Fear and Loathing in Dunwich

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Every week I spend several hours with someone whose politics are almost diametrically opposed to mine.  And I mean that literally.  Left, right.  Up, down.  You name it.  And interestingly we get along fine.  Now, we never talk politics, never.  Because we know that all we could possibly do is disagree.  So, we stick to business and to things that are universally human.  We love our families and we want our town to win the soccer games against the neighboring towns.  Nothing more controversial than that.

But even when all we are talking about is work, other things creep in.  And even when we are avoiding “current events” it’s hard not to let anxiety about the state of things surface.  Neither of us want to say much because we’re both avoiding putting a spin on what is fueling this anxiety.  But I think there was an “unspoken agreement” that we both feel that things are very, very not good.  And then she said something kind of odd, “Do you think that we’re reaching the end of one or both of the major parties?”  I tried to finish off this almost non-conversation by saying, “Well, maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.  Maybe every generation is like this and it’s not as bad as we think and things will just muddle along as they are now.”  And that was the end of the talk.  We moved onto Dunwich trivia.

But this got me thinking.  I think I see signs that things are very not good in the Blue States.  When the true believers start to wonder if things can go on the way they’re going without a change of party there is something very, very wrong.  I don’t want to blow this out of proportion or start putting money on some collapse theory.  But I get the definite feeling that all is far from well within the Democrat Party.  If I were to guess I think the socialists and the populists on the Left are eroding the “center” of the Democrat party to such an extent that a lot of the old guard don’t recognize what their party has become and are very worried by this change.

Maybe a good example is what is happening in the Democrat Senate race in Maine.  Governor Janet Mills was the establishment favorite to be the Democrat candidate to run against the Republican incumbent Susan Collins.  Graham Platner who is an oyster farmer, a Marine veteran and Harbor Master of the town of Sullivan is the Bernie Sanders candidate.  Mills attacked him based on his comments on Reddit about rape and violence and because he has a tattoo on his chest that resembles a nazi symbol (a Totenkopf).  But just last week she dropped out of the race and Platner is now the leading Democrat candidate.  Platner is a socialist and a populist and typifies the new Democrat direction.  Now someone like Platner would frighten a lot of old Democrats, especially the women.  The violent rhetoric, the adoption of a pro-Gaza, anti-Semitic stance, the pro-gun talk are frightening and confusing to a lot of these Democrats.  So, I think the question I heard was an honest one and means there is a lot of fear about what is going on in their party.

Of course, that’s not that different from what is going on with the Republicans.  Populist candidates are primarying establishment hacks like John Cornyn in Texas.  So maybe this is all just part of the increasing polarization of the country.  But maybe saying “just” the polarization is minimizing just how dire the situation really is.

Let me end this by saying there is fear and confusion throughout our country and we’re going to have to let it all play out before we know just how bad the crack-up will be.

Of Pyramids and Pitchforks

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Like the Pharaoh Cheops I know the pain and exultation inherent in an enormous engineering project.  Yes, he built the Great Pyramid of Giza.  But I built the Great Pond of Camera Girl.  So, let’s just look at the stats:

 

Project Name Great Pyramid of Giza Great Pond of Camera Girl
Length of project 27 years (total) 27 hours (active time)
Scope 2.6 million 2.5-ton blocks 270 gallons of dirt
Volume of project 92 million cubic feet 36 cubic feet
Size of Crew 40,000 1
Total manhours 1,752,000,000 27
Significance of project Final resting place of pharaoh Husband making wife happy
Projected lifetime of structure millennia until roots from cherry tree puncture liner
Tools copper tools, ropes, levers, sledges shovel, pitchfork, rake, wrecking bar, wheelbarrow, 4″ level (plastic), good old American grit and determination

 

Based on scope I guess I’ll have to hand it to Cheops.  27 years is a pretty good effort.  Of course, if we count the fact that I’ve been throwing out the garbage and repairing stuff around the house for almost 50 years all of a sudden Cheops is coming up kind of short.  Isn’t he!

But I don’t want to overreach.  People have been travelling to Egypt for millennia to gawk at the pyramids and so far, Camera Girl is the only one who has praised my great engineering project.  And even though she has been quite generous with the superlatives I must admit that 92 million cubic feet of limestone blocks isn’t anything to sneeze at.  I mean I dropped one of the rocks I dug out on my foot and that damn thing hurt but a five-thousand-pound rock is a little bit more of a big deal if it ends up on your foot.  So, okay.  Cheops wins.  He’s big man on campus.

But let’s look at this from a different perspective.  What did Mrs. Cheops have to say about the whole thing?  Based on my research after watching “Land of the Pharaohs (1955)” she must have been buried alive with Cheops.

Now maybe she was down with this.  Who knows?  But my knowledge of Camera Girl leads me to believe that this would not be to her liking.  Now as a charter member of the He-Man Woman Haters Club you might think I would be an advocate for this kind of wife entombing.  But you’d be wrong.  By any objective measure she is very high in the ranks of women and hardly ever uses her feminine wiles and never takes advantage of the modern anti-male legal or social mechanisms to make my life miserable.  By my reckoning she is a good egg and fully worthy of this amazing civil engineering marvel.

Next, we’ll fill it with water and put in a bunch of water lilies and other plants and then buy some goldfish and sit around in the afternoon and watch these aquatic vertebrates do their thing.  And then one day the local Great Blue Heron will discover this little water hole and eat all of the fish in one meal.  But as Camera Girl always says, “Everybody’s gotta eat.”

Movies, Taxes and World-Building

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Well, what’s to say today?  I was talking to some family and we were discussing this and that and I said that I wanted to see “Project Hail Mary.”  And some knew about it and some had heard a little bit.  Well, I think I talked them into getting together and going to see it.  Now I plan to see it this week with Camera Girl.  She’s not the biggest sff fan by any stretch of the imagination.  When I brough her to see the original Star Wars film she was not particularly impressed.  And come to think of it, she’s never been impressed by any sci fi or fantasy movie (or book) I ever gave her.  Well, I take that back.  She read “The Hobbit” back in 1975 and liked it.  But that was it.  When I told her to read the “Lord of the Rings,” she laughed in my face.  So, she may not be the most willing audience for this movie.  But since one of the characters is a puppet I’m guessing there may be an appeal there to her love of animals.  So, I’m going to see the same movie in the theater twice?  I think this may be the first time I’ve ever done that.  Well, I’m sure it won’t kill me.

The other thing I’m doing next week is go see an accountant about how to pay my taxes on the royalties from my book.  I have an inordinate fear of the Infernal Revenue Service.  I think they’re a malevolent force causing pain and suffering for ordinary people at every turn.  So, I’m going to find out what the process is for this kind of capital gain.  I don’t think I have to pay quarterly but you never know so I’m not taking any chances.  Also, I think there is a way to write off expenses like advertising and marketing so if I can find out whether it’s worth it I may even break even on this whole experiment (maybe!!!).

A friend was asking me about the sequel to the “The Sniper.”  He had particular questions about the back story for some of the characters like Connors and Cutter.  I said I’d love to tell him some of the details of their back stories but I still haven’t made them up yet.  I think he was a little shocked that these important facts didn’t actually exist yet.  Maybe even betrayed for investing in a story that was sort of a Potemkin Village.  But I feel justified in pushing out the corners of my little universe as the spirit moves me.  Although I will admit I’ve decided to do some outlining of the world, at least from a 35,000-foot height.  I need to decide what stories will grow out of the eucatastrophe I set off in the first book.  I mean, you don’t sink the White House, Capitol and Pentagon into the Earth’s crust without taking advantage of the elbow room that provides for political and social upheaval on a grand scale.