It’s Good Friday. Forty years ago I would be at an Ohio golf course with my work friends, enjoying a day of 36 holes of golf and fun. That would have included my too-soon-departed best friend at the time, John Wiseman. Those were great days. I’ll try to get out and hit a few today in his honor.

This story about how Boeing went rotten is scary as hell. We’re now in a place where we have no choice but to trust our lives to the planes this company built. And the death (murder?) of one of their primary whistleblowers is something out of a novel. Can it be possible that a major US corporation had an employee whacked to shut him up? Something’s very, very wrong inside the company that builds the airplanes I ride in.

Big storm coming to Socal this weekend, just in time to mess up the family visit. Outdoor egg hunts for the little guys may have to wait a few days. It’s been a wet spring in Socal – not a record amount of rain, but likely a record number of wet days.

I’ve been uninspired of late. Nothing much that I want to write about. The world goes on – US politics still a hard-to-believe mess, Russia still pounding on poor Ukraine, Israel still dealing with living among mortal enemies, etc. It never stops. Closer to home, we’re in the green damp part of the Socal year, and as soon as it gets warm again it’ll be great. For a little while.

All the travel we have queued up for the next six months will probably shake me out of the doldrums. Kentucky, Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, Canary Islands, Mexico…it’ll be busy. If all that moving around and sightseeing doesn’t provide some inspiration, then shame on me.

Next week these characters come to Socal for spring break, and that’ll be great. Can’t wait.

You ever have a week when everything goes wrong? I’m having one now.

• I’ve felt sick all week, even worse today.
• The weather is cold and rainy. I’m under blankets all the time.
• Trump got a reprieve, a huge gift from another court. Dude is a cockroach.
• UK lost their tourney game less than a week ago.
• And now reports are out that Cal is staying to torture us at least one more year.

Maybe all the shit is raining down this one week, and next week it’ll be all rainbows and unicorns. Maybe.

It’s Monday, a day of reckoning.

• The NCAA Tourney now has its Sweet 16 teams. UK still isn’t one of them.
• Many online sources say today is the day Calipari will be fired. I hope so.
• Boeing’s CEO has resigned.
• My entry in a tiny online writing contest got great comments, but did not win.
• The Bloated Orange Thing is in NY court defending himself against hush money payments to a hooker, while simultaneously waiting for another NY court to begin seizing his bank accounts and property. Big day for Don Poorleone. Update: An appeals court just ruled that Trump has another 10 days to pay up AND his bond is reduced to $175M, about $400M less than previous. When will the courts stop rescuing this criminal?

A lot going on today.

In a different world, today I would be basking in the post-game glow of UK making it to the Sweet Sixteen. As they should have. Their coach, the much-overpaid and overblown John Calipari, kept them (and me) from that pleasure. Big Blue Nation knows he’s the problem. How does it feel, John, to lose the most crazy-loyal fan base in the sport? It can’t be good.

But we live in this world. To fill the void of college hoops, I’ve started re-reading Vernor Vinge books. Friday I read The Peace War, and Saturday I started Marooned in Realtime. It’s been a real eye opener for me – Vinge was a *great* writer with an amazing imagination. I’ve read too many so-so novels the last few years, so reading these by Vinge is a reminder of how good SF can be. And often isn’t. Marooned takes place millions of years in the future but is still driven by good characters and interesting plot. Reading this stuff is like coming home to a warm fire.

It’s impossible to avoid news about the Bloated Orange Thing this weekend, given his $500M showdown with the NY AG on Monday. This NPR article is particularly depressing. It discusses how MAGA rallies have become religious events, not political events. The political party that became a cult that’s becoming a religion. It’s hard to stomach, hard to believe.

I also started watching Ted Lasso yesterday. I’m late to the party. But the first few episodes are good, real good. Makes you smile. I’m starting to understand what all the Emmy’s were about.

One last bit of nostalgia from yesterday. I listened to some decade-old music that I loved then, and it’s still great. Not just the song, but the whole album.

It’s just a game. It’s just a game. I keep telling myself that, but the anger remains. This is a whole new spin on “March Madness” – I’m mad as a cat tossed into a cold lake. And this is a horrible new take on “one and done”, for that matter. I *definitely* need a new hobby or two. Maybe something relaxing like ditch digging.

