PapaDeanBear’s Monday…Retail Therapy, New Kicks, Watch Service, Dinner, and my Orange and White Menace.
The hubby and I headed to the temple of retail hell (aka DestinyUSA) that has pretty much become the domed city from “Logan’s Run.” (There is no sanctuary.)
But papabear digresses…first up, new shoes.
The ones that I have are a little worse for wear, so I got some Sketchers Slip-Ins which have Goodyear soles for slip resistance, (which they actively market to senior citizens such as myself.) Next, some sandals. Again, Sketchers. I found a pair that I liked and was pretty close to the ones that I had a while back and I wore out. 133 dollars spent
.
(The new kicks)
Next, the watch.
This watch basically has sentimental value. It’s a Casio WaveCeptor analog watch with a small LCD display that shows the date. I have had this watch since 2006, when I bought it to replace a Casio DataBank watch that pretty much broke. All I have had to do is replace the battery, and set it when I got home. (I actually have to get the little owner’s manual out because setting it is a little convoluted!) 33 dollars spent.
(My Casio WaveCeptor analog watch)
Finally, the supermarket. The hubby wanted to get a few things for dinner. Family pack of ground beef (he wanted to make meatloaf,) side dishes of my choice (I told him flat out not to bitch about what I chose, in this case was pre-made sides in the meat case.) Picked up milk, bread, eggs, cookies (Classic and Golden Oreos,) and pre-sliced snacking cheese (habanero cheddar and smoked gouda.) 103 dollars spent.
At the end of Papabear’s Retail Therapy, the total came out to 270 dollars.
As for the orange and white menace, he is basically stoned on catnip and was being a goofball, so papabear had to take photos of him.
(BTW, dinner was meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, baked cheese potatoes, and french green beans. – PDB)
-30-
(c) 2026, Dean A. Basler Jr., all rights reserved.
Let’s just say up front, I am only relating this as a way for all of you to get a little glimpse into papabear’s life. (Bear with me, it gets interesting. – PapaDeanBear)
Yesterday, the house was a bit of a madhouse. My husband had volunteered to do the main course for a spaghetti dinner for our local senior LGBTQ+ organization, SAGEUpstate (link at the end.) Well, in all the madness of moving stuff from our kitchen to the car, our orange and white menace 🐱slipped out. We didn’t notice at the time.
I actually went to the spaghetti dinner later on (had to Uber, goddamnit) to help the hubby with cleanup and loading the car with leftovers and unused canned tomato products and pasta. So my darling hubby and I get back from it, unload the car, and get settled for the night.
The next day, I am looking around for my boy, and I can’t find him. I ask Dan (my husband) if he has seen the cat, and of course he says “Don’t worry about it, he’ll turn up.” (Fuck you very much for your reassurance.) So I am sick with worry. I love my furbabies, they are family.
So, I go through out the day doing things to distract myself, try to dispel my mental agony, like watching some of my favorite YouTube channels. So, I am basically trying to distract myself and failing, and my despair worsens.
About an hour ago (as of this writing,) my hubby barges into my den, and sure as shit, he has the orange and white menace in his arms. What happened was, Dan had taken the house horse (our Great Dane) outside to go potty (we have a fenced in back yard) and she went and chased away a feral cat that was stalking the birds that congregated around the bird feeder. He went to get her to bring her in, and sure enough the goddamn cat was sitting there behind the garage.
Suffice it to say, this cranky, cigar-smoking old man broke down in tears knowing that my boy is safe.
Brian Kilmeade makes a statement on “Fox & Friends” that mentally ill homeless who refuse to get off the streets and/or help or treatment should be euthanized by lethal injection. Nazi Germany under the leadership of Adolph Hitler proceeded to exterminate 250,000 mentally ill/disabled people.
His words: “Or involuntary lethal injection or something — just kill ’em.”
After walking back his statement, he doesn’t get punished by Fox News.
Matthew Dowd, a political analyst for MSNBC made this statement about Charlie Kirk while talking with MSNBC anchor Katy Tur:
“Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”
BOOM! Immediate termination by the higher-ups at MSNBC. And this is happening while Comcast is preparing to spin off MSNBC as a separate network, and controversy and antagonizing the government would make that impossible.
