2.28.2026 – tired of stupid

tired of stupid
testing should be required
stupid, can’t fix it

I am reminded of the Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.”

The story line is that Kanamits, aliens from another planet come to earth and with their advanced technology, according to wikipedia, that can easily and inexpensively solve all energy and food shortages and prevent international warfare.

The Kanamits prove their goodwill, turn the world into a paradise and further promise that their home planet is even nicer.

The Kanamits urge everyone on earth to enjoy the new abundance of food and when ready, sign up for a trip to the home planet.

The people here on earth embrace the plan and they eat and eat and then line up for the trip to the new world.

The twist is that the whole time, code breakers have been working on a book left by the Kanamits to see if they can understand the Kanamits language.

They finally crack code, realize the book, To Serve Man, is a cookbook and that the Kanamits are using earth as farm and to fatten up and harvest the people to eat back on the home planet.

My point is, the people lining up for the trip to home planet, DON’T KNOW THEY ARE GOING TO BE SERVED UP FOR LUNCH.

They line up, freely, expecting a trip to a better world.

It seems to me that a lot of people today are lining up, expecting a trip to a better world, KNOWING FULL WELL that THEY ARE GOING TO BE SERVED UP FOR A FREE LUNCH.

We can see into the kitchen.

We can pursue the menu.

And a lot of people STILL GET IN THAT LINE.

I think of an exchange in the Ron Reiner movie, The American President.

The Press Secretary tells the President, “They want leadership, Mr. President. They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”

The President responds, “We’ve had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand, ’cause they’re thirsty … they drink it ’cause they don’t know the difference.”

I guess the President is in on the joke and the joke is on us.

We know what’s at the end of the trip.

And we are getting on the spacecraft.

We know what sand is.

And we are drinking it anyway.

Is there a solution?

An answer to the question that we in America, have a good thing.

Something to embrace.

To protect.

Something that does not have to be made great …. again.

To think otherwise is stupid.

What can be done?

I came across the short story, Chef’s Night Out, by Anthony Bourdain, published in the book Rovers Return in 1998.

Mr. Bourdain, with his unique grasp of the English language, tells the story of a chef in a restaurant trying to deal with the fact that a chef in a restaurant has to serve folks who do not deserve to be in his restaurant.

The chef in the story loses it in a rant labelled Truth and be prepared for bad words.

I think people should be licensed to eat in a good restaurant.

Yeah.

That’s right …

A long, and unnecessarily irritating process of testing and certification should be required of every would-be diner.

To thin out the herd. All the well-done eating, low-sodium, egg-white omelette nibbling, crystal worshipping, holistic vegan cocksuckers, the sauce-on-siders, the low-cholesterol, no butter, no cream, can you take that off the bone split for two geeks, the slack-jawed, bedwetting, mouth-breathing, fanny-pack wearing scumpigs and rubes, with their Hard Rock T-shirts and their wall-eyed, no-necked, overfed monster offspring in tow . . . they can get the fuck out of my dining room.

Now.

The Space X rocket ship for the Kanamits’ home planet is boarding now.

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee whiz, but you can’t fix stupid.

2.26.2026 – stately libraries and

stately libraries
justice halls became useless
no longer revered

… the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed, either by study, or business.

The monuments of consular, or Imperial, greatness were no longer revered, as the immortal glory of the capital;

they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper, and more convenient, than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of stones or bricks for some necessary service:

the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry, or pretended, repairs;

and the degenerate Romans, who convened the spoil to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands the labors of their ancestors.

Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 7 (Leipsick: Printed for Fleischer).

For anyone happening to be keeping score or totaling up the reasons … thought this excerpt interesting.

2.22.2026 – in any instance

in any instance
violated the injunctions
incur punishment

Not sure what you think about on February 22nd but I often think of the old black and white John Wayne movie, Fort Apache.

After a long journey of crummy trains, stage coaches and other hardships, the new Commanding officer (Henry Fonda) and his daughter (Shirley Temple … yes that Shirley Temple) arrive at Fort Apache to find that not only were the officers at the fort not one bit concerned about the trials their new Commanding officer might be experiencing but his officers were having a party!

When he walks in the music and dancing comes to a halt and Fonda, cold, correct and angry, is introduced and everyone stands around staring at the floor until Fonda says, “… I take it this dance is not in my honor.’

There is quiet and John Wayne speaks up, ‘It’s a birthday dance, sir.’

Birthday. Whose birthday?

General George Washington’s, sir.

And Fonda shrinks down into the floor.

On Monday, March 4, 1793, George Washington was sworn in for the 2nd time as President of the United States.

He gave the shortest inaugural address on record.

With 135 words, General Washington said:

I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America.

Previous to the execution of any official act of the President the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence: That if it shall be found during my administration of the Government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.

After serving as a Virginia Delegate to the Continental Congress, then serving as Commander in Chief of the Army, then Chairman of the Constitution Convention and finally, the General said that, after all that if there was any … ANY … instance found where he violated his oath of office (preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States) he deserved both Constitutional punishment and upbraidings or intense, formal, or severe criticism (according to the online dictionary).

