Winter!

It's finally winter here. The temp when I got up to go to school was 34 degrees.

Lows in the low 30s and mid-20s all week. It's lovely!

What I'm Watching: Landman

On the recommendation of someone, I forget who, I watched the first two episodes on Landman, which (at least for me) requires a "free" subscription to Paramount Plus. (I can cancel it for free if I do it within five days.)

This is a series set in the oilfields of Midland, Texas, about a landman, which is a guy who gets leases and solves problems for an immense oil company. Billy Bob Thornton stars, and Jon Hamm plays the owner of the oil company.

There's a lot to like here -- Billy Bob and Jon not least of all -- but wow, the sexual politics. 

The main point, at least so far, is that the oil business is a high-stakes and very dangerous game (the getting and selling of oil). It's hard on the bodies and the lives of the men who work the "patch," as the oil fields are called. The pay is good because the job is so dangerous. That part is making a good point. 

And the huge amounts of money involved -- the show, so far, does a good job of showing that and showing why the people who own and profit off the oilfields are not going down without a fight. The show explicitly compares the oil business to cocaine/heroine smugglers, which is a nice touch.

The show also does a good job of showing the contrast between the oil company owner's life, and his family who lives on the profits of the oil company, and the lives of the workers on the oil patch, without ever calling attention to it. There's a nice scene where Billy Bob's son says, "The difference between you and [Jon Hamm] is that you quit and he didn't," and Billy Bob snaps back, "The difference is he has a trust fund and I didn't."

The macho posturing and dominance games are pretty well done too.

And there's some nice writing.

But much of the show is aimed at convincing us that the idea that oil companies are destroying the planet is just silly, and the oil production must continue, no matter the cost, in any definition of "cost."

Also, women in this show are either sexual possessions, and shown as such by the show (Billy Bog's nubile 17 year old daughter parades about a house filled with men in her lacy undies and a crop-top sweatshirt; the girl who works at the all-night coffee stand has her tits hanging out; Jon Hamm's wife spends her time lolling in a pool or in the sun); or they are ignorant upstarts who don't understand how the real world works (a lawyer for the evil law firm which protects the oil company). We also have a waitress, who stays out of the way when the men are talking. (I'm not the only one to notice the terrible job this show does with women characters.)

I get that this is probably part of the culture. But the show also shows all these big tough men as good guys, deep down, (Jon Hamm suffers when the oil patch workers die). And of course women exist to flash their tits and ass at men. Why else would men keep them around?

I might give it another episode or two, because the pacing and the writing are pretty good. But it's propaganda for the oil companies and for toxic masculinity, at least so far.

Nothing But the Truth

 

We have to stop assuming Trump is secretly a master manipulator with a plan. If there’s a plan here, it isn’t fucking Trump’s. Trump has concepts of a plan. And that “concepts” is to devour a Filet-O-Fish while watching his sons hunt immigrants for sport. That’s about as sophisticated as he gets.

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— Catherynne M. Valente (@catvalente.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 10:32 AM

Weather Report

It's 38 degrees here today, so winter has arrived. At least briefly. Tomorrow and the next day we're looking at highs in the 70s.

Honestly right now all I care about is no snow and ice for moving day, whenever that turns out to be.

BlackBoard Ultra

I finished Blackboard Ultra training today. Six hours of my life which I will never get back.

The thing about Blackboard, it's entirely counter-intuitive. Once you know how something works, you can usually do the thing. But there's no way to figure out, from looking at the screen, how a thing works. You have to have someone stand behind you and explain what to do next.

WTF designed this burning trash heap of a program?

Moving Is as Traumatic as....

I had my first moving trauma dream last night, and we're not even close to closing on the house, so that was fun.

I can't remember what moving is as traumatic as. The loss of a parent? Divorce? Having your entire life burn down?

We want to move, I can't wait to move, and I am still having stress.

George Takei on BlueSky

Speaking out against attacks on the trans community:

I would like to speak up today for the trans community. You see, I know a bit of what it’s like to be politically scapegoated. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, suddenly anyone in America who had any amount of Japanese ancestry became suspect. Politicians preyed upon ignorance and fear. /1

— George Takei (@georgetakei.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 12:19 PM

This one especially: 

They hope that by targeting one group, the rest of us will cower. Such an environment gives an open invitation to fascism. It leads to discrimination, then segregation, then internment, and still worse. A compassionate, good people would not permit this to happen. We will not be divided against /6

— George Takei (@georgetakei.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 12:30 PM

 

Continuing to Buy A House

Buying a house continues to be an endless series of papers to sign and things to transmit. Apparently after the 2008 bubble, regulations increased markedly on buying houses. So there's a whole list of things you have to do, and things you can't (or shouldn't) do, and I have to prove that I have or have not done all these things, with documentation. Like, I shouldn't have opened a credit account over the past year (which I haven't, except I sort of have, because we bought the cars, but apparently car loans are different, because the lender calmed down once I pointed out what that was).

