There’s a neighborhood cat that comes around to my front door periodically now. All I know about it is it isn’t a feral, it’s a young male tabby, and supposedly he belongs to someone in the apartments a block over. 

It began as it has every time with me. First the cat starts coming around because I put out bird feeders and that attracts cats. A cat comes around and next thing I know we’re sitting on my porch together. Then it starts letting me pet it. Next thing I know I’m letting it in the house and from that point on the cat thinks mine is a second (or third, fourth, fifth, sixth…and so on…) home.

This time around I decided I would not feed it, because after the calico I don’t want another second hand pet. I will go to my grave wondering if I could have done things any better for her last days. She was a feral who I spent years gaining the trust of. Then she got sick, I took her to a vet but she got worse, and then she wandered off and I never saw her again. She was maybe eighteen years old. You get really attached and when things go wrong you blame yourself for every little thing you think you could have done better forever. Like when I let Claudia go outside that morning.

So this one, and I still don’t know his name, gets no food from me, but I will put out a water dish. Then when he started coming indoors more often I put out a litter box in the upstairs bathroom, on the principle that it really isn’t a good idea to let the cat choose for itself where it goes to the bathroom. The calico taught me that one. I figured he would usually do his business outside and I keep the same agreement with him that I’ve kept with all the other outdoor cats that have come my way, which is when they want out the door opens. After what happened to Claudia I’d rather his owners kept him inside, but once an outdoor cat always an outdoor cat and I just accommodate as a matter of trust. But since he was spending more and more time in the house I put out a litter box. He ignored it for slightly more than two months, but then one day I found he’d made a deposit. 

Several weeks of random visits went by until yesterday when he made another one. This was during the usual routine of inspecting the basement, then racing up the stairs to the second floor, only to lounge in the hallway cleaning and groom himself for a while. Occasionally he decides to take a nap on my bed, which I’m fine with. We’ve napped together twice. But he never stayed more than an hour or two and that was probably because I wasn’t feeding him. Which was the plan. No more pets. It’s too much for me anymore.

So…anyway…This morning he presented himself on my front porch to be let in. Then raced up the stairs to use the litter box. Then back downstairs to be let out again.

Wait…what?

I’m not sure I like where this is going. But then the plan all along is I don’t want him getting too attached, so maybe this is how he sees the bargain we’re making.

Walking back from the grocery store yesterday morning, I chanced across a neighbor walking to their car and we started chatting. Being pretty much in the same age group the conversation took a turn toward the trials and tribulations of growing old. We compared notes. Yes, back in the day we could recover from small injuries pretty quickly. She mentioned her husband once played in a band and still had his drum set in the basement. I mentioned my Alembic bass that I’d mostly taken up because kids of my generation were supposed to learn a musical instrument and I still felt that even though I’m a graphic artist, it would help my mindset if I did.

I guess it was my usual way of making banter, but as she was getting into their car she mentioned that however old I am I still act like I’m young.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that. After mom died I entered a period of therapy, and the shrink who worked with me told me that I “present young.”

I can tell you it’s not affected in any way. If anything I’ve had to work most of my adult life at allowing me to be me…my school years prior to Woodward were so stifling, plus the constant static I got from my maternal grandmother simply for being my father’s son. And…yes…having to deal with my sexual orientation when that became a thing. Who do I trust? Who can I be open with? Where can I just be me? Those moments when you have to suddenly decide whether to be true to yourself or duck never stop coming. But you learn to handle them…for better or worse.

All I can think is I was always a science kid, and us science kids never stop enjoying discovering things about nature and the world around us. Which means you never ‘grow up” because you never stop growing.

Sure you move into different stages of life…you get a job, you take on responsibilities you didn’t have to when you were a kid…but you stay curious. Life keeps on being an adventure, even in your old age. Yes it can be harrowing at times. Heartbreaking even. But still an adventure. There is always something more to be discovered.

So I present young. It’s just me. I reckon I won’t have that second childhood they talk about old people having, because I never got completely done with the first one.

