Category: Current Events

Reading the SCOTUS Tea Leaves

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Well, I believe this is the last week of the Supreme Court session.  And most of the big decisions have been handed down.  But the 600-pound gorilla in the court, birthright citizenship, is still hanging out there.  And so, I’ve been trying to decide whether leaving it for the last means it’s more likely to be overturned or confirmed.

It’s a real puzzle.  Rejecting Trump’s challenge to the birthright citizenship interpretation of the 14th amendment is the conventional reading and if the court was unwilling to buck convention, then would they leave it to the end to minimize the amount of abuse they would inevitably receive from Donald Trump?  Or does leaving it to the end signal that they are going to go out with a bang this year and save the biggest decision for last?

The pessimist in me says they’re going to deny Trump.  After all you have the three commies who will surely vote against Trump and you also have John Roberts who is a squish and almost certainly would be afraid of taking such a stance even if he were completely convinced of the logic.  So that’s 4/5 without any other waverers.  How sure am I that the other five will be unanimous for Trump’s argument?  Well, not very.

But I’ve decided to force myself to take an optimistic stance on this highly important ruling.  I’m throwing my weight behind a Trump victory.  Whenever the last day of the term is, I predict that the Supreme Court of the United States of America will vote by a 5/4 margin that children born in the United States, to non-citizens are not automatically citizens of this country.

And that decision along with the recent decision allowing Trump to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for roughly 350,000 Haitians (and about 6,000 Syrians) will allow him to accelerate his immigration policies.

TPS is a humanitarian program that allows nationals from countries facing ongoing crises (e.g., natural disasters, violence, or instability) to live and work legally in the U.S. without facing deportation while conditions in their home country remain unsafe.  And that means they never leave.

So, I’m using this earlier decision as a rationale for my mindless optimism.  The thought is, if the justices were wise enough to see the logic that allows one president to declare something an emergency and another to declare the emergency over, then they can see the logic that would make the 14th amendment a stopgap to enfranchise the children of freed slaves but not want to utilize it to allow illegal aliens to steal American citizenship for their children.

Alright, have I convinced myself?  Have I convinced you?

SURE!!!

Well, stay tuned.  The decision is in the next few days and it will tell us quite a bit about our current Supreme Court.  Who knows, maybe Hakeem Jeffries is right.  Maybe we need to increase the court to thirteen justices and flood it with wild-eyed conservatives who will do my bidding.  Or maybe we’re just entering the silly season and I need a vacation.

The Wavelet

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Getting old makes everything, if not worse, then definitely harder.  I had the two younger grandsons over and one of them wanted to have a baseball catch.  And that is one of my favorite grandson activities.  But what I didn’t reckon with was the fact that he was now entering high school and had become much stronger.  So that meant we were standing about twice as far apart as we used to and that if he threw the ball a little too far or too far left or right, I would have to break into a full run to catch the ball on the fly.  And at first this was exhilarating and made me feel like a kid again.  But it was 85 degrees out and after about twenty minutes I was sweating and puffing like an old man (which I am!).  But it was great.  I think that was the most fun we ever had together.  And I was so proud to see how athletic he’d become.  His fast ball was a rocket.  It stung my hand through the glove!

But right now, work stinks.  I’ve got all these extra hours and it’s ruining the summer.  I want to hand the job over to someone else but no one else is stupid enough to accept it.  So, it’s me.  End of job rant.

As anyone who’s been paying attention knows the communists are making major inroads against “moderate” Democrats in the urban centers.  This reflects the voting pattern of millennial and zoomer radicals and includes their embrace of the whole Gaza “genocide” claim.  And this is causing a noticeable collision between Jewish Democrat politicians and their constituencies.  We saw this with the New York City congressional races but it’s happening elsewhere and it doesn’t spare Jewish candidates just because they’re “diverse.”

Here’s Scott Weiner, a Jewish San Francisco LGBTQ hero, who is running for Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat, being hounded out of a trans-parade because he won’t call Gaza a genocide.