Just something worth thinking about today.

Happy Birthday General.

George Washington arrives for his 2nd Inaugeral

2.21.2026 – you think you’re exempt

you think you’re exempt
world handed on a platter
therefore it’s all yours

” … struck me as a typical sports hero.

I know the type, because I was once one myself, or so the sports pages kept informing me.

You get to the point where you expect people to do whatever you want because they’ve been lucky enough to breathe the same air you breathe.

When you pass by people who are talking, you assume they’re talking about you.

You think you’re exempt from the rules of ordinary conduct, since the world has been handed you on a platter, and therefore it’s all yours.

Money?

There wasn’t much money in football forty years ago, the way there is now, although then, like now, you were likely to take the money mainly to show everybody how wonderful you were.“

From the book A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 1998).

These words are delivered by the Charlie Croker, the main character or Tom Wolfe’s book about the Atlanta Developer in the midst of a financial crisis of his own making.

Mr. Croker got an edge to his start in Atlanta business due to being a star of the Georgia Tech football team and he played those connections into a world of fabulous wealth.

And how did he get there?

You get to the point where you expect people to do whatever you want because they’ve been lucky enough to breathe the same air you breathe.

When you pass by people who are talking, you assume they’re talking about you.

You think you’re exempt from the rules of ordinary conduct, since the world has been handed you on a platter, and therefore it’s all yours.

Any reading of history and you see these people from the get go.

You might say that back in the book of Genesis, Cain, even though when God told Cain, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”, Cain felt exempt from the rules of ordinary conduct and went his own way.

From the get go.

We should be and I guess for the most part, we are used to these people being in the world.

It happens to sports stars, rich people … presidents.

What also survives from the get is that warning.

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door.

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Offerings of Cain and Abel,

*Genesis Chapter 4:

2.20.2026 – never thought Christians

never thought Christians
would lead attack on Christian
fundamentals, but …

But here we are is the way the sentence ends.

Based on the New York Times Opinion Piece, Christians Against Empathy Aren’t Who They Think They Are by David French

… put another way, our problem isn’t with too much empathy, but too little. We’re unwilling to place ourselves in other people’s shoes, to try to understand who they are and what their lives are like.

It’s hard to talk about this issue without recognizing a fundamental truth of the moment: The attack on empathy would have gained very little traction in the church if Donald Trump weren’t president. He delights in vengeance, and he owes his presidency to the evangelical church.

Given the sharp differences between Trump and every other Republican president of the modern era, in my experience evangelicals are desperate to to rationalize their support for a man who gratuitously and intentionally inflicts unnecessary suffering on his opponents.

That’s exactly how empathy becomes a sin.

And because empathy is a sin, virtually any appeal to consider the suffering of Trump’s opponents becomes yet more proof that Christians are being manipulated, that their emotions are used against them.

I never thought it would be Christians who led the attack on fundamental Christian values, but here we are. The Book of Hebrews says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin.”

In Christian theology, Christ engaged in the ultimate act of empathy. He didn’t imagine what it would be like to live as a man — he became one.

Our own desire for empathy, for ourselves and our friends, is almost primal. There is a deep human need to feel truly seen.

Viewed through one lens, America before Trump had its share of problems. We were fighting long wars overseas, we were still dealing with the economic overhang of the Great Recession, and we faced the kind of sharp cultural conflicts that always arise when people of different faiths and different ideologies share the same national home.

Zoom out just a bit, and you could see our abundant national blessings. In an imperfect world, the United States was a very good place to be. The American experiment was working. Our nation was free. It was secure. It enjoyed immense prosperity and power. It afforded a degree of religious toleration and economic opportunity that was the envy of most of the world.

In other words, we really did have it all, didn’t we?

The image above is of what is thought to be the first masterpiece painted by the dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn.

The New York Times, in a review of a Rembrandt show in back in 2016 stated:

Titled “Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver,” it depicts a scene that appears in only one of the four gospels, and then as a mere footnote to the Passion narrative.

At the Last Supper, Jesus announces that one of his disciples would betray him into enemy hands.

The culprit is Judas, who has already been paid by the chief priest and elders of the Jerusalem temple to lead soldiers to the doomed man and identify him by a kiss.

Once the deed is done, however, Judas is crushed by remorse.

He rushes to the temple and throws the payment money down in front of those who hired him, as if that might absolve his guilt, though he is beyond believing it will.

In the painting, we see him kneeling and wailing with grief, his clothes disheveled, his scalp bloody where he has torn out his hair.

The elders back off in shock; the chief priest holds up one hand as if to block out the sight of the man, push him away, disappear him.

Judas will leave the temple and hang himself.

Mr. French wrote, “… in my experience evangelicals are desperate to to rationalize their support for a man who gratuitously and intentionally inflicts unnecessary suffering on his opponents.”

And when an accounting comes due for the support for a man who gratuitously and intentionally inflicts unnecessary suffering on his opponents?

What will absolve you?

Thank God for grace.

Which I need as much as anybody else but there are some things I can do to avoid adding to the load on my back.

Good thing, there is always enough grace.