I probably shouldn’t post tonight, but…WTF. This UK loss is the last straw. Cal has to go. Out-coached again, another historically bad loss. The university pays $10+M for that. I’m not a fair weather fan, but in terms of weather, the Cal ship has broken up on the rocks and is a 100% wreck. Sunk. Lost at sea. Sleeps with the fishes.

Now what are UK fans going to do for the next two weeks? It won’t be basketball.

And Merrick Garland has to go too. He won’t prosecute Trump, but he’s prosecuting Apple (!?!?!?) for out-competing everyone else in the smart phone market. That helps exactly no one. Garland and Calipari – poster boys for worst leaders of 2024.

It’s Day 1 of the NCAA basketball tournament, the round of 64. There are a couple of games on TV every hour starting at 9:15am here on the Left Coast, so whatever writing I get done will be with background hoops. UK plays at 4pm, so my sanity is safe for at least that long.

The Oakland coach said some unflattering things about UK, and our team seems to have noticed. I hope that fires them up enough to play at their full potential. At their best, they can beat anyone.

***

Sad news – one of my favorite science fiction authors, Vernor Vinge, died yesterday. I’ll never forget reading A Fire Upon the Deep. I may have to re-read it soon – I have a copy somewhere on my bookshelf. He was also a professor at San Diego State University, so a big loss to two communities.

***

Only four more days until the Bloated Orange Thing has to pay up or declare bankruptcy. Will he forfeit Trump Tower? Will a hostile nation or an actual billionaire buy him? Will someone in the judiciary rescue him at the last second? Will his idiot donors keep sending money? Monday should be an interesting day.

I read an essay today on NPR that asked the question “can a picture make you happy?” Well, I’ve got the answer.

How can you look at those two and not be happy?

Post pandemic, corporations are trying desperately to regain control of employees, control they think they lost when work from home became the norm. Dell just announced that WFH employees will no longer be considered for promotion.

Employers are right (partially) – getting together in the office *can* be a benefit, can be a positive experience, but it can also be a toxic nightmare. For me the benefits were never, ever worth the commute time and stress. And over my career I ran into enough sociopaths that rubbing shoulders with “teammates” at the office wasn’t much fun.

In other corporate dumbfuck moves, Glassdoor decided to start adding real names to anonymous user accounts without asking their users. I estimate it’ll take less than 90 days for all their users to run screaming away from the site. Idiots.

***

This is an absolute nightmare. What do we do about the 0.1% of people who shouldn’t have children, but do? Breaks your heart to think that this horrific story is just one of many probably playing out right now. The world is a cruel place.

***

This may be the most esoteric Reddit ever published. It’s a discussion of gravity, one of the great mysteries remaining in science. With only my undergraduate math and physics to draw upon, some of the deeper points in the comments elude me. My mental model is classic Einsteinian general relativity, where gravity is a result of mass warping spacetime. Think of a rubber mat stretched flat, and balls of various size/weights placed on it. Each ball will warp (stretch) the mat in proportion to the ball’s mass, and objects traversing this 2D model of spacetime will be drawn into the “gravity well” of each mass. (The ironic thing about that analogy is that it’s gravity forcing the stretching of the rubber mat.) Anyway, fascinating reading.

Lots going on in real estate, suddenly. The profession of real estate agent got whacked by a lawsuit, and now it sounds like commissions are going down, maybe way down. Good news for buyers/sellers; bad news for two million or so licensed agents.

And we have new neighbors just north of us in Socal – that house just sold. We don’t know anything about the new neighbors yet except they have Trump stickers on their vehicles. Hmmm…

I will note that the new neighbors’ house is about 150 yards away from us, across a hillside, through some trees. We won’t see or hear much of each other unless we choose to do so.

My search for a new/bigger place in Louisville is ongoing, but nothing interesting so far. Not a lot of homes on the market in Louisville, but that should change in April/May. My preference filters are pretty tight – an in-ground pool or room to build a pool, 2000+ sq ft, new-ish kitchen and baths, and located in the Frankfort Ave area. There was one in January that fit the bill but I moved too slow.

And in the final real estate note, looks like the Bloated Orange Traitor is going to have to sell most of his property to pay his NY tax fraud case judgement. A half a billion dollars, more or less, and that’s in addition to the $80 million he’s on the hook for as a convicted sex offender. No bank or lender will put up a bond for him, no actual billionaire seems willing to lend him the cash (so far), and the NY fines or bond are due next week. The walls are closing in.

