My favorite social media post in a while:

That pretty much sums it up. Convicted Felon Donny is starting wars across the world to make sure people don’t get the proof that he’s a pedophile. He’s a long-term Russian asset and a child molesting creep. His election (twice!) is proof that American culture and our Constitutional processes are broken.

As bad as it is, it’s gonna get worse. More wars, more lawlessness, more destruction, more seizures of formerly peaceful / productive citizens and institutions. Donny Convict needs to be retired, ASAP.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Things I would not have believed if you told me in 1980:

• That we would all carry around a supercomputer in our pocket. And that the world’s entire collection of knowledge and history is available anytime, everywhere, just for asking.
• A large percentage of Americans distrust science and medicine, preferring to believe fairy tales about vaccines and the 2020 pandemic. (This is particularly hard to understand given the previous item.)
• America’s federal government being taken over by a completely corrupt, evil bunch of sociopaths, led by a pathetic idiot.
• That Rush and Jackson Browne would still be recording, giving concerts to large audiences and generally still creative/productive.
• That I would pay $1000/seat to go to a rock show or sports event. (Certainly not every time, but it’s been done.)
• That we haven’t been back to the Moon or even close to going to Mars. After more than 50 years since Apollo 12.
• That I could (and do) carry a giant library of books, photographs, and music in my pocket. And so does most everyone else.
• Ubiquitous and cheap flat screen TVs.
• That I would own an olive grove and (sometimes) harvest olives to make oil.
• That UK basketball would be in a crisis, clearly no longer the best in the country.
• The instant gratification of Amazon shipping and delivery. Think of something on Monday night, it appears on your doorstep on Tuesday morning.

There’s certainly more, but those are the ones that jump out at me. The world of 2026 is a strange, strange place compared to 1980.

We really do live in the worst possible timeline of the multiverse. We have (a) an insane leader who controls the world’s largest military and is surrounded by a group of hate-filled sociopaths, and (b) a UK basketball team that is pathetic. I need no further proof.

The UK hoops game last night was pathetic. From A Sea of Blue:

Leading 66-58 with 4:34 to play, that’s a game, at home, you have to close out. Plain and simple. Instead, Kentucky did everything you could possibly do to lose a game. Defensive breakdowns, turnovers, bad shots, missed shots, everything.

It was ugly, again. This season is over, a dead team walking. Another year trashed for fans.

And on the political front, what can you say? ICE just killed an innocent woman, straight-up executed her in broad daylight, and everyone in charge is gaslighting us with stories that in no way resemble the reality we all can see on video. No shame, no truth, no accountability. We’re now living as hostages to a hostile government.

And the outrages are accelerating. Every day there’s a dozen stories of how this government is making life worse for everyone. We’re getting numb to the horror, but it’s real, it’s ongoing and eventually it’s going to affect all of us, personally. Just like it did for that poor woman in Minneapolis yesterday.

I’m *really* glad I didn’t take the pledge for a dry January. Mind altering substances are needed to get through these times.

Posting from Phoenix airport, easy travel day so far. Decent wifi here, first flight wasn’t crowded, and theyve got good wood-fired pizza in Terminal D. Had to take out a loan to afford the pizza, but that’s become de rigueur.

One guy on the flight was wearing a T-shirt that literally made me see red. It said “Evil Lost” in large letters, and showed an electoral map of counties in the US, massively colored red. Because of course the huge number of rural counties voted for Trump, because they just couldn’t see their way to voting for a black woman. Evil lost…what a fucking joke. Like everything else associated with Convict Donny, it’s a perverted lie, the exact reverse of the truth. Evil is now in power, and we’re seeing it in action right now:

• The idiotic weakening of vaccine schedules for children by our captured health systems.
• The blatant exercise of military power – at the moment in VZ, but threatened against Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Cuba, etc. We’re becoming a brutal warmongering empire.
• The celebration of Jan 6, MAGA’s foundational lie.
• The blatant ignoring of law by Trump’s DoJ, including release of the Epstein files.
• The incessant and blatant financial corruption of this administration – it’s everywhere, all the time.
• The cowardly toadies in Congress and SCOTUS.
• The economic burden about to be shouldered by millions of Americans trying to afford health care.
• Ongoing snatch and grab operations by our secret police, terrorizing innocent families across the US.
• The DoD’s decision to try to punish a decorated war hero, an astronaut, for speaking the truth.