And we've got to have an inspection, and an assessment, which is fine. And we have to prove we actually have the down payment, and that it isn't money I've borrow via a credit card (yikes, do people do that?), and so on.

Still, the process is processing. We may actually be living in Fayetteville by the middle of December.

The kitchen

Another view of the yard

This is Great

 If only we had something like this here, instead of whiny little bootlickers sucking Trump's ass.

Māori MPs briefly suspended the Aotearoa parliament’s attempts to reinterpret their founding treaty in the most bad ass use of the Haka I’ve ever seen.

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— Ashley Fairbanks (@ziibiing.com) November 14, 2024 at 9:23 AM

Trump Appoints Elon Musk

...as an expert in cost-cutting, to cut government waste. Oddly enough, the things Musk plans to cut will directly benefit his own empire. 

Musk’s appointment was criticized by Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights NGO that challenged several of Trump’s first-term policies. “Musk not only knows nothing about government efficiency and regulation, his own businesses have regularly run afoul of the very rules he will be in position to attack,” co-president Lisa Gilbert said in a statement.

Trump and Musk, designing a car: "We don't need fuel efficiency, because global warming is a myth! We don't need seatbelts or airbags, because we're not going to hit anything! We don't need brakes -- we're not going to stop!"

Winnowing Down

We haven't closed on the house yet, but I've started prepping for the move anyway.

The first step is purging things we don't need or can do without. This is made easier by the fact that we moved less than five years ago, so we haven't had time to build up too much crap. It's made harder by the fact that Dr. Skull and I are possession-incompatible. Nothing makes me happier than getting rid of crap I'll never use again; whereas Dr. Skull wants to keep everything, just in case.

In case of what? In case he might need something later. This applies to fraying t-shirts, shoes he hasn't worn in ten years, mixer accessories for a mixer we no longer have, cushions for the lawn furniture that is not going with us (it belongs to the house), old sheets for a bed we no longer own....

I'm also looking at moving checklists online. Argh, this is complicated.

the yard in the new house -- beyond the fence is the green space I was talking about

The Joys of Living in a Red (Nanny) State

So I wanted to make a pot roast for dinner tonight, to assuage my anxiety, and the recipe calls for half a cup of red wine.

We only have white wine. And rum.

And I could run out and buy some red wine, but sadly I live in a benighted state which does not allow anyone to buy wine on Sunday, because Jesus. Even though Jesus was the guy famous for turning water into wine. 

I could use red wine vinegar, but Dr. Skull says that won't work.

Truth, Though, Honestly

I know we're not supposed to assume that people who disagree with us are dupes and fools, but honestly, anyone who voted for Trump at this point is a dupe or a fool or a bigot or all three. (Though really I'm leaning hard on bigot and dupe at this point.) 

We've Made an Offer on a House

 It's 1600 square feet, and on a quiet street. The property backs on a green space. We're about two miles from where the kid is currently living, and a short drive from all our other family up there.

We really like the house, and the price is right. Fingers crossed!

2016 All Over Again

I guess not exactly, since we all thought we would defeat him in 2016, and this time we weren't so sure.

I feel just as sick and betrayed, though. 

And they voted for him based on lies, lies they knew were lies. They voted for bigotry. They voted for white supremacy. They voted against immigration, against decent behavior, against kindness. They voted for the ugly lies that will allow them to feel that they are virtuous. That's the world they want.

I've seen interviews with Trump subjects claiming they voted based on the high price of gas and blah blah blah, but that has nothing to do with it. His promises to hurt immigrants and people of color and LGBQT people and women -- that's what they want. That's what they were voting for.

When the leopard starts eating their faces, will they realize they made a mistake? They may, but they will never admit it.

I'd say we need to keep fighting, but what good has that done us? Since the Right Wing hate machine put Reagan in power, it's been one long slide to this moment. I see no evidence that anything has or will change. This is the country they want, with more working poor, more ignorance, and more misery, and the climate growing worse and worse -- more hurricanes, floods, heat waves and droughts -- while the very few hyper-wealthy getting richer and richer and richer, and the Right Wing liars continue to line their pockets with the wealth stolen from the American people. And to write laws making that legal, and to put judges on the bench which will back those laws.

This is the world they want, so here we are.

What's Your Game Plan for Tomorrow?

