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We’re more than five hundred and fifty goddamn days into Season Two of The Donald Trump Shit Show: five hundred and fifty rancid episodes of a renewal nobody with a frontal lobe, pulse, or functioning remote control fucking ordered.

More than five hundred and fifty days of Cabinet sycophants mistaking ass-kissing for a résumé, billionaire boot-lickers marinating in oligarch gravy, political whores and donor-purchased meat puppets who couldn’t organize a two-car funeral procession, an economy stapled together with tariff grease and warm bureaucratic sludge, foreign policy conducted like a drunk Craigslist handjob, and a Republican Congress so spineless, supine, and erotically devoted to voluntary vertebrae extraction it should come with satin pillows, a drool bib, and a little bedside bell.

Everything is going spectacularly, catastrophically, Titan-submersible wrong.

And yet… somehow… through a feat of chronological acrobatics so strenuous it would make a Cirque du Soleil contortionist rupture three discs and reconsider their career choices…

It is still Joe Biden’s fault.

Trump appoints another gloriously unqualified dipshit whose only discernible qualification is a willingness to clap like a trained seal every time the Great Orange Sleep Apnea Pumpkin waddles into the room?

You guessed it… Biden.

These are Trump’s judges. Trump’s Cabinet. Trump’s economy. Every screwup, every scandal, every own goal, every international humiliation, every bureaucratic tire fire bears his fingerprints like a wet slab of cement somebody staggered across on their way out of a bar.

And yet…

The economy? Joe Biden.

Grocery prices? Joe Biden.

Inflation running hotter than every other country in the G7 after Trump was handed one of the strongest recoveries on the planet? Somehow… Joe Biden.

Trump slaps tariffs on everything that isn’t bolted to the fucking floor, lights global supply chains on fire with a blowtorch and a Sharpie, and suddenly your eggs cost the GDP of a small island nation?

Joe. Fucking. Biden.

Trump’s administration is emptying our weapons stockpiles by the warehouse, burning through interceptor missiles that cost millions of dollars apiece to knock Iranian drones and ballistic missiles out of the sky before they can turn an American base into a smoking crater?

Believe it or not…

Still Joe Biden.

At this point Donald Trump could back a golf cart into the Lincoln Memorial, declare war on the moon, appoint a decorative gourd as Secretary of Defense, and accidentally staple his own necktie to a Cabinet secretary, and within thirty-seven seconds some Republican congressman would sprint to the closest television camera, veins bulging like overcooked bratwurst, to explain that the real culprit here was Joe Biden.

Hell, Barack Obama still catches stray bullets from this asshole’s excuse factory. I’m genuinely surprised he hasn’t blamed Jimmy Carter for dropped calls, Abraham Lincoln for airline baggage fees, and Ulysses S. Grant for the fact that his Diet Coke keeps going flat.

Because the buck doesn’t stop with Donald Trump.

The buck files the paperwork to change its name, crosses state lines, assumes a half-dozen fake identities, and hires Todd Blanche to argue it never existed at all.

Remember during COVID, when that slack-jawed blame vacuum turned every White House briefing into another round of Presidential Pin the Blame on Literally Anybody Else.

China.

Democratic governors.

The media.

Anthony Fauci.

Blue states.

Windmills.

Anybody with a heartbeat and a name tag.

Anybody except the wheezing, blame-hoarding huckster standing behind the presidential seal. That bloated, grievance-gargling gasbag. That self-pitying, self-fellating monument to unearned mediocrity and industrial-strength narcissism. The only man in recorded history who wants all the authority of the White House, all the applause, all the parades, all the credit, all the fucking paintings, but reacts to accountability the way a vampire reacts to sunlight.

That’s not leadership.

That’s a toddler wearing enough bargain-bin polyester to shade a county fair livestock pavilion who still thinks “I know you are, but what am I?” is a governing philosophy.