So I have my two main characters, Terry and Jeff, a twenty-something gay couple, plus several other supporting characters all involved in this supposed ghost hunt arranged by a cheap reality TV show. Neither Terry nor Jeff believe in ghosts. Terry’s there because he wants to investigate the goings on at this supposedly haunted place because it’s tweaked his curiosity. He thinks ‘supernatural’ is a meaningless term, and that everything has a logical reason. And for the five hundred bucks the TV show routinely offers to anyone who can spend the night in their haunted place du jour, because his spending habits have caused friction in the relationship. Jeff gets involved because so many other local ghost hunters dropped out as soon as they laid eyes on the abandoned office building where this all happens, and the producer offers him a slot in it at the very last minute when he shows up with Terry. And because he’s afraid his man is walking into trouble.

So the cast includes true believers, a couple non believers, and the scam artists working the reality cable TV show. I’m finding that the more I work with the background characters the more I come to know them, the more I see how important their individual background stories are to the story I’m telling. Which isn’t about ghosts.

The thing about ghost stories, the good ones anyway, is the stories aren’t actually about ghosts. The ghosts are a catalyst for the events in the story, which is about the people. And I’m telling story two stories really. One is the love story I never got enough of, especially when I was younger. The other is a morality play I’ve thumped on many times in many different ways.

I like writing these stories the way Ken Burns’ Civil War series did about the war, where you have the big players like Lincoln, Grant, Lee, and Jefferson Davis, but he moves the story along with entries from the diaries of everyday Americans who were caught up in it. It is in their stories you get your best sense of what that war was about, and why it had to be fought.

Ayn Rand (who yes I’m embarrassed now to admit I have read) had her grand larger than life story embodied by her larger than life heroes. It was a mistake, but probably one she couldn’t help making because she was what she was, namely a worshiper of strongmen. Yes she had her secondary characters, Eddie Willers, and that too beautiful not gay could not possibly be gay brakeman we first meet whistling the tune to Hally’s fifth concerto. He never even gets a name. But the story does not live in any of them. 

That’s the problem. She almost gets it, when she relates in a series of quick sketches after the John Galt speech, how everyone knew after they heard it who would be going on strike and disappearing next, and who would not. But she doesn’t tell those stories. She isn’t interested in them. The everyday people who stand up to crooks and bullies are not her heroes. But they’re mine.

Tolkien got it when he wrote, “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

I submit that those small everyday deeds Are the great power. And when, in your art, you thump your pulpit about it, you can draw in large bold strokes the morality sermon at the heart of it, but it’s in the detail where you show how it lives in your characters and your reader sees it.

In the background of my story are the corrupt billionaires and crony capitalists who built the Palmer Building. But they never actually appear in the story. I’m pulling a switch on the Ayn Rand method, where my larger than life characters are deep in the background and it’s the street level people who are my main focus. I tell the reader about all the thievery and grift that built the Palmer Building, but what I put front and center is a reality TV producer who gets his kicks, and his money, manipulating people, because it amuses him. Everything about his TV show is faked, simply to attract a gullible audience and a few true believers, and this time a couple young skeptics, all of whom he uses purely for entertainment. Behind their backs he’s sneering at them. He’s a dime store swindler, but no different in any meaningful way from the ultra rich crony capitalists who built the location of his current bit of flimflam.

Only this time the haunting is real. The final boss, as the gamers say, is waiting for him, and for them all. Something deeper and darker than anything even the rich and powerful could manage, let alone the cheap and contemptuous: and different metals behave differently in the fire. Which I think is a better story than simply spilling a lot of blood and guts and cheap scares, Or straight up sermonising.

Jacob Bronowski once said that art does not set out to preach but to shine a light, and that “the values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.” 

That was Rand’s failing. She seemed constitutionally incapable of just showing the reader the values she’s going on about. She has to hit them over the head with them. Over and over again. That John Galt speech near the end was, in its comprehensive pontification, an abject failure of artistic nerve. By that point after being hit in the head with it over and over and over in a Russian sized thousand page plus novel the reader should have bloody hell already got the message. But the reader could not be trusted to see. Probably because the light was so dim.

I submit that where you really see those deeper illuminations is in those small everyday acts of kindness and love. And in the quiet courage and inner strength those things arise from. That is the glue that holds civilization together, and keeps the darkness at bay. The world does not need Atlas, it can hold itself up. One small act of kindness and love, one small act of courage, at a time.

The American Age Is Over

1. Canada

Fittingly, it was the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, who declared the official time of death.

