I find it hard to write anything here when I’m feeling down.* I’m buried at work, my body is not feeling quite right, and there’s the ever-present feeling that this country is free-falling into one or more disasters. The stress has wrecked my sleep schedule and seriously cut into my time with Nicole, who is doing everything within her considerable power to prop me up right now.
Fortunately, she’s very, very good at propping me up.
This is a long way of saying that I haven’t been good for much anything beyond “showing up at work” over the last couple of weeks, although there have been a few tidbits of interest:
We have learned that camping in triple-digit weather is a Very Bad Idea.
Our pet snails are getting along worryingly well.
One of my aliases** may have secured an interesting writing gig on the side.
“Burn Notice” was a damn fine show for three seasons.***
Warren Ellis completed the script for Fell #10 (#1-9 were insanely good).
The gap between starting a long-term plan and seeing measurable progress is the worst.
That last point concerns our long-term business plan. We’ve taken some steps forward, but the goal is still well over the horizon. It’s like starting an exercise program: The hardest part is the time after you’ve started it but before you start seeing measurable results. We’ll get there but it’s going to take a minute or two.
I guess the long and short of it is that I’ve allowed myself to fall in to a rut. I do that as sort of a self-preservation technique (of highly debatable effectiveness) when I’m overwhelmed at work. The best way I’ve found to get out of these ruts is to wallow in ’em as long as I need to, and then to force myself to put one foot forward and do the things I mean to do but haven’t. Things like posting to this blog even when I don’t have a great deal to say.
-RK
* In this sense, this site is the anti-LiveJournal.
** If “pseudonym” is correct, then shouldn’t “alianym” be acceptable as well?
*** Did you know that, before he starred in “Burn Notice,” Jeffrey Donovan was in Blair Witch 2? In fairness, I’m not sure anyone ever saw Blair Witch 2, but still..
“It has always seemed strange to me, ” said Doc. “Things we admire in men, kindness, and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
“Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?” said Richard Frost.
“Oh, it isn’t a matter of hunger. It’s something quite different. The sale of souls to gain the whole world is completely voluntary and almost unanimous-but not quite. “
I just finished reading a couple of Steinbeck’s shorter novels, Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. They’re both fun reads but they’re not without their problems. Some of Steinbeck’s attempts at dialect have aged poorly, and his depiction of the paisanos of Monterey, California are well-meaning but come across as patronizing (at best).
My favorite Steinbeck novels are his most focused. East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath are not just great stories; they’re works of enormous philosophical depth. Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, on the other hand, are just good yarns. They’re well-told slice-of-life stories, funny ones, but not a great deal else.
I’ve seen more than one contemporary reviewer who claimed that Steinbeck’s prose was so lacking in art that his books are effectively unreadable. I don’t get that at all. I’m hardly an expert, but I find his style more readable and enjoyable than, say, Hemingway’s forced minimalism or Faulkner’s showboating. I’m not saying that anyone who prefers those two is wrong, but I prefer Steinbeck. If that makes me pedestrian, well, it’s hardly the first time that label’s been applied to me.
When I tell someone that Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods is one of my favorite books, the most common response is that they, too, love The God of Small Things. I’ve heard this often enough that I’m reading The God of Small Things now. I’ll let you know what I think when I’m done, but so far? I’m hooked.
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 then finished it on the grill. She then used the grease and the coffee to make red-eye gravy. I have to admit, I don’t remember red eye gravy tasting this good, but this was the bomb. Red eye gravy, grilled rye toast, and camp coffee is a great way to start a day and end a trip.
We took our time with breakfast and with breaking camp and we were still home by noon. We learned a few good lessons we can put to good use for next time, but there was nothing that kept us from having a great time. I turns out we’re a pretty good team. What are the odds?
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.
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.”
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 makes me 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. The word is “melancholy.” Dude was a good traveler, though, and a ace traveling companion. Those two don’t always go hand in hand.
The got the day started with a camp fire, some bacon, and some of Nicole’s otherworldly blueberry pancakes. There’s frying, and then there’s _frying,_ and those pancakes were fried in hot, fresh bacon grease. Because they were on the thick side, she could get a good, crispy outside without drying out the center. It was a lot of work, but they were probably the best pancakes I’ve ever had.
I got some of the free coffee from the main building. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s no lack of free coffee in this town. Marfa Burrito doesn’t charge for theirs either. Unfortunately, I failed to affix to the lid to the cup and poured the majority of the cup directly on to my shirt. Those coffee lids are not to be trusted.
Marfa radio is keeping up their end of the bargain. We just heard the Stones’ “Dead Flowers” and now Townes Van Zandt is singing “Pancho and Lefty” and everything is absolutely right with the world. Nicole’s adding to her art and…oh my, is that Marty Robbins’ “Big Iron?” It is! Dear God, I’m going to have to leave this place and the injustice of that is going to weigh heavily on me.
