art, politics, religion: rinse, repeat.
Over the last month, Tina and I had one of our busiest of the year.
We had a photoshoot in Chicago proper, a 360 degree view from the 60th floor looking out onto DeSable Lake Shore Drive. Grant Park, Navy Pier, northerly views for miles, and west was a little obstructed by another building. There was a kitchen, dining, a family room and living area, main bed & bath, two guest beds and baths, and an office. It was bonkers for a downtown pied de Terre.
Continue reading “A dollop of ketchup”“That boy ain’t right,” one neighbor to the other, standing on the line between their front yards. His southern drawl is thick, and right takes another syllable or two to complete.
“Certainly strange,” said the other squinting at the obvious nod to King of the Hill.
A moment or two passes. The two men stare. The first one breaks the silence. “Strange,” he says. “Strange, indeed.” Strange is two syllables.
When men talk to one another, scientists say they don’t face each other. They turn ever so slightly, approximately a 120 degree angle.. To look each other in the eye, they angle their heads, chins and noses over their shoulders. That’s a particular reason why two men in the front seat of a car talk more, because they don’t face each other.
They are anglers. Fishing for information from each other. Conversations are tire kickers about cars, tools, yard advice, marriage talk and gadgets..
With age, angling becomes more important or not at all. Some men angle in their yards for hours over the topic of lawn care, greenifying their brown grass, strategizing weed eradication, postulating what pest nibbled what plants. Chipmunks? Squirrels? Raccoons, Rabbits, deer? Bison, Giraffes, camels? Parasaurolophus, Triceratops, brachiosaurus?
In the backs of their minds, they covet the others garage organization, they size up the others wife, a woman walking past with. her dog gets an up and down, the younger the woman, the longer the stares angling for a slice of inspiration to see if their dicks still work.
No one’s making a “Real Husbands of Broadview, IL”. The damn show would be boring. It would strangle its viewers with sufficating ennui. The show would have to come with shock paddles embedded in recliners, so wives could wake their husbands to come to the dinner table.
“The boy ain’t right” kid. That kid is playing with broken GI Joes and headless barbies in a yard across the street and two houses over. The grass in the yard long. There’s chalk marks up and down two trees. A matchbox car junk yard at their trunks. From their perch, the neighbors can hear him squeal, whimper, moan and spit when he explodes something, his cheeks swell then release a Phrrffffffffffffff, Phrffffffff goooggggggggeee!
“Strange one indeed,” repeats the other.
They say he began strange — a pilgrim of unfamiliar corners, a seeker who wandered past closed, locked doors; through first floor windows, over thresholds near beds, near snores, near warm blankets. What the world calls strange, it fears, and fear has a habit of inspiring the feared, the strange, the marginalized, to research obedience, of calming the fear with the softness of pillows, tight hugs, suffocating love. The pilgrim sets off in search of holiness, absolution, sin forgiveness, only after sins deafen the mind with guilt.
Pilgrims like strange kids focus on Sainthood. Of becoming an icon with candles strewn at its feet, of parishioners kneeling before it, begging, pleading, insisting that the Saint solve the puzzles of her perils, her aunties and uncles cancers, her sins that have wrapped ropes around her neck and are burning her skin with each tug, pull, and one more attempt at a scream.
The Saint is Strange. The Saint is a Strangler.
Saint Range is the Lotney Fratelli of Saints. Pray to St. Range to forgive the sin of judgement, of mockery, of godless insults and petulant gossip. Pray to St. Rangler to ease the noose around your neck, the suffocating delinquency of shame after criticizing a child.
The wood carving of St. Angler is unsanded, rough to the touch, a pregnant splinter awaits your fingers. The stained glass of St. Rangler has a halo made of rope. His robes are ripped, stained black with dried blood. He’s the patron of the albatross, the necklace, the Mr. T of sainthood.
Light as many candles as possible that you never have to bow to your knees in prayer to Saint Rangler, unless of course, you’re all ready to ask St. Peter about today’s weather forecast.
From the NYTimes:
A felon whose sentence President Trump commuted in the final hours of his first term was sentenced to 27 months in prison on Monday after being accused of a range of criminal conduct — including physical and sexual assault — since Mr. Trump freed him.
