An actual online post: “Anyone know what was going on this morning on midwest trail off 10th st (sik)? Looked like a movie crew, counted 50 vehicle’s (sik) down the street.”

People yapped on: A crew was shooting a Tom Hanks video in West Lakeland this week. But no Saving Private Ryan. Or Forrest Gump. Forget The Green Mile. (The voters these days would more likely cater to the now-innocent fluff of Bachelor Party. Note not The Silver Bachelor. The Golden was in many ways taken by The Donald. Maybe Tommy Boy should try a music video? And not a reaction video, as that would be an actual rapper, Molly Boy.) So not an hour in and out, and can edit later, and then back to Minneapolis?

Then a third responsorial came in, also. Green Day video? That career, although with killer moments, could use a bit more reviving …

East Lakeland is pissed. (Would that actually be Hudson? Downtown, most likely.)

Who else is pissed? Not just a lone editor, but eastward, most everyone in Washington.

Because they either can’t close their yaps, or don’t say anything that matters.

So I will deflect from the bull shit and hyper-analyze the shutdown closure coming out of Washington.

But first some real world ICE-type moments, and not Vanilla Ice, but more like Ice Cube and even Ice Tea:

What would happen if:

— While I was waiting for a taxi (immigrant driven?) who was Two Minutes To Midnight until being off of on-time, I saw a beaten up truck pull up to a yellow stripe just past an intersection and stop not squarely in a space largely used by all as a loading zone, but edging toward the arterial. He got out, (with a limp), looked at his front end for a few moments, then got back in and drove off. This shortly after yet another person with an SUV made a questionable U-turn on the busy street, albeit in its middle, by a nightclub. Thus an older guy I talked to assured me this was illegal, although like running a yellow light gone on too long.

— Same street, many a night, closer to midnight. A younger guy, obviously Mexican, walked daintily along. Pleasant enough, has always said hello. I’m guessing he’s a cook downtown. Maybe that shows my own bias. But he is decided bowlegged, maybe making him a marked man. I will decline to make the bad cowboy joke, of riding a horse too long. But Shooop, there I go. And it really isn’t funny, at all, if you think about it. Stops to rest, looks in a twin store window too long. In the dark.

In both cases innocent and in the latter, almost shameful of our culture (and me) in multiple ways.

And in both situations, if your skin is too dark, a dead ringer I would guess, especially if living in the inner city, for fast becoming an ICE detainee.

We’ve all done stuff like this. If you’re a white redneck you probably get at most a token lecture and a basically free pass. And if a European disabled man who often sits in that same spot, they’ll mostly look the other way, because he’s very disabled and always pays his Section 8 on time. And right now he gets Medicaid. These two are crucial, even if just for staying underneath the radar. But there could be exceptions to the way cops in general, and maybe ICE even more, treat these situations. More on that later …

These actual examples, with a couple of slight embellishments, of how people tend to be treated differently based on their status, also illustrate more what you need to know about our shutdown-blame-game debate.

The GOP has painted the Democrats with a brush that is not only broad but baseless. They say the Dems want to give what is basically free health care, and eliminate the large and tied-into-it insurance premium increases, to undocumented immigrants, and that is simply flat-out false. As in completely, based on reports from numerous news outlets, not just the ones left-leaning.

Right now, in Wisconsin, if you are an ordinary as in fully legalized citizen low-income person, you will be in pretty good financial shape as far as medical care — for now. You paid little or nothing, but that has already started to go up. For much of the Biden years, you paid nothing for a prescription co-pay, and also often that much for a doctor visit. Now the rates range, as chaos rules, by one case study from $1 to $3 to $25, and who charges what and when seems random.

With the issues that are these-days topical, there is a lot of such randomness to be found. These myriad types of inefficiencies are probably a bigger money-waster than fraud in programs under question. Most of that inefficiency, ironically, is created from government efforts to quell it.

But now to the idea of being considered fraudulent until proven otherwise, and even then lied about to keep the myth going.

To start with, keeping current the health care insurance reforms put in place under Obama, like subsidies, not basically cutting them, has NOTHING to do with giving this type of assistance or free health care to undocumented immigrants. Where does this lie come from?

Yes, there is a government rule that, in about the only example of alleged fraud that is repeatedly cited, hospitals cannot turn down people who do something like go to an emergency room. They do by law have to provide certain vital services, but look at the sign on the wall there, this is not a free-for-all, the immediate care given regardless of the ability to pay has a group of limitations cited. So, in essence, stabilize you and beyond that, if not even before that, there will be lots of insurance questions.

I would bet my left nut — wait it had been surgically removed while that option was still viable, bad joke — that the money dolled out in this way to illegals is more than matched by the many studied economic benefits of having a healthier more productive populace, that doesn’t miss work or find employment virtually impossible to do. (And if you are on the margin, and one of many thousands at risk of losing their health care insurance, chances of fraud for getting on Medicaid or disability increase, so this actually defeats the purpose that is the subject of GOP fears.) Those cited workability benefits are in severe jeopardy because of the proposed GOP changes that would keep many people from obtaining health care — blocked by lack of funds, since they had been cut, keeping them on the dole. These include increased premium costs and virtually no chance, in some cases, to get catastrophic care.

My way to have them meet in the middle is this. Allow an increase in Medicaid and Medicare premiums, but make it scant, not a literal backbreaker. The rich-getting-richer health care giants will be able to absorb that cost difference. The same with proposed co-pays of around $35. Maybe cap them at around $7.50. If there are viable and verifiable upticks in productivity due to reasons I cited a moment ago, offer some of it back as a reimbursement to the health care corp. et al for their trouble. But make exempt Big Pharma.

Kick this in gear, as of the end of the year, and reopen the government, now. After all, those working-for-free-for-now government workers might run out of money to gas up and commute to work, since in so many cases they were furloughed from working at home.

We’ll start out light-hearted, if they still thump. The government has shut down and the earth has stopped turning and the sun has stopped shining. Screw the moon?

What are the real world effects? On things that truly matter to each and every one of us?

Here’s what goes to crap as far as nonessential workers. Or tasks. Lord knows what federal dollars will fund, but on health insurance they largely take a pass.

— Those measuring how to lengthen the set limit on giraffe neck extensions are on furlough and those will go without pay, and any orders for more foot-long rulers are on hold. Only one supreme ruler.

— In a related matter, tiger and maybe zebra stripe additions studiers may be exempt from pay cuts. Elephants are also VERY exempt. Donkeys, despite their close relationship to zebras, don’t have a prayer. Since they are alleged asses. 

— Also going without pay until harvest-time, is a study counting the sheer number of pineapple scales on their hulls, across all time before tariffs, and the effect of tariffs, and therefore sales, on such.

So Trump, go to Canada. If they will have you.