“The global economy is fundamentally different today than it was yesterday. The system of global trade anchored on the United States, that Canada has relied on since the end of the Second World War—a system that, while not perfect, has helped to deliver prosperity for our country for decades—is over.

Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over.

The eighty-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership—when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect, and championed the free and open exchange of good and services—is over.

While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.”

And just like that, the age of American empire, the great Pax Americana, ended.

We cannot overstate what has just happened. It took just 71 days for Donald Trump to wreck the American economy, mortally wound NATO, and destroy the American-led world order.

He did this with the enthusiastic support of the entire Republican party and conservative movement.

He did it with the support of a plurality of American voters.

He did not hide his intentions. He campaigned on them. He made them the central thrust of his election. He told Americans that he would betray our allies and give up our leadership position in the world.

There are only three possible explanations as to why Americans voted for this man:

they wanted what he promised;

they didn’t believe what he promised; or

they didn’t understand what he promised.

Pick whichever rationale you want, because it doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason was, it exposed half of the electorate—the 77 million people who voted for Trump—as either fundamentally unserious, decadent, or weak.

And no empire can survive the degeneration of its people.

2. No Going Back

Understand this: There is no going back.

If, tomorrow, Donald Trump revoked his entire regime of tariffs, it would not matter. It might temporarily delay some economic pain, but the rest of the world now understands that it must move forward without America.

If, tomorrow, Donald Trump abandoned his quest to annex Greenland and committed himself to the defense of Ukraine and the perpetuation of NATO, it would not matter. The free world now understands that its long-term security plans must be made with the understanding that America is a potential adversary, not an ally.

This realization may be painful for Americans. But we should know that the rest of the world understands us more clearly than we understand ourselves.

Vladimir Putin bet his life that American voters would be weak and decadent enough to return Donald Trump to the presidency. He was right.

Europeans are moving ahead with their own security plans because they realize, as a French minister put it, ‘We cannot leave the security of Europe in the hands of voters in Wisconsin every four years.’ He was right.

The Canadian prime minister declared the age of American leadership over. He was right.

Instead of arguing with this reality, or denying it, we should face it.

It’s bad enough being a failing empire. Let’s not also be a delusional failing empire. Let’s at least have some dignity about our situation.

The world will move on without us.

Economically this means that international trade will reorganize without the United States as the central hub. Relationships will be forged without concern as to our preferences. The dollar may well be displaced as the world’s reserve currency. American innovation will depart for other shores as the best and brightest choose to make their lives in countries where the rule of law is solid, secret police do not disappear people from the streets, and the government does not discourage research and make economic war on universities.

There’s a reason why countries like Belarus and El Salvador aren’t tech hubs.

All of this will mean slower growth at home and declining economic mobility. The pie will shrink and people will become more desperate to hold on to their slices.

If you want a small preview, look at what has happened to the British economy since Brexit.

The drag we experience will be much greater, because we had much further to fall.

In the security space, Europe will organize apart from us. The Europeans will create a separate nuclear umbrella and will likely include Canada, Japan, and Australia in their alliance. The ‘free world’ as we have understood it for the entirety of our lifetimes will no longer include America.

As a result, America will either drift, or find itself becoming more closely allied with the world’s authoritarians. We may become closer with Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. We may find that we need them — Russia as a counterweight to democratic Europe and China as a source of cheap manufacturing to relieve some of the price pressure on American consumers.

The end of the American era doesn’t mean everything will become chaos overnight. We aren’t going to wake up tomorrow to the sound of the blaring war rig horn from Mad Max. We are still a rich country, with momentum carrying us forward. But in ways that will soon be perceptible and eventually be undeniable, things will get worse. And facts about America and the world that we have taken for granted since the end of the Second World War will no longer hold true.

3. Idiots

On the day that Trump’s tariffs collapsed America’s position in the world, Secretary of State Marco Rubio went to Brussels to demand that NATO allies increase defense spending to 5 percent of their budgets.

But here is how utterly stupid and unserious our government is:

Europe IS going to rearm. And they are going to do so by building up their internal defense industries so that they do not have to rely on America, which is in the process of threatening military action against a NATO member.

And the American response to this has been to cry foul.

