Category: Journal

Well this is nice. Nicole decided that we should go camping this weekend so that’s exactly what we did. We’re extremely fortunate in that there’s a state park with overnight camping less than ten miles from downtown.  We got married here, so it also has that going for it as well. We haven’t been camping together in the six and half years we’ve been a couple and, truth be told, I haven’t been camping in the sense that wouldn’t have a “gl” instead of a “c” in a couple of decades. No reason to let that stop us, though. What does one really need? A site, of course. A tent and some sleeping gear, some fire-safe cooking utensils, some camp chairs if you like, some clothing you don’t mind getting dirty, an ample supply of toilet paper, and you’re set, right? Well, it turns out that several bags for trash, some additional light sources, maybe a cooler, oh, and a knife you don’t plan on cooking with are all excellent things to bring. We’ll be sure to remember those next time. We did remember to bring some less-than-primitive niceties. Nicole has been streaming Marfa public radio, we have a box fan because it is Texas in the summer. We borrowed a marvelous shady amphitheater thingie because we’re it’s really nice to have. Oh, and I have this laptop, but there’s nothing resembling an internet connection. My phone keeps stubbornly trying, but it isn’t having much luck at anything beyond “draining the battery at an alarming rate.” It’s quiet out here, so quiet that the crickets seem loud. It’s dark enough that this dimmed screen seems blinding. There’s a raccoon that thinks he’ll sneak a meal when we aren’t being vigilant, but we have encountered raccoons before and we are prepared. You can’t scavenge for firewood here, but we brought some in (and by that I mean “purchased at the rangers’ stand) and we found a little fortune in the form of two large, pristine logs in our fire pit.  On that note, they have a nice setup here that I haven’t seen before: The fire pit adjoins the grill, so that all the fire is in one area and you can have a nice, sit-around-it-and-do-not-drink-beer-because-that-is-forbidden fire and you can shove some of the coals under the grill and cook on that. Having good recipes for outdoor cooking and I cannot recommend the ones shown on the Almazan Kitchen YouTube channel highly enough. They post their recipes on their web site, but they’re rudimentary in that quantities are often estimated or absent and there are no instructions beyond the wordless videos. That said, I’ve tried three of their dishes now, the filet, the carbonara, and now the hunter’s steak with onion gravy, and they’ve all been successful (except for my attempt to bake my potatoes directly on the goals which went…poorly). Not only are they the most watchable relaxation/cooking videos I’ve ever seen, but I find them both informational and inspirational. We’re relaxing after dinner now in the little clam shell tent, listening to music, stretching our legs, and enjoying each other’s company. One of the things I most appreciate about Nicole is that, when decides she wants to do it, she just does it. We’ve gone from not even talking about camping to being here in the span of a week. This trait of her is about to become really, really important…soon (cue mysterious musical flourish). It turns out that we made a critical math error. Tent sizes tend to overestimate their dimensions, and the inverse is true with regard to air mattresses. The net of this is that our tent, which was in theory one foot longer and one foot wider than our air mattress, was neither of these things. Of course, the sides of domed tents are far from vertical, so while the mattress came close to fitting at the base, things got a little ridiculous further up. The tent door would not close.   We attempted a partial deflation of the air mattress which is a terrible idea and I feel bad for even trying it. That left us with three option: Completely deflate the mattress and sleep close to the ground without padding, pack up and go home, or tough it out. We decided to tough it out and, while it wasn’t exactly what I would call “comfortable,” we got through the night. Sort of. The less said the better. Pictured: Some kind of hawk We woke up at dawn, as one tends to do when camping and especially when one’s tent isn’t quite up to the task. All of the tent campers started stirring around the same time. The folks in the big RVs might have been up and about, but there would be no way of knowing. I kind of doubt they were as that would defeat the purpose of having an RV. Getting up unusually early was one of the main selling points of this adventure as we wanted to do a little hiking before it got obscenely hot. Goodness knows I can use the exercise. The trail around the park is about three miles long and they pack a lot of variety in that relatively short distance. We saw more interesting critters than I’d ever seen at the park. In addition to the raccoons (grrr), turtles, and rabbits, we saw a proper crow (as opposed to those annoying grackles), a painted bunting, a couple of cardinals, a hawk of some sort, a ringneck snake, some baby crawfish, and several cool bugs. Oh, and we saw McKinney Falls. Not only were we staving when we got back to camp, we were also severely coffee-deprived.It was at this time that Nicole did something amazing: She made coffee and breakfast while I tried to convince my weary bones to do something other than “sit in chair” and failed completely. In anticipation of this trip, she bought a real live, honest-to-God coffee percolator! I know, right? The magic of watching popcorn start to pop is nothing compared to watching the dome of the percolator when the water starts to boil and the liquid starts to darken. A percolator!  A percolator! Squeeeeeee! While the coffee was percolating, she lightly fried some toast in the leftover bacon grease from the night before and…

