Little Pete.

I was thinking about Little Pete this week; I don't know why. 

He was a nice guy. Older, in his retirement. Little, as the nickname would indicate, maybe five five. Big glasses and slightly wild white hair. Loved his motorcycle. I used to see him occasionally down at the church group I sometimes attended, when my schedule permitted and he wasn't off somewhere exploring the roads of America. I didn't and don't even know his last name. Just one of those guys who was glad to see ya, and was glad to be seen. 

He got very involved in that group, as I recall, going from an occasional newbie to one of the leaders. He even chaired it at some point. I can say that I had been working in Manhattan when he was new, only seeing him on days off; when I was no longer in that job and was able to go more often, he was suddenly an important figure. It was like seeing a kid you hadn't seen in a while -- one day a toddler, next day doing long division. We seem to expect people to stay exactly as they are until we see them again, like toys we put away and then take out of the box years later. "My, how you've changed!" Well, of course, they did. So did we. 

Once again my work situation altered, and I didn't get down there much for a couple of years. The next time I saw him, he too had altered, unfortunately.

Little Pete didn't mind talking about the big black binder he was carrying. It was everything he needed to have with him for his cancer treatment. Test results, medications, appointments, insurance forms, Medicare forms, charts of diet and exercise. He was organized and determined. I don't know what he did before he retired, but if he brought that kind of organization and drive to his job, he must have been successful. He still had a smile, but it was a little more guarded, a little less likely to be seen through the glass of his spectacles. We all prayed for him, of course. 

Some months went by before I saw him again -- same place, same group, same black looseleaf binder. But I noticed, coming in late, that there was a pained look on his face, that there seemed to be a distance between himself and everyone else. They didn't want to cross to him, or know how to, and he seemed unable to connect to them, either. It was like he knew he was being ripped away from everyone, and no one knew what to do except to pretend it was not happening. He just clutched his now-thicker book tighter, like a totem that could make all this go away somehow -- a totem that he didn't believe in anymore, but one he grabbed because he had nothing left to grab. That was the last time I saw him.

Honestly, I don't know for sure what happened. I didn't know whom to ask -- so many members of that group moved away or otherwise left. I don't see any of the regulars anymore. I guess it's been ten years or so now. Maybe he had a miraculous bounce back with one of those new biologics, then moved to Florida to ride his bike all day, every day, summer to winter and back again. I hope so. 

Little Pete -- thanks for being a decent guy. I'm sorry I didn't get to become your friend. I'm sorry we're all so weird about sickness and death, like if we shy away from it, it will look us over. God bless you, wherever you are.   

AI yi yi yi yi.

Movie plots are strange, sad beasts. 

When films were more formulaic, they were sad because they were predictable. Like: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Murder is discovered and clues are unearthed to solve the mystery. Bad boy meets good girl and reforms. Party sets out and overcomes deadly obstacles to achieve goal. 

Then the plots got tortured to upend the expectations of the viewers. The cop is bad! The father is bad! The mother is bad! The bum is good! And eventually you'd know that the cop was the bad guy and the useless bum the good guy within five minutes, because the upended expectation was the new norm.

Then they got mangled because filmmakers were so in love with visuals that they threw the plot into the toilet and flushed and plunged until it went away. "We need a volcano to erupt here!" "Everyone should fall out the twelfth-story window and punch on the way down and survive!" "Wouldn't it be awesome if the moon exploded?" 

If that isn't enough, test audiences were brought in to torture the plot some more. Don't let the couple break up! Don't kill the boy! Don't kill the dog! Don't let the bad guy get away! Don't let baby Ashton strangle himself to death in the womb! (Hey, I didn't say the test audiences were all wrong.)

But why screw these things up on our own, when we can get technology to do it for us? 

If you look at startups these days, it's all AI, all the time. But I was still surprised when a friend pointed out a company called StoryFit, a Texas-based (do I have to say Austin?) company that aims to take your script and use artificial intelligence to make it awesome. 

"StoryFit's AI technology platform helps you understand the true value of your story and how to best reach your audience."

"StoryFit brings together insightful perspectives, industry expertise, and content analytics from our team of thought leaders to help you stay ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving world of storytelling."

"Learn how StoryFit champions creatives by helping them uncover white spaces for creative development, understand story elements that make their content special, and position their stories in the best places to succeed. By measuring thousands of story elements across thousands of stories, StoryFit expands creativity into new dimensions."

“We created 100s of proprietary models to measure 100,000+ story components matched against millions of audience data points to create the best possible opportunity for success.”

So, this is kind of depressing. 

First off, stories are human things if they're any good. Who needs artificial intelligence monkeying around with human storytelling? If we can't think up decent stories on our own (and, Hollywood aside, I think we still can), then can we even enjoy good stories anymore? Are we eager to kick experience and inspiration to the curb in exchange for machine learning?

