The Mepps Aglia is an international currency in sport-fishing -- Often cast frivolously like a coin into a fountain, with a single wish. 

To catch fish can take some time and what better way to squander some time than to learn to cast, properly?

A shimmering gold coin coveted by committed anglers. A French trinket treasured by dads, nearly as iconic, subtly popular, but as sustaining as the Eiffel Tower -- The MEPPs Aglia hails from Paris, then from Nice, and then from rural Wisconsin, where it swelled like orange cheese in popularity.

Curiously under-celebrated, This Lure is more enduring than most popular brands -- MEPPS and in particular the "Aglia" [Super Shimmy] rotating spoon, remain both the Air Jordan and the Coca-Cola of anglers. MEPPS have been the gold standard lure longer than most notorious brands. These spinners are at once ubiquitous, elegant, and intrinsically valuable.  It is fair to say that every single tacklebox has once held this 'Classique' in it's accordion tray. The Original MEPPS Spinner has caught more trophy fish than any other casting lure, except perhaps the lowly worm. Nearly as many people have suffered the indignity of snagging one upon a branch or a log. And the frequency of this mishap is owing solely to it's ubiquity, and lack of practice. Perhaps because a MEPPS is a "Secret Weapon" for those with and without fishing skills of any kind, MEPPS are often rediscovered along shorelines and in strange sand castles.  If you can't cast, and you cannot golf..., at a certain age, you can blame your Dad, for both, but the blame wont fix that void.

Practice.

For many children, a parent's selfish cruelty is first revealed beside the water's edge. Here an unwitting kid haplessly tosses a cheap popper, or a snell and bobber with a plunk! -- Frightening the fish, parents will shush...! their children, teaching them nothing but the quiet zen of patience. Soon, Dad will snag his second precious spinner on a reed, or a branch proving one should practice what they preach.
To learn to cast, is a cruel school without good instruction, and every novice believes they have skills, until they lose a favorite lure. This is a lesson imparted from one patient person to the next, but who has patience any more.  Skill cannot be learned on youtube, only the mechanics...
Most amateurs steer clear of fly fishing, and Tenkara, because they never graduate Spin-Casting 101. Most people never advance beyond the Zebco 202.

From the perspective of a child of six or seven, subtle subterfuge from Dad would seem inconceivable. That a $3.50 lure would be his guarded secret -- Even lorded over by a parent is soon discovered by every child. Concealed like a chemical addiction -- A parent keeps the good stuff (the real lures) for themselves, as if to guarantee their catching success.  This very same discovery is shared by children all over the world every spring. 
By Mid-Summer, the "family vacation" predicts that a small child will bear witness to another inconceivable parental phenomena. Shortly after dad snags his secret lure on a branch with another bad cast... All the rules of fishing become moot.  The very mistake he'd tried to prevent his kid from making, brings brief madness, as dad works to recover his "precious lure". He pulls-up a tiny anchor winds tightly his reel's drag, and then literally powers his small craft toward the stuck lure by reeling-in alone.  Aghast, the silent witness attends to dad's imminent cursing. When suddenly with a screech, Daddy lurches losing his footing as he breaks his 12lb test,  mid-route to an out-of-reach lure snagged up on a branch. 

There it hangs, glistening and lovely, but just out of his reach.

With 12 more Jigs, 2 Rapalas, 9 Plastic Worms, and 1 lil' Cleo,  in the tackle box, any sober child would find no reasonable excuse for dad to be so bereft at the loss of one tiny lure... Yet there it hangs, glistening and lovely, but just out of his reach. Alas, with such a setback, the day is called off, just as an unwitting child hooks a bass.

Et MEPPS alors? 
André Meulnart, ingénieur chez Peugeot, passionné de pêche et de mécanique, à l'époque de l'avènement du lancer léger dans les années 30 met au point pour son usage personnel des cuillères et des moulinets à tambour fixe (le Vamp et le Baby Vamp)
Son succès grandissant, il crée en 1938 une entreprise à Paris : la Manufacture d'Engins de Précision pour la Pêche Sportive (MEPPS)

The English Translation: www.mepps.com/information/aglia-dressed-aglia/121#B3%20G
André Meulnart, an engineer at Peugeot, passionate about fishing's mechanics, at the advent of light throwing in the 1930s, developed both spoon lures and fixed drum reels (the Vamp and the Baby Vamp).
His success growing, in 1938 he created a company in Paris: the Manufacture d'Engins de Précision pour la Pêche Sportive (MEPPS)

It should, perhaps always come as a surprise when a lure actually works, and a naive Fish takes the bait. Afterall, a lure is a rather crude object when we consider just how un-like dinner it should appear to a fish. Another mesmerizing fact is that the first real English bible of fishing, complete with snell and lure designs, knots, illustrations, and instructions for anglers, in varying water depth and temperature was written and published in the 15th century by a brilliant Benedictine Nun named Juliana Berners. Her Book: Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle,  c.1496, along with her books on falconry, and hunting, innovated sport fishing nearly as much as  Ron Popiel's "Pocket Fisherman".  The term 'angle' from the old English angol meaning fish hook, is a more or less modern invention in fishing, as compared to a spear, a rock, a net, dynamite, or using one's hands.  This first English illustrated guide to fishing, was (to me) revelatory, and still provides valuable pro tips for modern fishing.  The fish have perhaps evolved some since 1496, and some are a bit more wary -- But a magical lure is still a bit more magical when one considers the fish they pursue, and that a glittery smashed penny could angle a fishy.

Visiting Kauai, New Zealand, or any island fishing culture in Oceana -- City folks discover local's tattoos, T-shirts, and necklaces celebrating home-made whale bone hooks, and harpoons.  Big game fisherman have learned how to empty the sea without the need for these throw-back technologies, but the "Angle" and the modern hooked lure fascinate us as we acknowledge both their heritage, and their simple elegance. Fishing after all brings at once a primal sense of conquest, trickery, and wonderment. As a bow is to a shotgun, fishing remains a rather refined skillset.  A primitive hook can still be effective to angle a fish in much the same way the MEPPS lures do.  The above illustration is of a Maori Hook from the turn of the last century. A Modern knock-off can be found today on Amazon for sixteen bucks, is likely plastic, and has no special power. By Contrast the original MEPPS Aglia design is also available nearly everywhere, it is still made in France, and still out catches, nearly every lure globally. According to MEPPS, The Aglia Lure (nearly as old as the relic above) is claimed to be the most effective lure ever sold. In the years that immediately followed it's import, MEPPS had sold more than 3 million lures annually.

French Fishing Ingenuity Jumps the Pond:
When MEPPS came to America it was out of frustration, as most great discoveries come to be. It could be said that good things come to those who wait, and great discoveries come to those who stick it out year after year, refining an idea.  Brilliance, and landing a fish seems to  come once everyone else has abandon the idea.  This is where fables are constructed.
The development and subsequent popularity, (but not the invention itself) of the MEPPS spinning spoon is linked to a sportsman and outfitter from Antigo Wisconsin.
Todd Sheldon, an American fisherman had a frustrating day fishing. Which is of course far better than a good day at the office -- But when in mid-summer 1958, nothing was working in his tackle box, Sheldon took a chance on something new ...ish. Before heading home with an empty creel, he tied on a lure which had remained unused for years in his tackle-box.  A friend gave him the lure, two years prior,  but He'd not cast it before, as he'd not considered it's potential for local waterways. While trying the MEPPS lure for the first time, Sheldon pricked four trout straight away...  Combined, his catch weighed in at 12 lbs, and For Sheldon, this strange (new) French spinner was a revelation.
​
Owning a chain of sporting outfitter stores that offered fishing tackle, Todd Sheldon immediately contacted his GI friend, Franck Velek who'd brought him back the original MEPPS as a gift from France, where he'd been stationed during his service. Franck in turn contacted André Meulnart, (it's inventor) whom he then put directly in contact with Todd Sheldon. Todd and André quickly became friends and business partners, and MEPPS would soon invade the US market.
Back then, the MEPPS company based near Nice, employed 70+ people (mostly women), making fishing tackle. Using its own copper alloy, brass windings, and stainless steel, MEPPS lures became the gold standard in light casting Lures.  Today the company has grown globally, and distributes its spoons worldwide, with the original model, still produced in France, and still in the catalog after more than 80 years.

When Todd Sheldon first started importing Mepps spinners from France, he'd realized that the people who'd been assembling them since the war were mostly women, but were also incredibly efficient workers. He saw no imperative to expand production to the US, and He also found out that they'd worked faster when they had a steady supply of nylon stockings. Nylon and silk were scarce in post-war Europe, and the French workers were eager to trade countless lures for new or used silky hosiery. Todd went about marketing lures to sportsmen, and paying for many in barter.
Soon Sheldon started sending nylon stockings to the Mepps factory in exchange for spinners! For a time, his most reliable source of lures came not through exchanged currency, but through stockings. Mepps even advertised this arrangement back in the late fifties, and early sixties with slogans like “Send us your worn nylon stockings and get a fishing lure in return".

​Interestingly  MEPPS still barters with consumers, providing discounts on tackle, or swag,  in exchange for raw materials used in lure production.  By the early 60's fellow MEPPS anglers near Antigo Wisconsin had adapted the original MEPPS to lure different fish species, and in different conditions.  Darker skies, warmer temps, more tannic water... all moved anglers to modify the original MEPPS spoons, with paint, or even by tying squirrel hair around their hooks.  Later, the following season (and  even today), MEPPS would adapt lure versions with fur to conceal the hook, provide buoyancy,  and to provide unique turbulence below the water's surface... Subsequently the  "Squirrel Tale"  lure was "invented" with fur hula-skirts prepared around the hooks, and MEPPS would sell them ready for service for a few cents more. Today MEPPS still rewards locals for bringing them a steady supply of squirrel tales, which are triple washed, and sometimes dyed colors for various lure designs. Another fun fact is that a squirrel tail is unique because it is hair and nor fur, making the long hairs perfect for luring fish, whereas fur, doesn't share that same excitement. The Rest of the wiley Squirrel is "Fur", and not "Hair", and hence unsuitable for Lure designs.

What is most fascinating about MEPPS is just how popular they are, and how many people use them.  In a sporting store the MEPPS are likely in the back, forcing consumers to pass many other fascinating tackle options en-route to the sure-fire solution, The MEPPS Aglia. 

Today fishing still requires perhaps as much dumb luck as skill -- But a proper tackle-box arsenal will always lean heavily upon the MEPPS if all else fails.

A good angler can tie many effective knots; And a good sailor will warn, that if you cannot tie a good knot, then you should tie lots of them. Which is how most people approach fishing.
Both using the lure properly, and keeping the actual lure require some skill to cast, and perhaps that patient Zen of silence. Fishing is, I suppose, a bit like golf. Both may involve warm beer, a bit of boredom, and teach gobs of patience. Whereas many senses are tapped to focus on, or even tune-out many things at once: wind, waves, sun, shade, sounds, birds, insects, falling leaves and of course fish. The glimmer of the object once it leaves your hands, is sublime...  In Fishing, Unlike golf, the cup is always moving, the fairway is under water, and generally the pin is never visible, until like lightening, it strikes you.

