My Kid Draws Comics

 This one is taken directly from life -- Dr. Skull is the one chomping down on the cheeseburger, while chiding the kid for wanting catfish.

What I'm Watching Now

I just spent the past couple months watching every single episode of Vera, which is a police procedural show about a grumpy old lady who heads a murder squad in Northumbria. Partly I love the dialect, but also it was fun watching a woman be mean and unreasonable. Usually only men get to be unpleasant in media. Also the landscape was beautiful -- it's Northern England (I think?) and on the east coast, so there are a lot of fisheries and rolling hills and farmlands. Lots of ancient castle-like buildings too. There's a bit of copaganda, of course, but the show makes a point of having the police actually help people -- providing liaisons for victim's families and so forth -- showing how that can be done.

The show also makes a point of having disabled characters as police officers -- one character is an amputee, and two others are in a wheelchairs -- as well as featuring characters of color as police officers, as well as in Northumbria in general. The crimes weren't all murdered women, too, which was a refreshing change. It's available on Amazon Prime, though you have to subscribe to Britbox to watch it.

I also finally got around to watching Derry Girls on Netflix. I'm probably the last person on the planet to figuring out how much fun this one is. Again, I love the dialect; and the characters, especially the grandfather, are just great. It's about a group of Catholic schoolgirls during "the Troubles" in the 1980s, but that conflict is mostly in the background. The main business of the show is these girls (and one guy) in their daily lives. I was sorry this one ended.

Now I'm watching The Gentleman on Netflix. I almost quit watching this one in the first few minutes because it looked like it was going to your typical hot guy does hot guy things. (The lead, Theo James, is very pretty indeed.) But I stuck with it because I liked how the siblings interacted -- like actual siblings, I mean -- and I'm still mostly enjoying it. It's about a duke who discovers his father was maintaining the ancient and enormous estate by leasing out part of it to a weed-growing consortium. The duke soon discovers, much to his chagrin, that he has a certain talent for criminal enterprises.

It reminds me a little of Breaking Bad, except the duke is likable, unlike Walter White, who was always something of a jerk and who got worse as the series progressed. There are still moments in every episode where I wonder why I'm watching this, but it's charming enough that so far I have stuck with it.

Scalzi on Harris

John Scalzi has a good post up on the Harris/Biden situation. Go here to read it.

Key graph:

Can Harris win? Yes, I think so. It’s not 2016 or 2020. Here in 2024, the Supreme Court, with six conservatives, three appointed by Trump, has already gutted people’s rights, and Project 2025 makes it clear that the plan is to gut even more, and to make living in these United States objectively worse for almost everyone. 

The reaction I'm seeing from the Right is predictable: Harris isn't qualified because her parents weren't born in America; Harris isn't qualified because she's a whore; Harris isn't qualified because she's brown; and similar bullshit.

Honestly, what else have they got? They can't claim their guy is more qualified. He's a joke and a grifter. If they had integrity (yeah, don't make me laugh) they'd call for him to step down too. He's nearly as old and twice as incoherent as Biden, and the last time he was President, he let a pandemic kill over a million American citizens.

ETA: Right now, conservatives are wailing that it's no fair for Biden to resign! He has to run! WAAAH!

Holy Hell

Biden steps down.

Living by Lies

My kid sent me this

right after I finished a polite discussion with a conservative on FB who told me she didn't care what the evidence was, she believed what she believed.

This is why I find Rod Dreher's book title -- Live Not by Lies -- so hilarious. Every single thing this current crop of conservatives lives by is either a lie or based on lies. 

I mean, it would be hilarious, if they weren't trying to force us to live by their lies as well.

See also this.

And this.  One of the people in the comments makes a distinction between lies and bullshit, to which he should probably have added just utter stupidity. 

Pro-Trump is Pro-Q

I parked by a car that had a Pro-Trump, a Pro-Q, and a Pro-life sticker on it. Should have given it a door ding, but I restrained myself.

Weather Report

It was almost cool when I went for a walk last night by the river. (By "cool," I mean it was 88 degrees.) This is a blessed respite between heat domes, I guess.

It's 80 degrees right now, at 11:00 on a Saturday morning. Nice!

The rabbits have taken to lying under our outside table (the one my fig tree is currently on) scratching themselves divots in the earth and then flopping on their sides to lie in the cool spot they've created. It's adorable.

From PZ Myers

 This cracks me up:

Apparently, Conservatives Were Always Against the Iraq War

I was called a terrorist and treasonous to my face because I didn't think we should attack some country that had nothing to do with 9/11 just so Bush could be doing something. I remember "conservatives" screaming at those on the Left. I remember Freedom Fries. I remember the Dixie Chicks being cancelled because they spoke out against the war.

