Flossie, Snowball, and Lurch – Oh My!

Sunrise from Jen and Oni's Maine vaca

The sun is rising later. It’s not as warm out. I may actually have to dig out an autumn quilt. I’m gonna have to pack away my shorts, figure out where I’ve stashed all my long sleeve shirts, and start wearing socks again, aren’t I?

WTF?!

Guess what! The Orange Moron’s bestie, MusKKK, is responsible for making the death count and destruction in Nepal and Tibet a whole fuckton worse than it otherwise would have been. You’re shocked aren’t you? Yeah, me neither.

“DOGE famously used keyword searches for terms like ‘climate’ to terminate federal grants,” Konyndyk wrote, referring to the DOGE-led blitz to gut funding for USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“Among the victims: a collab between USAID and NASA for flood prediction, early warning, disaster readiness, glacier inventories, and mapping dangerous glacial lakes… in Nepal.”

Spearheaded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, DOGE oversaw around $60 billion in cuts to U.S. foreign aid under the Trump administration, leaving “few surviving” USAID projects in its wake. Among the USAID programs Konyndyk said was affected was SERVIR, a program that produced detailed and advanced flood forecasting with “days lead time” that “allows people to plan and prepare for [floods].” The program also specifically monitored the “potentially dangerous glacial lakes of Nepal.”

A notice from NASA supports Konyndyk’s assertion that SERVIR was impacted by DOGE cuts.

“Earlier this month USAID notified SERVIR partners that they have terminated all agreements and contracts with NASA and the SERVIR network,” the notice, published in late March of 2025, reads. “Without the partnership with USAID, NASA cannot continue the SERVIR program.” (source) 

In other KEE-rist-Almighty-Our-Government-Is-Corrupt-Compromised-and-Mindnumbingly-Stupid news, the FBI is now accepting applicants who’ve raped and/or otherwise abused animals. You know, like your basic serial killer or other random psychopaths.

So, you’ve had your way with Flossie or Snowball? Now you’re worried the FBI will think you’re way too skeevy to hire? No sweat! You’ll be amongst friends and fellow freaks at the FBI!

The new standards also specifically address applicants who have engaged in past acts of bestiality or animal cruelty – saying they may still be considered for the bureau as long as the incidents took place before the age of 18, the sources said.  (source) 

I suppose Krazy Kash will next welcome arsonists, drunk drivers, frat boys, and those tiny schwanzed idiots who feel the need to be heavily strapped when they go to McDonald's for their morning mocha. Sure. Why not? What could go wrong?

America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable
~ Hunter S. Thompson

The youngest of Pedo’s emotionally fractured and stunted spawn – you know, the one who gets dating advice from the raping, pimping, human trafficking, physical assaulting, child porn producing and distributing Tate brothers – has decided to maybe not be as much of a party boy, social butterfly. Why not? Well, there’s supposedly a $10 million bounty on Lurch’s head. Ho hum. Also, he’s reportedly afraid because of all the attempts on his dear father’s life. HAH! I do fully realize that, with Dimbulb Donnie and the smooth brained Slovenian as parents, the kid can’t be anything approaching bright but, C’MON, even a rotting pumpkin has to have picked up that all those "assassination attempts" were nothing but reality tv – fake blood and drama for the rubes. 

I guess Lurch doesn’t even have a decaying winter squash for a brain, eh? Runs in the family.

Here Comes the Flood

I’ve been so caught up by the constant, grotesque news of corruption within our government I’ve totally missed that there’s HUGE, incredible devastation happening in Nepal and Tibet.

Officials say more than 600 people have died and at least 2,426 people are missing following devastating flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday. (source) 

2,426 people are counted as missing SO FAR. Undoubtedly that number’s higher. How many of them are dead?

Sivaranjani Muthunathan was travelling by bus with 56 others to the Chinese border when they became stuck in what they thought was a traffic jam.

