Fred's Book Club: Never Stop Improving.

It's Hump Day, which means another thrilling edition of the Humpback Writers, who don't have humped backs but do write, and maybe even on Wednesdays. Anyway, we do this on Wednesdays and that's just how conditions are. 

Today we have a science fiction novel from 1984 called The Practice Effect. It's sci-fi that fits the classic title of "speculative fiction"--it asks one unusual question, and the plot hangs on answering it. Other examples might include: What if humans built a galactic empire and it began to fall apart like empires past? (Asimov's Foundation books.) What if Earth is a Fallen planet but sentient creatures on other planets did not fall from God's grace? (Lewis's Space trilogy.) What if everyone was resurrected after death in an Edenic world, all at once? (Farmer's Riverworld books.) What if aliens are even stranger than we have ever imagined? (Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey.") 

In this case it's a simple scientific question: What if a backward version of Newton's laws made things stronger instead of worn out as they were used?

Author David Brin was a rising star in the 1980s, having success with novels Sundiver and Startide Rising. This was his third book, and rather different from the first two, which are space-oriented. In The Practice Effect, our protagonist, Dennis Nuel, is a physicist looking into alternate universes. He does not expect, however, to have to survive in one. He goes on a two-hour mission through a portal called the zievatron to the other side, to a place referred to as Fix's world after the nickname for an animal that came from it. Dennis has to bring Fix back and do a quick recon. But his colleague and rival Brady has other thoughts.

Brady smiled, speaking softly so only Dennis could hear him. "I never mentioned it to the others, since it seemed so absurd. But it's only fair to tell you."
    "Tell me about what?"
    "Oh, it could be nothing at all, Nuel. Or maybe something pretty unusual... like the possibility that this anomaly world has a different set of physical laws than hold sway on Earth!"
    By now the hatch had half closed. The timer was running.
    This was ridiculous. Dennis wasn't going to let Brady get to him. "Stuff it, Bernie," he said with a laugh. "I don't believe a word of your baloney."
    "Oh? Remember those purple mists you found last year where gravity repelled?"
    "Those were different entirely. No major difference in physical law could endanger me on Fix's world--not when the biology is so compatible. 
    "But if there's something minor you haven't told me about," Dennis continued, stepping forward, "you'd better spill it now or I swear I'll..."
    Strangely, Brady's antagonism seemed to fall away, replaced by genuine puzzlement.
    "I don't know what it is, Nuel. It had to do with the instruments we sent through. Their efficiencies seemed to change the longer they were there! It was almost as if one of the thermodynamic laws was subtly different."
    Too late, Dennis realized that Brady wasn't just egging him. He really had discovered something that honestly perplexed him. But by now the hatch was almost closed all the way.
    "Which law, Brady? Dammit, stop this process until you tell me! What law?"
    Through the crack that remained, Brady whispered, "Guess."
    With a sigh the seals fell into place and the hatch became vacuum tight.

Once on the other side, Dennis discovers that the return device has been raided, meaning he is stuck on this strange world. His only hope is to find the stolen materials before the lab back on Earth decides he is not returning and turns away from Fix's world, which would leave him stranded forever.  

Things get stranger when he is set on by the humanesque natives:

Dennis watched the survivors stumble away, howling in pain, their fellows bloody and still behind them. He looked down at the small weapon in his hand.
    Powered by stored sunlight, the needler could peel tiny slivers off of any odd-shaped lump of metal he shoved into its ammo chamber, and fire them at high velocity. Dennis had thought it little better than a toy when he started out from the zievatron but he had begun to gain confidence in it with all the practice on the trail. 
    Now he stared at it in amazement.
    What a killer, he thought.

Indeed, on this world things get better with use. The mystery is deepened by the fact that this only seems to happen to inanimate objects; living creatures don't physically improve as they age here. Why should this be?

Dennis will have to find some answers -- if he can stay alive long enough. The natives are not all friendly, and he's going to have his hands full with them (and with a gorgeous woman named Linnora). 

I liked this book a lot when I first read it. Some years later I read it again and was less impressed. But the well may have been poisoned for me by then. I had a girlfriend who despised science fiction, and I lent her the book as an example of the genre as an entertaining way of exploring speculative ideas. She despised it. Then she despised me and de-Fredded herself. I didn't blame Brin for tarnishing my star, but I cursed everything about the relationship. 

David Brin's own star was diminished for a while, also through no fault of his own. I remember reading stories he had published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, stories that became the post-apocalyptic book The Postman. I normally am unkeen on that kind of SF, but I did like his stories. They were human-sized; love for humanity is not normally seen in that subgenre. Then Kevin Costner made a terrible movie version of the book in 1997, which was a huge flopperoo. The only reason you don't hear more about it now is that Costner had had a bigger post-apocalyptic bomb two years earlier with Waterworld. 

Despite it all I do recommend The Practice Effect. In its way it is a classic, rollicking science fiction adventure of the kind you don't see much anymore. Some of Brin's other fiction is more philosophical, but The Practice Effect is a thinking man's adventure, and fun for all that. 

Failure to launch.

Sure, we big-time writers have a lot of manuscripts in our drawers that never took flight. Heck, we have a lot of things in our drawers! Paper clips, for one thing. (Don't judge me.) But I think it's safe to say every author has some books that seemed good in conception but never really got going on the page. 

Sometimes it's not just our own ideas that were faulty. Oftentimes someone will suggest a project that sounds solid, but turns out to be a bad fit. This can mean hours of work wasted on something that winds up as useful as a dead cockatoo in a diving bell. 

Here are some of the fiction and nonfiction projects I've started on that wound up in the drawers of doom. And if you've ever put on drawers of doom, you'll know how unpleasant that is. 

Here I Sit, Broken Hearted: A Treasury of Great Public Bathroom Poetry

Cooking the Easter Island Way 

Make Big Money with Macramé 

Candace Sets Her Cheese on Fire: A Novel

101 Fart Jokes for Every Occasion 

Bang Gunly and the Varmints from Varmintville (with Mike Flangepart)

Bobbing for Durian and Other Party Games

The Crafty Schmafty Guide to Home Shoemaking

War and Peace II: More War, A Little Peace

Great Fight Songs of the Peloponnesian War

A Pound of Butter: The Shopping Lists of J. R. R. Tolkien

Scent in the Wind (a romance novel about a plucky woman and a trash collector with srs abs)

Lose Ten Pounds a Day--Look Great for Your Friends and Pallbearers

Howitzer Cozies and Other Ordnance Knitting Patterns

It Hurts When I Do This: Report from the 39th World Health Organisation Conference

Nuclear Armaments for Nitwits

Zero Whiskey Tango 4-Niner (never knew what it was about but there were guns and targets and men silhouetted on the cover; supposed to be written under the pseudonym Clom Tancy)

The Cat Who Was a Goldfish: Trans-Pets in America 

A History of Indicia

I Have a Red Pencil Box: Important Foreign Phrases

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So you see, I could have had a lot more books out for sale if I had stuck to it with these ideas. Alas, they were not meant to be. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm running up on the deadline for my next novel, How Green Was My Focaccia.