Have you ever had a really bad fall, or crashed your car, or been knocked cold playing some sport? I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do when my wits return is take an inventory of my body, see what is and isn’t responding, checking for pain, check for numbness, and get a sense of the damage. I always do that, but it never really works. Sometimes I’ll go days or even weeks before discovering that, if I move my back just so, I’ll scream like I’ve been shot. Maybe there’ll be a bruise under my leg I didn’t notice. Or I’ll bump into a corner and discover, painfully, that I’ve fractured the end of my elbow. That’s my metaphor of choice for dealing with my father’s passing earlier this year.  I expected it to hurt, and it does, but it keeps catching me by surprise. My first reaction to each of the surprisingly numerous emails encouraging me to buy a Father’s Day gift is “fuck you.” I didn’t know how many of those there were, but damn, they’re everywhere, aren’t they? Stores loaded with Father’s Day cards are almost as bad.  Today? Well, you know, the day itself is…maybe because I’ve been bracing myself, I feel less “Oh my god, why is the world still turning, does it not realize that he’s gone?” than I’d expected. Or maybe it’s more because Father’s Day was never a big deal to do. My memories of him have nothing whatsoever to do with Father’s Day. I’m fortunate in that I had a father who liked to do things. He let me shift the gears on his car (a 64 1/2 Mustang) while he’d drink a Budweiser, which perfectly legal at the time. He’d take me to baseball games, and play catch with me, and go fishing, and take me to movies, and read with me, and help teach me math, and go on vacations, and he’d eat food he hated because he didn’t want for his kids to hate it without trying it first and…well, it’s a pretty long list. Those are memories. Not Father’s Day. Not really. Funny thing: At our fantasy baseball spring meeting (we have a serious league), there was a photo of my father at the front of the room. The picture was taken decades before anyone in the league other than his friend Norm and myself had known him. It was an outdoor photo of my dad in his late “outlaw country” phase; felt cowboy hat, leather, western cut jacket, western shirt, mustache of the push broom variety, and a big, toothy smile on his face. Our commissioner commented that he had “no idea who the hell that guy was.”  I knew him. He was awfully happy then. I can’t place the date, but he was probably recently remarried, early forties, and in one of the best times of his life. I would probably have been late teens, early twenties at the latest, and I’m pretty sure that we had some issues between us because, well, if you’ve ever met a teenage boy, you probably understand. But in hindsight? I really liked that version of him. So,  I’m not going to say today was great, but it’s an occasion to remember all the good things, to enjoy his memory. I miss you, dad. Thank you for pretty much everything. -RK

As I mentioned earlier, I just finished reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Kingdom of Fear. It’s nowhere near Thompson’s best work, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more relevant writer in what I suspect will be regarded as the American interregnum. The 2016 election exposed many flaws in our of democracy, the most glaring of which was that our entire system is designed to present two candidates as de facto equals. The system doesn’t have a mechanism to cope with a candidate who isn’t at least minimally qualified. The press falls over itself to create a scaffold for this candidate with legitimacy in order to maintain an air of journalist objectivity. Dr. Thompson wouldn’t have played that game. He would never let objectivity get in the way of telling the truth. That was his greatest virtue, and it’s one we desperately need now. He wouldn’t have allowed the mythical “respect for the office” from letting the president have it with both barrels and then reloading. The phrase “This is not normal” is true, and it’s worth remembering, but “He is an ignorant, foolish monster would destroy us all if not for his own incompetence,” has a nice ring to it as well. The book itself is a bit of a mess; it meanders from an unlikely story to an obvious fabrication to an incredibly on-point criticism, but it never fails to be entertaining. I doubt there will ever be another Hunter S. Thompson* no matter how badly we need one. The lesson, however, remains:  “So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here–not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”           * And no, Spider Jersualem doesn’t count.        * And no, Spider Jersualem doesn’t count.             