Many have noticed that this makes Traitor Trump a uniquely serious security risk. A worse risk than ever before – he’s 100% up for sale to anyone (or any country) who will bail him out of this rapidly-closing legal situation. Next week will be…interesting.

So yeah, a lot going on in real estate, both macro and micro.

Aiming to have a quiet, quiet week. Not much going on until the UK game on Thursday, so hunkered down reading, writing and trying to Do Healthy Things. I’m healing the basketball wounds by participating in a few online bracket bets – I’ve covered all the scenarios. UK out early, UK wins 2-3 games, and UK goes all the way. I even have a 100% random pick bracket – that one will probably do well.

Trying to pay no attention to politics – the various Rep shitweasels are still at it, chipping away at civilization with all their might. The Entropy Party.

I got some good news; a small online SF magazine is publishing a (very) short story of mine. It’s nice to get a little positive feedback. In the meantime, I continue to try and rewrite the very-messed-up 10+ versions of my murder mystery on the Moon novel. What was I thinking when I splintered off all those versions? Putting Humpty Dumpty back together again is turning out to be…quite difficult.

It’s St Patrick’s Day. Not a big deal in our household, but back in my 20s it used to be an excuse for a big night out somewhere. We drank a lot of green beer in Akron OH.

But it’ll be a quiet day here. Another good day to read and write. Later today the NCAA announces who will play where/when in the big tourney, but I’m having trouble getting interested in that. Sure, I’ll watch the UK game (games?) next week, but with a very cynical, skeptical eye. Won’t Get Fooled Again.

Last night’s game was a soul crusher. Gutted. Not gonna think about basketball for a while.

I sold all my Fuji cameras and lenses yesterday. Packing it all up I found I had quite a collection. Just fed up with all the expense and complication of trying to take perfect pictures with that gear. The end of an era for me. After some late night research, I think the best solution is one of the high-end point and shoot cameras, maybe a Lumix ZS100. Better than an iPhone but no SLR complications and you can fit them in your pocket. Downsizing, getting rid of complications and expense – seems like something an old person would do. That shoe fits.

More good news. Golf, and other men’s hobbies, drive a 300% increase in ALS risk. WTF? That made no sense until the article mentioned that it was exposure to pesticides that was the likely cause. So golf, gardening, woodworking (?), guns, and metal working are all suspect. Fuck it, I’m not giving up golf too.

I was worried about Louisville friends and family Thursday when the big storms blew through the midwest. Just found out that a tornado tore up Milton KY, not that far from Louisville. Yikes.

Arrgh. I just looked at my iPhone photos from yesterday, and they all came out nice, some even great, with no needed post-processing. Here’s an example.

Even with the crummy lighting, this picture looks pretty good. Better depth of field than I got with the Fuji, and much better light balance.

That does it. I’m doing a Fuji-ectomy. I’ll take the loss on selling the gear and buy something different. Right now I’m thinking the Sony A7c II. If that doesn’t work, I’ll know that the problem is the human behind the lens, not the equipment.

Watched Come Sunday last night – great cast, not much action but lots of food for thought. Emotional watch for me. I hope more people come around to the idea that you’re not condemned to an afterlife of hell by default. Religions don’t need to be a threat.

Woke up this morning to a live broadcast of Starship’s third test launch. It just concluded, and Starship made it to low Earth orbit. Big day for the next chapter of space flight. SpaceX was able to broadcast some stunning high-def pictures of the Ship in orbit using a linkup with their StarLink satellites. Pretty amazing views. On this schedule I should be around long enough to see Starship carry payloads and people to the Moon. Fingers crossed.

Today we head out to the desert in hope of seeing a superbloom. With all the rain this year, it’s possible. We know there are some good blooms happening in the Borrego desert, so off we go. Here’s a shot or two from the 2017 superbloom. The desert floor goes from monocolor sand to this in a week or two.

This is drone footage from yesterday. Looks pretty good.

And an update. I forgot – it’s Pi Day!

During a walk today I listened to a podcast and heard a new story. It’s the story of Carlton Pearson, an evangelical pastor from San Diego who was branded a heretic for preaching that hell isn’t real and that everyone would be “saved” in the next life. The podcast was compelling, interesting, and the narrators recommended a 2018 Netflix movie called Come Sunday as the more definitive story of Pearson’s life. I’m watching that ASAP, because after listening to the podcast I admire the guy.

