Super-duper supermen

For those of us who thought last week’s speech at the UN General Assembly was the dernier cri of batshit lunacy, Tuesday at Quantico showed us that we have far to go before we hit bottom. First SECDEF Hogsbreath (“I’m not a cabinet officer but I play one on right-wing TV”) lectured 800 generals, admirals and senior NCOs on manliness, White supremacy and grooming for an hour. He was followed by Cadet Bonespurs (the guy who evaded the Vietnam-era draft five times and who comes from a long line of military service dodgers) delivering 70 minutes of spittle-flecked invective against Democrats, democracy and constitutional rights, and instructed military leaders to ignore international law, the Posse Comitatus Act and common decency.

He also whined about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize (which—he claimed—he doesn’t want for himself, but for the country) and was this close to begging the audience to applaud, cheer and laugh.

It was, at once, cringeworthy and terrifying. In the most disordered way conceivable, he was publicly telling the leaders that he expected them to go anywhere he tells them, and kill anyone he tells them, including Americans here in America. Every uniform in that room was filled with a person who’s served more than 20 years in the military, and is quite familiar with both the Constitutional limitations on use of the armed forces and with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Most of them take those things seriously and they know that issuing and following illegal orders are crimes.

(Remember—there are whackjobs in uniform. E.g., Mike Flynn. But I think they’re in the minority.)

When Whiskey Pete finished—on what he obviously felt was a high note—there was deadly silence for a few beats; then the assembly was called to attention to mask the lack of positive response. When the Kleptocrat finished, there was tepid applause for a few beats; then a Souza march was blared to drown that out.

It was a shameful performance by both of them, at the cost of millions of dollars to bring the audience to Quantico. But they’re all about the performance and not the substance, so they’re taking it as a win.

Meanwhile, our government shut down as of 0001 Wednesday and the administration is violating the Hatch Act all over the place as official communications channels blame the Democrats. (Republicans control the House, the Senate and the Presidency. They put forward a budget that slashes social support and demolishes ACA subsidies, which doubles or triples what people have to pay in healthcare premiums—and that’s what Democrats wanted as the price of passing the bill.)

Klepto has also announced that—due to the shutdown—he’s going to dismantle “Democrat” agencies. They’re also withholding all manner of funds to states that have Democratic governors.

So—given all this, today’s earworm is Spike Jones’ immortal “Der Fuehrer’s Face”. We're getting there.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

 

Timeline cleanse

 After Tuesday's absolutely batshit lunatic performance before 800 admirals, generals and senior NCOs at Quantico, I'm just going to post my equivalent of touching grass.

You're welcome.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Big wheels

Saw this little fella on a recent walk, and just liked the looks of him.

Also really appreciated the pattern of this aerator he was towing.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

How's your week going?

Sunday night I realized that my dishwasher wasn’t draining. I had the problem back during the Great Plague, and I was lucky to get a repairman out to fix it. I assume it’s the same thing?

Anyway, I’m on his schedule for today between 1100 and 1400. Hoping for the best, because I hate having to wash dishes by hand.

Then, yesterday morning, for no apparent reason, Windows 11 stopped recognizing my external input/output devices. Nada, zilch, zero, bupkis. (I’d only just on Sunday fixed the issue of “New Outlook” not running spellcheck—after hours on the web trying to figure out what was going on. Evidently the geniuses at Microsoft decided that they’d “streamline” the user interface by making you set up preferences in an email (not in the application) and then clicking multiple times instead of two overall. Also, this has been a known user issue since <checks forums> 2023. 

(However, I still can’t get it to recognize keyboard shortcuts for diacritical marks; in fact—it doesn’t seem to have the capability to insert symbols from the toolbar. Oh—I have to press the Windows key plus > to do what you used to be able to do with a tab on the toolbar. Of course. But still no diacritical marks.)

(The same update that did the above also somehow managed to reset my home page in both Chrome and Firefox to Bing, so I had to change them back. I only use Edge when a website won't let me view with an ad blocker on.)

I again spent several hours trolling forums, updating drivers, rebooting and all…before finally unplugging the docking station and plugging it in again.

That worked, but I gotta tell you it’s been a hell of a week and it’s only Tuesday.

 

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

 

Gratitude Monday: daily servings

One of the goals of my Costco run last week was to get some frozen vegetables. Since the pandemic, grocery stores seem to have gone more towards pre-packaged vegetables, as opposed to pick-your-own, and I end up with a crisper full of vegetable soup before I can eat them.

I hate wasting food.

Since I have a 17-cubic-foot freezer, I decided that bulk and frozen is the way to go. So I slapped down $50 for three bags’ worth, partly based on recos in the Costco sub on Reddit.

(For comparison, $50 at Wegmans would get me three containers of mushrooms and an 8oz package of haricots verts, none of which I could pick for myself out of bins.)

First out of the chute was the Provençale Vegetables; I had them as a side for salmon with rice on Thursday, and hokey smokes! Spread them out on a pan with a splash of olive oil in the toaster oven—so good I considered making a second serving.

(Sheet pan and vegetable mélange are coming up soon on the rota.)

And that’s my gratitude for today: that having the freezer makes it possible for me to solve the veg intake/food waste problem, and that it turns out to be delicious.

 

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Here he comes

You know, Tuesday’s performance in the White House on the terrors of Tylenol would have been enough for most insane asylums, but then we had Wednesday’s speech at the United Nations. That sucker wasn’t just unhinged; it had never in its existence been close to a hinge.

