Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

Writing’s Easy.  Selling is Hard.

photog Book Reviews, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , , , , ,

As I mentioned a day or two ago, I’ve finally finished my story about the sniper.  Of course, it still needs a spell check and another read through for errors and any “infelicities” of style that I may find.  But for the most part I’ve brought it to a close.

But now comes the really hard part.  Self-publishing versus traditional publishing.  And for me it’s especially difficult because the story is unacceptably “right wing” from the point of view of anyone in the traditional publishing industry except for one or two houses like Baen Books who cater to stories from our side of the great political divide.

I have just begun doing my research on some kind of order of operations to maximize my chances to publish the book so that the largest number of people will hear about it.  And my level of knowledge of the whole publishing process is pretty darn close to absolute zero.  I’ve only reached out to one guy I know of who writes in the same general universe with me but I think I’ll have to feel my way around by reading and watching content that is meant to educate the public about trad publishing vs. self-publishing and then get a better handle on what writers on the right generally do.

So far all I’ve read makes the whole process seem incredibly slow and painful and chock full of interactions with gatekeepers and unsympathetic literary agents who will never return any of my correspondence but will dismiss me as a talentless hack.

But maybe I’m completely mistaken and instead I’ll be embraced by the publishing world as the next Cormac McCarthy and be showered with accolades and surrounded by business agents fighting one another to get me to sign book and movie deals.  Within months I’ll be quoted by millions of readers who will flood my website with messages of delight about my brilliant writing and demands that I “take their crowdfunding money” for my next writing effort.  The millions of dollars will pile up in Camera Girl’s sewing closet (she likes cash) and I will become a recluse and start wearing outlandish clothes to reflect my new status as a global phenomenon.  I can hear it now.  The crowds chanting at DragonCon, “photog, photog, photog!”

Okay good.  Now I’ve got that out of my system.  I’ll go back to finding out whether the “hybrid” publishers I’ve read about that cater to right and libertarian authors are legit or really the infamous “vanity press” scam artists that take all your money and ship a few boxes of print-on-demand paperbacks and tell you to, “Go market the damn things yourself!”

Well, I wanted to try writing a book.  Now I’ve done it and I better find out how to get other people to know it exists without spending a million dollars doing it.  And that’s another thing.  Now that AI can draw covers maybe I can save some money by using it.  Of course, I understand that I’ll anger all of the artistic community that does book covers for a living.  Hmmm.  Maybe I should find out what it costs.  There are already so many people mad at me in the world, adding to that number sounds like a bad idea.  Well, we’ll see.

The Perfect Proportion

photog photog's Corner , ,

I was going through my feed on X and I saw someone liked a comment I made.  As is my habit I went back to the posts from this individual to see if it was of interest.  And as I clicked, I saw a picture of what was supposed to be a pizza.  It was a thin crust but it had about two inches of what looked like chopped meat cooked onto it.  I was horrified.  But all things considered, lots of things called pizza don’t seem to resemble what was called pizza back when I was a kid in Brooklyn.  There was a pizzeria on Avenue X that served the typical Neapolitan pie.  It was a large round thin crust with marinara sauce, mozzarella and various cheeses to taste.  For meat lovers you could get pepperoni or sausage garnishing the surface.  But that was about it.  And that was plenty good.  Watching the cooks shaping the dough and twirling it in the air was an entertainment all its own.  Coming hot out of the oven and served on a piece of wax paper with a coke to wash it down was paradise.  If you were rich, you might even buy two slices.  But a slice was a nickel so one was all I could afford and no coke for me.

Later on in life I found out about rectangular pizza with thick crust.  Camera Girl’s mother was Sicilian and that’s how they made pizza.  And that was very good too.  And they had some different ideas about toppings.  They would introduce the seafood motif; anchovies, and even bluefish.  All very heretical to me.  But still delicious.

But her I am sixty years later and what do I see?  Chaos.  Pizza without tomato sauce, without mozzarella, without cheese, vegan pizza, pineapple pizza, pizza without dough!  It’s too much.  And then there are the chain pizza joints.  They stuff cheese in the crust.  What the hell is that?