— Or go to Roberts, where they have music and munching, mammoth machines, mustaches, muffins (sorry, not quite exactly) and juggling and sewing and spinning and bobbing and weaving and DJ jukebox tunes and more. It’s the village’s 150th anniversary fete, following on the footsteps of so many others in communities around the St. Croix Valley, and its today (Saturday). There is both a wagon and history ride, as such offerings and their tours, museum-style in libraries too, have gotten to become a kinda thing across the valley in recent autumns, and the train ride has actual amateur NGineers (their actual spelling) and goes on again (no height limit) at 9 a.m. Sunday, with acoustic live music by Eugene and Camille following. There also first on Saturday is beard judging (no length limit) at 5 p.m., and with Halloween coming a cemetery tour (no age of death limit in order to display) at 5:30 p.m. Street Dance with local legendary lounge rockers (just kidding) Boondoogle from 5-9 p.m. And more.

Also on Saturday, Oct. 4, what do you get when you combine building pizza, tractors, kittens and apple doughnuts and more cuddles and light hayhem? Fun at the Family Fall Fest Food and such fodder and (locally farmed) Farmers Market at YMCA Camp St. Croix, held for the fifth time, from 2-7 p.m. today.

And if you missed it last weekend, you have no excuse. The art in the park event had listed as such, by the riverfront, in chalk with an arrow, in a couple of places, on intersections with the main drag, by sidestreets, a pair of promos. There wasn’t one in the middle of the sidesteet, that’s for center stripes, and maybe rumble strips. Inan unrelated event, also offered was, a high school band camp competition billed as by the sundial. I’ve no idea what that’s about. But their is an encore performance at 6 p.m. until the moon starts coming up next Saturday, Oct. 11, at Raider Stadium, at centerfield.

And in New Richmond, at the Wild Badger, creatures of another kind. Halloween several days ago was welcomed with a fish-casting-type net/spider web, similar in size, thus giving the St. Croix River and beyond its first actual wharf. —

But first on shutdown, a commentary on having what, 800 generals collected in one stuffy room at one time, making for a one for all and all for one terrorist-takeout target like none other. Like shooting fish or chicken in a big barrel, except their mass takeout possibility is easier than that of a shutdown-laden family with much higher medical costs. How did Black Sabbath put it: “Generals gathered in their masses/Just like witches at black masses … Poisoning their (our) brainwashed minds.”

Contrary to what the soulless ones have said, shutdown is not a bipartisan issue. What are the Democrats so pissed about? Let’s look at the numbers. Families could be left with pouring what has been called about 12 percent of their income into their medical insurance premiums because of the GOP gobble-dee-gook, that’s dozens and dozens of family dinners for this example family making $85,000. That’s what these Godbearer Dems have been fighting for. You and you and you. I’ll trade you my (on hold) new kidney for a few shutdown shekels to get by on.
The WIC program, which jokingly could be called Withheld Income Continued, will be out of money to pay-out in about a week. So I would call for not the Dems since they are not the ones to blame, but the godless GOP, the true bearers of bull shit, to during the shutdown go without THEIR pay, and let’s double down on it and make them also contribute backpay based on every day. THESE are the true fatcats, boiling over in their flab. (As long as they are making fitness in the military into a policy issue. These in the higher ranks, although not action heroes themselves, are used to being stoic about it while taking it firmly up the ass, the only part of the victimizers that is indeed for once firm.)

Still stock markets are up despite more bad economic news about things like huge numbers of added workers being laid off in the most recent month on record. And that is BEFORE shutdown. As Trump non-approvals hit record lows. It’s easy to lampoon The Anti-Christ(s). While news networks that had been truth-leaning are now filtering their comments and questions because of threatened legal action from The Evil One in office.

While we’re at it, let’s ask Dante, with pork at play, who will be the next politician to descend into hell. We know which side of the aisle. Word has it Vance is already there. And to Rep. Cole, of 2,000 year old slaw, as that’s what people will be forced to eat, what has been handed off to the most famous fat man in politics?

We won’t go too far into the new military overhaul, which is like trying to put a tank’s worth of trouble into an SUV, but this to Hegseth: Just go get drunk again with all the upper echelon of the upper brass.  

All this is so very bad, that guess who of all people has come out of retirement? THE UNKNOWN COMIC. He of old Gong Show fame. As long as we are making fat an issue, it’s now made note of the ultimate man of fab flab. That’s The Very Donald himself, who also has made beauty a political issue. Have you seen how obese this guy is? A fat man’s fat. How in God’s Green Earth did Stormy Daniels ever find his unit amidst all those layers of tubbiness? It’s rumored that she tried the other side, with no further luck for fuck. Now this woman is a true professional! Now that the Donald is into deep fakes himself, over a (very badly failed, with the only thing remotely funny a bad fake hairpiece on the lip, Roberts does it better, so read here instead for humor) attempt to parody the Dems, maybe the next deep fake is the size of the presidential penis. More than a stubby pencil?

So Nazi Nation, here we come. A subsequent post will analyze the bull shit behind their attempted shutdown-blame arguments. The GOP has lost any sense of humanity, if it ever had it. They don’t love our country. They love themselves. And their money.

They are beyond ballsy. With balls like boulders. “But we’ve got the biggest balls of them all!” The omnipresent rock band AC/DC invoked.

So tensions are high, but maybe pensions are not. Except for some.

So now they shot an ICE agent, no wait it was a detainee, and there were another two that survived prior to their certain descent into prison-like hell, as ascertained by Pres. Trump, as far as both the merit of such a view and now their mantle to bear, as they get rushed through purgatory by Locomotive Breath, incidentally. (With now another pop-up shooting or is it three since. Including the grand old horror of being, bar one, at a church, again. See an earlier post. But this one deals with something just as cold.)

When is enough, enough, enough.

With the ICE event, it wasn’t a sheriff who was shot, but listening to Trump yammer on about the poor ICE officers who have been given big raises, but whose well-being was put on notice, you’d think it was a thousand sheriffs and alleged accompanying points of light for the homeless man, and also their deputies, and certainly not detainees. Don’t forget the kinder, gentler machine gun hand, Neil Young sung about, still, while passing through the area on Farm-Aid.

The nature of those fallen could be the same difference to me. What do I mean by that??

Good cop, bad cop, or something in between. And ICE agents are like cops on steroids, like bishops and cardinals are priests on steroids. The majority in both fields are good people, but when they are bad they are VERY bad. The ratio is out of whack.

It is, or shouldn’t be, left vs. right. Right vs left. Center vs. center, Etc.

So if you are a detainee, back to the inquisition. Shrouded men of god hid behind their effectively stretched-to-cover masks. (No angels in Spandex.) And maybe the vast majority of those in ICE have good hearts and want to actually help those citizens and non, who they “serve,” but if I was a betting man I’d risk selling my soul to the devil first.

However, there are actual points of light with ICE, and good deeds by at least some agents. More on that later. But they may lose pay if the government shuts down soon. So where do their guns go? Maybe to fight crime via traditional cops.

But between them and the National Guard and ICE, if you are an immigrant I advise that you keep your documentation such as a Green Card or whatever on your person at all times, wherever you go or work. If you will even get a chance to produce it when detained.

And for much of the rest, Jimmy Kimmel tells the truth (although he could have watched his words, as I covered in an earlier post, as these days even the slightest mispeak means a libel suit, unless you’re Trump) and he is summarily crucified, and banned from broadcast. Much like Christ, if he was on the air.  Again, same difference. Truth on trial. And for Kimmel, after about three days he arose, as he basically had his ban and sentence commuted and was placed back in the studio. Without apologies. Or payment, from his (I assume) missed paycheck.

