interesting piece from the Yale Review this morning. It was a little over my head, but I'm kinda tall and I think I grasped the gist of it. That gist is this new world disorder is out of our control. There's not a fucking thing we can do about it. We can't litigate it in the courts or congress. There is no Barack Obama on earth that could save us. Kamala Harris could not stop it, so don't blame her. Jesus Christ himself- if he had all the power purported in The Bible- could not turn the tables on it in any temple on earth. Heaven, maybe. But that's not really a viable hope here. Forget I even mentioned it.  Here's the link:  The Yale Review | Rana Dasgupta: Trump Is Only a Symptom of a Deeper… I hope that worked. I'm a Luddite and it's been ages since I linked anything here. It's a rather intense read and my old ass trudged through it, and I wouldn't fault you if yours didn't. My role here is to translate what I think  I know into mo...

 It would seem to be unfathomable to consider that the American military would wage war on Americans, but of course, it has  happened before. Slavery, secession and preserving the Union were the issues then in 1861. Let's face it; it was slavery, but there was a menu of reasons for men to get involved on either side. Today however, all you have is a vindictive asshole of a president who has more grievances against Americans than Frank Costanza on Festivus. They make as much sense too. What would it take for the US military- groups of men and still some women- used to taking orders from the president, to follow orders from him to really invade US cities? An order is an order, right? We hear a lot about how it is a soldier's duty to not obey  illegal orders, but that's in the moment. Who really is a 19-year-old private to decide these things? We could also ask who a 70-year-old General is to question orders from the President of the United States. You fight wars to win and ...

 I found a letter years ago. It wasn't to me, but I had good reason to think it might concern me in some way. I read it.  The letter writer was Mike Broppy. The recipient was my former friend, Drew Dandy. I had long suspected those two (as Bubba Keppler use to say down south) "were homos together". I braced myself for some shocking revelations of man-on-man  debauchery.  WHEW! That was not part of the program in this correspondence. It turned out to be Broppy inviting Drew and my then wife, to spend the weekend with him at his college. I have to say that seemed even weirder than a gay love angle. Laura was married to me, and I wasn't even invited! That was rude.  I remembered that weekend. Laura told me she was going to visit her brother, Nicky, at college. Fine. I was working. Have fun.  What has stayed with me all these years was the no mention of me. The trysting was bad, but you get over shit like that once the smoke clears and you count up blessings. B...

 I consider all my neighbors beneath me.  OK, that's because I live on the second floor and my apartment straddles both of their units. But still... I think I have mentioned The Gilmore Girls before. I believe they have been here for 15 years. I wasn't sure how old mother Gilmore was. I met them when I moved in last year and, being curious as to who had lived in my place before me, I asked how old the woman was. She had to think about that a bit, and she told me she was the same age as her. I asked what age that was. She thought a bit more. After several long moments, it turned out to be 74. Daughter Gilmore is about 45. When my brother helped me move in here, we both thought something was a little off about her. Somewhere on the spectrum, we figured. She is on disability.  I chat them up whenever I see them. It's usually a disjointed conversation, taking many turns for no obvious reason, and often about their cats. They are not deceptive though. Just different. I was ver...

 I knew it was coming. I hate living on borrowed time. But they wronged me and there had to be a reckoning. Of course I'm talking about cancelling my Amazon Prime. It seems like more and more these days it is getting harder and harder to quit corporate America. My beef with Prime was that they never asked me to renew my subscription. Honestly, I don't recall even signing up in the first place. That's on me for letting that one slip past the goalie by not paying attention. Amazon deliveries were a big help to me when I first moved here and was without wheels. *Free* was a good thing at the time. But when I heard via the media that the annual fee was going up to (I think) $179 a year, I knew I needed to cut that out. But I was getting these emails from a bank that handled the Amazon house card. Fucking emails telling me that I owed them $22. No bills. Emails. They couldn't be bothered to tell me what they were for. I couldn't help but be suspicious even after I realiz...

 Donald Trump didn't lie to me. He tried, but it didn't take. I saw through all his bullshit, probably before he came down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his disdain for Mexicans. Oh, and he announced his run for the presidency too.  He lied to Maga, the simple-minded, common men and women who aren't as adept at thinking things through as I often am. I've got a pretty good track record of thinking things through- not perfect, mind you- but better than most. I've made some glaring errors in my life. They even have names to remember they by- Laura and Jennifer. I can't kick too much about that because my heart was in the right place at the time. It's in a better place now, because I learn from my mistakes. There are just some people you shouldn't trust, and that's the way it is. The trick is to figure out who those people are and walk away from there. Or run.  Trump was an easy read. There was no spankable bottom obfuscating his being. Of cou...