In other news at this hour, the GOP is still trash. This is a direct response to the SNAP crisis. I checked.

A few days back I turned on NPR, to yet another — yet! another! — earnest, NPR-like discussion on how to reach out to people you disagree with. How to build bridges, join hands across the chasm of our differences, all that.

And I…didn’t snap, exactly, but I reached my limit. I switched to the AM band, set push-button tuning for a couple of right-wing, all-talk stations. Enough of my NPR bubble; let’s see what the other side is talking about, vis-a-vis their political opponents.

I regret to inform you, although not surprised by it either, that they are not talking about joining hands, reaching out, or making nice. The only time liberals, or even moderates, are mentioned, it’s in discussions like, “How many New Yorkers will flee the city if Zohran Mamdani is elected? Tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands?” “The problem with that party is, they’re not proud to be American.”

And that’s not all. Talk about closed systems: In this world, Fox News at the top and bottom of the hour is nearly as lib’rul as NPR. One of the stations carries a network whose anchors and reporters say “the Democrat party” and “the government remains shut down, as Democrats refuse to budge from their insistence on free health care for illegal aliens.”

So no, I’m not particularly interested in hearing about how to talk to these folks. Really, really not interested.

But the blog today has been, as we say, overtaken by events, with the death of Dick Cheney. His black heart, mechanical though it was, finally couldn’t keep up with his deteriorating body, and he went the way of all flesh. I guess his statement in 2024, that he’d be voting for Kamala Harris, is supposed to redeem him somehow. Huh. Well, strange bedfellows and all that. We’ve talked here before about how Trump has managed to make even ghastly people look good, just because they oppose him. Dan Quayle and Mike Pence as the saviors of democracy – at least temporarily – is only one example.

But to me, Dick Cheney will always be this guy:

Thanks to Jeff G. for the image.

I remember learning about Abu Ghraib. I was finishing up my fellowship in Ann Arbor, driving back from a job tryout in Minnesota. I didn’t get the job, and Wisconsin was under my wheels on the way home, and I checked email during a gas stop. A friend in Fort Wayne wrote about the Lynndie England photos, the one where she’s holding the prisoner on a leash. He wrote something like, “But we haven’t accidentally dropped a nuke out of a Blackhawk helicopter, so I guess the war is going great!”

Very droll, my friends.

And who suffered for America’s foray into torture? Lynndie England, certainly, and a few other soldiers. Not Cheney.

So that’s my near-midweek catch-up. I would save this and post it tomorrow, but it’s time to discuss our late vice-president, so here you go.

I guess I’ve been gone a while. No reason. There are times when the well is empty and must be refilled, especially when you’re making a concerted effort not to think and write about a particular person more than is necessary, and/or part of our patriotic duty of being well-informed Americans.

Then I read about the Great Gatsby-themed party the president threw at Mar-a-lago on Halloween, on the literal eve of millions of Americans losing their SNAP benefits, and I get a goddamn facial tic. Fortunately, there are good people in the world:

That’s at the Eastern Market Saturday. I can’t wait until this motherfucker dies. The whitewashing of JD Vance’s marriage in preparation for that event, we’ll save for another day.

I’ve been walking around woolgathering on a subject that floats in and out of my headspace — transgender…ism? Is that a word? Dunno, but the issue keeps surfacing in connection with terrible crime, and I’m alarmed for the trans people I know, all of whom are not criminals and may end up suffering as a result.

A kid in Indiana, arrested while planning a mass school shooting. Nashville school shooter, maybe transgender. The person just sentenced for plotting to kill SCOTUS Justice Kavanagh? Transitioning.

Anyone with half a brain knows that being transgender makes one far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime, not the perpetrator. Yet, we can always count on the New York Post, Rod Dreher and, well, most of the right wing to amplify every incident, and most people don’t pay attention beyond that.

Transitioning is such a huge step to make, I hesitate to suggest anyone does it on a whim. But the sort of people who commit mass shootings or targeted assassinations are not mentally healthy people.

It made me think of the ’80s, and this guy I used to work with. His marriage was clearly not meant for the long run. Every talk show – and there were a lot of them on around that time, from Phil Donohue to Jenny Jones to Oprah – was talking about repressed memories and/or Satanic cults, and especially repressed memories of Satanic cult abuse. And soon enough, she was accusing him of Satanically abusing their kids, or her, or that she was recovering memories of all of the above. I think she may have thrown multiple personalities in the mix, too.