In some golden age science fiction worlds, people were freed from drudgery by Science! and allowed to devote themselves to arts and other creative endeavors. So now the computers have to take that away too? Aren't professional writers already panicking enough about losing their jobs to AI? Yes, the stuff produced by computers is lousy so far, but thanks to companies like StoryFit it's going to get better. Will it matter that the Writers' Guild settled its strike if the writers will be erased anyway?

It’s depressing, therefore, because it reminds us how much our popular culture sucks, how much intellectual space we're giving over to computers, and how quickly we're racing to make our species obsolete. 

The people at StoryFit seem nice enough, but I really can't wish them well. If we can't tell good stories without computer aid, we ought to stop entirely. If we're that creatively bankrupt, we're done. 

Cryptosale!

Hello, fellow cryptocurrency investors! It's time to once again expand your portfolio by sending me your worthless, value-cratering American dollars in exchange for dynamic, upward-looking Fredcoin! Fredcoin is the only cryptocurrency that doesn't suck, and don't just take my word for it. Why, have a look at this unsolicited endorsement from famous cartoon character Nancy!

That's right, Nancy! Fredcoin is the wave of the future, and that future is not found by looking back to yesterday, but forward to tomorrow! You ever get clobbered by a wave while you were looking toward the shore? Of course you have. Knocked down, grit in your mouth, crabs biting your toes -- who needs it? Well, you can avoid all that by watching the horizon with Fredcoin! And waiting for your crypto shyp to come in! 

Why now? you ask. Why not later? Why shouldn't I just sit around and not order Fredcoin now?

Isn't that silly. There's no reason to not order Fredcoin when you could be ordering Fredcoin. It's just that simple. 

And what better time than during our pre-Halloween sale? Yes, my friends, for a limited time you can still buy Fredcoin for the same price as always, rather than waiting for those dollars to devalue some more. That could happen before our Halloween Crypt-O-Currency Bonanza, and wouldn't that be a fine trick-or-treat? So stop being patient and order today! 

As a special bonus, every order over $100 will come with a genuine e-signature by me for your NFT autograph collection. Sure to be worth something some day! 

Good thinking, little unnamed cartoon peon! Think ahead to the future with Fredcoin, and leave all other coins behind. Be like Nancy! Yell out "Me for Fredcoin!" Yell it at the bank! Yell it in the ice cream parlor! Yell it in the asylum! Yell it on the bus! Yell it at the Federal Reserve! Let everyone know that Fredcoin is the coin for you! Accept no substitutes! 

Big-time joe.

Perhaps you remember that civet coffee, the one that was exceptionally expensive because the beans were fed to live civets, whose digestive processes supposedly enhance the flavor of the beans? And perhaps you thought to yourself, "Self! As appealing as the idea of poop coffee is, $300-plus per pound is just not expensive enough! How will I ever impress guests like Gates and Clinton and the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew and the other Pedo Island travelers with something that cheap? I need to find a way to pay a whole lot more for my poop coffee!"

Well, leave your worries behind, because Black Ivory is here to help! Yes, as the name might indicate, at Black Ivory they feed the coffee beans to elephants, then extract the beans from the elephant poop. It may not taste particularly good, but it costs $1,500 a pound, and that's what matters! 

The company claims that this product benefits the elephants, and I like that well enough. I like elephants. They're big, they're interesting, they just do their thing. And the company claims that all that coffee-bean consumption doesn't affect the elephants, and I like that too. No one wants an overcaffeinated elephant. 

But personally, I prefer to do all my coffee digesting on my own, thanks. Roasting the beans and grinding them is good enough for me. I will take it from there. 

I believe I can spend the rest of my life without tasting coffee that was shat out by a mammal or any other animal. In fact, I intend to.

Fall, schmall.

Everyone says summer is great, but they can't seem to kick it out the door fast enough after Labor Day. 

Never mind the Halloween candy in July -- that's a lost cause, and I think lost because we just like excuses to buy sacks of little candies and eat them and then have to replace them. The stores would put them out in March if they thought they wouldn't look like they'd been left over since last Halloween. And it's not like little candies in big sacks aren't available year-round. It's just that the variety is better at Halloween, and we can convince ourselves we're being festive! and not gluttons. These are for the kids! Yeah, that bag will have been reduced to a pile of little wrappers and human waste before October even starts. 

Well, today is the first day of fall, and as usual, the stores have been all-out for Halloween for weeks, beyond the candy. Labor Day: School supplies out, Halloween crap in. Like this, at CVS:

I'm calling the exterminator

You're not even trying to not be
a Christmas tree, are you?

The weird thing, my neighbors started following the trend. Usually no one puts out Halloween stuff before October 1 -- maybe a generic scarecrow or something that could be just a general autumn decoration, but "Boo"? Foo.

But one product has already got a jump on Christmas, and it is not whom I'd have expected. Sure, my wife's craft catalogs start with Christmas in spring, but they know people need time to make serious projects. And yeah, I've seen ads for some Christmas events like the Rockefeller Center show in the city and the invitation to waste the holidays and your savings at Disney, but people always plan trips months ahead. But a Christmas-themed cereal box in September?