To the point, ICE agents can, at times, like cops, be like dry ice. No soul to be found in at least some of them. So melt them, oh ye politicians. Or summarily fire those people first. Then they will melt.

So when I see an interestingly-adorned-with-things-such-as-sirens-on-top, and different colored, vehicle these days, and they seem to be everywhere, I wonder if someone else — an already boiled away kitchen slave or a dripping wet ditch digger — is about to be taken away from their post forever. (Aren’t you like me living in this police state, when you hear a siren blare, you’re kinda shakin’ at your knees and look over your shoulder?) And if the wrong skin color, soon stuck very far overseas in a cell where there is likely not a toilet or running water, much less a stove or even a table.

More locally …

A bartender friend with a law degree said, in general terms, that same night that the world is on fire, because it is going to hell fast, and not (because of) Mexico. Eat the rich. Put them on the menu and see if they’re tasty.

Or, like a homeless guy I met the other night, closeby to the place he recently sleeps, on a grassy knoll downtown, and who added that most cops are nice and will kinda just leave him alone, though there will be that one or two who will give him grief. And want to check his ID. Maybe that’s just to see if he has any outstanding warrants — and why would they just assume? He seems smarter than some of those who I have met who wear a badge. I had a half-hour theology conversation (we agreed we could have extended it to a full week) with him that would be over the head of bible-thumper Charlie Kirk. Sorry.

Or, if an ID-less-one, do they want to send the smart guy packing to Mexico. At least a (warm) place to stay. But this guy is not Hispanic. Maybe that is his salvation to not be deported. Or the officer’s mate, you came up and said hello and that this guy is OK. The other officer, who had looked a bit annoyed that his potential bust basically based on alleged trespassing (yes he gets the word allegedly like anyone else would) had been busted, walked away grumbing, I was told.

Hence hope …

But there is a broader sense of humanity here, to which witness is born through of all things the recent shooting of the detainee. The shooter, like some but not all who have left a note, said he did not want to hurt any detainees, only certain others. Some shooters have apologized to their victims and even their own family for not being that perfect child. Some humanized ICE agents even were said to have scrambled to help save some of the detainees from further bullets, with their own lives at risk, as the detainees’ punishment should fit their (alleged if it even gets that far in the court process) crime. One wonders, didn’t at least some of the ICE cops actually think that these guys deserved to be hit by those bullets? Again, good cop (the vast majority,) bad cop (hopefully just a few).

Yes, back them in their effort, but it depends on the circumstances.

These are new circumstances, taking into account some very real (world) circumstances.

So if an immigrant, how do you get around safely in Ugly America? Maybe go clubbing! (But not in a bar seaside, as another shooting like the recent one from a guy in a boat might transpire.) But bop around, up and down, up and down, on the dance floor. To an old ’80s song, by Men Without Hats, called the Safety Dance. Or a shift in its key phrase to, “is it safe to dance?” Or the Stairway to Heaven line, “And the forests will echo with laughter … Does anyone remember laughter?”

With all the beatings and threats and silencing, if you are going to file a formal complaint against ICE, you’d better not speak it in Spanish. Instead, write it in perfect cursory style, and not with carefully crafted characters only letters. And paint your face white. With perfectly coifed beard? Not necessarily Arab style. And no tattoos, too. That wouldn’t help the guy just dragged away in front of suburban apartment dwellers who was known as simply, or silently, The Ice Cream Man. David Lee Roth, or my music friend Dan who lists that as his favorite Van Halen song, better watch out when stepping off stage. Or the man at the ice cream shoppe who looks the color of chocolate. Does he work at one of the two such shops that still operate downtown, at least for a time into the fall.

Whatever happened, with the Bible so often suddenly being (badly) cited, to the old idea of that when a stranger comes under your roof or to your door, treat them with honor and respect? Offer them the fatted calf. Where would all those Isrealites — and thus maybe later Christians — have been without the hospitality of the family in the desert to Moses? Ask Metallica, who wrote an iconic song about it. Or more on them and an early album cover, our Statue of Liberty — now basically shot down — and the idea of bring me your poor (immigrant workers), your tired (such workers), your huddled Masses (their families) …

Yes I will offer to debate the likes of Trump and Vance on it anytime. Just name the time and date and place. And don’t waffle about it then.

But, yay, finally! I give approval for Trump, and his granted approvals that are qualified, for backing a NATO country shooting-down-while-they-were-overhead Russian drones. But this one is an easy call, unlike the complexity of the Biden situation with the spy balloon from Alaska coming to the mainland.

But now, sell no more soybeans to Russia. If anyone out in the fields is paying attention, I guess that Trump has just lost the Iowa vote, for sure. Even though, he said, he’ll help farmers before harvest time. I think it’s more likely that the crops will succumb to California wildfires.

Or the other extreme. A local man without a plan in a rainstorm. His wife smirked that he had placed the umbrella over mostly himself, and only partially over her. “Thanks Mr. Trump,” she said sarcastically. Oops, Donald would have had the whole thing over himself. As it is always about himself.

More …

We now are separating out some kinds of disorders within our child vaccine targets, rather than just a single inoculation for a bunch, thanks to RFK Jr. and crew. Rubella? No, that was my old football coach, just spelled a bit differently, exchange a vowel or two, and taking a knee, albeit scraped and needing disinfectant.

And at the bar, the famed T-shirt worn by bouncers to separate them from bartenders for people ordering drinks, saying simply “staff” takes on a new warning, as it could possibly indicate they had been on sick leave, then had to come in immediately when getting better because of staffing needs. In short order? No, that’s cooks.

Apparently only slain people of some political persuasions get memorials that include filling stadiums. And what does it take to get Trump and Vance, but oddly on their orders not members of their cabinet, to show up and speak and add to the many hours of the observance?

Across the river in Minnesota, dead men need to be Prince, I guess, not dead Democratic politicians and for sure not George Floyd to get huge rallies befitting rock stars, as he is not Pink Floyd or one of their contemporaries, also recently deceased Ozzy Osbourne. But in very stark contrast — even though between all of these instances, there are differences — in manner of death and ouch, skin color, over in Idaho, there continues after multiple years to be hubbub over killed and white college students, as they on recurring docu-dramas have the wholesome good looks of four fresh faces. Eye candy invoked.

But this post is about conservative evangelicals and, dare I say it, Charlie Kirk’s memorial and its prime-time-type, blow-by-blow news coverage. All intertwined.

I’d compare my reaction to this memorial as the equivalent of when again, Captain Kirk’s shuttlecraft comes crashing to the ground and then streaks back above to the sky … I felt like I was back in college having a preaching prof pour gallons of hot fudge down my throat. So rich, literally, that it was too much. Laid on way too thick.

It was almost more like a fundraiser for Kirk’s campus ministry events and beyond than a memorial. On this unfortunate note, but applicable because of themes and names, check out Megadeth and one of its staple songs, Holy Wars … The Punishment Due, which starts “Brother will kill brother, all across the land, killing for religion, something I don’t understand … Do you kill on God’s command?” 