Note: We recently returned from a vacation in Marfa, Texas. The internet is like water in this part of the country, in that it’s scarce, moves slowly, and is probably full of hidden stuff that will try to kill you. Ergo, I wrote this while we stayed out there as sort of a diary of our stay. I had more wine and beer than I normally do, and you’ll probably be able to tell which parts were written under their influence as I’m leaving them in.  Wednesay Wednesday morning in Marfa. It’s still cool in the shade, but that’s not going to be the case for much. I’m watching a kid chase a rabbit across the campground and hoping he trips and falls into a cactus or an ant hill.   Didn’t happen; justice is denied.   People in brightly-colored robes are emerging from most of the trailers. Most of the showers here are outdoor, some are communal. Some of ‘em are taking drags off of what are undoubtedly hand-rolled conventional tobacco cigarettes. Some are frantically packing their gear and hauling it out to the parking lot. Normal campground rhythms, if you’ve ever been to a campground.   Marfa is in the middle of nowhere, but its a particularly elevated nowhere. The high plains of west Texas are over four thousand feet above sea level. The air is dry and clean and not quite as oxygen rich as I’m accustomed to. There’s a good breeze, and we’d best enjoy it while we can because it’ll be still by mid-afternoon.   We’re moving slowly the morning, having dined like royalty on filet and mushroom grilled and cheap but delicious tempranillo. I no longer have the prodigious tolerance for alcohol I possessed in my youth, and recovery takes a little longer than it used to (although it is also a more certain and complete recovery as my wizened brain knows how to mitigate hangovers in ways my younger self could only dream of).   Out here, technology is garbage. My phone is in roaming and never stops alerting me to that fact. It turns out that Sprint’s unlimited data plan does not cover unlimited roaming, so my phone is just a camera for me right now. My Chromebook has all the capabilities you’d expect of Chrome in offline mode, which is to say. It’s barely a typewriter.   It’s a nice desk, though. But that’s what we came out here for, isn’t it? Getting away from it all may be a cliche, but that doesn’t mean it’s without its virtues. There’s a difference between ignoring frantic calls from your office and literally not being able to receive them. I’m tempted to set my phone to forward to one of the many bill collectors on my ignore list, but my karma’s bad enough as it is   It’s mid-afternoon now. We had a late breakfast at Marfa Burrito, and we’re feeling a little heavy again. Marfa Burrito is a must, unspoiled by tourism, cash only, and no English spoken. I suspect the ladies working behind the counter understand English just fine, but in their home, you’re going to speak their language. It’s absolutely worth the effort. For five dollars, you get one of the purest expressions of “burrito” you’ll ever experience.   We walked around the square and sat in front of the courthouse on benches donated by the Marfa rotary club. The birds around here are marvelous mimics. A dove does a convincing impression of an owl and there’s a grackle singing in a decidedly non-grackle-like voice. Most of the folks walking out of the courthouse seem happy. I’d wager there’s a marriage license or two in the plain manila folders they’re carrying.   We’re back at our home for the week, the Battleship, a 1950s Spartan trailer with more space some apartments I’ve rented. It’s where we spent the first night of our honeymoon and the folks at El Cosmico left us some prosecco on ice because, while this is camping, it’s the most painstakingly curated camping experience I’m aware of. What they’ve done is remove all the parts of camping that make it “real” but also make it “suck.” We can enjoy the good bits while the staff here does all the heavy lifting. It’s a fine tradeoff.   