For today, I'm trying really hard not to doom-scroll.

For tomorrow, I plan to stay off the internet except for work, and to track my kid as he flies back from the West Coast (where he and the boyfriend have been attending a wedding). I will read and I will grade papers and I will breathe very, very deeply. I may take a Xanax I have squirreled away for an emergency. There is also chocolate.

See you on the other side.

Oh My God

I think we once more have access to the internet at our house.

 

STILL OUT

The internet has now been out at my house, and in a two block radius around my house, since Thursday afternoon. (Almost three days now, but who's counting?) 

AT&T sends me useless updates, or lying updates, every 24 hours or so. They have no idea, currently, when I will once again have internet service.

As I said elsewhere, I am finding out what people did before the internet. A lot of reading and baking, apparently. I read an excellent book by Isaac Fellman all in one day, and two books by Naomi Novik, and I have baked apple crisp and banana muffins, and am currently making baguettes.

My kid says at least I can't doom scroll. There is that.

Internet STILL Out

 Once again, I have had to drive up to my miserably hot office to access the internet and grade my students' submissions. 

At least it's cool enough today that I can open the window and get the temperature in here down from 74 to 70. But still, UGH.

AT&T says they have no idea when internet will be restored to my area.

More Whining

The internet has been down at our house, and in a three block radius around our house, since yesterday.

This is torture.

I've had to come up to my very hot office at dawn to grade. UGH.

Whining

Why does it have to be so hot in my office? It's SO HOT.

I had the window open for a while, which helped, but now the leaf-blowing guys are out, and the exhaust from those things is unbearable, never mind the racket.

What exactly was wrong with rakes again?

Argh, So Much Anxiety

I'm having so much anxiety about this election. Argh.

News Sources I'm Reading

 I used to subscribe to the New York Times, but their policies became so openly transphobic that I dropped their subscription. After that, I subscribed to the Washington Post, until this past week, when they let their billionaire owner dictate their content, and became, thus, no better than Fox News. I cancelled my subscription and told them why.

Now I have subscribed to The Boston Globe and The Star Tribune. I also read The Guardian, mostly for what it has to say about international events.

If democracy is to survive, the nation needs reliable, trustworthy, non-partisan journalism. That doesn't come free. People have to be willing to pay for it. But also, the newspapers themselves must be willing to stand up to billionaires and wanna-be fascists. 

As I said in 2020, I didn't think the downfall of America would be quite this boring and depressing. But here we are.

Scalzi Endorses Harris

I mean, no surprise, but his post is worth reading nonetheless.

A pull quote:

I am deeply tired of Donald Trump and everything about his shitty, selfish, criminal and hateful self, a man whose only lasting legacy to this point is encouraging the worst parts of the American public to free themselves of any social bond to their neighbors and to be be just as awful as their idol. Kamala Harris fucking laughs, and seems happy, and actually appears to like people, not just tolerate people she needs something from. It would be too much to say she embodies the better idea of what the US could be — that’s a lot to put on anyone — but I will say that at least when I look at her, I know that there’s a chance that the better idea of what the US could be is possible. I can’t look at Trump at this point and see anything but hate and anger, and the worst of what we are as a nation.

I agree 110%, obviously. And when I look at Trump supporters, that's what I see too: hate, anger, lies, and cowardice. They are America at its worst. 

I have voted. Dr. Skull has voted. The kid and his fiance have voted. If you haven't voted, do it now.

I am so anxious, y'all. 

Ten days, now

The Drought

The drought is so bad here, I put two big ceramic bowls (Heywood's water dishes) out in the yard and I'm keeping them filled with water. 

So now my yard is filled with birds -- bright red cardinals, sparrows, doves, mocking birds, and dozens of others I don't recognize. The squirrels like the water too, but the birds keep yelling at them and chasing them away.

I might get bird seed next.

I Voted Early

 Straight blue ticket, as you might imagine. I voted against the casino and for medical marijuana.

Y'all, I Gotta Tell Someone

My credit score is so good.

It comes from paying off my credit card four years ago now, and then not taking on any debt (or none I didn't pay off within six months) until I bought this car. Taking out a car loan actually improves your credit score, which, who knew? Also no foreclosures or evictions! Go me!

The loan guy actually congratulated me. 

Four Years Ago Gas Was Realllllly Cheap

It's like a thing among MAGAts to pose the question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

I am, but only because COVID killed my father and I inherited all of his money. (He had dementia, but it was getting COVID that killed him.)

Which is the thing they're forgetting -- four years ago we were in the middle of a pandemic that has killed over a million Americans so far.