So yeah, “evil lost”. What a crock.

I tentatively signed up for a new AI-based writing tool called Spiral. I’m just beginning to explore what it can do for a writer, and my first test was to use it as a research assistant. I asked Spiral “Is Mark Pope a good coach?” The app told me that it was going out to the web to get information relevant to my question and “pondering” before it gave an answer. It pondered for about 5 minutes, and then produced this nicely-formatted answer.

———-

That’s not bad at all. It would have taken me quite a while – an hour or two – to gather all that data and then write a short article citing it. If I were still in the workplace, or working as a freelance writer, this would be immensely useful. Right away I can predict the rise of “super-employees”, who use tools like this and produce 2x or even 10x the work product they used to. Or produce the same work product 2-10x faster.

Then…I told Spiral I was writing a murder mystery on the Moon, and it responded with this:

——–

That’s a compelling premise, Jeff! A murder mystery on the Moon offers some fascinating constraints—limited suspects, no easy escape, unique forensic challenges in low gravity and a sealed environment.

What can I help you with? Are you looking for:

• Research on lunar science, Moon bases, or space travel logistics?
• Help writing specific scenes, chapters, or content for the novel?
• Something else like brainstorming plot elements or working through story problems?

——–

Hmmmm. I’ve been stuck on the novel for months, and have pretty much given up. Too many edits, too many versions, just confused on how to finish. But can I use Spiral to restart the writing process? Maybe help with some problematic plot elements, or help me fill in more/better scenes in Act 2 (I think I have a solid Act 1 and Act 3 – the book’s middle is what has me stuck.)

There’s probably a fine line between using an AI tool for research and plotting, versus using it to generate the actual text. Publishers are already taking a hard line – no AI-generated stories allowed. So proceed with caution.

But this might be what it takes to get me writing again.

Lost most of the day yesterday to what feels like an incipient cold or flu. Stuffy head, no energy, no desire to do anything other than rest…I hate losing entire days like that. There are only so many left.

Postscript from yesterday – UPS says they tried to deliver the painting at 1pm (outside of their published time window, of course), but was unsuccessful. But my son-in-law was home, so…did they really? Whatever, the painting is still in the wind and that’s one delivery try down, two more to go.

The news this morning that the US attacked Caracas and captured the President of VZ was…disturbing. Congress is out of the loop, so the attack is unconstitutional. Illegal. Just another lawless day for Convict Donny. We’re establishing a norm that the President can attack anyone, anywhere, with no approval, no justification. By this norm China could attack DC, remove Convict Donny because they say he was not duly elected. As our eyeliner VP says, “…there’s no law, there’s only power”. Maduro is a bad guy, but I don’t like how this went down. I predict this action will not end well.

In better news, today starts the real 2026 basketball season. UK plays at Alabama as a five point underdog. I think it’s a toss up, and I like our chances if we just come out and play in the first half. This is do or die for Pope and the team. But hoops is back for the next two months, and I’m grateful.

In an extreme case of the “no good deed goes unpunished” rule, I bought a rather expensive painting for my wife as a Christmas present. We just visited good friends in Florida and the wife of that couple is quite the artist. So I had K select one of her paintings as a gift, and we decided it would go best in the Kentucky house. I figured I’d just ship it from a UPS store in Florida to KY…and that’s where the punishment started.

First, the packing and shipping. The painting is large, a 3 feet by 4 feet unframed canvas. It’s mounted on a wooden frame, so that thing that happens in the movies where they roll a painting canvas up and stick it in a tube wasn’t possible (that would have been easier, in retrospect). But at the UPS store I procured a large enough box ($80) and some packing material. They informed me that they could pack the painting in the box for about $250 or I could do it myself, but I could NOT pack it inside their store. Easy decision, I bought some tape and acquired some bubble wrap from UPS (another $20). I packed the thing carefully, secured the box and took it back to the store to be shipped.

It’s only 17 pounds, and the shipping cost turned out to be $570! Their first bid was $1800, for a guaranteed delivery in a couple of days. I took the bargain option of $570 giving me a delivery date of sometime in 5-7 days. I shipped it to my daughter’s home, as I would not be in KY within the 5-7 days. Mission more or less accomplished, and the package was on its way.