Has there ever been a bigger whiner? A more prolific pissbaby? A more decorated professional victim in the recorded annals of human civilization? Somewhere on the wall of a cave in France there’s a thirty-thousand-year-old painting of one hunter pointing at another guy after the mammoth got away, and even that prehistoric buck-passer would take one look at Donald Trump, rub some charcoal off his hands, and mutter, “Jesus Christ, man… just take the fucking L.”

Not me.

Not mine.

I didn’t do it.

It was the other guy.

The election was stolen.

The virus came from somewhere else.

The economy would’ve been perfect if not for…

Fill in the fucking blank.

Because there’s always another villain. Always another sacrificial goat waiting patiently in the wings, powdered, pressed, and camera-ready for the moment this scapegoat-collecting bullshit artist needs a warm body to eat the fallout.

Donald Trump doesn’t solve problems.

He outsources blame.

It’s the one promise he’s never broken.

This is an eighty-year-old head of state. The President of the United States. And this… this is what passes for leadership in MAGA world: an overgrown fucking toddler who won’t cop to coloring all over the living room wall while he’s still standing there, diaper sagging under the gravitational pull of his own horseshit, clutching the fucking Sharpie in one fist and jabbing a finger at the babysitter with the other, swearing on his mother’s grave the dog learned cursive.

Leadership isn’t planting yourself behind a podium to gorge on applause when things go right and then vaporizing into a noxious fog of denials the second reality comes collecting its debt.

Leadership is ownership.

Leadership is possessing the vertebrae, the intestinal fortitude, the basic fucking decency to say, “This happened on my watch, and I’m responsible for fixing it.”

Donald Trump treats accountability like it’s a process server carrying child-support papers and an IRS auditor with a battering ram rolled into one. The instant it lumbers into his ZIP code, he’s already halfway over the back fence, bathrobe flapping, hair meringue listing to port, shrieking, sniveling, sputtering, and blame-spewing into the night that it was China, or Joe Biden, or the fucking wind, leaving behind nothing but a banging screen door, a chemical contrail of Aqua Net and spray tan, and the unmistakable stench of cowardice marinated in cheap vanity.

He inherited an economy moving in the right direction the first time. He inherited an economy moving in the right direction the second time. Both fucking times, he wrapped those bruised, blotchy, burger-greased little mitts around the wheel, mashed the accelerator with all the foresight of a drunken lawn mower, and steered us straight toward the nearest fiscal fucking sinkhole.

That’s on him.

He owns every market convulsion, every boardroom anxiety attack, every supply-chain migraine, every economic aftershock flowing directly from the policies he chose.

He also owns an obscene share of our national debt. Across just a term and a half, he racked up roughly twenty-eight percent of all the red ink accumulated since the founding of the republic. In a nation that’s been keeping books since powdered wigs and quill pens.

He did that.

He owns that.

And yet…

Still Joe Biden.

Barack Obama is not the president. Joe Biden is not the president. Donald Trump is the president. The economy you’re living in today? That’s him. The appointments. The pardons. The purges. The priorities. The consequences. Every signature. Every wound he carved into this country himself.

His.

At some point the training wheels come off, the alibis expire, and you either govern or you don’t.

Unless your name is Donald Trump, in which case every disaster arrives with a laminated list of alternate suspects ready for whichever quivering, expendable toady draws the short straw and gets shoved in front of the cameras.

The buck never stops with Donald Trump.

It never even slows the fuck down.

If he stubs his fucking toe, it’s Joe Biden’s coffee table. If he bites his tongue, it’s Joe Biden’s teeth. If he gets a paper cut, it’s Joe Biden’s envelope.

I genuinely believe we are two weeks, three tops, from that incontinent insult to upholstery shitting his pants on a tarmac, staring down in bewilderment like his own ass just staged a coup, and demanding a congressional investigation into Joe Biden’s role in Operation Brown Thunder. There’ll be hearings. Fox will book a gastroenterologist. Jim Jordan will subpoena a pair of Dockers. Todd Blanche will insist the underwear was weaponized by the radical left.

