First Draft

 

 

I have obtained a rough draft of President Again Trump's inaugural address on 1/20/25.

 

"Vice President JD, Vice President JD's hot wife, Little Speaker Johnson, Tall Senator Thune, Chief Justice Roberts who probably won't give me time to put my hand the Bible, justices of the United States Supreme Court including the ones I don't like, President Horndog Clinton and his awful, terrible wife, President Kid Bush, President Big Barry Obama, President Biden (if he's awake), Vice President Harris (ha, ha) and my fellow citizens:

I'm back, baby!

You thought you got rid of me, didn't you? Didn't you?

Well, you didn't.

And I'm back with something I didn't have before: A mandate!

Suck it, losers!

Anyway, the golden age of America begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again by all of those dumb-dumb nations that despise us except when they need a little cash. We will be the envy of every nation just like I'm the envy of every fat 78-year-old man when they see my arm candy, First Lady Melania Trump.

Yeah, we ought to call her Dr. Melania Trump because she has a Ph.d in Hubba-Hubba. Remember, she's all mine President Clinton!

During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, make sure I'm on TV a lot. I will be interviewed by Hannity. I will have a press conference every 15 minutes even if I don't have anything to say. I'll just drop in the press briefing room, just to say howdy. I won't use buzzwords like 'circle back'. If I don't know the answer to something, which is unlikely, I will make it up.

Even though I'm in my late 70s, like somebody else up here, you will not have to worry that the President of The United States has wandered off somewhere in his pajamas like Uncle Junior did on The Sopranos.

I will issue an Executive Order to find out if Tony Soprano was whacked. The American people deserve to know!

America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more cooler than ever before.  Have you seen me dance?  How many 78-year-old men start a dance craze? I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we can put "Y.M.C.A." back on the charts. A tide of change is sweeping the country.  Pretty soon, even Americans will be answering customer service calls.

But first, we must be honest about the challenges we face. We must admit that we have a truckload of goofy people trying to lead our country. We have to stop listening to them, no matter how awesome their bosoms are. We need to listen to the ugly people who had to study in their younger years because other kids wouldn't play with them.  They might have some good ideas.  

Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency because it is really hard to do.  It is also hard to do when the mayor of your city is in Ghana and not out fighting the fires—just a little beautiful editorial comment from your favorite president. 

My suggestion: if wild fires are threatening your community, you should have a lot of water around to put out the fire.  This is just a little of the common sense I'm bringing back to our country. 

Later today, I will sign some four thousand executive orders that will make America great.  I will rename the Gulf of Mexico "The Gulf of America" because we need to have our own gulf.  Let Mexico go out and get another gulf. Geez, do I have to think of everything?

I will sign an executive order stating we have only two genders and not the twelve hundred genders all the college kids think you should celebrate.

You no longer have to put your "preferred pronoun" in your email address. You can thank me later.

Yes, I'm still thinking about Greenland. Here's a fun fact about Greenland.  It is mainly ice. Isn't that wild?  And Iceland is mainly green. Crazy.  

I'm going to pardon the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, but remember, President Grandpa pardoned everybody in his family and Anthony Fauci, who honestly wasn't even on my radar. Still, it would have been a good idea to go after Big Dr. Tony because he made everybody wear a mask and stand ten yards apart.  But what are you going to do?

In conclusion, I will ask one question: Are y'all ready for this?  We're going to have a ball."

The Lonesome Death Of The Mall

 

For people of a certain age, you can remember the first time you went to a mall.

Around the Metro Atlanta Area, most people went to the Lenox Square Mall, which is in Buckhead, a section of Atlanta known for its traffic, offices, and people who are better than you.

But not us at Manis Manor.  My father could think of nothing worse than traipsing around a building of stores with his wife and his feral children.

My mother was raised in the Mississippi Delta, where going to town meant going to the store. There, you would meet somebody you knew. It was a social occasion. It was different in suburban Cobb County, Georgia, where it was just like Ellis Island with all the new people who moved here from far away lands like Indiana.  She always said, "I went to K-Mart and didn't see anyone I know."

Therefore, we didn't go to the mall.

One day, a friend took my brother and me to Northlake Mall.  A whole new world was presented to me. They had a store that only sold Levi's Blue Jeans. They had a store that just sold records. The big album on sale was Neil Diamond's "Hot August Night" to show you how long ago it was. 

Northlake had big department stores: Rich's and Davidson's. Those store sold name brands.  The clothes were fancier and didn't look like the clothes we bought at K-Mart.

Soon, we wouldn't have to go to Northlake Mall. We would have a nice mall of our own: Cumberland. 

Cumberland Mall had Rich's and Davidson's, too, but also had a Sears and J.C. Penny for us lesser folk.  It had a store called Spencer's Gifts which was full of tacky, naughty, and gross stuff. On top of that it had two bookstores: B. Dalton and Walden Books. 

There was a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor.  Do you remember Farrell's?  Before we knew it would kill us, they served all kinds of ice cream treats.

One of the treats was a sundae called "The Zoo" and was meant to be shared by a group. The Farrell's employees, all who just happened to be attractive high school girls, delivered "The Zoo"  with a big hullaballoo, sirens blaring, the whole nine yards.