“Then there was fog, smoke, something that seemed to suddenly engulf us,” Muthunathan, 46, told Agence France-Presse on Friday, showing a phone video she recorded of a torrent surging towards her. Around them, vehicles were swept away or buried under mud. (source) 

And she survived. Just imgaine.

The Nepalese army was, as of four hours ago, digging through heavy mud that filled a hydropower tunnel. People are thought to be trapped inside. Wow, now there’s a claustrophobia igniting nightmare for me.

China enforces wickedly strict state control and censorship – they took control of Tibet in 1950. So, it’s reasonable to assume that we're not getting the full picture of what's happening on the Tibetan side of the border.

How did this flash flood happen? What was the spark?

Nepal's disaster authority (NDRRMA) described that a chunk of snow and rock broke off near the glacier zone on the Nepal-China border, about 20km northeast of the Rasuwagadhi border crossing.

That avalanche either fell into a glacial lake or blocked the river channel, and the resulting surge, carrying glacial ice, meltwater and debris -- "glacier-inclusive flood" -- swept down the Lhende Khola into the Bhote Koshi river. (source) 

There is no doubt that this is a result of a changing climate, a warming planet.

As the region warms, its ice is becoming increasingly unstable, raising the risk of catastrophic flooding.

"The glaciers over there are definitely in retreat,” says Joseph Shea, an associate professor of geography at the University of Northern British Columbia. “There’s a lot of glacier mass up there, but we’re seeing thinning, we’re seeing retreating.”

Since 2000, the world’s glaciers have lost 5 percent of their ice, with much more drastic impacts in certain regions. Nepal’s glaciers lost nearly a quarter of their area between 1970 and 2010. More than 160 smaller glaciers in the country, research has found, have vanished entirely.

A recent study finds that 40 percent of the world’s glacial ice could disappear if the world does not keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius. (source) 

Weather-wise I live in a pretty calm area of the world. Sure, we get the occasional Snowmaggedon winter and there’s that time it rained so hard for so long that the peninsula Valhalla sits on turned into an island for a few days. Could be way worse! No wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes (none so big you’d notice anyway) and, best of all, relatively few climate change denying republicans. They exist but they’re seriously outnumbered.

I feel lucky. I can’t imagine hobbling around with my walker, making sure I’ve got my myriad life preserving meds with me, getting Cake into his carrier bag, and then attempting to outrun the rampaging headwaters, mud, and debris of a flood. Yup, I’d be seriously, thoroughly dead.

Here Comes the Flood – Peter Gabriel 

Escape!

Amidst the absolutely absurd and the obscene news of the week, I bring Jen and Oni pics from their Maine holiday and some assorted memes and comics. I just can’t bear the fucking news every goddamn day.

I'd rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.
~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
~ Douglas Adams 

Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.
~ Bill Gates

Dolphin rock

The cushion star is one of the few sequential hermaphroditic echinoderms. 
Younger and smaller individuals are males, developing into females as they 
increase in size and age. (source)

Chip Bok

Stephen Pastis, Pearls Before Swine

In the News

Natalie Harp is Trump’s Rasputin? No wait, really! Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report makes the case and I can totally see it. 

Rasputin was a Siberian peasant and mystic who gained immense influence and power over the Emperor’s family after healing Nicholas' and Alexandra's only son of hemophilia. They were then absolute putty in his hands – taking his advice on everything from medicine to politics to war.

Similarly, Harp soothes and applies salve to Trump’s fragile, hopelessly brittle ego. Same result – he's putty. 

Harp isn’t just a passive little girl (I realize she’s 35, but this is how the press keeps characterizing her) with a daddy obsession. She’s a grown-ass woman with strong opinions and a history in rightwing propaganda operations. And now she’s controlling much of what Trump sees and reads and, apparently, even writes on his Nazi-infested social media network. (source) 

Harp's feeding him toxic waste, mad distortions, lies, and who the fuck knows who she’s ultimately working for.
~~~
Dolly Parton and Tim Curry both died on Tuesday. Both were 80-years-old. THE WRONG 80-YEAR-OLDS HAVE DIED!!!
~~~
Pedo postures like the U.S. is winning big in his and Bibi’s lying-ass war of choice in Iran. He’s not. We’re not. On top of that, he’s burned every friendship with every single ally the U.S. has ever had. We’re in a trade war with Canada now? Pedo just stood up South Korea lest he upset his bestie in North Korea? Is he still crushing hard on Vlad or is that cooling since Volodymyr’s kicking ass and taking names? We do know that the orange fuckface can be quite fickle.

Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy. The US is still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth. That status is secure. The current president, contemptuous of law and indulged in lawlessness by a supine Congress, enjoys even greater power than the constitution allows.

With those advantages it takes a special talent for incompetence to look as thwarted and impotent as Trump does with more than two years of his second term still to run.

History will record the war against Iran as a turning point in the fortunes of the current US administration and a grievous wound to national prestige. (source) 

So, with a tantrum toddlering, full diapered, stank breathed, barely sentient, moldy radish brained, volatile, malignant narcissist, who’s not being reined in (quite the opposite) by his advisor, “leader” of our country, OF COURSE we don’t have any friends left! 
~~~~
The Tate brothers – those rapists, sex traffickers, pornographers, liars, BAD fashionistas, and grifting pools of diarrheal gerbil turds are now asking a federal judge to free them from a detention center in Miami. They’re fighting extradition to the U.K. BUT ...

"Under current U.S. law and practice, it is extremely rare that an extradition judge will release on bail a person sought in international extradition," according to the State Department. It adds that only a narrow set of circumstances might lead to bail, such as a defendant suffering from a serious medical condition that can't be treated in jail. (source) 

I’m betting “tertiary stupidity and narcissism” doesn’t count as a serious medical condition.

Supposedly, the White House won’t be saving the day for Pedo’s fellow lying-ass, grifting pedos. Yeah, who knows. Pedo might come in with a dramatic, last minute save for his boys.
~~~
You know how celebrity deaths usually happen in in threes?

Today would be an excellent day for another, NOT so beloved, 80-year-old to meet his maker.

I only mention it.

An Assortment

What if they threw a war and nobody came?

No really. How about everyone just sat the fuck down and said NO, I’m not going. 

It’s a damn shame logic isn’t as infectious as COVID, chicken pox or measles.

Recent footage shared on social media has shown individuals dressed in plainclothes trying to force fighting-age men into vehicles to take them to the recruitment centre, while weeping women try to intervene – echoing similar scenes in Ukraine. 
~~~
The Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies puts the number of deaths among Russian forces since the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 at nearly 450,000. (source) 

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., military recruitment had been on an upswing after years of decline and then Pedo and his astoundingly stupid Secretary of Warcrimes took the wheel. I googled “is enlistment in the armed forces down since the Iran war started?” All the usual military related sites were headlined, All Branches Meeting Targets, Reversal of Slump, Early Goal Completion, and yada, yada, yada.  

Can you say "amateur hour propaganda" kids? Of course you can! It's totally unsurprising that they're spewing happy horseshit. What else can be expected from the Lies, Grifts, and Cons Administration?

NPR had a story from back in April. 

"It's been very, very busy," he says. Galvin is the counseling director at the Center on Conscience and War, which helps run the 24-hour GI Rights Hotline, set up to inform service members of their options for military discharge.
~~~
Military members are citing myriad reasons for wanting to leave, but the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has been a powerful motivator. (source)

I doubt things have improved since April. 
🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️
Jen and Oni are on a wee holiday up in Maine. She’s  sent a few pics. Me? I’ve been sending harassing texts, begging for more pics or, failing that, other assorted entertainments Shockingly, she doesn’t always answer. I suppose I can’t fault her on that. I can be rather annoying. See below.

• Any more pictures? Huh? How ‘bout now, hmmmmm?

• Or a grizzly bear? I’ll take a black bear if you’ve got one. Do they have those in Maine?

• Maybe a squad of Martians in cerulean tutus instead?

• A portrait of 6 dead republicans wearing moldy ferret carcasses on their heads?