Anybody except the wheezing, blame-hoarding huckster standing behind the presidential seal. That bloated, grievance-gargling gasbag. That self-pitying, self-fellating monument to unearned mediocrity and industrial-strength narcissism. The only man in recorded history who wants all the authority of the White House, all the applause, all the parades, all the credit, all the fucking paintings, but reacts to accountability the way a vampire reacts to sunlight.

That’s not leadership.

That’s a toddler wearing enough bargain-bin polyester to shade a county fair livestock pavilion who still thinks “I know you are, but what am I?” is a governing philosophy.

Has there ever been a bigger whiner? A more prolific pissbaby? A more decorated professional victim in the recorded annals of human civilization? Somewhere on the wall of a cave in France there’s a thirty-thousand-year-old painting of one hunter pointing at another guy after the mammoth got away, and even that prehistoric buck-passer would take one look at Donald Trump, rub some charcoal off his hands, and mutter, “Jesus Christ, man… just take the fucking L.”

Not me.

Not mine.

I didn’t do it.

It was the other guy.

The election was stolen.

The virus came from somewhere else.

The economy would’ve been perfect if not for…

Fill in the fucking blank.

Because there’s always another villain. Always another sacrificial goat waiting patiently in the wings, powdered, pressed, and camera-ready for the moment this scapegoat-collecting bullshit artist needs a warm body to eat the fallout.

Donald Trump doesn’t solve problems.

He outsources blame.

It’s the one promise he’s never broken.

This is an eighty-year-old head of state. The President of the United States. And this… this is what passes for leadership in MAGA world: an overgrown fucking toddler who won’t cop to coloring all over the living room wall while he’s still standing there, diaper sagging under the gravitational pull of his own horseshit, clutching the fucking Sharpie in one fist and jabbing a finger at the babysitter with the other, swearing on his mother’s grave the dog learned cursive.

Leadership isn’t planting yourself behind a podium to gorge on applause when things go right and then vaporizing into a noxious fog of denials the second reality comes collecting its debt.

Leadership is ownership.

Leadership is possessing the vertebrae, the intestinal fortitude, the basic fucking decency to say, “This happened on my watch, and I’m responsible for fixing it.”

Donald Trump treats accountability like it’s a process server carrying child-support papers and an IRS auditor with a battering ram rolled into one. The instant it lumbers into his ZIP code, he’s already halfway over the back fence, bathrobe flapping, hair meringue listing to port, shrieking, sniveling, sputtering, and blame-spewing into the night that it was China, or Joe Biden, or the fucking wind, leaving behind nothing but a banging screen door, a chemical contrail of Aqua Net and spray tan, and the unmistakable stench of cowardice marinated in cheap vanity.

He inherited an economy moving in the right direction the first time. He inherited an economy moving in the right direction the second time. Both fucking times, he wrapped those bruised, blotchy, burger-greased little mitts around the wheel, mashed the accelerator with all the foresight of a drunken lawn mower, and steered us straight toward the nearest fiscal fucking sinkhole.

That’s on him.

He owns every market convulsion, every boardroom anxiety attack, every supply-chain migraine, every economic aftershock flowing directly from the policies he chose.

He also owns an obscene share of our national debt. Across just a term and a half, he racked up roughly twenty-eight percent of all the red ink accumulated since the founding of the republic. In a nation that’s been keeping books since powdered wigs and quill pens.

He did that.

He owns that.

And yet…

Still Joe Biden.

Barack Obama is not the president. Joe Biden is not the president. Donald Trump is the president. The economy you’re living in today? That’s him. The appointments. The pardons. The purges. The priorities. The consequences. Every signature. Every wound he carved into this country himself.

His.

At some point the training wheels come off, the alibis expire, and you either govern or you don’t.

Unless your name is Donald Trump, in which case every disaster arrives with a laminated list of alternate suspects ready for whichever quivering, expendable toady draws the short straw and gets shoved in front of the cameras.