Last night, while I was waiting for the coals to catch, I was close enough to a group of young professionals to catch snippets of their conversation. The guys in one huddle discussing their experiences and theories of professional life, while the segregated women talked travel. It reminded me of a conversation I had with one of the folks on the site who expressed something between frustrating, and disbelief that people would drive so far to come out here in the middle of nowhere and just bring their lives with them. Seems to defeat the purpose, but to each their own.
Finally finished the book I’ve been reading, Hunter Thompson’s Kingdom of Fear. Thompson’s funny as hell and his gift for exposing the hypocrisy and downright evil of authority is well documented, but it almost feels as though 2017 has rendered him a little quaint. The hyperbolic descriptions of presidents past don’t come close to matching what decidedly less gonzo journalists are reporting about the current administration. On a related note, I understand that there are big happenings regarding the President today. I trust folks will update me if I missed anything interesting.
We’re about to head out to Marathon (that “o” is pronounced like a schwa if the soothing voice on the radio is to be trusted) via Alpine. I’ve been to Marathon before, but it’s been forty years, so my memories are non-existent. I just want a decent western wallet as I feel myself going native.
Well, we didn’t make it to Marathon. We hit some rain in Alpine and decided to stop there and poke around. It’s a surprisingly nice looking little town. The downtown is in better shape than most of the old Texas small towns, but there was a vibe to it, something a little off. We saw some unique southwestern cactus pottery that we were on the fence for buying, but we passed. Fortunately, the potter is from Austin, so we shouldn’t have difficulty tracking him down if the mood strikes.
Nothing fancy for dinner tonight. We’re grilling burgers with green chiles and oh look! There’s some leftover bacon from this morning. Huzzah! We’ll have gone through three bags of charcoal when this is over which says something about our pent-up grill lust. This whole trip is giving us some “own our own place” lust. That’s an unfortunate kink to have if you’re living in Austin. Owning a home inside the loop-I-just-made-up-and-is-totally-not-a-thing* is to win the lottery or live within ones means and no betting man would touch either of those propositions.
View from the hammocks. Unrelated to the current discussion, but I like the image.
I know I keep harping on the radio here, but the DJ has a mean streak. He’s been playing protest songs all day, and I assume that the timing is not a coincidence. Well played, 93.5, well played.
Met some nice folks when prepping for dinner. A young couple driving from California to the other side of the country via the southwest were making s’mores, minus the graham crackers and chocolate. Their marshmallow roasting was excellent. The man looked so much like a young Luke Wilson it was a little disconcerting, but he was a nice guy and he’d made some good decisions I wouldn’t have had the gumption to make at his age. They’d recently been to Zion and the Grand Canyon and Santa Fe.
There was another gentleman, old Austin if I’m any judge, who had some good thoughts on where to get decent tacos off the beaten path. Nice folks out here. I haven’t exchanged words with anyone who rubbed me the wrong way. He cooked up some fajitas while I was grilling the burgers Nicole put together. They looked professionally made, but they tasted much better than that. You really can’t beat grilled burgers with green chiles and bacon. Even cheese would have been overkill on this burger.
As the sun went down, we heard a band playing next to the big building and wandered over to check them out. Adult Mom are a four-piece from New York with what sounded to me like a Safari-era Breeders influence. I can’t imagine they’d played many venues like this and I hope they enjoyed it, even with the sudden invasion of dogs.
Every band dreams of a stage hammock.
We’re heading back home tomorrow, probably pretty early. Right now, with the travel day still a full sunrise away, we’re planning on taking the scenic southern route through Marathon and Del Rio, but “best-laid plans” and all.
I sent out postcards earlier today. I have a thing about sending written correspondence when I’m traveling. Part of it is the semi-exotic postmarks on the cards and letters, but it also just seems easier to write to people when there are fewer distractions. That suggests some failing on my part in terms of priorities when I’m not vacationing, but I’d rather not think of it that way.
Friday
I don’t have much to say about the drive home, except for this: If you get the chance to take US 90 between Marathon and Del Rio, you’ll be richly rewarded.
The rest of the drive is garbage. Turning left in Del Rio to head to San Antonio, the desert suddenly becomes something that wouldn’t look out of place in central Oklahoma. Don’t bother.
All told, it was a fantastic vacation. It’s only rival in my experience is our honeymoon which, coincidentally, also featured driving all over the desert and staying in Marfa. This has caused a plan to form in our brains, a plan aimed at a very specific goal. Back at home, and at work, it’s nice, maybe even critical, to have something to look forward to.
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.
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.”
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.
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:
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.
