Month: July 2025
26JUL2025 – Quote of the Day
The Tell-Tale Heart
True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
…
Edgar Allan Poe
Trump, You Magnificent Bastard, You Did It!!!
H.R.4 – Rescissions Act of 2025 signed into law July 24th 2025.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4
It’s over, it’s over. Books and Capon will have to panhandle outside the deserted Dept. of Education office building and turn tricks for the homeless.
What a wonderful time to be alive. All of the dreams of my youth are coming true. Who knows? Maybe they’ll put Tricky Dick Nixon on the thousand dollar bill.
So remember kids, dreams really can come true. All you need is an ornery enough bastard like Donald Trump and enough people who are sick and tired of being lied to and gaslighted by their elected officials.
And Now a Word from Our Sponsor
Today was the dreaded ladder day. I have been promising to clean out the gutters on the house and adjoining buildings for quite a while. And because there are levels and other levels and other, other levels it took hours. And somehow that damn ladder has gotten heavier over the years. I mean it can’t be me. I’m as strong, skillful, handsome and intelligent as ever. I think it may be that the Earth’s gravitational field has increased over time. If I’m ballparking it, I’d say it’s doubled. For that reason, I found it necessary to use “maximum effort.” But it didn’t help that it was in the high eighties today and high humidity. And if I’ve learned one lesson it’s that badminton birds are very effective at plugging downspouts. From now on badminton is a forbidden sport. Let’s see them get a basketball stuck up there! Well, that’s enough whining. I didn’t manage to break my neck or go into vapor lock so let’s move on.
I saw that the same company that wasn’t willing to pay $46 million dollars in losses a year for the Late Show was willing to pay $1.5 billion dollars for five more years of South Park. That’s got to make you pause. I remember back in the 1990s when the pilot for that show came out on-line. It had Jesus fighting with Santa Claus. It looked like it had been drawn by a twelve-year-old and it seemed to have about the same emotional maturity. And now the two doofuses who created it are going to be billionaires. Well, only in America, I guess. And that at least makes sense. People want to watch their product. It makes money. It has value. Stephen Colbert and NPR and PBS can’t get enough people to watch their stuff to pay for making it.
I guess the lesson here is that if you’re an equal opportunity offender (and the makers of South Park are most definitely that) then that doubles your audience and adds a level of authenticity to your story. South Park and its creators; Trey Parker and Matt Stone have insulted and mocked every single powerful figure in one or more episodes over the course of almost thirty years. That’s all presidents, dictators, religious leaders, billionaires, geniuses, generals, movie stars, corporate bigwigs, movie studios, nations, religions, even supernatural beings from Jesus to Satan to Mohammed. They’ve made fun of the woke and MAGA. They offend everyone. And they do it disgustingly. But people will pay to watch their stuff because it’s funny. Disgusting, but funny.
I think that tells me everything I need to know about why the current media landscape is crumbling. The product on display is really bad and almost no one is willing to cough up the ducats to pay for it. And I believe that is a hopeful situation. A lot of really crappy content will go away. And a lot of it is stuff that annoys me; MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. What’s left afterward will at least be profitable. Stay tuned.
25JUL2025 – Photo of the Day
25UL2025 – Quote of the Day
I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth.
Edgar Allan Poe
Company on the Unemployment Line
So today was the weekly zoom call with the boys. Coincidentally, I received my “Del Boca Vista” tee shirt. One of the guys had them made up It says,
“Del Boca Vista
They don’t want us there
so we’re going.”
It captures the petty spiteful spirit of the Costanzas and honestly, I’ve always felt a kindred mean spirited impulse toward almost everything out there.
I wore it to the zoom and immediately sensed a greater respect from my fellow Deplorables.
I read off the Costanza rant verbatim,
“This is Frank Costanza. You think you can keep us out of Florida? We’re moving in lock, stock, and barrel. We’re gonna be in the pool. We’re gonna be in the clubhouse. We’re gonna be all over that shuffleboard court! And I dare you to keep me out!”
It was a proud moment. But we must move on.
So, everyone has been whining about Colbert getting the boot. The Democrats in Congress want to have Senate investigations to make sure Trump didn’t order the firing. Gee, if they could prove he was responsible I bet he’d hand out lists with almost every name in Hollywood and the networks including Tom Hanks, George Clooney and Alec Baldwin to start.
But finding out that the Late Show costs $100 million a year to produce and loses $46 million a year was hilarious. If ABC and NBC are losing anything close to those numbers, I’m guessing that Kimmel and Fallon will both be given the boot sometime soon. And that would leave Greg Gutfeld not only the highest rated show on late night but the only one.
And how about the View? Is that turkey actually making money for ABC. It’s kind of hard to believe. But then again maybe they don’t pay those demented hags much of any salary. I mean, why would you? They’re not actually celebrities. The closest they have to a star is Whoopi Goldberg who was in a couple of popular movies about a thousand years ago while she was still alive. Now she’s just one of the undead subsisting on the leftovers from the craft services table and sleeping upside down in an equipment storage closet on the set. I couldn’t imagine they pay people like Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin or Ana Navarro at all. I figure they just wandered on the set one at a time and became domesticated by the crew. I’m sure they’ve been taught a few stupid pet tricks over the years like a parrot learning to mimic human speech somewhat. It can be a fun trick but one soon tires of the irritating repetition of some catch phrase like “systemic racism” or “mansplaining.”
Well anyway, we’ll have to wait and see whether the other shoe drops and Jon Stewart is also given his walking papers by Paramount. Now granted, he doesn’t make $20 million a year like Colbert and his show doesn’t cost a $100 million dollars a year to make but maybe just so Colbert doesn’t feel picked on they should also heave Stewart overboard too. After all they’re old friends. They could keep each other company on the unemployment line.
24JUL2025 – Quote of the Day
Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.
Edgar Allan Poe
24JUL2025 – Photo of the Day
Tom’s World – 23JUL2025 – The Next Generation
There is an INTENSE need for people who can think and have experience + a work ethic, goal driven. I’m a subset of one out of 300 million+ so I can’t exactly extrapolate but—
Like photog, I’m an engineer but at 76.8 years old, a supposedly retired one. To keep myself in touch and engaged, I have a part time consulting business out of my house. I do design and in addition, construction contract and managing, budgeting and walk dogs on occasion.
I have people coming out of the woodwork begging me to work for them. They tell me that the current system isn’t generating people like me at the needed replacement rate.
I have all the clients I want (2), I work all the hours a week that I want (15) and I have no intention of getting back in harness. I like the commute from my bedroom to my home office but I have problems keeping the cats off my plan table.
Before retirement, we spent a couple of years trying to hire and train my replacement. A number of recent grads but there seemed to be at least something wrong with every one. No motivation, no work ethic, can’t get out of bed, not interested, HUGE holes in their knowledge base, scatter brained. One of them could not generate a simple logical excel based budget to save his life.
I can’t do the typical retired thing, traveling, visiting grandkids, etc. My wife is well into Alzheimer’s but not quite yet a nursing home candidate. So I’m tied here. But if I’m not working on something interesting, I’m pretty sure I would rapidly dry up and blow away.