Author: photog

Now You See it, Now You Don’t

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner ,

After any significant snowfall we now experience an obligatory freezing rain follow-up.  So, I wake up this morning to both driveways essentially skating rinks.  For fun I took a shovel as a rudder to keep my balance and stepped onto the steep top of the lower driveway and allowed gravity to propel me forward.  It was smooth as glass and by the time I got to the bottom, I was moving pretty fast.  So, I leaned over and headed for a snow bank.

I spent about two hours sanding the top driveway (the bottom one was hopeless) and then went out to buy another 360 pounds of sand for the future.  Of course, after lunch it started raining hard and the 45–50-degree temperature melted most of the ice on both driveways.  Well, what can you do?  Basically, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t so, “Yay New England!”

So that put the kibosh on my plan to get finished with the marketing chores I need to perform for the book launch.  But I’ll get going soon.

I read some more news items on-line.  This is a seriously mixed-up world both domestically and internationally.  But I remain optimistic that the Trump administration can make a substantial difference in the lives of Americans if he keeps his eyes on the factors that are limiting the ability of young people to marry and have children.  If he finds ways to address this; some kind of Marshall Plan for this country I think he can get the Zoomers solidly in his camp.

And I’m not saying that will be easy.  Our economy is seriously distorted by the off-shoring of manufacturing.  But Trump has a lot of levers he can push to force business to do his bidding.  And I think he should use every last one of them to restore the middle-class.  Everyone since Aristotle has known that only countries with a large thriving middle-class are worth living in.  I think he should build houses and pay women to stay home and have kids.  If enough incentives are offered, I think it would change the direction of our demographic collapse and at the same time make this a much more human and interesting place.

Well, we’ll have to see if Donald is up to the challenge of “making America great again.”  And without a doubt I’m rooting for him.  I hope he doesn’t get too wrapped up with his Venezuela project or spend too much time refereeing the Ukrainians and Russians.  I’m satisfied with leaving the Europeans to muddle through that disaster on their own.  There’s nothing but death and misery happening there.

So, as we approach the New Year, I’m still mostly optimistic about 2026.  I think the economy is starting to show signs of life and that could make a big difference for the mid-year elections.  If by some stroke of luck, we hold onto the House and Senate it’s possible Trump will talk the Senate into abolishing the filibuster and just pass a bunch of laws that will make this country normal again (like having a balanced budget!).

Well, that’s enough for now.

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

The week between Christmas and New Years is a sort of no-man’s land.  Everyone is recovering from the holiday and using it as a chance to catch their breath and look ahead to the next year.  And that goes for me too.  January is the launch of my book and I will be very busy trying to perform the marketing functions that I’ve been told are important for the success of the book launch.  So, on Monday I’ll be reading all of the information I’ve been sent and trying to fulfill all of these tasks correctly.

Now honestly, I don’t know how much relevance they’ll have for the success of the book but I’m giving it a shot so off I go.  I’m both excited and skeptical about the prospects of this launch being successful.  I don’t have a large digital footprint and I don’t see how enough people will hear about this book to make it a big splash.  And so, if it is a dud and only sells a few copies, I’ll chalk it up to experience and move on to other ways to amuse myself.  But if it’s a huge success I’ll claim that I knew from the beginning that I was a literary giant just waiting for the world to beat a path to my door and that from now on I’ll wear designer clothes and expensive sunglasses wherever I go.  Hmmm.

I’ve been paying some attention to what the pundits are saying about how the political situation will play out in 2026.  The Left is talking trash about anything and everything they can.  A friend asked me about the brouhaha that went on at the Turning Point USA (TPUSA) gathering recently where Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin demanded that Tucker Carlson and some other pundits apologize for talking to Nick Fuentes.  For those who don’t know him, Nick Fuentes is a young dissident who is decidedly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.  Carlson interviewed him much as he interviews many controversial figures.

My take on all this is I don’t think we need any more gatekeepers demanding people get cancelled because they have unpopular opinions.  Nick Fuentes and Ben Shapiro will never be able to sit down and discuss their differences.  So what?  Even if Fuentes is the devil himself, Tucker Carlson should be able to interview him without having to apologize and take some kind of loyalty pledge.  And I think Shapiro and his colleagues at the Daily Wire provide lots of insightful and entertaining content that I consume.  But acting as censors for other people on the Right is not one of their appointed offices.  After all, watching the Left act as woke judges and juries over everyone’s behavior and cancelling those they didn’t “approve of” was one of the things that got Donald Trump re-elected.  Freedom of speech is only important when it’s speech that someone else is trying to censor.  So regardless of whatever stupid things Nick Fuentes believes or even says, I’m not demanding anyone be cast out of the vast right-wing conspiracy just for interviewing him.

Tenacity of Purpose

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, Movie Reviews, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Movie Reviews ,

I had my oldest grandson over today.  I spent about three hours in the morning clearing snow from the driveways and the afternoon and evening watching a science fiction tv series that he liked.  It’s called “Murderbot” and it’s about a cyborg that figures out how to override the “governor” that forces him to obey and protect humans.  The series is based on books that my grandson read and liked.  It was somewhat a black comedy because the cyborg finds humans incredibly annoying and so he is sorely tempted to do them harm from time to time.  He is also disgusted by most human speech and emotional activities, finding affection and sexual behavior especially nauseating.

And so the plot puts him in contact with a group of humans that can only be described as woke hippies.  They’re constantly virtue signaling about their sexuality and politics and thereby annoying the “SecUnit” (security unit) almost constantly which triggers him to complain internally and that provides most of the monologue of the show.

And the SecUnit is further incensed when his actions to keep the hippies safe requires him to kill cyborgs and humans who are actively hunting.  The audience sees the absurdity of this squeamishness but the hippies are just too pacifistic to understand.  But by the end of the season, they learn the value of fighting back and SecUnit becomes a valued part of their group.  Well, I can’t say I didn’t despise the hippies but the cyborg was an amusing protagonist.

Afterwards we talked about fiction publishing and how short stories are currently shared on the internet (for free).  He mentioned a story he was reading that had a character that finds a sentient being that resembles a tin can but is possessed of tremendous cosmic powers.  I told him it reminded me of a short story called “The Sack” about an omniscient being found by humans on an asteroid that could answer almost any question and how that becomes the cause of an interplanetary battle.

Then we talked for a while about joining the work force because he graduates college in May.  I told him a story about some mistakes I made during a job interview and how maybe they worked to my advantage in the long run.  And we talked about crafting a resume.  I had a story about how maybe insanity may have played a hand in one of the first jobs I got.  A distant relative added some text to my resume using the phrase “tenacity of purpose.”  And this phrase was mentioned by my prospective boss’s boss as one of the things that attracted them to my application.  At a later date I could confirm that both the relative that came up with that phrase and the manager who liked it were both certifiably insane.  Maybe that was a good thing.  But it has to make you think about how bizarre circumstance plays a role in moving our lives in the directions they go.  I told my grandson to use that phrase “tenacity of purpose” with care since apparently it attracts the crazies.

An interesting day.