The unhinged behavior of the three gatekeepers chasing him off the parade ground is indicative of the primacy of the Gaza genocide plank of the communist movement.  Regardless of what other causes you can point to on your political grievance bingo card if the Zionist spot isn’t covered you lose and no election win for you!  Now this is going to cause some problems for these people when we get to the general election.  First off, they’re going to have trouble raising money for their campaigns.  A lot of the big donors are Jewish and they’re most probably not loving all of this.  And they’ll be expressing their unhappiness by closing their check books.  And in some cities like San Francisco, the older voting population has a much more nuanced position than Gaza = Israeli genocide.  So, if, for instance, Scott Weiner wins Pelosi’s seat I wonder just how friendly he’s going to be with the Mamdani mafia that will be installed next year.

Now, maybe I’m wrong about how this schism on the Left will affect the 2026 midterms but I’ll be surprised if we see a blue wave.  I think it’ll be a much less impressive wavelet than promised.

Technical Innovation 2030 – Part 1

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We’re in an odd moment technologically speaking.  The only thing anyone talks about is AI.  It’s the alpha and the omega.  It will bring on the singularity or it will usher in a golden age where we all live like the Eloi in H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine.”  On second thought maybe that would be the singularity since being lunch for troglodytes doesn’t sound like much of a golden age (unless you’re a troglodyte that is).

But I think it’s time to start looking beyond the glory of AI and begin to think of what comes next.  After all, in a manner of speaking AI is kind of like this century’s electronic calculator.  It made engineering work much more efficient but it didn’t eliminate the need for humans to look for answers to problems that needed to be solved.  It just made the process faster.  So once all the tech companies get through firing their engineers and computer scientists the industrial world is going to find that they’re still going to need to design “stuff” and solve new problems that are supposed to make the world a better place.

And contrary to present expectations AI isn’t going to plan and design the next bridge that spans a couple of miles across a bay or between mountains.  Sure, the engineers will use AI to find out the state of the art in civil engineering but eventually a human being will have to sign off on the drawings and take the legal responsibility that the bridge won’t collapse and kill a bunch of people.  And only an idiot would assume that the answer that AI gives him is worth risking prison time without making sure that he knows that the answers are correct.

So, let’s put AI into the category of modern tools and instead look at what problems are in our near future to solve.

Regardless of what everyone has said for the last thirty years, solar and wind energy are not the future energy sources we need.  But there will come a time when hydrocarbons will not be sufficient.  So, I would say that a replacement for oil and gas is the largest technical problem that humanity will face toward the end of this century.  But that means it’s already long overdue to start working out the details of what that will look like.  There may be several technologies that will exist.  I’ve questioned (and not just in a fictional setting) whether geothermal might become a significant source of global energy but if I were to make an educated guess, I’d say that nuclear fission will be the main energy source.

But just because fission has been a stable part of the energy grid in places like France for more than half a century doesn’t mean that the form currently employed is even close to what will power the world for the next century and more.  The science and technology of fission power is in its infancy.  The research in the United States that was going on in the 1950s and 1960s was strangled in its crib by the whole anti-nuclear movement of the time.  There will need to be a rebirth of nuclear power technology that will combine government, industry and academia.  And it will require energy policy to be handled by intelligent people in government.  And that is something we haven’t seen in half a century in this country.  Because it is a massive effort.  Eventually we will have to decide whether battery technology is a better storage medium for things like transportation than something like synthetic hydrocarbons or hydrogen.  And these questions should be answered based on efficiency and other important factors like safety.  But definitely not decided by idiots like Al Gore, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Let’s see what’s next after power in Part 2.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 25JUN2026 – More Commies

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Photog said

“Well, nothing new here. Republicans have been screwing up elections since I was a kid.”

Indeed there is a reason they have their sobriquet of the Stupid Party, I just wish they wouldn’t work so hard to earn it.

Is this the apocalypse? I don’t think so, yet. These victories involve ONLY the motivated party types. For example Ms. Chevalier (the most egregious of the DSA winners) won on a vote of 66k voters where the number of voters for the district is north of 750K. What She and the Maine Senate Democrat say is the Democrat party is hurting hard and is afraid to tell the DSA/Socialists to take a long walk off a short pier. The reason for this is their base is shifting. They ticked off the working folks, and many of the Hispanics with favoring other ethnicities (e.g. Sub Saharan Africans) and ideologies (Trans, Islamist, and the underemployed white bourgeoisie wannabes). The Wannabes are young enough and have been inundated with enough nonsense to think Socialism can work and their problem is Nasty billionaire/trillionaires stifling their potential success. The Islamists view the Democrats as useful idiots and a way to power. The other part of the new base loves them some graft and happily provide a cut back the Democrats and the Democrats are hurting for money after Kamala bet the house on a 20-1 shot and a really nice Hermes purse and unsurprisingly lost.