Starting off this political show, very heavy on references to God, was Kirk’s pastor, who noted another super-human figure, Moses in the Bible, never reached his promised land, dying instead while looking down a mountaintop. (I will cut the pastor some slack, as in the denomination of choice for many if not most modern Christians who seek to first of all dominate, Moses does not actually die, he is basically assumed into heaven.) A precursor to Christ’s method. This minor, if a spoken glitch, illustrates a more important problem.

You attract more flies with honey, not vinegar, so back off a bit, and see the size of your flock increase, loosen your verbal grip on the throats of sinners, and show them the way with less insistence on getting your own way with having them follow your ideas. So if your dogma is a bit different than that of another denomination, or religion, just deal with it, or at least truly and in good faith, debate those people. Heaven, not hell, might still await them.

Another pastor type did a version of bait and switch. Twice he asked a question that played well, but then went off into other tangents and didn’t really answer it.

You might convert more people to your cause if you gave thorough, complete answers. Complexity will win the game with me and many others.

An example is a discussion with one of my evangelical neighbors, which lasted less than a minute before I verbally ran a bit the other direction. I asked what he held as true. The answer: I believe Jesus Christ is my personal savior.

And? … 

That’s it.

He at least could have added the synonym Lord, or the mantra often given, having an individual relationship with him. By comparison, I would love to have someone like Kirk ask me, not tell me, about the complexities of my own personal theology on the concept of God’s “qualified omnipotence.” And I now paraphrase a metal music reactor/composer — while I listen to Black Sabbath sing about God — who said we should all treat each other as people not commodities.

To wit: A middle aged wife, it is crucial to note that, and her husband had Kirk over for dinner and said they were taken by this nice young man — who was selling his fundraising — and he needed $50,000. By the time dessert had passed, Kirk had half by check and it was requested that he match the other half … which he raised in two days. So the matching money kept coming in from the couple.

OK. How many of us can just whip out that much dough that fast? Even for a good cause? The best I can do is pull the tops off pop can lids for a penny each, then donate it to charity when due to Dew it reaches a few dollars. If I was to emulate the couple he met, and get him that first windfall, that would be 2.5 million drops in the bucket.

The audience was just dripping with such privilege, and bright, shiny people, non-nattily dressed to kill. Donate designer duds? And that doesn’t even include — with the audience encouraged to be dressed if not to the hilt, in red and white and maybe blue, at least the tie — the speakers. Imagine what they wear to church.

Another thing that your parents said not to do, was something championed by another speaker. Instead of going off to college, he met Kirk brimming with his message, immediately gave up all such plans for future study, put away his school books and followed him and his group, almost instantly joining it. Probably Christ too, but specifically Kirk, who specializes in a task used by many, creating so much chaotic “noise” that it drowns out statements that are well put-together.

I can see his mom and dad reeling, unless they are of the same ilk. Don’t just up and bolt from school, spontaneously and before giving it any thought, not checking him out first. Only thus checking into the philosophy and theology of Us Versus Them, and therefore checking out. Seek to compromise, and again, add complexity. Don’t be the “bubble-headed bleach blonde” in the song Dirty Laundry, about what types of things usually make it onto the evening news.

So I issue this writ: You can’t evangelize if you isolate yourself.

Core principles? I suggest amending them slightly and thus have the increased audience to be able to truly take back America. And we all should get to decide what those principles will be.

Maybe this is what ABC did by airing the memorial, in all its running hours. Or it could be them finally caving in and selling out. Ironically, it was said at the memorial, “it takes no skill to be courageous.” I beg to differ.

And I offer this, concerning what I see as a flaw in the speeches made and their mantras, this time from Kirk’s widow: It appears that decision-making in their relationship was decidedly top-down, which eventually will bring trouble, and all that she said about faith appeared to be focused on HIM, not his dutiful wife. 

With this season too upon us, does anyone remember when right wing was a hockey, not political position? These days, it has even more teeth, and might as well take a sawed-off-shotgun style also — wait that’s an old-school-term — with all the politically tainted shootings occurring.

I quote Metallica, as metal and hockey are much alike, Adam Sandler, we are a country with liberty and justice for … a few? Speaking of which, have you actually read OUR constitution, and know what’s really in it and not in it, (and even then we should go in and revise it. But those amendments — do you icy right-wingers know the word? — would be blocked by court actions in front of packed higher powers in red states.) How and who decides??

— Does Kirill slice or hook on the course, in the course of securing a contract extension. The Russian winter-here wunderkind is back in the Twin Cities, and his first large-scale public appearance was at a golf course in Lake Elmo, as part of a Wild team event. A source close to the route, said that on a main avenue between I-94 and Hwy. 36, which normally sees a car or two cross at a time at the light, was up to five or six each way. Media types and gawker types. Meanwhile in Somerset, the Vulcan Krewe also trekked over from St. Paul, for a charitable golf event. Was it perchance anything to do with helping Kirill keep up with the Joneses, as far as his killer contract conditions.

Over at Green Mill, the set of shelves by the door, formerly filled with staff picks for kids books and games for charitable purposes, now showed only a few potted plants. Guess the arrival of school means they are suddenly all picked out. Good kids are still reading. The wall of causes for paws, helping out pets, also has been replaced with a handful of event flyers more general in nature.

Moving from paws to parking, Ziggy’s downtown Hudson has become the first nightclub to formally offer parking on both sides of the main drag, utilizing the west-side marquee sign in the former Associated Bank building. —

For gun-gaining answers we might look to our (former) brethren to the north, Oh Canada. There they have carefully crafted and detailed gun laws, and ownership is a privilege not a right and not everyone gets one, as you think our background checks are stringent? (John Candy’s characters might not possess.) And all assault weapons are basically banned. Seems that Charleton Heston and his gun lobby got their fingers frozen off the trigger.

Canada, by comparison, has not only red-flag laws for guns, but yellow-flag laws for those with basically all kinds of motivations chosen to be questionable. And what about having a pink-flag, hate crime law?

Canada doesn’t mention hunting? Even if it does, you could say that you need an AK-47 to take out a polar bear, but not a deer. And this scenario illustrates my problem about all those internet ads who say their high-powered product will meet all your safety needs. They make up those needs so there exists a market for their product. Like a Bowie knife the size of the one carried by Crocodile Dundee, not David. (The former couldn’t carry that while movie filming these days.)

The result in Canada? Relatively few murders to speak of. Their gun laws work.

Further analysis of Canadian gun statutes would take on much of the length of their Library of Congress.

But after all, ban AK-47s and such, and keep smaller arms legal with restrictions, and Charlie Kirk would still be alive. A pistol’s reach is not a city block.

So what more do we do to solve this mess? A lot of it involves the questions asked of one another and how to phrase them. For instance, with this newer term Christian Nationalism now thrust in front of us, many would stand in the way of having “one Christian nation?” But few would argue greatly with this statement: “We should all live our lives with the virtues espoused by Jesus Christ.” 

And as per Kirk: Refer and defer to Spock’s logic. Climate change can be cited where life if you are indeed living in the real world has proven the conservative position to be explicitly and irrefutable wrong. (View the stats of science.) Hands down. With certainty. No (further) qualifications.  Pass a science test before you should be allowed to run for office.

