There is an old adage in American politics that Democrats get America into wars and Republicans get the country into economic depressions. The key to any presidency is to avoid doing both.
I spent 12 years as a county politician, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. A hard-nosed realist politically, my take is “You elect officials and then you live with the results.”
Americans re-elected Donald John Trump as president and we should accept the consequences. It’s not like President Trump has made a secret of his opinions. He considers tariffs beautiful, every agreement not signed by him personally is worthless trash, and anything not specifically forbidden by law is negotiable: Actions like putting his name on public buildings, hanging huge banners with his likeness on federal government property, tearing down the East Wing of the White House and paving over the Rose Garden or turning Washington DC into a racetrack. If something is not expressly forbidden in the Constitution and Trump wants to do it, he issues an Executive Order and does his thing, whether it be resurfacing the Reflecting Pool or holding a cage fight on the White House lawn.
There is an Unwritten Law of Unforeseen Consequences, but until they blow up in our faces, the Trump administration seems oblivious to any consequences what-so-ever.
IRAN. When President Obama left office, the U.S. and Iran had concluded a nuclear arms agreement specifying that Iran would not develop a nuclear weapon. Once elected president, Donald J. Trump announced that the U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement was the worst deal in history and the U.S. was withdrawing from the agreement. Cut loose from any binding agreement, Iran put the pedal to the metal and accelerated development of a nuclear weapon.
This threat led to a direct military strike against Iran by Israeli and American forces on February 28, 2026. Before that date, few members of the general public had ever heard of the Strait of Hormuz. (It sounds like a brand of hummus, Strait of Hormuz brand hummus!)
I expect the White House to be better informed than the general public (including me). Suddenly the Iranians cut off oil tanker traffic in the bottleneck Strait of Hormuz and a third of the world’s crude oil became unavailable. Duh, who knew?
There is no cleaning up this mess. The world was better off with the Obama-era agreement, left to molder in the dust of history.
The economy. The Republicans had a field day poking the Biden administration in the eye over rising gas prices. I am not an economist, so for me that branch of science seems kind of diffuse. Does it really matter if the U.S. has a trade imbalance with China? It’s all numbers. If both countries wanted, you could officially erase the debt tomorrow and just start over. I realize that is unrealistic, but it is not impossible.
What does it mean when America’s national debt has topped 40 trillion dollars?
One thing seems obvious, tariffs are not a good remedy for what ails the U.S. economy. Even I notice when gas prices hit $4 a gallon and grocery prices rise by a third.
The Kennedy Center. If you don’t live in the Washington DC area, this last discussion may seem uninteresting, but I feel it is symptomatic of the current administration’s willful blindness. Someone should point out for White House spokespeople and Department of Justice lawyers that calling an elephant pink doesn’t give us a herd of pink elephants.
The Kennedy Center is the top fine arts venue in the nation’s capital. It is also a bastion of liberals and Democrats, as the name implies. Not especially welcome there, for years, Trump ignored it. Then he decided to make it his own. He issued an Execulive Order adding his name to the building’s façade and he replaced the entire board of directors with allies and supporters. The sad news is that these actions resulted in artists and patrons abandoning the Trump-Kennedy Center as too partisan and reflective of President Trump personally. Unhappy with the current administration, they stopped participating, leaving the venue with very few patrons, fewer donors, almost no artists and in a hellish position financially.
Wake up, America! How many mistakes are too many mistakes?
Some seven years later, rapper Clive Flatenbad in Swedish rap duo realPfft revisits President Trump’s anti-immigrant wall in southern Texas. Only to get interrupted by a phone call from the White House!
And once again, Clive’s rather nutty younger brother Tim has painstakingly moved Heaven, Earth and megabytes to edit and package the mucho raw footage which Clive & Friends brought home from their location shoot outside El Paso.
Based on the saying “Everybody likes a pretty girl,” Tim has even plundered realPfft’s photo archive, seeking images of beautiful women.
God help me, what a crew! As their manager, publicist and music publisher, I am guilty as charged for distributing this hilarious wideo creation.
“I love the smell of Victory Gin in the morning,” Todd Harrison said, sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his socks. Outside the window, bright yellow sunlight promised the start of another glorious Spring day. The roar of omnicopters rattled the windows.
“You are such a piece of work,” Erin swore angrily. “I come here, give you what you want— what you claim you need— and never do I hear a word of thanks!”
Red hair and green eyes, she was out and out fuming.
“I wonder if they’ve chosen a parade route free of disruption this year,” Todd pondered. “Last year was such a disappointment.” He was a flag carrier in Big Kahuna’s annual birthday festival and military parade.
“You swine—”
A mile deep into Proletown, they were in a rented room on the second floor of a shop on a grubby side street littered with rubbish. The name on the shop window said Ye Olde WatchRepair, but the letters themselves had faded into ghostly outlines. On the walls upstairs, bucolic scenes of a pre-war nature sat in wooden frames, alternating with cracks in the plaster. Over everything hung the pungent odor of mice.
If they climbed upon the roof and looked south, they could see the cranes being used to build the 250-foot-high Victory Arch on the Isle of Dogs.
“I love the Orange Thunderbolt as much as any man,” Todd insisted, balancing on one foot and pulling on his trousers. “Fourth term notwithstanding, he’s the guy. Listen, they can have a 95-year-old PM if they want, but sometimes the Party makes life all but unbearable.” Searching the rickety nightstand for a smoke, he asked “Why is there a giant banner of Big Kahuna hanging on the Ministry of Injustice building? What’s up with that? Has he become a law & order freak in his old age?”
Working in the Lit Department of Miniprop, the Ministry of Propaganda, Todd had a way with words.
Erin just glared.
Th hollow clatter of a transport drone passed by overhead. “We’ve got to get out of this place, if it’s the last time we ever move,” Todd proposed.