Now roll forward to today, exactly seven days after I shipped it. For days I’ve tried to get shipping/delivery updates from the UPS website, with zero luck. No tracking info until today, when I see that it’s out for delivery. That’s good, but…the UPS website also tells me that “signature is required”. Not good, because I can’t guarantee that anyone will be home at the exact time of delivery.

So I try the UPS website to change that “signature required” flag. Absolutely no way to do so – their website has a lot of circular logic in it. It looks nice, but functionally it’s shit. I try their chatbot for help, and it’s worse than useless. No luck. I try getting a live human on chat, finally get one, but they’re also useless – can’t help with any of my options. I try calling in for phone assistance, and once again, no luck. First I can’t get an agent. Then a couple of hours later, I manage to get a live agent on the phone and they tell me that (1) they can’t change that delivery flag, even though it’s MY package and my money that sent it, and (2) that the UPS store that sent it (in Florida) is actually the sender and only they can change the delivery terms.

Sooooo….I call the Florida store and talk to the same person who created the shipping label and accepted the package for shipment. He was incredulous that I would think that he could change anything about the delivery at this stage, and informed me that UPS would try three times to deliver based on the apparently immutable terms of delivery (delivery terms are apparently on the same level as laws of physics), and if unsuccessful they would send the package back to origin (Florida) and charge me another $570 for that courtesy.

I don’t really know what I should learn from this experience. It’s as if I got shoved into a Kafka story, and any move I make is thwarted by some obscure rule and no matter what I try, it’s going to cost money and my original good intent is being laughed at by UPS trolls. Maybe there will be a happy-ish ending to this tale, but along the way I’ve learned that UPS is a stock I should short. Their idea of customer service is punishment.

Wet and cool here in Socal on the first day of 2026. No problem – plans are to read, watch some TV, and have a relaxing day. Definitely easing into the New Year. Dinner out with friends tomorrow, then the UK-Alabama game Saturday, a couple of low-key rest days then back to the air on Tuesday, heading for Louisville. Sometimes I feel like a hamster in a wheel…

We’re in the dead zone for televised sports. No college basketball, with UK in the middle of a two week holiday break before the SEC games. No golf, other than all the goofy Youtube video stuff. I’m not real interested in the college football playoffs, though I might watch a game or two around New Year’s Day (supposed to be raining here, so I probably won’t get outside for NYD golf). Plenty of NFL on TV, but I’m just not a pro football fan any more. Same with the NBA.

Soooo, I’m reading a bunch of books. I have three going at the moment – a re-read of Julian May’s Pliocene series (on actual paper), a new and slightly dumb SF book online, and a stack of historical/political books about the Dulles brothers that one of my MAGA friends gave me. Quite the mix. Plus I start a 2-3 day project in the olive grove today – applying some organic bug control via sprayer and Gator – not really looking forward to that.

But Saturday the Cats play Alabama in their SEC opener, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. A win and we’re back on track for a good year. A loss and we start digging what could be a very deep hole. So just five more days to get past the dead zone.

Christmas images from Venice. First, “downtown” Venice Avenue at night.

Next, a particularly trusting turtle at Venice Beach.

A veteran fisherman, fishing for sharks.

Our Florida hosts.

One more time around the Sun, and it’s December 21st, the winter solstice. Shortest day of the year. It’ll be sunny and 75 degrees in Socal on the solstice, and that’s just fine with me. Time for a few holes of golf this afternoon.

Still feeling the glow from the epic UK hoops win yesterday. Jayden Quaintance played for the first time, and it changed everything. KY now has a bright future with JQ in the lineup. He’s an absolute beast – a man playing among boys. Plus we got a gritty performance from Jayland Lowe, and those two additions to the lineup turned a 10 point second half deficit into a convincing 12 point win. The season turned around on December 20. Next up, the SEC schedule that starts January 3rd. Can’t wait.

The gaslighting by Donny Convict and Pam Bondi on the Epstein files continues – they must think we’re idiots. They’ve released 1% of what they were supposed to, then redacted the shit out of what they released. Donny is *very* afraid of what’s in those files, and eventually it will come out. It has to. Maybe just once, something will stick to the Teflon Felon.

Tuesday we join the millions traveling for Christmas as we make our way to Florida. We have a nonstop SAN-TPA, so we should be fine. An early flight and no connections to get cancelled or delayed. I sure hope I don’t regret traveling at the holiday…we’ll see.