The answer of course is General Mills' sponsorship with Hallmark Channel, home of a million Christmas movies. My sources tell me that the channel is running 31 new movies this year, starting on October 20, so you'd better believe they're ready for autumn to be on its way and get us thinking Yuletide thoughts. 

As usual, I feel like I just took the tree down. Can we push Christmas off till April 2024? Is that too much to ask? I’m not ready.

Bad movie saints.

Movies often are appealing because we find characters with whom we can identify. Sometimes they are not the main characters, who are handsome or powerful or gorgeous or resourceful or in incredible shape or witty or really have a lot going for them. I mean the second bananas, or maybe third or even further back in the bunch. Sure, they're Hollywood characters, so they're probably still not awful to look at, but they're not the star, are they? (Although the star could be someone like noted Italian-American homunculus Joe Pesci, so who can say?) One thing, though, is that precious few characters in the movies would ever be considered for sainthood.

The Church often calls upon us, especially at Confirmation, to identify with a saint, someone of extraordinary virtue with whom we may still find some fellowship. We hope this will inspire us to seek out virtue ourselves, such as the Seven Cardinal Virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and courage plus the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity), as well as the 12 Fruits of the Holy Spirit. 

Well, movie characters with whom we identify are not always going to have those virtues, or maybe any at all in a generous supply. And yet we can learn from them, even if they would make lousy saints. Plus, they always wind up helping the good guys. So allow me to present a few Lousy Movie Saints for your consideration. Devotions not encouraged.   

St. Cleo McDowell of the Rival Hamburger
Patron of Small Business Owners
Known for: Dedication, hard work, directness,
paternal love
A real David-vs.-Goliath story, with a man who
appreciates royalty

St. Samir Nagheenanajar the Long-Suffering
Patron of Victims of Office Machinery
Known for: Intelligence, love of justice
Appreciates how the Evil One uses things against us;
not afraid to fight 

[see also: St. Female Temp, Patroness of Mondays]

St. Mona Lisa Vito the Handy
Patroness of Classic Car Mechanics
Known for: Mental endurance, intelligence, fortitude, courage
Sees the beauty in others that others do not -- like a broken-down
Thunderbird covered in dents and rust

St. Jack Butler the Unemployed
Patron of Stay-at-Home Dads
Known for: Prudence, chastity, paternal love
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do -- even if it means
resisting the gorgeous Ann Jillian

St. Mongo of Rock Ridge
Patron of Big Galoots 
Known for: Strength, humility
Maybe not the sharpest hammer in the icebox,
but shows how a little love and candy (and dynamite)
can turn a sinner away from bad

So there's a starter set. As I say, they're all lacking in attributes one would expect to see among the holy, but they all help out our heroes, so there's definitely a lot to like here. And definitely a lot with which to identify. 

Crate day in the mornin'!

Another trash day, another morning inspecting the neighbors' garbage. And what an interesting find we have here! 

Forty crates of wine grapes, emptied and waiting for the trash collectors. A veritable 6x8 wall of wine. It was a magnificent and imposing structure, like the ancient menhirs, Mesoamerican pyramids, or the monolith from 2001. What kind of wino lives here?

Actually, probably not a wino. For an active alcoholic, making your own wine is one of the worst ways to feed the disease. Takes too long. This is the kind of project the wine enthusiast engages in, and I have no problem with that (except it would have been nicer for the garbagemen for them to not put ALL FORTY crates out at once). 

This family is from Eastern Europe. I have a friend who grew up in Communist Yugoslavia, and his family made vast quantities of wine, as well as grappa and olive oil. In a Communist country you did as much off-the-books work as you could. Everyone did. The black market was probably twice as big as the legit market. He's been a proud American for a long time, but for years he still made his own wine because it was a family tradition. 

I personally also made alcohol -- I used to make beer at home, home being my apartment. I did get some really good results, and I enjoyed the process. I made mead, too. Like any great hobby, you can start with a small stake and escalate it to massive proportions -- the way with fishing, you can start with a rod and work your way up to a boat. But I gave it up after a few years. Too much work for too little booze. 

But back to these forty crates. Each was sold as containing 42 pounds of grapes. How much wine could you actually make from that? Well, I looked around at some winemaking sites, and found out that you could get as much as three gallons of wine from each crate. So this wall o' boxes would translate to as much as 120 gallons of wine. Federal law allows more than that per year for households with more than one adult, so they're not considered bootleggers. However, maybe for the alcoholic this could work out after all. 

I wish them well in their winey efforts. I used to do odd jobs for a family that made their own wine, and it was pretty weak, watery stuff. I hope this family gets it right. 

And I hope I don't awaken to an explosion one night, with bits of fermented grape raining over a four-block radius. That would be hard to hose off the roof.