Well, I guess it’s just the way of the world.  We live in a global environment.  Cuisines from everywhere exist in this world civilization and are adapted to the business environment and every other factor.  It only makes sense that a successful product will morph to expand its popularity.  After all I don’t complain that the Chinese or Thai recipes I like probably aren’t authentic cuisine but instead a version that works for a restaurant competing in an American marketplace.  Why should pizza be any different?

But then I saw that monstrosity with the mound of chopped meat on top.  That must be the sign of the end times and the four horsemen of the apocalypse must be somewhere nearby.

But one good thing came from seeing that.  It made me think back to that pizzeria on Avenue X and the perfect proportion of crust, tomato sauce, olive oil and cheeses.  On a summer afternoon after playing ball and hanging around with the boys from the neighborhood we’d go to that pizzeria and watching the pie being made and waiting for it to bake was the best feeling in the world.  Because you almost didn’t want to start eating it because it would be finished before you knew it.  The anticipation was the thing.  Good times.

The Chiropteriad

photog Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner ,

 

So last night around midnight I was trying to fall asleep in bed when I heard some noise coming from a window.  In the summer this window has one of those screens with the bracing handles that snugs into the frame of the window.  I had noticed that it wasn’t completely sealed into the window frame but figured it would keep 95% of the bugs out so I didn’t bother to fiddle with it.  Anyway, it was dark so I couldn’t see anything but there was a scurrying and scratching noise.  So, I turned on the light and almost immediately a small black object fell to the floor under the window and immediately opened its wings and flitted around the room.  It was a bat.  I woke Camera Girl and like the good woman she is she ran screaming from the room.  Being a man of action, I started swatting at it with a sweatshirt I had on hand.  That proved to be less than useless.  So, I procured a kitchen broom and ran around the room swatting at it.  No go.  I opened up the door to the balcony and tried to force him out that way.  When a second bat entered the room by the door, I reconsidered this tactic and closed said door.  Now I was ineffectually swinging a broom at two bats that were swooping around the room.

Having a low tolerance for useless effort I closed the doors to our closets and bathroom and beat a hasty retreat to the hallway outside where Camera Girl confronted me on my failure as a protector of the marital bedroom.  I declared a temporary retreat but swore a terrible oath on the River Styx that in the morning I would reconquer our sacred homeland and evict the flying vermin with all of my strength and cunning.  So, we were marooned in one of the spare bedrooms and greatly was I wroth.  After a surprisingly comfortable sleep I woke up raring to settle the score with these winged interlopers.  I brought a six-foot ladder, a child’s butterfly net and a stiff piece of cardboard to trap the beasts inside the net.

After a somewhat thorough inspection of the ceiling, I couldn’t locate my enemies.  Then I looked behind the blinds of one of the other windows that was opened and found one of the critters wedged in the upper corner between the screen and the frame.  I lowered the open window as far as I could while still allowing my hands to force the screen outward and then pushed.  Now the screen was hanging below the window on the outside of the house.  I assumed the bat would fly off in fear.  I was mistaken.  The stupid creature was clinging to the screen.  I got my head and shoulders out of the window and with the leverage I now had I banged the screen against the wall and finally the bat let go and ended up on a flat roof below the window.  Apparently stunned, he later flew off.

I went back and made a closer inspection of some curtains and found the other varmint tucked between the wall and a curtain rod.  I angled the butterfly net and the cardboard as close to the critter as possible and then scraped him off the wall with the cardboard and trapped him with the net.  With Camera Girl nervously entering the room to open the balcony door (and quickly shutting it behind me!) I was able to shake the flying invader out of the net and whoosh; he winged into the woods.