The pipes are piping.

Good day, YouTube world, and welcome to Uncle Fred's Home Repair show. Today we take you deep into the bathroom of Uncle Fred's house to show you yesterday's project -- a project you can complete in your very own home with your very own hands. Or, if necessary, someone else's hands. Watch these clips.

So here I am examining the sink in my wife's bathroom. (You viewers may remember my #1 tip for domestic harmony when possible: separate bathrooms.) Seems that her sink has been running slow. Now, the cap on this kind of drain plug can be unscrewed. Many people don't know that, because it unscrews to the right -- righty loosey, in this case. Maybe it's Australian? Anyway, here it is off, and look at that hair! Somehow, some hair from her head has gone into the drain. We'll have to pull that out. I'm using a needle-nose pliers and a long, thin screwdriver to get the tangle. And it's just a little clump. Why is human hair so nice on the head and so awful everywhere else? Just a rhetorical question from Ol' Uncle Fred.

Now here I am in the hallway after that job, deep in thought. You can tell because my lips are moving. The drain in my shower has been awfully sluggish. Can it be a hair issue? Ah, you say, Uncle Fred has precious few hairs on his head. That's true. Maybe an armadillo died in there. Let's open 'er up and have a look.

For this job I'm using a long piece of metal in lieu of a screwdriver. Why? Because the piece of metal was in the junk drawer in the kitchen, so it saved me a trip to the cellar. We just put it in the screw on the drain cap and -- There we go! The screw is loose and -- huh? It's not pulling out? Let's pry up the drain cover and --

HOLY CRAP! It looks like someone's been scalped, and the scalp stuffed in the drain! 

Here we see Uncle Fred retching as he pulls his own gooey, sticky hair clumps out of the drain. The upside is that there's no clog in the pipe. The downside is, it's disgusting. This is why Uncle Fred admires professional plumbers so much. This is gross enough when it's just my own hair. If it was some stranger's hair it would be worse. 

With the old hair pried out, we just return the drain cover with a few twists of the metal stand-in for the screwdriver and the job is done. Easy, right? The only question that remains is: Why is there more Fred hair in the drain than on Fred's head? Maybe some mysteries are not meant to be solved. 

That's all for today. Join us next time when Uncle Fred deconstructs a leaky toilet and calls 9-1-1!

Miscellaneous.

Yesterday kind of fell apart on me for a variety of reasons, and I had no time to really work on this blog. But rather than disappoint my public (My Public! How they love me!), I am resorting to the old random thoughts column. I always thought those were cheating, but they do enable one to use ideas that don't make a large coherent thought. Coherent thoughts being in short supply everywhere these days.

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Some candy bars just aren't universal as are others. You can find Reese's things everywhere, but Clark bars, Chunkys, 5th Avenues, and others can be hard to find. Including this:

The Whatchamacallit bar was introduced by Hershey's in 1978, but I don't think I ever had one. The Hershey's site says that the name was picked "from a list of nearly 100 possible names brainstormed by Hershey and ad agency staff." It's a fun name, but it says nothing about what's inside. That was probably useful when they changed the formula in 1987 to include caramel. 

I found it delightful. It has an excellent texture for a Hershey's product, light and yet toothsome, and you can't go too far wrong with caramel and chocolate. I wish they made it in Fun Size packages so I could buy a bag to eat on Halloween give out to trick-or-treaters.

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Speaking of Halloween, I mentioned yesterday that we may be trying to rush into the holiday stream to get rid of 2020 fast. Well, the trees here are rushing too, turning color a little early. 

I think it's because we've had dry weather for a couple of weeks. It was a nice change from the long, wet summer, but the trees might all be nekkid by Columbus Day. 

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I may have mentioned that we love our Bosch dishwasher. Having lived our early married life with no dishwasher (husbands not included), we would have liked a clunky old Yugoslavian machine if it got the dishes clean. When we got a house it came with a Kenmore, which was okay, but pretty loud. When it had to be replaced, the Bosch came recommended and has performed admirably.

But I have, of course, one complaint. It's the little flap door you see below, on the machine's detergent compartment.

The little flap door is where you put the rinse aid (i.e., Jet Dry) to help dry the dishes clearly. If it is empty the dishwasher has to run about twenty minutes longer. The flap door is separate from the unit, attached to indents on the bottom with little nubs. Well, one of the nubs broke off somehow. The door stays on, but I think it leaks rinse aid. Of course you can't buy the little flap door on its own; you have to spend $65 for the whole dispensing unit, and if you're Mr. Handythumbs like me, good luck replacing it without breaking something. I just want a new door, which probably costs them pennies to manufacture. Grrrrr.

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A fellow I used to think had some sense posted that "If you aren't a fascist, Antifa isn't your enemy." I guess he hasn't seen all the videos of Antifa burning down local businesses and attacking people they don't know. Antifa is a mob, and mobs don't stop to examine your credentials before they pull you out of a car to beat you, harass you at a restaurant, or set fire to the block where your dry cleaning shop has been running for years. I have had to classify that fellow as an uniformed dodo now.

Anyway, I also saw this online, which seems to have a lot more truth to it.  

Heh.

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I was informed that the Mets have failed to make the playoffs. Good. Less temptation to watch.

Major League Baseball: "We need to start up baseball again this year! The American people need to know we're with them in this time of Wuhan Flu!"


Also Major League Baseball: "We need to make common cause with communists who hate most of the people in America!"

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Should I stop now? I think I should stop now. 

All right.

Halloween! Hurry!

Looks like Halloween is starting a bit early this year. I have been seeing spooooky decorations around since before the fall actually started. Normally you don't see much during September. I think there's a reason for this.