Went to a retirement party for an old friend last night – it was great to see everyone, but we’ve all gotten old. Funny how that works. The old friend – Sam Montini – is and was liked by everyone, as you can see from the nice turnout in the photo below. He worked 39.5 years (!!) (and he was adamant about the .5) for SAIC, where I spent about seven years.

No Epstein files to be released on on today’s court deadline, shocker. The Trump “Dept of Justice” breaks yet another law. What recourse do we have when the Fed’s own legal authorities ignore the law? I think they call that a dictatorship.

And Donny Convict wasted no time putting his vile name on the already despoiled Kennedy Center. What’s next, the Washington Monument becomes the Donald J. Trump Phallic Fantasy? Disgusting.

I spent some time driving to and from Brea CA yesterday (business meeting), real close to downtown LA. Reminded me why I left that life when I got the chance – driving to an appointment anywhere near LA is stressful. Even driving back after 8pm, traffic was heavy and what should have been a 75 minute drive took over two hours. Ugh.

Spectrum, who provides our cable TV and Internet service in Socal, is about to lose a customer. For three days they’ve been “upgrading our service”, which translates to an infinite number of just-under-two-hours outages of both TV and Internet over the last three days. They do this on purpose – their terms of service require rebates for any outage lasting over 2 hours. So…they craftily chop a major maintenance event into many less-than-two hour outages. Maddening. You’ll be online or watching TV and then have to stop for 119 minutes. You get an hour or two of service, and then whoops, you’re out again. It’s irritating, insulting, and unnecessary. I know because I used to run a huge network service for Fortune 500 companies. Spectrum is shitting all over customers, and I’ve had enough. It may be time for Starlink.

Big UK hoops game again tomorrow – UK v St Johns and Rick Pitino. Plus, Jayden Quaintance might play for the first time. Let’s go!

I’ve recently realized that I have some shitty weather karma. A disproportionate number of the major events I travel to are held in bad, sometimes terrible weather.

I just returned from a 10-day stay in KY for early Christmas with family there. It snowed hard the night I got there, stayed cold and damp for the entire 10 days, turned epically cold (single digit temps) for 2-3 of those days, then snowed again on my last day there. Ugh.

For the only Derby I’ve attended in person in a few decades (2025), we suffered through torrential rains and a severe weather warning that cleared the track – one of the most miserable Derby days in recent history. That was a very expensive bad weather day.

For the 2024 PGA Championship, same. Hard rain, muddy slick conditions on the day my cousins and I went to enjoy the golf. We still had fun sliding around the muddy hillsides with bourbon in hand, but…a little sun would have been nice. Though it must be said that Scotty Scheffler had a worse day than us.

In 2023 (or was it 2022?) we got stuck in a cold snowy Louisville during the massive air traffic meltdown of that Christmas season. We spent a week going to the airport every day on the promise of a flight, but nope. Made it back to Socal on New Year’s Day, seven days delayed. I should note this wasn’t solely a weather thing, but the bad weather added to the frustration of it all.

All the way back in 2015, we had a record heat day (105 degrees in the evening!) for Emily’s outdoor wedding reception at Yew Dell Gardens. Stuffed into a formal black suit, I’ve never been so hot and sweaty. Great wedding, but that weather…

Maybe this is just selective memory. There are lots and lots of beautiful sunny days in my travels – the pictures prove that. But somehow those bad ones stand out in memory.

We head for Florida on a Christmas visit next week. Watch the weather for the hurricanes/tornadoes/floods that are now likely to hit. My gift to Florida.

Beautiful sunny morning here in Fairbanks. Five degrees Fahrenheit, a little cool for enjoying the sun.

But a win by the roller coaster Wildcats last night makes it all a bit better. An ugly first half, then a great second half, and the season is still alive. Was a great crowd in Rupp last night, happy to be there.

A pre-game dinner at Distilled was also worth the trip. Great restaurant, great service. And within an easy walk to Rupp. Gonna have to do that one again.

The drive home was a little less fun. Driving, frozen snow, a windshield that was hard to keep clear, 18-wheelers doing their best to be assholes in bad conditions. Took 2.5 hours from Lexington to Louisville, most of that time between Lexington and Shepherdville. But the glow from the win made it OK (though I wouldn’t want to do that drive again).

