Monthly Archives: September 2025

“Acorn” for MVB, Sept 7, 2025

When I saw this prompt, I just had to reblog this blog of mine from 2018. It was too perfect.

Mystery Solved

My friend Larry Kolczak has allowed me to copy this hilarious email sent to me.  I’ve been trying to convince him he should have a blog himself. Do you agree?

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Six months ago, we hung these beaded curtains on our second-floor patio fence to obscure the view into the neighboring lot.  Recently, …

 

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… we started finding broken strands.  We figured it was because the curtains weren’t made for outdoor use, and that sun and wind had deteriorated the nylon strings.  But, that wasn’t the problem…

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It turns out that many of the eco-friendly beads are acorns.

 

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Guess who noticed?

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He nips the string to get the uppermost acorn…

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… which he either eats on the spot, or buries in our potted plants, and leaves us with the…

 

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…collateral damage.

Go HERE to find Larry’s monthly articles in El Ojo del Lago.

MVB‘s Prompt is Acorn.

Trump Declares War on Chicago. When Will This Stop?

image by rohan gangopadhyay on unsplash

September 6, Heather Cox Richardson

Today the social media account of President Donald J. Trump posted an AI-generated image of Trump as if he were Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now in front of the Chicago skyline with military helicopters and flames and the caption “Chipocalypse Now.” Kilgore loved the war in Vietnam in which he was engaged; his most famous line was “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Over the image, Trump’s social media post read: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The words were followed by three helicopter emojis, symbols the right wing uses to represent former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s goons’ disappearing political opponents by pushing them out of helicopters.

Although it has become trite to speculate about what Republicans would say if a Democratic president engaged in the behavior Trump exhibits daily, this open attack of the president on an American city is a new level of unhinged. Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo wrote: “The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents.” He added, accurately: “In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.” . . .(Go HERE to see more.)

Wow. Saying it As It Is!!!!!

My friend Brad sent me this. Don’t know where he found it, but I must pass it on:

BREAKING: The White House melts down and attacks music legend Jack White after he insults Donald Trump’s “disgusting” and “vulgar” redecoration of the White House

“Jack White is a washed-up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career,” claimed White House spokesman Steven Cheung.

“It’s apparent [White]’s been masquerading as a real artist, because he fails to appreciate, and quite frankly disrespects, the splendor and significance of the Oval Office inside of ‘The People’s House,’” Cheung added.

this is Jack’s response…

“Listen, I’m an artist and not a politician so I’m in no need to give my answer or opinion on anything if I’m not inspired or compelled, but how funny that it wasn’t me calling out trump’s blatant fascist manipulation of government, his gestapo ICE tactics, his racist remarks about Latinos, Native Americans, etc. his ridiculous ‘wall’ construction, his attacks on the disabled, his attempted coup and mob insurrection and destruction of the sacred halls of congress, his disparaging sexist and pedophilic remarks about women, his obvious attempts at distraction about being a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein and his inclusion in the Epstein files, his ignorance of the dying children in Sudan, Gaza, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his lack of empathy for military veterans and those struggling with poverty, his attempts to dismantle healthcare, his obvious wimpy and pathetic kowtowing to the dictators Putin and Kim Jong Un, his nazi like rallies, his attempts to sell merchandise and products like Goya beans through the office of the President, his fake ‘gunshot to the ear’ that he showed no medical records or photographs of, his constant, constant, constant lying to the American people, etc. etc. etc.”

“No, it wasn’t me calling out any of that, it was the f*cking DECOR OF THE OVAL OFFICE remarks I made that got them to respond with insults,” he continued. “How petty and pathetic and thin skinned could this administration get? ‘Masquerading as a real artist’? Thank you for giving me my tombstone engraving! Well here’s my opinion, trump is masquerading as a human being.”

“He’s masquerading as a christian, as a leader, as a person with actual empathy,” he wrote. “He’s been masquerading as a businessman for decades as nothing he’s involved in has prospered except by using other people’s money to find loophole
after loophole and grift after grift.”

“His staff of professional liar toadies like Steven Cheung and Karoline Leavitt have been covering up and masking his fascism as patriotism and fomenting hatred and division in this country on a daily basis,” White went on. “And I have ‘ample time on (my) hands’? That orange grifter has spent more tax payer money cheating at golf than helping ANYONE in the country. Improve. Anything. There is no progress with him, only smoke and mirrors and tax breaks for the ultra wealthy.”