And just like golf..., The price of the rod, reel, tackle, vest, line, lure, and even the net won't make a great Angler -- But a MEPPS Aglia 3 can lower ones handicap significantly.
​

As the Bowline is to the sailor..., any angler should know how to tie on a hook.

I am no Muscle car, but this July Fourth, rears fearful memories of rednecks peeling out of the corner bar, where they'd just cashed paychecks. Angry Americans who've slammed several beers, right before racing to the state line to fill Nova & Chevelle trunks with lethal fireworks. History is littered with such cautionary memories. Masculine, yet shitty cars define the 'american man', and perhaps America. Defending dumb-shit nostalgia, and un-deserv-ed freedoms, is the 'American Operating System 1.1'
​Me personally,  ...I am perhaps a Pontiac Fiero..., A decent enough looking attempt at a sports-car, but just as lame.  The facsimile of something fast, but wimpy, and scaled-down -- perhaps effeminately sexy, but with no redeeming features whatsoever, except that it doesnt look like a pick-up truck, thank god!

America is a has-been muscle-car, obsolete, uninspired, and in need of nut and bolt restoration.

Like a Corvair, or Karmann-Ghia. I am underpowered, dim, and anemic, ... [you know, like a Fiero]. My interior is spartan, dashboard confusing, and the AC is broke.  I was built in America, mid-day Friday, right before the holiday weekend began.  No skilled labor on this production line, and no one is trying to impress management the day before a July 4th holiday. This factory is working it's way towards the door, not towards Quality.

Just before Pussy Fiero sales fizzled-out -- This relic, (a pretend muscle car in drag), was perhaps briefly cool. Today the Fiero, and so many other Pontiacs line the bottom of the scrap-yard, even their second-hand parts go un-used. Which is basically where America now celebrates independence.
In the 80's auto workers hustled to slap sections together, wandering the factory floor beneath day-dreams of charcoal briquettes, potato-salad, and picnic blankets -- But never working on car quality. So it happened that my underbody immediately began to rust through -- my clear coat fades by the day, timing chain was slack, and the cylinder head split. But I know who I am, and that I live in a strange republic full of red-necks, risk, and dark forces.   Independence Day means different things to many "Americans", but to me, it means sticky vinyl car-seats, plastic-chrome window cranks, leaky metal coolers, and pre-catalytic smog. It is a season of snagging carp, piss-warm shit beer, and mosquito bites.  There isn't much else to regale on "The Fourth", but its fair to mention I don't feel half as free today as when this Fiero rolled off the line.  I'd feared a small part of America back when I was young, but now I shudder at most of what I witness.

“A clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower.”

American Anthems steer us 'down to the levee', but the nostalgic levee is hot, dry, and masked ICE agents are waiting below the bridge to arrest dissenters.  Awkwardly, we all gather around as friends with a few kilos of TNT to celebrate how things used to be.  Because... why not blow some shit up to celebrate our freedom to blow some shit up?

"If we had a fast car -- Maybe together we could get somewhere".       ​-Tracy Chapman.
​

Whatever your opinion of American Muscle cars, the best ones are well in our past, despite what Corvette & Mopar owners may claim -- And perhaps, the past is where they, and their owners belong. Stellantis, doubled down on gaudy muscle cars heaving Hemi Engines, from zero to sixty, and eventually... Regardless of the 'Turner Diaries' reconstruction, America will abandon stupid muscle cars altogether. Gasp!, Stellantis is looking at a few billion dollar short-fall this quarter, mostly on throwbacks, and muscle cars.  Eventually even tacky boxy NASCAR crap will be Electric. Sometimes, on a holiday such as this, the "glory days" is just so fucking unbearable. Watching people cling to the past. Watching drunk paralytic tongues resuscitate Seeger anthems, imagining themselves stoned in a pit-crew, spraying fuel into a fake muscle car, tells the tale.  The cars rolling around the actual track are so far and away from what you can buy at the dealer, that the game of pretense that you are 'kind of' a race car driver, is a joke.  Post apocalypse, the same proud red-necks who'd frightened youth, are still with us, but they are now running "government". While one may hope that they expire in a blaze of inglorious petrol on a riding mower... This dumbass muscle car never goes out of style. Your neighbors are pushing the same white-cleanse agenda from before the noughties. The mass extinction of masculine hubris will alas take more time to fizzle out.

Around this time four years ago, Charlie Sykes said during an appearance on MSNBC, “A clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower.”, and that is where we sit to celebrate our "Independence".

  To me, the pageantry of the Independence Day parade, (which is full of clowns by the way), is where we reflect upon a trunk full of ice,  beer, wieners,  and quarter-sticks of dynamite. July Fourth is always framed in front of a hot grill,  with a masculine maniac in a mullet squeezing a can of Gulf Lite into a blaze. It is a fearful season marked by a fuck-ton of potential energy, that can (and does) go really quickly the wrong way.

Relax...! this is all senseless drivel, and America is stronger than ever before. 

But the Clown still has a flamethrower...
Setting the whole shebang ablaze is the birthright of All Americans, and for anyone named Larry, Gary, Don, or Rod, as these clown names require no Green Card, nor Citizenship documents.   
Self Immolation of American evil cannot happen quickly enough, and it's fucking hot out today. And... Oh,  "The Clown still has a flame-thrower..."
But fireworks, and hunting rifles are merely prequel plinking practice for America's next celebrity school shooter. Here in america, we get a break from the media clown-car only when liberal bastion gets shot up, or flooded.
A Rocket's Red Glare will soon bring us together around a funeral, and a  celebration where C.C.R. & Eagles anthems, along with white pride, fill smoky skies. The sulfur themes of racial enslavement are coming up the rear. This year, [on the 4th] we will blow some shit up, just before  our hangover wakes us up to the fact we are no longer free -- So what's with the fireworks? We are so un-free, that even "South Park" is pulling punches, stating, "I don't know what else we can say about Trump", (or even Trumpism).
Strange to celebrate civil liberty, when we are far from free.  Not in the press, not in public, not free to protest, and not free to travel, not free to worship... We are not free from taxation without representation, and we are certainly not free to love whomever we desire. So grab a can and burn some shit, because fire is cleansing.  Man it's hot outside!
​ 

Every Billboard on my holiday drive is for Fireworks, and Personal Injury Attorneys. Which is to say plainly, more than a bit ironic. People role play, burning shit down,  blowing shit up, and shooting things, perhaps so that they don't advance to the next round.
When Independence Day rolls around [again], people either stock-pile dangerous explosives, or are trying to escape those with them.
As I steer cautiously toward a rural cottage beside a lovely lake, I understand that the sweaty Orange sunset will soon bleed with purple, pink, and brown... while explosives smolder It's fore-ground. two inches to the right and we would have moved away from our dread... but today we fear the desperate red-necks more because the gloves are off on white pride.
I’d suppose in the whole of the world, there has never been a paradise like America so enamored with its sordid conquests, slave history, neck tats, and danger that we celebrate, NOT independence from autocracy... And our freedom to fuck shit up.  Sweaty drunks coated with bug-spray and sunblock, squirt lighter-fluid, unleashing wild flames and ruin upon a lovely landscape. Children dance and twirl sparklers, and here again we slump, to gaze over our gut as the lit wick of independence sputters out.

Independence day, and the vacancy of government, are a  mirror of America's disrepair. Seriously, who drives a Chrysler "muscle car" anyways?

"But, I can't go for that."   -Hall and Oats

And why shouldn’t our “leaders” posses the full measure of our basest instincts. Waxing an old muscle car, like polishing a gleaming weapon, is how we lovely Americans now relate to our post apocalyptic World. We have strange cars, strange tools, and stranger Fashion. Those who still do their own car repairs, and their own grocery shopping, on balance betray our belle-epoch with fistfuls of refined sugar, warm beer,  wieners, and vapes. 

From our revolutionary war through the cold war, fashion never revealed so much [sigh] about American supremacy as it does today. Beneath a proud muffin-top, a track-suit, a tatted neckline, and velour airport pajamas -- Free expression in America's fashion defines the coach-class slave we are today. We see ourselves as celebrities,, influencers,  but we are pretty vacant. Everyone rides in Steerage, imagining themselves as influential. Today, haute couture is measured in Fleecy slippers, Ironic T's, and it's washed down with a 96 OZ Big Gulp thermos.
American celebrity status is measured by "limited edition" Sneakers, stretch-pants, and elastic waistbands. Our true brilliance reflected in a gleaming gigantic Costco shopping cart.  To see one's reflection in these thin chrome bars is at least a bit slimming.

Independence Day means that America is now free to consume buffalo wings, lick it's fingers, and then lose them to a firecracker. All we 'Free Americans' need to understand this holiday is found scrawled along the rural-route through Indiana, or Georgia. Banners for Injury Attorneys, Casinos, Fast Food, and Fire-Works, beg allegiance. That Star Spangled Banner yet waves, yes -- But it has been defiled, misappropriated, and soiled. Luckily it comes with extra bacon, and ghost pepper sauce.
Even the mega-church is seeking new parishioners, but they too fly the flag  upside-down out on the lawn -- An unsubtle nod to restoration of America's white racist Christian  tyranny.
Bright-sides...!, you can now hire an attorney with or without missing fingers using a QR code whilst speeding to the E.R.
Any reasonably advanced civilization,  Is measured by it's cart-size,  waistline, and heartrate.  We are growing, so to speak, into our role as a "has-been" empire, ruled by a has-been emperor like Jabba.

Healthcare is reactive.  Statins, E.D. Drugs, Glucose Monitors, Dialysis, and botulinum, are OTC self-care without question for their medical efficacy. We can do it all ourselves while romancing a Half-Pound-Dog & Big-Gulp super-combo.

"Happy Fourth", he said awkwardly.

Wherever a screen-door slams, into a sweaty July 4th, “has-been” America is simmering in its transitional juice from scrappy republic, to nostalgic smug-fuck, to short-lived social disaster, to political holocaust.  We watch the fireworks, together, as the whole empire collapses under it's largess.
For me, little pink houses, screen doors, picket fences, and swimming-holes, still mean something… but not in that, twangy “set a spell”, way… Perhaps in the truly affirmative knowledge that what we have lost to recent tyranny, will not return to an immoral majority, so I try to find value wading through elegiac feelings. What we have forgotten to do today, lives in the music, somewhere. We have forgotten how to be free. We should adore simplicity, inhale its majesty, feel awe, and touch something meaningful. But we just want to blow shit up, and blame others for a wet fuse, our own failure to launch.  Behind the glare of a glowing gadget, is a world pressed like a flower -- desiccated, and well beyond resuscitation.
Independence, is perhaps now only the freedom to imagine the past fondly, where we once  heard freedom ring -- Where we'd looked out for one another. Where we are at now, is a fucked up capsule, sealed off hermetically from whomever we were supposed to care about.
Since the "Civil War" we have been trying to outdrive rednecks that resent those of us who can type.