Dunwich has many hazards.  Vampires, lycanthropes of various descriptions, ghouls and even Democrats haunt the swamps and graveyards of this cursed land.  But I feel that my actions today deserve some very special tribute.  Some kind of testimonial with perhaps a cash award would be reasonable, I think.  In a more creative era, the local poet laureate would dedicate an epic poem, possibly in dactylic hexameter, to immortalize my titanic struggle to make Camera Girl safe in her own boudoir.  Maybe I can get Grok or ChatGPT to put something together.

Let’s see.

Sing Muse of that hero skilled in the netting and ejecting of chiropteran monsters in all their horror

Who climbed to great heights and swung the broom to protect the goddess Camera Girl from any harm

Bring him to my mind’s eye and let me praise him with great praise.  What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man!

 

Or something like that.

What Keeps Us Human

photog Current Events, photog's Corner, Science , , ,

I’ve been reading the latest analyses of paleolithic hominin DNA and from what I’ve gathered it seems to be the case that the present human population is a non-homogeneous collection of various hybrid populations between Homo sapiens (“modern” humans) and Homo neanderthalensis, Homo denisovensis and very likely Homo erectus.

Of course, human evolution is such a hot-button topic today that getting paleontologists to use words like hybrids to describe human lineages makes them squeamish and nervous.  Everyone is afraid of the accusation of racism to erupt if someone hints that human beings of different ancestries aren’t all exactly the same.  But they really should all calm down.  Hominin species have been walking the Earth for something like seven million years and during that time various groups have become isolated, evolved different characteristics and then just as easily recombined and formed hybrids that in turn become isolated and start the process all over again.

The latest information I’ve seen shows that there is a strong correlation between Neanderthal DNA and modern populations in northern Europe and northwesten Asia.  And there are strong correlations between Denisovan DNA and modern populations of Australian aborigines and Papuan New Guineans.

The ancient DNA that has been found is restricted to specimens that existed in cooler climates so the complicated story of hominin mixing and isolating in Africa and other tropical areas may never be reconstructed (although recent work with fossil protein materials may change that in the future).  But I think it’s clear that humans have in the past and will continue in the future to recombine their populations in various ways in reaction to local conditions that select for fitness.

Of course, those selection pressures have changed drastically over the geologic time our genus has existed.  Human society has also evolved and culture has as much to do with evolution now as climate had in the past.  Human behavior is now dictated by things like propaganda, government policy, industrial planning, resource scarcity and even internet influencers.

But hopefully men and women will still try to find mates that will allow their offspring to have the best chance of surviving and carrying on the race.  It still makes sense for a man to want a woman with empathy for his children and enough sense to teach her children to obey their parents and follow the simple rules written on those stone tablets that have guided our civilization for the last several thousand years.

And it makes sense for a woman to want a man who isn’t too lazy or selfish to provide for his family and who enjoys coming home from the hunt and retires to the fire in his cave and tells his little tribe about the mammoth that he hunted and the saber-tooth tiger that hunted him.  And draws a picture on the walls of his cave to celebrate that story.

And the most important trait that both men and women should be selecting their mates for is their minds.  Our brains have been our hallmark for millions of years.  Homo habilis; the tool maker.  That’s us.  We’re the monkeys that came down from the trees, stood up straight and looked at the world straight on and began changing it to our liking from day one.  Fire.  The wheel, the wagon, the chariot, the ship, the saddle, the plow, the heat engine, automobiles, airplanes, rockets. Stone weapons, saws, knives, hammers, axes, levers, firearms, lasers.  Gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, steel, uranium, the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb.  Wheat, oats, millet, rice, maize, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, donkeys, chickens, ducks, white mice, guinea pigs, rhesus monkeys, yeast, mammalian cell culture, CRSPR gene editing, bioengineering.

Let’s just hope that our “civilization” never forgets what keeps us human.

A Window into Death

photog Current Events, Movie Reviews, photog's Corner, Reviews , , , , ,

This morning when I woke up the house was noticeably cooler than it’s been in a month.  It was sixty degrees or thereabouts.  So, Fall is making its entrance felt.  Lots of leaves under the maple tree and the grass is drying out.  The raspberry canes are still producing tons of berries but the lower leaves are all turning yellow.  Well, the kids go back to school on Monday and so this is the end of summer by decree and by degree.  So be it.