I suppose I shouldn't say "forgetting." They deny the epidemic ever happened, and if it did happen, it wasn't any worse than the flu (which killed somewhere around fifty million people in 1918), or if it was worse than the flu, then it only killed the weak. Like my father. Or immunocompromised people, those losers. Or diabetics. Or....

THERE WERE SEMIS FILLED WITH DEAD BODIES BECAUSE THE MORGUES WERE OVERFLOWING.

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— L O L G O P (@lolgop.bsky.social) October 22, 2024 at 6:33 AM

And that's not even taking into account the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the attack on the Capitol which he orchestrated, his malfeasance, the separation of children from their parents at the border, his fucking the Supreme Court for the next 40 years, the eight trillion he added to the national debt, the inflation that kicked off due to his mishandling of the epidemic, his encouraging the Right to become vaccine deniers, his endless lying....

All of which MAGAts also deny, so it's no good trying to point it out.

WOOOOO

I am pre-approved for a house loan. Now all we gotta do is find one in Fayetteville in our price range.

Cat Pictures

 This picture of Baby Jasper, circa 2010, came up in my memories today:

The Real Voter Fraud

...is coming from the Right. No surprise there.

I Have to Get Out of This Town

My neighbor has put Trump signs all over his yard.

This is the neighbor who kept stopping me to chat when I was taking my walks in the neighborhood. I knew he was annoying, but I didn't know he was an idiot and a bigot.

Ugh.

ETA this story from the Guardian: "A Third of Americans Agree with Trump That Immigrants 'Poison America's Blood.'"

The poll also found nearly one in four Trump supporters, 23%, believe if he loses the election that he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.

And this:

What I'm Listening to Now

I've been listening to audio books while I exercise and while I'm trying to fall asleep (highly recommended, by the way). I've got the Hoopla app which lets me borrow these for free -- if your library is a Hoopla subscriber, you can probably do that too.

This are my recent favorites:

Kathrine Addison, Goblin Emperor, narrated by Kyle McCarley

I love Addison's books about this goblin/elf world anyway (there are also ghouls and dragons), and McCarley does a fine job narrating. This are books where the main characters acts with decency, intelligence, and as much justice as they can manage, despite being from categories -- like being half-goblin -- and past circumstances (being treated unjustly, and even abused) which make that difficult. Addison's world is richly developed, with several cultures, religions, and multiple languages. If you're listening to it instead of reading it that might be a problem -- the book has an appendix of characters, places, and words. But since I've read this one a couple of times already, I'm having no problem following it. The story in this one concerns Maia, the fourth and half-goblin son of the emperor of Elfland, who has been relegated to a distant hunting lodge with an abusive guardian, rather than being brought up at the court, since no one thought he would ever inherit the empire. Then his father and all his brothers are killed when their airship crashes, and Maia has to take over. This is my current go-to-sleep book.

Shirley Jackson, Raising Demons, Life Among the Savages, narrated by Lesa Lockford and Kirsten Potter

These are Jackson's two books about bringing up her four children from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. They're kind of twee but also charming and occasionally very funny. Jackson herself called them a "disrespectful memoir of my children." Lockford and Potter do an excellent job with the narration. Some of this material was also published in various women's magazines before being reworked for the two books. If you've only read Jackson's horror novels and stories, these are entirely different, and a lot of fun.

I also listened to these while going to sleep. They're perfect for that -- nothing bad happens, and very little is at stake.

Naomi Novik, The Temeraire novels, narrated by Simon Vance

I read the first two of these a long time ago, and then our library didn't have the rest and that was when we didn't have any money, so I just didn't read any of the others. So now I'm listening to them while I exercise. Vance is an excellent narrator, so much so that I sometimes exercise just a little longer so I can find out what happens in the scene. If you don't know these books, they're about a minor member of the nobility during the Napoleonic wars, who is serving as a ship's captain when he accidentally "harnesses" a dragon, and thus must leave the navy and join the aerial corps -- a very different kind of service indeed. The bond between him and his dragon, Temeraire, makes him willing to put up with the disruption of his life. A knowledge of the history of the time helps, but I know only what I've learned from reading Georgette Heyer novels and Jane Austen novels, and I'm pretty well able to follow it. These are the first audiobooks I've listened to without reading the novel first, and I'm enjoying them a lot. 

Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News? narrated by Ellen Archer

This is my favorite of the Jackson Brodie novels, and Archer either has or does an excellent Scottish accent. This is the first novel Reggie is in -- she's about sixteen in this book, and her mother has just died, leaving her an orphan (though apparently legally of age in Scotland?). There's some violent deaths in the background, but mostly in the novel we see Reggie and her mentor Dr. Jo as well as Jackson Brodie and Louise, a Scottish police officer, handling things as well as they can, while also (both Jackson and Louise, who are hot for each other but married to other people and thus unable to admit the attraction to each other.)