When I drive a car, I enjoy the privilege of knowing I am (of course)  the only good driver, and everyone else is a motherfucker. ...And we are all trapped beneath glass and steel, shouting at each-other. Today, we all live in the same conceited capsule. hiding behind the machine.  And we are all driving them poorly.  We believe we are free from influence, and sovereign in our own thoughts, but we don't have original thoughts any longer.  We are wasting our time talking about politics, and who we pledge allegiance to.  We cannot all become stoics overnight, and hence, we are doomed.  We are not free, because the machines, have already won. They have already picked out your cheeky cut-of shorts, what explosives you will buy, and how you will light them ablaze.

Independence means different things to different people.  Here in America, freedom means you have the right to choose your own facts, your own explosives, and perhaps what janky car you'll drive aggressively --  But you cannot outrun the genetics of this failing republic. Since the "Civil War" we have been trying to outdrive rednecks who resent those of us that can type.  Ignorance builds relic muscle cars, in the face of far more efficient machines. And although fireworks only show up in the darkness, a redneck will still set some off midday.
This holiday,  instead of celebrating independence day; Just say, "Happy Fourth", without any feeling, and then blow some shit up.

We've got your back, and will keep your fingers safe in a ziploc.
​

Superstition /soo͞″pər-stĭsh′ən/
noun

1. An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.
2. A belief, practice, or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance.
3. A fearful or abject state of mind resulting from such ignorance or irrationality.

Consider Golf. As with most male superstition, Large Club Size has the mythical aberrant of fulfilling a promise of competence.  But, ability comes from practice, and perseverance,. and not specifically one's gigantic tool. I once knew a guy who'd walk onto a course early spring, or late autumn, with range balls, and two clubs... A seven iron and a wooden shafted putter.  He'd shoot PAR or below without a pig-skin glove, dorky shoes, or blousy chinos. He'd play 7 or 16 avoiding the cups closest to the clubhouse, because he was playing for free.  Practice makes the difference, as in most endeavor... But we still seek advantages, even status, from cool gear instead of putting in the work.  Every year the department store sells a pre-strung tennis racket which likely won Wimbledon the year prior, and yet, most hold out for the latest un-strung technology.  This is to say that we are easily tempted by marketing, and superstition, [mostly Bull-shit], to hit further, drive straight, and go fast.  We ignore the lessons of raw talent, and hard work, preferring to believe that the latest gadget will ease the pain, open the door, and create opportunity.  I am in awe of those raw talents who approach nearly every endeavor with patience, and a watchful calculus, like local surfers bobbing behind waves, waiting for the right moment. 
By contrast I get exhausted in the waves climbing on every one.
I have a friend who rides a shitty bike,  refusing to upgrade. He deserves it, but some monastic celibacy precludes his ascendence. Just the same, he is a terrific cyclist. We all know a guy who betters seasoned riders without any sophistication, or even practice. (His initials are J.B.)... But for most... 'hard work', and NOT 'hi-tech' makes the difference.
​Laughably I seem to be heading way too fast toward some end-game, where I cannot be helped.

Twice, each year we get a reminder of the things we have not yet accomplished:  New Years Day is spent in quiet reflection of one's regrets, and missed opportunities -- We double-down with resolutions to change. We approach our Birthdays with the reluctance, of a doctor's check-up -- We lift our drooping chin in a morning mirror, with the confidence that we are aging gracefully. These days, we fidget reflectively, pensive, if a bit disappointed in our results.
I want to be adored, we all do... and I work tirelessly toward that end, BUT with my poor technique, and nasty nature, I fail. e.g., people tend to stay clear of my cloud.
​
Most days,  I know that I am not special, nor deserving of adulation.  Should we stumble upon our birthday and not feel worthy of a party, it's likely that we are well past our "deserving phase".  There will always be some adult twat who believes they are intrinsically special, and should be adored daily... especially upon Birthdays, but most of us will simply buy ourselves some new stuff in hopes of improvement, and keep our head down. Me, I'm still waiting for my bionic upgrade and my Jet-Pack, "Happy Birthday, dumb-ass!, Take this shit... you will need it!"

I've always been mediocre,  and at nearly every endeavor, I could use a little daily affirmation to feel whole, or even competent. Alas, I don't get much positive feedback.  I get zero "Kudos", zero "Likes", and far less adoration. Nevertheless, I try a lot of things on, in hopes of finding a competency which fits me well. Alas with my figure, nothing flatters.  So, I've settled upon the maxim that it's better to be lucky, than to be good at anything at all. Mediocrity inspires my defeat, which brings a strong head-wind, and no aero-bike will fix that.

Aero is Bullshit anyway -- As are gigantic club-faces, brand-new shitty surfboards, Electric Fishing Poles, and $400. baseball bats. To get good at something takes practice. The right swing, and proper focus.  Struggling to get good at something which one has no business attempting is bull-shit too. One need only scan the Running path for evidence of the un-adapted. I have been trying to "get good at" so many things simultaneously, but have come to realize my repeat defeat cannot be practiced into competence.  Realizing that I have no business in marathons,  a swimming pool, transmission repair, golfing, or hang-gliding... I've settled into my mediocrity.  

Taboo talisman that it is... "Aero" is the "Surround-sound" end game of a dying hobby. Aero was invented to level out the classics, using Time Trial bikes as marketing for strange tech, that no mortal will ever actually ride. Aero was created for D-Bags who cannot swim nor run, but want to gain 9 watts.

What wont make me a better cyclist is an Aero Bike; nor aero anything for that matter. I keep my head down, and bring my elbows in, when riding in my drops. I tuck down low while descending, but find no gains from novel aero sanctuary.
Aero Bikes are the New "Surround-Sound", a giant club for lonely men, which has in a few decades outlived it's usefulness, and has alas marketed itself to death.  This began with a "kick-ass", (but shitty sounding) college stereo, pointing a Cerwin-Vega speaker out of one's window, in hopes of Bro-recognition... (Lonesome men hoping someone will share in their relish of "Rush 2112"), These lonely guys gobbled up the Surround Sound Evolution, like cheese fries at a rave, and Soon enough "Red Barchetta" broke into "Quadrophenia", which gave way to the inevitable Subwoofer. Before too long, music and film were dissected into tiny packets, and spread over a shit-ton of stupid anemic speakers, paired with subs, birthing 5.1, 9.1, 9.2, and even 12.4 channels of soulless surround-sound, Too Fucking many marketing guys in the incubator, killed the whole titanic shit-storm.  Today we have stupid shitty sound-bars, and tiny Bluetooth portables which sound impressively tinny, like a squirrel is locked in a bucket... and today, nobody even buys a kick-ass stereo. 

(Well, except for lonely old guys who'll likely buy an aero bike and a rear-view eyeglass mirror, without much convincing).

Death is the inevitable end game of any hobby which evolves unnaturally from Fat 'club-face" into sticker adorned Aero -- Or Surround Sound. Aero is what they sell you, when you've forsaken that cool vintage bike in your garage, believing you have graduated into velo-topia.

Taboo talisman that it is... "Aero" is the "Surround-sound" end game of a dying sport. Aero is the Gigantic Club Face which wont make you a better golfer, but promises you will get noticed,  (...for all the wrong reasons).

Long live the Kool kids who ask their parents for a Bike for their birthday. Viva the natural talents, and the jalopy riders.  Today, let's celebrate those who ride bikes well into their old age!, even if they wear tacky neon, tennies, as long as they DO NOT ride stupid-ass aero bikes.

When Specialized re-introduced the Shiv, with a "Nutrition Pouch"  the die was cast to dismantle cycling's dynasty for the last time. As if the throttle bike wasn't bad enough; That too will soon be aero. 


P.S. 
​
Trump Don't Surf !

 Looking down, we discover Newtonian irritation in, well
...basically we are irritated with you.

The Thing is... Everyone does the work, right?  struggling to the summit; We wait at the top for our friends... then We all coast.  We go someplace to earn barely enough for a new bicycle, and some of us will use it properly. We ride someplace on it for fun... A waterpark, lunch, a church, a hike, perhaps a bike ride up to the top of Mt Crumpet?  Then, reluctantly we return to our caves, with stupid stories and stuff acquired along the way.   Perhaps a Medal or a jersey laden with sponsors whom we don't give a shit about.

​  A filthy Medal, Lactate burning Lungs and Legs, Some Costly Carbon Bling... A Sour-Patch Stomach rumbling beneath a snug lycra uniform... A few gummies, a new Gel or a Gooey Tonic, enhance and unsettle the whole mess. But it's you. We are cheering for you.
​We all strive a bit -- Some on Strava -- carefully stenciling the outline of our beloved's chin on a real roadway. We may choose to live an illusionary drama through pretend "Likes". citing data to prove we were there first. Others suffer in their lonesome basement with a Virtual ride atop a $10K mail-order bike strapped to motors and such, following Fake Plastic trees, atop magnetic mountains in upside-down land. 
Many give it their all on a real road, without keeping score -- Without fanfare.  With or without "Likes". A loathsome few, actually ride their bikes into the wind and rain, because they like to feel something real. Pissing of their bike-shop mechanic who nary gets a summer day out of doors to play nor suffer.  These "Outsiders" do it to enjoy the ratcheted spree of a whirring freewheel, and the separation of thought from action.

A pencil-thin Puerto Rican pulls past into oncoming city traffic, slick wet pomade on raven-black hair, No helmet to douse the sheen. Carbon tri-spoke front wheel -- Some Blue spoky abomination behind it. Zero Brakes... Back-stroking to slow his single speed, with a final inhale, and his last kick-back before his fixie pride and his perfect hair land atop the hood of a Lexus.  Thud!
He will survive his lunacy, (sans brakes), In-fact he will roll off the bent hood and blame a Soccer-Mommy for his hobby.  But he will never know the thrill of the coast. The Buzz of the pawl heating up against a hardened circle of tool steel, as the descent becomes real. Really loud clicks purr, tears tickling cheeks, as the doppler fades whirring clacks to black numbness.

It's all in the coast. Rolling without regard for time, work, or worry.  The descent is where we all level out.  Fat fucks, Clydesdales, and Scrawny dicks, we all drop like stones as velocity heats beneath our calculated braking.  The ratchet winds up to the ultrasonic pitch of a hummingbird's, We scream down a slope for 20 full minutes numbing hands and minds.  The Coast... It's all about the coast.

The fixie fanatic, is an enthusiast, true, riding the razor's edge through traffic to feel something. To impress oneself with the unchallenged feeling of invincibility. Sovereign soaking head-nods from adoring friends for swerving just in time.  But enlightenment never comes. The coast will elude this kid until they come of age.

We are ALL FAST IN THE FUCKING DOWNHILL!.   Aren't we? 
​
...I identify as Fast Motherfucker, so please afford me this one moment and Get the Fuck out of my sight on this one descent.  Unless of course your jersey plainly states: "I'm doing this for Pussy" or has a Cigarette or Whisky sponsor, then you can cut in line, of course you can.

