Self- Explanatory

You Really Should

A legendary homodeity named Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth and it shall make you free:

So, word:

You Ought To Be Having Fun

Now, wasn't that liberating?

Not to mention:

Disinterring the Godfather

Eddie Harris

Eddie Harris, according to some jazz cognoscenti, was "serious as a bad x-ray", a phrase I hope to steal when no one's looking. But what he was serious about ultimately, was something that, whatever it was, makes ye have to dance and sing, even if only inside your head while you sit in your audience seat:

Listen Here

Internal Refugees is not just a good name for a punk band...

...it's a real thing. Increasingly, most of America looks like,  or is well on its way to looking like,  this:

Here in Portland, it's mostly all new and grand in our little Pacific Northwest prosperity zone. We don't have run-down buildings. We just have rundown homeless people everywhere.

Why here? Because:

a) many people can't afford to pay the rent, and once you hit the streets, it takes enormous lift to pull you off;

b) this being a prosperity zone, homelessness pays better than it does in, say, Baltimore or Detroit, so local homeless tend to stay while homeless from elsewhere tend to come here to enjoy the relatively good begging, and;

c) while it's wet around here, it doesn't get too cold nor too warm.

Homeless is as homeless does:

Homeless Portland 

"The Trump administration wants to cap the number of refugees admitted into the United States to the lowest number since the resettlement program was created in 1980. A State Department proposal released Thursday would put a cap on the number of refugees at 18,000 for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Of those refugee admissions spots, 5,000 would be set aside for persecuted religious minorities — an attempt to bolster President Donald Trump’s heightened focus on global religious freedom — and 1,500 would be set aside for nationals of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, who are seeking asylum in the United States in far greater numbers."

There would be a wise, if cruel, logic to this in that refugees from where we create mayhem are likely to have a significantly higher proportion of souls angry at USA and willing to do mayhem within. And most refugees derive from our mayhem (including global warming, of which USA is the official avatar). Just sayin'. I ain't buying the logic, but that's cuz I'm a bleeding-heart liberal at the core.

But that logic doesn't apply to refugees from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, nations we have grievously scarred, nations known for producing criminal gangsters of exceptionally violent nature uncommonly adept at besting our oh-so-brave-and-brilliant constabulary as they play Home Soldiers in their used tanks and Operation Desert Storm (that was a recent war, wasn't it? or just a fashion tag?) bulletproof superhero costumes.

If one chooses to assume, however briefly, that there is method to this particular madness, then I suggest the rabid conspiracy notion that this is some kind of steroidal Operation Paperclip on krokodil.

But surely there's a positive logical rationale to this that someone can share with us?

Wadda Mellow Mien

Raised in Chicago but born in South Carolina ('56, y'all, first string of the second wave of Boomers, that generation of Boomers who was too young to remember live broadcasts of Howdy Doody, and know of him only through the few video remnants), I especially appreciate this telling of the One True Genuine Birth of Funk:

Hey! Watermelon Man!

Fiddle you Romans, fiddle!

On Being Human

Human

For further study, perhaps we should visit the zoo?

Zoo

Hot Mess Zoo

Uncle Macron

President Macron’s amazing admission

In which France's president Emmanuel Macron cries uncle and admits that the Western Era is over.

He wouldn't say this unless his benefactors/handlers told him to.

They wouldn't do this unless they were preparing to pull the plug on Euromerica. The shift to the East is now a closing door in full swing. Gonna be harsh when that thing slams.

Rough times ahead, y'all.

Something dirge-like yet uplifting maestro:

Death of Superman

Not that America nor its European cohorts were the superpowered polities they told themselves and each other they were, nor that they fought for truth and justice while enforcing the American way upon others, but the death of an illusion is hard medicine.

Bonus trivia tidbit:

Gastromancy and the Transformation of Internal Flatulence Into Divine Prophecy

We call it spin-doctoring.

Why pick Greta Thunberg?

Because however deranged or unbalanced one may think she is*, she is typical of something you'll be seeing more and more on lots of younguns' faces -- rage based on raw existential fear -- so the Powers That Prevail attempt to preempt this inevitable angry groundswell and place such angry expressions in the "conspiracy theory" lunatic ghetto.

* I don't; I think she's just overwhelmed by everything including now being in way over her head, with or without manuipulative handlers. She was chosen to be allowed to make the noise she has because she was passionately angry in the first place. That is obviously genuine. She's not unique. I personally know a 15-year old girl who is also terrified and angry over climate issues as well as other eco/logic-nomic issues. Orphan girl from Russia adopted by a good friend. Her people experienced some serious cold and other survival challenges during the Russian Reconstruction (caps mine).

The fact that the motivation produced by this hysteria will be used by billionaire interests to make more money selling their eco-scams is secondary, for they use ANY mention of climate troubles to either dismiss the concept, make promises to fix the problem they don't intend to keep, or sell snake oil off the political momentum. Actually fixing the problem would require ceding control of the global oil business to sane survival concerns, and ruling sociopaths simply don't do that without a sharp stick up their colon.

None of this says anything about the physics involved. Meanwhile, yes the world is growing hotter, and yes, it's most likely because we all think we need to live in comfort as The Privileged Species, which would be nice if it were true but it ain't: we're just mutant monkeys who discovered fire. (But God loves us anyway. wll, He has to. We're His brats, after all.)

Human history in a sentence: humanity discovers fire, humanity burns planet to a crisp.

Back to my opener: why pick Greta Thunberg? Why pick on Greta Thunberg? Because she will appease one sector of the political opinion divide (the 'do-it-all-for-us' eco-activist side) while giving the other side some punk kid to make fun of and pick on. Sort of the Anti-Poster Child Syndrome. APCS.

We're NOT rational beings. We're beings who rationalize after the fact.

P.S. Comparisons to Joan of Arc serve both ends: glorifying Greta as chosen child crusader while also labeling her as a deranged lunatic who should be burnt as a witch.

Burn, Babies, Burn!

Sounds Like Church, Sings Like Breakfast

Local folks singing together, the wonder of harmonious voices:

Fortunate Ones

Tomorrow's World

Resuming our normal abnormal broadcast:

Who remembers tomorrow's world?

Tomorrow's World

Born in 1956, I grew up in a culture that went from rocket fins and hula hoops to Earth Shoes and Pet Rocks.

But wait! There's more!

Cute'n'fluffy

Tomorrow: on the care and feeding of smartphones.