I found this from Wikipedia: "Another menu item that was served in a mini pig trough was the "Trough". If the person who ordered it ate the entire sundae, employees would come out banging on a drum, announce the accomplishment to the entire restaurant, and present the customer with either a ribbon or a pinback button that said, "I made a pig of myself at Farrell's!"  I remember the "Trough" with great fondness.  I remember they oinked at you, too, but maybe that was just a Cobb County thing. And no, I never had a "Trough".

Next to Farrell's was a little shop that sold chicken sandwiches. It was called Chick-fil-A.  I wonder what happened to them.

Well, time passed on. Farrel's went away. I would go to Cumberland a lot, particularly when I was dating my wife. I also worked near Cumberland and spent my lunch hour there. Once, I went to Walden Books, and the great writer Pat Conroy was there.  I talked to the son of The Great Santini for 15 minutes because nobody showed up for his book signing.

The month my wife and I married, they opened another Cobb County mall: Town Center.

Town Center was newer and bigger than Cumberland. They had the same stores, but it was 80s bright.  It was a fun place to go. 

And at Christmas time, it was packed.

We went to Town Center during Christmas time this year. It wasn't packed.

People have, for whatever reason, given up on Town Center.  It needs a touchup and some paint. The parking lot hasn't been paved and restriped in years.  They have a lot of stores you have never heard of and kiosks out the ying-yang.  I will say, if you need a baseball hat, you can find it at Town Center.

There are many reasons for the decline of Malls.

One is that going to a mall is a great big pain. You have to fight traffic to get there, and then you remember you can order it online.

Two, and I'm going to sound like the old fuddy-duddy I am, but the youth of America killed the mall.  Roaming in packs, looking like they are part of some punk rock band from the 70s. 

It became a hangout, and many people decided not to hang out there anymore.

Rich's and Davidson's were bought out by Macy's. This week, Macy's closed three stores in Georgia, but the Cumberland and Town Center stores were safe.  For now.

There's talk of repurposing Town Center with apartments. There's also talk of turning it into classrooms for Kennesaw State. Who knows?

James Lileks said about malls: "It was wonderful! People loved it!  Until they didn't."

It is kind of sad because nobody will have a fond memory of adding something to your cart and then clicking for checkout. 

 

Do Better

 

Like most of you, I spent a good part of the holiday season thinking about the H-1B Visa Program.

Sorry, I was pulling your leg. I spent a lot of time thinking about the College Football Playoffs which is almost as complicated as the H-1B Visa Program.

The H-1B Visa Program allows US employers to hire foreign works in specialty fields like IT because Americans are fat lazy doofuses.  (This is not true.  Some Americans are skinny.)

Who is to blame for Americans being dumb-dumbs while all foreigners are really smart?  Well, according to Vivek Ramaswamy (you remember him?) it is all our culture's fault. 

In a 12/26/24 post on "X" (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), Ramaswamy said, "The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture."

Our culture "has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer)." 

He says, "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers."

Okay.

I went to Wheeler High School in the 70s and we celebrated our prom queens because they were easier to look at than the Math Olympiads. We were really shallow people back then.   

I'm not so sure our culture "venerates" Cory from "Boy Meets World because I'm not sure which one was Cory.  Americans do venerate Urkel because he is the only funny one on "Family Matters."  If Americans actually do not venerate Urkel, it is because he spent a good part of his time trying to get smacky face from Laura Winslow instead of trying to become an engineer.  Not that I would know that. 

Ramaswamy adds, "(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates)."

Here's a "fact".  "Multiple sets" of immigrant parents in the 90s could be two, twenty, four hundred, or a million people.  I'm unaware of any study that blamed American Youth Dumb-Dumbness on too much "Boy Meets World."  I'm not sure that this argument proves proves Hal and Helen's kids were successful STEM graduates because they didn't watch "Family Matters". But then again, I watched a lot of "Gilligan's Island" growing up and I didn't become a wildly successful STEM graduate. In my defense, I can talk for hours about why Mary Ann is way hotter than Ginger. 

Ramaswamy goes on to say, "More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.'” 

You hear a lot that adults are "stuck" in the decade they came of age in.  This is not the 90s. I'm not too sure Ramaswamy has been to the mall lately. You don't see a lot of kids just "hanging out" at the mall.

In fact, you don't see a lot of people in the mall anyway.  

On top of that, there aren't Saturday morning cartoons anymore. We have entire channels devoted to cartoons. You would think Vivek would know that. 

Ramaswamy is right to the extent that there is a culture problem.  We put too much emphasis on sports, particularly "travel" ball, which separates the talented kids from the less talented kids.  We place too much emphasis on entertainment as a career when entertainment is just as iffy as sports as a career because, often, it is just a matter of luck rather than talent.

But, as Jack Butler of National Review says, "We won’t solve these problems by disdaining possible sources of virtue, by misapprehending contemporary social realities, and by mechanistically funneling more and more people toward preset pathways of supposed success."

In the television show "Young Sheldon," ten-year-old Sheldon Cooper is placed in the local high school because of his "once in a generation intellect" (his words, not mine.)

His only friend is a South Vietnamese immigrant named Tam.  Sheldon and Tam eat lunch in the library because the East Texas high school crowd shuns them.

One time, Tam's mother left a note in Tam's lunch.  It said, "Do better".

We need people to push us to do better. And sometimes, we need to tell them to chill.