Moods are a funny thing. For a few days I’ve felt like a dark cloud hovered over me, but today it’s gone. Is it just chemistry? Lunar cycles? Wordle scores or sleep quality? Whatever the cause, I’m grateful that the cloud has moved on. Today I cruised out and played 18 holes of golf, walking and carrying my clubs in the heat, and loved it. A sweaty happy mess. That kind of hard physical activity is the perfect foundation for a good day.

I’m not much of a football fan these days, but I am looking forward to the UK v Alabama game on Saturday. There’s a chance that UK and our new coach has crafted an actually competitive SEC team, a rarity in my lifetime. And KY fans are hungry for some sports action – Kroger Field will be full and rocking. So Saturday afternoon I’ll post up, take a look and hope for the best.

I’m rewatching Game of Thrones this summer, and one of the subplots is the story of The Mad King and the prince who killed him – the aptly named Kingslayer. It seems The Mad King mistreated his subjects sufficiently that news of his death was cause for celebration across the land. It’s said that life imitates art, and Convict Donny is doing his best impression of a Mad King lately. Will we have a Kingslayer in real life, or will our just-barely-democratic system rid of us him by less violent means? We have no choice but to stay tuned and find out.

Speaking of Convict Donny, he has recently shown some competence. He has a talent! It seems he’s really good at losing wars. He’s losing a kinetic war with Iran and will certainly lose the economic war with Canada. He’s tearing down the world’s finest military culture by placing an idiotic drunkard in charge, insuring that we lose any other wars we might start. Given that the man drove six casinos into bankruptcy, we should have seen this coming. DJT, loser extraordinaire!

The ethical dilemma embodied by Elon Musk keeps getting larger. His financial support of Germany’s nascent-Nazi party is unconscionable. At the same time his Louisiana investment in Starship launch facility is a shrewd move, one I support. Once again, how do you reconcile thoughts about a smug racist/fascist prick who is also an spaceflight engineering visionary? The end can’t justify these means, so I hope for some future where Musk and his engineering creations part ways.

Labor Day. A national celebration of human labor, of the common working man. Now that I’m not one of them (a working man), it seems a bit quaint. US politics now favors the non-working man, the rich folks who control capital assets. Labor Day is an anachronism. I can identify with that. feel anachronistic most days.

The weather in KY and CA has suddenly reversed – KY is now pleasant, and Socal is now hot, humid and not fun. Go figure. For once I’m on the right side of the equation.

Today my family helped me avoid a down day – a nice lunch with my brother and SIL, then a short visit to Lakeside with Em’s family. Hundreds (thousands?) of people celebrating Labor Day by jumping in the spring-fed water, dressed in tiny outfits that they will likely renounce at church a few days later. Classic. In my late teens I lived in places like this, Dreamland and South Side in Ashland, pool cultures where I learned to swim, play basketball, and love those summers. It was glorious. All that helped me get out of my head and feel a little connected to the world. Might seem hard to understand, but that connection is hard to come by lately.

September has been tougher to deal with than July or August. Still not sure why, but…there it is. Mornings watching the grandsons play soccer or just hanging out with them make it all a bit simpler. Here’s a picture of a kid completely caught up in the moment. I envy that. We all probably do. Probably should.

It was 102 degrees today. Yikes. I practiced a lot of golf indoors at 5Iron, spent time with the grandsons, watered the lawn, watched some TV. Not a bad day given the shit weather.

I’ve been inside a bit given the heat, and I keep seeing the ASPCA commercial “…will you open your heart to feed a hungry animal….will you fill their bowl?”. Eric McCormack, the king of animal misery. Busts me up every time. It’s a shit world we live in.

Tough day, financially. CA Franchise Tax Board sent us a letter saying we owed a lot of money, unexpectedly. My accountant and I will have to sort that out. Chase Bank told me one of my credit cards has been hacked, so….a new card and a whole lot of changes to automatic payments. And now dealing with a financial conflict with my so-called Turo partner. Feels more like Friday the 13th, not the 4th. Tomorrow’s gotta be better.

Up fairly early after landing in the eastern time zone late last night. Groggy, but not feeling too bad, considering. Happy to be a good jet lagger.

Tarrant County, Texas, looks like ground zero for Rethuglican voter suppression schemes in 2026. Heather Cox Richardson sums it up nicely:

Last night, in Tarrant County, Texas, county commissioners tried an even cruder way of rigging the election. As Cecelia Lenzen of the Texas Tribunereported, they voted 3–2 along party lines to get rid of 92 of the polling sites the county had in 2022 before the midterm election. In 2022 there were 316 election sites; the Republican commissioners cut that number to 224. They also cut three sites for early voting, from 50 to 47. Republicans voted for the cuts; Democrats voted against them.

“It’s not about cost. This is about power. This is very political. This is campaigning from the dais,” said Democrat Alisa Simmons. Throughout the eight-hour meeting about the cuts, speakers from the audience called on the commissioners to increase, rather than decrease, the number of voting sites for the more than 1.3 million people registered to vote in Tarrant County.

Those 1.3 million people are more than live in Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, or Montana, and about the same number of people who live in Maine or New Hampshire.