Of course I mean the Chinese Death Virus. Because of that, September lost its usual theme around here as Back to School. Many kids have not gone back to school, and those that have are experiencing changing start dates, tons of at-home e-learning days, schedules that don't align with those of kids in their own classes, cancellations of traditional activities, and all kinds of issues that have made September a sad version of its formerly robust School Daze self. So, let's call it a wash and go to October. 

Plus, a lot of kids being home more than usual, and their parents still being home more than usual, can lead to the former irritating the latter, so why not get the kids busy on Halloween / Autumn seasonal decorations? Something to do, and maybe if people aren't coming down with the Wuhan Blight in large numbers in a month's time, the children will be too busy with school things to make pumpkin drawings and scarecrows. Get them done now.

Another reason for the rush on Halloween is that, consciously or not, I think we're all trying to shoo 2020 out the door as fast as we can. There's no guarantee that things will change for the better next year, but with three months on the clock this one looks like a disaster; move the holidays along, drop the virtual ball, and let's get on with next year. 

Meanwhile: A friend of ours who LOVES Halloween is already excited, but he's the kind of guy who thinks spooky thoughts in the middle of May. He's jonesing for the 12-foot skeleton that Home Depot is selling. I saw it in person the last time I was in the Depot, and it is genuinely impressive. 

I thought we could get one, have it leer at the mean neighbor's bedroom window. And when Halloween was over, put a big Pilgrim hat on it. A Santa hat for Christmas. Bunny ears for Easter. A sombrero for Cinco de Mayo. The thing is three hundred bucks; get the most out of it! My wife liked the idea but suspected the police would get involved.

Anyway, if you want to be scary, you can be scary in Christmas, too. This snowman, hidden in a basement not my own, shocked me. It looks like Frosty the Cursed Spirit. But maybe it's the perfect decoration for Christmas 2020. 

No state income tax, you know.

Presenting the Collection.

Have you ever read one of those catalogs of fine objects put out by museums, auction houses, or the like? The ones that present the objects for admiration or potential purchase? Coffee table books are often compiled in the same way. Each item is lovingly displayed with a great deal of sober consideration for the facts. These aren't sale-a-thon car commercials; they may be a little playful, but always sincere. 

The text beneath the object will say something like "This stunning 21,402-carat emerald, likely from the Muzo mine of Colombia, is considered one of the largest and most desirable gems in the world. Believed to have been owned by Louis XV, the Calliope Emerald is a trilliant-cut masterwork of deep verdant green with exceptional clarity." And you're saying, "Holy slappin' catfish! Get a load of this gigantic rock! What the hell is it? Mama mia, I could kill a guy with that thing!"

I don't own anything that would cause such a reaction. The only things I collect are books and dust. Oh, and one other thing: Somehow I have come into possession of a number of poop bag holders, those plastic containers that strap onto the leash to make sure you can clean up after the pooch. 

But in the spirit of the art catalogs, allow me to present: The Collection. 

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Item #23A: The Stealth Combat Container

This somewhat menacing container of bags is believed to have been based on ancient ninja "shi no unchi," or "death poop" designs. Complemented with camouflage sacks, it is the perfect accompaniment for murder or eveningwear. 

Item #19F: The Strapless

Composed in brilliant royal azure, the Strapless features a unique hook that has refused to remain clasped since 2017. A daring, even risqué item, this container is known to disappear without warning -- sometimes when you most need it. Not for the faint of heart. 

Item #57B: The Royal Canin

Royal Canin, purveyor of fine canine comestibles, is the creator of this poop bag conveyor. Notice the alabaster finish, the clean and simple hook arrangement, the way the bone end screws on in an unorthodox fashion. A rare piece, as the owner has been heard to exclaim that it would be a cold day in hell before he would pay seventy-five simoleons for a thirty-pound sack of dog food. A gift to the collection from an Anonymous Veterinary donor. 

Item #IP9: The Matching Red and Blue

This set of crimson and sky-blue matching bag containers in classic bone shape, shown with complementary leashes, is desirable for any fashionable dog-walker with a taste for bright color. Can be mixed, or selected based on climate or mood (of owner or dog). A fun fiesta of cheerful canine color.  

Item #LMNOP: The St. Florian

This unique and truly eye-catching bag container is known as the St. Florian, owing to the Maltese cross known as the Florian cross on the side opposite the dispenser. St. Florian, the patron of firemen, has surely blessed this item, as it has a flashlight on the bottom for nighttime use; it does, however, use a type of button battery hardly ever found in the United States. The Velcro strap is an ingenious idea, although the cap of the fire hydrant design easily detaches, and may leave one holding the cap rather than holding the bag, as it were. A fascinating item for any serious collector.

Item #I80: The Machine

Perfect for admirers of steampunk or the industrial music of the eighties, the Machine poop bag carrier employs a strong plastic strap on the top to anchor it soundly, as one might expect from a rugged device. The bags (shown here in steel gray) are held in by the firm rubberized cap in the bottom. A reflector strip on the opposite side has fallen off as a result of cheap glue. 

Item #8675309: The Jenny

This elegant case for feces collection, known colloquially as the Jenny, is a haute couture bag, not unlike popular clutch purses, featuring sturdy sewn straps, a long and well-constructed zipper, and a side dispenser for ease of use. The washable fabric is waterproof and lined with top-flight plastic. Velcro straps on the bottom are used for leash connectors. Overall a sophisticated and envious contribution to the collection and to dog-walking in general. NB: Dog hair stuck on the Velcro prevents proper adhesion, so the bag is liable to go flying off anyway.

Fred's Book Club: Now You See It.

Welcome once again to the Humpback Writers series, our Wednesday "Hump Day" book feature, where we have a look at all kinds of books. Do the writers actually have humps? No, we believe they do not. In fact, sometimes the books don't even have writers, as is the case today.

Remember these?

Yes, it's the amazing, dazzling 3-D adventure, the Magic Eye! "Stare into these seemingly abstract fields of color (no funny glasses required), and an enchanting 3D image will materialize, all from an abstract, seemingly random field of color!" Or so says the book flap, one of the few bits of the book that really contain writing. 

The trick of the thing is the so-called Salinsky Dot, an image-rendering system that can hide a picture within a picture. There's not a lot of explanation beyond that in the book. To get more information, we can look at a 2019 interview with Magic Eye founder Tom Baccei from AIGA's Eye on Design. It explains some of how the phenomenon works, as developed from research on human's binocular vision: "In the 1960s, [neuroscientist Béla Julesz] pioneered the concept of the random dot stereogram, a visual trick that shows how humans can achieve the sensation of stereopsis, or 3-D vision, by looking at a pair of 2D images filled with randomized, black-and-white dots." Baccei's research into this phenomenon led to the founding of Magic Eye. 