A troubled woman, yes. But not one crazy enough to be committed. Subclinical, as the shrinks say. It made me think about people who believed, once upon a time, that incubi and succubi entered their bedrooms at night and penetrated them sexually, sometimes impregnating them. I saw “Agnes of God,” both on stage and in the movie. Now those people are more likely to believe aliens do the same thing. There are no incubi, succubi or aliens. I feel pretty confident in this.

My point is that every era in history, especially in this media-soaked age, has its high-profile mental issues, and I wonder if the people in that link-filled paragraph are truly trans, or have simple seized on it as a way to explain the static in their own heads. Next year, we may be back to incubi and succubi, who knows.

A passage from the story I linked above:

“They hate your guts. They despise everything you stand for, and we’re running out of time to stop them,” a somber looking Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears says in a recent campaign ad. “This election, don’t let radicals decide what kind of man gets to undress next to your daughter at school.”

Earle-Sears, a Republican, poured millions of dollars into this ominous advertising blitz attacking her Democratic opponent for governor, Abigail Spanberger, as a radical on transgender issues. She blanketed the airwaves with warnings to Virginians that mimicked Donald Trump’s successful campaign against Kamala Harris last year (“Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you”).

But as Tuesday’s election approaches, the line of attack does not appear to be working as well for Earle-Sears as it did for Trump, according to data, raising questions about how potent the issue will be in the future for a party facing voter anger over high prices. Spanberger is leading Earle-Sears in recent polls.

So we may have already passed Peak Trans Panic. Let’s hope so.

It’s the return to standard time this weekend, so expect a tsunami of complaints. It gets dark so early now, etc. I will repeat my twice-yearly opinion about this: Changing clocks in spring and fall is a useful adjustment to the way we live our lives, at most a minor inconvenience, and some people should stop complaining about it.

I see the Free Press – the one in Detroit – is making a fuss over the upcoming 50th anniversary of the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald. We will inevitably hear the Gordon Lightfoot song over and over in the next week. I’m taking this opportunity to echo something I believe Eric Zorn once wrote, and he may have been quoting Peter Sagal, I’m not sure: That Lightfoot’s song is only the second-best song about a shipwreck. The best is this one. Listen and see if you agree. It’s certainly a good anthem for times like these.

And with that, I’m back in the saddle. Have a good week ahead.

If anyone is wondering, Fran Lebowitz was great. Maybe that’s the wrong word, though. You don’t go to see Fran to laugh until you pee; it’s more a matter of chortling. She’s not a standup comic, but a wry observer of the world around us, and her friends. She told us about Martin Scorsese, and that photo by Peter Hujar, and Charles Mingus, who came for Thanksgiving at her parents’ house one year.

And she said something about Democrats in Washington. Yes, yes, they can’t get anything done when they’re in the minority and are blocked on everything, etc., but they can do one thing, she said: They can amplify the feelings and opinions of their constituents, and those constituents are furious.

This got a big response from the crowd. And yet, Michigan’s two do-nothing senators, both Democrats, continue to not do just that.

I read a review of Virginia Giuffre’s book, discussed at midweek.

The critic, Emma Brockes, puts her finger square on what I’ve been wondering since we all saw all those photos of Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book:

But so much focus has been put on the prince that after reading this book, it wasn’t him I thought about most; it was the casual visitors to Epstein’s New York mansion, the illustrious men and occasional woman whom Giuffre says she encountered at dinners there.

In respect of these people I’d like to ask: who the fuck did they think the 17-year-old at the table was? What did they think she was doing there? Only Melinda Gates, who met Epstein once and cited him as a factor in the breakdown of her marriage to Bill Gates, sensed what apparently none of these people could put their finger on. Giuffre quotes from a statement made by Gates after her meeting with Epstein: “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified.” It was an insight that evidently escaped geniuses like the MIT professors Epstein continued to advise long after he’d become a convicted sex offender.

Ex!act!ly! It’s my belief that they knew exactly what she was doing there, and didn’t care. Rich people make their own rules. Also this guy…

The closest we get to a fresh allegation is Giuffre’s description of one of the scores of men Epstein forced her to have sex with as a “politician” and “former minister”, who choked and beat her almost unconscious, but who, she writes, is too powerful to name.

…is said to be Ehud Barak.

OK, then, time to wrap the week. The east wing of the White House is a pile of rubble, my massage was heavenly (“you’re very symmetrical,” the therapist said as she worked on my back), and it seems a good note to end on. The pedophiles and current crisis will still be there on Monday.

Do I have any photos to share? Not really. Here was the whiteboard workout for my Wednesday lifeguarding shift. Swimmers, give it a try:

Have a great weekend.

