Burning Bright

Dreamed I was in law school, & I had a big test coming up. F________ (also in the class) & I set out to acquire a massive outline that would surely allow us to pass the test—though I hadn't studied for it at all.

We went to this 1950-ish office building and pulled all the books we wanted to xerox. The bill for all the copying came to $766.

Then we waited for the copying to be done. And waited. And waited.

I think we waited overnight?

And at some point, F________ disappeared, and I was handed a few mimiographed pages that weren't going to help me at all, & I was in a complete panic because I didn't know the material, & it was an essay test, and there wasn't a single thing I'd be able to write, & I would flunk the examination, & God knows what would happen to me after that—

And then I remembered that this was the first of three exams. I could flunk this one & still pass the class—

And woke up feeling relieved.

I think the dream was inspired by Curtis Sittenfeld's flawed but still remarkable novel Prep, which I fell asleep reading.



Friday was the Hyde Park Community Garden's annual Harvest Dinner.

I neglected the garden horribly this year.

After Brian died, I pretty much neglected everything except boring, livelihood-related scutwork. (At times, it still feels inconceivable to me that he's dead. Brian was always off taking trips. Sometimes, I still feel as though he's off on a trip and will return...)

Anyway, Claude—bless his heart—took up the slack, watering and weeding the garden! Just take the harvest & donate it to the food pantry, I told him by email.

Even with all the donations, there were still a lot of tomatoes to harvest when I checked in Friday afternoon:



Not enough to justify going to all that trouble to make sauce, but still enough so I oughta do something ambitious with them.

###

The Harvest Dinner itself was somewhat sparsely attended this year.

Also, I found standing & serving for two hours somewhat physically uncomfortable—a sign that I'm getting old or a sign I need to exercise more? Hard to say.

The only thing of actual interest that happened is that Deb, the woman who's the head of the garden, ushered me aside to tell me how much she ❤️LUV❤️s me.

I've always had a kind of aversion to Deb. She does Good Works, but makes sure everyone knows how Good those Works are, which rubs me the wrong way. Also, she was a rabid Trump supporter in the last election, and how anybody who helps run a food pantry could support Trump is beyond me.

Anyway, I met and raised her effusiveness—No, Deb, it is you who are wonderful! Such an inspiration!—because my new policy is to keep my head down, network, and restrict all reveals of my true thoughts to situations where they may have some meaningful impact. How does it benefit the Cause to say to Deb, You fuckin' hypocrite! Get your hands off my sleeve? It doesn't. And I may find uses for my connection to her, she carries some heft in the community.

I should be setting up an Underground Railroad, right?

Send your trans children & grandchildren to me! I will make sure they are ushered to freedom in Canada!

###

The Work in Progress continues to move along nicely.

We are now into Grazia & Neal's introductory meeting. They are out touring the Rondout District in Kingston.

After that, I think we'll need one roadtrip—maybe the one I coaxed BB into taking me on to Pennsylvania when I wanted to see real live slag heaps.

And then I think there has to be one scene at Neal's house where Grazia offers to give Neal a massage, possibly preliminary to pouncing him, only to realize that they are firmly in the Sibling Zone from which there is no going back.

That will be the end of Chapter 2.

Chapter 3 will be Grazia in the ER during COVID. Somehow, I will have to introduce the other sister wife characters. Haven't worked out the action timeline for that one yet, but the end of Chapter 3 will be the end of Grazia first-person. Chapter 4 leaps into Daria first-person.

The real life Daria moved from Mexico City to San Francisco when she was 11.

But I am thinking the novel Daria will have to move to somewhere in the Northeast. Because if the way the novel Daria & Neal get together parallels the way the real-life Daria and Brian got together, it will be too-ooo-oooo complicated.

Not that I'm a Jimmy Kimmel fan, you understand. I don't own a television. I've never watched late night talk shows. My only association with late night talk shows comes from an ancient Harold Robbins novel in which an aging movie star, propped up on vodka & dolls, masturbates to a late night show applause track.