The buck never stops with Donald Trump.

It never even slows the fuck down.

If he stubs his fucking toe, it’s Joe Biden’s coffee table. If he bites his tongue, it’s Joe Biden’s teeth. If he gets a paper cut, it’s Joe Biden’s envelope.

I genuinely believe we are two weeks, three tops, from that incontinent insult to upholstery shitting his pants on a tarmac, staring down in bewilderment like his own ass just staged a coup, and demanding a congressional investigation into Joe Biden’s role in Operation Brown Thunder. There’ll be hearings. Fox will book a gastroenterologist. Jim Jordan will subpoena a pair of Dockers. Todd Blanche will insist the underwear was weaponized by the radical left.

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I Wish He’d Posted The Second Floor

Another one from Timur Karinov.

I really wish he’d posted the second floor plan, although it wouldn’t be that difficult to infer the layout.

I like this one. It seems well laid out, although I’d push the door from the downstairs hall to the living room closer to the front of the house to maximize wall space in the main living area. If there’s an indoor dining area as well (I really like the al fresco patio dining) I’d tuck that into the bay window area.

The downstairs guest bedroom would also make a great home office.

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Yes, Please!

Deceptively Small From Streetside

@architecturaldetective:

On the Market: 1922 Alice Lynch House designed by Harwood Hewitt and John Byers in West Adams Terrace HPOZ.⁠
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⁠Completed in 1922, today’s home was designed by noted LA architect Harwood Hewitt along with architect and adobe construction advocate John Byers for the poet Alice Lynch. The home was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style with thick exterior walls recalling the adobe construction of the Spanish Colonial period.⁠
⁠
The home’s large airy rooms have been thoughtfully restored and reimagined to create a world that celebrates the home’s history while also harmonizing it with the 21st century. ⁠
⁠
I’m particularly enamored with the beamed ceiling in the living room and the expansive exterior courtyard and loggia. Located in the West Adams Terrace HPOZ, the home has been designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 621, ensuring it will stand for generations of future Angelenos to enjoy.⁠
⁠
2414 4th Avenue, a 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 2,560 square foot home located on a 9,386 square foot lot, is currently listed for $1,849,500.⁠
⁠
Source: MLS, Year book of Architecture & Allied Arts, Southern California Chapter American Institute of Architects, Los Angeles Architectural Club 1922⁠, Dwell.

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Dear Leader is bugfuck nuts.

we know this. it’s not open to debate. we’ve all seen the erratic behavior. the pants-shittingly infantile tantrums. the utter lack of impulse control. the mood swings. the ever-shifting incoherence he wreaks on the world, as the family of raccoons that live inside his fat, waterlogged head randomly chew through allthe wires.

but you know who else is equally deranged?

Preznit Fuckwit’s stalker-slash-diaper-nurse, that’s who.

you know who I’m talking about: the Ivanka-esque blonde who’s ever-present, following three steps behind Dear Leader, everywhere he goes. the one whose official job is to make a broken-inside rage-baby feel good about himself.

Donny went on a posting spree yesterday, one that was even more crazypants than usual, shitting out dozens of childish memes all over his crappy app.

but of course, it wasn’t Donny pulling those antics all by himself. it’s Natalie Harp who curates all that shit in the first place and shows it to Donny, at which point he goes ‘hurr hurr hurr, so funny.’

so yeah, she’s every bit as bugfuck nuts as Dear Leader.

she’s also every bit as transphobic.

isn’t that charming? Donny and the diaper nurse are doubling down on the childish ‘Kaitlan Collins and Dylan Mulvaney, who can even tell them apart’crack that Donny made at the Correspondents’ Dinner. why? it wasn’t a particularly clever — or even remotely accurate — remark. it’s just a sad reminder that we’re dealing with the most infantile administration ever. it’s just sewer clowns and bridge trolls.

now, somebody please explain to me, what the fuck even is this?