“Again??? Blimey! ’Nough said. I’m not hearing nought!” Erin muttered, pulling the dingy bedsheet up around her chin, round as a tennis ball. Todd loved to kiss her chin, cupping it in his hands and slobbering on it.
On the flip side, sometimes it took all of her wiles just to get Todd to look up from his cellphone.
A half-read novel lay on the nightstand. “Elephant Hunting in Deepest India” screamed the title in lurid red letters. On the cover, a scantily clad damsel rode atop a wayward elephant. Todd had the disquieting sensation that he might have unknowingly contributed bits to the large language model used in the story’s creation. Some of the flowery descriptions matched his prose.
“We need to find a more secure location for our trysts,” he insisted.
“No shit, Sherlock!” sang Erin, jumping from the bed buck naked and marching to the washstand to sponge herself.
Todd heard voices from the street below. “Hoo, hoo, Big Kahuna is watching you!” they chanted, but Todd knew it was just rowdies letting off steam.
“Can you loan me any money?” he asked, not for the first time. Checking the fly strip, he plucked away the dead bodies of flies with his fingers and threw them in the rubbish bin.
“God damn drunk!” Erin griped, her Irish accent as clear as a morning breeze in May. “I never should have taken up with you!”
“It’s all O’Bannon’s fault,” countered Todd defensively. “If he hadn’t introduced us—”
“Yes, yes, blame it on an Inner Party member, why don’t you?” hissed Erin. Wiping the sponge vigorously between her legs, she worked up a lather.
“Ye Irish are as thick as thieves,” Todd commented. “I still wonder what he’s up to, y’ know.”
“I’ll tell you what he’s up to, that wanker. Free love is what he’s up to. Disseminating it among the ranks, so that his own sex crimes will look minor in comparison,” she exclaimed. Throwing the sponge into the washbowl, she marched to the dresser and pulled on her summer frock. Dressed in pink, she looked bleeding gorgeous, barefoot, her hair wild, eyes shining. Todd, hands extended like an eagle’s claws, chased her around the room, drooling. “Just you wait!” predicted Erin. “O’Bannon will throw us under the wheels of the bus, sure as beeswax.”
“I think not,” Todd claimed, only too aware that in politics, Erin was much more perceptive than he.
That’s when there came a click at the washstand and the mirror sank to the floor with a thud.
“Hey, what’s all this!” Todd howled.
The more practical of the two, Erin marched to the washstand and pulled it, screeching, along the floor. The glassy eye of a peeping tom video camera stared at them, the lens covered in dust. “Bastards,” she cursed.
“Yes, bastards!” came a cranky voice over a speaker embedded in the wall.
“Kiss me arse!” she added.
“Yes,” squawked the voice. “Kiss ye arse!”
There was a crash at the window and suddenly the room was filled with guv agents in macks and masks, storming in from window and doorway. “Hup tight! Stand thee with hands behind head!” roared a drill sergeant, teasingly drawing his truncheon down Erin’s spine and along her hip, tapping it meaningfully between her legs. “Tick tock, tick tock,” he joked. “Cat’s got paws, where’s the pussy?”
Todd and she stood helplessly still, trembling, while the guvs milled ‘round. One knocked Erin to the floor.
“Up ye go, lass,” suggested another, helping her to her feet, after which they smashed poor Todd on an elbow and knocked him on his bum.
“All right, that’s enough larking about!” O’Bannon said, coming into the room hurriedly. “Let’s wrap this up.”
“Aye, I thought t’was yer voice I heard,” Erin observed.
While Todd was lifted to a standing position, O’Bannon put on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and read from a printed green card, “Under Article Eight, Paragraph Two of the Charter for the Isles of Britain and Ireland, you are hereby accused of sex crimes, domestic terrorism, insurrection, thievery, bribery, unauthorized handling of explosives, conspiracy to attain handguns and attack drones, printing of unlawful leaflets and doxxing. Each charge specifically or all of the above. Now, strip!”
“Strip, is it?” complained Erin. “Aye, and we what just now got clothed,” she declared, making everyone except Todd burst out laughing.
“Take them to the Ministry of Hygienic Love,” commanded O’Bannon. Black cloth bags were placed over their heads and they were led, stumbling, downstairs and outside to a waiting van.
2
In a chilly room with steel walls, where every noise had an echo, Todd was tied up and strapped to a contraption that resembled a cross between a dental chair and a barber stool.
A busy bureaucrat, O’Bannon left him there, viewing a series of video tutorials filled with trumpeting fanfare and titled “Oceania in the Age of English Socialism.” Not surprisingly, Eastasia and Eurasia were the bad guys, while life in the British Isles resembled a kind of Garden of Eden. The fourth in a series of five was titled “Big Kahuna Is Watching You.”
Afterward, O’Bannon came back in view and in an almost kindly fashion explained the situation.
“Attention, Todd! Consider yourself privileged,” O’Bannon exclaimed, looking surprisingly morose. “I could leave your interrogation to A.I. and it wouldn’t be pretty. You will be amazed at how effective our robots have become. It’s the perfect match, soulful militants against soulless machines. Guess who wins, each and every time?
“I am taking a personal interest in your case, mostly because I know Erin’s parents, two stalwart revolutionaries of the Old School. I don’t do rehabilitations anymore unless they affect policy. So, whatever else, take these formalities seriously and consider yourself honored to be here and getting my personal treatment.”
“My bad,” agreed Todd.
“As long as we are here, let’s see if we can make some progress,” stated O’Bannon, folding shut the hand-tooled brown leather case to his cellphone, a status symbol limited to members of the Inner Party. “The alternative is seven grams of lead in the head,” he added.
“I would like to forego that eventuality,” Todd replied, croaking like a crow.
“I have been following your vlog. Who gave you permission to stream the Special Olympics?” asked O’Bannon.