• A video of Ron Jeremy and John Holmes doing a duet of I Got You Babe while juggling a trio of beglttered blowup dolls?

• A line of dancing robot skunks wearing lettered hot pink top hats. When they stop twirling (and these skunks stop on a dime — the Rockettes got nothin’ on them) their hats spell out “FUCK TRUMP.” Then, in unison, they lift their tails and fart sparkle dust.

• What about this – karaoke night on a D5 Klingon cruiser. Worf is on board, a little tipsy and climbing up on stage. Will he do it? Does he dare? YES he does. Worf belts out Dancing Queen and the crowd goes wild! You, of course, were able to catch that on your phone video thingie … right?

• I KNOW! You and Oni have befriended a crack team of killer whales. They’re teaching you the ways of their pod but FIRST, martinis and nachos — a pod’s gotta eat ya know. After snacks you’re all off on your mission to take down the next billionaire boat. GO TEAM!

• You’re having ultra secret, closed door (wait … that’s probably redundant or something) meetings with Susan Collins. You’re informing her that trying to distance herself only now from JDouche and Prez Pedo is too little too late and no one buys this act anyway. You told her she’s old, rich, and doesn’t have a lot of life left so she should just follow her lifelong dream and become lead singer in an all nude Starland Vocal Band cover band. Tour the country. GO FOR IT BABE!
👁️ 👁️ 👁️
Found on Threads last night:

The year is 2030. I pull my spear from the sparking wreck of the Flock Droid. 
We shall have water tonight. 
My wife is harvesting Twinkie’s from the ruins. 
A blueberry killed my father. 

It’s 98 degrees in December. 
The wind smells like batteries.

From a golden megaphone, Trump's voice shouts that climate change is a hoax and thermometers are now illegal.
The aliens came in 2029.
They looked at us, looked at the mess, then left.  

They just fucking left. 
~ Ryan Stygar

Make Food Edible Again!

This whole ripping apart of society, treating the working class as if we’re lazy-ass, worthless, perverted beggars who should be thankful to be spit on by fat-arsed, botoxed, planet defiling pedophiles, is kind of counterintuitive. Don’cha think? I mean, being stepped on, being bullied isn’t exactly a big motivator. I don’t think that’s just me.

Also, who's gonna bag their groceries, mix their mojitos, whip up an Iced Coconut Mocha, give them a mani/pedi, clean their homes, fix their cars, plumbing, teach their rugrats, if we're all sick, homeless (so can't score employment), too disabled (from lack of proper, affordable healthcare) or dead?

Project 2025, as planned, promised, and publicly stated, is destabilizing our most basic needs – water, food safety, food, assistance, sleep, clothing, safety, shelter, healthcare, including the meds we need to live, bodily security and there's more to come. They're surgically taking apart society piece by piece.

When we’re hungry and sick, we’re easier to control. If the proletariat are fighting each other for scarce resources, we’ll be too distracted or weakened to go up against them, the real villains who continue to rob us into early graves.  

Desperate people will turn to theft and crime. Where will they be sent? Why, they'll be sent to Trump's for-profit prison pals, GEO Group and CoreCivic. They're currently doing boffo business housing innocent immigrants who've been beaten, terrorized, and kidnapped by Trump's criminally banjaxed ICEholes.

Private for-profit prisons incarcerated 90,873 American residents in 2022, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population. Since 2000, the number of people housed in private prisons has increased 5%. (source) 

The 13th Amendment bans slavery and involuntary servitude BUT that doesn’t count if you’re in the joint. IF you get paid, you’ll be lucky to make 12 to 40 cents per hour.

No need to pay Americans a fair, living wage OR export your work needs to China for cheap menial labor! Now, with Prez Pedo and Project 2025, you can have everything done at the local for-profit prison by Sally, Maria, and Gina. They were imprisoned for stealing Pampers and Cheerios for their kids after SNAP benefits were slashed.

The entire country is going to become, essentially, an open air forced labor camp.