For the present, this lives in the Cities. The hipster wannabes love a city and its close environs (E.g. Cambridge and Somerville in Massachusetts), at present the grifters stay in that vicinity as grifting is harder in suburbs and exurbs where everyone is in everybody else’s business. Islamists, for the present, seem content to be near cities mostly for the conveniences like halal markets and mosques, though those seem to be spreading. As the Hipsters age out will they move to the burbs/exurbs and have kids? For a lot of them I think the answer is no. So we need to keep an eye on cities and subsidies of them. In particular when (not if) New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago Baltimore et alia come to be bailed out at the Federal level The President in charge has to respond like Gerry Ford and say, Drop Dead!!!

The people with a big problem are the Democratic Party. Their leadership Either makes Methuselah look like a spry youngster or can’t even render the dignity of a cat falling off a couch. Hakeem Jeffries is next on Mamdani’s hit list, and as more DSA types get in they’re going to start holding the reins in the Democrat party. If the Democrats had any brains they would not officially caucus with ANY DSA person, However if the DSA types put the Dems over the top for the house in the 2026 election, the Dems’ lust for power will (foolishly) overwhelm their fear of taking a shiv in the back. I think things could get ugly if we get there as DSA could control the Democrat party. The only good news is that DSA control would almost certainly result in a 2028 slate for president and representatives that would be shown the door in all but the blue cities, likely resulting in a McGovern or even Mondale class defeat.

Best plan for the present seems to effectively lie back and think of England. The Senate has stopped the clock on Iran and Trump/Vance seem unwilling to, as the video game says, finish them. Financial woes (especially high energy costs) will favor the Democrats as well as the usual advantage of the party in opposition in a mid term election. And 2028 may not be pretty, as there seems to be some Vance/Rubio disagreement around Iran, and Vance seems unwilling to let go of certain previous supporters (e.g. Tucker Carlson). The only saving grace is that at present there is no one on the Democrat side that has other than a very difficult path to 270 electoral votes (short heavy manipulation of cities in the purple zones). Maybe this will light a fire under the Senate for the Save act, but the Republicans are the stupid party…

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

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So yesterday three communists won the Democrat primaries for three seats in the US House of Representatives that represent districts in New York City.  And they weren’t even close.  Two of those seats had sitting Democratic law makers that were defeated and the other one saw the current Brooklyn Borough President defeated.  None of these communists were seasoned politicians.  One of them was a graduate student.  What they have in common is that Mayor Mamdani assured New York City voters that they were card carrying communists who would soak the rich and bring about the workers’ paradise on Earth that is Karl Marx’s vision of communism.  Workers of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but your 401K!

Now, the punditocracy is fighting over whether this is a sign of the apocalypse or not.  And who knows?  After all there are plenty of young people who have seen all prospects for normal life with careers, families, homes and prosperity disappear for them.  So why shouldn’t they throw their support behind charlatans like Bernie Sanders, AOC and Mamdani who claim they’ll take money from the rich and give it away for free to the poor?  Of course, as we know, that will end up crashing the economy right down to the ground as the Russians, the Chinese and the Cambodians discovered to their sorrow.  But why shouldn’t we get our turn in the barrel?

Well, there’s no use in worrying about something that can’t be helped.  Those three house seats will be occupied by commies in January.  How that will differ from the Democrats that occupied them before seems minimally important.  They won’t vote any way differently from their predecessors.  All that will change will be the use of Marxist rhetoric in their press releases and the disappointment of their constituents when nothing tangible will occur after they’ve taken up their residence in the Capitol.

But what is important is whether Trump and the Republicans manage to get gas prices down sufficiently before November to sooth the voters’ nerves before the midterms.  If he allows the Democrats to take back the House and the Senate this will hamstring his efforts to get his agenda enacted over the last two years of his term.  But of course, once you’re in a shooting war with the Iranians it’s probably a cinch that they’ll pull a stunt right before the election just to put the kibosh on Trump’s plans.