“I wasn’t aware that I needed permission. I just repost with ironic emojis,” Todd explained. Eyeing various punitive torture devices hanging from the ceiling, he asked, “Is this a wax museum or what?” Only half-joking.
“You seem to have a penchant for the dog poo emoji,” O’Bannon pointed out.
“I told you, I am being ironic.”
“Why do you only have 38 followers?” O’Bannon wondered, waving away a technician in a white lab coat who seemed intent on speaking to him.
“The Net is a closed system, as you know,” Todd explained. “British Isles Only. You try scraping together followers in the UK, where everybody religiously follows Cheltenham F.C. but nought filthy else. Me followers online are a crew of dodgers. Bloody shy, thanks to your lot breathing hot and heavy and such.”
“Why post on a vlog if you don’t have an audience?” O’Bannon queried, genuinely curious. “What is this about Big Kahuna’s hair-loss remedy? Do you actually know something or is it just click bait? Is your podcast sending secret messages in code to an erstwhile opposition? Vox clamantis in deserto. You are a voice crying out in the wilderness.”
“It’s a hobby. I can’t be working for a foreign power because you can’t find a foreign power in London to save ye arse. I wasn’t aware that being a futile bloody failure online is illegal.”
That’s when O’Bannon hit him in the mouth. Once. Hard. When Todd had recovered enough to speak, he said, “I take that as a typical example of trolling.”
O’Bannon’s face went red, but at least he didn’t hit Todd again. Instead, he stood massaging his knuckles. His hand was sore. “Room 35B,” he said.
“What the fuck?!” Todd protested. “I’m British. Some rights and permissions we have. Read the Magna Carta. Bloody Irish!”
“Room 35B is the worst thing you can imagine,” heckled O’Bannon. “It varies from one individual to another. We use an algorithm to determine what you find most reprehensible, based on your online viewing history. In your case, Todd, it is listening to political speeches. As incredible as this might sound, you never participate in political rallies nor Hate Week, although you hoist the colors in Big K’s yearly procession. Why is that? Do tell.”
“No. Aye. Yes. As you say, I really hate listening to harangues. Too many family troubles growing up and like that. ‘The revolution eats its own,’ as they say. Now that we have that nailed down, how about we go to a Wimpy’s and grab some burgers?” he suggested.
“You jest,” said O’Bannon, “but this is not a jesting matter.”
“I don’t jest!” Todd protested. “On me dear old mother’s grave, I hate speeches and I love a Wimpy Triple Quarterpounder Bacon & Cheese. Now that’s a burger!”
“Untie him!” O’Bannon indicated and the technician came scurrying over in his white lab coat. He struggled with the knots.
Traversing the city in a green Ministry of Works van, avoiding the pro-Kahuna flash mobs in City Centre, they stopped off at the Ministry of War where a surly tattoo artist inked a barcode across Todd’s forehead. “Welcome to the Tribe of Ingrates,” O’Bannon announced, smirking. “The State gives you everything and you are still not satisfied.”
Once the novocaine wore off, Todd’s forehead itched terribly.
At the fast food joint, O’Bannon sat over a cup of java, brooding, while Todd fed his face. “Would you mind paying?” he asked O’Bannon. “We left our loft in such a hurry, I forgot me wallet.”
O’Bannon, sure-footed but immensely bored, plucked an evidence bag from his briefcase and handed Todd his wallet.
“Uh, now this is embarrassing,” Todd admitted, “but I don’t have any coin, you see. I’m skint. Penniless. Stony-broke be the bloke.” Holding up his wallet, he showed it to be empty.
Sighing, O’Bannon waved to the waitress. When she came over, he paid for the burger and the coffee.
“I wonder what Erin is doing right now,” Todd mused.
“Don’t worry yourself on her account,” answered O’Bannon. “A wench like that always lands on her feet. She’ll go home to Eire and get a job tending golf links.”
“Now about these charges against us,” Todd proposed, wiping his mouth daintily with a crinkly napkin. “I can understand that you are angry. Then, too, there’s all the things we said when we were at your flat in Russell Square, all that cal about throwing acid in the faces of babies, the joy of anarchistic drone attacks on municipal housing estates and such drivel, but you need to understand that Erin and I were putting on an act. We didn’t ska mean all that blarney.”
“Then why should I believe you now?” O’Bannon asked stonily, his face dour and furious. He propped an oily grey guv-issued M1911 automatic pistol on the Formica tabletop next to his cellphone. It looked enormous, sitting there among the cardboard tray, plastic utensils and paper wrapper left over from the burger.
Staring at the gun, alarmed, Todd stammered, “All I am saying is give me a chance. Seriously, mate,” he pleaded, “I really do love Big Kahuna. Carrying the banner at his birthday parade is a sure sign of my devotion, I can assure you. Only…”
“Only???” spat O’Bannon, leaning menacingly across the table. “Only what?”
“You are Inner Party, you see, old chum, while I am Outer Party. You gents get the more part of the booze and the capers and all the good stuff while the rest of us poor sods have to put up with Victory Gin, crumbly chocolate and your leavings. It says—”
“WHAT SAYS?” roared O’Bannon, bringing the waitress at a run. He waved her away.
“In the archives. At work. There’s a wine in France called a Bordeaux.”
“Yes? So?” hissed O’Bannon.
As if on cue, three rowdies, unshaven and quite drunk, stumbled through the street door, their black bomber jackets plastered with football badges. One look at O’Bannon and his pistol sent them on their way.
“Life is short,” Todd declared. “If I could procure a supply of something as meaningfully fulfilling as Bordeaux wine, Big Kahuna has in me a trusted servant for as long as we two shall live! It would affix me a place on the black market and such, you see. Ta! I have said my piece.”
Stymied, impressed and immensely irritated, O’Bannon told him, “Come to my flat next Tuesday and we’ll sort you out once and be done with it.”