IF, you use your bike like a dildo, rolling through the motions on a magneto in your basement throughout summer, citing humidity and covid as a reason to remain "sheltered in place", You are not the problem, just stay where you are. You may be the VR analog of the clown-like pubescent kid that just guilted a coffee-clutching Yoga Mommy into 400 bucks for a bent fork --  But you will not know what it means to ride, without a freewheel. You suck only slightly less than the fool who races me in the downhill. DONT RACE ME IN THE DOWNHILL, Dumb-ass.  We are all fast in the downhill, Duh!... you fucking idiot.  Lithe, fat, thin as a triathlete's aero ass...  we all have to do the work to get up the fucking hill, and the just desserts for said spent energy is this moment -- My Moment, The Coast.  Kick Kick Coast.  We the people, celebrate this sublime recipe of spent energy.  We WORK toward this moment, because we are sledding, we are skitching, we are skiing slalom down the hill and we didn't bring an E-Bike to this gunfight.  We earn the summit & the downhill.  So my friend, could you please spare us all the humiliation of your smug face passing me on the interstate at 60 MPH and queue up behind my ugly gleeful ass... because my silent scorching ratchet whirrrs for me alone, It's mine..., and I need a bit of space to walk through my buzzing Zen garden alone melting brake pads tiny hot pawls and all, in a perfect whine. WITHOUT seeing your smug ass 2006 jersey from some Team-building exercise, or your Fake KOM jersey sponsored by some orthopedic hospital or worse an investment firm.  Please! 
I need you to kindly stand the fuck down while I listen to my ratcheting freehub warm with the lightening-fast click of the surrounding cicadas.  I've earned the right to descend "My Mountain" with MY thoughts and even if we are on the same Fucking Fondo... I'd appreciate some respect as I burn some lithium grease without your fat spooging waistline rolling up beside me.

I'd like to descend alone, and without consideration of your chamois, your pseudo-sponsored jersey, and your unmatched bar-wrap.  Leave this to me, and I will try not to encroach upon your decal'ed cloud.

No gripe with you folks who don't know how to enjoy yourselves out of doors. Hand Solo at home...? I'm good with you. No issue with you monkeys pressing backwards to avoid obstacles across town on your fixie-bike which never coasts.  What IS annoying, however is the heavy-weight who has something to prove whence he arrives upon summit, and is dead-set to make up his sloven performance on the hill-climb.   Really?  My complaint is with the fair-weather downhill roller.  My complaint of course,  (Mr. Portnoy) was with my right to climb and plummet and contemplate my own chamois chafe without some hack making up his glacial ascent time in a tuck, while I'm forced to consider his in-grown thigh shag.

Peace is afforded when we all do the work together, but alas we descend alone, and when we all grant the space to enjoy the fruits of that labor, within the intimacy of one's descent we are whole.
​Lay back! ...Lest I get my super-tuck on, and glow past your damp ass with a whirr only the cicadas  respect.  

We are all fast in the descent, aren't we?  ...And as with skiing, there is a flat beer waiting for the first fucker to cop my line in the downhill.  We know who you are, and we don't appreciate you ruining what we have worked for.

 Do we really have to correct another historical record again so soon?  Because nobody gives a fuck about history any more, and even gray liberals are normalizing the fall of Democracy; as it's written -- Let's begin our day with a slice of jelly toast in upside-down-land.  It is all white-noise to comment upon such daily chaos.  In our news vacuum we watch Orange jelly eaters destroying America like it is a reality show we can turn off. But the failure of America is real. This is happening.
Because the charade of speculative panic about insane tariffs were bandied about the world with outlandish conspiracies as to what they really mean, I too will waste ink to report some truth. 
Chump, is a lonely, depraved, senile, failure who once found a lever on a field-trip to the Smithsonian. Here he discovered that African History was legitimately cool, and that slavery made his daddy rich. While the teacher was in the potty. The kids shoegazing around exhibits, and placards, A bored and confused Chump discovered a lever.  When he pulled it, the clatter drew so much attention, faces in the diorama illuminated, and an amazing animatronic calliope clattered to life. The giggles from classmates implored him for more.  Naturally, all the kids in class stared in awe at the defiant kid  who would certainly be punished, or expelled for touching the levers.  Initially, no guards nor docents, and no teachers saw him hit that lever, and nobody spoke up because they'd hoped the idiot (who'd  surely soon be expelled), would do it again.

​And, of course nobody can take their eyes off a train wreck... Frankly they would love it if he was dumb enough to do it again before their teacher marched out of the ladies room and began her trademark reprimand.  There were "Ooh's", and "Oh man is he busted..." "...Sooo Busted", "In Sooo much trouble", etc... But because the teacher had been up all night drowning in a bottle of Chardonnay, she didn't give a fuck, and so the class moved on to the next exhibit without incident.
This President has absolutely no original ideas, but as a class clown, and a bully, he would combust without constant attention. and so he keeps pulling that lever. I'm not completely stupid -- I do know that Chump and his boy band bet heavy on Futures and made a mint in the maelstrom.  I know that there are all sorts of side-room deals, but these criminal mob ideas are not only NOT his own,  they are also nothing new.  
Trump was losing One Trillion dollars a day for 6 days straight.

Their are some far off places where nobody has ever heard of this man, Or jelly for that matter, and they don't speak of Dr Doom every day in panicked histrionics. Nomadic tribes, Sheep Herders, Fishermen, and Bedouins who manage to avoid the tyranny of worrying about what some far off boy-king and his idiot entourage are up to, live free.  So when Mr. Crazy asked his loyal yes men where in the world their may be more idiots and savages who didn't yet live in fear of him, he pressed them to bring one into his Television Set. or to bring them this news. [Chump] 'Would soon become a household name even in remote huts, and stone-age tribal communities'; Those who comb sheep for precious downy wool, or those who shoot seals adrift upon massive sea ice.  [Chump] 'Wants them to also know that he has these fancy levers to pull, and that they too should fear him'. 

But because the "So Called Democrats" keep hoping he will make some epic public blunder, and perhaps literally explode -- They just watch silently the burning train-wreck of America.  Silently sheepishly hopeful that there will be enough tiny pieces left to rebuild, if they ever get back in the driver's seat. And just to be clear, when US Bond yields drop our Federal interest rate goes way up, and we are staring at Recession, which would hand the House back to Dems... Basically, Mr. Stable Genius incited a rummage sale at the highest level, inspiring foreign and domestic investors to dump the safest of all treasuries.  Everyone is pulling out of the "Safe Space" which had been America.  For perspective, Musk claimed to be saving America a Billion here and another Billion There, by laying off a quarter million people in  a few months -- Whereas Trump was losing One Trillion dollars a day for 6 days straight.  [by MAGA Messiah deal maker Chump.]  That's lighting fire to a Thousand Billion Dollars a day from the wealth of his donor's stock! Gone! So there would be a rally, as the bro's high-fived, and chest bumped... but what is gone is gone.  America is unreliable -- Not to be trusted. Of course, "In God We Trust", but God can't save your 401K, and Chump cannot be trusted.

The So called Trade war is not that at all.  There is no trade war... Just a lunatic, and complicity. Chump needs everyone to be discussing him.  EVERYONE to fear him.  Even.., everyone to laugh at him.  He needs constant combustion to remain in motion, to be relevant. He needs to be doing something, anything, because before him, things just worked, and the "American exhibit" basically spoke for itself.  The dark energy of chaos, keeps all eyes on him, lest he fizzle out as the failure he most assuredly is.

Smucker's recently lobbied Chump to tariff the EU, and France in particular so that Delicious French fruit preserves such as Bonne Maman would cost more than Goober-Grape at Costco..  Smucker's even wanted Goober-Grape to cost less than Bonne Maman in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, etc... This "brilliant strategy" was misguided, in the belief that adjusting cost could make literal shit taste better. But more misguided, because Americans and in particular Trump voters love cheap crap.

Imagine this... "If The good stuff cost more..., Americans would prefer Smucker's", to a lovely jar of French or Belgian Preserves.  Ipso-facto, the French would adore Smucker's crap at a lower cost,  to their higher quality local jams because, well, they couldn't possibly know what they were missing in such an exciting flavor palette: Concord Grape, Squeeze Berry, Goober-Grape, Mint Apple Jelly, and Sweet Orange Marmalade. The reality of this game, is that The French do not give a fuck about Smucker's, because, well they don't prefer that strange American taste;  And also... They already have a better product.  Much like Germans do not prefer Chryslers to Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Mini or VW, There will always be demand for German Autos in Trump-Land, and IF they build more factories here -- They will likely be robotic, not requiring a cadre of racist white power to run.

In the same vein, ETSY --  loosely defined as [A garage-sale of crafty crap scattered across a country lawn in a tornado], will be truly fucked when people have to pay double and a half for crafty junk they didn't need or want anyway. This goes for Dollar Stores, Harbor Freight, Farm and Fleet, and most cottage industries, held and adored by MAGA voters. This Sudden death is real, and the trickle-down of the stand-off will be epic.
The real fact is that MAGA's quiet enablers lack the fortitude to bear this burden. Former Dollar store shoppers, will be having a fuck-ton more rummage sales, bake sales, and the like, to make ends meet. So what happens when a steady stream of broken exercise equipment, and HSN debris stops flowing into 'Merica at below what it could possibly cost to produce?  What happens when his entire constituency run out of debris to decorate the lawn? Who will save them when they can no longer buy more cheap junk to decorate folding tables out front?  When there is nothing to feed the chickens with?

Archaeologists mostly uncover society's trash piles to reconstruct ancient cultures. Likewise it is an accurate method to get to know a trump voter parked on the shoulder to stroll their Yard Sale.  In a world where nobody cares much for history, "Proper Rummage" will elucidate his legacy, just before being burned along with any books about it.  In a sense, a 125% tariff on China is the most ecological leap of faith, a Republican lawmaker has ever made.

To believe that pulling a tariff lever will make naive consumers prefer shitty home spun brands to imports is bananas. Another classroom prank in the chaotic arsenal of a boy who never knew a consequence for stupid. 
Anyway... Who would purchase shitty trash, just because it's cheaper, more sugary, more disposable, tasteless, even orange, simply because it costs less... Hmm?
Well -- That trick ONLY works on "Stupid Americans".

​...So I suppose he may be right to keep his tiny hands on those levers.
​

Fiction is a drug as misunderstood as how I feel today. A vacant messianic Netflix squeezes a billion bad books into a luke-warm screen-play syrup, reconstituting re-runs with .2mg of botulinum, 5 mg of THC, a half Xanax, Hyaluronic acid, and a splash of Sauv-blanc.  Disturbingly average actors pour piss-poor lines over ice, Abysmal algorithms shake them, and we sip this bitter antidote for the blahs. Bad news comes as fast as their top ten, just before rumble strips rattle me awake.
[Are You Still There?]...

​Every sleepless night, I startle awake, half-asleep at the wheel -- Desperately patting in the dark for the controls, as it rests loosely in my other hand. I'm on the couch, and should be in bed reading. Anywhere else. Today, I can't seem to keep my head above my Netflix dashboard, (likely because Netfilx sucks), But as water fills my car again, I wonder, "will the next episode entertain me?", "Will the water wake me?", "Save me from myself? ...Just before I drown here half asleep?"
Fictional elixir briefly reconstitutes our desiccated dreams, with drippy third-rate screenplays.  We are becoming something dewy & damp, glistening, slouching, as slowly as lichen devours a stone. Alas, I feel the urgency to pause, and I stand up to go piss. I'm thinking of my moist springtime, and why I can't escape the muck and mire to alas cancel Netflix, and head out to another live show... But I suppose it has something to do with the endless back-ground montage of bad fictions. Fictions which box me in a dry cell, fiction of any kind as a drug, a remedy, a sanctuary, from thinking too much. Summer may not come fast enough. Today another Protest March. Everyone is upset, some for the right reasons, Most not enough.
​Rom-Coms like baby food, require no work, nourishing us to defeat the blahs through rosy soft focus, and deliberately awkward dialogue. Banner descriptions boast tacky flavor notes like: dry, witty, eerie, smart, addictive, but it is all mush. Each chick-flick auto-starts like autonomous taxis, merging into my exit-lane, far too robotically to be safe -- and so I remain on the neon highway.

