crap

Vexes and Exes

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Per the internet: “Vex is a verb meaning to annoy, frustrate, worry, or cause difficulty to someone, often through minor or persistent provocations.”

Is there any word better to describe our current President? He vexes us. He is vexacious(sic). A persistent annoyance. Why? Ask him. Ask him why his name has to be on everything. Ask him why he needs to make the 250-year-old seat of our government look like Mar-A-Lago. As the national debt climbs, wars rage, and government shuts downs are the norm, he has the time and the money to build ballrooms, gold-plate the White House, rename buildings, centers, and traditions using tax-payer money, and hire anyone to do anything for his Cabinets. DOGE, my ass. The OBBB, (One Big Beautiful Bill) is starting to take effect. That’s vexing. As Our President Plays Golf (OPPG), million-dollar drones are launched at minor but irritating enemies. And so many bombs have been bombed OPPG asks for $1.5 TRILLION….TRILLION in his new budget to replace the ordinances heroically liberating Iran and saving us from the nuclear bomb they have been “two weeks away” from since…1995? Can’t remember, but you can find 30 years of videos by hawkish politicians about how Iran is either two weeks away from a nuclear weapon or their nuclear capabilities have been “obliterated” by the previously mentioned bombs. Not only vexing but dizzying.

AI says I can use “vex” as a noun as long as I don’t mind sounding old-fashioned.*

So OPPG and my ex-girlfriend are Vexes, capitalized to make them Proper Nouns, a more accurate description than common nouns.** Why do I lump them both into the newly created Dustbin of Vexes? Neither of them give a shite about me. Or you, probably.

Our Vexator In Chief only cares about people who have money, mainly so they can give it to him, while my ex doesn’t care about me at all…for anything. If God offered the chance to get even with one Vex it would be a tough decision to let God rain his wrath on either of them, since it means the other might escape unscathed.  Yes, I should ask for World Peace. Maybe by the time God grants me the “The Option” my level of vexation will have un-vexated enough to be more magnanimous.*** And unselfish.

And there is another vexation: why should I/we have to be unselfish (and magnanimous) when our leaders and lovers won’t be? For 74 years I’ve been a model citizen, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous–and occasionally decent–politicians. Why am I getting this one, this vexator, so late in life, in my golden years?

Same for the ex. After 50 years of meandering, I settled on her to be “The One”, and truly enjoyed 20 years of stray-free monogamy until she left me with to suffer OPPG and loneliness in my mid-70s. It took her that long to realize what a terrible person I was?

I’ll be obvious for all who have trouble with nuance, or possibly passive-aggressive behavior: Any females reading this looking for a good-old-fashioned man?

I should have thought of this sooner and saved dating site money. Hope I remember to cancel the subscription.

A crappy final thought that literally just came to me: did I vex the ex for those 20 years?

Also, a warning. yesterday I stored a package of cheese in the silverware drawer.**** Let the games begin.

*There is no difference between “old” and “old fashioned” when you are—actually-old.

**Proper nouns are specific. Common nouns are not. No extra charge for the grammar lesson, but you owe me.

****And took an hour to find it, which included asking Ai if the cheese was still okay to eat. It was Extra Sharp Cheddar,

***Ai or google “magnanimous” and ponder the lengths you’d go to elect a leader like that word.

*****Footnotes out of order. It’s a cognitive test. How did you do?

Notable News, and Not All About Trump…But Some

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The recent—March 2026–war in Iran is becoming an hot-button, circle-the-wagons political issue, so Vice President JD Vance announced there is a new “Whole of Government Crackdown” on fraud in the “benefits system.” No other quotes, just wonder…are they bringing back DOGE? Is Elon returning? What happened to all the FWA* (Fraud Waste and Abuse) they found in 2025? Did they miss some?

And will they focus on the billions of dollars of abuse in defense contracting and political consulting, or just the millions in Benefit Fraud?

Unrelated(?), there is an unverified report online detailing how much it costs when the President goes golfing. I ignored it and have no idea if it is about Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, or Trump. You’ve got a brain; you decide who the article is about. No, golf is not FWA. Why do you ask?

A 2024 study recently reviewed and updated in the journal “Nature”, reports sea level rise has been miscalculated: “99% of coastal sea level studies over the last two decades…have effectively missed about 10 inches of actual ocean height.” The lengthy report will put any non-scientist to sleep, but its main conclusion is we have never found a good way to estimate and then track actual sea level rise. Uh-oh. Buy any beach property lately? No? Then fugeddahabout it. But note how science works: it watches over and corrects itself, especially as we learn new ways to see and do things.

Tiger Woods did something. I didn’t bother to read that article, either,  but the headline was interesting. Hey, it’s Tiger. For God’s sake. It’s not like some scientist found a cure for cancer.