Tears of gratitude pouring down his face, Todd found he really did love Big Kahuna.
Flying into a brick wall, a small black bat fell at my feet. It seemed like an ill omen. Something ethereal in the bat’s nature made me suspect that this flying rodent consisted of more than met the eye at first glance. Having had some experience in the vivisection of inert bodies as an anatomy student at the University of Uppsala, I gently raised the creature in my gloved hand and stared into one of its glassy eyeballs.
“New life!” I cried aloud in the inky white fog of a London night. The scuttling of rats rose in reply. Eerie footsteps and murky shadows populated a street dripping in condensation. The wings of the bat fluttered, its tiny teeth gnawing on the black leather of my glove.
I was in London for a fortnight’s sojourn at the behest of Professor Otto Penn, renowned physician at Eep’s College, Brixton. When landing at Heathrow, I had been required to declare all items above the threshold of £135, then sign a promise that I would not undertake employment while in the U.K. and finally swear that I have never had any dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, Esquire.
Having left Stateside my betrothed Lenore in the provincial backwater that we call home, I hoped that my recently completed monograph on the derivation of the Irish banshee might win me a teaching fellowship at Eep’s. A laboratory assistant at a glue factory, I wouldn’t mind coming up in the world. Memories of Lenore’s hot, prickly breath made a havoc of my thought processes.
What with both ICE and the Border Patrol on the warpath, God only knows what will happen when I try to return to the States. Airports have become dangerous places. I can check my credit rating, but how do I check my ICE rating? Has some protest march I participated in during college left an indelible signature in the Border Patrol database? Am I on a Watch List and, if so, whose? Has a contribution to the ACLU gotten me listed as a domestic terrorist? What if my next door neighbor’s dog is a subversive? I don’t want to end up in a detention center in Bayou Blue, Louisiana just because my neighbor Bill’s Pekingese has been spying for the Chinese Communist Party. Scary stuff!
Fortunately, although an American down to my bootstraps, my family has a wee connection to the British Isles. Humble brag, one of my maternal great great uncles designed the loos on the battle ship HMS Dreadful.
I know myself to be something of a throwback. Every Victorian drama requires a mad scientist who electrocutes inanimate objects with the hopeful conjecture “It’s alive!”
Administering the Kiss of Life, exhaling into the bat’s jagged mouth, it fell from my hands. Growing in shape and bulk, a mysterious figure four feet in height dressed in a black peacoat took its place on the flagstones, its face a pale blur. Scared shitless, a rash of goosebumps ran down my back. I could feel my hair standing on end. “What the fuck?!” I wailed.
“Have no fear,” commanded this strange apparition.
“Fuck you ‘have no fear,’” I complained. “I got plenty of fear.”
“I am but a weary traveler,” he insisted. “Thee has no idea the extent of my afflictions,” he assured me. “Among other things, I am tormented by the curse of spasmodic recollective memory. Fragments of the past come upon me unbidden, mocking and plaguing me, laying siege to my soul, filling me with ennui and regret. Think of it! Now consider that for 600 years, I have occasioned such emotions.”
I must say, he did look mournful, standing there in the shadows. I found myself unable to look away from his baleful stare, pointy ears, weird nails like spikes and frightful comb-over. There was an Old World slovenliness about him. He stank of sloe gin.
His Mitteleuropa accent assured me that he did not come from any shit-hole country. Still, one can never be sure. He may own a yacht off the coast of Africa.
“Ah, thee be American!” he cried gaily, spreading his claw-like hands in a welcoming gesture.
“Yes,” I admitted, “I am.”
“I could tell thee a tale about a world leader who is sucking the lifeblood out of his country,” the fellow exclaimed, wagging his head playfully, “but I won’t.”
What to make of him? Was he even 9/10th’s of one percent real or simply a bad hallucination brought on by a bout of indigestion?
“Have thee ever considered mindfulness?” he queried, swaying from side to side so violently, I felt compelled to steady him with a hand. “Close thy eyes,” he suggested, “put thy hand over thy heart and imagine all of the enemies thee can vanquish with a swipe of the longsword. Hacking off their limbs! Hacking off their heads!” he shouted with glee, his eyes aglow like two burning embers.
“I think most people are focused on peace,” I objected.
“Oh, yes, peace,” he croaked, as if discussing an inferior brand of laundry detergent. “Naturally, peace speaks to the soul of the populace, but, really, it is no part of human nature. Human nature eggs us on to conquer and subjugate. That’s the way of it.”
“You seem a bloodthirsty lot,” I felt impelled to point out.
“Now thee confuseth me with the Ottomans,” he insisted.
“People need to stick together,” I replied warily, the corporate motto at my place of employment. “All I am saying is give peace a chance.”
“Don’t make me list the unappetizing catalog of military misadventure carried out within the last decade,” he insisted, burping a mouthful of breath that smelled like swamp gas. “There is always someone attacking or bombing their neighbor somewhere upon this sorry globe,” he observed. “Thee need fight like hell or thee won’t have a country anymore. No politician should be elected to high office if they have not studied Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Nothing compares to the gory, glorious warfare we waged 600 years ago upon the field of battle, our barbarity fully on display for all to see. VladȚepeș I was christened in the popular mind, ‘Vlad the Impaler,’ a glutton for dead meat. Anorexic, a banquet of food lies before me, yet I cannot eat. Blood I crave and blood I shall have,” he chuckled, falling flat on his face.
“I say,” I commented, helping the midget to his feet, “I fail to see the connection between bats and you.”
“Creatures of the night,” he grumbled in a voice like thunder rolling down a Transylvania mountain top. His peacoat reeked of mold and sawdust. “I am the greatest vampire in history! Everyone knows Count Dracula, ‘Son of the Dragon.’ That’s me!” he howled. “In Romania, they think I am a hero. They make vampire fangs, keychains and shot glasses in my honor. Suveniruri, jucarii. Souvenirs, toys. Look me up online!”