It may feel like a trivial thing, but sleeping in the middle of a hot day with a wall-mounted air conditioner on full blast is glorious. The room never gets really cold, but everything the blasts of air touch is chilly and delightful. It’s a sensation you can never get from central air, and it may just be the nostalgia of it that appeals to me, but I haven’t felt this relaxed after a nap in ages.   The local public radio station, 93.5, sounds like it’s coming in on an AM from somewhere else in space and time, has renewed my love of public radio. I listen to public radio at home, especially the music-only station,   Maybe it’s because Father’s Day is coming up, but I can’t help but think of my dad when I’m out here. He brought us out to Big Bend, which is just a couple hours down the road, several times when I was a kid. In his thirties and forties he threw down a very “outlaw country” vibe. He wore Western cut suits, listened to Waylon and Willie and most especially Jerry Jeff, and developed a taste for tequila. You had to squint a little to get it, but the look worked for him. He’d have loved El Cosmico, or at least;,the version of him from the mid-seventies sure would have. Just another thing about me that I belatedly inherited from him, a thought which makesme smile.   Tonight, I made marinated lamb kebabs that were an unmitigated failure. The marinade gave them a gritty texture that we attempted to remove by paper towel and even rinsing. The result of this reclamation effort was to remove the flavor while leaving the texture. As Willie said to the youngster, “They can’t all be winners, kid.” On the plus side, grilling pear quarters was a noteworthy success. We will never again speak of the lamb.   Thursday   Slept remarkably well last night even though I had dreams about traveling with my father….

Note: I’m writing this on phone somewhere between junction and Fort Stockton on I 10. There will be errors. Also, there’s lot of Donald Trump. You are warned.   It may look as though I haven’t written anything in a while but that isn’t true. I’ve written three long posts, totalling close to six thousand words, about the increasingly likely end of the Trump administration. I haven’t posted and of them because events are moving so quickly toward that end that I can’t keep up, and damned if I can write about anything else until I get this out of my head. So here it is, in greatly shortened form and minus the Hunter Thompson-influenced but from the second draft: I think it’s almost certain that the Trump administration won’t last the full four years. Even without the mounting evidence of coordination between his campaign and Russian meddlers, there’s more than enough out there for Congress to remove him when they choose to do so.  My best guess is that the plan was to do so prior to the 2018 elections. Trump is so deeply unpopular that his removal by a Congress headed by his own party would be a huge boon for the Republicans running for re-election. The timeline may be pushed forward as the party will want him out of office before the Russia investigation bears any fruit and threatens to expand beyond the White House. Honestly, there isn’t much left of the Trump presidency in any meaningful sense. He failed to assert leadership in his first hundred days, leaving the Capitol with his tail between his legs and no legislative achievements. He’s abandoned leadership in trade to China in the Pacific rim and ceded leadership to Germany and France in Europe. We’ve reached the point where the White House had to release statements saying that the president’s tweets do not reflect his positions or policies. He is, by a wide margin, the weakest and most interesting president in my memory (and I remember the Ford adminstration.) Believe it or not, that’s the short version. It felt good to get that out and finally been done with it. Now I can enjoy my vacation in Marfa. I won’t even be able to watch Comey’s testimony on Thursday, and man, I can’t tell you good that feels.  -RK    