“So maga folk, enjoy your concrete paving over of the rose garden, your 200 million dollar ballroom in the White House, and your gaudy ass gold spray painted trinkets from Home Depot, cause he ain’t spending any money on helping YOU unless you fit into his white supremacist country club rich idiot agenda,”

“Wow, he hates who you hate….good for you, be proud of yourselves, how christian of you all,”

“The only way you can support this conman is because you are a victim of the 2 party system and you ‘defend your guy no matter what he does.'” he wrote. “No intelligent person can defend this low life fascist. This bankruptor of casinos. This failed seller of trump steaks, trump vodka, trump water, etc.”

“This man and his goon squad have failed upwards for decades and have fleeced the American people over and over,” wrote White. “This professional golf cheat, this grifter who has hundreds of thousands of deaths from his inaction of the pandemic on his hands, this man that the majority of the country somehow were fooled into supporting and voting into office (through the flawed electoral college) and their love of reality
television stars.”

“Being insulted by the actual White House that this particular conman leads is a badge of honor to me, because anyone who trump supports and likes is a villain who gives nothing to their fellow man, only takes what can benefit themselves,”

“And no I’m not a Democrat either, I’m a human being raised in Detroit, I’m an artist who’s owned his own businesses like his own upholstery shop and recording label since he was 21 years old who has enough street sense to know when a 3 card monte dealer is a cheap grifter and a thief,”

“I was raised to believe that we defeated fascism in World War II and that we would never allow it again in the world. I don’t always state publicly my political opinions, and like anyone I don’t always know all of the facts, but when it comes to this man and this administration I’m not going to be like one of the silent minority of 1930’s Germany. This man is a danger to not just America but the entire world and that’s not an exaggeration, he’s dismantling democracy and endangering the planet on a daily basis, and we. all. know. it. -JW III… ‘To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.’ – Theodore Roosevelt”

“Hope” for SOCS, Sept 5, 2025

I can’t resist reblogging this blog I wrote in 2016 for the SOCS Saturday prompt, which is “Begins with ho.” After the poem, there are additional links that finish the tale if you have the patience to read them.

Hope

IMG_5964Hope wears a white apron and a pensive smile!

Hope

I hope life turns out as you wish and is a bowl of cherries.
I hope you find a run of luck and that it never varies.
The whole world would be lucky, if I had my “druthers.”
Every line would catch a fish. All orphans would find mothers.
All endings would be happy. All lottery tickets win.
But as I stop to think of it, I have to think again.
If all of us were winners, winning would lose its distinction.
Every hunter bagging game would lead to their extinction.
It seems that often one guy’s luck brings bad luck to another.
If you’re the family favorite, then it cannot be your brother!
So if I must express my hopes I guess that I’ll just say
I hope that when it is your turn, good luck will come your way!

Now I have to tell the story about my camera, which showed up missing (oxymoron) the day after I’d met friends in the Ajijic plaza coffee place. I’d run a number of errands that day, and so after I had searched my house for over an hour, and my car, and my garden, I headed off for town. Was it at the coffee place? No. Either of the stores I’d visited? No. I headed down the street to Ajijic Tango, where I’d had comida with my friends. All locked up. Seeing a door ajar a few yards away from the entrance, I called into it. It must be the kitchen. I called and called and finally someone came. I gave them a note asking the owner to call me.Then I went home.

A day or so ago I wrote about a friend in Missouri who tends to straighten out my life for me on a regular basis? Well, I wrote to him bemoaning the fate of my camera. Within the hour, he had sent me a link to a local message board and lo and behold–there was a picture of my living room with friends I’d invited to a viewing of the new documentary of another friend all sitting in it! A picture that had been in my camera! Turns out the lady pictured above had been approached by a man who tried to sell her a camera. “He asked too much” she said in her message, which stated that when she’d inspected the camera, she had surreptitiously removed the sd card from the camera as well as three more in the pouch of the carrying case, then posted one of the pictures on the card in hopes of finding the owner.

Did she know the man who had the camera? She did. Long story short, she went to his house to ask about the camera. Sadly, he reported, it had stopped working. (He still didn’t realize she’d taken the sd cards out. Brilliant move on her part.) Did he still have the camera? No, he had given it to his son, who, it turned out, worked in the restaurant next to where I must have lost my camera! After a few more trips to enquire on her part, the next morning I recovered my camera from the son, giving him a good reward, although he didn’t ask. I then recovered my four sd cards from the angel pictured above and gave her a reward as well, in spite of her protests. And that is how my Music Man in Missouri once more came to my aid and turned disaster into luck. (If you regularly read my blog, you might have guessed that I cannot survive without my camera.) What does this story have to do with hope? Simply that I hope if you ever lose anything dear to you that you have two angels looking over you as I did!!!