Swords and heroes.

This year I reread one of my favorite trilogies in the world of fantastic fiction -- the Swords series by the late and prolific fellow Fred, Fred Saberhagen. I had been meaning to do so for years, but couldn't find my copies. (I think a relative absconded with them.) So I bought them again and I'm glad I did. 

Fred Saberhagen had a number of distinctions in his career. For example: 

⚔ He had multiple well-loved fantasy series, and one well-loved science fiction series (about the Berserkers, exceptionally adaptive robotic enemies of all life in the universe). 

⚔ He wrote a very successful series about Dracula, bringing in Sherlock Holmes for fun.

⚔ When he began the Swords series in the 1980s, he had an eye toward using it for a video game series. He was ahead of his time -- back then, "the project was deemed technologically infeasible" (according to Dr. Wiki), but no question it could be done now. 

⚔ He became a joke for my unappreciative wife; his work on Dracula stories was so well-known that he wrote the book adaptation of the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was sold as Bram Stoker's Dracula by Fred Saberhagen. Which she thought was hilarious, and she has used "by Fred Saberhagen" as a running gag for years. ("Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind by Fred Saberhagen.") Philistine! 

The main conceit in the Swords books is that the gods have, for their own fun, created twelve swords of the most astonishing and varied powers, and tossed them into the (medieval-level) human world for their own amusement. Little did the gods realize that the Swords were so powerful that they themselves could be harmed by them. Each Sword is virtually indestructible, and has its own hilt symbol and its own superpower, as you can see on this li'l chart I drew up: 

Some of them have an instant appeal. Like Doomgiver, for example -- you could travel in safety anywhere, because no matter what an enemy tried on you, from violence to psychological warfare to sorcery to poison to anything else, just carrying the Sword of Justice would leave you unharmed and inflict the damage on your foe. Farslayer is perfect if you want someone dead, because once you send it flying, nothing can stop it from piercing the heart of your enemy. 

Of course, they all have drawbacks of some kind. The perfect good luck of Coinspinner makes it unbeatable, but the Sword up and vanishes without warning. You can literally defeat an army with Townsaver, but the Sword does nothing protect its wielder, and you still take all the hits -- and once the fight is over, so are you. Wayfinder will lead you to anything you want, but doesn't take the safest path. And if you use Farslayer on your enemy, you'd better hope his friends don't know who sent it, because guess who has the Sword now?

 

Of all of them, only Dragonslicer seems out of place in that it has a weirdly specific purpose: to kill dragons. But in Saberhagen's world, dragons are not friendly, not helpful, not very intelligent -- they are enormous and very much akin to natural disasters, wiping out entire towns, destroying flocks and agricultural lands, bringing down castles. The one with the Sword of Heroes is a hero indeed. 

The original trilogy was so much fun that Saberhagen went on to write an eight-book series with further adventures connected to the Swords. There was even a book of stories by other authors with Swords-related adventures. 

The appeal of these books is all about the magic weapons -- what can they do, what will characters do with them, what happens when forces use them against one another -- and Saberhagen's careful plotting never fails to please the reader. His characters are vivid and memorable. If he has a weakness as a writer, it is that sometimes he lets the reader down with emotional payoffs. In one case, family members are violently separated, each believing the other dead, and are reunited years later, and we don't even get to see the reunion. It's just glossed over. It's like the writer was too busy with other stuff to care. 

We cared! We wanted to see it! 

Oh, well. It's a small price to pay for some very exciting and often terrifying action. The third book of the original trilogy has a god-versus-men battle that is simply outstanding. I can't think of any other scene that was more of a page-turner. And that's only one of the climactic confrontations in the novel. 

So, highly recommended. 

At one time I really hoped that someone would make an adaptation of the series. After reading about Amazon TV's revolting and disrespectful Rings of Power series, however, I no longer hope for that. Moviemakers used to ruin book adaptations by limitations in running time and budgets. Now they ruin them by their lack of talent and insertion of ideology. Who needs it? 

Auto lies.

Lies and Implied Lies I Have Told My Wife After Using Her Car

(Or Have I?)

The frangipane light came on.

I let the dog drive.

It's okay if not all four tires are completely round, right?

Pity I couldn't find the insurance card. That cop was getting sore.

I turned all the mirrors upside down, so now their reflection is upside down. 

The dog was smoking in the backseat but I told him to cut it out. 

First of all, let me say it wasn't all that long a walk home. 

People don't understand how hard it is to tell the oil cap from the wiper fluid cap.

I got the tires potated.

That AAA took forever to send someone.

I got that special gas out of the green-handled pump for you. It's more expensive, so I'm sure it's better.

I told the police officer I was you, identifying as male.

Really cool special effect, where smoke comes out of the vent when Metallica comes on.

I promise I will stop lying about the car.

Angry young meme.

 Just feeling PO'd today. Gah! Grumble! Grrr! Have some memes. 