Because it felt like a grim duty, I forced myself to read an excerpt of “Nobody’s Girl,” Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir. You’ll recall she was the first, and highest-profile, of the Epstein victims to go public. It was published in The Guardian. It’s as sad and awful as you’d expect, but this passage, about sex with the no-longer-titled Prince Andrew, caught my eye:

Back at the house, Maxwell and Epstein said goodnight and headed upstairs, signalling it was time that I take care of the prince. In the years since, I’ve thought a lot about how he behaved. He was friendly enough, but still entitled – as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright. I drew him a hot bath. We disrobed and got in the tub, but didn’t stay there long because the prince was eager to get to the bed. He was particularly attentive to my feet, caressing my toes and licking my arches. That was a first for me, and it tickled. I was nervous he would want me to do the same to him. But I needn’t have worried. He seemed in a rush to have intercourse. Afterward, he said thank you in his clipped British accent. In my memory, the whole thing lasted less than half an hour.

It took a few minutes for the image to swim up from the depths of my memory:

Remember that? It was 1992, and Andrew and his commoner wife, Sarah Ferguson aka the Duchess of York, were separated. She’d traveled to the south of France for a restorative weeklong holiday with a then-unknown Texas “financial advisor,” and the paps did what paps do:

The 55 pictures over nine pages showed a topless Fergie rubbing sun cream on to the head of her balding financial adviser, kissing him, lying under him and letting him kiss or lick – the actual activity has since been disputed – her toes.

The question of whether Andrew or Sarah were into foot play when they married, or whether one introduced the other to it, or if it just happened spontaneously, remains open. Me, I don’t judge, I just notice. A longtime reader of this blog once messaged me that when someone says, “check out the pair on her,” he first looks at her feet. I’d much rather have my feet rubbed than kissed, and tomorrow I’m cashing in a nearly expired gift certificate for a 75-minute deep-tissue massage that I hope will include a little attention to the ol’ dogs.

I am thinking about this because it keeps me from thinking about the White House being torn down to build what will no doubt be the ugliest, tackiest, goldest monument to Tubby ever, one that I believe we should allow a full squadron of graffiti artists to deface as soon as he leaves. Assuming he leaves.

Let’s also turn our attention to other, more substantive matters. Roy has a nice piece on Zohran Mamdani. Dunno if it’s paywalled, but here’s a passage Dems should be paying attention to:

It should be mentioned that part of Mamdani’s success is his willingness to champion policies the voters actually want instead of making up excuses for why they can’t have them. Cheaper housing, lower cost of living, higher minimum wage — those are all easy layups. Even his promise to protect people from ICE goons reflects a growing consensus across the country at large.

These policies are reflexively treated by the Prestige Press as outside the mainstream, but if they are, it’s because those guys put them there, not because voters don’t want them.

Why did Trump win? In part, because he promised things people want. Yes, most of it was transparent, obvious bullshit — how’s that better, cheaper health care working for you, Kentucky? Is it infrastructure week yet? — but it worked for a man with a known track record for lying. Why can’t it work for those of us who deal in good faith? It seems it’ll be easier to make NYC buses free than design a national health-care plan, but what do I know? I know enough about public transport to know that fares are a small portion of system revenue, and the more people who can take public transit into a densely populated city, the better it is for everyone. I’ve been taking my beloved DDOT 31 bus down to Wayne State when weather permits, and I’m reminded again of how pleasant it can be, to throw your bike on the rack, ride downtown, retrieve the bike and cycle the last three-quarters of a mile to campus, without having to worry about parking. Besides, I’m taking a creative writing class, and we’re into poetry now. I need to hear the songs of my people for inspiration. and you hear them on a bus. Here’s something I heard the other day: “Hey, beautiful, I like your glasses.” And he was talking to me!

Anyway, go Zohran. Let’s try you for a while.

OK, I gotta think about exercise, a shower and dressing for the evening — going to see Fran Lebowitz tonight with a friend. Hope the remainder of your Wednesday is swell.

Hi there. Sorry the comments on the previous post were closed. I posted that on my re-downloaded WordPess mobile app, thinking it might make posting on the fly easier. Didn’t realize it defaulted to closed comments; I just thought you guys were not into it yesterday. I need to find that setting and fix it.