She fails to mention that Tarrant County, while traditionally conservative, is trending toward Democrat. The county, centered on Ft Worth, narrowly voted for Biden in 2024. And more alarming to Repubs, in early 2026 a high-profile special election in Texas Senate District 9 saw Democrat Taylor Rehmet flip the historically red seat, drawing significant state and national attention to the shifting political dynamics in the region. So the state legislature says OK, if you’re going to elect Dems, we’re going to make it really fucking hard for you to get out and vote by closing 30% of your voting places. Let me guess where those polling places are? In the neighborhoods that went Dem in those elections, almost certainly (no proof, I haven’t seen or done the analysis, but it would make sense).

But there’s a good workaround for this, if Texans will band together just a little. Take some of the D party money normally used for ads and hire some nice high-end buses to travel those neighborhoods during the day and take the disenfranchised voters to a polling place. Advertise the pickup and drop off schedules. Give them AC and a bottle of water. Take them to vote and then take them home, have a little party along the way. I checked; it’s legal. Texans could turn this evil insult into a great opportunity for celebrating the election and giving voters a chance to socialize. I like this idea so much I’m going to write it up and send it to the Texas Dem organization. I hope they adopt it.

One last unrelated thought. I’m really fucking disappointed in Apple and Google for immediately renaming Lake Ontario in their map software, bending over for Convict Donny. There was no legal requirement to do so – they’re just showing obedience to the wannabe king. Time to download Mapquest.

I’ve read a lot of Ed Ziron’s anti-AI essays, and found his arguments interesting. Maybe not compelling, but interesting. I had noticed that he seems angrier than a good technology analyst should be, but that didn’t invalidate some of the points he made. But after reading this, I won’t waste time on Zitron any more. His posts/essays tend to be looooong, and as it turns out they’re not accurate. I’ve seen him on TV quite a bit lately, and his short-term fame is/was probably the entire goal. He’s monetized his anger and found an audience, now an audience minus one.

Today is a travel day, taking my favorite route east – SAN to DEN, then DEN to SDF. Weather looks fine, so it should be an easy travel day. I’ve done a lot of thinking lately about my post-work life and travel schedule. I tend to focus on the downsides of a dual-home life, a long list. Constant exposure to viruses during travel. No good way to have a dog, with life in two places 2000 miles apart. The rather extreme expense of maintaining two residences and commuting between them. Some non-trivial issues with healthcare and health insurance across two very different states. No way to have a weekly get-together with golf buddies, a book club, or pretty much any regular social activity, as I’m gone half the time. The occasional trip from hell, which can really wear you down physically and mentally.

But there are some pluses. I don’t get stuck in a rut as much as I might, because every 2-3 weeks I reset by changing home bases. Then there’s the core reason for the travel, being close to family in KY – that outweighs pretty much every other factor. Being a material part of the grandsons’ life is a very high priority for me. The joy I get in just being somewhere with rain and dense greenery. The time for thinking/reflection while flying. The fact that getting up and going somewhere every 2-3 weeks keeps me active, gives me another good reason to stay in good shape, good health.

I mention all this because I’ve come to enjoy the travel days, weirdly. It’s not reasonable to like spending a bunch of money to shuffle through TSA security, wedge myself into a packed Southwest flight, and pay stupid prices for bad airport food. But I do enjoy these days, for the most part. I guess you can get used to anything. But I’ll still buy the occasional lottery ticket in hope of being able to fly private and take my still-aspirational dog everywhere.

The fall elections are looking to be a shitshow of grift, graft, and corruption. ICE is gonna show up a key swing state polling places to intimidate anyone nonwhite or with a non-European name. Unlimited PAC money is gonna lie to and confuse voters with intentional misdirection across all media. Democrats will continue to divide themselves across the socialist to moderate spectrum, helping conservative candidates win where they shouldn’t. And now the US Postal Service has been compromised, and is NOT on our side. A whistleblower from the USPS has published a 20-page memo detailing how Convict Donny’s mail-in ballot restriction system is being implemented, in spite of court orders. Rules and laws are for the little people, amiright?

Here’s the advice for everyone voting this fall, especially those voting in close races where your vote will certainly matter:

Vote early and in person if at all possible. 

If intending to vote by mail (and you actually receive a ballot), alternatives to using USPS for return are to use drop boxes (if available in your state), to hand-deliver your ballot to the county Board of Elections, or to hand-deliver to early voting locations (if allowed). The USPS can no longer be trusted as a ballot delivery service, according to a veteran election official.

If I get a mail ballot, I’ll drop it off at the SD County registration offices, NOT at a post office. Those days are over. It was good while it lasted, but just as Convict Donny and his cronies have captured and compromised the DOJ, the DoD, DHS, the Park Service, the Dept of Education, the CDC, the FDA, the IRS, the Border Patrol, SCOTUS, CBS, the Census Bureau, the US Treasury, the State Dept, and Congress, they’ve infiltrated and compromised the USPS. It’s gonna take a generation or two to root out all the MAGA loyalists in these institutions, if we ever do.

Kinda feels like the fate of the country depends on the fall elections. If we (dems, liberals, people with empathy, non-MAGAs) can take control of the House and Senate, there’s a chance that we can stop and reverse the rapid destruction of American democracy. A chance. But if we don’t, Convict Donny will continue his insane wrecking-ball behavior for another two years, unchecked by anything. I don’t think we survive that scenario.

So get out there and vote early, in person, and often!