Well, it was a terrific summer weatherwise and we did most of the things we wanted to.  And we had a big party at the end.  So now it’s time to anticipate the good stuff that comes with Fall.  Well?  I guess the only thing about Fall that’s good is the long evenings allow us to watch old movies and plan for the holidays.  Certainly, there’s more to do than that.  Fall is when you’re supposed to do the repairs and weatherproofing that prevents winter from doing a lot of damage.  And I do plan to do that stuff.  But let’s be honest here.  I hate that stuff.  I’ve been talking about getting some tarps to cover over the woodwork on the balconies and the outside staircase for about ten years and I haven’t gotten any closer to doing it yet.  I’m just an immensely lazy man whose strong suit is dithering, waffling, vacillating and procrastination.  Of course I blame Camera Girl.  If she were half as good at nagging as she is at cooking, I’d be a model husband.  But it’s the cross I bear.

So, a couple of nights ago TCM had “Psycho” on and Camera Girl was watching it.  Well, I was busy but I noted her choice in passing.  And while I was working in the dining room, I could hear snatches of music and dialog.  And I could tell it was getting toward Marion Crane’s (Janet Leigh’s) fateful arrival at the Bates Motel.  So, I dropped what I was doing and sat through Marion’s supper with Norman and all the way through her murder and subsequent deposition in the “swamp.”  By the way, how much of Southern California actually has any swampland?

Now I’ve seen Psycho dozens of times.  And the murder scene has always struck me as well done.  It’s well staged and well shot.  And having seen it so many times allowed me to watch it this time analytically.  And I thought that the critical snatch of film is when Marion is luxuriating in the shower and the camera shifts to the room through the shower curtain and you see the door open and a silhouette appear in the doorway.

That is the moment when death has entered the frame.  The actual killing with the blood and piercing, screaming “music” is almost an anticlimax.

And then I watched Marion Crane die from loss of blood.  And it was remarkably well acted and achingly sad.  Here was a young woman whose impatience to be with the man she loved had driven her to steal an enormous amount of money.  But just as she’s figured out what she needs to do to escape from the trap she’s gotten herself into, fate steps in and feeds her into a buzz saw of insanity.

The rest of the movie is a murder mystery and a psychological horror show.  But the end of the murder scene is a tiny window into an intensely poignant moment; the death of a human being and specifically the death of a beautiful young woman.  Janet Leigh’s face conveys the reality that Marion Crane’s brain is shutting down from lack of blood and her world has shrunk down to just trying to grasp the shower curtain with her hand.  And then she dies and her body lies crumpled on the floor and her unfocussed eye stares into space.  That’s the best acting in the movie.

So, despite the spectacle from then on, the interesting part of the movie is the first forty minutes that record Marion Crane’s date with destiny.  And I’ll include her conversation with Norman.  He does communicate his pathetic version of what he thinks the world is about.  And in some sense, he provides a sounding board to allow her to think about what to do about her own private trap.

Well, anyway, it’s Fall and old movies are the thing to do.

Does Fiction Publishing Still Exist?

photog Book Reviews, Literature, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews ,

Selling intellectual property has changed radically in the last thirty years.  We used to buy books at a book store.  We bought music at a record shop.  And we rented or bought movies at a video store.  And then we bought all these at a Walmart or an electronics store (well, maybe not the books).

Now we stream movies and pay by the minute or the month and listen to music more or less for free and books are just this thing that exists on Amazon as a free service or a minor expense.  And the marketing and advertising of these works is some inexplicable algorithm that somehow links up people to the things that would appeal to them.

Now, the only way a musician can make any money is by live concerts that people pay to attend.  But no one would pay to attend a reading of a chapter of a book.  So maybe very soon books will cease to exist as a commodity.

