11 April—The good news is that Orion has landed safely, having survived a plumbing catastrophe. And an unverified but unquestionably reliable source has informed us (on the condition of anonymity) that the White House had a special courier with top-level security clearance waiting on board the USS John P. Murtha, which picked up the Orion, to seize the capsule’s compacted solid waste and deliver it to an unspecified—i.e., top-secret—facility.

At the unspecified—i.e., top-secret—facility, according to the unquestionably reliable anonymous source, the historic and well-traveled solid waste will be mixed with sawdust and compacted even further to maximize volume, divided into one-ounce bars and rounds (avoirdupois rather than Troy, to maximize volume), embossed with Donald Trump’s imperial image and signature and who knows what else, plated with nine-karat (or baser) gold, and delivered to one of Trump’s evil spawn for marketing to Trump’s MAGA multitude, who have shown that they’ll buy any shit.

The other news, then, is that the latest renderings of the latest Trump vanity project, officially called the Independence Arch to fool the aforementioned MAGA multitude but commonly known as the Arc de Trump, have been released. It must be noted that it’s Trump himself who put his miserable moniker on the typically tasteless and inappropriate monument to himself last October, when he characteristically answered a reporter’s question about whom the gilded monstrosity rendered at that time but not much different from the current embarrassment to taste was for, with “Me. Going to be beautiful.” Of course.

In case you miss it on the architect’s rendering, it must also be noted that Harrison Design calls the monstrosity “triumphal arch.” And if you go to Harrison Design’s website, you can see why Trump chose that firm to design his eponymous arch.

Trump claims that the cynosure to himself is actually intended to mark the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Well, truth be told, Trump probably doesn’t know what a semiquincentennial is. As a practical matter, though, do Trump and his flunkies and other supporters really expect it to or believe it can be ready for the 250^th Independence Day festivities on 4 July, not even three months away?

Everybody knows that Donald Trump performs miracles with the selfsame Ex-Lax regularity he flouts laws, but even God himself, whose name is to be gilded at the top of the Arc de Trump where it’s not likely to be seen, couldn’t be expected to get it done . . .