Next 48 hours will be Arctic conditions, and then I head west to mid-80s weather. Most of the time I feel sad to leave either place, but this time I’m *ready* for some better weather. Bring it on.

Ten days ago I arrived in KY around midnight, and woke up to 3-4 inches of wet snow clinging to trees and roads. It was beautiful. This morning, exactly the same thing. It’s still beautiful, but I’m ready for a change. Back to Socal and 85 degrees on Tuesday. And some golf.

Meanwhile, I’ve found a band that I really like – Wolf Alice. A British band with a 9-10 year history and a lead singer with a wonderful voice. Definitely my style. So here are a couple of videos/songs that are now in my regular listening rotation.

I *really* like these cuts of their live recording session from 2022. Great stuff. Same tones, but with a rock edge. And after watching several more of their videos, I want that drummer’s vibe. He looks as content as I’ve ever seen a human as he plays. Something to strive for.

It’s great to discover some new music – takes some of the edge off the awful political developments in the US. While our country may be in the midst of a slow moving car wreck, the rest of the world soldiers on.

Meanwhile…

• The stock market hit an all-time high yesterday. Go figure. Boomers get richer.
• Kentucky has another season-defining must-win game tomorrow against Indiana. I’ll be there in person. For me it really is the season-defining moment. If the Cats don’t get things turned around now, the rest of the season may not matter.
• Since arriving in KY, my Wordle game has been strong. On the two-week average, I’m beating both the NYT reader average AND the Wordle bot. Beating the bot consistently is not easy.
• This local tragedy exemplifies everything that is wrong with our government at the moment. A policy and a resulting action, based in racism and hate. A man who followed the law, paid his dues and was excited to become an American citizen, turned away at the threshold because of Donny Convict and his band of sociopaths. Makes me sick.

It’s a good day to stay inside and get a few things done around the house. And listen to Wolf Alice.

Another cold, snowy day in KY. Perfect day to sort through the latest list of US atrocities.

• Big news, we seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela because, reasons. One more step toward all-out war. Our cruise next month to Aruba, just off the coast of VZ, is looking a little dicey.
• More big news, the State Dept just banned the use of Calibri font in favor of Times New Roman. Calibri was adopted a few years ago to help people with vision problems – Calibri is a san serif font, so It’s less confusing for those with severely impaired vision. But that’s too woke, so Marco Rubio decreed that it be gone.
• South Carolina has a raging measles outbreak. Gizmodo covers it succinctly:

Measles Outbreak Nears Grim Milestone as Hundreds Quarantine in South Carolina

What happens when your country’s public health system is run by anti-vaccine activists?

The U.S. officially eliminated measles as an endemic disease in the year 2000, thanks to the widespread vaccination programs of the 20th century. But America’s federal public health infrastructure saw a hostile takeover by anti-vaccine activists in January, led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his so-called Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

There have been 46 measles outbreaks identified in the U.S. in 2025, and 87% of confirmed cases have been associated with outbreaks, according to the CDC. An outbreak is defined as three or more cases of the same disease linked to a common source. If the outbreaks continue into January 2026, it will mark a year since they began in West Texas. The U.S. will then officially lose its measles-free status.

But wait, there’s more!

• The January 6th criminals aren’t happy with just a pardon. According to Bloomberg, “Almost 400 people pardoned or granted clemency by President Donald Trump in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol are now seeking millions of dollars in payouts from the federal government, according to their lawyer.” Your tax dollars at work.
• Convict Donny and team decided the US tourism industry needed another punch in the face, so now non-citizens visiting the US may have to show five years of social media history to enter. We’re truly becoming Gilead – a horrific, dangerous place no one would want to visit.
• America’s secret police is using more overt threats these days: “ICE threatens family separation, indefinite detention to satisfy Trump deportation goal.” Basically leave or we’ll take your child. How is the country not up in arms about this?
• Senator Chris Murphy is telling this story on Bluesky – how Trump is preparing to abandon Ukraine in exchange for Russian money for his billionaire friends. It could be the greatest corruption of American foreign policy in our history. Russia gets Ukraine. Trump’s friends get rich.

And all that is just TODAY.

Well, the UK game last night was a success score-wise, but they still didn’t look right. Kind of a slow ugly start to the game. The Indiana game Saturday will require a lot more effort. I’ll be there to see that one in person.