How’d your No Kings rally go? Detroit’s went swimmingly, but as this is the third one, I’m no longer surprised by that. The first one, in…April? Yes, April 5. That one was a revelation, seeing thousands of people coming out to say, essentially, We Can’t Believe This Shit, And We Object. That was a moving march up and down Woodward, no speakers, just fellowship. The second, in June, was held at Clark Park, and was stationary; we came, held up signs, but didn’t listen to the speakers. (I kept hoping they’d put on a rousing playlist, but no.) This one, at Roosevelt Park under the newly renovated Michigan Central Station, was also a speaker-forward event. We walked around, took some pictures of the best signs, stayed a decent interval and left to enjoy a couple beers in the warm October sunshine.

The important thing is to show up. Be one of the millions who are not OK with what’s going on. There won’t be a quiz on the speakers’ remarks.

One guy was yelling about Palestine, with a sign that accused Biden, Harris and Trump of complicity in genocide. I pegged him as yet another Arab-American Jill Stein voter. It was a nice day, so I didn’t want to ask how the new regime was working out for his countrymen and women in Gaza. (As of Sunday? Not well.)

But it was the Grosse Pointe demonstration that was truly heartening. Officially it was for the Pointes, Harper Woods and the east side of Detroit, but it was really robust — a couple blocks of people covering the sidewalks at a busy corner, shaking signs. I didn’t stop because I was en route to Detroit, but honked the whole length of the demonstration. It was a long honk.

So we head into the cool months — I have to assume this will be the last one until spring — knowing we’re not alone, that millions are as horrified and distraught and angry as we are.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen this, you should see this:

This is what you-know-who posted early Sunday morning, after the No Kings protests had largely wrapped. I know none of these know-nothings care what the rest of the world thinks about us, but I do, and so should you. This is not just literally disgusting, it’s horrifying in what it says about the man who posted it. I wear my Is He Dead Yet? T-shirt with pride, but also dread.

This, by the way, is what the vice president posted yesterday:

[image or embed]

— JD Vance (@jd-vance-1.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 3:32 PM

I guess he really is the worst stereotype of the American hillbilly: Mean, parochial, clannish, violent.

But let’s not dwell on the bad news as the week starts, OK? Seven million of us showed up yesterday. That’s something. Have a good one. Here’s a cute dog to cleanse your palate:

Still thinking about the other side. See you at the demonstration, brothers and sisters.

The older I get, the more of a grammar-and-usage pedant I become. The dumbass slang that every generation has can chap my ass, some days. The other day I saw the word obsessed to describe about 20 different things, from makeup to some nutritional supplement. I scrolled on, and learned that a particular influencer had declared this sweater made me reevaluate my entire life. That’s a powerful sweater, dear. You’ll be wearing that one a while.

Obsessed is up there with iconic in that it seems to be slung about most often by young women with vocal fry. OMG I am obsessed with this yoga mat. My new lip color has my husband shook. Kate introduced me to ate, which apparently means “to do well.” How were the shows in Canada? Oh, we ate.

Good to know.

I bring this up because… well, I’m not sure why. I saw a set of photos from Chicago this morning that were absolutely shocking, and in psychological self-defense, I needed to think about grammar and Uncrustables (amusing story, gift link) and respond to texts about the latest posting in the Wedding Attire Approval subreddit. Another old-person rant incoming: What the hell with these ridiculous wedding dress codes? When did people forget how to dress for a goddamn wedding? Going to a funeral? Wear black. Wedding? Something nice that’s not white. Job interview? Like the neatest, cleanest person who holds the job you want. Why complicate it, and where the hell do young people get off demanding black tie, especially at a time when virtually no one owns formal clothing anymore? The only wedding couples I’ve known who asked their guests to wear special clothing were getting married in non-traditional ceremonies and faiths, and even then they’re optional.

Maybe if we stopped shlepping through life in PJs and slippers, we wouldn’t have to do it this way.

That Uncrustables story is a wealth of information. As I recall, Uncrustables — basically a PB&J empanada busy moms keep in the freezer — were not favored by young Kate, so I only bought one once, at Cedar Point. But evidently they’re a cult favorite, and not just of children:

They’re not just a staple for kids (and the harried parents who have to feed them), they’re being wolfed down by the thousands in NFL locker rooms. Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce, a.k.a. the future Mr. Taylor Swift, revealed on his podcast that he scarfs down Uncrustables “probably more than I eat anything else in the world.” They’re often found at the finish lines of races, to refuel runners with carbs and the macronutrient of the moment, protein.

Who knew? Not I.

Those Chicago photos were really awful.