But it may now be too little, too late.

But aim to instruct and educate but not incite, advocate but not antagonize and agitate, be spicy (like I am attempting to be in this wide-ranging post on the dangers of our politics, one of them being death) but not too bold, and there is a fine line.

The result if we don’t? John Lennon and Dimebag Darrel may come from different schools of rock, lyrically too, but their epitaphs are very similar. They, like Charlie Kirk, were not far enough gone to be Cowboys From Hell. Play guitar for God, not fiddle for Nero. 

Lennon also, with the riveting questions asked of him, should have used a little more forethought before reacting. In fact, with the queries put before all our candidates, give them time to think first, not just blunder forward like The Donald.

Also, when debating, choose key and carefully chosen words, then work around them with the structure of your sentence. See the above example of alliteration.

A problem with situations like Kirk’s shooting, and we keep on seeing the same pattern play out in our country, is that only after giving it a few days, are we finally reflective and truly searching for answers, to keep the same problem from happening again and again. At the start, being reactionary rules the day, and everyone, including all the president’s men, just focus on merely saying all the right things.

And maybe only a bit later give them a little truthful edge.

The key, I think, is to balance these things out, over the entire course of our reactions, from the first hours — give it a few minutes to settle in — to the next few days, after which it’s yesterday’s news and we move on to another tragedy. Their timeliness will help win the game.

I think that the stances Kirk took could be irrefutably debunked in a debate, and that would be the way for his opponents to address these issues, not shooting him. I think as came up often in the 2024 election presidential debates, the best way to fight bad speech is with more speech, as in using good speech.

The bottom line to consider here if you are someone like Kirk is this: These days, if you take an outrageous and extreme political stance, you might get more than ridiculed, you might get shot. So I say to you, unfortunately and thus posthumously, Mr. Kirk, be captain of your own ship, and dear God protect yourself by toning down the venom of your rhetoric. Debate, do not soundly denounce. Shout for justice, do not shout down, and Kirk despite all his bluster about wanting to debate, has in some, if not many, cases tried to simply silence people he didn’t like.

With this we move to the likes of Hobbs and Locke and The Marketplace of Ideas, which I doubt Kirk and his followers have read. In this marketplace, Kirk and his positions are like rotten tomatoes being sold for $9 a pound, and soundly distasteful, and soon getting bad reviews. No one buys them and eventually they start literally dying at the vine. At which time the maker floods the marketplace, and mailboxes, with deceptive ads, and everyone, including those who bought them, becomes angrier, and there is a boycott. At which point the maker cries foul, and the advertisements are filled with even more falsehoods. The government steps in, and the tomatoes later are banned by the FDA.

Sound familiar?

Some right-wing media outlets boasted that many of Kirk’s videos have fifty million views, but these days that’s not that much. Some rock videos that would take him to task have more than a billion. Maybe he was more like Charlie Sheen, with arrogance, and just wanted to be more popular and accepted?

I cite that kind of insipid country song known for singing, “at least I know I’m free.” Note that caveat, “at least.” That implies settling for less, like not working to do better, and resting on your laurels, and nothing is more American than that.

After all, and not to defend the killer, isn’t anti-fascism, a big part of the Kirk shooter’s manifesto, a good thing?

It is not Christian to invoke God, but praise ungodlike ways, like despise hatred and, let’s say it evoke pacifism, to turn the other cheek, although I realize that is basically a parable and maybe not to be taken literally.

Note that word, literally. A lot of Kirk’s manifesto is a loosely-strung-together set of “principles” that never get beyond the “black and white, all or nothing” simplistic viewpoint that is so wrong with many conservative arguments.

And for his views, Kirk paid the ultimate price. That litany of irresponsible positions. He is more matador, waving red at bulls, than martyr.

There are some people of whom you don’t touch, unless you’re being very careful, and Kirk was not. Don’t go after Martin Luther King Jr.

Like so many sports and music figures too, Kirk wanted to live in the limelight. That means if you’ve truly got the goods, you will get the money to safeguard yourself. It also could be argued that with such prominence comes more responsibility.

On my list of applicable tangents, I will cite the Chuck Berry song, as example, of the country kid Johnny who “didn’t learn to read and write so well, but he could play guitar like ringing a bell.” This song is a brilliant example of a black man penning a nice slap in the face to the white establishment, so clever they won’t even know it. In the Old South, it was a crime to teach black people to read and write, but this kid — a black boy? — rose to be the rock star, while the whites were left as wannabes sitting in the back rows.

After all, if you are on a subway, even in some of those red cities, aren’t you going to watch your step, and back?

In response to a post, saying that present gun limitations would not have prevented most recent killings. Idea: Place limitations on assault guns, and have gun rights advocates band together with non, and provide self-policing transport groups to hunting areas, including more than one witness who would make available the hunting weapon, then drive them back when finished. If the group members put their actions where their mouth is, they will not mind the scrutiny, since the weapon would not be needed for foul play. Any inconvenience? That comes with the freedoms of democracy baby … Who needs a fucking revolver anyway? And for what? Besides hobbying and injury. If you feel you need it, an ordinary pistol will do.

And as far as safety needs? Consider keeping your gun-toting butt out of high risk areas, and if you have the high-priced property money, pay for security. With rights come responsibilities, and the mere fact of having this in place by definition means limits. With responsibility means you can’t just go doing anything you want. Get out a newer-version, with new inserts, dictionary. Such rights are not a license for all behavior, they are defined as having limitations.

Christian nationalism, too, is a non-starter, as I have always said that patriotism is fine, but nationalism of any type or form is approaching a dangerous line. I cite Nazi Germany, and let’s face it people, right now we are living in a police-state country where we are at the same crossroads as Germany in the mid-1930s. 

To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question with only one answer.

I am, or was for a few of my randomly sleepless days, literally embedded in an associate, or is it assimilated, my assistant living facility (just kidding) as the best number of sleep maxes I could grab maybe was a couple at a time, occasionally and randomly, hours … now, wait a minute … zzz for the moment only. So bring me more Xanax or such. (My pharmacist would explain to me how when having the disparate energy of ADHD, at varied times sleep is blocked physically and as far as electrical impulse by the very drug action that’s supposed to cause it.) Head-checked by Henry, who also has not slept, so he headed first to Osceola to oscalate his brain on a trip out with his girlfriend.

Now, newly discovered on the sill of a window showing the full moon, I think, then a full sun, then a slightly lesser moon, then the sun again … was the on and off again green glow, from just under a second to just over it, from a small device — and not the orb from the movie Heavy Metal — of unknown origin. Which also means I don’t know where I got it. (From the mean streets? Or a really mean fireworks shop, on the edge of town.)

— This is a case of mega-musicianship that’s made its mark, much musical mask-makeup making up the comparison to a less traveled, but still traveling band stopping off locally.

The Dead Cowboys, playing Big Guys BBQ Roadhouse this coming Saturday, could be the Cowboys From Hell, or taking after their guitarist into the Dead Kennedy’s, or Ghost or Cradle of Filth, with their image of a player or maybe the whole band with white skull mask complete with zippers, real or just painted-on motif.