I'm a little reluctant to give true examples from the books, since they're still in print and under copyright. Nor do I want to give away a lot of the answers; half the fun of doing this is discovering what the secret hidden image is. But to give you an idea: Some, like this page, just turn the image you see into a three-dimensional version of the same...

3-D money

While others contain a hidden image you have to look into to perceive.

There's a motorcycle in here somewhere

I'm not sure if you can get the 3-D image from my posted examples, but you can from the Magic Eye Web site (as noted below). 

The books were a craze in the '90s. The ones I have were published by Andrews McMeel in 1993 and 1994, and there were more. According to the Andrews McMeel site, "Magic Eye I, II, and III appeared on the New York Times best-seller list for a combined 73 weeks." More than 20 million copies were sold. And then it went away, or at least fell from the public's -- eye.

As fads go, this was better than most. Maybe the Hula-Hoop was healthier, and the Pet Rock was funnier, and the Fidget Spinner more . . . fidgety, but Magic Eye was more scientific. Plus, it was a lesson in relaxation. To make it work, according to the first book, you should "let the eyes relax, and stare vacantly off into space, as if looking through the image.... Relax and become comfortable with the idea of observing the image, without looking at it." No wonder I sucked at it when I first tried it. It required relaxation, and I spent my entire youth as a nervous wreck. Pretty much true now, too, actually. 

Magic Eye is still around. If you want to try your luck on getting the 3-D image to show, go to the Magic Eye Web site. The image works on the browser almost as well as on printed paper. You can find an instructional page here. 

In addition to its own books, Magic Eye has made books with themes like Harry Potter and Spider-Man. The crew now uses the Magic Eye technology for advertising and promotions as well. There was even a Magic Eye necktie, if you don't mind people staring at your chest with weird, dilated eyes.  

These two books in my collection actually belonged to my mom. She thought it was the most incredible thing. Well, maybe not, but it's not bad.

Devaluing books.

I have noticed that on PBS's Antiques Roadshow, two things that people often think will be valuable but aren't are old toys and old books. Even when a toy (in the original box!) is valued well, a revisit to an old episode with updated pricing usually shows a drop. For a book to be valuable it needs to be a first edition, of some historical interest, in perfect condition, with dust jacket (if applicable), and so on and so forth, and maybe it's a couple of hundred dollars.  

My concern isn't for the monetary value of books at the moment, though, but of their value in our culture.

Old Joke: How do you break a nerd's finger? Slam his book on his nose.

Before computers took over the world, books had a place of honor in the culture, a value that is lost now. I don't think those of us old enough to remember the pre-Internet days appreciate that. Before computer storage was common, books were the cheapest means of storing any kind of data. And before photography and phonography, putting things down on paper or the like was the only means of storing data. Printing was the only means of reproducing it for distribution.

For centuries books represented the depository of all human knowledge and wisdom. They commanded a respect that I think young people can only imagine. True, people who lived their lives in books, for research, writing, library science, and whatnot, could be teased as bookish or bookworms, but the respect engendered by books and what they meant usually rendered the teasing light.

All of a sudden, slowly when computer data storage began, then suddenly as the Internet blossomed into businesses and homes, books lost their place as the repository of all human knowledge. It happened so fast that we still haven't recovered from the cultural whiplash. 

In a historical trice, a whole category of books was wiped out. Print encyclopedias, trivia books, the full-length Guinness Book of World Records, sports data books, map books, all sorts of general knowledge books vanished or became shadows of their former selves. The Internet was faster, free, and with the smartphone, could fit in your pocket. Sites were never out of date because they could be updated to the current minute. Even if the information was wrong, it was good enough for most readers. And it's not like the old books were always 100% on the money, either. 

Books still have place in our culture anymore; it's just that their prestige has mostly gone. When everything is data, books are just more files to download. 

I think the main loss at this point is historical. Book lovers for the most part had a good sense of history and the continuity of human nature, because the minds of those in the past were still alive in their books. Today, dusty old books have as much respect from those who grew up the Internet as do dusty old Web sites. The Internet has led them to live in the eternal now. The idea of browsing in a used-book store for old forgotten treasures makes as much sense to them as buying old food. Most of those shops are long gone now, anyway.

No wonder these idiots rampage in the streets. Why would they have respect for our culture, our history? Nothing matters or even exists but this current second.

As always, I thank the fine folks at Gutenberg, such as our friend Mongo, for helping to keep the fires of civilization lit. How long we can hope to do that, who knows? The Internet is a wonderful genie, but once it's free from the bottle, you can't control what it does.

Bring an umbrella.

Goose air shows

Cereal killahs.

I know many people were impressed by Joe Biden's harrowing tale of a confrontation in 1962 with a gangsta named Corn Pop. Back then, Mr. Biden says, he was the only white lifeguard at a city pool in Wilmington, Delaware, and after sending the disruptive Mr. Pop out of the pool, the latter promised to meet Joe with his straight razor and give him an exceptionally close shave. But Mr. Biden used his famous charm to patch things up with the gang leader, and they became pals, like Max und Moritz.

Well, I want to go on record as saying that I, too, have met my share of badasses and punks, and emerged little worse for wear.

Yo yo yo, just sit yo heinie down while I lay it all out for y'all. Your man Special Fred has gone toe-to-toe with big-timers like:

Alfa Bitts -- Saw this muthah selling smart pills outside the elementary school for a dollar. Saw they was just deer poop. Kid buys one, spits it out, says "It's poop!" Alfa says, "See? You smarter already." Was gonna bust him but he cut me in on the action.

Rice Chexxx -- Part of the Czech mob, Chexxx was one bad hombre. We crossed paths when I stole a Zenith hi-fi console from loot he already stole. His gang tied me up and was gonna cut me up. But it turned out Chexxx came from a humble family of coal miners, just like me! After we bonded over that, he not only let me keep the console, he threw in an eight-track tape player.

Apple Jack -- Ol' fart, used to walk around uptown threatening people while drinking that stuff made from apples. I took him aside one day, got to talkin', turned out he was off his crazy meds because the insurance wouldn't cover it! I said I knew some people, dig? We got him covered and strapped down with IV drugs in a VA hospital. It was a big f'n deal, yo. Then he got an infection and died.