I was at a political fundraiser Friday. Never mind who– Oh, let’s not be coy. It was for Jocelyn Benson, who’s running for governor as a Democrat. I wasn’t there because I am a huge fan, although I think she’ll be the nominee and as usual, the people on the other side are ghastly. I was there because the event was being held at a friend’s former house, and she wanted to see it, three years later. I donated to justify having a glass of wine and some little phyllo-wrapped cheese things.

The wild card in the 2026 Michigan gubernatorial race is Mike Duggan, outgoing mayor of Detroit, who’s running as an independent. He’s not just any third-party flake, and has a chance to spoil either party’s chances, depending on the nominees. Given that Duggan has been a lifelong Democrat, it could easily be the Dems. Given that he has coddled the Detroit billionaire class (en route, to be fair, to transforming at least part of the city), it could also be the Republicans.

I mentioned this to someone during the chitchat portion of the evening, and she confidently asserted that Benson has little to fear from Duggan. And she knows this how? “AI says so.”

Which is the long way around to saying that in a very short time, a shocking number of people I know have integrated ChatGPT into their lives. They ask it the current value of a particular classic car, the chances of rain a week from Tuesday, to tell them a joke. Condense this document I don’t want to read. Give me some questions to ask this person when I talk to them. And so on.

I know I, too, use AI; I’m not naïve. I use Google, which now gives you an AI summary of your results whether you ask for one or not. If they sound fishy, I double-check them. I should always double-check them, because I’ve gotten straight-up hogwash more than once.

The other day, while lifeguarding, I couldn’t get the pace clocks — the natatorium wall clock that counts seconds in big digits, so swimmers can time their 50s and 100s — working correctly. So I turned them off with a shrug, figuring every minute spent fiddling over it is time I wouldn’t have eyes on the water, and that’s more important. Someone piped up, “Ask AI! It’ll tell you!”

The ones that really floor me are those who use AI to essentially do their jobs for them. The product is obvious — bland, anodyne, with the weird absence-of-humanity feel to it, which are then sold to clients. Sooner or later, the client will figure out what they’re being served and think, logically, what do I need this clown for? Way to put yourself out of business.

Do any of you do this? Is it worth it?

I finally figured out the pace clock via the time-honored tradition of asking someone who had the job before me. It turns out you have to set one to Lead and the other to Follow, and they sync themselves and work just fine.

It was a good weekend. Not much bloggage, but here’s a gift link: How a bad man got a good paramedic fired because he didn’t like what she said about Charlie Kirk.

Have a good week, all.

Late but welcome, fall has arrived. I always note that there’s a week’s load of laundry a couple times a year that contains both shorts and at least one flannel shirt, and I guess it’s this week. It was 70 and muggy when I got up Tuesday morning, currently struggling to reach 50. Dinner last night was adjusted from chicken on the grill to BLTs. Can’t deny it: It feels great.

Check with me in another month, when the whining begins.

So. The week began at a gallop and has slowed to a forward canter. Coming back from my creative-writing class at Wayne State, on surface streets to avoid the freeway parking lot, I listened to “All Things Considered,” and wondered after a spell if it might be wiser for me to just quit paying attention to the news altogether. In an interview with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, he said (paraphrasing), “President Trump doesn’t read, and doesn’t know what ‘insurrection’ means.” The reporter, with her Bias Alert going WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP, said, “I think the president would disagree with you on that.” Gee, thanks, I feel so much better now. We wouldn’t want to let an American governor get away with speaking the truth, would we?

But I can’t stop, because that’s how I’m made. Before that, I heard the last few moments of an interview with Beth Macy, who has a book out this week. She was on “Fresh Air,” and had an op-ed in the NYT Sunday, and has this piece in the Atlantic today. Title: “What Happened to Ohio?” and yeah, it’s a gift link. It’s about Urbana, where Alan started his newspaper career and from which Macy hails. Turns out it’s not the place she grew up:

I was most shocked by what I gleaned from people I’d known the longest. My childhood friend Joy, a Black lay minister who had conducted my Mom’s celebration of life, revealed that she didn’t believe George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin. My niece’s husband, a type 1 diabetic, turned down not one but two life-saving transplants because the donors had taken COVID vaccines. When I spoke with my sister Cookie about my oldest son, Max, who was about to marry his husband, she used the Old Testament scripture from Leviticus to condemn homosexuality.

A friend asked recently what it felt like to spend time in a place I had once loved but no longer connected with, and I had to admit that my predominant emotion was pain. Often, I’d leave two or three days before my rental was up, eager to return home to my husband, my dog, and my largely privileged circle of friends who don’t espouse beliefs that repulse me.

Sigh. When does this shit end? Do we ever get out of it? I’m skeptical.