Well, nothing new here.  Republicans have been screwing up elections since I was a kid.  What I feel is more important is that the administration does everything it can to encourage companies to employ Americans in good paying jobs.  How he manages to do this is not my field of expertise.  He’s tried tariffs.  Maybe now he should try legislation that rewards companies with lower taxes if they employ more Americans.  Whether that is considered communism, national socialism or noblesse oblige is completely irrelevant as long as it makes this a more prosperous and happier place for my descendants to live in.

More Antifa News – Prison is in Their Future

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Down in Texas, the Antifa cell members that attacked an ICE facility last Fourth of July were sentenced for their parts in the attack.  The man who shot a police officer in the neck got one hundred years in prison.  The shortest sentence of the eight was thirty years for a conspirator who wasn’t present but hid evidence from the police.  The rest got fifty-year sentences.

Okay, no one, not even I can say that these defendants were treated too leniently.  That’s throwing the book at them.  And not only did they get what they deserved but this will be an extremely powerful deterrent to other Antifa gangs who try to act up in red states.  Of course, in places like Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota the judges and prosecutors are leftists and very unlikely to punish Antifa to the full extent they deserve.  But even in these deep blue areas these sentences are going to throw the fear of God into these psychopaths.

It was interesting to hear how the shooter in Texas tried to justify what he had done.  He claimed that he shot the officer because he thought the officer was about to shoot one of the protestors.  So, in his mind he was the one defending the law and the police were the criminals.  Well, apparently the jury and the judge didn’t quite see it that way.  Maybe they figured that police officers were entitled to carry their guns without being shot by terrorists who were attacking a federal law enforcement facility that was carrying out its lawful activity of deporting illegal aliens.

I wonder how long the shooter will actually serve?  I looked up the federal sentencing guidelines and other than some small good behavior reductions he has to serve the whole sentence.  So, unless the next Democrat president pardons him he’s going to stay behind bars for the rest of his life.  And since he’s 33 years old that could be a very long time.  And I’m good with that.  That officer that got shot in the neck and his family probably aren’t upset that this nut will be safely behind bars for the better part of the twenty first century.  As for the rest of the Antifa maniacs that got very lengthy sentences, well there needs to be a penalty for being stupid enough to help a guy who’s willing to shoot it out with the police.  And they are paying hefty penalties indeed.  You rarely hear of fifty-year sentences for even some murder convictions.  I would say the judges were making a point.

Now without a doubt the convicts will appeal their sentences and that is something I’ll be keeping an eye out for.  The fact that it’s Texas this is happening in leads me to believe that even shortening those sentences will still leave the convicted Antifa members with a very long time to think over what they did.  So, this is a story where justice triumphed and chaos and anarchy took it in the neck.  About time.

NO PETS FOR YOU!!!! NEXT!!!

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For many years Camera Girl has been legendary among her friends and family for keeping an actual menagerie of varied pets.  She has kept insects, arachnids, crustaceans, mollusks, worms, marine invertebrates, salt and fresh water fish, frogs and toads, salamanders, various lizards, snakes, turtles (mostly tortoises), parakeets, canaries, finches, gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits and decades of dogs (everything from Newfoundlands and basset hounds to miniature long haired dachshunds and German short haired pointers).  She even has adopted some local wild life having become a close friend to a crow pair (Moe and Flo), an acquaintance of a raven pair (Poe and Mrs. Poe) and a witness to the frightening visitations of a pair of hawks that habitually pick off the less cautious mourning doves at Camera Girl’s feeders.  So, it goes without saying that she’s no amateur at keeping critters.

This week it was decided that in deference to Princess Sack of Potatoes’ summer sleep over schedule, her request to add a hamster to the local zoo would be granted.  Now why the present rodent in resident (guinea pig Laylee) isn’t sufficient representation for that phylogenetic order (Rodentia) in the house I could not say.  But youth must be served so we headed off into the rain today to bring home a handleable (and cute) representative of Mesocricetus auratus also known as the Syrian hamster who will forthwith be known as “Chucky.”