And I guess that’s just the way it will be.  Now I’ve been trying to finish up a novel (and fixing the last ten percent of the book has been much harder than writing the first ninety percent).  And when I attempt to market it, I’ll try it on some traditional publishers and if that doesn’t work, I’ll probably self-publish it on Amazon.  I have noticed that lately some authors try to start a “go fund me” campaign to drum up the support for the book before it’s released.  But I’m not sure how that would work for a new author.

I guess pretty soon I’ll know as much about it as anyone else.  But isn’t it interesting that now that technology allows for avoiding all the obstacles that the “gatekeepers” of traditional publishing provided, that the real problem would be the “needle in a haystack” reality of many millions of self-published books thrown together in an endless slush pile with no way to stand out to a jaded reading public.

Well, they say that Americans have always made the best salesmen.  It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that self-promotion is the real talent behind entertainment.  Hollywood was successful because they could get millions of eyes on their product.  I’m sure the same applies to selling books, movies and music.  It’s just that it’s a field I never got involved in.  Engineering is product that has to be sold but I was always just the product.  I was never one of the sellers except when I would be sent out with the marketing team to convince the buyers that we knew what we were doing and could provide them with the services and hardware that they wanted.  Books on the other hand need fancy covers with somewhat-undressed women and weapons of war and starships to attract the buyer’s attention and get him to plunk down his electronic money.

I’ve seen some marketing going on by some of the people I follow on X and YouTube and it all feels very tiring but maybe that’s because at heart I’m a very lazy guy and hawking product is hard work (at least for me).

And maybe this is all a transitory situation and eventually some more efficient way to link readers with new books that match their tastes will appear among the AI gods.

Well, just some musings.

Goodbye Summer 2025

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family ,

So, Saturday (09AUG2025) is a big family party at the Compound.  Another grandson graduates from high school and begins college.  The next, next generation become adults and have all the same decisions and experiences in front of them.  And Camera Girl and I continue our campaign to get to play with progressively more distant descendants.  The hunt for great grandchildren is now the thing.

But the main thing is that I’m just providing the infrastructure; the indoor and outdoor venue and the grill.  The graduate’s parents will bring and cook the food and organize the kids’ activities and lifeguard the pool.  I’ll just be one of the kids tomorrow.  I intend to spend a portion of the event with my brothers talking about how passing the torch to the next generation feels for them.  There has been a threat of putting on a Shatner-Khan adjacent event.  Maybe put on one of his greatest hits.  If it happens, I hope it’ll be “Terror at 20,000 Feet.”  There can be nothing more definitively Shatner than that.

But I hope to spend most of the day eating burgers and dogs and potato salad and peppers and sausage.  And then playing pool with the grandkids and shooting the breeze with family that I don’t see very often.  This will be the last get together for the summer.  And everyone is getting older and travelling even the modest distances between us becomes more challenging every year.  So, these parties become more important.

I guess most of us are on the Trump train so there will be some Trump gloating going on.  We’ll keep it sotto voce because even among my close relatives there are a few folks of the other persuasion.  And I don’t see any need to start a fight.  Family solidarity is more important than scoring political points at a party.  That’s for sure.

A couple of days ago the goofy looking weather man on the Spectrum channel (my cable provider) told us that it looks like a very nice week with temperatures in the 80’s, low humidity and plenty of sun.  But then, just to prove he’s a jerk he went into a little spiel where he defined just how much daylight we lose over the course of August.  And just to show that he was intentionally spreading misery he finished off by saying, “But most people don’t like to be reminded of this sad fact.”  What a creep.

But he’s right.  The sun is lower in the sky.  It’s cooler than a few weeks ago and the sun is down earlier than it should be.  The leaves are starting to fall from the cherry trees.  The vegetable garden is definitely looking worse for wear and the flowers are starting to exhaust.  Last week the daylilies in the sheltered corner ran out of flowers.  There are still some smaller ones (Stella de Oros and orange ones) but they’re not the same.  The cone flowers will last a good long time but there aren’t anymore new flowers growing.  The only flowers still to come are the Montauk daisies and the wolfbane in October.