As he spoke, he began flickering like a faulty lightbulb. Once… twice… and then… poof!
He was gone.
I waited around in the dank night, hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm, but it didn’t seem like he would reappear. Well, I thought, that’ssomething I can tell my grandkids about, one fine day.
I was filled with equal parts relief and trepidation. As I turned to go… blink!… there he was again, clear as a video on YouTube and twice as real. Shivers went up my spine and, let’s face it, I experienced a sense of irritation and major disappointment that I hadn’t shaken loose from his companionship. It began to feel as if I might spend the rest of my life standing on that chunk of pavement. And not in a good way.
“The hour grows late,” he said, as if nothing had transpired, leaving me to ponder whether he even realized that his spectral image had, in fact, shorted out. “So much to do and so little time before sunrise.”
“So what brings you to England?” I wondered, making the best of a bad situation.
“I have purchased an abbey,” he exclaimed expansively, seeming to grow an inch or two in height. “Downton Abbey it is called, but I think of it as Rundown Abbey. Sadly neglected by the previous owners, it needs a lot of work. Still, I expect to make something of it. I am renaming it Vlad’s Hideaway. I have already had the name affixed across the front of the building. So far, the earthmovers have only demolished the east wing. I live in a suitcase— well, a coffin, if thee must know— so, by necessity, I call wherever I hang my coat home. However, buying a property gives me somewhere to exhibit my store of gold objets d’art. Gold ornaments are only worth having if one can flaunt them.”
“I really wouldn’t know,” I insisted.
“More is the pity,” he lectured me. “One can never get enough gold. Thee knows the old saying, ‘Me, impotent? Hogwash! Just behold the golden trophies upon my mantelpiece.’ Klemens von Metternich said that. Or was it Napoleon?”
Listening to him rant, without a doubt, I found Vlad to be a man of deep conviction. “I suppose you are supernatural…” I guessed.
“Eh! Supernatural,” he grimaced, his mouth turned cruelly down. “That and four pounds ninety-five will get thee a salted caramel milkshake at Wimpy’s. I do not drink… wine.”
“I say, are you rich?” I blurted, surprising myself. “Where does your money come from?”
“I thought thee knew,” parried Vlad. “I have made a fortune in real estate. One never loses money in real estate, old boy.”
“Do tell,” I quipped, keenly aware from the cinema that I mustn’t let my guard down for even a minute, lest I find the vile creature at my throat.
“As the world goes kaputt, I would like to secure my position in the structure that remains,” he explained, sounding like a stockbroker.
“Apparently, 600 years have given you opportunities to acquire multiple talents,” I surmised.
“Yes, yes, I haven’t been asleep all the time,” he confirmed. “I donate money to blood banks across the globe. It never hurts in times of trouble to have a reserve.”
He paused, seeming to parse his words. “Every hundred years, I reboot the system,” he claimed. “I could tell thee more, but we do not yet know one another all that well.”
Evidently, vampires don’t share.
“Question: Is it true that you have a harem of female vampires?” I wondered, titillated by the very idea. One sees so much speculative nonsense at the movies.
“Like the Muslims and their 72 vestal virgins awaiting every martyr in heaven?” he grinned. “I think not. If thee seeks the Bride of Dracula, her name is Miruna and she lives on a goat farm at the base of Mount Moldoveanu in the Transylvanian Alps. The altitude raises the level of hemoglobin in the goats. She drove me crazy. We are estranged,” he declared with chauvinist distaste. “All that I got out of that relationship was an exceptional stamp collection.”
I checked my watch. Time to go.
“Doth thou wish to join the Eternal Order of Vampires?” he proffered, taking my drift. He made it sound like a gym membership.
“Who, M-M-ME?” I stuttered. “No way, José.”
“One does feel duty-bound to ask,” he all but apologized. “European custom.”
“I am so done here!” I stammered, breaking into a cold sweat. “Really, I am not the type.”
“Blood types!” he rejoiced, clasping his hands emphatically. “Don’t get me started on the merits of the various types of blood. Type A for kings, type B for queens, type AB for aristos and type O for commoners,” he recited categorically, as if he were listing paint samples. “Bloody confusing until one gets the knack,” he acknowledged. I got the feeling he was trying to sell me on the whole concept of vampirism.
“No, no, no,” I insisted, stamping my foot, which made him look down his nose at me and laugh. Was I afraid? Damn straight I was afraid! “Make a habit of flying into walls, do we?” I asked, now doubly curious.
“I am a vampire,” he sighed, shaking his head woefully. “Alas, when I suck the blood of someone who is hammered, the alcohol enters my bloodstream, poisoning my organs. It is toxic. I become intoxicated. Thee has thyself witnessed the result.” He stared at me cross-eyed. Raising his gnarled hands with their grotesque nails, fingers splayed seductively, he intoned, “Look into my eyes, deep into my eyes,” which I did, only to wonder at their bloodshot condition.
“Ach so?” I asked.
“Well, maybe not,” he muttered.
As bad luck would have it, one of London’s urban foxes chose that moment to come trotting around the corner of a near-by building. Sensing us, the red fox froze in its tracks, but it was already way too late. Down on all-fours, Vlad had become transformed. Coiled like a puma, a feral monster, he emitted a low, ferocious growl, drooling a pool of saliva onto the flagstones.
“WAIT! STOP! NO!” I screamed, but my entreaties fell on deaf ears. The vampire leapt through the air and pounced upon its prey. Amid horrendous yelps and the crunching of bones, the fox was not so much killed as physically obliterated. Never will I be able to erase the frightening image of the vampire, crouched on the ground, glowering at me dementedly from the edge of the building, the dead fox hanging lifelessly from its maw.