The only good thing was that Coach Pope yelled at the players middle of first half, and they played as they should the rest of the game. He benched Brandon Garrison for not hustling, as he should have. BG didn’t play at all afterward. I think Pope has been too nice, too touchy feely, not tough and serious enough with these young men. Pope has been all carrot, no stick. Last night was evidence that the team needs some tough love.

After the game, OMG, watched a political talk show and KY Governor Beshear was on. The OMG part is that poor Andy showed up with a very distracting raccoon face – bright red makeup (or sunburn?) all over his face, except for a white mask around his eyes. It’s a bad look – whoever on his team let him go on the air like that does NOT have good judgement. Andy’s talking points and style are really good, but that face…yikes. Here are a couple of comments from the Youtube video of the interview:

Raccoon eyes aside, right now it looks like Beshear, Newsom, and Josh Shapiro are the frontrunners for the 2028 Dem Presidential nomination. I could get behind a Newsom/Beshear ticket, and I think that would be a winner.

We can’t take a chance on a MAGA candidate winning again. Trump beat Clinton (thanks Comey), then lost to an old white guy (Biden), then beat Harris (still figuring that one out). Michelle Obama is right, the US is, sadly, not yet ready for a female President. There’s a patriarchal / misogynist streak in several key demographic groups, including black males, young white males, Latin Americans, some boomers – that just won’t vote for a woman. We need enough of those voters to cross over and vote for a Newsom/Beshear ticket (or equivalent) to break the narrow margin MAGA holds in Electoral College math.

Unexpectedly, took some nice pictures the last couple of days.

First, today I walked past a big hawk chowing down on a squirrel just down the street from the house. Its mate or a competitor watched jealously from high above. It’s rare that hawks will let you get as close as I was able. Must’ve been a good snack.

Then from yesterday, a few shots from the Butler High holiday fair, where my SIL’s choir walked around and serenaded everyone. Nice little event; got a *lot* of nice pictures. The grandsons got some sweet treats, so they were also impressed.

There’s a lot of holiday fun in Louisville – definitely more than Fallbrook, and more family to enjoy it with. I’ve even got a big pile of gifts (for others) at the house, something I haven’t managed to do in quite a while. KY Christmas for me is next weekend. Actual Christmas will be in Florida with friends, a brand new take on the holiday. It may be a little weird.

Took a break from writing anything after Friday night’s nauseating loss to Gonzaga. I thought I was prepared, had low expectations, but what I saw was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a UK team. Can’t shoot, can’t rebound, can’t catch a pass, just look like they don’t care. We missed 42 of our first 47 shots, and it didn’t get much better after that. Something is very, very wrong with this team, and it’s not clear that Mark Pope has a chance of fixing it. In the immortal words of Elton John / Bernie Taupin, “…it’s a sad sad situation, and it’s getting more and more absurd.”

Things on the political front aren’t any better. Here’s the latest list of outrages:

• SCOTUS said fine, whatever, Texas can draw a racist voting map, over-ruling lower courts.
• SCOTUS is now going to consider birthright citizenship. We all know how that is going to turn out. (I’m not 100% for birthright citizenship – it made sense 200 years ago, but now…maybe not. I’m just against giving Convict Donny another win.)
• Hegseth and Trump are doubling down on killing Venezuelans bobbing in the water. Congress is not united on pursuing this obvious war crime – what a shocker.
• Donny decided to replace free admission days at US National Parks on MLK Day and Juneteenth with a free entry day on his own birthday. Ugh.
• The US Institute for Peace is now the Donald J. Trump Institute for Peace. Ugh part two.
• RFK Jr. and the idiots he has installed atop US health organizations continue to chip away at vaccination policies. Hep B is their latest victim. The generation being born starting 2025 is in serious, serious trouble.
• Convict Donny’s white nationalist team has released the US’s new national security strategy, which basically says “Screw every other nation, it’s America First, and you can forget all those past agreements and treaties. Oh and by the way, we intend to take over S America and Canada.”
• ICE is still out there trying to make quotas by rounding up random brown people and shipping them off to who-the-fuck-knows-where. They’re current terrorizing NOLA.

All that is just an off-the-cuff roundup of how screwed up things are. I’d say Steinbeck got it right, this is officially The Winter of Our Discontent.

At least the winter is photogenic. Here’s an appropriately lonely shot taken last week. I like the scale of the person against the landscape.