You may or may not have heard that Texas governor Greg Abbott went to the shooting range and made a joke about using his prowess with a gun to intimidate the press: Abbott proved a good shot and, proudly displaying the target showing his marksmanship, the governor joked, according to the Texas Tribune reporter and photographer who were within earshot, “I’m gonna carry this around in case I see any reporters.” Ha ha. The governor’s Mike Huckabee-esque sense of humor didn’t play well in the press (go figure), but some folks thought it was fake outrage since it was, you know, “just a joke.” Texas Monthly even went so far as to waste some virtual ink publishing a think piece headlined “Panicking Over Paper Cuts – The hysteria over Governor Greg Abbott’s joke at a gun range is ridiculous.”  I’m not going to pretend that Abbott’s joke was anything but a joke, but that doesn’t mean it’s the sort of joke the governor of Texas should be making. What if, instead of “reporters,” Abbott had joked about threatening “women,” or “Mexicans,” or “queers,” or “blacks?” Instead of Abbott making the joke, what if Obama had proudly displayed his shooting target and said “I’m gonna carry this around in case I see any Christians?”  It’s exactly the same joke. If you don’t see any problem with these variations, then so be it. If, however, you’re fine with what Abbott said but you’re upset or offended by the others, then you’re not ok with the joke; you’re just ok with the target. EDIT: Just in case you haven’t been paying attention, reporters have been under attack from politicians all over the country. Their crime? Doing their constitutionally-protected job.  It really says something about Abbott that I can write about another incredibly stupid thing he’s said and still not address his frankly awful positions on women’s health and sanctuary cities. No, I’ll leave those for another time. Instead, I’d like to take a moment to react to his inserting himself into the dispute between Austin and the big ride-sharing companies, Lyft and Uber. If you’re not familiar with the history of the dispute, I’ll give you the short version: Lyft and Uber prefer to operate in markets where they don’t have to play by the same rules as cab companies, so they attempt to get local laws changed in their favor so they have a built-in competitive advantage. In Austin, they wanted to use less-expensive methods of vetting their drivers instead of the fingerprint check required for cabs. So, they spent a crazy amount of money to get an initiative on the local ballot to carve out an exception for themselves. Despite having stacked the deck in their favor by having a confusingly-worded ballot question, having the election on a weekday, and being the only initiative on the ballot (not to mention running absurdly misleading ads), their exemption went down in flames. So they left. They weren’t forced to leave. They decided to punish the city for not giving them regulatory advantages over the competition. But they weren’t done with Austin, oh no. They decided to go over the city’s head and get a state law passed that would force Austin to give in to their demands. And, today, Governor Greg Abbott signed this law, and in doing so, stated:  Today I signed a law to overturn the City of Austin’s regulation that trampled freedom and free enterprise. He went on to say: “What today really is is a celebration of freedom and free enterprise,” Abbott said during a signing ceremony. “This is freedom for every Texan — especially those who live in the Austin area — to be able to choose the provider of their choice as it concerns transportation.” I’m not sure this qualifies as “Orwellian,” but it’s certainly a bald-faced lie. Greg Abbott is doing exactly what Republicans say they don’t want government to do: He’s picking a winner instead of letting the market sort it out. He just signed in to law a preferred status for ride share companies. Uber and Lyft wanted to change the rules to ensure they won, and Abbott was only too happy to help them. The “why” of it is up for debate. Uber in particular is a particularly odious company with a history of not paying the non-employees and of treating women badly, so it could be that he just sees in them a kindred spirit. Abbott is also reliably against anything Austin, so it could just be an act of spite. The sad thing is that these are the two least-nefarious explanations I can think of for his going against everything conservatives supposedly stand for.