…while commentators agree that about half of Project 2025's proposals have been implemented, that means over half have not, including:

• Rescinding approval of abortion pills and a ban on sending them through the post

• The classification of teachers and librarians who discuss "transgender ideology" with children as sex offenders

• A reduction in US forces in Europe and a shift in the US military's focus towards China

• The addition of a citizenship question to the US Census (source) 

Did you know that frozen blueberries and mixed berries from GreenWise Organic are now on the DO NOT INGEST list? They were subject to a Class I recall at Publix. This means use or exposure could cause serious health problems or death.

Also alfalfa sprouts from Calco and Everything Sprouts brands. These have made more than 65 people across roughly 20 states sick. Thrilling, eh?

One last thing – the collapse of the US farming industry is intentional. It's engineered so the land can be snapped up cheap. The farmers can be kept on as tenant farmers or vasals. They'll run it for the oligarchs. Of course.

Transitions and Trash

We’re in the last weeks of summer. Vacations will be ending soon. School starts back up on September 8th. The sun comes up noticeably later. As a morning person, this always registers as a disturbance in the force. Yeah, I know nothing’s actually wrong but the lessening of the light doesn’t thrill me.

The autumn equinox isn’t until Tuesday, September 22 but I’ve always felt like summer was over when school buses rolled out again.

I may’ve mentioned that Jen, Oni, and I have begun watching Stranger Things during our weekend “tea” times. NOT a warm, sci-fi comedy-drama, like Resident Alien but still a fine distraction from our current reality. It’s a creepy, suspense filled, sci-fi thriller, with evil government labs, alternate dimensions, and middle school kids playing D&D.

The setting is a bleak small Indiana town in the 1980s (that’s the vibe anyway – maybe it’s later but it seems pre-cellphone, pre-internet). The weather seems to be permanently overcast. 

This sounds like it would be a depressing drag, doesn’t it?  It's not.

There’s Joyce Byers’ (Winona Ryder) home though. Joyce is the distraught mother of the missing 12-year-old, Will. She’s a single mother who’s a clerk at the local general store. While she’s definitely not a top earner, this is rural Indiana so it’s, comparatively speaking, inexpensive. 

The house she and her two sons live in is the epitome of white trashdom. I mean, it’s not just a ramshackle mess, it’s grubby and grimy down to a molecular level. Dingy doesn’t even begin to describe it. It looks like it’s made out of cardboard and has never, ever been tidied let alone cleaned. Also, there is just SO much junk laying about. Fer Christ’s sake, a house fire would be a mercy. 

So far, this is the only part of the show that’s bugging me. Ya see, Joyce doesn’t come off as white trash. She’s certainly frantic and disturbed about all that’s happening (as one would be, what with a missing child, monsters and shit) but she seems to be intelligent and sane. She appears to be logically, scientifically working through the clues she’s given.

So, why is she living in this toxic waste dump? Paradox anyone?

Related – I’ve read that the term white trash is considered by some to be a terribly derogatory and offensive slam against all low-income white people. 

When poor (or formerly poor) white folks do get portrayed in the media and pop culture, they're often reduced to a series of offensive stereotypes: that they're angry, lazy, dirty, overweight, sunburned, stupid, racist, alcoholic, abusive, jobless, tacky, diseased, violent, backwards, Bible-thumping and uneducated. (source) 

This is NOT Joyce. WHY are they living in this beyond bleak house that looks like it’s given up its will to live?

When I use the term white trash, I’m referring to people of any income or education level who fail to behave in a rational, sane, kind manner. Fer instance, Prez Pedo and his entire administration are white trash. Pedo’s MAGAt cult (AKA the new Klan), are all white trash. Elon MusKKK is MOST def white trash. Bozo the multi-billionaire, same. 

Also, there are the folks who spend the rent and grocery money on Trump merch and wear shirts that proudly proclaim they welcome the president’s sexual assaults.

I only mention it but J6 was Woodstock for white trash.