Cracklin' Oat Brando -- Violent suckah, told me if I got in his way he'd go through me "like Sherman through Georgia, yo." I said I wouldn't run; there was no reason to get all flushed, we were all the same down deep. He admired my intestinal fortitude.

Fruity Pebbles -- Head of the Stonewallers, Fruity wanted to run me outta town. I said hey, let's get a latte and talk. We wound up going to the Halloween parade together. I got a Snickers and two Almond Joys!

Weeta Bix -- Sista was gonna pound me because she heard what I done to her sis, Weet Tina. Said I was actin' creepy, sniffin' her hair and stuff. I said hell no! And if you don't believe me, you ain't female! I woke up in the ER six hours later.

Grape Nutz -- This suckah was about to blow me away with a shotgun. So I stuck my fingers in the muzzle and it blew up in his face. Kickin' it Looney style.

Cheery O -- British underworld leader, working for Michael Steele in MI5. Tried to get me to cough up info on Russian collusion for a skimpy 20 G's. Told him kiss my leotard, man, ain't no collusion at all. He says Pip pip, whate'er, chap, I'll just make sump'in up anyway. Loser. Wonder what happened to him.

Lost amid plenty.

My favorite supermarket is completely rejiggering itself. Walls painted, floors replaced, and most of all, departments moved around willy-nilly. Meanwhile, it's open for your shopping pleasure! 

Pleasure is not the word. This kind of thing brings out my inner Rain Man. 

Here's a simplified -- well, maybe stupified -- map of the store layout to which I have grown accustomed over more than a decade. 

When the weekly list is set, I rewrite it in the order of the aisles as I will encounter them. I might say I could shop it in my sleep. I couldn't quite shop it blindfolded, because a can of corn feels much like a can of peas. But if I did shop it blindfolded, I would probably bring home stuff we would use. I wouldn't be groping blindly for canned tomatoes in the cleaning goods aisle.

But that was before. I can't quite figure out what the final plan is supposed to be now. Something like this:

It doesn't make any sense. Worst of all, things were in the process of being moved while I was shopping, so some products wound up in multiple aisles while others were nowhere to be found. 

I appreciate that they want to update the look of the place and make it fresh and clean, but I wish they'd taken the hit and closed entirely until it was done. But there were probably good reasons beyond just money lost that they chose not to do that. 

I will have to avoid them for a couple more weeks until I'm sure it's all over. Maybe a month. They're certainly doing this now to get ready for the big Halloween / Thanksgiving / Christmas / New Year blob that brings in the big dough, and they'll surely be done with the reno by the middle of October.

At least that is my hope. I hate when I have to curl up on the floor in Frozen Foods out of sheer anxiety. The managers aren't keen on it either.

Oh, you know.

"Another bad day?"

Two-wheelin'.

Finally broke down and got myself that sweet two-wheeler I've been eyeing. You can call it a midlife crisis purchase; I don't care. 

born to be wild

When we first moved into this house, I bought a cheap trash can, from the now-long-gone local Kmart. It proved to be a bad idea. It's very windy around here, and I was commuting from suburbia to urbia, and by the time I came home from Manhattan the emptied can could be found almost anywhere on the block. And it's a long block. I never did find out what happened to the lid. Maybe it ran away from home. It was never the same after a car ran over it.

My wife had enough, and took her own personal self to Home Depot to get a big ol' Rubbermaid trash can, similar to the one above. Heavy, lid attached, with wheels, it was perhaps not the Cadillac of garbage cans, but certainly the high-end Buick. It may have blown over, but it never blew away.

Well, as our first blush of youth faded over the last eighteen years, so too did Rubbermaid's. It started with a crack in the base of the thing. No problem; actually an advantage, as a rain drain for when the garbage men left the lid open after pickup. Then it turned into a split that ran across the edge of the base. Then the base split on the other side. Finally the base split in the front, and was detached on three sides. I could still roll it up from the garage, but the trash bags inside could be seen peeking out the flap of a bottom, which slid along the asphalt as the wheels rolled behind.

At last, I gave up and bought the beauty above.

If, when I was a kid, someone told me I would spend ninety bucks on a trash can, I would have expected it to take the garbage out by itself. But our old Rubbermaid sanitation device taught me the value of a good can. If this one is more like the Caddy of cans, as I suspect, it may last me until I start to collect Social Security. And it's pretty groovy to be popping wheelies twice at week at that age.

My first question now is, should I paint the house number on it? That was a standard action when I lived in the city. If you had a really sensational garbage can, or just didn't want to be bothered to have to buy replacements, you painted the house number on it to reduce its appeal to thieves. Also useful if it did blow away, like my cheap can. I never bothered with the Rubbermaid can, but this new one may need the treatment. I wouldn't want someone hijacking my sweet set of wheels. 

And my second question is, how do you throw away a garbage can?

Fred's Book Club: Southpaw.

Welcome back to our Wednesday book feature, the Humpback Writers, which falls of course on Hump Day. While the writers themselves may actually have no humps, or even backs, they managed to produce something bound as a book, and as you know, we have a very low bar for qualification in this feature. 

Today we have a book that was made into a well-known film. It's from my baseball library, because I love books and I love -- or loved -- watching baseball, as we will note later. It may be the most famous baseball novel written so far.

Mark Harris, who died in 2007, wrote a number of novels in his day, four of them starring pitcher and narrator Henry "Author" Wiggen. Wiggen is a left-handed starter for the New York Mammoths, a successful club modeled on the Giants, called Author by his teammates because he wrote a book. The first three books in the series were written in the fifties -- The Southpaw (1953), Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), and A Ticket for Seamstitch (1957). The fourth, It Looked Like For Ever, came much later, in 1979. Bang is the only one I have read.  

The title comes from the famous song "Streets of Laredo": 

Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly
Sing the Death March as you carry me along
Take me to the valley, there lay the sod o'er me
I'm a young cowboy, I know I've done wrong

So you might imagine it has something to do with mourning. 

The book opens in a dramatic moment of the off-season, when Wiggen gets a collect call long distance from catcher Bruce Pearson.

"You have got to come and see me," he said. "I am in the hospital."
      "With what?" I said.
      "You have got to come and see me," he said.
      "I cannot afford it," I said. "I am up to my ass in tax arrears." This was the statement of a true rat, and you can imagine how it must of sounded to him. But I knew nothing of the circumstances at the time. If he had hung up on me then and there he would of had a right to do so. Yet who could he of called besides me? There was a silence, and I personally cannot stand silence on long distance, especially if I am not sure how deductible it will be, and I said, "Say something! Do not just stand there!"
      "You have got to come and see me," he said.
      "All he says is I have got to go and see him," I said.
      "What did he do?" she said.
      "He is in the hospital," I said.
      "Then you will have to go," she said.
      "I will come," I said.