For decades he led a huge congregation but was troubled by the thought of the millions (billions, actually) who would be doomed to eternal damnation according to the message he had been taught, the message that he preached. He began to think it didn’t make sense. His epiphany began with one of those “…send money to feed starving children in Africa” commercials, and he wondered why god would let them suffer in this life and then usher them immediately down to hell for eternal torture. Good question.

He first came to grips with the fact that the Bible was (is) a flawed record of things, written down by men who had opinions and who probably made shit up. Some might be true, some partial, and some total fiction. Once he got comfortable with that idea, he was free to try and find clues about how his chosen religion might actually work. He came away with a view that hell wasn’t real, that Jesus’ sacrifice saved all humanity with no further action required, and that all the fear-mongering about eternal damnation was just part of the system designed by men to recruit folks.

These were the same questions I asked myself as a twenty year old. I just couldn’t believe in a god and a system that would send most of the world’s population to eternal hell, year after year. Though that had been pounded into my head for my entire life up to that point. It made no sense. So I decided that either (a) Christianity had it all wrong about how/why you might escape hell in the next life, or (b) there is no hellish punishment in the afterlife, or (c) there simply is no god, no afterlife and religions are just making shit up.

Fifty years later I still don’t know which is correct. I’m pretty sure A is correct, but B and C…who knows? I still refuse to believe in a universe/system that methodically condemns a large percentage of the world population to burn eternally simply because they haven’t “accepted Jesus”. Or Buddha. Or Mohammed. That’s all BS.

But I *am* fascinated to hear more about a person who was indoctrinated at least as hard as I was and ended up deciding that all that indoctrination couldn’t be true.

He lost everything by talking about his new belief – his following, his wealth, his wife, the respect of his religious peers and “friends”. No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose. He died last year at the age of 70, still convinced that god loves everyone and had arranged to save all of humanity, independent of their belief.

I spent the entire day today making reservations and checking details for our upcoming spring/summer trips. Alaska, Canary Islands, a long drive to and from Yellowstone (lots of hotels involved), Kentucky multiple times, and Guadaloupe Valley MX. Hours and hours of details. But it’s all done now. I need a vacation.

Nice to see a little justice being served. Navarro is a dangerous creep.

I’ve joined an online writers’ forum called Scribophile. I’m not much of a group joiner, but we’ll see how it goes. I need all the writing help I can get. They’re having a little writing contest so I threw in an entry. You’re supposed to write a short (300 words max) scene involving all five senses, written in first person POV. So I banged this out:

Light blazes down on me with a furious, destructive energy. In every direction the only colors are grays and black, all shades washed away by the relentless light. If not for my suit I would cook in seconds.

I walk toward my goal, a pitch-black shadow cast by a pile of rubble. The ever-present gunpowder smell of dust reaches me in spite of my suit – the dust invades everything. Stepping into shadow my suit hisses and pops, a five-hundred-degree temperature drop forcing joints to realign. In the shadow, I look away from the sun and see an ocean of stars, hard points of cold light billions of miles away.

I almost wish I could be outside of my suit where no sound is possible. But inside, safe, I hear my own breathing and the faint whir of fans frantically trying to maintain constant temperature.

This is my church, the dark and silent space underneath the stars. I am as alone as any human in history, unseen and unheard a quarter million miles from Earth. It’s not far enough for me.

My suit reminds me to drink and I take a sip of tasteless water. With my head tilted back as far as my helmet allows, my neck rubs against a spot where I feel the deep cold seeping in. My suit reminds me that I have only two hours air remaining.

A radio transmission screeches without warning. “McLean, what the hell are you doing out there?”

My idiot boss can’t see me, but he can reach me with the radio tether. My reverie is broken, my time in church is over. Time to get back to work.

I hope that it’s obvious that the scene is on the Moon. I’ve had a lot of practice imagining what it would be like on the Moon’s surface, so this scene came easily. The extremes of the Lunar surface are fascinating.

Huge win for the Cats last night – they slugged it out toe to toe with one of the nation’s toughest teams. Our defense was as good as our offense. We end the season on a huge high note, and we have almost a week to prepare for our first game in the SEC tourney against either Ole Miss or TX A&M. It should be a big weekend of smashmouth basketball – anyone can beat anyone in the SEC. The official DraftKings Sportsbook odds have Tennessee as the favorite at +130, followed by Auburn at +260, Kentucky at +400, and Alabama at +450. Given that we’ve beaten TN, Auburn and Alabama recently, I like our chances.