But firing Jimmy Kimmel over saying this? The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.

That's BAD.

The FCC chair threatening ABC with nonsense investigations for Kimmel's opinions on Charlie Kirk's murderer is even worst.

###

My immediate conclusion was that they—and yes, Virginia, there is a they—wouldn't be acting this way if they weren't absolutely certain they were gonna keep their hold on power (which they're not going to be able to do with votes.)

Thank Gawd that turns out to be wrong.

No, it turns out just to be about money: The dying television industry is trying to consolidate. In Olden Times, this would trigger monopoly fears. But nobody cares about monopolies anymore, & anyway, if they did, in 10 years, television will be deader than rotary phones.

###

I keep thinking that I've been here before, and that there's something I didn't do then that I can do now. It's the same feeling you get when you're working your way through a particularly absorbing video game scenario.

The one universe-changing act is there.

But where?

Is there some gold ring I'm supposed to toss in a volcano cauldron?

Really, I'm not much good at anything except bearing witness.

I'm superb at bearing witness.

But what good does that do?

###

Meanwhile, a very low-key yesterday in which I did no work of my own but labored for filthy lucre.

The sky was overcast. When the sky is overcast, I get despondent. It's some brain chemistry quirk, & I know it's just errant brain chemicals, but knowing doesn't stop the feelings, it just makes it so I have to ignore the feelings.

The political scene in the U.S. just keeps getting worse & worse & worse.

Trying to justify an attack on what turns out to have been a Venezuelan fishing boat, Trump foams, 300 million people died last year from drugs. That's what's illegal.

He can't be talking about 300 million people in the United States, can he? I mean, if that were true, it would be so-oo-ooo much easier to find parking, wouldn't it?

But that's just comic relief.

###

JD Vance's current plan—and he's the true Annointed One—is to compile a database of those who are insufficiently reverential over Charlie Kirk's death and then harass their employers into firing them.

America! Land of the Snitch!

Like I've said, I think all political violence is bad, and people ought not to be assassinated for expressing their opinions, regardless of whether or not I agree with them. I'd never heard of Charlie Kirk before he was shot. I can't say I like much of what I've learned about him after his death, but those candle-lit vigils being held in his honor across the land are more or less the equivalent of all those George Floyd vigils back in 2020—the significant difference being that the Floyd vigils were an urban phenomenon & the Kirk vigils are a rural phenomenon.

(There was actually a Kirk vigil in Montgomery I almost went to last night because I am very, very curious! But I talked myself out of it. I don't think I would have been able to blend in with the crowd, and that raises personal safety issues.)

I've seen several photographs of Kirk flashing the white power sign, circle of pointer & thumb, other three fingers erect.

But is it a white power sign? For decades, that particular hand gesture signified A Okay.

###

I will say that while there is little in Kirk's ideology I agree with, the one thing I think he was 1,000% correct about is that the youth in this country—especially the youth with penises—need some kind of structure that the culture at large is simply not providing them with.

He was very, very smart to target college campuses.

Adolescence is a social construct. (cf Philippe Aries' remarkable Centuries of Childhood.) It was invented in the 17th century at roughly the same time as the Industrial Revolution, and it served to keep individuals out of the labor market at a time when great numbers of workers were being displaced from their traditional employment slots.

Adolescence, then, almost by definition, is a waiting period, a socially sanctiioned interval of utter aimlessness.

But aimlessness is uncomfortable.

Adolescence is not strictly a chronological definition. The boundaries of adolescence keep shifting as the labor market shifts—and right now, thanks to AI, the labor market is tightening. College kids today are equivalent to, say, the high school sophomores of 50 years ago. A significant number of them are clinically depressed—it's hard to come by exact numbers, but one recent study posits that 34% of Gen Z are taking antidepressant meds, and that doesn't account for those who are self-medicating.