Gee, sounds like shades of Stephen Colbert getting shitcanned right before the Paramount/CBS-Skydance Media merger, which was pretty much orchestrated by Donald Trump because he controls the FCC, ergo the broadcast licenses of the CBS O&O (owned and operated) television stations.
(And if you have been watching Colbert, you have seen him just push everything to the limit on his show, because they cancelled him and they can’t do a goddamn thing about what he puts on short of pulling the plug and having Colbert sit out the rest of his contract.)
Is the mainstream media running scared? You’re goddamn right they are. And this is the first step in the slide to an authoritarian regime, control the media to control the narrative. Then they can feed the public any kind of bullshit that that they can dream up in their twisted little minds.
(I wrote a blog post in August 2021 about a weird fucking dream I had that sort of touched on the dystopian nightmare that we have now.)
Trump is sickly, mentally ill, and delusional. All this bullshit that he does such as paving over the Rose Garden to make it look like his shithole “resort” in Florida, building a new ballroom at the White House, because “the American people want it.” NO WE FUCKING DON’T!
What do Americans in general want? Affordable groceries. Affordable housing. Health care without restrictions. Being able to worship in their own way. Being able to love someone openly regardless of gender.
What have we gotten?
An attorney general (Pam Bondi) who just parrots whatever rises to to the surface of Trump’s adderal-fueled pea brain.
A communications director (Steven Cheung) who looks like the rotting corpse of the Pillsbury Doughboy who also parrots whatever rises to to the surface of Trump’s adderal-fueled pea brain.
A deputy chief of staff (Stephen Miller) who at the base is a self-hating Jew and chief architect of the Trump administration (Joseph Goebbels reincarnated?)
A FBI director who has no fucking clue how to run the FBI (Kash Patel) and can’t provide a straight answer when he is grilled by Congress. Not to mention his deputy (Dan Bongino, who does have law enforcement experience) who was more concerned with being a media personality than a law enforcement official. (And was slammed by former colleagues in the Secret Service as basically a grandstander.)
A White House press secretary (Karoline Leavitt) who is basically nothing more than eye candy for Trump and just keeps broken-record-ing the same shit over and over when grilled by the White House press pool.
And to top it all off, a sociopathic businessman (Elon Musk) who was brought in to “improve efficiency and reduce costs” in government, but according to projections, will potentially increase the deficit to $2.6 TRILLION by fiscal year 2035.
And to top it all off, there is the main man himself, DJT (and his demented Tattoo JDV, Fantasy Island anyone?) constantly changing the fucking goal line because he is a superficial sociopathic malignant narcissistic unhealthy sack of shit who shoves his tongue so far up the assholes of strongmen and dictators that Febreeze should be carried by his protective detail to mitigate the shit-smell that comes out of his mouth when he speaks.
Am I fucking scared? Yes! I am fucking scared! The current administration is turning against anyone who isn’t white, straight, Christian, and greedy.
There are signs of life in the American political landscape, though. The MAGA base is starting to show cracks in the foundation, as the tariffs and hardline ICE crackdowns are destroying trust in the government. Governors of states (JB Pritzker in Illinois mainly) are telling Trump to NOT send the National Guard into cities to “assist” law enforcement like they did in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. (As of this writing, Trump has backed off Chicago and is now saying that he is going to send the National Guard to Memphis, TN to “combat rampant crime.”)
Also, there is independent media that should be watched and read, such as Mother Jones and The MeidasTouch Network. Sure, the mass media is good at shoving the big picture at you, but they are driven by advertising dollars. They don’t want your attention to stray from the pretty flickering picture box with all the ads blasting their audio at you in Dolby Atmos.
Okay, I got a bit verbose again (blame the cannabis sativa gummies, cigars, and dark roast coffee) so I am going to wrap this up by saying:
VOTE IN THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS! I think that there will be a larger turnout than in the general election that brought Trump back to power, because the vox populi have seen what has happened over the past eight months. If public sentiment is any indication, both the House and the Senate can be swung over to the left, and act as a check valve on whatever bullshit Trump can dream up in the remainder of his term.
I am Dean Basler, and I support (and also wrote) this message.
-30- (c) 2025, Dean A. Basler Jr., all rights reserved.
The DeanBear Chronicles 