I must begin the morning with Trump (I will later dig into Musk). At present, it's almost impossible to keep up with his outrages, and, in some sense, this is impressive. He is not a young man, but his determination to make sure that "hell is empty" is, to say the least, Herculean.  He began the week by threatening important trading partners with tariffs that would tank the North American economy in short order; then he announced a plan that would displace 2 million Palestinians and, in the process, turn the entire US government into a gargantuan gentrifier. I have no idea what this manic man will do today or tomorrow. But what I do know is that Trump is not doing his job, which is mostly boring. He refuses to do the regular, dull, and technical stuff (the stuff that preoccupied Biden), because, of course, this would keep him busy and out of the news.

Fox News Be Like: "Exactly one week after a passenger plane and Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed midair near D.C., killing 67, a Japan Airlines plane and Delta Air Lines plane collided on the ground in Seattle." Damn, Fox. You're feeling the end-timey fever too? Feeling "closer to god in a tight situation"? We used to hear nothing about airports for years and years, and now that the leader you relentlessly championed is gutting the government from top to bottom, the scales are falling from your eyes? Well, the incident at SeaTac was nowhere near as dramatic and deadly as the mid-air collision in D.C. This one happened on the ground. A wing hit a tail. No one was injured. In fact, a passenger told KING 5 that it "felt like we were in a car accident, like a fender bender." This incident is not up to Trump-snuff; it will not appear on his show.  

And it don't stop. The South African-born billionaire, Elon Musk (also known as the ghost of Apartheid), is now going after, of all things, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the "federal agency responsible for forecasting the weather." Why? Musk's latest and possibly most powerful enterprise, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), wants to find and root out anything to do with the devil called DEI. According to ABC News, DOGE also has access to NOAA's servers (there might be DEI in the machines). And it gets worse. DOGE sent agents to look for DEI-related "posters and signs" in NOAA's  bathrooms.

It is shocking to me that America was basically bought by a man from my part of the world, Southern Africa. Indeed, he, like I, attended private schools, lived in "low density" neighborhoods, and had our beds made by servants. But he came to America with dreams that were clearly much bigger than mine. He became the nation's number one capitalist. And I became a mere socialist writer in Seattle.   

Not all white South Africans are evil:

 

 

In the words of Tears for Fears, let's "talk about the weather." There was some snow during that part of the night when one wakes up only to realize that a dream revived the dead people they were talking to only a moment ago; but now (6:33 am) it's: "here comes the rain again." The winter wonderland will mostly be gone by sunrise. All in all, snow has been underperforming this season. It's not like the snow of old, the snow that knew how to bury us and bring the city to a week-long standstill. Indeed, the snowmen of this sorry season have a life expectancy that's dismal. It's a few hours or so.  

21,227 Western Washington households are rising from "the kingdom of the fading apparition" to find they are without power. They can't recharge computers and phones; they can't turn on the stove and brew a "cup of ambition." So sad, so cold. Also, the Washington State Department of Transportation reports that "cars [are] sliding and becoming stuck on the roads." 

KIRO reports that the SPD has two fatal hit-and-runs on its hands. The first one happened on February 1 in Ballard and involved a pickup truck and a pedestrian. The collision brought the life of a 39-year-old man to an end. The other hit-and-run also occurred on February 1, but this time in Bitter Lake. A 42-year-old man was struck and killed by what witnesses described as a very fast car. But let's move on. This sort of thing is permitted in our society. Automobiles hitting pedestrians doesn't generate the kind of hysteria that petty theft does. And this is to be expected. We live in a culture that's socially engineered to worship the car.

Let's enjoy for a moment the opening sentence to a story on MyNorthwest: "The saga of two donkeys who were reportedly stolen from a property in Bellevue continues." Let's leave it at that. True, I have a lot of literary tricks in my bag, but none can surpass the originality of that sentence. My tricks are humbled.

How shall we end? With a track that will be featured in the "Brief History of Desire, Lust, and Longing in Rap" show at the Clock-Out Lounge on Tuesday, February 11.