After years of internet news aggregator reads, I’ve found myself automatically avoiding news from certain sources and even looking for news specifically from other sources. My age gives it way but I look for a byline from sources like Time, Newsweek, Popular Mechanics, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, even Fox. You CAN trust legacy media to NOT report on and circulate non-news, and misinformation.** Yes, there will be a slant, spin, or bias, in their reporting but there will also be a grain of truth. Try it. So many of the “feeds” picked up by our news aggregators are from podcasts, lone wolves, and personalities. Sort them out and ignore them or read them with an eye to clicks instead of news. As if, right? Love those kitty videos.

Baseball is here. The Yankees. And some other teams. There is (famously) no crying in baseball but let’s see how long that holds true. There will be bleating, bellowing, moaning, yelling, excoriating, insulting, screaming…and lost sleep.

But no crying. Ah, summer in upstate NY.

Wonder how the Mets will do this year.

Buffalo Bills? Were you thinking of the Bills? Too soon. Don’t jinx them.

And no, no update on the Blinds. May start a GoFundMe page so stay tuned.

*per AI: “in the world of compliance and government oversight, ‘Fraud, Waste, and Abuse’ is a catch-all term to describe the various ways resources—most often taxpayer dollars or healthcare funds—are misused.

**They can get sued for it. Right, Fox? And maybe CBS? Jimmy Kimmel?

Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah

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Is that enough blahs for you?

When there is some dead space in my overactive life*, I Watch television. Sorry. Hope this doesn’t affect your vision of me as a hand-on-the-chin Rodin thinker, but television/media is the Window to the World.

Sidebar: Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” was meant to be a clothed, self-portrait of the sculptor sitting atop the Gates of Hell, admiring the Circles of Hell and pondering Dante’s poem. Rodin, to his credit, noticed the figure had a more powerful message and purposely stripped it naked. It is thought to be the first artistic expression of an intellectual with muscles. It was publicly unveiled in 1904. Yet, to this day we still think of brainy people as nerds and weaklings. Since intellectuals are so smart, how did they let that image proliferate? Or…is it an image they prefer, so they get underestimated? We all know, now, we can’t trust those intellectual types and their woke ideas, but are they playing us, leading us around by the nose? Take your clothes off, sit on an uncomfortable granite slab, and give it some thought.

I left Upstate New York and traveled south by car a few weeks ago. The trip began with long pants, solid shoes for walking in the snow, two layers of clothes, and gloves. 24 hour later—after an overnight rest—I was in shorts and sandals and cranking up the AC. Durham, NC is going to set a record today of over 90 degrees. When I drive home in a few days the weather in NY will be snow, sleet, and freezing rain. The range of climate is not the impressive part. What is impressive as hell is how easily we can move between these varying climates. We take it for granted. If it was Gunsmoke days, it might take weeks, even months to find a different biome. It is a wonderful world.

But not for News, and Information is slowly rotting, as well. The first problem with our news and information disseminating systems, is Capitalism. The ever-present need for profit means, these days, commercial time in our media centers is paramount, content be damned. Forget the need for a commercial every three seconds and note the timing, when something neat is about to happen or be revealed, your media cuts to an advertisement. We see you, you capitalist shites. We know what you’re doing. But can we do anything about it? The Window to the World is covered over with bumper stickers.

But hold on, what about that damned “content”? It is apparent** there is a lot of money to be made by…talking. Blah blah blahing. Spitting words. Mangling sentences. Mouthing opinions either believed or tailored for certain information silo consumption. News is now 5 seconds of fact and 23 hours and 55 seconds of talking heads, each with his own ass-inine(sic) take on some ass-inine(sic) subject. News  head: “America dropped $10 million dollars worth of bombs on the Middle East, today. Here to discuss it is our Talking Head Panel (THP) of experts.” Of note, there is always at least one female with the flowing tresses of modern fashion, and at least one man with a beard hiding his wattle. (Don’t pretend you know what a wattle is. Look it up.)

With our information silos, you can find any THP discussing any subject you want and offering any opinion you agree with or would like to argue against from the safety of your living room, you troll. And how about CNN actually including on-line comments in their news reporting, now? Should anyone care about the opinion of one lazy, partially informed, but supercilious listener/watcher/critic/snark? (For full effect google “supercilious.)

Thank, God, this essay ran out of room before something stupid got printed.

I’m going to watch me some Gunsmoke on Grit*** and hope the world goes on without me.

            *”Dead” is probably not a good word for a senior to use, but you all know what I mean.

**”At this point in time going forward to the future.” Ha.

***Or Rich Steves travel show on PBS. A true Window to the World.