And we were successful in finding Chucky and establishing her bona fides vis-à-vis “nipping” and were requesting the sales help to package Chucky for the trip home when a catch appeared.  We were asked to provide “proof of enclosure.”  Now this is a New England thing.  The states here are more concerned with the rights and privileges of hamsters than they are with the rights of people.  And it’s not even close.  So, what these two young people wanted was a photo on a phone showing the cage that Chucky would inhabit when we got her home.  Now Camera Girl and I both travel through life “sans phone.”  Other than a land line back at the Compound we are solely connected to the world around us through sounds produced by our mouths without any electronic amplification.  So, no phone, no pictures of a hamster cage.

This floored the young sales staff.  They said it was forbidden to send out a hamster without proof of enclosure!  I thought this was hilarious but Camera Girl was incensed.  Basically, they were accusing her of not knowing how to keep a hamster which from her point of view was a deadly insult.  She began describing in gory detail the dietary, housing and psychological regimen for hamsters that she had learned over the years.  She demanded to speak to the manager and know why this requirement had not been communicated over the phone when she had called earlier to find a hamster at the store.  The young sales staff were noticeably chastened and retreated to the manager’s office for more instruction.  And of course, the manager used discretion noting that the “proof of enclosure” was understood to be a way of ensuring that novice keepers didn’t get home with their pets and promptly lose them because of inadequate housing.  And of course, Chucky was promptly packaged and purchased and headed home with us.

But on the way home I quickly adapted the scenario into a variant of the Seinfeld episode “Soup Nazi.”  In my version it became “Pet Nazi” with a short mustached tyrant in a Pet Smart uniform shouting to customers who wanted to buy hamsters without cage photos, “No hamster for you!  Next!!!!

And this was a comical event but just multiply this aspect of life by a thousand and you get an idea of the suffocating nature of life in the nanny states of New England.

Father’s Day 2026

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So, I got every father’s Father’s Day dream come true.  I didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything at all today!  I slept an hour late and I ate a leisurely breakfast and I went outside to breath in the Summer Solstice air and stare at the sky and enjoy the experience of time standing still at the top of the solar roller coaster ride before it comes crashing down in the Winter Solstice and Christmas.  And it occurred to me that I would only be getting a handful more of these.  How many exactly, was a secret that the big guy upstairs plays relatively close to the vest but a dozen or two is an optimistic range.  From the point of view of probabilities even zero more summers isn’t that very unlikely.  So, I decided I should treat this occasion with the proper respect and commune with the spirit of the day.

So, I saw something I’d never seen before.  Two rabbits were standing outside of the living room window and almost nose to nose facing each other.  And suddenly one of them jumped vertically in the air and landed in the same exact spot.  And a few moments later it did the exact same thing.  I was very curious about this ritual.  Was it a male and female in some strange mating dance or was it two males trying to decide who was the bull goose rabbit of the area.  But I never found out because just then they must have seen me moving behind the window and took off (like rabbits).  I thought it was interesting how an animal with such a lopsided set of limbs could manage to launch itself so precisely square.  Its entire back remained parallel with the ground throughout its rise and fall.  Or at least that is how it appeared to me.  Well, you live and you learn.

Today the neighbors began delving into their Fourth of July stash of high explosives.  For the most part it seemed to be some kind of a series of about ten detonations in a row that seemed larger than fire crackers but smaller than M-80s.If I were going to guess I’d say it was some kind of a small mat of interconnected charges that branch off from a common fuse.  And this moderate sized munition doesn’t have a bad effect on the dogs so far.  They haven’t gotten worked up or frightened or even seemed to notice them so far.  But that is a temporary situation.  My neighborhood is sort of the Yucca Flats of fireworks testing.  One of the close neighbors (although because of vegetation cover I’ve never been able to determine exactly which one) must have access to fairly large thermonuclear devices.  The seismic events are somewhere around eight on the Richter Scale.  The fact that the recoil of the ground has shifted the orientation of my house by forty degrees over the course of the last few years is a testament to the quality of his firework merchant.  But Dunwich doesn’t have a noise ordinance or an atmospheric test ban.  So, I expect the show will be spirited this year.  Let the games begin!

To the Marriage of True Minds

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So, I was at one of those parties today and I met a bunch of nice folks and spent time with some old friends too.  And one of my friends was telling a story about a relative of his who had a job that involved a lot of international travel including Europe where he met his future wife.  And because of his desire to build up some equity in a home he bought a house in a town where he did not necessarily want to eventually settle down when he returned permanently to the US.

