Monday Odds & Ends.

Feeling a little scattered, so I loaded it all into the blog shotgun and am firing it on this page. Yes, it's the old Random Thoughts fallback today....

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Since we lost Junior Varsity Dog Nipper, my Fitbit thinks I died. Or maybe went into a coma. I have not hit 10,000 steps in almost two weeks. Senior Varsity Dog Tralfaz simply doesn't need or care about the kind of exercise that Nipper demanded. Fazzy is content to plow through the snow in the yard, and boy do we still have a lot of snow. More coming today. My main exercise is plowing through the snow to pick up after him or make sure he doesn't get to the street without a leash. Two feet of snow makes for a tough slog. And Fitbit gives me no credit for extra effort.

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I've got a great idea for a novel -- it'll be the biggest thing since Scarlett, the 1991 Alexandra Ripley sequel to Gone with the Wind.  

Think of it! The injured Ishmael, the lone survivor, is reunited with Queequeg, who turns out to have survived the destruction of the Pequod as well, by floating to Nantucket in a barrel. The two band together, determined to avenge their sunken pals and bring Moby-Dick to justice. The only person who believes in them is Phyllis McSnord, the Boston socialite who found Ishmael and nursed him back to health. Her heart yearns for him -- but is his too full of vengeance to love? It's a revenge novel, a buddy novel, a romance novel, and a sailing novel all in one! 

Of course, there are some issues. I've never sailed on anything but a cruise ship, a ferry, and a catamaran. I've never even been in a rowboat. So the research might be a little daunting. Plus, I'd probably have to read the original Melville novel, and if I could get through college with an English degree and avoid that chore, I'm certainly not inclined to take it on now. All right, never mind.

🧰🍽

So I fixed the dishwasher. (He said casually, as if a minor accomplishment, hardly worth mention.) This actually occurred a week ago, although the problem went back to my last column of miscellanea in September. To fix the broken flap on the part of the dispenser that stores the Jet Dry, I had to buy a new dispenser, take out a dozen screws to access the interior of the door, gennnnntly unplug the wires leading to the old dispenser, force the part out without breaking anything, put in the new one, plug those wires (seriously, they are so fragile) into the new unit, reassemble the door, and pray that the new dispenser would work and that the hollow door wouldn't fill with water when I ran the thing. So I have avoided mentioning this until the dishwasher had been run enough times to confirm that it is working and I did not break it. Ha! 

📕😨

Been working on very PC novel, targeted at the youth. When I say it's very politically correct, I mean it. The author has used mathematical precision to bring in all preferred groups (ethnic, sexual, people who use weird pronouns), and the characters smack down each other for the slightest hint of un-PC or white supremacist behavior. Anything that happened before their tender little lives is racist garbage. 

Do kids really live this way? Life as a perpetual chase to be PCier than thou? What a drag, man. And this is supposed to be light reading, not a serious drama. If you hear about college-age folks feeling stressed these days, look at the sheer panic they live in, terrified of getting caught out by someone being bitchy, tagging them with labels of uncleanliness, online where all the world can see. Forget the pandemic; this is what's scaring the youth to death. 

For the record, my preferred pronouns are Youse, Dem, Dese, and Doze. 

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The problem with chips is that once you start eating chips you can't stop eating chips. Corn, potato, vegetable, tortilla, silicon, poker, doesn't matter. It's the first chip that gets you. The only way to win is to not play the game.