I remember this:

Child covered in her parents' blood

And now this: apparently conservatives never supported the war on Iraq. It was all Biden's fault!

We've never been at war with Eastasia.

Oh, and apparently they've all taken to wearing big white bandages on their ears, just like the one their idol Trump wore. It reminds me of the convention where conservatives wore Purple Heart band-aids to make fun of the Purple Hearts John Kerry got for being wounded in Vietnam. 

Walking by the River

I took a walk at dusk down by the river, the first time I've walked there in a couple of months (because summer), and found there's a new project underway, to "restore native grasses," which is pretty cool.

Lots of wildflowers too. I snagged this picture, which the internet tells me are plains coreopsis:

I enjoyed the walk but holy hell it was hot, even at 8:00 p.m., and the air as thick as steam. Back to the gym today.

MAGAts Screeching with Delight

The reaction from the Right to Trump's ear being nicked is almost orgasmic with glee. Clearly they all think this will lead to his election. (I'm dubious, since no one who wasn't already pro-Trump will have their opinion shifted.)

Meanwhile, "conservative" pundits are claiming this is the fault of the violent left, and something about a bulls-eye, and what can you EXPECT when you go around calling people fascists?

Yeah, these people, the ones who call immigrants, leftists, trans people, and brown people vermin, who joke about throwing people out of helicopters, who say journalists should be lynched, now they're clutching their pearls about rhetoric.

These People

Pardon me if I'm not convinced.

Meanwhile, 2,500 children a year being shot, some of them in classrooms, well, that's just the price of freedom, isn't it?

A relevant quotation:

“We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Mr Roberts told the War Room podcast, founded by Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

Edited to add: PZ Myers' take on the situation

ETA: Just a reminder:

What I'm (Not) Reading Now

Frank Herbert, Dune

I once again tried to read Dune. Once again, I couldn't get further than six pages. If you love this book, God bless, but despite everything I've read about it which makes it seem like I would love it, it's just clearly not for me.

Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

Set in Ireland, lovely dialect, you'd think I love it. Getting great reviews. I tried twice, just couldn't get through it. I don't know why -- I just couldn't get interested in any of the characters. If you like really short novels about hoodlums in Ireland, you might like it more than me.

Jane Smiley, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidle Newton

I recently read Smiley's latest novel, Lucky, and liked it right up to the last five or six pages, which are postmodern and grim. Anyway, I also liked Smiley's Moo, so I thought I'd give another of her books a try. This one started well, but yeah, no. Apparently I only like one in ten of Smiley's books. Lidle Newton, again, seems like a book I would like -- a 20-year-old marries an abolitionist after her father dies, and they take out for Lawrence, Kansas, in the years just before the Civil War. Doesn't that sound like a hella book? Sadly, after a promising start, it descends into tedium. Did not finish.

Sarah Langan, A Better World

A near future novel -- everyone except the very few hyperwealthy are desperately poor and ravaged by the collapsing ecosystem. The very wealthy have created gated communities where the air and water are filtered, and decent, non-toxic food still exists. If you have the requisite skills, you can join one of these company towns. Our main characters do, only it turns out everyone there is very unfriendly. Why? I guessed the plot twist coming at about page 30. It's not a very striking one. Also, I didn't care about any of the characters, who were either ciphers or assholes. Stopped reading about page 70.

Curtis Sittenfeld, Rodham

Basically, a what-if. What if Hillary Clinton had not married Bill? What would her life, and our country, be like? I was interested in this premise, but by the time Hillary decides not to marry him, I was so bored I could not go on. I've liked, in a tepid way, Sittenfeld's books before. This one didn't do it for me.

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

I keep trying to like Atwood. I made it all the way through Handmaid's Tale, but I can't say I enjoyed it. This one was mentioned in Michael Berube's book of criticism, The Ex-Human, which I liked a lot, so I thought I'd give her another try. Noped out about page fifteen. Just deadly boring. 

What all are y'all not reading?

Anxiety Dreams

 I had the worst dream last night -- we had moved to Atlanta, and I had to take a bus to get to my new university (which seemed to be more like a high school than a university) and we were living in a hotel room with two other families and I couldn't find the bus stop, plus I was late. And the kid was about 12 years old, so he had to get to school too, and Dr. Skull had a job somewhere but he wasn't sure where. Or which bus to take to get there.

It was one of those dreams where you wake up and are still trying to solve all the problems in the dream, and remembering it was just a dream does not dispel the anxiety. 0/10 do not recommend.

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Whaaaat!

Weather guy says we might get rain today. And the high tomorrow is 77? 

Whaaaat!

It hasn't rained in maybe a month here, and the grass has gone crunchy underfoot, so rain will be nice. Fingers crossed.