So, when he and his new wife took up residence in this home, he had his eyes open for his dream house which would include a huge garage that would accommodate his hobby of rebuilding classic old cars.  And one day he found it.  It had everything he wanted and was in the part of town he liked best.  So, he informed his wife of his find and that they should get ready to sell their house and move to the new location.  What he didn’t realize was that since moving back his wife had put down roots in the neighborhood and made friends and after moving to a new continent she would be devastated if she had to pull up roots again and start from scratch.

So, he stayed and had to forego the dream garage.  And my friend finished by saying that he had always been extremely shocked that his relative hadn’t insisted that they move in order to get the garage he really wanted.  So, I said to him, “But aren’t they still happily married?”  And he said “Yeah.”  “Well,” I said, “what’s harder to find, a good wife or a good garage?  And what are the chances of finding a second wife as good as the first?”  He chuckled and said, “I see your point.”

Now mostly this is just an amusing story.  The whole reason that his relative didn’t demand a move is that in any halfway decent marriage there is always a whole continuum of tradeoffs and negotiations that go on between a husband and wife.  We all have our “garage” that we want badly and also a laundry list of things that come ahead of it in the calculus of family life.  The kids’ braces come before that man cave you lust after.  A minivan has to be financed before the fishing boat you’ve always wanted.  Sometimes by the time it’s your turn to buy your heart’s desire, your heart no longer desires it.  Or you’re too old to put it to good use.

But managing to raise a family in today’s society and still being married to someone you like at the end is something of an accomplishment and I guess that was what I was trying to say.  It’s a trite saying, “Happy wife, happy life.”  But if you’ve had a happy marriage, it rings true.  Now before I get too sappy, I’ll append the classic answer that Art (Deputy Marshal in “Justified”) gave to the criminal when asked if he loved his wife, “Well, most of the time!”  But even that limitation admits to the fact that (mostly) happily married men recognize that even if a marriage is fraught with feminine annoyances the alternative is much sadder and lonelier.

Parties and Stories

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Tomorrow Camera Girl and I are double booked for parties.  We have a graduation party and a friend’s family party.  And they’re both at about the same time.  So, I suggested that we go to the graduation party for an hour or so and then head to the second one.  Camera Girl spent a couple of days telling me why that was a stupid idea.  And then she told me that we would split up and each go to only one party.

So, then I suggested we start off going to separate parties but then I would come back and pick her up and both of us would go to the friend’s party.  I think she wanted to hit me.  She shook her head and walked away.  I don’t think she understands optimization.

You see if I show up at a party by myself everyone is going to want to know where she is and why I showed up without her.  I’m not the draw.  She’s much more interesting because she’s telling stories about all the stupid things I do.  And when she tells them they’re funny.  Now I can’t tell stories about myself.  It would sound stupid.  I need a straight man to tell the story and then let me weave my defense.  It would be like Costello asking “who’s on first” without Abbott.  It’s just not the same without the cross-talking.

So today I checked my stats on Amazon.  So far, “The Sniper” has sold a total of 303 books (65 paperback copies and 238 e-books) and 3,657 pages on Kindle Unlimited.  On Kindle Unlimited my book is about 210 pages long so 3,657 pages is about 17 copies.  Not bad for about a month on Kindle Unlimited.  But I may have to cancel the yacht.

But the lack of fabulous wealth from my book sales has not dampened my enthusiasm for writing.  In fact, I’ve become much more excited about the sequel.  And what has me most intrigued is not so much the plot or even the new and old characters.  What I’m interested in is injecting more dialog.  Specifically, I want to get some of the characters to tell their stories.  And I know that this is backward.  The author is supposed to show the reader the story and not tell it. But storytelling within a story is an interesting technique that I’d like to try.  And I’d like to introduce dialog between characters about politics, economic policy, religion, traditional family, artificial intelligence, the war between the sexes, energy policy, the future of the human race, space exploration and a million other things.

Of course, I’ll have to be careful I don’t drown out the action under such a heavy soaking of blather but I think it’s time for my world to start exhibiting brains and not just marksmanship.  One thing I haven’t worked out yet is whether I get Connors and Grace to go out on a date.  I’ve been bouncing some stuff off of Camera Girl but I still don’t know whether any of it makes sense.  Oh well, the only way to find out is to start writing and see where it goes.