U.S. officials have told European allies they want them to keep buying American-made arms, amid recent moves by the European Union to limit U.S. manufacturers’ participation in weapons tenders, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The messages delivered by Washington in recent weeks come as the EU takes steps to boost Europe’s weapons industry, while potentially limiting purchases of certain types of U.S. arms.
Our government thinks it can simultaneously:

demand that Europe re-arm;

threaten our European allies with territorial annexation; and demand that Europe buy American weapons.

We have a deeply stupid government — from our economically illiterate president to our craven and foolish secretary of state, from the freelancing billionaire dilettante who is gutting American soft power to the vaccine-denying health secretary who is firing as much talent as he can. From the senior economics advisor who thinks comic books are good investments, to the senators who voted to confirm this cabinet of hacks, to the representatives who stumble over themselves justifying each new inane MAGA pronouncement.

But also, we have the government we deserve.

The American age is over. And it ended because the American people were no longer worthy of it.

-Jonathan V. Last
The Bulwark
April 3, 2025

Bruce here. When I was a younger guy, watching Neil Armstrong plant the first human footstep on the moon, I would never have expected that I would be living in a failed nation in my old age. But here we are. And as Last says there is a lot of inertia left in what was the United States, so hopefully I won’t live to see the curtain rise on the dark ages, just the warm up to them.

But I am so desperately sorry for the younger gay guys I came to know during the Love In Action protests, and all the LGBT kids out there now. They are probably going to have to find somewhere else to live eventually. Preferably before everyone’s passports are confiscated, and/or the rest of the civilized world locks its doors against us. Like we did to the Jews during WWII.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
-H.L. Mencken

I’m up early and step out onto my porch to check the weather and see if the neighborhood cat is out and about and wants to come in for a bit. I see that it’s rained, and there was some wind overnight because blossom petals from a tree nextdoor are scattered all over my porch. It is pleasantly warm.

Then one of the more impressive flashes of lightning I’ve ever seen streaks across the sky. Not sky to ground but cloud to cloud spreading out and covering half the sky above me. I’ve seen this sort of thing before but never that expansive and right over me. Seconds later a blast of thunder tears through the sky, then decays into a slow growling rumble that goes on and on.

I give it the applause it’s due, thinking maybe I wait a while before taking my morning walk.

…still in it.

Had four new run flats put on the Mercedes this morning. I had not run flats on it because several years ago the Costco in White Marsh said they couldn’t get the run flats for my car anymore, and talked me into putting on a normal tire set, which I expected to drive less rough and last longer than the run flats were. They did neither. But I think I understand the problem better now.

My car has the stiffer sport suspension in it, because as I am told, the diesel engine weighs significantly more. So Daimler puts the sports suspension on their diesels. Sports suspensions ride harder and wear tires out faster. And so my experience with not run flats was basically the same as with the run flats.

The only advantage to the not run flats is they’re hundreds cheaper. But the stress of driving around with only a tire plug kit in case I got a flat wasn’t worth it. I’ll keep the plug kit in the trunk of course, but I feel better knowing that I have some leeway to get the car someplace safe and off the road if a puncture happens.

This time I went to the Costco in Owings Mills, which is more like your standard Costco than the one in White Marsh, which I think was a Price Club way back in the day. I could almost imagine myself walking through the Costco in San Luis Obispo the floor plan is so identical, except they can’t sell alcohol here in Maryland so no Kirkland tequila (I joke, you can get the good stuff at the Costco in San Luis). I had no trouble getting run flats from them, and there were lots of places nearby to grab a bite to eat and shop while I was waiting than at the White Marsh one.

So that’s the 210k service and new tires. Now I’m ready for another trip to Oceano. But I’ve no idea when I can get enough vacation time for that. I’m hoping maybe next September. I’ll see if I can negotiate a week or two of work offsite.

Kurt Vonnegut once said that you’re allowed to be in love three times in your life. I’m guessing that isn’t counting all those temporary infatuations you might have along the way, until you take a closer look and see they’re really not all that, or if you’re gay, until righteous godly people were able to step between both of you and put an end to it because you’re making baby Jesus cry. I’ve Had My Share of Those.

No. Pretty sure he meant three times to love truly, madly, deeply, as the Savage Garden song goes. Three times to go all in. Three times to lose yourself in it. But only three. Because a forth might kill you.