In shock, I collapsed onto the pavement and lay gasping as vampire and fox disappeared into the darkness. How long did I lie spread across the flagstones, an oily blackness tinging my sight, my throat a dry and aching hole, my heart thumping hollowly in my chest? Who knows.
About the time I struggled wearily to my feet, Vlad returned, standing erect and assiduously wiping his mouth on a sleeve of his peacoat.
“There’s a nip in the air,” he commented. “Still, rain makes the grass grow.”
The casual banality of this utterance was so unexpected, I found myself doubting my own senses. Didn’t he just attack and drain a pint of blood from a woodland creature? Did he or didn’t he? The night had become surreal.
“I consider myself a connoisseur,” he bragged. “I have traveled the world tasting the blood of yaks, mountain goats, musk ox, bison, water buffalo, elephants, dolphins, mountain lions, lions, snow leopards, marmots, grey squirrels, voles and hummingbirds. Hath thou ever tasted the blood of the horseshoe crab? Quite the treat. It is blue. A remnant of prehistoric times, the crab’s blood is copper-based. You should try it.”
“I find the idea of me drinking blood thoroughly repugnant,” I confessed.
“Warm blood, chilled blood, a blood aperitif. Blood daiquiris. Blood red tomato juice,” he bantered. “The Belgians have the right idea, a different glass beaker for each kind of beverage, fitting the glass to the libation. Blood pudding! Thee will eat blood pudding, but thee won’t drink warm blood. How quaint!”
Giving me a defiant look, Vlad turned on his heels. “Beastliness, brutality, cruelty, depravity, inhumanity, savagery, wickedness,” I heard him curse as he hastily walked down the high street. As if drawn by a magnet, unable to resist, I followed in his path. Reaching a pub, he peered through its green glass window. “I shall drink the blood of yonder drunken sods,” he declared, pulling me past the doorway into the barroom proper.
“More blood?” I asked helplessly, but to no avail.
Hot and noisy, the air was thick with the smell of ale. As Vlad made his appointed rounds among the patrons, a fulsome blond trollop with a painted face waylaid me. “Love me!” she cried gaily, grabbing my codpiece in a vice-like grip. Her eyes, blue orbs all but drained of color, stared hungrily into mine, a playful smile flitting upon her lips. These goings-on pleased me. Having been through hell, I felt I had earned a respite. Quaffing a lime and lager, feeling young and virile, I decided to postpone a return to my lodgings.
Leaning heavily against me, coyly unbuttoning her blouse, a mammary protrusion of salty white flesh filled my mouth. “Ucksayeyemayipplesnay,” she commanded in a well-rehearsed cadence of pig Latin. What can I say? I did as requested.
Later, untangling me from the arms of the trollop, Vlad declared “Come, it is time for second sleep” a concept with which I am only too familiar. An overactive bladder, I only get four hours of shuteye before being forced to rise from my bed and visit the lavatory.
Outside on the pavement, Vlad looked me up and down, as if considering whether to share a particularly ribald joke. “Illegitimi non carborundum” he declared, disappearing in a cloud of ill-smelling grey smoke. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
That’s right, annex Antarctica! It’s Christmas Eve and freezing cold in my House, so I have some Perspective on this issue. What looks like a maxi-chunk of ice is in fact an integral part of America’s Defense Posture. For entirely too long, this vital link in America’s chain of World Domination has been blithely and willfully ignored. Fortunately, there are Republican politicians who truly understand President Donald J. Trump’s fixations and they are willing to go that Extra Mile in understanding just how essential Antarctica is to our National Security. Let us take a Voluntary Position to make Antarctica an integral part of the U.S.A. Any Sleazeball Democrat bleeding-heart Antifa scum who opposes us should be tried for treason! Congress must ratify the selection of a Special Envoy to the icy south, rather than throw out the baby with the bath water. Yes, it’s cold down yonder, but if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right!
Five different species of Penguins be damned. They have been Ripping Off America entirely too long! Yes, they are cute, but they are also totally worthless when it comes to manning machine gun nests or firing HIMAR anti-tank missiles. We have run tests. Nor do they spend anywhere near 3% of Antarctica’s GNP on their own defense. All that penguin guano is chock full of nitrates which could be fertilizing soybean fields in Iowa. It’s shameful that we have let them hitch a Free Ride on America’s coattails for far too long, but we are Good People and, as the Ice Shelf melts, we will save their sorry asses from oblivion.
Don’t let the Southern Elephant Seals fool you, they are all Radical Left Lunatics!
Instead of getting their house in order, the whale, seal, petrel and penguin denizens of Antarctica’s frozen wasteland have depended on International Treaties that claim Antarctica as a nuclear-free zone and pacifist redoubt. No one wants to live there! You have to pay people to overnight. Poo-poo on your international treaties, you softies at the U.N. You typically Fuzzy-Headed Bureaucrats! It is time for you to put the horse before the cart and ensure the survival of the Snowy Albatross. Read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge for details. As Coleridge wrote, “I fear thy skinny hand!”
Redemption is at hand! Redirect the Seventh Fleet. Ship Heavy Weapons to McMurdo Sound and preserve the ice sheet. What’s not to like? The driest, coldest place on the planet, they have nine months of winter and a volcano. We already have a footprint in the region: There are burger bars, pizza ovens, stir-fry and burritos in the cafeteria at McMurdo Station. Grab your moon boots and an AR-15! We must protect the civilian population of research scientists and our $110 million yearly investment. We can use Christchurch, NZ as a staging area. If Pakistan can sell more than $4 billion in military equipment to Libya, what’s the problem? Besides, if we don’t do it, China will label Antarctica as the Final Destination on the Silk Road and invade. We have the aircraft and we have the storage lockers, it is only the will to Invest in Antarctica’s Future that is currently lacking in Congress and among the American people. This will change! I am certain of it.