This one is not real! That we know of.

Bury the lede!

One of the many ways the Internet has turned media on its head (or hed) is that it buries the lead (or lede).

We'll get back to that in a moment, but first this:

For those who have never worked in editing -- good thinking! But also -- terms like "head" and "lead" are traditionally misspelled in the biz, because when marking editorial changes on proofs, it was important that instructions not be mistaken for text to be inserted. For example, say I was editing a big fat important newspaper. I look at the first pass of the front page, put together by the compositor, and I see that the headline has an error. The story is about a murder at a rival paper, and the header should say PEN IS IDENTIFIED AS MURDER WEAPON, but the typesetter left out the space after PEN. Whoopsie! So I write "Headline should have no space after pen." When it comes back it now says HEADLINE SHOULD HAVE NO SPACE AFTER PENIS IDENTIFIED AS MURDER WEAPON, because my compositor is a moron. Had I written "# on hed" or the like indicating where the space goes, my misspelled and abbreviated writing would not have been mistaken for text to be added. 

Okay, now: Burying the lede. We've all heard that news writing uses the so-called inverted pyramid, in which all the important information is put at the top, with less important info being filled in below, in rough order of importance. This was crucial in the heyday of newspapers, because stories were filed, edited, pasted, and ran within hours, and the news stories had to fit somewhere in the layout. If a story was running long, information of lesser importance could be snipped off without editing. So the lead paragraph (or lede) should have an outline of everything readers needed to know. In my hypothetical case it would be:

• A follow-up on the murder of [victim]
• Featuring our dirty loser rivals
• Police announced the victim died after being perforated with an actual pen
• Any suspects announced or arrests made

The "pen is mightier than the sword" joke can wait for the editorial page. 

If possible the headline and sub-headline would themselves convey crucial information, because that would interest readers and entice them to buy the paper to get the whole story. 

Now, though, it's all about the clicks. So the writers do their best not to give you any information in the header or even the first paragraph if they can avoid it. In fact, the longer they can keep you hunting for information, the longer you'll stay on the page and be exposed to the crappy ads from Temu et al. Take this one -- please:

The headline in the New York Post for this same news was "Jimmy Buffett, legendary ‘Margaritaville’ singer, dead at 76." Right there, you have the name, what happened, what he did, what he was best known for, and how old he was, in eight words. In the online story above you get no name except the news-magnet governor of Florida, "secret" to make it sound mysterious, and first of all "Billionaire," because flies love honey. But if you didn't know whom they were talking about, you'd have to dig around for a while in the story to find out. 

Maybe there's nothing wrong with it -- we all know that the Internet is all clickbait, all the time. It's the only way to make money. If that means resisting reporting the news rather than rushing out to report the news, well, that's our brave new dumb world. 

But it is yet another way the world has been turned upside down. News stories don't report, crazy people get the most attention, idiots are treated as geniuses, illegal immigrants get care while citizens get hosed, tobacco is bad but illicit drugs are A-OK, all official sources are liars, and nothing works well -- if it works at all. 

My grandparents would have thought aliens had taken over or something. Maybe they have! You wouldn't find out from the news sites.

Crap -- uh, craft.

So, rock painting. Is that a thing now? Or is it origami again?

Did Bob Ross ever paint rocks?

These books were all in the wholesale club back-to-school pile, and may be more indicative of what the kids were up to last year than this year. Rock painting is something to do, I guess. I don't recall ever doing it in school. Maybe in New York City they were afraid to let the kids have rocks small enough to throw.

It got me thinking about Craft Projects of My Youth, most of which were connected with elementary school. It's funny how some kids will take to one and not to another, how it's not always the kid you would think who excels at a particular craft. Here are the ones I remember, and my rating (from 0 to 5 yarn balls 🧶). Your mileage will certainly vary. I'd love to hear your take in comments. 

🎨🖌🖇🧶

Paper crafts (corrugated paper edition): Cutting and gluing pictures using sheets of colored corrugated paper. You had to think ahead a little because your cut-out pieces had to have the same direction of corrugation as the background. Otherwise you might have a corrugated man running left-right when he should be up-down, so instead of walking he has to lie down. Lame. Only saved from 0 yarn balls because a classmate accused the school librarian of having corrugated lips, which is still funny. 🧶

Papier-mâché (puppet edition): Very intense exercise in using heavy conical dowels made of cardboard (a.k.a. yarn cones) as puppet bodies and making papier-mâché heads for them. The amount of wet newspaper in that classroom was amazing. The humidity level rose 30%. Later, the heads were painted and decorated with glued-on stuff, and little clothes were made for them. They were all Wizard of Oz themed, because we used the puppets for our class drama that year. I cannot begin to tell you how long we worked on this, but it seemed to be the whole school year. I memorized the entire script even though I had about five lines. As involving crafts go, it was amazing. As for the finished puppet heads, everything looked like blobs. Especially mine. Still: 🧶🧶🧶🧶🧶