Three strikes. Strike one was the first. Setting eyes on him in high school yanked me out of denial. But it was 1971. Pretty sure his family found out he was talking to that queer kid in school and after that he kept his distance, and then they moved away so it would have had to end anyway. Strike two was a reawakening of hope. That first broken heart makes you certain it will never be (I nearly jumped off a bridge in front of a train…), and then suddenly it happens again and you believe again. But he was straight…

Pretty sure now that was the start of the Dark Time, though I’ve written before that my memories of that period in my life are so mucked up it’s hard for me to recall the timeline. I couldn’t pull myself out of it for years. I stopped doing art and turned to computer programming instead so I didn’t have to look at my feelings. Then along came strike three.

Strike three eventually told me we were just friends with benefits. Then he dumped me. I found out during an AOL Instant Messenger chat with him. This is how it’s done in the 21st century.

It could have been a lot worse. This graphic came across my commercial social media feed the other day…

I almost moved south to be closer to strike three. I had it set up with the agency I was contracting for. There were jobs to be had down there according to the agent I spoke to. But Three dumped me before I could set it all in motion. So I stayed in my apartment in Cockeysville.

Had I done it I would never have got the job at Space Telescope, and bought a house of my own. And he’d have dumped me anyway.

I have it pretty good now. But I never found a companion for my body and soul. I haven’t been whole for most of my life.

Don’t be telling me that I’m not the only one. Each and every lost one of us who failed at love, are the only ones. 

Someone should write a book on that. Anyway…I was curious how the author of The Martian managed it. From what I heard he’d first serialized it on his own website, and somehow that led to it actually being published. So I asked Google…

Andy Weir, author of The Martian, self-published the book in a serial format on his website, chapter by chapter, then made it available as a free ebook, and later on Amazon for $0.99, which led to its success and a traditional publishing deal.

This could work for me except that if A Coming Out Story is any guide I might be months between putting up new chapters of my Not Really A Ghost Story But Sort-Of. And I would need a good editor to finish it properly. It looks to me like Andy Weir didn’t hire one until after his serialize version took off and Crown Books bought in, so maybe that also works because I think it’s going to be another year at least before I finish the story.

I’ve done it before. I had a fantasy series I worked on decades ago up on this website: The Skywatchers of Aden. At the time I didn’t know Aden was an actual city in the middle east. I gave the nation that plays a key role in the stories that name to make it sound like Almost But Not Eden. So if I ever pursued it seriously again I’d probably have to give it a different name. But I think I’m done with those stories. There were other problems with them I’m not sure how to resolve. I had five short stories up and one novelette. If you look at the page source on some of my website pages you can still see references to it.

Anyway…there’s another problem with this plan. I’ve asked for people to take a look at what I have so far (seven chapters) of my story and nobody responded. My website gets next to zero traffic unless I put up more photos of Robbie Benson in cutoffs or instructions on how to draw sexy guys who wear glasses. I have no idea how Andy Weir got all the interest in his story when he was serializing it on his blog and I am clearly utterly incapable of self promotion or I’d have had photo gallery shows and art shows to look back on. My brother tells me frequently that I should self publish A Coming Out Story and I haven’t.

I know what’s missing. I’ve heard it said that behind every great artist is a lover. But…so it goes… I don’t need to be great, just get it out there somewhere it doesn’t die stillborn.

But I’m liking how the story is working out. Got a lot done on it today in fact. I might start to serialize it here. I actually do get some traffic here on A Coming Out Story. It isn’t a lot but it is still very gratifying. Especially when it looks like someone just stumbled onto it and then they go through all the episodes.

Today is I Have To Stay Inside My Comfort Zone day, and for the occasion I’m going to spend time with my artwork, fix the electric tiller, take a few lazy walks around the neighborhood, possibly smoke a good cigar, have a nap, and if the weekend parking weather improves go to the hardware store and see if I can get some more solar mushrooms for the front yard.

Now that one of the Japanese maple trees out front isn’t there anymore, and the neighbor’s tree probably not by the end of this year, there’s plenty of sunlight on the front lawn for solar lights. I picked up a couple new ones for the front the other day in fact.

The backyard is already full of solar lights that I put out when the weather gets consistently warmer. Now I get to try doing the front yard. Only problem is being more visible from the street they’re more likely to get stolen. I live in the city after all. But so far my solar walkway lights haven’t been taken, and I kept them up all winter.