It’s a rainy Wednesday in November and it occurs to me that I am remiss in serving fans of the Swedish rap duo realPfft. You want more songs. I’ve asked the boys, Mutte and Clive, “What’s cookin’?” They have two biscuits in the oven, but Mutte wants to add musical breaks and bridges before they release these monsters onto an unsuspecting world.
As their music publisher and band manager, I have access to their entire catalog. Why not showcase their best work while they labor on new material in their virtual studio?
“Storming the Capitol” is a great rainy day hit. A terrific riff, lots of bass, their usual fascination with sound effects.
On January 6, 2021, a crowd of rowdy, armed Trump supporters met on the mall in Washington, DC to hear a speech by their leader. After losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump called on them to take back their country. By interrupting the Congressional counting of electoral ballots in the U.S. Capitol, the insurrectionists hoped in some vague way to swing the election to Trump. Overrunning police barricades and beating up the police, they broke into the Capitol, where they did a lot of damage and threatened lawmakers who ran for their lives or took shelter behind locked doors. It was a wild, upsetting afternoon with colored smoke wafting through the air and the future of American democracy very much in question. Returning to the White House, President Trump watched the pageant unfold on television. He waited hours to call the whole thing off.
Two weeks later, on January 20th, Joseph Biden was sworn in as America’s 46th president.
The insurrectionists were charged with unlawful entry, destruction of property, violence against the police and other assorted charges. No one, however, was accused of treason. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys militia, was convicted instead of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison, the longest prison term given to a January 6th insurrectionist.
From June to December 2022, Congresswoman Liz Cheney and the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol held a series of hearings into the violence at the Capitol. Although never charged, the video record made it pretty obvious that President Trump incited the mob to attack the Capitol. For her courage in pinpointing this truth, Ms. Cheney was drummed out of the Republican Party!
Once elected to a second term, President Trump immediately pardoned all the January 6th defendants.
Rap band realPfft released the instrumental “Storming the Capitol” on January 8th, 2021, exactly two days after the actual event. How in the world did they do that?!
They had already spent two weeks working on the instrumental. A Russian-influenced emotional rollercoaster with roots in classical music, it has a soaring, pining melody and a male choir. Adding diverse crowd sounds and the occasional explosive percussion, the boys fine-tuned the finished product.
The only thing missing was the cover artwork. They turned to their Old World collaborator Kuny who listened to the music, watched footage of the rioters on TV and sketched the 1920’s style German Expressionist agitprop cover art in a single inspired all-nighter. They then delivered the product to TuneCore for almost instantaneous release.
In a January 2021 blog post, I provided a link to the track on YouTube. Five years later, we revisit this musical gem, one of the best things that realPfft has ever done.
It’s award season and Donald Trump has announced that he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump sees himself as a peacemaker and he feels that his efforts to bring peace to Gaza and a negotiated settlement for Ukraine qualify him for the Nobel Prize.
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Seeing the carnage of war, Nobel felt responsible. To counter the view of him as a “merchant of death” and to strengthen peace initiatives, he created the Nobel Peace Prize.
You can’t just announce that you want the Nobel Prize, however, that’s not how it works. You are awarded the Peace Prize if, in fact, you deserve it.
Not everyone is eligible. Among other things, you have to be alive to qualify, the prize is not awarded posthumously.
You also need to be nominated, but in Trump’s case, that is no problem since he has been nominated at least 12 times, most recently by Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. The government of Pakistan nominated Trump for his work in brokering a cease-fire between Pakistan and India. In 2022, Péter Szijjártó, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, suggested awarding the prize to Trump for the Abraham Accords. In the past decade, several American lawmakers have nominated Trump, some out of conviction, others to curry favor.
There are six Nobel Prize categories: physics, chemistry, medicine, economics, peace and literature. Some years, the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to an author, other years to a poet. “Song lyrics are also a form of poetry,” Clive Flatenbad of Swedish rap duo realPfft points out. “Therefore, Mutte and I as songwriters should also be eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature. We have released 140 songs. There’s probably some literary merit in our work somewhere in there. Huh, huh, huh?”
Fortunately for Clive, just because he is gauche doesn’t disqualify him for the Nobel Prize.
Clive’s argument is not completely outlandish since, occasionally, the Nobel Committee chooses a home-grown Swede for the Nobel Prize. “That’s me!” says Clive, whose father is Swedish and whose mother is British. “I grew up in Stockholm,” he insists. “Therefore, I deserve the prize.”
Competition is stiff and no motivation is off-limits. The band’s motto is “With realPfft in Modern Times,” a bastardization of Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf’s slogan “For Sweden in Modern Times.” (För Sverige – i tiden)
To bolster their argument, the boys point out that realPfft has received The Freilitzer Music Award from the district of Sjælland in Denmark in 2021, a grant from The Catherine C. Grant Foundation in the town of Bristol in England in 2022 and the Big Bellyacher Award for Good Housekeeping from the city of Tokyo in 2024.
Just as Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward qualified them for the Nobel Prize, the boys claim that the lyrics to their song Speed Hump qualify them for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Sample lyrics: Don’t insult him/ Don’t insult me/ Spending coin/ To put bumps in the roadway… Any love, any love, give me, give me/ Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! / Papa done me, si si dumb need/ Papa done me, si si dumb needy… Pick me up, pick me up, give me, give me/ Pick me up, pick me up, give me, give me… In the roadway… Coin/ Spending coin… etc.
“Mutte has created many an audio effect at the mixing console. Give us the Nobel Prize in Physics,” Clive suggests, using a scatter-shot approach to the awards. “I’m a cough drop addict. Medicine! We have good chemistry. Chemistry! I know how to add. Economics! The cards are stacked against us, but the problem, as I see it, is too few categories. Where is the Nobel Prize in Choreography? Where is the Nobel Prize in Fashion Design? The Nobel Prize in Dumb Jokes? It’s like the Oscars. We could win an Oscar for videos by my younger brother Tim in the category Best Original Short Visual Representation of a Musical Composition by a Swedish Rap Duo Out of Uppsala, Sweden. Easy-peasy, we could win that Oscar! Hands-down.