Macrame (belt edition): Everyone in class had to have a macrame belt ready for the annual spring class dance at the end of the year. Not a school dance per se; each class had to do some kind of dance number. Our costume required us to make our own macrame belts. I don't want to say that I was bad at it, but a cat would have had a better chance at making a ball of yarn into a belt. In desperation the teacher asked the #1 macrame artist in the class to make my belt -- this little twerp, a jerk who would have been the class bully if he'd not been short, but as it was, was a loudmouth who could piss off anyone. He was a genius at macrame. Who knew? 🧶🧶

Stuff with Popsicle sticks (I have no idea edition): I just know there were tongue depressors and paint and glue. Nothing good ever came out of it. 🧶

Ceramics (painting edition): We got to pick our choice of unpainted ceramics to paint. When I say "our choice" I mean no choice at all, since we went by lottery. I got these little pine trees. Some kids got huge things with an opportunity to do some thoughtful and creative painting. I painted mine green. I am still disappointed, but on the other hand, I had those trees out every Christmas for decades. 🧶🧶 

Tilework (glue edition): We got sheets of little tiles, cut them to shape, and glued them on other things. In theory, pretty cool; in practice, mosaics for morons. 🧶

Pottery (middle school edition): Now we're talking. Using the snake coil method to build up a pot, painting, firing, glazing! Kilns were involved! My pot still came out looking like crap--literal crap, as I painted it brown for some reason, and it was lumpy--but it was tons of fun. I still have it somewhere. It's heavy enough to kill a guy. 🧶🧶🧶🧶🧶

Knitting (adult edition): This actually was team-building project designed by people who did not know anything about knitting, because when you have twenty people knitting a square, even if they knew how to knit, every square is still going to be a different size because of variations among knot sizes, hand sizes, and general ability. Most people did not know how to knit. The dreamed-of goal of having a group crazy quilt was put to bed within the hour. I, of course, could not even make a good snarl. No improvement from my macrame belt fiasco. 0

🎨🖌🖇🧶

That's all I can remember offhand. I am glad we didn't do origami. I think probably some kid would have lost a finger. I don't think our school turned out a lot of geniuses, is what I'm saying.

Did we forget?

We said we would never forget.

I know it's been 22 years, and barely a soul in college now was even born when it happened. All right, maybe for them it's ancient history, like the partition of Berlin or the fall of Saigon was to my generation. 

What about the rest of us?

The people in power were around. They remember. What are they talking about nowadays? 

Pronouns. Drag queens. "Fortified" elections. Foreign wars. Re-masking. Replacing reliable forms of energy with spotty ones and demanding everything be run on electricity. Teaching a generation of men that they are lower than dirt. Open arms for every criminal on earth. 

Meanwhile we have the fall of Kabul, runaway inflation, cities turning to garbage, plummeting trust in our politicized government agencies. We see them sending people to jail for being in the wrong party and letting others walk away laughing from criminal activity if they're in the right party. 

It's hard to be governed by the stupid and terrible to be governed by the wicked, but when you get both at the same time, it's brutal. How did the great meritocracy, the place where any citizen could in theory become president, have to endure same problem the British suffered generations ago -- discovering that the wealthiest families and the best schools could turn out a horde of morons who all think they're brilliant? It was not supposed to happen here.

The Flag of Honor at a local parish

When America voted for Obama over McCain, what hurt most was the fear that we had forgotten in just seven years, that we were rolling over and going back to sleep, the dragon tired of the fight so soon, to lie down and dream about the "peace dividend" era of the 1990s. 

I wish. The 1990s seems like a time of great statesmanship compared to today, and that was the Clinton era. 

Shame on every one of us that let the country become what it is now. Shame on all of us who could have prevented this. Shame on everyone who thinks any of this is okay.

Apples of crabbiness.

It's crabapple time again in the ol' orchard! Come on down and bring your crabbiest friends!

Okay, that's like the one crabapple tree I know of in town. It's on the yard of a house that's more than sixty years old, and since it looks like the only such tree on the property, I would guess it was planted on purpose as an ornamental tree. The crabapple, despite its cross name, is a pretty tree when flowering.

In my childhood, my grandmother's little house had some crabapples around the neighborhood, and we were told that they were not edible. That's not strictly true, but the crabapple is known to be very tart, more suitable for jellies and cider. 

We kids of course found the crabapple most suitable for throwing at each other, because boys are dumb about things like that. You could usually ping one off a kid without causing too much damage, and I speak as the pingee as well as the pinger. Still, I'm glad we had no proto-Randy Johnsons in our family. 

The Latin name for the plant and its various species is much more pleasant than CRABapple. Malus floribunda, for example, is one of the most desirable crabapples for its flowers. But how did an appealing tree with a somewhat useful fruit get such a grumpy name? 

