I'm taking the week off from work, which means only one column and one architecture piece. Some vacation. But it's not intended as such, just burning off PTO to give me a reason to skip meetings. I still went downtown to go to the gym. Sorry, hit the gym! One hits the gym.

It was a bit odd to be downtown and not go to the office. To not visit the place where I have the credentials. The door that lets me in and the car that lifts me up. I wandered around to places I hadn't been in a while.

Sometimes the views make sense.

Sometimes they don't.

I mentioned yesterday that I was tired of ketchup. It’s one thing to be bored with ketchup and still call yourself a patriot, but what about breakfast burritos?

I had two in the freezer, left over from the days before I started making the eggs / salsa / habaneros / sausage scramble every morning. I remembered that the last time I ate one, it was like an egg-flecked cud. Well, let’s see what they’re made of.

		Not too many calories, but that's all my carbs for a day, plus ten.
		I guess soybean oil is an important part of the scrambled eggs, and gosh you can’t have a good breakfast without a ration of PROCESS JACK, who sounds like a slightly roguish lawyer or computer programmer. It has butter flavor and natural butter flavor! Which means it has unnatural butter flavor.
		This, of course, is a lie. You cook it at 3 minutes at 50 percent, then cut it open, then cook it for another minute at 70%, then 30 seconds at 100%. Anything less and the center is like an Arctic core sample.

I unwrapped it to reveal the innards. This is what’s in one breakfast burrito, aside from the “tortilla.”

		It's about a spoonful's worth of eggs and stuff. Mostly stuff, I suspect.

Twenty years ago I would not have thought that a busload of Jews (and their supporters) would be stranded in a European airport because the bus drivers refused to take them. Five years ago I would not have been surprised.

One year ago I would not have thought it would happen in the US. Two weeks ago I would not have been surprised. Who knew that DC bus drivers were such deep and sincere Anti-Zionists! (Not anti-Jew, of course. Big, important distinction!)

I wonder if they feel the same way about the US? They should. Let me back up a bit, and show you a tweet:

The best way to ensure security for Jews is to dissolve the country where they can define themselves and defend themselves, and disperse them among other populations in other countries where they have no history.

Relocating Palestinians to Jordon, of course, is off the table.

Okay, file that one away. Next:

The United States, we can infer, does not have a right to exist.

So the Jews should be moved to the United States, but don't unpack, because we're moving everyone in United States out of United States. The good news is it will be okay to be a colonizer for a week or two until we sort out the paperwork and figure where you're going.

It's not just the wisdom of these bright lights that inspires, it's the way it's matched with such can-do practicality.

By the way, I assume that everyone with European ancestry has to leave Central and South America, and pile back into Spain and Portugal. Perhaps mestizo will be given a choice - stay or go - or moved to a large platform in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

It'll be quite the project, everyone sorting themselves back to the proper starting point, but it will be a Just World when it's done. This will coincide with a ban on air travel and non-essential movement because of the Climate Crisis, of course, so this means everyone will be frozen in stasis in their original lands, with no one colonizing anyone else.

As their new hero once said: Segregation now! Segretation forever!

It’s 1904.

A Republican landslide, and the publishers of the Colored American were delighted.

We don’t hear much about Veep Fairbanks these days. Doesn’t sound like it was a happy marriage:

The 1904 Republican National Convention selected Fairbanks as the running mate for President Theodore Roosevelt. As vice president, Fairbanks worked against Roosevelt's progressive policies. Fairbanks unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination at the 1908 Republican National Convention and backed William Howard Taft in 1912 against Roosevelt.

		Social news of import: Miss Lizzie Scott, who holds an important position, married Joseph Jones, who is also a man of accomplishment. I don’t know what a checkman is. The dictionary says its a man who operates a check valve, but it seems unlikely the Senate cafeteria hired someone for that specific job. Manning the hat-and-cane counter, perhaps? Something in accounting?

What the hell

Okay. Well. It’s Vidalia, not Videla. There was an elephant named Samson, and he did become unruly - but it happened in 1884 in Hailey, Idaho, and they shot Samson dead.

Other than that, it’s accurate.

		From the editorial page.

Wikipedia has an entry.

The court-martialed officer was Captain Robert M. Hitch, commanding the Savannah-based Oglethorpe Light Infantry of the First Infantry Regiment, Georgia State Troops.

It took about 15 seconds to find a for a Robert Hitch bio in one of those old hagiographic compendiums. Same fellow?

On December 28, 1898, he was elected second lieutenant of Company A, Savannah Volunteer Guards, and served as such until June 8, 1900. During this term of service he was for several months recorder of the military examining board and from April 24, 1903, until October 24, 1904, he was captain of the Oglethorpe Light Infantry.

Yes, same fellow. The bio doesn’t say a thing about the lynching.

		Another note from the editorial page. I don't entirely follow this. I do, but the dry sarcastic phrasing somehow makes it read oddly.

		Liberian ship registration goes back a ways.

In town for the Shriner convention, eh?

Spurgeon, Pendleton - it’s hard to find anything on these guys. If it weren’t for the Colored American, there’d be nothing at all.

If that doesn’t constitute a sure-fire endorsement, I don’t know what does.

It should be noted that this was something of a curious choice, since the fellow’s father, Revendy Johnson, argued the winning side of Dred Scott before the Supreme Court. I mean, C’mon.

He also defended Mary Surratt, accused of conspiracy in the Lincoln Assassination.

I mean, really? This guy? In this publication?

		Now two ways to chip in!

That'll do - see you around! Nervine information awaits. And thanks for the patronage.