I see by my Google Calendar that tomorrow (Sunday the 23rd of March) is I Have To Stay Inside My Comfort Zone Day…

The day I asked if we could do something together on his own time and he told me no, “I have to stay inside my comfort zone.” This should be a special day for making myself comfortable.

That’s two Very Special Days in March! I think I shall have dinner at La Cuchara tomorrow…

If only that technology in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind was a real thing. Except…

Joel re-experiences his memories of Clementine as they are erased, starting with their last fight. As he reaches earlier, happier memories, he realizes that he does not want to forget her…

Joel comes to his last remaining memory of Clementine: the day they first met, on a beach in Montauk…

No. No, if that’s what you go through on the way to forgetting then I don’t want to do that.

I’ll live with it if erasing the memories are more painful than living with them.

And make myself comfortable inside my comfort zone.

I heard Ed McMahon on Johnny Carson tell your usual lounge lizard joke once, that I still think is kinda funny. He said if you’re ever hiking in the wilderness make sure to bring along everything you need to make a martini. That way, if you’re ever lost, you can make yourself a martini. And while you’re mixing it up someone will tap you on the shoulder and say “That’s not the way to make a martini,” and you can ask them how to get back to civilization again.

As I said…a lounge lizard joke. But a good one. And it probably works for making a margarita. I think I finally have the right mix of ingredients to make that perfectly smooth Italian margarita I’ve only been able to get sporadically at various bars and restaurants. And along with that, a silky smooth basic margarita. And probably someone will tell me this isn’t the way to make a margarita.

Whatever. I’ve wondered for so long why some places make their margaritas so tart I can barely sip them. Pretty sure now it’s too much lime.

I’ve seen the bartenders use all sorts of things…sour mix, Grand Marnier instead of Cointreau, simple syrup. It’s been hit and miss. Last summer my brother took me to Avila Beach golf club, just up the coast from Pismo, and there I watched a young bartender make me a margarita from scratch…a good tequila, Cointreau and a fresh lime she cut and squeezed herself, plus something in a mystery bottle that I thought might be sour mix or simple syrup. It was the smoothest, nicest margarita I’ve ever had. But when I tried to do that myself it came out way too tart.

I’ve tried ready made margarita mix. The Kirkland stuff is very good. But I can’t make an Italian margarita with it. I’ve tried a bunch of different recipes all to no avail. Your basic margarita follows a 321 rule. Three parts tequila, 2 parts Cointreau (some substitute Grand Marnier) and one part lime. I think that one part lime is where a lot of bartenders get it wrong and it turns out too tart. But just fiddling with the amount of lime wasn’t working for me. I bought some fresh limes to try and duplicate what I had at the Avila Beach Club and could not.

But I really Really like that Italian margarita. So recently I tried experimenting with it in ernest. I started subtracting lime from the accepted recipes but too little was no good either. A good margarita is a balance of sweet and tart and while I lean toward sweet in just about everything (my go-to tequila for making margaritas, Tres Generaciones plata, is a slightly sweet and very smooth tequila) the lime needed to be in there. Then I got a tip: use agave sweetener, but sparingly, to balance out the lime. Instead of one part lime, one half part lime and one half part agave sweetener. Or maybe two-thirds part lime and one third agave sweetener. I am stil fiddling with it.

But it works!

Now I can have my Italian margaritas at home whenever I want. Which isn’t often because at my age my body doesn’t take alcohol like it used to. I go out for dinner now I’m more likely to have a mocktail as an actual drink. In fact, a new gay mocktail only bar has opened up near the DC gayborhood I’d like to try sometime soon.

• I find myself anxiously checking first thing in the morning that my Social Security check was deposited when expected. Now I’m instantly paying bills with it I don’t have to until the first of the month, on the theory that if Apartheid Clyde decides I died several months ago like that guy in Washington State, he can’t claw it back from my bank accounts if it’s already in the hands of someone else and at least my bills are paid while I’m wandering through empty Social Security offices trying to convince the system that I’m not dead yet.

    I’m not. I feel fine. I think I’ll go for a walk.