Pearson is in Rochester, Minnesota, and he has Hodgkin's disease. The prognosis is very bad. Pearson begs Wiggen to keep his illness a secret so he can play in the upcoming season. 

There's a definite Ring Lardner touch to Harris's style with the book as told by Wiggen, which is not too obtrusive. Wiggen's not a learned character, but is no dummy, either, and can be funny. He is also not particularly lovable. He is often abrasive, combative, selfish, petulant, egotistical, and very, very tired of having Pearson under his wing, defending him to players and coaches. 

Pearson continues to catch for the Mammoths, although he is getting sicker. His real disability to me is that he is as dumb as a sack of hammers. He calls Wiggen Arthur instead of Author, and yet has somehow stayed on a good big-league team without ever knowing how to play the opposition.

He begun thinking about baseball a lot, which he never done before, always treating it before like it was football or golf, not a thing to think about but only play. He said to me, "Arthur, if you was on one club and me on another, what kind of a book would you keep on me?"

     "If I was to keep a book on you," said I, "I would say to myself, 'No need to keep a book on Pearson, for Pearson keeps no book on me.' Because if I was to strike you out on fast balls letter high you would not go back to the bench thinking, 'That son of a bitch Wiggen struck me out on fast balls letter high, so I will be on the lookout for the same thing next time.' No, you would go back to the bench thinking, 'I would like a frank,' or 'I see pretty legs in the stands,' and by the next time you face me again you have forgot all about the time before...."

Wiggen can't help but abuse Pearson, but he truly wants to make the dumbbell a better player and keep his secret from the other Mammoth players and management. 

I guess at the time catchers were still thought to be morons -- decades earlier Bill Dickey (or maybe Muddy Ruel) called the catcher's equipment "the tools of ignorance," and Yogi Berra's quotes in the papers (real or not) didn't help -- but catchers have to be the field generals of the game, especially in Berra's day, when managers didn't usually send pitch signals from the dugout. How could Pearson call a game when he has no idea what batters like to hit? 

Regardless, the relationship between the men during the team's pennant chase is what makes the book, and I couldn't help getting involved in it. I give Harris high marks for a sad story well told, and not a trace of maudlin sentiment anywhere.

I lost interest in Harris when I found out that It Looked Like For Ever featured Wiggen attacking a general during Vietnam for coming to a baseball game while boys were dying overseas. I was already sick of politics invading everything and I had no interest in dealing with lefty politics in my baseball. Maybe Harris was sincere about his own pacifism, maybe not, but we know from the amazing change that American leftists underwent from pacifism after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to war hawks after Operation Barbarossa that pacifism was often the sheep's clothing worn by America-hating wolves.

Bang the Drum Slowly was first performed as a TV drama in 1956 starring Paul Newman as Wiggen and Albert Salmi as Pearson. Michael Moriarty and Robert DeNiro, two once-respected actors, starred in the 1973 film. I've never seen it, but the bits I've seen made the team look a lot more like the Miracle Mets of '69 than the Giants of Thomson, Mays, and Durocher. I've heard it's good. I might watch it if it comes on TCM. Moriarty was fantastic in The Glass Menagerie and through his years on Law & Order. Not sure what happened to that DeNiro guy.

But I'm not watching any actual baseball this year. Why? Leftism has invaded it; Marxism in the sheep's clothing of concern about police violence while their lupine brethren wreck the cities. Leftism ruins everything. Leftism never lets you find a place where politics will leave you alone. Leftism says that if you want peace, if you want a place of comfort, you have to obey. To hell with that. And to hell with professional sports for playing ball with them.

Thank you, 2020, may I have another?

Beautiful evening Monday, out in the back with small disobedient beast Nipper, thinking that maybe things will start to get a little more norm--

WHAT THE HOLY HELL IS THIS NOW?

At first I thought it was a beetle, but closer examination showed wasp-like wings. But I've never seen an orange-striped wasp. So? To the Internet!

Deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deee!

So far I have found:

Stizoides renicinctus, but that lives on Antelope Island in Utah and doesn't look like this.

Abispa ephippium, but that lives in Australia and doesn't look like this.

Vespa mandarinia japonica, but that lives in Japan and is tremendous.

Vespa crabro, but that doesn't look like this.

Maybe it's not a wasp? Well, it's not a boxelder, spittlebug, Mydas fly, milkweed bug, fire bug, or any other damn bug I can determine. The only thing I can guess is, the way this year is going, it would probably sting the hell out of me and I would be allergic to it and die. 

So I throw it to you, o entomologists of the Internet -- can any of you identify this suspect from my blurry photo? 

Hugs not drugs.

 Yesterday, according to the fine folks at National Day Calendar, was National Hug Your Hound Day. 

On the second Sunday in September, National Hug Your Hound Day dedicates a furry hug to our canine companions. All day long, be sure to give your pooch your full attention. Even spend the day much the way your dog spends it.

The idea of Hug Your Hound Day is about observing your dog (from his point of view). That means, explore your dog’s world from his perspective. Investigate his environment and habits. You may discover some hazards as you roam around the house or yard. For example, you might find broken chew toys that have become choking risks. Perhaps your fur baby leads you to realize he has access to toxic chemicals.

Look for items or places that put your forever friend in danger. Place childproof locks on cabinets. Discard or repair any broken items. Our yards can be surprisingly risky, too. Check for toxic plants or holes in the fencing. 

Not only will your pup enjoy the companionship, but he will also be safer for all your exploring, too.

They go on to say that "Ami Moore, author and canine behaviorist, created National Hug Your Hound Day. Her desire is to make America more pup-friendly, as it is in Europe."

Well, you know I love the puppies, and I'm a fan of things that make their lives safer. However, there are some issues about this day that need to be addressed, because I am a noodge and can never be happy.

1) There is also a National Hug Your Dog Day, which the competing National Today people say takes place every April 10. Curiously, it is not on the National Day page. National Today gives no origin for this holiday, but I think they may have seized pride of place. After all, "dog" is a more inclusive noun than "hound," hound referring especially to "a dog of any of numerous hunting breeds including both scent hounds (such as the bloodhound and beagle) and sight hounds (such as the greyhound and Afghan hound)" according to Webster. National Today does not list Hug Your Hound Day. I think there's gonna be a rumble between National Day and National Today at some point.