DOCUDRAMAS WONT SAVE YOU!

Every so often, we wash down another dehydrated film franchise with a luscious golden Sancerre, then we nod off again. So was the winter of my discontent, where fiction could not save me from loathing the fall of America, but it kept me alive just to witness it's end.

["Are you still There"], urges my raison d'etre. This, my streaming simulacrum of planet Earth, as safe as space ice-cream... Dry, crisp, powdered -- Not quite Neapolitan, Not even cold, but somehow each flavor tastes remarkably like the real thing. My freeze-dried room-temp brain-freeze brings a Netflix stupor which is decidedly not as labelled  -- This "Sexy Thriller", is as sterile, as dry "Ice-cream", yet nothing drips on my sofa.  I nod back to my safe place, asleep again at the wheel, biding time, wasting it.

FICTION WONT SAVE YOU!

Netflix is my clueless Lyft driver, from some small town, never watching the road... taking me for a ride around my own block in an endless loop.  Netflix is our substitute teacher who rolls in the steel hammer-tone TV cart, pops in a docudrama, and watches everyone put their heads down.  She is the mean baby-sitter, The bad nanny,, my worst fucking nightmare -- But I have nowhere else to be tonight. Another date alone with myself..., I'm neither awake nor unconscious, micro-dosing episodic fiction, where each "feature" is rated worse than the last. Remakes, reruns, prequels, procedurals, sequels, foreign versions, numbing subtitles, Serbian Cop shows, even M.A.S.H -- all failing me... Netflix is a collage ransom letter demanding my submission.  Netflix is a college job in a book store, where I've read the back of everything, but never finished a book.  Netflix, I love you but you're bringing me down.

"Kill Your Television  Do Something", my phone is jealous.

My Phone is warm... I think my phone is too warm, I think it may be overcharging, because I have nobody to call at this hour. Someone save me from Netflix. 
Netflix is the taxi-driver nightmare running the meter on a desert drive where I'm trapped in their trunk.

[When the] T.V. flashed back to life... I knew the end of the fucking world would begin right then.
​
It is an elixir as quiescent as beer-nuts -- urging another glass to wash it all away,  but there is no place to pull-off and pee.  I implore my driver to find a flooded quarry someplace, and drive us straight over the ledge.  Bleak bland and momentary, we never stop to ask what the hell we are doing squandering so much free-time, in retarded reverie.  Netflix, you are killing us softly with re-runs.  Like watching SNL's smug duds -- Not smiling, hoping to laugh, but Jost's snarky jokes never land, do they?

SNL WONT SAVE YOU!

Alas another hour lost to time, as I gel under the gravity of a neon red "N".  I'm in the Uber, and I didn't buckle-up. I'm going no place, gridlocked, I'm made of stone, my seat-belt is stuck, I'm still waiting for my driver to confirm my drop-off time. My desire, Gone! My free will, Gone! My Drive, Gone!, My joy, Gone! Rainy spring evenings wasted, watching effects-driven film franchises, pantone red and vanillafied previews -- dried, ground and powdered.  The Thrill is not only gone, it is a soulless whey protein. Fake Flowers, the dumpy stand-in's for a real hot meal. A plastic tub of International Coffee's sugary ash, dissolving me into a thick manilla solution -- Sanka single-origin stripped of what it once was. Powdered creamer heavy and hopeless.  Unmoving, I'm sipping Huel, or Soylent, as a saccharin cloud of adult baby-formula scatters like ashes over deceased screen-writers, whose dramas fetch the lowest bid.  

DRUGS WONT SAVE YOU!​

However you feel today about your healthy habits, The fate of the world, Your unhealthy binge watching, it's all hopeless. Another White Lotus, Dexter, Bad Sisters... whether you merely dip your toe in it, or you wade out into Adult Swim..., You are FAR deeper than you think. You are Losing your edge,  we are all losing time. Convenience is killing us all.

NETFLIX CAN'T SAVE YOU!
When I was a kid, My uncle's suburban home was the beta-site for a marvelous and revolutionary invention. The wireless remote control. When the adults left the room for shrimp cocktails, and cold duck, I climbed onto the recliner, reached to the TV table, and  hefted a new prototype Space Command remote control. As I clunked its prominent chrome buttons, and the T.V. flashed back to life... I knew the end of the fucking world would begin right then. I never thought it would take this long to take effect, but I now know we are all doomed to watch our own annihilation unwind on T.V.  

"We owe nothing to the past but wasted time". Clicking through our chaos --
[ARE YOU STILL FUCKING THERE?] Fuck My T.V.!, Fuck my Space Command Remote, and Fuck Netflix!
​
The End is Nigh.
​
​

The Eighties was full of shit, full of so much shitty trauma that it made people believe it was (perhaps) the end of the world.  But every generation thinks it's their last -- Every generation believes it's the end of the fucking world. Rounding the corner to the noughties, a new decade held the promise and hope, which (in some strange concentration), brought people to believe in optimism. Belief, yes... because in truth it wasn't that different than the prior years, as far as epochs go. Anyways that optimism, like the sex, freedom, nudity, and drugs which liberated the 60's and 70's from dogmatic white Christian racist tyranny, landed everyone in a decade's-long hangover where most people put their clothes back on and retreated from view. Risqué returned to it's closet, and divorce was discussed quietly under one's breath.   Nearly everyone bought curtains, and stayed at home, or holed up in a cabin in the woods, in a sense people sheltered in place. This era of retreats, was not new, but rather ubiquitous.  Much like Doctors who'd fled NYC after 9:11 to upstate bed communities, such as Cooperstown.

"Heading Up North For the Weekend?"  became THE most popular late 80's catch-phrase. next to the concept of "Retreats", which were veiled attempts by your neighbor to start a cult.
Seemingly everyone was hiding from their past traumas, fear they may be exposed, and perhaps a backlash against previously exuberant free-love indulgence, or for sanctuary of simply feeling good for the first decade in about a century. Fortunately for them those hippie documentaries wouldn't emerge until Ken Burns became a messiah.
Punks and Skaters were always in police crosshairs, or in custody -- and even post-pop-punk bands like Black Flag spouted blatantly racist drivel. This was done because they had nothing legitimate to bitch about.  Counter culture drove a bit deeper below ground, and everyone with normal haircuts were at surface level indoors sleeping it off. Meanwhile, famous republicans (aka white Christian racist tyrants) realigned with "D-Cell" metal flashlights under white blankets, promising broad-ranging behavioral modification, V1... They even re-kindled Bourbon, with every permutation of the name  "Jim", e.g. Jim Crow whisky was born. This contraction remains the ebb and flow of our American ruin.  So it seems odd that everyone cannot recall just how recurrently shitty the world has been to itself in the low troughs of our banal tyrannical-freedom. The give and take ledgers are paid with red ink and baseless currency which we harvest from the clear blue sky to pay our debts. Or more appropriately, we pay our debts with our debt. This Fantasy-Land which we all participate in, is half the time raw with resentment for the other side fucking everything up. Or sleeping it off. Today, as then... we spend the other conscious half wallowing under the covers from shame, and fierce reprisal. And, (perhaps) the third half taking pictures of ourselves.

Wait!  Does it sometimes feel like everything you do, write, and say is meaningless?

​My friend Chelsea says that childhood trauma is something you may wish to share with any random stranger on the bus. That even Creepy family trauma is just a natural casualty of the human experience. That life is so full of that sort of shit that it’s perfectly fine, (even recommended), to share shit with any imperfect stranger. It is a time-bomb to hold on to our trauma, As if this unique burden defines your brand, lest it control our days. The preceding and following "generational flow fails because they carry their 'woody-allen-daddy-diddle' trauma with themselves everywhere". "Why was it so traumatic?", "Really?  Are you OKAY?"  "You look OK...", "So suck it up and move on".  Chelsea says, (before bearing her soul at Karaoke) [that] "...People need to be more open, to be in touch with their emotions", "Let that shit go". Share & shed your repressive shame of (perhaps) simply being raised catholic, you think you have to?. Think of it like a micro-dosing cure for sleepless deep set mental anguish.  Curiously, but unsurprisingly the entertainment which most sells to the couched and coddled post-modern churchgoer are a limited PBS series, a podcast, or books, full of other people's trauma. "Their Story" about survival... is a strange therapy. While the other side adores horror, and John Wick. In my version we all kill the monster, and take a few gratuitous kicks to his nuts. What is so fascinating about someone else's dirty anguish? Do we really need another podcast about church abuse, Russel Brand, or Hip-Hop celeb molestation?  No we do not.  "Share!", she says -- "And set yourself free".  But by sharing, you make everyone more aware. Let that shit go.

Now, I know that is a wacky perspective, but it is not wrong.  People pay big bucks to their online shrink, Psychic, Hypnotist,  or even a pedigreed counsellor to emerge from something they could have dropped-off on a perfect stranger in coach class seat 22B.

Increasingly America turns to fictionalized memoir — Novels full of other people’s trauma, pain, and misfortune to feel alive, to feel anything at all besides defeat.  It is Defeat which rears when the world tips to the dark-side. Today that is totally understandable.  But perhaps letting things go is merely scratches on the surface of a Fight Club methodology.  To be in tune, to really get in tune requires coming to terms with anger, frustration, fear, anxiety -- But also Wonder, Fascination, Awe, and Joy.  It is an unpacking of sorts.  Memory perhaps is the operant which we most need to tame.  It has been suggested that most memories are conflated by trauma and become inflated monsters casting far larger shadows against the walls of our safe spaces. How we remember our traumas is perhaps as much to blame for fucking us up, as are those who have wronged us. Was it really that bad? Like mistakenly being flown to a super-max in El Salvador?
In the Nineties, we used-to tape everything in some strange philately conservation, ostensibly meant to cherish our memories a bit longer. To make it last longer so to speak. A mix tape to share one’s raw emotions, a VHS tape of a birthday party, or recital, perhaps using TiVo Hard Disc to record a big event.
Americans obsessed during the noughties over preserving better times — perhaps simply to bathe in their glow, became the oddest phenomena of Human Kind. Fetish level universal obsession with recording everything everywhere, in lieu of being present.

Within the 90's Boot sector of our human condition needlessly photographing everything all the time deserves a silly noun like 'philately' is to stamp collecting. Perhaps "Phillatiography" will become the catch-phrase for human-kind's obsessive photo collecting. From Doorbells to Ray Bans, everything is loaded with a lens. 