Cain and Co. opens, and they will not share the stage company of Brother Cain, but it’s still fitting since on the night before it’s the Non-Prophets. On the day after, it’s just your luck to have Inside Straight, or is the name flipped as SI, thus abbreviated, and name in long form bringing them in. Either will work.

All this on the heels of shows such as GRave, a play on words for an outer area electro-pop deejay-based act rather than death metal — fitting since I just saw another shirt in mid-New Richmond about Rave In Paradise, for its maker who passed on a couple of years ago. With those things, word has it that a jazz club, of all things, may start up in the southern end of Hudson’s downtown, in an existing bricks and mortar venue that’s actually no stranger to swinging, if you go back far enough. And wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the best group with its first gig still coming up, but before last call, The Happy Hour Band, which is delightfully Grateful Dead. —

Or what is it? The not-quite inch high barrel-shape is striped sideways red and white with what looks like a dark green fuse, complete with slight and light green spark at the end. And it went on and off, and on and off. Should I look at it to check for — I hope not — a possible growing flame not gleam, rather than roll over to look the other direction and ignore until throwing it away in the morning what could be a fire hazard. Watch the dumpster for a few seconds to ensure no burn. Was this object a battery? (Not the Metallica song.)

Or did I imagine all this? Sleep med delusion?

Then I reached for a book, reading about how to sleep I thought could put me asleep, and spilled a bottle of pills, and not the sleep form, twice into an open drawer with all kinds of socks and such. As many as pages. Damn, I kept on eventually finding in my fog, that there was always another capsule or two that scooted, and thus were hidden, under one of those many flaps in my underwear. Maybe this is why people wear thongs. Or buy the easily viewable, as in big, form of drug, what my family called “horse pills.” Bigger than Shetlands.

Damn, last pill went where? So get up and figure what more to put into that chili, still on the stove from the previous day, something like a million poppies to make me sleep. Peppers can be just as bad, or good, if you can stand your mouth and even nose burning so your brain can sleep. 

But my cayenne powder subscription — at this point I would need more than one bottle — had been cancelled due to lack of payment, as it had gone to drowse-or-die ghost-style pepper, so I had to try to find something else to do.

Check my phone calls that may have come in; turns out I had butt dialed while tossing and turning. That woman I had met at the bar two nights ago — after which the last time I slept.

So now, finally, get dressed, but still middle of the night. Get out some of those same underwear and literally, get hopping into them. Damn, can’t reach up my foot that high! So balance yourself with your right hand on the countertop, and your left pulling up your big toe and the waist band, remember that from the piils, at the same time.

In the morning at 5 a.m. there was what appeared to be DJ music emmemating from somewhere in the block, or so thought my boggled mind. This was not the first time I’d heard such seemed background noise, which could include the buzz of electrical machinery, construction workers starting very early, so industrial music aided, (maybe sounding the same if on sleeping pills, like Nine-Inch Nails,) and including times when I wasn’t the least bit loopy, starting off during the pandemic as private parties when most other events were shut down. There have been known to be band rehearsals during off hours, (usually well AFTER the sun comes up,) and this was a mid-week Wednesday, so if there is no beer or such flowing … The band plays on. And no one’s watching, so … Just kidding. If you can’t sleep.

The block caters to a pair of large bar and grills, other big and small retail business that include staid law firms, upstairs apartments, the Phipps Center for the Arts, and a street-strangled corner for elderly (dosing much) and disabled apartment building where still, stereo tunage is sometimes played well into the night, at moderate level, and not just Golden Oldies. Think classic rock, and what it entails, if only sorta on my side. A vague, distant noise in the back of my head positioned near the wall.

Across the street is, among other things, a coffee shop and an urban church, where the bells rang before six, tolling the bell for dead sleepers/sinners. Or at this time I’m more sure of things, as the sleep meds were working their way out of my system by working my way out of my butt.

No total sleep. So over to that coffee shop. Extra expresso fast, before I do finally fall asleep.

And we as the general public, and the victims, with the estimated number growing by the hour, must wait beyond forever and a day? It might take, literally, an act of congress, after that astute body recently heard lots of testimony about the personal stories behind a mega-sex-trafficing ring. This has none of the suggested glamour of that old “Vehicle” soul-sung song often played on the radio. But when Dio sang “Invisible,” his tiny voice rang loud.

It is obvious that the only reason for stalling the release of the Epstein Files by the GOP at the highest levels of government is political, partisan and privileged, even if only done partially when dragged to that point.

— With fall not even really here yet, if you don’t count the temps — and unless they’re being disbanded, as a new agency, that would be the federal side of things — we already have the annual autumn decor and Halloween decorations. There was a time when a creepy front porch was a Hillybilly/Texas Chainsaw Massacre thing, but with October nowhere near yet, one can already see two area porches decked out and running almost-length-of-house wide if not deep with parallel-to-the-road spooky characters. Any Epstein figure sightings? Also, a local farmstead that runs a business out in the yard where there sell, well, just about anything rustic, has added an inflatable 40-foot-high gorilla in the corner, that I presume since it’s new is intended as a Halloween happening. The hobby yard also is known for its sign frequently in the driveway that says “sorry we’re closed,” and me-thinks they were shut down by that King Kong.

This in a time frame that has also seen a bonanza of fall potted flowers for sale, some leaves starting to turn in clumps at the tops of trees, a new type of cattail-topped-type of roadside rusty colored bush, and the fact not going unnoticed that there’s been a resurgence of both bald eagles and turkeys, frequently seen along some of those same roadsides, often birds on both sides of the roads. —

If there is a fear for more damaging territory being entered as far as files disclosure, such as the privacy of the victims of the late, rich pedophile, given as the only real reason for dragging their feet, take this into account: Since most if not all victims of sex crimes WANT their stories to be told, wouldn’t showing what is in court documents be the first step? (I do get that such victims will want to tell their delicate story in their own words, that courtroom questioning can be brutal, and even that the court can get things wrong.) But I ran this past a friend who had been abused, and she concurred, that what is paramount is not privacy but fighting back against privilege if that is what’s standing in the way of full public disclosure and education.

And this thought on “grooming” for such acts, which I think is not something that happens with one mere touch on the shoulder, or as the friend said, a day of flattery and faux friendship. The point is that this makes the actions even more heinous, since this is not a one-second blurt of a bad word or an uncalled for shove, but a consistent and thought-out and systematic plan — that could be aborted at any time. If you keep doing the grooming, it’s the presence of evil in you.

These thoughts have resonated with others with whom I have talked, and include the idea that at some base level of physical stimulation, such contact feels “good.” This was said by an incest victim with whom I’ve been acquainted, and that fact was maybe the biggest one she grappled with. So I can see how someone could be a victim of grooming. 

That said, the following paragraphs unveil many more questions.

The news showed women as they left the congressional hearing, and does this not reveal their identities? A senator said that at issue is the release of court-owned videos. Can’t he drop at least one couched example of a “frailty,” which he said was a type of thing holding him back from releasing the files? 

Protecting the president? Mike Johnson, speaker of the house, said that was “obvious” nonsense. I’d say it’s anything but nonsense as the president appears to be “stonewalling,” to quote another GOP congressman who has said that primarily of GOP senators. And Johnson’s straight-faced reaction belied being actually stunned by the testimony.