• The Not Run Flats I was talked into buying at Costco last time, because they said they couldn’t get the right ones for my car, didn’t last any longer than the run flats would have anyway, and they didn’t ride any better. So I will have run flats put back on. The Costco in Owings Mills says they can get the right ones for my car now. It’s about 500 bucks more for a set of four but I can avoid the constant the anxiety of running with only an emergency tire plug kit in case I get a puncture.
• The Disney+ Percy Jackson series has already been renewed for a third season which means we will get to the introduction of Nico di Angelo and hopefully see him through the rest of the first five books of the series. But the big reveal during the fight with Cupid doesn’t happen for six more books after that one and I have serious doubts that Disney is going the distance there. If they just let it end with the last of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books then they don’t have to deal with that big reveal in The House of Hades that it wasn’t Annabeth Nico had the crush on.

The best fan art there is of this scene and imo much Much
better than the official graphic novel adaptations, by 
alessia.trunfio

• Pretty sure going full time isn’t going to work for me, given the very low energy levels I have. I would just be working and sleeping all week long with maybe a little energy left for housework on the weekends. I need to make visit to the GP again, which I haven’t in a couple years now, to talk about this, and also verify my measles vaccine status and get the next updated COVID shots before the lunatic currently in charge of our public health services takes vaccines off the market in favor of Draino cocktails.

Germans like you probably saw this coming but I never thought I’d see the day and I am scared for you. Never mind all the water under this bridge I am scared for you. Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and he is using it to deport even green card holders like you without any sort of appeal or legal review.

I’m watching my country going down the tubes. It’s just stunning. I’ve no idea what I’ll do to get by but I reckon I’ll cross those bridges when I get to them.

I hope you’re somewhere safe. Please be somewhere safe.

-Bruce

It looked for a while like Meta had paused it’s pro Trump counter attack on Facebook posts that weren’t passing politically correct muster with the Donald. I was thinking this was because Facebook’s censorship campaign worked well enough that Trump got his bloated ass back in the white house and all was right with the world and whatever the libtards were saying didn’t matter anymore. But no.

I shared this graphic on my Facebook page back on March 5 and now it’s being “Fact Checked”, along with probably everyone else’s posts who laughed at Trump’s confusing transgender mice with transgenic mice…

The hair splitting being done this time by ersatz Meta/Trump fact checkers “Lead Stories” is that it wasn’t just a case of Trump confusing transgenic with transgender but that he referenced several studies that studied the effects of hormone treatment in mice for the purpose of evaluating the safety of certain kinds of transgender healthcare. But it was never about making mice transgendered, and yes, he did also confuse a study on transgenic mice with the studies on transgender healthcare.

So once more Meta/Facebook is stepping up to the plate to sew doubt and confusion about legitimate criticism of Trump’s behavior. There are lies made of false facts, and there are lies of omission, where some or all critical facts are hidden behind a lot of word salad. But they are all lies and you can’t build a nation out of lies.

We’re on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They are practically what define us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. 

-Valery Legasov, Chernobyl 

Meta is once again covering up Donald Trump’s lies. He must be feeling the heat. Good.

[Update] This from a Reddit user: I guess that’s why it reads disingenuous to me. What Trump said is still wrong and the White House is trying to defend what he said by referencing useful science that is worth funding. His words are anti-science and anti-transgender people. Hormone research and gender affirming care also applies to more people than just transgender people. I worry people would simply read the headline of the Lead Stories article and follow along with his anti-science narrative.

That’s the entire point, to keep the anti science narrative alive, and also hatred toward transgendered Americans. Because otherwise how are they going to keep winning elections.

I had this wee adventure on the way back home to Baltimore from Disney World last Sunday. About ten miles into my trip the car’s message system beeped at me and the center console told me I only had 10 starts left. Above that number was a small icon indicating that the complaint was I had run out, or was about to run out of DEF.

I understand why they’re doing that countdown thing when it comes to the emissions control system, it’s because lots of drivers will simply ignore it otherwise, but I absolutely hate it and I think it’s a potential life threatening thing to just shut down the car when the count runs down to zero. When it started happening to me a couple years ago on my way to California, because my catalytic converter failed, I was in Grand Junction which did not have a Mercedes dealership and the nearest one was in St. George Utah, which meant driving several hundred miles through empty roastingly hot desert.