seriously, who’s panicking? who is this aimed at? it’s just Donny and Nattie, high on their own supply, smiling at each other and going ‘they’re so scared of us.’

how fucking dumb.

and it’s all so delusional.

which man, exactly, ‘saved America’? the psychotic teenager who was so out of control that his cold and distant parents shipped him off to a military academy, so he’d be out of their hair? the serial predator who used to fight with his dead pedo bestie over which one of them had the right to ‘own’ the Motel-a-Lago ‘spa girls’? the racist game show host? or the current doughy pantload in the Oval Bordello?

who even comes up with this stuff? oh look, it’s the worst remake of North by Northwest ever.

let’s get real. any real-life scenario where George Washington meets Dear Leader would simply be George repeatedly smacking Donny upside the head and going ‘what the fuck is wrong with you? America doesn’t have kings, you stupid dipshit.’

how MAGA-pickled does your brain have to be to sit down at an AI prompt and go ‘draw me Dear Leader saving George Washington from falling off of Mount Rushmore and there should be a clock with lightning in the sky, because it’s all something something something time travel’?

this is like proudly announcing to the world, ‘look how mentally ill I am.’

so is this.

let’s do a quick fact check. does Donny in real life actually look as handsome and heroic as he does in that AI-generated drek?

yeeesh.

of course he doesn’t. that ‘cosmic commander’ bullshit is just the diaper nurse stroking the piss-baby’s ego. ‘look how rugged you are, sir!’

seriously, how can Natalie keep from swooning, being in such close proximity to such a hunk of alpha masculinity?

it’s all so fucking idiotic. no other world leader needs to be coddled like this. no other head of state runs their own social media site devoted to stroking their fragile ego. at this point, even Kim Jong-un has to be all ‘come on, dude. tone it down. you’re embarrassing yourself.’

and then there was this shit. Donny and Nattie farted out at about a dozen variations on the ‘Donny 2028’ theme, each one dumbfuckier than the next.

oh please. Donny wishes he looked anywhere near that good, ever.

it’s time for another fact check. here’s a photo from yesterday, by Matt Kaminsky, of Dear Leader waddling his way back to the White House after cheating at golf.

look, I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction: there isn’t going to be any serious effort to run Donny again in 2028. all we’re seeing here is Donny’s minders trying to troll us, and get us all riled up over nothing. it’s a distraction — along with a generous dollop of letting Donny think he has a chance to run in 2028, just to keep him mollified.

but here’s where Nattie and Donny’s posting spree goes from stupid to reckless.

oh gee, Commander Crazypants is warmongering again. I have no idea what he imagines he’s accomplishing here, aside from antagonizing the country that’s currently shut down the Strait of Hormuz. does Donny actually believe that shitting out threats on social media is an effective way of negotiating?

Donny has clownfucked himself into an unwinnable don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war on Iran, a quagmire that’s now in it’s fifth month, with no end in sight — and now he’s making things worse for himself, by posting first and thinking never.

oh, it’s our tanker now? what, we’re going to board Iranian oil tankers? just like that?

that’s a pretty strong boast — especially considering that there are reports that Donny’s gin-soaked Secretary of Death had to put his jolly little war on hold, because we’re fucking running out of munitions.

The U.S. military had been poised Friday to launch an intensive series of strikes against Iran, which could have lasted up to two weeks, the officials said.

But the operation was delayed so diplomacy could proceed and as officials discussed the effect a major attack could have on the U.S.’s shrinking stocks of Patriot and other air defense interceptors.

gee, maybe Piss-Drunk Pete should have spent less time obsessing over the testosterone levels of his warfighting warfighters and more time on making sure he had enough bombs on hand to win the war he thought would be over in an afternoon.

which brings us to this exchange between Meet the Press’ Kristen Welker and UN Ambassador Mike Waltz, because — well, you have to hear it to believe it.