So summer is wrapping up.  The kids go back to school in two weeks and pretty soon the end of season Dunwich Fair with its First Selectman dunk tank (win at your own risk) and free werewolf neutering clinic will be upon us.  Well, it’s time for the party and goodbye Summer 2025.

I Have My Priorities

photog ArthurinCali, Chemist, Ed Brault, Life in Dunwich, Mr. Coffee, Neil Dunn, NostraDumbass, photog's Corner, Photography, pigpen51, Science, SubVet , , ,

So today was an early day because I had to head to the office.  I was already running late when Camera Girl walked out of the kitchen and said, “Don’t react or the dogs will start barking but there are a couple of momma turkeys at my bird feeder with about eight young.  Go take a look.”

So, they were under the bird feeders looking for seeds on the ground that the normal birds spilled out of the feeders.  But eventually they weren’t satisfied so they headed out into the fields.  Camera Girl saw them heading for the gardens and said, “They’re headed for the raspberry patch.  Do you think they’ll eat any of the berries.”  I answered knowledgably, “No they only eat bugs and small critters.”  Of course, they immediately attack the patch and clearly start picking ripe berries off the canes.  I didn’t look back at her but I think there was a look.  And I think there might have been a derisive sound.  I came back with her own famous statement, “Well, everybody’s gotta eat, right?”  So, I announced that I had to leave for work and made a show of ignoring the prehistoric creatures that had invaded my domain.

When I got home, I got the update.  They had not only picked all the ripe raspberries but they then cleaned up the ripe blueberries too.  Then they went down by the swamp and annoyed Moe and the rest of Camera Girl’s murder of crows that hang out there during the morning.  Finally, they walked the perimeter of the fields until they ended up near the road and then made a nuisance of themselves for the motorists until they finally crossed the road and headed for the next swamp in their path.

I’ve always been interested in the turkey population because they provide an opportunity for interesting photographs.  But here they were adding insult to injury.  They not only didn’t eat any of the copious beetles that are afflicting my vegetables and flowers but they went out of their way to pillage my favorite summer fruit crops.  This is the thanks I get for never hunting them or setting the dogs on them or even making fun of their homely appearance, clumsy walking style or spastic flying abilities.

Well, truth be told they’re still in my top five species of birds I like to see around the place.  I like seeing the vultures (turkey and black) in the trees.  I like to try and get a shot of a Great Blue Heron fishing in the swamp and I also hope one day to lure some of the local ravens into a closer arrangement.  I’ve always thought they were fascinating creatures.

But there’s something appealing about a flock of turkey hens with their young walking around in Dunwich in the summer acting like they own the place and livening things up.

Yep, that’s true.  However, if they come near the berries again, I may just get some rocks and help them to move along at high speed.  At this time of year, I have my priorities.

Maybe He Wasn’t Ready for His Own Show

photog Humor, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner , , ,

So, the First Selectman heard about Stephan Colbert losing his gig with the Late Show and somehow got the idea that maybe he could end up as a replacement on CBS.  He called me into his cave and said, “Listen Appetizer, I want you to get on the blower with Bill Paley and tell him I have a great idea for a late-night comedy show.  I’ll call it “Late Night Selections.”

I said, “Sir I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but William Paley died in 1990 at age 89.  And currently the parent company of CBS; Paramount Studios, is being acquired by another entertainment company Skydance Media and they have decided that the old-style late-night show is outdated and unprofitable.  They have not only not renewed Stephen Colbert’s contract; they have ended the whole Late Night production company.  They’ve effectively fired two hundred people in order to save $100 million.”

This outraged the First Selectman, “Who ever heard of anyone dying at 89.  Why I’m in excess of a trillion years old and I’ve never felt better in my life.  Sure, I eat healthy and stay away from fatty food like Mexicans and Italians but last time I saw Bill in 1948 he was the picture of health.  He was smoking a cigar, drinking a martini and pinching his secretary.  You don’t get much livelier than that!”