UK just lost by 30 and looked like a high school team against a real D1 college team. Hell has frozen over.

It’s a lot to deal with….

Jeff Tiedrich is in rare form today. Works for me; saves me the trouble of saying the same.

“…of course, Donny inflicting his accursed name onto everything and glomming credit for shit he didn’t do is pretty much his entire business model — but this instance of it is so fucking galling on about eighteen thousand different levels.

first of all, this ghoulish hyena’s name would be more appropriate on a building that houses the US Institute For Bombing The Shit Out Of Shipwrecked Survivors Who Are Trying Not To Drown.

what kind of ‘war is peace’ bullshit is this?

wherever he is right now, George Orwell is ripping fistfuls of hair out of his head and screaming ‘god fucking dammit, 1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.“

There’s so much horrible news today about Venezuela, Ukraine, New Orleans, SCOTUS, Texas, vaccines, the economy…it’s all too much. Everything Donny Convict touches rots and dies. Like his festering hand.

Gonna be a bit tough getting into the Christmas spirit this year. Ho fucking ho.

UK hoops fans had a bad day yesterday, but Convict Donny and Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth are having a much, much worse one. Karma is a bitch.

A Pentagon watchdog group reported that Hegseth definitely put American soldiers’ lives at risk with the SignalGate fiasco. And now the media is all over Hegseth and the military chain of command for illegally killing the in-water survivors of the first bomb to hit the alleged drug boat off Venezuela. The consensus is that war crimes were definitely committed. Oopsie.

Now new photos of Epstein Island are being published, bringing the whole sordid Trump-riddled affair back into focus. And yesterday Trump kept falling asleep during his own Cabinet meeting.

It’s hard to get too enthusiastic about all this, as Trump has shown for a decade that he’s Teflon. Nothing sticks to him. But all three of these scandals have teeth, real consequences. Maybe Convict Donnie will skate again, but Hegseth…he’s looking very, very inconvenient for Trump right now. And that may be the biggest sin of all in the MAGA cult/crime family – inconveniencing The Don.

Yesterday was a tough day, full of disappointments. The eastern Tennessee House race was close, but the Democrat lost. The older grandson came down with yet another mysterious fever (this is actually more of a concern than a disappointment, but it’s still in the “not good” category). I completely tanked The Wordle, a rare occurrence. My lottery ticket didn’t win. And the UK men’s basketball team showed us once and for all who they are, and who they aren’t.

Learning to deal with disappointments is part of becoming an adult. That shiny red bike you didn’t get for Christmas as an eight year old. That promotion you never got. The golf you didn’t get invited to play with your grandfather. Those are all learning moments. And dealing with last night’s game requires all I’ve learned about dealing with disappointments.

I thought UK would have a great team this year – top 10 for sure. Enthusiastic coach, great athletes, a returning Player of the Year candidate. But this team isn’t great. They’re not even good. Part of it is injuries, part is some weird team chemistry thing. Part of it is that college teams are now simply paid employees, not student-athletes playing for the love of the game. And I think a non-trivial part of it is that Pope isn’t a great heat-of-the-game, Xs and Os, strategist. At critical moments, he and his players look lost.

But this team has gotten whacked every time against a true D1 talent – Louisville, MI St, and now NC. The Purdue exhibition win doesn’t count – I’m 90% sure Purdue was playing to learn during that game, not playing to win. And NC isn’t even a top-tier team. We could’ve/should’ve beaten them by 15-20. Soooooo….time to adjust expectations.

I no longer expect UK to do well this year. We’re gonna lose 15+ games, and we might not make it into the NCAA tourney. Our SEC run will be brutal, and this team has not shown itself to be tough. If we do reach the Big Dance, it’ll be as a 16-seed, a long shot. The kind of Cinderella team that Calipari’s Cats lost to often enough to get him fired.

But part of dealing with disappointment as an adult is to accept reality, so all that’s OK. I’ll still watch and attend the games, I’ll still be a huge fan. I’m wearing the T shirt today. But I won’t expect much. I had hoped that Rupp Arena’s 50th year and my 70th on the planet would be a special year for the Cats, but it ain’t gonna happen.

The silver lining – I’ll save a few thousand dollars not attending the stupid-overpriced NCAA tournament. And my blood pressure will be lower given the lower expectations.

Yesterday.

Today.