Meanwhile somewhere in the late Noughties, literally all of our tapes were tossed to the waste bin, or “donated” to a charity resale shop. If we had only ascribed more meaning to them -- throwing them away could have been so much more cathartic.  If we were smarter back then, we'd have burned them, as tiny, poignant magnetic effigies, just before Y2K destroyed humanity.  But we didn't think of that, in our frenzy to clear the historic record. Those of us who yearn to come to terms with destroyed evidence of post-Reagan perversity, can be trapped within their imaginations. Relax!, All the evidence is toast.  Alas that long lost history is only an oral one, (tongue-firmly-in-cheek). Fortunately now, your newest greatest trauma's are forever uploaded someplace. Your device will remind you daily through "memories" of how well you are aging.  ...And The ONLY good outcome from our big fat orange permanent record is perhaps that a few survivors will reflect upon our dead empire. Hopefully, they'll drop that trauma on some unwitting stranger on the bus. "You know the story, the one about those billionaire dickheads who'd boiled our oceans, and torched the countryside, before blasting off in a fiery space ship. Let the record reflect how they'd burnt this place to the ground, before they flamed out in space.  This is all sharable, (of course) while you are snapping pix of your Musk Burger and Putin Fries, and Orange Cheese.

Bright sides: Some precious memories, later become snarky Greeting cards in some clever stationer, bearing ironic phrases -- Anonymized awkward strangers sport ever more ironic hair-cuts.  But the nostalgic novelty of our worst eighties exposure has been doubled-down by commemorating every single thing one does today. It seems that we cannot get free of the 70's fascination with capturing ourselves from every angle. Ego, Vanity, or "vainglory" is merely a form of self idolatry where someone likens themself to greatness, Pictures, constant pictures are the modern equal to some idiot carrying around a mirror everywhere. This Vanity is a construct to guard against feeling piteous. "Vanity well fed is benevolent. Vanity hungry is spiteful."[5] -Mason Cooley

The Noughties, were a period of vanity's revival wherein the world emerged from the regressive oppression of 80’s disaster politics, Reaganomics, several hundred million suppressed egos, and an adjacent series of recession… Right about then -- Everyone began recording everything, especially themselves perhaps to trap these better times like specimens under glass. A dried Flower, pressed between volumes which would soon be burnt by our Government. Archiving our tattered taxidermy of a soon extinguished golden era -- Kodachrome came to capture our better times in vivid hues, where we breathed cleaner air, drank cleaner water, and enjoyed an idyllic togetherness. Government by the people and for the people encouraged the EPA and the FDA to guarantee our public health.
But, barely after America had learned to bake cakes together, road-trip together, relax together, being blissfully together manifest a strange outgrowth — An obsession to preserve our good times, at all cost.  The world went Coo-Coo for cameras. Taping everything went haywire. Americans, started to do precisely what they'd disparaged proto-Japanese tourist memes for doing in the early eighties... We began to capture everything, and print the shit out of it. We even got duplicates for free, so we could share how great we looked in one out of every thirty-six frames. 
Today everything is memorialized well before it is even experienced. Every meal, every scenic overlook, every party. Time stamped. It's even likely that the chefs are taking cell-phone pix of the meal you are currently taking a photo of right now.
These recordings are rich vibrant, 3D, 4K, HDR, and also boring as fuck! They include every Texture, every photon, every grain, every crumb, of spreading butter upon toast, and yet they taste like nothing at all.
Nothing matters more than what you ate for dinner, and nothing matters less than what it actually tasted like.
Nothing is intrinsically important about our collecting banal memories like butterflies on a wind-screen. Our obsession to collect (good) memories, began with Kodachrome, expanding into magnetic tape, hard-discs, and (gasp) THE CLOUD, (wherever that is). The insecure cultural obsession born of a nervous cult(ure) searching for meaning, nay belonging through rewinding, is bonkers. Your "Cloud Memories" are like a remedial memoir for illiterates.  We are all doing it, and each and every photo, video of every concert, fades just as fast as our liver will metabolize a sixteen-dollar cocktail.  Nothing at all is being recorded and posted at such a frenzy, that reality is suffocating beneath the huge vacancy of experience.

The joy, even awe of lived experience is lost to the process of manipulating every meaningful moment through a filter, and getting that shit out in front of everybody as fast as one can — Literally everyone. But nobody cares, and everyone just keeps doing this thing, without knowing why, or even that they are doing it -- Like a roller rink without getting to cop a feel.

But seriously -- literally everyone gives zero fucks about what you had for dinner, nor even that you've eaten, just that your capture outshined theirs.  Vanity, is where flavors are delivered in the form of praise, or not at all.  Coo-Coo, right? 
So, part of our potential energies could be implemented to delete all that we wish to no longer remember.  While a smidge of our idle energy could be used to own up to some or all of our mistakes.  The rest of that shit, (namely the trauma) simply needs to be dropped on a perfect stranger -- And this can be done just like "Donating" your old video cassettes, computers, photos to the thrift store.  Like a shitty memoir, or The Moth Radio Hour -- others may benefit from your shame.
The time we kill, is killing us.
Delete the history of your trauma along with those pix of tonight's "small-plate courses"  You'll never see them again, right? Let that shit go.  Share a dark secret with a total stranger, just before choking on the: #BEST-BUFFALO-WINGS-ever?
When the person next to you breaks out pics of a pet, or toddler... why not start out fresh with, "That looks like a proper shithole... Let me tell you a story."

This is a Pixies song about a Phone, right?
​
​

No More Food for Bomb-Sniffing Dogs, Abandoning Pediatric Cancer Treatments, and More Genius DOGE Cuts c. 2025

By Charles P. PiercePublished: Mar 17, 2025 1:59 PM EDT
Reprinted without permission, but full credit to Esquire Mag as below:

Anna Moneymaker//Getty ImagesThe ever-essential Margaret Sullivan points us to this remarkably delusional headline in The New York Times. Now, I find all of the president's attempt at charm to be offensive, but I don't think that was the NYT's point anyway. But let us take a look at how the charm offensive was going this weekend.
Our own Logan Airport apparently has been turned into an immigration black site, complete with enhanced interrogation. Dozens of stories have emerged of the human costs on the ongoing DOGE and pony show—graduate schools rescinding acceptances because federal funding for programs has been cut, Social Security recipients being denied benefits because somebody, somewhere declared them dead, pediatric brain cancer patients are being abandoned mid-treatment, court orders are now being routinely ignored to the point where tinpot Central American presidents are mocking them. The president is now threatening to ignore the lawful pardons granted by former president Biden, basing this latest power grab on a theory even more laughable than the one he used to justify his reverse human trafficking to El Salvador. Arlington National Cemetery and the U.S. Army scrubs its website records of black and Hispanic and other minority military members, including the 442nd Infantry, the famous Nisei unit in World War II that was recruited from Japanese Americans out of the detention camps where they were being held. He's demanding that Columbia University knuckle under even more than it already has, and has said quite plainly that Columbia is merely the lab rat for a genuine assault on the country's colleges and universities. Bomb-sniffing dogs are being denied decent nutrition.
Charming, wot?

NOT Mythical, but much like Aunt Jemima, just as fictional.  Dr. Gustav Klein, is/was a pharmacist, with a chain of apothecaries, he may never have ridden a bicycle. 
When Browsing the web for a bike part, dynamic search will press the buttons for you, and where you land is manipulated by the very worst Dot-Com era mechanics.  Way Way Back when there was No Google, [GASP], I recall a client telling me about the "New Google Thing" which was democratizing WWW search, and opening doors to so many more narrowed search results, "...and that". He continued excitedly,  "...Results appear nearly instantly!" He said with building enthusiasm (that), "They, (Google) search like a couple hundred thousand places all at once!", and, ["holy shit man!"] "filter super accurate results".  I remained incredulous and, just to get him to leave me alone, I'd promised to look into "Google", when I got back to the office.  This was an era still flush with fresh flip-phones, DSL, Laser Discs, laser-mice, laser printers, Plasma TV's, and Surround Sound.  In this [my] ancient society, it's citizens purchased batteries at their local Radio Shack. Soon everyone would own a Mountain Bike, A Tivo, an Ink-Jet printer, and an MP3 Player, which they'd plug into their dashboard cassette adapter. I remember this like yesterday, mostly because it was the first time I tried a Google search, and perhaps the last time I would actually get an agnostic search result.  Way Back then, people searched for shit, and they saw so much shit, that they had to use hyphens, and commas, and cogent key-words to find anything relevant at all.  Google would show the user how many places it was looking, and how long the results took, as if they wanted to flaunt a rather pedestrian algorithm. Anyway -- That's about when the internet began inventing things all by itself, building upon it's silly methods, and herd mentality.  Filtered search results are why we all hate each-other today, but Hey!, they also are why we all dress alike. As Search advanced, the results may have become more relevant to the typist,  but that was likely only because Americans had become so homogenized that those doing the searching all wanted to find the same crap quickly. Beige Levi's Dockers for example --  And this is basically where we are today.  Search is so slanted and bullshit, that before you actually find what you'd set sail to discover, you've seen so much other bullshit that you've completely forgotten what you were looking for, ...and you'd already bought what they told you to buy.  Even if you'd only wanted a recipe, you'd now be waiting for UPS to bring  that new Gas Grille or pizza oven.
Anyway, before A.I. levels your search into untainted relevance -- Sergei and Fakebook were back in the lab massaging  machine-learning like kobe cows to feed users more directed garbage like fatted  French geese.

Before the wheels came off search the first time, eBay search algorithms, would compile independent nouns and adjectives into "relevant" categories, and largely still rely upon these search terms to feed your results. So it is no wonder that the Internet, which is banefully broken, merges completely unrelated search parameters until they become their own manifest ghost.
In a way, the crowd built the back-end, and 'our results' provide endless amusement when one searches for an alternator, or brake pads,  and find new feminine hygiene products crammed into our cart. The data-set is broken, the mechanism is broken, and the dynamic web wants to destroy us all.
So it is wholly unsurprising that the same cuckoo mechanism would eventually invent a human being out of thin air. Or... More specifically exchange one German Pharmacist for One American Bicycle Builder.  Gary Klein became Dr. Gustav Klein, and at this point in both of their retirements, their brands are merely nostalgic afterthoughts.  For a break from this crummy blog, open a browser and search for a Klein Adroit Mountain Bike.  I Guarantee that you will get results for the widely praised Porsche 911 of Mountain Bikes, and if you want to buy that used Adroit, your search will bear the Name Dr. Gustav Klein, prominently in your result. If you Search for a Homeopathic Prostate remedy, you may land upon Dr. Gustav Klein,  here you will not see any bicycles in your search result.
But there is this one smart guy who'd deserved veneration in the early 90's straight through to Y-2-K for making magical products, and his name was Gary Gordon Klein. Gary Klein was an engineer who grabbed a degree at MIT, and then built some crazy cool Bicycles.  He didn't invent the Aluminum bike, but he patented several innovations and made it an effective, even lethal weapon for bicycle racing.  Gary Klein changed the entire category during the 90's Mountain Bike Boom, Press-fitting cartridge bearings into perfectly milled tubes to cut weight, and to make his bicycles bomb-proof. He invented loads of innovations, but no homeopathic prostate remedies.  Gary Klein was a very real human being who'd set up shop in Mary's Corner, Chehalis Washington.  Chehalis is a tiny rainy whistlestop outside of Seattle where a lake, a river, and a train punctuate, skilled factories catering to Seattle's Aerospace biz.  Gary saw so many opportunities to "Fix" the American Bicycle through methodical rocket science, better metallurgy, chemistry, sexy paint jobs,  and with of course with meticulous craftsmanship.  He was affable, active, and an avid cyclist. In particular Gary's company excelled in building exceptional Aluminum Mountain Bikes. Klein set the benchmark for precision and quality, like a Rolex, or a Rolls Royce. The Klein Brand was gold.
​

Many will take credit for inventing A.I. and rediscovering  Agnostic Web Search, just before it is replaced again by more filtered Bullshit, & Dynamic A.I. Search. Soon all of us will be replaced en-masse by our avatars.  In the meantime I'll cherish fondly thinking for myself, travelling  places, riding cool bikes, and meeting interesting people. 
The other day, an enthusiastic younger person asked me (an old person) about Klein Bikes from way back in the 90's, and unsurprisingly I had a lot to say on the matter. They then asked me about Dr. Gustav Klein, and who he was and how I may have come to know him " Who?" I asked? 