And to the idea that the files have mostly been released already, at a 97 percent clip? What about the other three percent? Must be pretty damning.

Investigate more? We’ve had years of it already. And gathered 34,000 pages of documents. Now maybe up to 40K. How long to just to black out the names of victims — which probably are not listed anyway.

These are not always bi-partisan issues. Maybe the National Guard should be put to better use to round up these ICE-ish-catching offenders? And seriously, do the guard members really need the cool sunglasses? Some news images show guard members in what appears to be not plainclothesmen but full riot gear. Do we really need that for community policing?

ICE has now been said to be showing its presence in Chicago. Hell, it’s even on record as being here, this time in plainclothes, in little ol’ Hudson.

One would think we were a hotbed of crypto-currency, as the Trump family always defends its interests — and they just enjoyed a 5 billion stock windfall from such business that was just as tainted, because of Daddy’s conveniently laid policies, as his red carpet was for Putin.

Well, OK. The rich always get richer. But some Republicans have the gall to make the comparison to what was made — now full circle after repayment and amounting to zero — by Hunter Biden in tax misdoings. He was found guilty of claiming $1.4 million in admittedly questionable business deductions. Hey, the M word is a whole lot different than the B word, even though — to this point — the Trump family has not been hauled in, at least on this matter, by a bailiff. Dad’s legal status is far more tenuous. That don’t keep the boys from making a buck or two.

— Speaking of saving money, with the growth of ICE, and Doge, I think we need more initials, in this case DDD, the Department of Diabolical Disinformation, also known as Lies, Damned Lies, or LDL, or Lamentation on Stats Department, or LSD. Ask anyone asked to skew info that is so basic it’s hard to otherwise obviously misinterpret — see Chicago crime data. 

So with numbers, I think that even though my nephew is closer to seven-feet than six, and paler than pale, if he works one more month on his summer job, he might get tanned enough to be in danger of deportation. So be careful later in September. As in being multi-colored, (not multi-cultured?) Innocent people have been pulled over for less.

So in what languages would the crucial killer ICE information be? What would be on the office door? “Entrance?” That’s almost sacrilegious to the word. 

And though whiskey is not his thing, I must point out that as a college freshman, options for he above and others are growing more limited.  Five companies that distill such brew have at this point (end of August) declared bankruptcy. Tariffs take a sum total.

Even though this may not have been intended, a Hudson mayoral candidate put on his flyer on our last time around, reasons that I “voted for Rich.” That might be his first name, but it also describes, you know … Touting re-election. Figures.

And we as the general public, and the victims, with the estimated number growing by the day, must wait how much longer?

It is obvious that the only reason for stalling the release of the sex-tinged Epstein Files by the GOP is political, partisan and privileged, even if only done partially. If there is a fear for the privacy of the victims of the late, rich pedophile, given as the only real reason for dragging their feet, take this into account: Since most if not all victims of sex crimes WANT their stories to be told, wouldn’t showing what is in court documents be the first step? (I do get that such victims will want to tell their delicate story in their own words, that courtroom questioning can be brutal, and even that the court can get things wrong.) But I ran this past a friend who had been abused, and she concurred, that what is paramount is not privacy but fighting back against privilege if that is what’s standing in the way of full public disclosure and education.

And this thought on “grooming” for such acts, which I think is not something that happens with one mere touch on the shoulder, or as the friend said, a day of flattery and faux friendship. The point is that this makes the actions even more heinous, since this is not a one-second blurt of a bad word or an uncalled for shove, but a consistent and thought-out and systematic plan — that could be aborted at any time. If you keep doing the grooming, it’s the presence of evil in you.

These thoughts have resonated with others with whom I have talked, and include the idea that at some base level of physical stimulation, such contact feels “good.” This was said by an incest victim with whom I’ve been acquainted, and that fact was maybe the biggest one she grappled with. So I can see how someone could be a victim of grooming. 

That said, the following paragraphs unveil many more questions.

The news showed women as they left the congressional hearing, and does this not reveal their identities? A senator said that at issue is the release of court-owned videos. Can’t he drop at least one couched example of a “frailty,” which he said was a type of thing holding him back from releasing the files? 

Protecting the president? Mike Johnson, speaker of the house, said that was “obvious” nonsense. I’d say it’s anything but nonsense as the president appears to be “stonewalling,” to quote another GOP congressman who has said that primarily of GOP senators. And Johnson’s straight-faced reaction belied being actually stunned by the testimony.

And to the idea that the files have mostly been released already, at a 97 percent clip? What about the other three percent? Must be pretty damning.

Investigate more? We’ve had years of it already. And gathered 34,000 pages of documents. Now maybe up to 40K. How long to just to black out the names of victims — which probably are not listed anyway.

These are not always bi-partisan issues. Maybe the National Guard should be put to better use to round up these ICE-ish-catching offenders? And seriously, do the guard members really need the cool sunglasses? Some news images show guard members in what appears to be not plainclothesmen but full riot gear. Do we really need that for community policing?

ICE has now been said to be showing its presence in Chicago. Hell, it’s even on record as being further north here, this time in plainclothes, in little ol’ Hudson.

One would think we were a hotbed of crypto-currency, as the Trump family always defends its interests — and they just enjoyed a 5 billion stock windfall from such business that was just as tainted, because of Daddy’s conveniently laid policies, as his red carpet was for Putin.

Well, OK. The rich always get richer. But some Republicans have the gall to make the comparison to what was made — now full circle after repayment and amounting to zero — by Hunter Biden in tax misdoings. He was found guilty of claiming $1.4 million in admittedly questionable business deductions. Hey, the M word is a whole lot different than the B word, even though — to this point — the Trump family has not been hauled in, at least on this matter, by a bailiff. Dad’s legal status is far more tenuous. That don’t keep the boys from making a buck or two.

What do a single, great big purplish pimple, water-in-pool-or-lake inflatables that fight fish and the annual near-end-of-year wall photo calendar gift — where all is shown in its glory — have in common with your complexion?

Or in common, getting to moderate-size gardens, having to fight off rabbits — with the help of ma’s could-be-seen-as-scary one-dollar whirlybirds — and growth of weeds that are in some cases funky, and thus putting up a fence or other barrier, or taking it down, to deal with animals and possible veggie thieves.

Maybe it’s all someone or two I know, in those many cases battling the onslaught of mosquitos, worse with the weather-allowed breeding in rain and 90-degree temps that are higher no matter which side of I-94. Who thus may recently have puffed up even more. Like a riverside puffin. Or not really.

— They had the gall to mess with nightly specials. So don’t drive to where you want to drink. The water main broke on a main street, and it set in motion more than three days of work full of “grace,” as since we’ve now mentioned music titles, its gushing through gravel was fixed with the use of many boatloads of water, gallons and gallons worth, donated and piped in by a neighboring music club of note.

And no, we are not talking about a bucket brigade of bartenders, although it was near happy hour …

So the sidewalk stayed open, for clubbers, although a block of the street was dug up and big plastic bucket barriers cut off entry to multiple alleys, two for one, so that barrier to local transport also played in, to parking and people.