2) Most dogs don't like hugs. They will put up with it because they love us, but according to at least one canine behaviorist, they show signs of not liking it. Animals just don't understand hugs. It's an aggressive and dangerous move, and to smaller prey pets like rabbits, it could mean they are what's for dinner. Dogs like their freedom of movement. Some may take to hugs better than others, but that may be older or smarter dogs that have caught on that it is us showing affection and it means no harm. It's hard to fight instincts.

3) If your dog is large, as mine are, and independent-minded, as mine are (especially larger dog Tralfaz), there may be repercussions to hugs if you catch them at the wrong time. 

And I dare to wonder how my back got to be such a mess.

Ultimately I did not spend yesterday hugging the dogs, but they were allowed to do as they pleased and run roughshod over the rules. So, pretty much like every day.

Bland opening.

Our town, like a lot of towns these days, has an older section that was built up around the old railroad station, and a newer section that has box stores and things. There's always a push on to keep "downtown" alive, but generally it does all right. Hell, it's only about five blocks and it has two pizzerias and four other eateries as well that are going concerns. Which it why it was a nice idea for the town and these restaurants to partition off the main drag (two blocks!) for a combined outdoor dining experience. You can sit at any table and order from any restaurant on the strip. It seems to be popular, but you can't tell from the picture I took, because when I got home I realized I only had a blur. So no picture. 

Anyway, all the stupid 2020 restrictions still apply--masks required except when you're actually placing food in your mouth, tables all socially distanced, hectoring about washing your hands, and the traditional no smoking even though you're outside. New York's reputation for being tough is overrated.

We won't be joining them. My wife hates dining al fresco. She doesn't like eating around bugs or bums or other "bu-" words, or in our quickly changeable summer weather. 

There are other possible reasons.

The town plans to have this dining experience on weekends for while, but maybe not much longer. It fell into the low 50's overnight. Pretty soon it will be in the low 50's all day. Maybe the New York government should have eased up on the dining restrictions in this state a little earlier.

"Evil Eyes" Cuomo finally posted rules to open up New York City restaurants for indoor dining starting on September 30. Eater gives us the run-down:

• Restaurants will be able to reopen at 25 percent capacity, which is half of the 50 percent capacity everywhere else in the state except for NYC.
• Masks must be worn at all times except when sitting at a table.
• Temperature checks will be required for anyone who enters the restaurant.
• Patrons will not be allowed to sit at the bar.
• One member of each dining party will have to leave their information with the restaurant for contact tracers to reach out in the instance that there’s a COVID-19 case.
• Restaurants will be required to have enhanced filtration systems installed, though Cuomo did not immediately clarify what this entailed.
• Tables will need to be six feet apart.
• All restaurants will have to close at midnight.
• Every restaurant will be required to post its full capacity outside and provide a phone number to report social distancing violations, either via voice or text.

This isn't even strict enough for Mayor Warren Wilhelm Jr., who wanted a later start date and a trigger to close everything if "the city’s positive test rate hits 2 percent on a seven-day rolling average," according to Politico, Because he hates the city's restaurant industry and wants it to die, I guess. Maybe he blames it for making him fat. I suspect it's the munchies. 

I'm glad we're not in the city anymore, but we still have to deal with Cuomo. If you don't live in this state, pity us. I heard him on the radio announcing the conditions, sounding as usual like a teacher who is pissed off at his stupid students who can't absorb his genius teaching into their stupid stupid minds.

I have called him Sonny Corleone, but that's an insult to the Godfather character, who was a pretty good liar and cheater until he got the lead special at the tollbooth. Sonny never planted sick people in Grandma's nursing home so that he could clear a bunch of old people off the books while leaving a hospital ship and two field hospitals empty. But I've beaten that drum all summer long. Andrew Cuomo is his father's vengeance on us from beyond the grave, because we deposed Mario I in 1994.

Enough of them. The people I saw dining outside on Friday night looked like they were having fun, but check again on those rainy October nights or November evenings where it drops to 30 and see how many show up.

I think there's a lot more collateral damage with this Chinese Death Virus safety dance we've been doing than we know. The mom of a friend of mine was having lunch outside at a diner. Tented areas set up in the parking lot. She tripped on a tent pole and busted her pelvis. Spent a week in the same hugely expensive hospital I visited last February. I hope she doesn't have Obama-mediated health insurance like mine. I've got two more payments to go.

The year 2020, like our governor, is stupid, thuggish, and persistent, and I hope they will both be shuffled off the stage sooner rather than later, without a lot more deaths. 

I know the feeling.

Out of the clear, blue sky.

I'm glad my mother didn't live to see September 11, 2001. She would have suffered unbearably from anxiety. It might have killed her in a slower and more cruel way than the heart failure that took her a couple of years earlier.

I have a friend who was an EMT down there. He talks about going to Iraq later with the army, looking for a pound of flesh, killing an enemy, getting hurt by a suicide bomber, but he doesn't talk about September 11.

Another friend was a fireman uptown. He likes sharing bawdy stories about his days with the department, on trips to Vegas and other shenanigans, and will talk about his past job, finding dead children and pets in apartments gutted by fire sparked by crack pipes or stupidity. But he's never talked about September 11.

All I did that day was walk down from midtown to as close to the Financial District as the police would let me go, which at that point was Houston Street, so I could finally find my wife and get her out of Manhattan. We had no idea how we would do it, but we did it.

I think that's all I have to say about it, except -- all those Americans who promised they would never, ever forget? The 343 firemen and FD EMTs, the 23 officers of the NYPD, the 37 PATH and New Jersey police officers, and the nine others who ran in while everyone else was running out, and paid the ultimate price? America said it would never, ever forget.

It took less than 20 years.

The roof! The roof! The roof state is dire!

In theory, guys are coming tomorrow to work on the roof. 

There's a lot of ifs about this theory. It makes Descartes's defense of rationalism vs. empiricism look like third-grade homework. 

A guy once told me that we have a twenty-year roof. Guess how old the house is?

So I didn't hire that guy, who would have insisted on ripping out the whole works. Besides, there are a bunch of houses around us that are a year or so older, and I've only seen one of them get any serious roof work, and that one was surrounded by massive dead trees. 

Not one other house has needed a new roof. I doubt their original owners said, "Well, I'll pony up for the thirty-year roof. You never know."