It seems to have been the name for a wild tree going back to the middle ages -- the crab part, anyway, coming from Nordic languages, the apple added later for wild trees that bore these fruit. Although some say it's the "wild fruit" part that was the crab. It's a little obscure. It doesn't seem to be related to the crustacean, who got his name from the Germanic for claw, descended from the word for scratch. Or is it? Because according to Ancestry, the name Crabbe (as in Larry "Buster") came from the "German Dutch and Flemish: metonymic occupational name for a fisherman from Middle Low German krabbe Middle Dutch crabbe '(sea) crab'." So if the name Crabbe (or Crabb) comes from the crab, from the same languages at the same time, how can there be no connection between the crab tree and the crab crustacean? 

And I must say, I've known more crabs (the people) than Crabbes (the people) or crabs (the animal) or even crabs (the fishermen). Undoubtedly the crab one knows at the office gets his or her appellation from the armored sea animal, not known for its cuddly nature. 

That's what I mostly knew of as crabs when I was kid. Lucy Van Pelt from Peanuts was known for her crabby nature. Crabby was a common word then; less so now, a few decades on. I don't know why. It's still useful. I think we all sense the difference between someone who is crabby and someone who is just grumpy; the former is more likely to be looking for a fight, the latter wants only to be left alone. 

I'm not sure why the word in this sense has fallen into disfavor, unless it's because of its association with the famous crab lice. That might make someone crabby. So might getting pelted (or Van Pelted) with crabapples. It might make one as crabby as a crustacean. And speaking of crustaceans, the Asian crabtrees are among the prettiest floral varieties. But not if crushed. Being a crushed Asian would make them crabby. So it's all connected, somehow. Or is it?

Popaganda.

Just got back from observing the popular culture for another day! 

I occasionally work on books for younger readers. Sometimes they are pretty good. Sometimes they even achieve that rare quality of being a good read for an adult. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story.”

At least, that used to be the case. Nowadays every one of them has to have some kind of propaganda. 

Nothing new there. Propaganda is the art of the emotional appeal, and it does not always make for bad art. The Nazis and the Soviets were terrific at film and poster art. Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove makes no attempt at reasoned appeal against nuclear weapons; it just wants to make us laugh and sick with fear at the same time so we can't think unemotionally about the subject. Cartoonish portrayals of political figures intend to make us ill when we see the real humans. And don't even get me started on pop music. A lot of craft can be put into the appeal that goes below the threshold of reason. Often it is meant to spur the good of the recipient, but mostly it is meant to support the cause of the artist.

I'm not seeing much craft these days, alas. It's definitely gotten worse in the last five years. The kids turned out from left-wing universities, their brains stamped like Oreo cookies with indoctrination, don't all come with creamy talent filling. They just toss off the usual canards with very little art, either hoping to make us two-minute-hate one target or accept something as normal that would have seemed preposterous yesterday. Adjust your Newthink dictionaries accordingly. These kids move up (no matter how many of their projects fail) and hire people just like them. The next thing you know, you're playing Candy Crush on your phone because there's nothing but crap on the bookshelves and in theaters and on TV.

Propaganda doesn't show the world as it is; it's either a picture of the world as the author thinks you should want it to be, or a kaleidoscope in which the only patterns that form are those of hate. 

So yeah, everything is insane out there, and of course your only hope is to read my books! 

Are they lousy? That's up to you. I don't think so. But at least they play with the rules of humanity as we know humans to be. They are not written with an eye on the scoreboard, making sure they check the boxes and win clapter. Even my fantasy books start with three-dimensional human characters you could recognize.  

Give one a read! If you don't like it because you think it's written poorly, I will give you a personal apology. If you don't like it because it doesn't conform to your social ideals, well, we'll have to agree to disagree. But please know that, oxymoronic as it seems, I write honest fiction. 

The daylights outta me.

Everyone here in New York considers summer over because the kids went back to school. They are aware that summer has officially has 17 more days, but they're thinking of closing the pools and getting the leaf and snow blowers ready for What Lies Ahead. 

My main concern is the lack of daylight. When we hit that first day of fall, the daylight and night darkness will--supposedly--even out. Half and half, Even Steven, Igual Pasquale. Actually, according to Time and Date's invaluable Sun Graph feature, I see that even on the first day of autumn we will have more daylight than darkness, not even counting the twilight. But that won't last long, and soon it will be months of depressing darkness again. Seasonal affective disorder? Moi? Yeah, maybe. 

You can get a good idea of what daylight hours in southern New York look like thanks to the Time and Date sun graph:

It's like a snake that swallowed a big meal in January and is digesting it between May and August. The static bit is of course the daylight savings interruptions in spring and fall. 

Now, let's compare this to the sun graph for a Quito, Ecuador, the Middle of the World City, the city that boasts a monument showing where the Equator runs, and you can stand with one foot in either hemisphere. 

Just as you'd expect -- pretty much straight stripes, the days never getting longer or shorter. I had a friend who lived there for a while, who said he got bored with the perfect weather all the time. I say: Try me.