I just finished reading Dying Light by Donald Griswold and it’s been a long time since I’ve been so conflicted about a book. Griswold’s a fine writer whose prose is polished and he gives his characters more life than many novelists, particularly the characters on the periphery of the story. I think he’s got a terrific novel in him, but Dying Light is not that novel. At its core, Dying Light is a fairly conventional redemption story. I’m not giving anything away by saying this as it’s perfectly obvious from the first few chapters that we’re looking at a successful, unhappy asshole who’s going to Learn An Important Lesson and come out a better man at the end. For my money, I think the change came too late in the story, and occurred too abruptly and completely. You know it’s coming, but when it comes, it occurs almost literally overnight and it’s such a complete change that the willing suspension of disbelief is severely tested. It’s a serious pacing problem, and it makes the final third of the book feel rushed and unconvincing. My larger issue may be one of taste, but it impaired my enjoyment of the book to the point where I nearly didn’t finish reading it. Griswold does such a good job of painting the point of view character as the kind of jerk who is proud of all the things that make him unbearable that I found myself wishing something awful would happen to him (the character, not Griswold). Benjamin is utterly devoid of empathy (until he suddenly isn’t) and living inside the mind of someone who doesn’t give a shit about anyone else is painful regardless of how well-written the story is.   Griswold does characters well. He manages to transform the Lisa character from a mere plot device into a well-rounded and interesting plot device. The world his characters move around in is real (it helps that I’m very familiar with many of the locations) and some of the side characters are a great deal of fun. There’s a lot of good stuff in Dying Light, but the payoff isn’t enough to make up for the fact that we spend a couple of hundred pages seeing the world through the eyes of Benjamin. I know guys like him, and man, I want to spend as little time with them and possible. -RK P.S. The image at the top of the screen doesn’t really relate to the post, but I loved the caption so much I had to use it somewhere.

When shopping with Nicole a while back, I saw a fondue pot and commented that it reminded me of my favorite childhood dinner. Things progressed quickly from there and we wound up treating my mum to a Mother’s Day dinner at the World’s Tiniest AirBnB. Or rather, we had the dinner on the patio because it turns out that the World’s Tiniest AirBnB plus a hot oil fondue equals a a very persistent fire alarm.  Anyway, it was a lovely night for it and I think mom enjoyed it almost as much as I did (it was my favorite childhood meal, after all). Mom is taking her health seriously and she was looking quite a bit more spry than when last I saw her. It was one of the nicest evening we’ve had with her in a long time, followed by what was one of the worst sleeping experiences I’ve ever had. The World’s Tiniest AirBnB was stocked with scented trash bags, and a couple of those in 300 square feet is a little overwhelming. The bed room had a 4 foot ceiling, a disastrous mattress, step, slippery stairs, and no night light. Oh, and there was no door on the bathroom. We did learn a few things in the process: 1) Mushrooms work great in a hot oil fondue. They’d probably be good in cheese fondue, too. Heck, I wouldn’t be shocked if they were good in chocolate.  2) Chromebooks tether to Android phones over USB easily, which probably shouldn’t have been a surprise. No drivers to load, no third-party programs, just hook ’em up and go. 3) Even good grocery stores have garbage tortilla ships. If you live within driving distance of an El Fenix, they’re your best option. If not, they’re still your best option. 4) There are people out there who steal basil plants off of people’s porches. I know, right? I didn’t think those people existed, but we returned home to find our basil plant, pot and all, had been taken from our porch while we were away. No other plant was touched. Weird, huh? All in all, I don’t think I’ve enjoyed visiting my mother so much in quite some time. She keeps saying she’s going to come down here to visit I have a stack of places I’d love to take her but, in my heart of hearts, I know she’ll want to go to the seafood restaurant shaped like a tugboat because of course she will.  -RK