And then we got Republican conspiracy theories about a “broken escalator” (safety mechanism most likely tripped by one of the Kleptocrat’s videographers) and “broken teleprompter” (all teleprompters used by Cadet Bonespurs wherever he is are operated by White House staff)—they’re calling for “investigations” into “treason” and for the US to “bomb or gas” the UN for making him look like a clown.

Which really demeans this guy because he has demonstrated for decades that he’s fully capable of self-beclowning.

So today’s earworm is from the Everly Brothers. Substitute “Putin” for “Cathy”, and you’ve got it.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

 

They're here

Okay, I’ve not been to Costco for a few weeks, so I don’t know how long this has been there, but this was yesterday, 24 September:

And, on 24 September, I didn’t see any Halloween décor, so if you didn’t get your 12’ skeleton, you’ll just have to go to Lowe’s.

(I didn’t check the candy aisles; they’ll surely still have plenty of Halloween treats, right?)

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Rapturous

If you’re reading this, it means that neither you nor I have been subsumed into the Rapture.

As far as I can tell, no one appears to have been.

I rather suspect that I was never in the rapturous category, for which I confess great relief. The target demographic are not the sort of folks with whom I’d enjoy hanging out—non-bibbers, unhumorous, credulous and generally with a right-wing poker up their butts. But I did kinda hope that those who made the cut would have gone to their reward, thus clearing out the traffic and ease the competition for resources down at the grocery store.

Christian prophets have been predicting the Second Coming of Jesus since the Second Century (when it was pegged at 500 CE, based on dimensions of Noah’s Ark), and they’ve been rolling around ever since. I last wrote about the one that was meant to occur in 2011, with billboards advertising it in The Valley They Call Silicon. There may have been a couple that were called since then, but I evidently didn’t hear about them. In any case, the Almighty has failed to deliver on every one of these, so you’d think that people might be a little more skeptical about the predictions.

But you’d be wrong.

Sadly for the whole world, the core of the End Times believers—evangelical Christians—hold enough sway in the US to fuck things up globally, inasmuch as they elect Republicans to national office on the supposition that it’s been predicted that a war in the Holy Land will usher in the Apocalypse, with the attendant ascension into heaven of all the true believers, and this shapes our current foreign policy.

And you see how that’s turning out.

(Pretty sure that everyone who had to listen to yesterday’s unhinged gibbering by the Kleptocrat at the UN was fervently hoping that this time the Rapture would come just to end that crime against humanity. I only got it in snippets and I wanted to open a vein.)

Well, but no—just like every previous time we were promised an end to it all, that great and terrible Lucy pulls the football away. So welcome back to the secular world.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

 

A new year

Jews around the world gathered with families and friends at sundown yesterday to welcome in the year 5786. Rosh Hashanah begins with the call of the shofar at a synagogue service, and continues with a meal that traditionally includes a round challah (symbolizing the circle of life) and apples dipped in honey (for a sweet year).

It also marks the ten Days of Awe, when Jews reflect upon the past year and consider what they might have done better. The Days end with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when Jews acknowledge the wrongs of the previous year and ask forgiveness—from both the person(s) they’ve wronged and from God.

As I’ve written before, I think it’s a custom that pretty much everyone could benefit from. Most Christians pay lip service (literally) to the notion of atonement when they recite that passage of the Lord’s Prayer that goes, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” But there are a shedload of Christians who run through that whole prayer without giving it much thought. They also run through their lives the same way.

That may be true of Jews at the High Holy Days, too. But I think that taking entire days out of your life and devoting them to thoughts of enumerating your transgressions and asking forgiveness (as well as accepting others’ apologies) tends to focus the mind.

A lot has happened in this world since the start of year 5785. Much of it appalling. Let’s all of us—Jew and gentile alike—see if we can’t do better this time around. I wish all my Jewish friends (whether in Herndon, New York or on a cruise somewhere in the world) L'Shanah Tovah.

 

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

 

Gratitude Monday: Alea iacta est

Thursday I signed with a kitchen and bath contractor to remodel my primary bathroom. I started the research phase on this in June, and started contacting recommended companies in July, so It is a massive relief to have finally pulled the trigger to get this show on the road.

(If you’ll recall, I eliminated one of the six prospects after the “design consultation”, when they gave me a blind estimate of nearly $40k, without scope of work or line item costs. Another one went when I showed up at his showroom on a hot Saturday afternoon and he sat there sipping coffee without offering me so much as tap water. Then gave me a bid close to $30k. A third was much more custom—and costly—than I wanted, and a fourth left me to wallow in making all my choices without guidance.)

I will say that with every round of talking with someone, I learned more about bathrooms and what I actually wanted, so the hours and hours I spent in showrooms and online were not wasted. By the time I got my choices down to two companies, I felt that Elegant gave me more bang for the buck than My; their proposal is a couple of grand under my budget, which gives wiggle room for changes during construction. (Moreover, My’s total, which was already scraping my budget line, still left the toilet, vanity light and shower door to source for myself.)

In the end, Elegant sent me 11 rounds of proposals before I signed. The designer and the project manager came out on Saturday to do the final measurements and confirm scope. I’ll know on Wednesday when they can start work, and then—two weeks later—I’ll have a gleaming new bathroom.

(In addition to a vastly varying spread of cost proposals, the six companies’ estimates of actual project time ranged from eight days to six to eight weeks.)

To remind you: this is the current state of my bathroom:

This is the botch job that someone did with the floor tiles:

I’m grateful to have made it to this point and I'm truly looking forward to having a bathroom I actually want to use.

  

©2025 Bas Bleu