The Scottish accent is at least 20% of why I liked this one so much. But also Reggie is a great character. I listened to this one while I exercised and it make the process practically enjoyable.

Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries, narrated by Kevin Free

Also bedtime books. These are about a construct security unit who hacks its governor module and becomes a rogue unit, but instead of murdering people watches a lot of media instead. Then he makes friends with a giant space ship and...oh, who doesn't know the plot of these already? Free is less good in the first volume, but he rapidly improves, and since I know these so well by now they're a good going to sleep listen.

Please More Xanax

I am so anxious about this election.

FB is full of people spreading lies about immigrants, crime, and what a whore Harris is. I've had to ban myself from the site because I keep trying to reason with them. You cannot reason with Trump supporters. They are disconnected from reality, and they are proud of that. They are dupes, liars, and fools. There is no way to reason them out of positions they did not use reason to get themselves into.

I'm just going to read SF, give money to the Harris/Waltz campaign, and try to write more. Also, I'm so glad we're moving out of this benighted town. 

What's This?!

We have a frost advisory tonight!

Apparently we have gone straight from summer to winter, skipping fall entirely.

Oh No Fall Break Is Almost Over

I really enjoyed this fall break -- it finally has cooled down here in the Fort, and I am able to sleep. We saw the kid twice, and I figured out how to make pinhead oatmeal in my rice cooker. I also read a lot of science fiction and wrote reviews for some of it. Plus, I caught up on all my grading.

Sadly, tomorrow I must return to teaching. What a good job this would be except for the teaching*.

*A joke, obviously. I love teaching.

Fall Arrives

 Fall has arrived in earnest. We have all the windows and doors open, and the cats are very much enjoying their screened porch.

There might even be frost on Wednesday.

What I'm Reading Now

This doesn't include books I am reading for reviews -- that explains the lack of science fiction here.

Richard Powers, Playground

I don't know how I've gotten this far into my career as an extreme reader without encountering Richard Powers, but I am delighted I have finally stumbled across him. I was about fifty pages into his latest novel, Playground, when I started saying how have a missed this guy? I looked him up on Wikipedia and learned he has won the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and a McArthur grant. How did I miss all that?

Anyway! Playground is a great book, a near-future about four people whose lives intertwine. There's a lot about oceans, and about AI. The ending left me bemused, and I can't decide if I like it, but the book is very much worth reading. I've put all his other books (or those my library has) on hold.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Father Time

I've loved Hrdy's work for literal decades now. She's a biological anthropologist who focuses on what babies do to parents and to their communities. Here, she looks mostly at what babies do to fathers -- that is, what being around babies, taking care of babies, and interacting with babies does to the neurological and hormonal makeup of men. (These don't even have to be the actual fathers of the babies.) 

Conversely, she looks at what not being around babies does to men, in those cultures (like her own "tribe" of 1950s Texas) where men are kept from interacting with or taking care of babies for whatever reason. (In Texas, because that was "women's work.") Spoilers: a lack of contact with babies spells bad news for men, which frankly explains a lot about toxic masculinity.

This is a fascinating book which ranges through world cultures and looks not just at homo sapiens but also at primates, rats, and other animals. It's not just enlightening but, like all of Hrdy's books, extremely readable. Highly recommended.

Liana Moriarty, Here One Moment

Moriarty has written some brilliant books -- my favorite by her is What Alice Forgot. She also has three or four books that left me cold. This one, Here One Moment, is about a woman, Cherry, who suffers a kind of episode on a plane flight, and goes up and down the aisles, telling everyone the age they will die and what they will die of. Most passengers treat it as a joke, though others are freaked out, including one mother of an infant who is told her infant will die at age seven, by drowning.

This happens in the first pages of the book. The rest of the book follows the woman herself and several of the people on the plane, as the predictions begin to come true. It's mostly about the past and currents lives of these characters, and it is really well done. Cherry turns out to be the daughter of a professional psychic who has had some psychic moments herself. She does not remember the episode on the plane, and insists she cannot see the future; that no one should take her predictions serious. The narrative itself plays with the idea of whether the future can be seen, whether the future is fixed, and how we struggled to control our lives. I liked this one a lot. 

My Kid Does Art

This was actually done for a presentation he and his group are doing for a seminar:

But honestly, it's beautiful.

"Of course I've Got Sources!"

So in case you missed it, the latest MAGAt conspiracy theory is that "the government" is creating these huge hurricanes on purpose, so that they can aim them at Red States, and kill all the people who would otherwise be voting for Trump.