Theoretically, the roof and gutters should be in lovely shape forty-eight hours from posting time. But there are those ifs:

IF the weather holds out. It's going to rain today, all day, off and on but mostly on. Tomorrow it will clear, but who knows? By then the roof may be too soggy to hold a nail. 

IF they can get the materials. No one has called me, but the materials shortage has been so bad and so weird that I just don't know. Thanks to the Chinese Death Virus, there has been a severe disruption in the supply chain. In fact, we were supposed to have the shutters replaced as part of the same job, but no one knows when they will be available.

IF they aren't missing workers due to the CDV or other illnesses or injuries -- say, falling off a roof.

IF the guys don't get drunk early in remembrance of September 11. That sounds unlikely, but I live just north of the city, and a lot of these men used to be card-carrying builders down there. 

IF they aren't delayed by another job that ran late, the contractor's great bane and/or excuse. 

If, if, if. Meanwhile I will spend today trying to push through a job of my own due on Monday, because I don't know how long the guys will need to do the job tomorrow and I don't know if I will be able to work with hammers above and dogs freaking out below. 

Wish me luck, and safety for the crew!

Fred's Book Club: Compose Yourself.

Welcome to another post in the seemingly endless Wednesday book feature, called the Humpback Writers for Hump Day. I usually have a disclaimer that the authors don't actually have hunchbacks, but this time I really don't know. Why? Because today, in honor of Back to Skool season, we feature the most fabulous and wonderful writer of them all -- YOU!

Yes, friends, this week we feature the humble marble-covered composition notebook, this one by iScholar, which is a kind of high-tech name for an outfit that makes such a low-tech classic. I don't know if there's a kid in America, or perhaps the world, who hasn't had some variation on these at some time. I think I used them until middle school, when we had to switch to loose-leaf binders. 

If it seems like this style of notebook has been around forever, well, not really, but it has been around longer than anyone alive. Format.com has an article about a writer working on a history of the humble learning companion.  Designer Aron Fay says the origin of the marble composition book is shrouded in history, but it goes back to France and Germany in the mid-19th century, when marbling became inexpensive. 

Inexpensive is the word -- I got this one for fifty cents during the big school supply sale at the supermarket. I don't generally write out things of any length longhand -- those awe-inspiring novels you see to the right were all drafted on a computer from the get-go -- but I like to have blank paper for notes, memoranda, ideas, shopping lists, to-do lists, sketches, and whatnot. As a bonus, this book, like so many others, has on its inside covers "a class schedule, contact list, multiplication table and conversion tables." It has every table but a cafeteria table. How can you go wrong?

The main draw of a composition book, though, is its very blankness. For Child Fred it was not just for notes (class and passed), but also was a doodle magnet. 

A blank book may seem like a lot of nuttin', but it's an invitation to creation. 

And now I sound like an overly cheerful second-grade teacher. So I think I'll leave it there for this week. 

Vax and violence.

Many people are concerned with the various vaccines being readied for public use to prevent infection by Chinese Death Virus, a.k.a. Wuhan Flooey (#1 Super Bug). I've looked at the data for some of them and am impressed by the number of subjects being sought for testing. For example, in June the Moderna Inc. was looking for 30,000 volunteers. That's a pretty darn good sample size.

I know a lot of people are nervous about taking the vaccine. Some may be old enough to remember the 1976 Swine Flu debacle. Americans were urged to get the shot to stop an expected pandemic of swine flu that never really materialized (although that same year Legionnaires' disease did, as The Smithsonian points out). About 450 people who got that shot came down with Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which the body's immune system attacks the nerves. It is not a walk in park. The CDC estimates that 1 in 100,000 people who got the shot came down with GBS who otherwise would not have.

Others who don't recall that event may just be afraid of a hastily assembled vaccine by companies who stand to make billions. Or they're just anti-vaxxers in general. Whatever the reason, I can understand. This is a scary issue, and we're all pretty punchy after months of bad news and terror.

I am not alarmed about it, though. If a vaccine clears a large sample without serious adverse effects, I'd try it. It would be for the public good, and if it worked I'd feel like I had a superpower. Really specific invulnerability. 

If it made me break out in spots, that would not be too bad. I'd prefer if they were stripes, at least vertical stripes. Slimming. Not big, wide stripes; too mobster. Nice, thin pinstripes.

But if the government were to demand that I and everybody else get the vaccine, that would frighten me. A government on any scale that can force everyone to get a vaccine is a much greater threat than any illness.

That's not going to happen under Mr. Trump. I'm not sure about Mr. Biden. He seems to have the impression that the federal government can force people to wear masks, or at least he sounded that way in the past; he seems to have been corrected later. Going by his campaign videos, he now seems to think that the violence racking American cities is caused by Trump supporters and right-wingers rather than the communists and anarchists who actually are the bad actors. He and his people seem to believe some very strange and controversial things, but if you wait a few days they seem to believe the opposite. So I would imagine they could mandate a vaccine, and then deny that they did so if people start getting sick from it. Seems like an odd way to govern.

Labor Day or Chinese Death Virus?

American Gothic 2020; hat tip David Blaska

I'm not sure if it's Labor Day or not. Every day kind of looks like Labor Day here in 2020, the year of the Wuhan Rat. The lot where I used to leave my car to catch the bus into the city would have upward of forty cars every morning; now it seldom has as many as four. Some office-based companies have been reopening their work spaces, but more are reluctant. One client of mine announced that everyone (not just us freelancers) would be working from home until January at least. Another client permanently closed the branch office it opened in New England. Most of our local businesses seem to have survived the quarantine period, but by no means all. 

The schools have reopened, sort of. I have not seen a single normal school bus go by yet; maybe this week. New York schools traditionally open after Labor Day, but what's traditional about this year? I know kids were doing some orientation things, like driving by in a parade of cars to meet their teachers. And half the people around here expect the schools to close down again as soon as some kid gets a fever.

There's backyard barbecues on for today, I guess, but way fewer than normal, even though the weather has been perfect. Haven't seen much this weekend. One up the block. Another making a hell of a racket about half a mile away, by the sound of it. One kid's birthday party. A friend of mine in New Jersey didn't even bother to announce the cancellation of his annual summer shebang. We all just knew.

Essentially, every day since March has looked like Labor Day without the fun, with no one going anywhere. I don't know that tomorrow will look any different than today. I'm just tired of the whole damn thing. 

I hope your weekend was fun where you are, because here in the lower Hudson Valley we look like all the fun has been sucked right out of us.