Then we got the news that another five-star high school hoopster, Karter Knox, is joining the Cats next year. Kevin Knox was a good kid and a great player; this is his younger brother. Great news.

And then we got the news that both Puke and Kansas lost yesterday. A pretty much perfect basketball day.

In other news, the Bloated Orange Sex Offender never learns. He should shut up, but he can’t.

SNL’s satire skit of Katie Britt’s speech was priceless. Comedy gold. And comedy aside, Britt’s speech was a perfect example of the southern Fundy Baby Voice, a creepy learned behavior in certain circles. Ugh. If that’s not bad enough, the horrific serial rape story she told to try to blame border violence on Biden is/was a complete lie. It’s a 20 year old story that happened in central Mexico. Different President. Different country. Not relevant to our border today. And Britt stated that she traveled to the border last year and met a woman who told her the story that allegedly happened recently and on the US border. 100% false, not even close. So Britt is not only a creepy fundy, she’s a blatant liar. She should make Alabama proud.

Shifting gears again, this news continues to make me nervous. My life depends on Boeing making safe aircraft, as I’m on them 25-30 times each year. Sitting inside a tin tube 30,000 feet high, traveling at 500mph – you really want the maker of the tin tube to be honest, ethical, and supremely competent. Boeing is falling short on each of those lately. If more evidence of incompetence surfaces, I would seriously consider changing life strategies and just driving coast to coast a few times each year. Fewer trips, but longer stays. Dying in a plane crash is not on the bucket list.

Biden is on a roll after his SOTU speech. He was sharp, direct, forceful, on point…everything the MAGAverse says he isn’t. He’s perfectly capable of doing the job and his character is 180 degrees different (better!) than the Bloated Orange Thing. I was in a business meeting with 8-9 other folks during the speech, and jokes were tossed around the room about politics, mostly about Biden. I was appalled to realize that every other person in the room was going to vote against Biden. All of them, my friends and work peers. I still can’t understand how otherwise reasonable people can vote for Trump. The ad below is a good one.

I watched the Republican response to the SOTU speech, given by Sen Katie Britt from Alabama. Creepy. As. Fuck. That is one disturbed woman. From Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter today:

Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) gave the Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union address. Sitting in a kitchen rather than in a setting that reflected her position in one of the nation’s highest elected offices, Britt conspicuously wore a necklace with a cross and spoke in a breathy, childlike voice as she wavered between smiles and the suggestion she was on the verge of tears. 

“What the hell am I watching right now?” an unnamed Trump advisor asked Nikki McCann Ramirez and Asawin Suebsaeng of Rolling Stone.

Enough politics. This morning I was looking for some dreamy music to bridge the gap between sleep and rolling out of bed. Started with Linger – one of my all time faves. Losing the Cranberries lead singer a few years ago was rough – she had (has?) a beautiful and unique voice. Instantly recognizable. Youtube then teed up a singer new to me, and the algorithm worked perfectly. Mitski is a new fave, and My Love Mine All Mine is dreamy and cool. I’ll be listening to more of her.

UK plays its final regular season game today against Tennessee. It’s a big game and yet it’s not. With a win we keep our recent momentum alive and set a great tone going into the tournaments. A loss will be a downer, but it won’t change anything about the season or the NCAA tourney. So no stress. TN is a very good team and we’re the underdog. But I’m confident that if we score more points we’ll have a good chance of a win.

I like this website a lot. Reasons to be Cheerful. We need all that we can get.

SDSU lost a heartbreaker to Boise State yesterday. I feel their pain.

I’m sorry to miss the State of the Union speech tonight – I’ll be at a board meeting/dinner. But Jeff Tiedrich has already published the text of the speech, so it’s OK. And it’s a damn fine speech. So good I want to republish it here. (If you don’t like swearing, just stop reading now. Seriously.)

Madam Vice President, Mister Weird-Ass Porn-Obsessed Speaker, our First Lady and Second Gentleman, members of Congress and the Cabinet, Justices of the Supreme Court, my fellow Americans —

now, before we start: hey Marjorie Three Toes — try to keep your braying to a minimum.this is supposed to be a solemn occasion. and you, Handy Oakley — try not to fall out of your dress. this isn’t Beetlejuice the Musical. both of you, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. nobody wants to see a repeat of your disgraceful behavior from previous years. you’re government officials and grown adults. it’s time to act like it.

ok, on with the show.

the state of our union is … pretty fucking awesome.

three years ago, I inherited an utter shit-show. the worst pandemic in a century. the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.

now, three years later, check this shit out: 

— over 14.8 million jobs have been created. that’s more jobs created in three years than any president.