A little disclosure here before I write about Keith Law’s new book, Smart Baseball: I spent several years in the shallow end of the pool of baseball statistical analysis. I worked for one team for a short time, did a little writing for the trade magazines, and a few other odd jobs in the business. I’m wasn’t an insider but I knew a lot of insiders and man, I wish this book had been available back in the day. It was a lot of fun, but man, reading this book, old hedge wizards like myself would be thoroughly out of our depth in today’s game. And honestly? That’s pretty cool Keith Law’s Smart Baseball is simply the best baseball book I’ve read this century. It’s clear, rational, funny, and extremely interesting. There are so many wrong turns Law could have taken here; he could have been pedantic or smug or delved so deeply into the technical aspects of baseball’s information revolution that it would have rendered the book impenetrable. Instead, it’s accessible and informative and a lot of fun to read. If you want to understand the relationship between baseball and baseball statistical analysis, this is the book. Smart Baseball is broken into three sections. The first concerns traditional baseball statistics and how they present a distorted image of value. It’s one thing to say that saves are a terrible stat, but Law presents a compelling case* backed up by just enough data to demonstrate his point. It’s bad enough that awards were (and are) given to the wrong players based on reliance on flawed numbers, but teams were making decisions based on bad data, and these decisions were costing teams money and wins. The middle part of the book is devoted to the current state of the art, the result of the revolution started by Bill James and Pete Palmer and their ilk. The early stat guys, “SABRmatricians,” were the ones who questioned the conventional wisdom of baseball and developed mathematical tools to better measure the value of players and strategies. The impact of their work cannot be understated. By the late nineties, more teams than not were making use of advanced stats. And now? Everyone’s doing it, and unlike the self-taught enthusiasts of the the turn of the century, today’s teams have full analytics departments and proprietary systems for parsing the numbers. The last section covers the baseball equivalent of the singularity: Major League Baseball’s StatCast. The amount of data produced by the in-stadium radar systems, ranging from the relatively simply stuff like “how hard each ball is hit” to near-magical measurements of the spin on a pitch to…who knows? There’s more information in there than anyone really knows what to do with yet. Rather than examining existing data with increasingly finer-toothed combs, StatCast opens up a whole new world of data and there’s an arms race trying to make sense of it. It’s the “making sense of it” that’s the key and makes the whole store so compelling. Anyone can generate statistics; the trick is understanding what they mean and making informed decisions based on that understanding. Law’s book is by far the best explanation of the story of how analysis has changed the game for the better that I’ve ever encountered.  -RK   * Not that this is a terribly difficult case to make when you’re talking about saves…

It’s been quite a week. I can’t remember the last time I pulled an all-nighter for work. I mean that literally; there’s something about staying up all night and going to work the next day that isn’t conducive to remembering things very clearly. I’m a little surprised I’m still chugging along, although “chugging” might be overstating the case at this point. Anyway… I just finished reading Laurie Penny’s Unspeakable Things.  Penny writes best when she’s got some anger behind her eyes and Unspeakable Things finds her in fine, trenchant form. There’s something in the book to make any reader uncomfortable; she covers a broad range of what can be loosely grouped as “abuses of power and how those abuses affect people and especially women, people of color, and the queer community. Don’t mistake it for a book of feminist man-bashing; Penny has no time anything so cheap. That’s not to say that anyone who has benefited from the privileges of their birth is let off the hook. Unspeakable Things doesn’t shy away from turning on the bright interrogation lights and holding up a mirror to people who allow injustice to stand just because it doesn’t hurt them in any personal sense.  Books about now are tough. It’s difficult to write about things that still in the process of becoming history. Knowing how things play out makes it a lot easier to construct a narrative, and once the winners and losers have been sorted out, the passion of the heat of the battle is lost. Writing about now tends to be hyperbolic because it’s writing about a fulcrum and the writer often has a strong interest in the balance swinging one way or the other. There’s some of that in Unspeakable Things, but Penny tempers her righteous anger with deeply personal stories and dry-approaching-gallows humor.  In the end, it’s tale from the front of battles that have not yet been decided. I can understand why some people wouldn’t like it, but it’s not a book that was written to be liked.  -RK P.S. Nicole just put “Under the Sea” on and now it’s thoroughly lodged in my noggin. I think I could use a little sleep, huh?