On one of the sites I was glancing at, a person made the claim that the government was indeed controlling the weather, that this was a "proven fact."

People asked this person for their sources. Now usually when that happens, your average MAGAt is confused, since they have no idea that people are supposed to support their claims with credible sources. Usually MAGAts will then call anyone who asks for evidence a sheep, brainwashed by liberals, and so on.

This person replied, though, giving their source: When they were a child, a weatherman their family knew got drunk and said it was true, that the government did indeed control the weather.

That, for your MAGAt, constitutes credible evidence.

Which is why they're voting for Trump. He tells them stuff, like that Biden and Harris are giving all the FEMA money to immigrants, or that FEMA is refusing the help Republicans, and they believe it, because Trump said it was true, so it must be.

How can we reason with people who don't know what a credible source is, or how to evaluate evidence? "My uncle's girlfriend's daddy said it, so I know it's true!"

(One) Trouble with Religious Students

Living where I do, I often have Evangelical students in my classes, who have been homeschooled or sent to schools run by Evangelicals. They've been taught to view and understand everything through a single lens, that of Eschatological Christ as they have been taught he is. 

Frequently they have also been taught that anyone trying to get them to use another lens is demonic, or an agent of Satan, or at the very least misguided. Their job is not to learn to see new ways, but to hold fast to this single way.

It can be difficult to get them to understand global literature when this is the case. They want to view, for example, The Bacchai through their specific sort of Christian lens. Since the play is about Dionysus and the foible of refusing to accept Dionysus as a god, and the vengeance visited on mortals who think they understand the gods better than the gods do, this can cause difficulties.

Why are such people in a university, if they don't want to read new things and learn new ideas? Well, they see the degree as a job qualification. That is, like many people in America today, their parents and probably they themselves see the university as a trade school. They are here to get a degree as a qualification for a job, and to avoid being educated while they do it.

Not all Evangelical students, of course. Not all Jehovah's Witnesses either, to name another religion that is popular in this area. I've had some excellent students from religious backgrounds. But those are students with enough imagination and intelligence to learn to see with different lenses despite their religion. (Pretty much never because of their religion, at least in my experience. Christianity in Arkansas does not encourage learning as a virtue, or intelligence or curiosity either.)

FALL, FINALLY

This morning it is actually cold -- 56 degrees when I woke up.

FINALLY.

More Conservatives Lies

The new lies I've seen coming from the Right have to do with the destruction in North Carolina, and the response to it.

From the left, I am hearing about the help flooding into the region from ordinary citizens as well as the National Guard and FEMA. Some of the stories literally bring tears to my eyes.

Go here for more on this:

Disaster compassion is real. Here are some things I've seen today and yesterday in Western North Carolina:

— Margaret Killjoy 🏴 (@magpiekilljoy) October 2, 2024

Meanwhile, the Right is busy spewing their usual hate and lies:

• FEMA is broke because they gave all their money to immigrants 
• People who try to volunteer in NC are being arrested by FEMA/federal agents
• FEMA will only give victims of the hurricane $750 dollars 
• Biden's government is controlling the path of the hurricane, they sent it to NC on purpose, because NC is a red state
• FEMA won't give you help if you're white -- their new DEI initiatives mean they have to give all their money to immigrants and brown people
• FEMA is confiscating any money or aid sent to NC
• There's no money for disaster response because Biden sent all the money to Ukraine

See this meme, being shared by Trump supporters, for a sample of these lies:

It's gotten so bad that FEMA has set up a site to deal with rumors. But from what I've seen, any attempt to counter rumors is useless. When people try to talk sense to Rightwing weirdos, what they get is a response like, "You're just brainwashed by the Fake News Media," or "Do your own research, stop trusting federal lies."

Evidence and facts and good sources do not matter in the least to Trump supporters. That's why they're Trump supporters.

ETA: Even Republicans have had enough (though Trump supporters keep on ticking, as you can see in the comments):

local republican representatives in north carolina setting the record straight. pic.twitter.com/lgzXLSmBUV

— emily may (@emilykmay) October 4, 2024

Grading Papers

I have papers coming in. They're mostly good, but when they're bad, they're really bad. I have to bribe myself to keep working with chocolate and popcorn.

I also have to keep reminding myself: This is the second to last time I will have to do this.

Retirement can't come soon enough.

The VP Debate was Depressing

Partly this was because Vance lied nonstop and was only fact-checked once (about the immigrants in Springfield being legal immigrants); partly it was because Vance is just better at debates than Walz, who was visibly nervous, and misspoke or garbled his answers. 