— the unemployment rate is down to 3.7%. unemployment has been under four percent for over two years, the longest stretch in more than 50 years. 

— inflation is down to 3.1%.

— wages are up, and outpacing inflation.

— our economy has added 800,000 manufacturing jobs since I took office and private companies have announced more than $300 billion in manufacturing investments here in the U.S.

— thanks to the CHIPS Act, we’re bringing high-tech jobs back to America and improving our supply chain.

— we’re investing more than a trillion dollars in rebuilding our country’s aging infrastructure. remember how the former guy used to announce imaginary ‘infrastructure weeks’ and then did absolutely fucking nothing? we’re actually doing it.

— American manufacturing is booming.

— more Americans have heath insurance than ever before.

— a month’s supply of insulin is now capped at $35 for seniors on Medicare.

— we’ve canceled about $138 billion in federal student loans — wiping out debts for about 3.9 million borrowers.

— oil production in the US is at an all-time high.

— renewable power is the number 2 source of electricity in the U.S. — and climbing.

— and just two days ago I capped bank overdraft fees at eight bucks. 

now, to a lot of you out there, this is the first time you’re hearing about any of this. but you would have already known it if the media would do its fucking job and report on facts instead of obsessing over my age. oh nooo, Joe Biden is old. he’s so old. so very very very olllld.

to which I say: so fucking what. I get shit done.

meanwhile, what have Republicans been doing? punishing pregnant women. getting mad at books. getting mad at drag performers. forcing ten-year-old children to give birth to rape-babies. arresting women for miscarrying. drowning migrants in razor-wire booby traps. 

all their culture war bullshit is designed to distract you from the fact that beyond tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy and farcical revenge investigations, Republicans don’t have shit. not one useful policy proposal that would benefit the average American.

yesterday, Elise Stefanik asked if you were better off today than you were four years ago. are you fucking kidding me? Republican nitwits have memory-holed an entire pandemic. 

remember not being able to buy toilet paper? remember corpses stacked in mobile morgues and buried in mass graves? I remember. that was exactly four years ago.

I also remember some fuckface going golfing, and telling the country to gargle horse paste and inject disinfectant — and now this incompetent dipshit wants his old job back. 

hey Comer Fudd, how’s my impeachment going? talk to any Russian spies lately? I’ve asked Home Depot to send you a fresh supply of rakes to step on.

House Republicans, don’t even bother trying to pass any more extremist legislation. fuck your national abortion ban. I’ll veto that so fucking fast you won’t even know what hit you. 

Rand Paul, shut the fuck up about cutting Social Security and Medicare. it’s not happening on my watch.

well, that’s it for today, folks. 

God bless America. thank you and goodnight.

Day 2 back on the Left Coast, another rainy cool day. Feeling good this morning after a decent night’s sleep and a fourth straight Cats win. They’re really playing well. We should have 2-3 more wins on our 2024 resume, but we lost some close ones – that LSU game in particular was a heartbreaker. But we’re hitting our stride at the right time. The SEC tournament starts in a week, and we have the final big game of the season with TN on Saturday. I love this time of year.

There’s a lot of political news that I could comment on, but it’s too depressing. More corruption, more hateful GOP actions, more idiots enabling Trump’s march toward the 2024 election. Ugh. So I’ll write about science fiction instead.

I’m looking forward to seeing Dune 2 on the big screen, probably this weekend. For counterpoint, here’s a review of the movie by someone who didn’t care for it.

I’ve enjoyed watching Halo the last couple of weeks and look forward to its Season 2 conclusion soon. I wasn’t a gamer, never have been, so I don’t know the Halo universe like someone who played. Reading the IMDB comments, the veteran Halo gamers *hate* the series. But it’s a good military SF story with excellent special effects. Master Chief aka John-117 is a wonderful character, getting more depth every episode. In the latest episode, I was shocked/surprised to hear Jackson Browne’s Fountain of Sorrow playing faintly as a Mad-Max style caravan crossed the desert on a lonely planet. Fountain is one of my favorite JB songs. The setting is 500 years in the future, so in the Haloverse that song has had time to become quite the vintage classic. Somebody in charge at Halo is a JB fan.