“We finish every day’s struggle in the studio by making a ‘V for Victory’ sign with both hands, shouting to one another ‘Peace, brother!’ That alone makes us worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize,” according to Clive.
“If Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize without creating peace,” reasons Clive in an open letter to the Swedish Academy, “we deserve the Nobel Prize in Literature without creating literature.”
Note: Since you need to be nominated by a public official in order to win, I, blogger Kevin Feingold, officially nominate songwriters Clive Gunnar Flatenbad and Mutte Anders Fjutt for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2026. May they live to be 100 years old! (Ja, må han leva i hundrade år, the Swedish version of “Happy birthday to you.”)
Life Goes On… In a time of war and disheartening news, musical maestro Mutte Fjutt gives us a ray of sunshine, an instrumental with a crowd-pleasing, big band melody and a sweet refrain.
Add it to your playlist. Going viral on a platform near you!
While Elon Musk chainsaws the federal bureaucracy, firing people left and right, “saving” the American taxpayer millions, Trump’s policies are going to raise the national debt by trillions. Penny wise and pound foolish.
A trade war with America’s most prolific trading partners isn’t going to end well for America. “They’re ripping us off,” complains the president, but when he took office, unemployment was at 4% and we had a robust economy. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Trump has experienced multiple bankruptcies, only this time, when he bankrupts America, there won’t be any small claims court to bail us out.
Maybe Trump is just playing with us and isn’t really going to place 25% tariffs on foreign auto parts. He has the playfulness of a child and follows his instincts, so we never know what to expect from one week to the next.
Americans in the heartland love their automobiles. They are not going to be happy when tariffs drive up auto prices, adding $10,000 in sticker shock to new cars. Most dealerships have enough stock on hand to cover sales for 60 to 90 days, but after that, we’ll be living in a world of tariff autos.
As soon as prices fly through the roof, the American people are going to be furious.
I call most Trump supporters “kitchen table Republicans,” people who sit at the kitchen table in the evening and try to get the household budget to add up. Perennially strapped for cash, they cannot afford to have inflation reduce their purchasing power. These are the voters who blamed the Dems for the rising cost of gasoline and groceries.
If they were furious with Biden over higher gas prices, just wait while Trump screws up trade with Canada and Mexico. The pendulum is going to swing. Violently.
This is what happens when you populate the highest echelons of government with billionaires. They couldn’t care less about ordinary people who are struggling to make ends meet.
In recent weeks, the Trump Administration has laid off tens of thousands of federal employees across numerous agencies. Lacking constitutional authority, Elon Musk and his assistants at the Department of GovernmentEfficiency (DOGE) continue their effort to dismantle the federal workforce without any clear analysis of the impact. Federal agencies and the American people will suffer devastating consequences.
Since more than 80% of federal employees live outside of the Washington DC area, the effects of these “large-scale reductions in force” will be felt in communities across the country and reduce the effectiveness of government operations.
These layoffs follow a 77,000-person reduction in the size of the federal workforce via acceptance of Musk’s “deferred resignation” offer: Employees who signed the agreement will receive pay until September, while no longer being required to work.
There are timebombs.
Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service have fired 400 federal workers at the Department of Homeland Security. Two hundred of those cuts are Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees. Good luck when the next hurricane floods the South, the next snowpocalypse snarls the East Coast, California burns to the ground or terrorists blow up our cities.
What will happen to our food and medicine when Trump hollows out the Food and Drug Administration?
Where will we get vaccine to fight the next pandemic when Trump/Musk terminate research funding by Executive Order?
Layoffs at the Federal Aviation Administration make flying that much more dangerous.
Awaiting a tax return? With tax season looming, the IRS has cut nearly 6,000 newly hired employees, representing about 7% of its workforce.
DOGE has dismissed dozens of probationary federal employees at the Department of Education. Considering how MAGA supporters attack the curriculum at our schools and libraries, these turbulent times bode ill for our children’s education.
DOGE has reduced the Small Business Administration staff by 720 employees— approximately 20% of its workforce— while inflation rises and bird flu sends egg and chicken prices skyrocketing. Since February 2022, over 150 million chickens have been killed to stop the spread of the H5N1 epidemic. No longer profitable, many restaurants have been forced to close.
While Musk and his minions chainsaw their way through a supposedly bloated bureaucracy, more than 10,000 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) staff have been placed on administrative leave, abandoning aid programs around the world. With USAID funds frozen, $500 million in food has been left rotting in ports and warehouses.
No longer a beacon of democracy, America can expect foreign adversaries to attack. How will America defend itself when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fired the career leadership at the Pentagon?
More than 1,000 Department of Veteran Affairs employees have been dismissed, including some working at the Veterans Crisis Hotline, leaving soldiers and military veterans like me who are suffering from PTSD to fend for ourselves, always a ticking timebomb.
The good news is that north of the border, 250,000 Canadians have signed a petition demanding that their government rescind Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship. Shazam!
On its website, DOGE has claimed savings to date of $65 billion, but offered no explanation for why some previous items have been removed or how it had arrived at this total. A “wall of receipts” is the only public ledger the organization has produced to document its work. Riddled with errors, this “wall” calls into question the veracity of DOGE’s claim. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has said in a written statement that the cost-cutting initiative “has already identified billions of dollars in savings.” Do tell.
Buzzing chainsaw DOGE axed roughly 2,000 Department of Energy employees, including those who worked for the critical National Nuclear Security Administration. The Trump Administration quickly reversed the layoffs, after learning how critical those jobs are to the security of our nuclear arsenal. D’oh?
It’s amateur night at Trump casino. Good luck!
This blog post is based partly on data from NARFE, the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.
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