It's also depressing when we consider the possibility that if Trump is elected, we could end up with Vance as president. 

Over on the cesspool that is Twitter, Rod Dreher was gloating over how well Vance did (despite Vance bearing false witness against immigrants, a thing that you think would bother Dreher, since his schtick is that he's such a Christian) because, says Dreher, at least Trump will get rid of trans people.

(1) Wow

(2) That's the religious right for you, folks. Forget anything Christ actually said or told them to do. Instead, they're going to obsess about trans people and abortion, even though Christ said nothing about either of them.

I've learned better than to argue with these moral monsters, though. They could not care less about facts, evidence, or anything Christ said. What they want is power, and they will do and say anything to get and hold onto that power.

My Kid in Graduate School

The kid is loving graduate school. From his newsletter on Patreon:

Grad school is going great! I'm working on an application for the Biological Anthropologist meetings in the spring! I'm having the time of my life! By that I mean like in the Left Hand of Darkness when they are traveling through the icy wastes and having an extremely hard time but there's joy there! I love it! I feel like that one summer in high school when the AC broke and it was 104 outside and my mom, the cats, and I were all dying, but the family dog was thriving! He loved it! I'm the dog! Also god I finally met people IRL I actually want to talk to and be friends with! Yay grad school!!!!!

You can support his Patreon here, btw.

Ruminations

I started watching The Shining last night, because it was there, and I had to nope out after an hour (horror that depends on claustrophobia is not my jam), but before I reached the nope-out point I had time to notice was an absolute asshole the Jack Torrance character is. 

I guess that's toxic masculinity, and I'm glad the movie notices what a monster he is even before they go to the hotel, but what hit me the most this time is how miserable the father in this little family is, and how his hatred for his family and his misery at his life affects his family. Both the wife, Wendy, and the kid, Danny, have learned to lie to the father -- and to some degree to themselves -- in order to escape his emotional and physical attacks. The scene where Jack holds Danny on his lap and makes him say he loves his father and he loves the hotel and he's having a good time is just so horrible. 

Danny has to invent an imaginary friend just so he can speak the truth (Tony lives in his mouth, but he swallows him down whenever anyone tries to see him). Wendy desperately tries to keep Jack happy, hopelessly trying to predict the storms of his temper. Both of them, when they can escape Jack, are more or less competent, healthy people; but when he's around they cease to be able to function.

There's a saying that families are only as sane as their sickest member. What this movie does is take a family that is desperately trying to survive their sickest member and lock them in a bottle episode. That's what's terrifying. The ghosts and blood and all are just images of that terror.

Stolen from PZ Myers

 This is how it happened, I was there:

But to be fair, he stole it from Tom the Dancing Bug

Mitt Romney Won't Endorse Kamala Harris

Which I guess is no surprise. He says he wants to remain politically viable in Utah, which apparently he could not do if he admitted out loud that Harris is a better candidate than Trump. Is this just because she's a Democrat? Or is it because she's brown and a woman? 

Being brown and a democrat would be enough to kill you here in Arkansas, as we saw in the last election when our voters put Sarah Huckster Sanders in the office rather than vote for a black physicist with a D beside his name.

And it's not that they thought Sanders was more competent. They knew she was a joke, a bootlicker, and a thief. But at least she wasn't a black man who supported progressive causes.

I think the woman part also matters in Utah, which like Idaho adheres to rigid gender roles; but the brown and democrat parts probably matter just as much.

Harris is ahead in the polls right now, but as we know from 2016, that's not a guarantee of anything. These next six weeks are going to be painful.

Weather in Arkansas

 Now that's better:

Highs in the 70s for the next ten days, and the lows are getting lower.

Kamala Harris Answers Questions

 Found this on YouTube:

Eight Days until October

It's eight days until October and we're still getting days with highs in the 90s. Worse, the air is like flannel and steam, and the pollen count leaves my throat raw.

Please can we have some fall now please.

 

A Christian Nation My Big White

I've been reading Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's Father Time, which is a companion volume to her two books Mother Nature and Mothers and Others. Hrdy is a biological anthropologist who looks at parenting, including alloparenting. Specifically, she looks at how human evolution was shaped by our need to first produce and then keep alive fat little expensive babies, which have to be carted about for two or three years and then provisioned for ten or fifteen more years.

That's a huge investment in calories and time, and if we're going to compete as a species, we need to produce, and keep alive, three or four children per woman. Hrdy's overall thesis is that this is impossible without the help of alloparents (which is to say, people besides the parents who are willing to invest time in and to provide calories for the babies). In this new book, Father Time, Hrdy repeats that thesis, but looks more specifically at fathers, and at men, and at how being around babies shapes human males. She also looks briefly at the effect not being around babies has on human males. She's talking about the biological effects -- brain growth, hormones, that kind of thing -- as well as the cultural effects.