I interjected that notwithstanding his fond memories of Mr. Paley it was unfortunately true that new management was in place at the Tifanny Network and perhaps this was not the time for a new late-night show.  This got me nowhere and so yesterday I was assigned the task of putting together a stage for this dynamic new production.  As luck would have it, I read an ad for Colbert’s extra furniture going up for sale and picked it up for a song.  I think it was being sold hot by the disgruntled stage crew.

Well with a little alteration to allow the five hundred foot tall First Selectman to interact with human sized guests on the stage we had it up and running this morning in time to go through some try-outs.  As luck would have it Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren were all hoping to get some extra face time during Trump’s problems over the Epstein case so the First Selectman was able to book all three of them for his trial run.

Well, there were problems.  During the first segment Schiff began banging the drum about Donald Trump being a fascist.  Now the first Selectman used to be a close personal friend of Mussolini so he innocently said, “What’s wrong with being a fascist.”  Well, Schiff went ballistic and started going through his talking points about Trump assaulting women and being a felon and starting an insurrection and before you know it, he was calling the First Selectman a reactionary.  Well, this didn’t sit well with the First Selectman so he ate Schiff.  And when Pelosi and Warren saw this from the wings, they came running out screeching at a very high pitch.  As it happens the First Selectman is very sensitive to the particular frequency so in self-defense, he quieted them by eating them.

Well, the booking agency was very upset and said they couldn’t provide any more guests, except maybe AOC and Mamdani because nobody likes them anyway but the First Selectman said Puerto Rican and Middle Eastern food gave him the runs.  So, he’s given up on the whole show idea.  It’s all very sad.

Lesson Painfully Learned

photog Current Events, photog's Corner , ,

So, what have we learned?  What have I learned?  After fifty years as an adult living in the United States I have learned one thing.

The only thing that counts from leaders is results.

In addition to that are all the other things you learn by living in the madhouse that was the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the twenty first:

  • Talk, of all kinds, is cheap and almost meaningless.
  • Good intentions by themselves achieve nothing.
  • Action that is not informed by intelligence and purpose can sometimes be worse than inaction.
  • Most politicians are liars and crooks.
  • Those that aren’t, often are insane.
  • Everyone has ulterior motives. The trick is to align with those whose motives are compatible with yours.
  • There are no angels out there, only men. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
  • Allies can come from the most unexpected corners.
  • Stay far away from really stupid people. They’ll get you killed.
  • Lots of conspiracy theories have turned out to be true. Be careful whom you talk to.
  • Just because you’re the only one in a dozen people who think something is a bad idea doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It might mean they’re feds.
  • Someone can be really smart and have all the facts and still come to the wrong conclusions. Use common sense.
  • There are nuts on both sides of the political divide. Use common sense.
  • Don’t let political differences destroy your family. Tread gently here.
  • Keep a sense of humor. You’ll need it.
  • Don’t let hate eat you up. Most of the people on the other side aren’t monsters.  A few are but don’t transfer that status to everyone.  Unless you live in some kind of red bubble you will meet up with the Left.  Don’t become unhinged.
  • Don’t become manic or depressed. There will always be victories and defeats.  Learn how to live in the real world not a wonderland that will never be.
  • No one is God except God. Trump is a man.  He’s just as imperfect and prone to error as everyone else.  He will not save us and one day he won’t be in charge.  Remember the big picture.
  • Figure out your actual convictions. What do you truly believe in?  What is unimportant?
  • Figure out what you want to achieve in your life and decide if this is likely under the current political regime.
  • Align your goals with the world as it really is. For example, cable news anchorman may no longer be a reasonable career path.  Whereas news influencer has some currency.
  • Don’t waste too much time agonizing over things you have absolutely no control over.
  • Spend the time prioritizing the actions you can achieve according to how much they will benefit you.
  • Spend as much time as you possibly can with people you like.
  • Learn how to communicate with people who hold extremely differing views from you. For instance, learn how to disagree with someone in a conversation without insulting him.
  • Find some friends out there and laugh with them when you can.

There, that was fun.