Anyway, this is a group of people who really want a purpose.

And Charlie Kirk was peddling purpose really successfully. Charlie Kirk's New Improved Purpose! product evidently was able to make people feel good about themselves.

That's the key! People want to feel good about themselves.

It's too bad the Left can't learn from that. In the aftermath of George Floyd's death—which, as I say, I see as kind of an analogue—the purpose products seemed to all be from people like Robin DiAngelo who hectored well-intentioned people, You will never be good enough.

And you know what?

Fuck that shit.

###

In other news:

I was highly productive yesterday in the sense that I did lots of things that needed to be done. But not in the sense that I did lots of things I much wanted to do.

The tax class remains interesting. Big Company uses a completely different computation method than TaxBwana does. Very systematic! Branchings of the probability tree! If this, then this. It's a canon!

Then I got a tidy chunk of Remuneration done and went to the gym.

My Fitbit doesn't actually register any of the exercise I do at the gym. Which is a major bug. Because one of the reasons one owns a Fitbit is to bask in the dopamine ping and gloat.

Once home, I watched the original Willie Wonka movie, rendered sublime by Gene Wilder's exceedingly strange, haunted, otherworldly performance:



Sigh.

If only it were that easy.

I'm grumpy because one of my clients just sent me a ginormous assignment. My favorite method of making money involves glancing down at the ground & picking up that $50,000-bill nobody else has noticed, not laboring over a keyboard.

However, I should be grateful since the U.S. is clearly in a recession, even if they haven't called it yet. Time to start stuffing money into that mattress! Although that dollar bill you stuff into your mattress today will only be worth 90¢ next week.

Recession plus inflation—just about the most horrible economic formula you can possibly imagine.

I'm cheering myself up by thinking thoughts like, Well, it's really not going to affect me! I'll be dead soon!

Which when you get right down to it is not a particularly cheerful thought.

###

Meanwhile, Adrienne had chided me—deservedly—for not updating the Shawangunk Dems' website for months & months & months, so I spent yesterday morning working on that.

Then Ichabod called & chided me for my insufficiently progressive views on the racial divide. Yes, I do believe in color blindness—say it loud & say it proud!—and you're gonna have to reset the starting marker for history at some point else the current (completely unacceptable) situation is just gonna go on & on & on. So why not do it now?

Then I trotted off to the Shawangunk Dems' monthly meeting where I learned that Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill cut all Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. Not just for abortions! But also for birth control and Pap smears. And this made me very upset indeed. There's not a single thing I can do about it, though.

In the evening, I watched a documentary about Charlie Sheen who ingested more drugs than any other single person on the planet, & I decided—Work in Progress alert!—to borrow his crack cocaine habit & give it to Flavia, since that's an ongoing motiff in the Work in Progress: Neal is gonna save each of the sister wives from some incipient doom. Flavia's doom will be drugs, Daria's doom will be some mountain hike, but I still haven't figured out what Grazia's doom is, and I need to come up with it before I can start Chapter 3.

I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage. --Charlie Kirk, 2022

###

Went out canvassing with Adrienne yesterday.

"I'm a bit nervous about going out today," she confided.

"Why?" I asked. "Because it's September 11th?"

"Charlie Kirk," she said.

Oh.

###

I don't think I ever heard the name "Charlie Kirk" before yesterday, when the youthful conservative activist became the year's 46th victim of a school shooting just as he was answering a question about... school shootings! (Who says the Universe has no sense of irony?)

There was another school shooting in Denver a couple of hours later: one death (the shooter turned his gun on himself), two injuries. This shooting got minimal news coverage.

Having never heard of Charlie Kirk, I had no real thoughts about his death—beyond the cursory disclaimer that violence is always a bad solution, blah, blah, blah, which I totally believe but which seems like an increasingly irrelevant aside in 21st-century America.