There’s Rachel Powell, business owner, mother of eight, and rioter who was convicted of three felonies and six misdemeanors. She def counts as white trash. David Dempsey, who had been sentenced to 20 years for stomping on police officers' heads, amongst other things during the riot, and then pardoned by Pedo. He's white trash. Andrew Taake assaulted Capital cops with pepper spray and a metal whip. He was sentenced to over six years and pardoned. Andy was just rearrested on child sex crimes charges. Trash. Theodore Middendorf pleaded guilty to destruction of government property. He’s now doing 19 years for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old. That’s worse than trash.

At least 40 January 6th insurrectionists pardoned by President Trump have been rearrested, charged or sentenced for other crimes since January 6, 2021, according to new analysis by CREW. At least 12 pardoned insurrectionists have allegedly reoffended since receiving their pardons. Several have argued that the pardon should cover unrelated criminal convictions and in one case in November 2025, Trump explicitly re-pardoned one insurrectionist for his unrelated weapons charges.

Seven of the pardoned January 6th insurrectionists are charged with committing child sex crimes, ranging from sexual assault to possession of child pornography … (source) 

Go read the full piece at Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington’s site (dated December 18, 2025 – the figures are undoubtedly MUCH higher now). It’ll blow your mind. At least 97 former Capitol rioters have been accused of other post-J6 crime. 

This, these people are white trash.

Words to Bring Back, etc.

Things I do when I'm stuck in a rut and don’t want to read the news, dwell on my shitty health or that of my sweet, precious middle-aged baby cat, and it’s raining AGAIN (I know, I know. We totally need the rain but ...). I peruse the thesaurus and look up the history of words.

Yes, yes, I AM in fact just a thrill a minute. You guessed it!

Here are some interesting words for “cool” or “excellent” from the The Historical Thesaurus of English with the approximate dates they were first recorded (unless otherwise noted, these originated in England):

1560: jelly (Scots)
1609: twanging
1613: topgallant
1666: spanking
1757: daisy (U.S.)
1762: immense 
1776: ripping 
1794: dandy (U.S.)
1802: smick-smack I like this one. (Let's bring it back!) Geez Jen, that new painting of yours is really smick-smack!
1827: pure merino (Australian) Audrey, that new haircut is pure merino.
1828: supernacular I'm telling you, that caprese sandwich was absolutely supernacular!
1838: lummy (originally probably/maybe a variation on "Lord love me")  
1846: ripsnorting 
1866: up to dick (I'd really like to know the etymology of this one!)
1872: spiffing 

1879: fly (U.S.) 
1882: all wool and a yard wide (I imagine this one would go big in knitting circles even now.)
1901: v.h.c. (very highly commended) – totally textable, eh?
1915: bobby-dazzling (I'm confused. Does this mean that you've impressed a cop with some glittering display of some sort? Slipped the cuffs while juggling sparklers, perhaps?)
1919: snodger (Dunno, this sounds more like what you do to empty out a stuffed up nose than a synonym for excellent. Maybe that's just me?)
1953: ridgey-didge
1962: bad-assed
1964: radical
1972: superstar
1976: bodacious (U.S.)
1980: stonking
1989: kicking

In the not-so-cool realms is bummer.

Bummer began in 1850–55, probably from the German word Bummler – “to take a stroll, dawdle, loiter.” In the U.S it somehow became synonymous with drunks and vagrants.

 "(obsolete, historical) A forager, especially in Sherman's March to the Sea of November to December 1864"

"(US, slang, dated) An idle, worthless fellow, without any visible means of support; a dissipated sponger” (source) 

Somehow, in the ‘60s, bummer’s meaning morphed into slang for a bad trip. Now we say any old nasty thing or experience is a bummer (no off batch Orange Sunshine or Blue Cheer required). i.e., These pancakes didn’t have nearly enough blueberries. Bummer, man.

Does anyone still say bummer? Just us ancient relics?

AND … here are a few cartoons with commentary on some of the news of the week. You’re welcome. 

Bill Bramhall

Nick Anderson

Pedro X. Molina

David Horsey