Rough flight to Socal yesterday. Got disrespected by a woman saving seats on Southwest and wasn’t able do anything about it. What do you do when someone disregards the rules and keeps you from a benefit you would otherwise have – in this case, an exit row seat?

The seat I aimed for was an exit row window with more legroom room than others. It’s my go-to seat, and I’m always happy when it’s open. I’m OK if it’s not – on SW, it’s (supposedly) first come, first served. There was a woman sitting in the exit row middle seat with her belongings piled in the aisle and window seats. The SW flight attendant was standing in the row behind her.

I started to move into the row and this conversation happened.

Me, pointing at the window: “I’ll take that seat, thanks.”

Her: “No, that’s for my husband.”

Me: “There are three seats. He can have the aisle.”

She replied. “No, he’s six foot four and he needs this seat.”

Me: “I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Please move so that I can sit down.”

Her: “Fine.” And she moved into the window seat, jamming her stuff back into the middle and aisle seats.

Me: “Seriously?” And to the flight attendant, “You’re OK with this? This isn’t how SW is supposed to work.”

Flight attendant: “Now that she’s claimed that seat (the window), it’s hers.” He might have shrugged; I can’t remember.

I processed this for a few seconds, standing in the aisle. I realized that if I took the aisle seat, I would end up sitting next to this shitstain of a person when she switched seats with her husband. Or next to the husband, who would be a large person. So I gave up and went away to find a non-exit-row seat. It was a long 3.5 hour flight to Phoenix, a little less comfortable than it should have been.

I find this part of modern, “civil” society maddening. If you just don’t care how big an asshole you are, you can flout the rules and inconvenience others. With no consequence. You can’t use force to get people to do the right thing, and in this situation any escalation with this unreasonable, unlikable person could result in being thrown off the plane. It’s a no win, and the asshole woman used this to her advantage.

I used to think that most people were nice, reasonable people. Through encounters like this, and knowing that almost half the country will vote for Trump, I no longer believe that.

Later in the flight I imagined a conversation I wish had happened. Would have made me feel a bit better about it all.

The six-four husband shows up to sit next to his harpy wife and I say to him. “You know, we haven’t met, but I already know something about you.”

Husband: “Really? What’s that?”

Me: “You have poor taste in women.”

It’s a travel day. Clean up and close up the house, run a few last minute errands, pack and trundle onto Southwest. Lots of good memories and some weird weather – a few days at 20 degrees and a few days at 80 degrees. The local flora must be confused.

Yesterday’s 80 degree day and trip to the zoo was a highlight. Wish both grandsons could have been there, but…school.

I finished the Patricia Cornwell book Chaos, and it triggered all kinds of thoughts about writing. She is wildly successful as an author, yet her style breaks pretty much every rule that my mentor Dave Putnam teaches. In this book she has a meandering, hard to read dissertation for 95% of the book, then everything happens in the last 5%. She does a great job tying together all the plot points in that last 5%, but it was hard to stick with it for that very late payoff. For me the payoff was late in two ways – I ended up reading the final bits at 3am.

Scanning the news this morning, several things jump out.

First, I’ll predict that SCOTUS will rule in Trump’s favor today on the issue of states’ ability to keep him off the ballot. While I would really like for the ruling to be the other way, it would open up a huge can of worms.

Next, the Philadelphia Enquirer wins the award for best headline: “Mitch McConnell is the arsonist who set America on fire and ran away“.

Ongoing, Trump’s continued domination of Republican primaries and polls is astonishing. In 2016 we all were surprised by his win but hoped he would be a reasonable President. Nope. This time we know what we’re getting and people *still* support the monster.

Cory Doctorow is not a fan of Amazon. He’s right; none of us should be. But it’s so damn convenient.

Something weird is going on with ESPN’s website. For a few days it has been difficult or impossible to reach. Haven’t seen that in a while. Their CIO must be having a bad, bad week.

Dune 2 pulled in $178 million over the weekend. Gonna have to see that one on the big screen.

Well, this explains a lot. Turns out that Covid reduced the average IQ of humanity by three to nine points. A disease that made us dumber. That’s more good news for Trump.

Cory Doctorow tells the sad story of how private equity firms are ruining the US healthcare system. This also explains a lot.

I hate this so much. SCOTUS is a joke. Actually no, they’re not funny. They’re twisted, corrupt and dysfunctional. And largely due to this guy.

McSweeney’s somehow acquired a copy of one of the 25 drafts of my novel-in-progress. Bastards.