The sentencing of the man, Jonathan Braun, who had a long history of violence and in 2011 pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering, demonstrates how Mr. Trump’s handling of pardons and commutations has allowed some convicts to return to criminality.
Mr. Braun, whose family used a connection to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to obtain the commutation in January 2021, is at least the eighth convict to whom Mr. Trump granted clemency during his first term who has since been charged with a crime. Several others pardoned more recently after being convicted of crimes committed during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have also run into trouble with the law.
Mr. Braun, despite receiving a commutation from Mr. Trump, was still on supervised release, essentially a federal version of parole. But prosecutors said Mr. Braun had continued a pattern of violence, including sexually assaulting a nanny, swinging an IV pole at a nurse and threatening a congregant at his synagogue.
He was also accused of assaulting a 3-year-old, and was continuing to make usurious loans to struggling small businesses. Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto of Federal District Court in Brooklyn found this year that he had violated the terms of his supervised release, and federal prosecutors asked that the judge sentence him to five years in prison.
Read the full article.
From a AFP fact-check issued earlier this year:
Amid a massive push by the Trump administration to root out improper and wasteful government spending, social media claims circulated that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut payments to Barack Obama for “royalties associated with Obamacare.” However, no trademark exists surrounding the former president’s signature health care law, and the claims originated with a satirical website.
“DOGE stopped an annual payment to Barack Obama for $2.6 million for ‘royalties associated with Obamacare.’ He’s been collecting since 2010 for a total of $39 million taxpayer dollars,” reads text over an image, posted to Facebook on February 27, 2025 and shared more than 25,000 times. Similar posts, accusing the former president of profiting from a trademark of “Obamacare,” enacted in 2010, also spread on X, TikTok and Instagram.
Read the full article. This rumor has been circulating since last February. A big sticking point between me and my gungho MAGA family is that they hate ACA and we – Tina and I – benefit from it. That family can support hating their family like that is beyond me.
The first part of a headline for this Washington Post poll caught my eye, and I admit, I didn’t read the second part. It reads”Voters broadly disapprove of Trump but remain divided on midterms, poll finds.”
After reading the article, I discovered that while Trump is one of the least popular presidents in our history, our entire system is festering in an unflushed toilet. The poll is behind a paywall, that you can get around if you know how (this link should work).
Here’s the breakdown:
Donald Trump’s approval sits at 41% — and 59% disapprove, his worst rating since the Capitol still smelled like tear gas. Independents? Nearly 70% disapprove.
If this presidency were a restaurant, the Yelp page would have blood on it. If it were the Oval Office, the walls would be painted in ketchup and broken glass.
Trump promised power, deals, cheaper groceries, and a “country winning again.” Voters look around and see:
And the public is sending a message:
“We’re not buying it, grandpa.”
64% say he’s going too far expanding presidential power.
Majorities don’t like the federal worker purge fantasies, the National Guard cosplay, or the political meddling in universities.
This isn’t quiet disappointment.
It’s the country tugging on the emergency brake.
But to be fair! Democrats aren’t winning from this.
They aren’t even jogging ahead. The public doesn’t like democrats either.
46% say they’d vote Dem for Congress. 44% GOP.
Coin flip politics in a moment that should be a layup.
Worse, 68% say Democrats are out of touch, more than Trump or the GOP. In a three-way game of spin the bottle, the democrats are not getting any smooches.
It’s not that people are running to Trump. It’s that they aren’t running to anyone.
We’re living in the era of the political shrug.
“I don’t like him…
but I don’t feel seen by you either.”
The truth humming under this poll:
People don’t want a savior.
They want a government that lives in the same grocery aisle, the same rent market, the same anxious future.
Trump’s bleeding politically.
Democrats are catching none of it.
Voters aren’t choosing a side.
They’re waiting for a reason.
We’re done with all the treason. The overreach. The ballroom. The glitzy parties. The private use of government jets. The bathroom remodels. The presidents permanent middle fingers stretched out in our general direction.
Until someone speaks with America rather than at it, this will keep being the mood:
a tired country staring at two political parties and saying,
“You sure you know what the hell you’re doing?”
Le Café Witteveen 