Acceptance, for dVerse Poets, Sept 4, 2025

 

Acceptance

Old age––
Can’t escape it.
We grumble about it,
but the alternative, for sure,
is worse.

The dVerse Poets prompt was to write a cinquain: 2-4-6-8-2.
See how others responded to the prompt HERE.

Spider on the Ceiling, for MVB, Sept 5, 2025

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Spider on the ceiling, legs evenly spread round,
I can’t help but wonder what keeps you ceiling-bound.
Have you little suction cups welded to each foot,
and if so, has nature adequately put
each one on this spider far above my bed
so it will not disconnect and land upon my head?

For MVB the prompt is “Ceiling.”

Places for a Girl to Roost! For Pull Up A Seat #36, Sept 5, 2025

How many ways are there for a girl to be seated? On a chair, in front of a stool, on a lap, on the stool, on the floor. So many chances to pull up a seat!

For Pull Up A Seat #36

Fibbing Time Again (Half Lies This Time)

The latest Fibbing Friday prompts are:

1. Which is the highest ever grossing show on Broadway? Sweeny Todd was the grossest Broadway Play I ever saw.

2. How many times has Rafa Nadal won the French Open?

3. Who played the Young Victoria?

4. Who sang the 1957 original of That’ll be the day? The Babylonians, who named each of the days after one of the five planetary bodies known to them (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) and after the Sun and the Moon.

5. What’s the Buddhist state of happiness called? California

6. Which lake has a mythical creature named after it

7. Which year was the Chevrolet Corvette introduced

8. What kind of cells are found in the brain? Brain Cells.

9. How many different actors have played James Bond? They’ve never hired a “different” actor to play James Bond.  Just the normal ones.

10. Which is the world’s oldest active volcano.

Sorry, I give up on the rest.  

Bruce Bishop’s “Go Write Ahead” Interview with Judy Dykstra-Brown

To order my newest book, If I Were Water and You Were Air, go HERE.  But please note: Amazon says the book’s readership age is 16-18. This is an error. It is appropriate for readers age 16 to adults of any age. I’ve also tried to correct a few other typos in the book’s description on the sales page, but as of this date, Amazon has not corrected them. 

You can read more about Bruce at his website HERE.

“Helpmates” for dVerse Poets, Sept 4, 2025

Helpmates 

I’m the first to tell her what to do,
though each morning she pushes my button, too.
“Get out of bed,” I order her,
come back to reconnoiter her.
When she refuses to rise at once,
I sit in the corner like a dunce
and nag and nag until she’s up
to shower and dress and feed the pup.

I keep her clothing crisp and neat
with water mist and searing heat.
I’m a dangerous helper and she knows it.
Dire results if she ever blows it
and fails to heed my hiss and cough
and forgets to turn me off.

When my workday starts, I have no say.
Always ready as she greets the day,
I perk her up and fuel her drive.
She says she needs me to feel alive.
She takes me with her when she leaves.
When she kills the rest, nobody grieves.
I’m strong and flexible and black.
Cause eyes to open and lips to smack.

She holds me tightly every morning—
cussing, yelling, pleading, warning
others who get in her way
as she speeds into her waiting day.
She pushes my buttons and wheels my wheels
with clicks and groans and grinds and squeals.
I carry her inside of me
to take her where she needs to be
and wait outside until she’s done
in rain and snow and baking sun.

I wait at home in the cold and dark,
wondering when she’ll light the spark
that relieves me of my lonely plight—
chilly  environs and unlit light.
I hear her footsteps across the floor,
light up as she opens my door.
She reaches in and relieves me
of can or bottle, then goes to pee
restoring me to isolation.
I don’t complain. It is my station.

She turns me on most every night
to wallow in my sickly light,
staring at dramas I provide.
Never does she go outside
to jog or run or bike or walk,
to meet the neighbors and have a talk,
to mow her grass or trim her tree—
she seems to live her life through me.

When at night she seeks her rest,
she always favors me the best.
I cushion her at end of day,
listen as she has her say
about her travails, aches and pains,
her setbacks and all her gains.
All her secrets I will keep
as she covers up and goes to sleep.

for dVerse Poets, the prompt is “I would love to know how you deal with setbacks in life. Share with us in the form of a poem, of course, are you the kind to bounce back, do you curse and rant when things go wrong or do you wallow in self pity. As always you are free to interpret the prompt in any which way.” Image by Jessica Mangano on Unsplash.