Welker: “NBC News is reporting that the Pentagon is actually rationing some defense weaponry amid diminishing supplies. is America backing away from a larger military attack because our stockpile has been depleted?”

Waltz: “look, we have to take a step back here. a lot of stockpiles were depleted … the administration inherited a depleted military under the Biden administration.”

Welker: “but you acknowledge that they’re depleted?”

Waltz: “I want to be crystal clear. the US military has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign, and I have to tell you, the people who are leaking this nonsense deserve to be in jail.”

got that? America doesn’t have enough munitions, because of that meanie Joe Biden, who was old and icky and smelled bad — but we also have more munitions than we need, and anyone saying otherwise needs to rot in prison.

hey, speaking of rotting in prison — everything totally fucking sucks right now, but at least we can all enjoy Andrew Tate (or, more likely, some flunky posting for him) continuing to bellyache about how super unfair it is for an ahem alleged rapist and sex trafficker awaiting extradition for his ahem allegedcrimes to be deprived of his liberty.

boo fucking hoo.

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

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The Illustrated Man

He took his shirt off and wadded it in his hands. He was covered with Illustrations from the blue tattooed ring about his neck to his belt line.

“It keeps right on going,” he said, guessing my thought. “All of me is Illustrated. Look.” He opened his hand. On his palm was a rose, freshly cut, with drops of crystal water among the soft pink petals. I put my hand out to touch it, but it was only an Illustration.

As for the rest of him, I cannot say how I sat and stared, for he was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voices murmuring small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. When his flesh twitched, the tiny mouths flickered, the tiny green-and-gold eyes winked, the tiny pink hands gestured. there were yellow meadows and blue rivers and mountains and stars and suns and planets spread in a Milky Way across his chest. The people themselves were in twenty or more odd groups upon his arms, shoulder, back, sides and wrists, as well as on the flat of his stomach. You found them in forests of hair, lurking among a constellation of freckles, or peering from armpit caverns, diamond eyes aglitter. Each seemed intent upon his own activity, each was a separate gallery portrait.

—Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man

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The More You Know

I also have my funerary arrangements in place. One thing that I brought with me out of the horrible 90s was the urgency to get that shit taken care of so your survivors don’t have to. I contacted The Neptune Society (again, based on my experience in the 90s) and arranged everything so Ben wouldn’t have to. It wasn’t cheap, and they force you to buy a ridiculously expensive wooden box to hold your ashes that isn’t worth a quarter of what you’re charged, but it was still cheaper than going the traditional route. When the time comes, they’ll pick up your body pretty much anywhere in the world, take care of all the paperwork, cremate your remains, and deliver the ashes to your loved ones.

Many years ago Ben gifted me a big blue Tardis ceramic cookie jar with the intent it would hold my ashes until he could decide what to ultimately do with them. Personally, my first choice has always been to have them scattered at North Baker Beach in San Francisco, but I realize the logistics of actually pulling that off are more difficult now since I don’t actually live there any more. My second choice would be in Sabino Canyon north of Tucson. Ultimately, Ben will do what he feels is best and brings him the most peace, so if that means scattering over the back yard so the dogs can roll around and play in me, that’s fine too.

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For Those Who Have Large CD Collections…

Do you find that you actually only listen to about a dozen discs with any regularity? I know I have my “go to” titles that seem to get all the rotation in my collection especially when I don’t know what to listen to.

In no particular order, they are

  • Verve Remixed (vols. 1 thru 5)
  • The Best Of Blue Note
  • Blue Note Reimagined
  • Blue Note Reimagined II
  • Marla Glenn – The Best Of
  • Nina Simone – Four Women (box set)
  • Chris Isaac – San Francisco Days
  • George Michael – Listen Without Prejudice
  • George Michael – Faith
  • Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue
  • Miles Davis – Blue Miles
  • Disco Discharge – European Connection
  • Anything on the Three Blind Mice (Japanese Jazz) label.

And of course, probably because of the novelty of something new from Madge….

  • Madonna – Confessions II

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