###

The countryside Adrienne & I drove through was beautiful. Though leaves were falling, the trees were (mostly) holding on to their green. We canvassed Jansen Road, a back country road with newish asphalt and a line of modified A-frame houses probably built in the early oughts, backed by scrub forest. I wondered briefly who the original "Jansen" had been: the farmer who'd originally farmed this land?

We rang around 10 door bells. This area has been zoned for two-acred lots, and many of the houses had circular driveways with a giant flagpole in a small center island. The Stars & Stripes flapping gently in an almost imperceptible breeze and beneath it, various auxilliary flags: "Don't Tread on Me," "9/11-Never Forget."

Not a liberal NYC-minted Democrat like Adrienne's natural constituency, in other words.

###

About 9/11, I have no deep thoughts either. Beyond wondering at what point they will start doing 9/11 reenactments.

Maybe I would feel differently if I'd actually been in New York City on that day, but I was not. I watched the whole thing unfold on a television set in Monterey, California, and the most immediate effect it had on my life was that they closed the Monterey Presidio. Before 9/11, every day I walked Xena the Jack Russell terrier up Franklin Street through the Presidio to Huckleberry Hill Park, and it was a really pleasant tromp; after 9/11, I began having to take her to the beach, which she didn't enjoy as much.

###

Several people I liked, though, did a complete 180 as a result of 9/11. One of them, Gerard Vanderleun, was a guy who made his Big Buck$ writing dirty letters—Dear Penthouse Forum, I have an etiquette question: When I ask that stripper with big, pink, pendulous pussy lips to sit on my face, should I remove my glasses?

I knew Gerard from the Well.

Gerard was an excellent writer, if a bit fulsome. And an even better editor. One night, he'd driven up to my then house in East Oakland in an enormous white Cadillac to waft me away to the bar in the Claremont Hotel, where we sat drinking Manhattans and storyboarding the apocalypse. Gerard was an amazing riffer, right up there with Robin Williams; practically every stray utterance out of his mouth was brilliant, sardonic, hilarious, rife with subtext. I came away with a bit of a crush. He was never what you would call a political liberal, though. Maybe a libertarian. He worked for a while for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

After 9/11, though, Gerard metamorphosed into a right-wing extremist. Nobody got tearier than Gerard watching Old Glory flapping in the breeze! Nobody was more thankful for Jesus's love! Nobody more deeply loathed wily, two-faced leftists! He started a blog called American Digest, which attracted a deeply loyal readership as obsessive as he was. He died a couple of years ago.

###

On September 11, 2001, Gerard watched the disintegration of the Twin Towers from the vantage point of the Brooklyn Heights promenade. He wrote an excellent piece about the experience, which I wish I could find to link to, but which—alas!—seems to have disappeared into the same cyber-La Brea tarpit that American Digest itself got sucked into.

The detail I remember best from the piece was a description of the slow current of debris wafting out from the explosion, advancing across the East River silent as snow, settling on his clothes, clogging his nostrils. The debris was made up of pulverized concrete, granulated glass, metal, plastic, paper, asbestos, and, of course, human cells.

Now! It is quite possible that had I, too, stood on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade that day & watched those planes assault the towers, that I, too, would have metamorphosed into a fulminating right-wing extremist. One's own personal experiences, after all, are always infinitely more persuasive than reasoned analysis or logical exposition.

But since I wasn't, I tend to view 9/11 as just another pretext for American exceptionalism. Yes, for sure: 9/11, just horrifying! But was it any more horrifying than what's currently going on in Gaza, which our elected officials would prefer us to ignore?

It isn't.

In fact, what's going on in Gaza is a whole lot more horrifying.

The salient detail: Only it's not happening to us.

###

Anyway, nobody slammed any doors in Adrienne's face. The majority of people we talked to were polite though I have no doubt her campaign materials were swiftly dumped in the trash the moment the doors closed.

And nobody mentioned Charlie Kirk.

I went home, and set my browser to Facebook for a quick peek before I started doing Useful Work.