"Dr. Gustav Klein..." "Oh No!", "This is the Guy who the internet invented out of the clear blue sky". "No no", I said,  "That's not a real person". Or rather I should say, he is/was a real Pharmacist or homeopath in Germany and Austria, with a chain of apothecaries to his name, but Dr. Gustav Klein is not the Guy who built your Bike.
In every Web-Search for Klein Bicycles, there is this fictional amalgam who seemingly arrived in America well after Gary Klein sold his company. Klein bikes were venerated in Germany and Japan well after he'd wound down his factory in Washington State.  But Gary Klein was the undisputed father of cutting edge aluminum bikes. Whereas Dr. Gustav Klein, was Known for homeopathic, and Holistic remedies, along with a chain of branded Pharmacies.  Gary Klein built his first Aluminum Bike in 1977 at MIT, and didn't know Gustav.
Gustav is not the German word for Gary, nor is Gary Klein natively German. The Germans admired his bikes, true -- And they started to collect them well after Gary sold his soul to Intrepid, (AKA The Trek Bicycle Corporation).   Because the Germans amassed collections, and even a museum for Klein Bikes, (I suppose) his name became synonymous with German Bicycle craft. Later somehow the Internet linked the Pharmacist to the Bike Maker, and viola!, Dr, Gustav Klein is in the Bike Biz.   This is of course understandable because Germans trend toward quality craftsmanship, and because Klein is a German advective... But also it's strange because Gary Klein built bikes in the Pacific North West, and  although he had no PHD, he may have been secretly fond of Germany -- Who knows.  Gary and his brand were firmly rooted in the US.  First manufactured in California where his parents owned a Prune Farm, and then Washington, where he worked with seed money and a few College partners to  "Innovate and patent Aluminum Bicycle craft". It is important to mention that Gary Klein sold bikes all over the world and while American Boys were wild about them, they became like Levi's, Marlboro, or Springsteen, in Japan.  He was as hot as Hansel, and his bikes were big in Japan longer than any other market.

​There was never a Dr Gustav Klein in the American Bike Biz, but you can find him in Germany, and even walk into his pharmacy for a (quack) remedy. A bit like Chef Boyardee, who was in fact a real Chef, He didn't necessarily invent SpaghettiOs. Dr. Gustav Klein had nothing to do with Klein Bicycle Magic.  Dr. Gustav, may have been cross pollinated in Japan when young enthusiastic boys and men were searching for authenticity by American appropriation.  This adulation of Americana is so beautifully nostalgic, but slowly being erased  by the Mandela effect of internet laundering.  
I checked with eBay as to why their product search Lists: "Dr. Gustav Klein" on every single search for a Klein Bicycle, and they stated that this was (of course) "the correct attribution".  Regardless of this silly misappropriation, Dr. Gustav wants to sell you one of his classic used bicycles for well over market value, plus fees and shipping, and some homeopathic tablets for your back pain.   
Sadly Japan and Germany's 90's veneration of American culture doesn't really happen today -- Our culture, and in particular our hobbies, like bicycling, could use some authenticity, creative inspiration, and really truly needs some ordinary heroes.  As our former authenticity blends it's colors, darks, and whites into one machine, we as a culture come out  quite bleakly grey.   

...Or Beige, Because, well... American is so very blasé right about now!

​The below Klein BIO. was reprinted directly from Wikipedia, because... no one writes their own dating profile or resume these days, and it's far more genuine to state that I didn't actually forge this book report either.

Gary Gordon Klein  6/9/1952 –
AMERICAN ENGINEER
In 1973, Gary Klein was a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As an engineer and as a competitive road racer, Klein was interested in developing a bicycle frame that was stronger and more responsive than those currently available. Klein developed a prototypical oversized tube design aluminum frame as a part of an MIT independent study course, a design he took to limited production in 1975.
The Klein frame was revolutionary; Klein may not have been the first person to theorize as to how aluminum could be employed as a material in frame construction, but he was the first to advance the concept of the oversized aluminum frame. Steel had been the material of choice for most cycle manufacturers as it is a stiff material, approximately three times as stiff as aluminum. Conventional wisdom in the early 1970s world of cycling manufacturing was that an aluminum bicycle, while lightweight, would lack the stiffness to perform. Aluminum bicycles were derided as spaghetti bikes, frames that lacked the stability required by a serious athlete. Klein theorized that if the tubes used to construct the frame were of a larger circumference, an aluminum frame would possess an even greater stiffness at a lighter weight than the conventional steel frames. Klein's aluminum frames were approximately 15% lighter than the conventional models. Klein determined that a 1.5 in circumference aluminum tube (3.75 cm) was approximately five times stiffer than a 1-in (2.5 cm).
Klein developed a proprietary welding process to compliment his frame designs, creating smooth, aerodynamic welds at each join in the frame. Klein ultimately patented 18 different designs and processes in relation to his aluminum frames.
The modern Klein designs have maintained a cutting edge status among both mountain biking and road cyclists. The frames manufactured today are a variety of aluminum and carbon fiber composite constructions.
Klein parlayed his frame development into the multi-faceted Klein Bike company, producing mountain bikes and road bicycles for the international market. As modern bicycle development moves further in direction of frames made from carbon fiber composites, it is likely that the Klein oversized aluminum frame will be given its proper recognition as an important historical step in the development of faster, lighter, and more responsive bicycles.

The luxury of choosing ones' adversity is a lark. The myth begins as a child, and children soon learn the brutal consequences of actions which seem to come at them automatically, by tangent. These things which seem out of our control appear "Unfair", and unexpected. We feel slighted "So unfair",  is what we call it, when we get mono, break a wrist, or chip a tooth. Later we surrender into a false faith that we can avoid most bad outcomes, through our clever cunning, or savvy. When, most children (and one childlike president/king) loses, he blames everyone for unexpected outcomes. Losers who feel wronged begin begging others to come to their aid. Pleading how unjust things are. Throwing a tantrum, revolting -- Hosting an insurrection. That we have the sovereignty to control for life's pitfalls, is broadly false. We do not. Reactive vs Proactive outlines the tacit territory of Karma, perhaps, wherein very few humans admit they do not control their path, but wish to remain on the "Good Side" of fate, as "Shit just happens". So we adjust, or we whine, complain, riot, blame others, and then we adjust.  But the new administration is not proactive.  They are guessing, and then correcting for mistakes, which is unsurprising.  What then happens when your whole flat earth tilts like a pizza sliding from a plate? What do we do about everything breaking all at once? We begin the blame game...  Enter the ASSet.  The douchebag in chief, with his Prime Minister Musk are breaking america quickly.  Adolescent DOGiEs brandish laptops like a bosses kid may hold an empty clip-board. Moving fast and breaking things, and then back-pedaling discovering they have NO clue how things actually operate. These ASSets have been hard at work destroying america from within.  What is the reason?  To curb spending?, to Save Money?, To get attention?, To land-grab the ashes? To be contrarian?, or... to create chaotic distractions from far more frightening agendas, like invading Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela. 

Is This Asshole really an Asset of the Russian Government? Is the Kremlin using our doughy fungible dolt-in-chief  to destabilize nearly all american institutions, and markets, to weaken it's government,  and to further erode what was once a "Western" bulwark against Communism, Fascism, and Feudalism. Trump is perhaps the first and ( I hope),  the only american president to ever have become a full fledged traitor, a foreign ASSet, and a really-really bad reality TV actor working to undermine the United States Of America simply to curry favor with Kremlin friends writ large, (if, unwittingly).
Whatever your personal perspective, even 'the far right' know that he has been compromised.
What then is the expected outcome of making an enemy of Zelensky? [Well, he didn't help Trump win an election, by hanging Clinton & Biden out to dry], and he has a conscience, so he is a threat.
What is the best outcome from alienating EU leaders, and america's most essential allies & trading partners? What is the best that can come from exiting entrenched trade agreements, NAFTA, The UN, and by making enemies of China, Canada, and Mexico?  Tariffs are a tax on everyone. Except those not trading, (e.g. Russia), and those with 'fuck-you' money. 
Is Fentanyl trafficking an adequate pretext to making enemies of nearly every close american  ally and trade partners?  Is making everything 25-35 % more expensive beneficial to his constituents?  Compromised ASSet.

Blindly lobbing darts at bad policy scribbled onto post-its, Is the best we can do in Washington today.

It is very clear that shock and awe are intended diversions, from real accomplishment, and  actual work.  But the DOGiE dumpster fire which decapitated the formerly functional juggernaut of American Sovereignty, and governance, is strategically aligned with dismantlement from within.  Collaterally 100,000 americans will lose their jobs and livelihood almost immediately. Somewhat ironically they voted for him. Even those who lose Medicare, and Medicaid voted for this. While globally millions more suffer  for lack of US aid. So, who stands to benefit from "Draining the Swamp", tilting the entire table, and pissing off nearly everyone? 
Who would be on the winning end of every current political move made by the ASSet?

(sigh)       

...Russia alone -- 

And current capitulation to Russia comes without getting anything in return, except perhaps a bromantic chest bump.  This smells an awful lot like, "...Hey thanks Dr. Death for tipping my election".  It doesn't take a Democratic Think-Tank to discover a few truths. This imbalance being one of them, and the other being -- Democrats biggest failing seems to be calling a spade a spade.  Calling out Dictators, Indicting Fascists, even offing it's enemies, before they burn the place down,  And... always acting like the "adult" in the room, (which is now a circus) while the world crumbles, are a few of these failings.   And... don't get me started on Special Council investigations, and whistleblowing.  He should have been indicted so many times, my head spins thinking about it.