For the complete opposite, and for alarming comparison purposes, here is the yearly sun graph for the Amundsen-Scott station in Antarctica: 

Isn't that nuts? They say that down there, as at the North Pole, the sun goes down one day and doesn't show up again for six months. This graph shows what a weird thing that is. Look at those huge gray vertical bands--those are sunset and sunrise!

So I see my best options as Quito or running back and forth between the Poles twice a year. Or maybe I should just turn on more lights starting in October. That might be good. 

Can't work, must meme.

Too lazy to work on Labor Day, our annual day of rest from our labors. I'm sure lots of dads will be enjoying it. All they have to do is buy the beer, set up everything outside, clean the pool, grill all the food, and then relax for ten minutes before it's time to put everything away and go to sleep for work on Tuesday. 

All I'm doing is resorting to some more memes. 

Not mine, obviously, but a good reminder.

Sanitized.

Three years ago I was driving my wife's car in Pennsylvania. I stopped to pick up some goods at Walmart. The Chinese Death Flu was riding high at the time. I realized that she had no hand sanitizer in the car, so I grabbed a bottle to keep in the vehicle. I happened to notice it on Friday when I was using her car again. 

Didn't that take me back. Especially the scent, which is strong but pleasant enough for a hand sanitizer. Lavender? I suppose. 

I remembered that trip to the Walmart, how one of the store's exits had been closed off -- which funneled all customers through the same doors and ensured us being closer together at one point at least, but whatever. Also the masks. The arrows in the aisles. The dots on the floor by the register for social distancing. The plastic sheeting everywhere. The special shopping hours. The nitrile gloves, the weird shortages. All of it. All, apparently, for nothing. 

I don't know about you, but I'm not doing it again. 

The news is panicky about a new variant. Screw that. I'm not discounting it entirely -- three friends of mine over the age of 65 just had it. For one it was his third time with COVID, and he's vaxed out the bazooty. But guess what? All of them survived, even the one with severe physical degenerative issues in a long-term care facility. 

The whole mask thing was a bust. That's not just coming from the right-wing press. We know this, and they still want to start all over with it again. Closing the schools was a literal disaster for the kids. Watch what the teachers' unions do next. One thing for sure, it means we won't be allowed to ditch any of the rules for remote voting, the ones that made it so easy to, er, fortify the 2020 election.

I played along last time because we didn't know better, and the ones who did just lied. Also, I am not the kind of guy who believes in taking stands that inconvenience innocent bystanders. Why demand to shop barefaced and force some put-upon store manager to have to deal with me? He has enough on his plate. But I'm not going through that again, not unless the plague is the real deal, wiping out healthy people in the thousands like the Spanish Flu or the Black Death. So the Wuhan labs better cook up something really hot for our next election year. 

Speaking of which, that bottle of hand sanitizer expired in April 2022, long after my patience with the federal government had. And can you guess where it was manufactured?

Communist China: The cause of -- and treatment for? -- all the world's ills. 

More Napoleons of crime.

Puppy dog Izzy and I usually are out when it's not too bright, before any other dog-man walking combos in the morning, because we are early risers and maybe not too bright either. It's not so bad at this time of year, but in the winter, when the sun comes up around noon, it's a little depressing. 

Being out early, though, we're usually the first to see what the nocturnal drivers have left around. For a while we had a run on banana peels, when the local 24-hours gas station/convenience store was selling bananas at the register. But lately we're just back to the old favorites -- cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, and beer cans. Although these days we're more likely to see abominations like White Claw or hard seltzer represented than Coors Light. 

I can't complain too much. As I've noted in the past, one of my first cars had a hole rotted out in the passenger seat floor, so when I wanted to empty the ashtray at a light I would just lift up the mat and dump it through the hole. I have a long, sordid history of litterbugism, for which I am trying to pay bit by bit, picking up trash. 

It's the beer/other booze containers that make me laugh. You know the geniuses are thinking that if they're pulled over, but there's no empty container, there is absolutely no way the officer will suspect they've been drinking at the wheel. 

"No one will EVER KNOW!"

The drinkers of things like White Claw or Twisted Tea also believe that they don't smell of alcohol regardless of how hard they've been pounding the juice. Okay, kids, you just keep on believing. Might as well start to practice standing on the side of the road, reciting the alphabet backward starting with V.

Obviously, the solution to this is for us all to drive Peel Tridents. 

Not only is there no window to throw garbage through, but for about half of the year the weather in New York wouldn't let you even get that thing on the streets unless you carry it there. What are you going to do then? Sink it in the snow? And in the summer, that bubble bakes you like a potato.

Besides, there's no room in it for a fully grown man and a six-pack of anything except wax bottle candy. If you drive it drunk and hit a pedestrian, it's 50/50 which of you will die. Plus, with all the gas we'd save, John Kerry could fuel his private jet for a hundred years. 

Modern problems require modern solutions!