Fuckin' amazing! A miniaturist whose work I sorta follow ('cause you know I like 28mm-scale miniatures of D&D archetypes as well as the next person) had posted this:

Normally I try to keep this page only about miniatures and fantasy in general but something has changed and I feel compelled to make a statement.

I am Right Wing. I am STAUNCHLY Right Wing. I will make no apologies or explanations for that. Think whatever you will of that. If it is intolerable to you I will not miss you. Be gone. I do not want your money. I do not want your friendship. I do not want your encouragement. I do not want your support in any way shape or form. I do not care who you are how long we have been friends or associates. I do not care what this costs me to say. I want NOTHING to do with you. And being totally honest I want to know who you are. I will not keep company with cowards or louts or liars.

Charlie Kirk was a good man. He was a moderate who opened a stage for anyone to debate him in a public forum with no censorship. Yesterday he was murdered for that and last night and today there are people mocking him and celebrating his murder.

If you are one of those people...... FUCK YOU. I hate you.

If you are one of those people who choose to ignore the destruction of Europe and Australia and America by the importation of hordes of third world savages. FUCK YOU. I hate you.

If you are someone who despises the Right Wing or uses " White " as a pejorative or wants the destruction of European Culture and White People in general.... FUCK YOU. I hate you.

Gods Rest You Charlie Kirk. You were a warrior and did not die a straw death.

SKAL!!!

And that was just one post among many.

I mean WT-actual-F?

It really is a race war, isn't it?

The Cro-Magnons versus the Neanderthals.

This is deeply Not Good.

My virtual tax instructor lists his hobbies as "horror movies" and "video games." So, I guess I'm in the right tax class.

I was surprised by how many of the other students had thick accents and names most mainstream Americans would find difficult to pronounce. I guess H&R Schlock employment is a well-known step on the ladder that leads to the dizzying heights of the American dream.

The class wasn't as bad as I feared it might be. Spying on those differently accented students was actually quite interesting. And Microsoft Teams turns out to be an efficient tool.

###

Afterwards, I met up with Belinda whom I mostly avoided all summer because she voted for Trump, and after Brian died, my tolerance in general went wayyyyyy down.

I informed Belinda that I would not be TaxBwana-ing this coming year.

And she said, "Well, then, I'll go to H&R Schlock and tell them I want you to do my taxes. I trust you."

Which I guess is flattering.

We had lunch at the falafel shop in Rhinebeck where all the movies stars go when they come to Rhinebeck. (A surprising number of movie stars come to Rhinebeck.)

And then we drove up to an apple stand just north of Valatie.

I'm not sure from whence comes Belinda's fixation on this particular apple stand; it is not remarkable in any way. But the drive through rural Dutchess & Columbia Counties, past fields of sunflowers and corn, and patches of scrub woods, was lovely. It was a crisp, sunny day, distinctly autumn. The leaves on the trees in those woods have not yet begun to turn—I guess because there was so much rain this year? The color changes of leaves is more related to tree hydration than to temperature changes.

There was a cunning little distillery in the corner of the apple stand, so multiple opportunities for ArtPhotos™!!!













That last photo is not an apple stand ArtPhoto™, but a photo from Italy sent me by the real-life Daria with the note, On our walks, four of ‘em, every time we saw a cat Brian would stop and snap a pic, “for Patrizia.”

It made me sad...

Though I must say, I am simply filled with admiration & awe for the real-life Daria for staying her mountain course, keeping to the adventure!

Under similar circumstances, I probably would have hopped the next train to London, spent my remaining days abroad huddling inside the British Museum, ruminating on what a hideous failure I am.

###

Speaking of cats, the kiskas brought me the corpse of a very large mouse this morning.

They were very proud!

I showed the corpse to Icky who stared at me like, What do you expect me to do about it?

Well, you're the fucking landlord, Icky. Figure it out!

Finally, he mumbled, "I guess I should start setting traps in the basement again."

I guess you should!