But Dick’s Bar played good corporate citizen, and allowed connection of their building’s water source and supply to keep the repair process moving, slowly, forward. You can still see the filled-in gravel on street that shows where the digging was done.

As I swirled my whiskey and water, a Shakespeare joke commenced in my head, so I commented to a new bartender, with a play on the blessed phrase to be or not to be: “Be gone,” oh cursed road and flood, “and take leave of me.”

But with flowing water also was the curse, it occurred to me as I sipped a little, this bit was like Jesus quoted as fighting the devil in the desert, them not using black dirt and vinegar but laying back blacktop and asphalt — so sympathy for him, as on the third day the tide was quelled and the workers rested. There was no further need to walk on water or have the holy kind sprinkled about to bless construction workers. Then in my head with irony, Velvet Revolver: “Like holy water. To wash away the sins of you and I.”—

So what is one to do? Don’t go where you want not to, into Ontario or the like while camping, like where it rains it pours, and fishing, per se. But you might consider reading a book or at least a magazine about how to do it, or bring one on how not to, so double trouble, while being bored in a canoe with one eye out for walleye. Pass the time, which can be seen as tedious, and slap the could-be-bait insects. Until the fish begin to bite. By that time you should have read through to the appendix, the end. Which might steer you to other options for such a outbound trip that would make it more pet friendly.

This after all, is the test for any pet owner. So in which case, you don’t have to pet them more, or sneak them food scraps under an only-in-house table, but both dogs and cats are still entertaining. But do take at least one of them along when duck hunting.

So back to the first paragraph(s) … If you’re allergic to those bloodsucking insects, this is how you will look, cheeks and body, while you’re back planning also Your Big Marital Day after a week up north. No not that day at the merry minnow Minocqua resort, with pix of people with biggest fishes and their fish stories. But the fate of your face’s Spots — and not the bird dog covered in such bugs — will hang in the balance if you choose to go out near sundown. You better take care while trimming your hedges or pulling out potatoes, or snipping those two or three pieces of human-high shrub greenery that are shaped like ma’s broccoli. Round-up and kill the cauliflower.

But gotta get on back, more, to the garden(ing.) Jokes are aplenty, but we hope you will remember this one come tomorrow, or the next hour. A set of small plants suddenly and opportunistically jetted forward like corn stalks and got all kinds of fluffy stuff at the apex. And this was not maltodextrin. Brought in was an amateur expert on horticulture, broadly, who said, if I myself earlier heard the story right, this could lets just say be of great value in an opium den. This is a person you want to get to know. Or not. Are you measured by the attributes, or lack thereof, of those you associate with?

This gets me onto the topic of, again broadly, garden weeds, even those with yellow flowers at the very top, alongside three-prong vine leaves that could poison, that would be a reason to call that horticulturalist. Simply a flower without merit? If they grow too fast and block the pathway that you had used to get back to the lot (and now pot?) line. Or somehow contribute to the slow felling of a tree, that now takes a fall after years of surviving a dead trunk and deadly, slowly splintering winds. A swatch, or do you call it a patch, of weeds that had spread out in front had been trimmed out by a much earlier owner, someone who simply had gotten tired of looking at them, at an angle with the TV.

That one tall drink of water, called a tree, that over decades had absorbed plenty of such, was now dead, but that did not mean it couldn’t still hold a tacked on old birdhouse, beneath several feet of only-there ivy. Placed in that place years after its making, in retrospect, in shop class – a counterpoint, to the one I’d constructed decades ago with splits one-inch-wide at two of its end quarters, unintentional gaps in its “floorboard,” never would have lasted to present day — but there may be a statute of limitations in if today’s birds would have interest. It was painted bright blue, maybe enough so to scare away bluebirds, and had held its color. (I swear, I saw a brownie birdie creep in!)

Kinda the color of, a last subject, ma’s mother-of-bride dress that she broke down and finally bought after a pair of planned trips of try-ons fell short due in part to being up north — which is like both a wild and very tame kitty cat’s color — and for that dress, a bright blue woulda been too “showy” compared to that of the leading lady.

So she’ll just hit the garden and dig in the dirt like a chipmunk, while dodging mosquitos that had been planted firmly on her screen door.

So, now it happened here.

A shooting in Minneapolis.

In a rural, or should I say suburban, setting …

In a damn church!

Again. And again.

And so continues to happen.

And what to make of it?

So many things to say.

I get, really get, the frustration. But …

And I know the carnage religion can do …

But after all, in a church my God!

Called Annunciation.

The one place where you’d think you’d be safe.

Kids at prayer in an all-school Mass. But still two dead and many more injured.

Maybe just a few feet from where I took my wedding vows, years ago, at the altar.

Ouch!

Shots ringing out through very stained glass.

— Heaven’s golden choruses … Quality karaoke brings knowledge. And your hair still shines and sheens well in the mirror. At Bobcat’s in New Richmond, in the men’s john, there had been a funny sign where the lack of a such mirror in front of the sink said, and I quote, “Don’t worry. You look great.” Now it is replaced by a single pane of non-stained, silver backed glass. The brief, uplifting message was better.

And at Dick’s, there was this time such a message lifted some time ago from the small, side-metal divider also in the men’s bathroom. It had been scrolled on, like other scribe sayings, in the form of grafitti as referencing a real pissing match, this with the gauntlet being thrown down by someone with a pen: The record for long going was at what, over a minute, and do you have the balls to top it, and if you are a girl, sayeth not likely. All this is like who can hold a music note the longest. Then there are the writings not on the wall, but the partition, in that one lone stall, coming from different scribes that invited first, others to comment, and second, please refrain from such. Since covered up. —

Shootings amidst all our isms. Catholicism. Satanism. Atheism. Hinduism. Inhumanism. Into-ism? So many isms. I don’t care what your ism is, use that ism to do some good.

After all, as a commentator, reminds us, even those into Satanism volunteer at food shelves.

(But in a church?)

This I say while in my small kitchen with only two real cutting areas, not a grand cathedral like Annunciation looks, slicing or almost smashing the filthy edges of my veggies off, hitting close as I can to the brown, so I can give the rest to those who have not.

But is there even a fucking point? If they are just going to be shot, eventually, anyway?

As I say and splice, I have singing in my head an old Black Sabbath song. Called Electric Funeral. Fitting. About nuclear holocaust, but can be adapted.

“Supernatural King, Takes Earth under his wing …”

As the commentator says he hears thunder in the sky …

Best beware. And why has this divine king — we are not told whom, but hints are given — not taken over quite yet?

Maybe we haven’t really let him. Even wings need a boost under them.

Could it be that’s where evil first cuts?

And we need to, initially, dull that knife, so feathers can truly fly.

To cut to the chase with my wordplay. Wings can soar but they need the support to be bolstered and thus loft up. It requires effort. A lot of it, including from us. It is far easier to just flap them.

So the words of the song:

“And so in the sky

Shines the electric eye

Supernatural King

Takes Earth under his wing

Heaven’s golden choruses

Hell’s angel’s flap their wings

Evil souls fall to Hell

Ever trapped in burning cells.”

That last line will be our fate, if we don’t help out.

But it is never too late, as there will always be another soul that can be lifted up.