My car is a 2012 E350 Bluetec that I took delivery of December 2011. I am its first and only owner, not counting the factory and the dealer. It has that OEM 642 engine everyone seems to hate but I’ve had no trouble with it (ironically not counting the emissions control system which I’ve had to have worked on Lots, like the DEF tank heater replaced which cost nearly two grand, and both NOx detectors replaced). This is probably because I give the car every service the factory indicates except the oil changes. Those I did twice as often (every 5k) until the car reached 170k and now I do them every 3k. I do them myself except at the 10k service intervals where I let my mechanics do the oil change too.

And also top off the DEF tank. So that nominally gets done every 10k, but if I need to visit the mechanics in between those service intervals, like I’m taking a cross country road trip and I want the car checked over first, I’ll ask them to top off the DEF tank then too.

My car currently has 209k on it, most of that road trip driving. I am able to walk to my office, and to most day to day things I might need right here in my city neighborhood. So the car does not get commuter miles. I do a lot of pleasure road tripping in my cars and this Mercedes makes a wonderful road trip car..

Only once before have I had a problem with the DEF tank running low and that was because a shady dealer didn’t do it, or change the fuel filters like they were supposed to either, and I had to find out, that time also on the way up I-95 from Disney World. Good thing you can get that stuff at any any truck stop.

So this time I thought it was another case of the mechanics not topping off the DEF tank. But the guys I use now are really good and very trustworthy. So I gave it some thought.

I did the emissions recall two Julys ago, got a check for 2k from MBUSA…and lost 4 mpg (why??). I wondered if the car was sipping DEF more since then and maybe that 10k interval just wasn’t cutting it now. I had the car looked over several times before taking a road trip to visit family in California and asked them to top off the DEF tank then. So I might not have noticed the DEF tank was draining out faster than before since the emissions work.

I stopped for some road food and checked to see if I still had a countdown. I did. Now I only had 9 starts left. I had a reservation for the night a South of the Border, which yes is barely a two star motel but every room has its own private covered car port which makes it worth it to me. I figured I would buy some DEF at a truck stop along the way, get myself to South of the Border and my room. Nine more starts would be more than enough. Once I was there it would be easy to empty the trunk and add some DEF to the tank.

I stopped at a Flying J and bought a cubetainer of two and a half Gallons of DEF. When I started the car again it said I had 16 starts left.

Wait…what…???

I didn’t think that was in anticipation of my putting DEF in the tank and now I’m wondering if it wasn’t some glitch in the system and the tank had plenty of DEF in it. So I kept on driving hoping the next time I stopped I’d still have some starts left. Periodically I checked the messages. I had one message, I had 16 starts left. I checked again. Same story. I stopped to take a bladder break. When I started the car again there were no messages, no indication of a countdown happening. I double checked the message list. Nothing.

?????

Now I’m thinking maybe the sensor that tells the car the DEF tank is nearly empty was glitching and now it wasn’t. Or now it was telling the car the DEF tank was okay when it wasn’t. I had no idea, but I promised my car I’d add DEF to the tank when I got to South of the Border and I was going to do that.

So I get to South of the Border, check in, drive to my room (those private carports are Really Nice, you drive right up to your room door and even if it’s pouring rain you can unload the car for the night no trouble) unloaded the trunk, took out the trunk liner (the car has to be a working member of the household so I bought one of those when I took delivery) and uncovered the DEF tank.

The cubetainer of DEF came with an extendable pouring spout that fit snugly into the DEF tank filler. I started pouring. The tank took nearly all two and a half gallons. I think maybe there’s a pint or less still in the cubetainer.

The next morning I drove the rest of the way back to Baltimore without any trouble or new messages. As I read it, the DEF tank in my car has about a six and a half gallon capacity. So there was probably still four gallons of DEF in it. I don’t think that should have caused any problems.

Anyway…new rule: when I do my own oil changes from now on, I will also top off the DEF tank. And it would be nice to have a feature that lets me see how full the DEF tank is. But the sensor that’s in there might not be capable of that.

The chatter I’m getting on the Mercedes forums is the sensor in the DEF tank that tells you when you’re about to run out is getting flakey. Oh well. I’ll ask my mechanics about it when I do the next 10k service in a few weeks. I love my car, but that countdown thing sometimes makes me wish I had a 1973 240D. With a four speed stick.