R e l a x M a n..., because this too is not impeachable, Trump vis a vis Putin have convinced, [nay brainwashed],  idiotic constituents that their moron is "working" in their best interests.  We The People, (damaged & slightly more-smarter) all know HE has no plan. ZERO.  He has never had a plan of his own, except to be popular.  To get "LIKES". The chasm between being popular and being liked is as wide as our country.  The thing of it is, that many a charlatan, con man, and ASSet, operate under beliefs which remain sufficiently unclear to themselves, as they form excuses for what goes wrong. Reentering the "Blame-Game" -- Reactive is what we are. Humans adjust the thermostat when we feel chilled.  Reacting to bad news, tragedy, and to criticism, as if betrayed by the unexpected... all the while believing that our reactions are some sort of preemptive expert strategy.  That we are in control, is largely myth, but as we just fumble with the remote control (perhaps) something a bit less lame appears on our screen, and we feel vindicated by our expertise.  The whole Trumpian movement runs like this... Chaos, Trade wars, Tarriffs, one day, rescinded the next when that shitty plan fails -- Try something new. Blindly lobbing darts at bad policy which we've scribbled onto post-its, This is the best we can do in Washington today.  Pin the blame on the Donkey, while the left convenes to bury woke, and polish it's appeal. But the real motivations are perhaps far less insidious than we could know. Because at it's core -- American idiocrasy is constantly blindsiding it's citizens by what they cannot see, which is just how good they had it before the wrecking ball took their quiet comfort away.  The greatest generation simply wont let go of white sovereign supremacy, and re-invents a new scape-goat every day. Especially when things go sour, and Trump is their Mouthpiece.

So, why is it so difficult to see that Trump is a Russian Asset?, Perhaps because it would mean that we were wrong, and ineffective. Compromised for certain. Call it what you will. That we couldn't see it coming, is "unfair adversity".  BUT, in truth he couldn't really know either. This is of course the key to creating an effective ASSet. They first need to be rather dim.  Brainwashed by hubris,  self importance, and the desire to be  a strong man dictator himself, is all the motivation a weak person needs to drink Commie Kool-Aid. All effective cults and religions for that matter, promise nirvana, which you only get when you are dead, so you cannot actually fact check it, can you?  Let the charlatan believe that he is sooo smart that THIS could never happen to him, as was his last administration.  But NOW, TODAY the U.S. is on a disastrous trajectory.  The showman promises that trick with the table cloth, but where everything tumbles. Wait... Which pill did I swallow?

The President of the United States is a Compromised Russian Asset, and everyone is pretending that it is fine.
Say what you will about conspiracy Theories... Or How Bonkers the Right or the Left appear. The World is on edge because of one man and his patsy Donald J Trump, and this is entirely unsurprising. Find yourself a popular, if unlikable celebrity has-been, and promise them billions.  Tell them they can plant a Trump-Tower Man-Phallus directly off Red Square. Allow them to believe they wield unfettered power and popularity, and how do you think they will behave? This is of course safe-guarded by their limited survival.  The last man standing will not be Donald J.

A political lifetime ago The Guardian and many other credible news sources tried to properly decipher the Kremlin Papers, and the Steele Dossier, to reveal what they were at their core.  These purported to improve relations, and cooperation between a ruthless dictator, and a doughy dottering insecure sociopath. But they are a doctrine for takeover.  A means to plant an asset and a flag upon the american capital. Donald J. is the mouthpiece for Russia. He is a Mole. He is a Kremlin Asset.

What follows are cogent adult fact based reporting on america's traitorous ASSet.

​The person to ‘weaken’ America: what the Kremlin papers said about Trump. This article is more than 3 years old Documents appear to show how Russian intelligence worked to install their preferred candidate as president
Papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh
Thu 15 Jul 2021 13.05 EDT
In January 2016, America was coming to terms with what had previously seemed incredible. Barring an unforeseen event, Donald J Trump was on course to become the Republican party’s presidential candidate. Some welcomed this giddy prospect, while others in the Republican establishment recoiled in horror.
The man himself oozed confidence. “I have a feeling it’s going to work out, actually,” he told his rival Ted Cruz, at a Fox News debate. By 22 January, the polls had Trump well ahead, as a snowstorm nudged towards Washington.
Trump’s astonishing and confounding rise had not gone unnoticed in Russia. Unbeknown to the US public, his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was in touch with the office of the Kremlin press secretary. Cohen had begged for help in building a luxury hotel in Moscow – a decades-long Trump dream.

Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

Read moreMeanwhile, Trump had said flattering things about Vladimir Putin, a person talked about by some leading US politicians as a cold-eyed KGB killer. “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia,” Trump would muse.
That he was the Kremlin’s preferred candidate is not in doubt. What has been a source of endless conjecture is the lengths Russia was prepared to go to to help Trump win. The Guardian has spent months seeking to verify the authenticity of papers that may provide an answer to this question.
Our investigation has revealed that western intelligence agencies have known about the papers – and have been examining them – for some time.
Independent experts approached by the Guardian have also confirmed they are consistent with the Kremlin’s thinking and chain of command.
Their fascination in material that appears to have come from within the heart of the Kremlin is easy to understand.
The papers suggest that as Trump surged ahead, a group of analysts inside the Russian administration were putting the final touches on a secret paper.
The title of the document was bland enough: “Report on strengthening the state and stabilising the position of Russia under conditions of external economic constraint.”
Its contents were not.
The document describes how Putin’s expert department was urging a multi-layered plan to interfere in the race for the White House. The goal: to “destabilise” America.
One candidate above all might help bring this about, the experts confidently believed – the “mentally unstable”, impulsive” and “unbalanced” Trump.
This plan was presented as being entirely defensive. The Obama administration had inflicted damage on the Russian economy by imposing sanctions. Living standards were falling, regional elites were unhappy and the sugar rush from Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea had worn off, the report said. Potential domestic political dangers lay ahead.
The sensible course from Moscow’s perspective, it said, was to enact measures that would “pressure” America to ease off – by dropping anti-Russian sanctions, or softening them.
The paper seems to have set off a flurry of activity in the Kremlin.
The documents indicate that on 14 January Vladimir Symonenko, the expert department chief, shared a three-page summary.
“At the moment the Russian Federation finds itself in a predicament. American measures continue to be felt in all areas of public life,” it starts. Next, Putin ordered the head of his foreign policy directorate, Alexander Manzhosin, to arrange an urgent meeting of the national security council, Russia’s top decision-making body. At some point over the next few days Putin appears to have read the document himself.
By 22 January, other security council members had had a chance to digest its contents. The early part dealt with Russia’s economy. The secret American measures were contained in a special section beginning on page 14.
The report seemed to confirm what Trump would later deny: that Putin’s spy agencies had gathered compromising material on him, possibly stretching back to Soviet KGB times.
Trump’s personal flaws were so extensive – also featuring an “inferiority complex” – that he was the perfect person to feed divisions and to weaken America’s negotiating position.
The unflattering assessment of Trump’s personality was based on evidence, the paper said, derived from observation of his behaviour during trips to Russia.
Trump visited communist Moscow and Leningrad in summer 1987 following an invitation from the Soviet envoy in New York. Trump returned in the 1990s, and early 2000s, seeking business deals, and flew in for the 2013 Miss Universe beauty contest, when he stayed in Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel. Putin’s FSB agency had spy cameras in guest rooms, and a full-time officer on the premises, the Senate intelligence committee later found.
The report appears to confirm Trump was being watched, though no dates or locations are given.“Considering certain events that took place during his stay on Russian Federation territory (Appendix 5 – personal characteristics Donald J Trump, paragraph 5), it is urgently necessary to use all means to promote his election to the post of President of the United States,” it says.
The allegation that the Russians had kompromat on Trump would haunt his four years in the White House. True or false, his flattering treatment of Putin was one riddle of his chaotic presidency.
The papers seen by the Guardian suggest that after the security council meeting Putin set up a special inter-departmental commission headed by his close ally Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister. Shoigu was in overall command of the operation to influence the 2016 US election. GRU military intelligence, SVR foreign intelligence and the FSB were all told to prepare immediate practical steps to help accomplish the report’s preferred scenario – a Trump victory.
This certainly came at a time of internal spy agency tensions.
The SVR’s then chief, Mikhail Fradkov, was regarded as a weak figure. In 2010, the FBI arrested 10 of Fradkov’s undercover sleeper agents in America. The scandal badly damaged his authority. The GRU and FSB harboured scarcely concealed ambitions to take over the SVR’s functions abroad. Meanwhile, the GRU’s director, Igor Sergun, died two weeks before the meeting, apparently while undercover in the Middle East.
By spring 2016, the commission chiefs appear to have overcome their institutional rivalry to work harmoniously together. A team of GRU cyber-hackers moved into an anonymous glass tower in north-west Moscow. They worked closely with GRU colleagues based in a downtown building.
The first phishing email was sent on 19 March to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
More followed. As the report correctly envisaged, these stolen and dumped emails became a “media virus” – infecting and weakening the Democratic campaign, and reaching millions of American voters via Facebook and Twitter.
By autumn, President Obama was convinced Putin had personally approved the hacking operation, which Clinton believes cost her the presidency. In October 2016, Obama remonstrated with his Russian counterpart in a phone call, telling Putin his election meddling was “an act of war”. The 2019 report by special counsel Robert Mueller called the Kremlin’s operation “sweeping and systematic”. In 2020, the bipartisan Senate intelligence committee said it was “aggressive and multi-faceted”.
The committee detailed multiple interactions between individuals linked to the Russian government and Trump’s inner circle. The GRU spy Konstantin Kilimnik held clandestine meetings with Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Manafort supplied Kilimnik with private polling and other data. The pair communicated using encrypted messages and shared email drafts.
And what of the report’s claim that Putin would be able to exploit Trump’s weaknesses in “clandestine fashion” during bilateral discussions?
Something along these lines took place during their notorious 2018 summit in Helsinki. Asked at a joint press conference to condemn Kremlin hacking and dumping, Trump endorsed Putin’s assertion that Moscow had not interfered – a claim at odds with the findings of all 14 US intelligence agencies. After a backlash at home, and amid speculation the Russians were somehow blackmailing the president, Trump said he misspoke.
Putin has repeatedly denied claims he interferes in US politics. Western governments don’t believe him. According to US intelligence officials, Moscow sought to influence the 2020 election by spreading “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations” against Joe Biden. Last year, Russian state hackers penetrated numerous federal US institutions, in a massive cyber-attack.
Little is really known about how decision-making works at the top of the Kremlin. The apparent leaked papers seen by the Guardian appear to suggest the bureaucratic paper trail is more considerable than you might think. The security council – the Sovbez in Russian – has increasingly come to resemble the Politburo, the Soviet Union’s powerful executive committee. At the top is a small, like-minded group of individuals, led by a preeminent figure.
For the moment, Putin’s regime looks impregnable, despite mass street protests in January following the arrest and jailing of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, poisoned in 2020 in a special FSB operation. As unrest grows, further leaks seem possible. The lesson comes from history. When the USSR collapsed 30 years ago, KGB files were opened and long-buried secrets fell out.
Trump did not initially respond to a request for comment.
Later, Liz Harrington, his spokesperson, issued a statement on his behalf.
“This is disgusting. It’s fake news, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA was fake news. It’s just the Radical Left crazies doing whatever they can to demean everybody on the right.
“It’s fiction, and nobody was tougher on Russia than me, including on the pipeline, and sanctions. At the same time we got along with Russia. Russia respected us, China respected us, Iran respected us, North Korea respected us."
“And the world was a much safer place than it is now with mentally unstable leadership.”