This is a fascinating book, and I encourage everyone to read it. Among other things, Hrdy looks at how our current generation of fathers and men have changed and are changing; she talks about how grandparents and fictive kin are encouraged in various societies to help provision and care for children; and she looks at what happens when a society focuses on the rights and honor of men and the ability of men to control women, rather than on those babies and the need to care for them and keep them alive.

Which brings me to my secondary point -- the "Pro-Life" "Christian" culture which our current "conservatives" keep claiming as their own.

Oddly, this culture has very little to say about caring for or feeding children, except that parents should not expect anyone to help them feed or take care of those children. Its "pro-life" aspect, as we all have seen, is focused entirely on forcing people to continue pregnancies against their will. That's got almost nothing to do with babies and almost everything to do with controlling women (and people the GOP defines as women).

Our current GOP and "conservative" culture are focused -- well, they're focused on wealth concentration and capitalism, obvious, capitalism being their true religion. 

But the "tradwife" movement and the "pro-life" movement and the push to remake the US into a Christian nation, ruled by the laws of a very few sects of Christianity -- those are all about control of people the GOP considers inferior, which is to say women, immigrants, poor people, and LGBTQ people.

You can tell because none of what they are trying to force the rest of us to accept has anything to do with provisioning people or helping families. You can also tell by the lies they tell and the laws they want to impose on us, all of which are about control, and none of which are about helping their fellow citizens.

Haitians are eating dogs and cats? That's about trying to control brown people, poor people, and immigrants, by bearing false witness, by the way, which is one of those ten commandments they idolize.

Democrats want to make it legal to kill newborn babies? That's about controlling the bodies and fertility of those inferiors.

Democrats are coming for your guns? The right of (certain) men to control others through violence shall not be infringed.

The things Christ actually said, which have to do with wealth redistribution, feeding the hungry, giving to the poor, and staying with and taking care of the family (which is why Christ forbids divorce), those are things our current "conservatives" not only ignore but actively treat as anathema. You should see my local FB page when they talk about beggars. It's not at all Christlike, that's all I have to say.

Christ, by the way, had nothing at all to say about gay people, or trans people, or abortion, for that matter. The only thing he had to say about violating sexual taboos has to do with not throwing stones. Our current conservatives do nothing BUT throw stones. 

They don't want Christianity. They want control. They're the Christian version of the Taliban, and everyone who looks at them can see it.

Weather Report

This Saturday coming up is the last day of summer, and highs will be in the 90s.

Shortly after that it looks like a front is coming through, and highs will be in the 80s and 70s.

I need winter please.

Happy 20th Birthday to My Blog

My blog is 20 years old this week. I started writing it in September 2004. 

If it was a person, it would be old enough to vote, old enough to buy a gun, but not old enough to buy cigarettes.

My Wonderful Kid Makes Me Very Happy

The kid sent me a text today, saying he thinks he might have to get a PhD after all. 

He says he loves graduate school and never wants to leave it.

He's also turned out to be an excellent teacher, just like his mama.

Whining

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm on campus from 6:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. That's just too LOOOOONG.

I come that early so I can drink coffee and prep. My actual first class is at 8:00 a.m. So I could come a little later, but on the other hand, I can't teach without coffee and prep, so.

I've got three classes in a row from 8:00 until 12:15, and then a break until 2:00, when my fourth class starts. I also have an online class, which I am always working on. It's a lot, but it's a schedule which gives me a four-day weekend to spend writing, so I guess it's worth it. 

I'm just really, really tired by the time I hit that fourth class.

Only four weeks until fall break.

LOL

Maybe my favorite moment from the debate last night:

Trump: She’s going to take your gun

Kamala: Bitch I have a gun

— Adam (@adamgreattweet) September 11, 2024

Don't get me wrong, assault weapons should definitely be banned; but I've listened for years now to MAGAts squeal about how they're going to win the civil war that they are convinced is coming because they "have all the guns," and I just shake my head. 

There may be a couple of Far-Right white nationalists with a ton of weapons, for whatever bizarre reason; but I know a lot of leftists who have weapons. 

I mean, granted, it's Arkansas, but still.

This was also a stellar moment. It came right after Harris noted that people were leaving Trump's rallies because they were so bored by his lies. He lost it right then and started shouting this kind of thing, and he never got it back:

You can literally pinpoint the exact moment where Trump lost the debate. pic.twitter.com/yzNV9BCpu9

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) September 11, 2024

Reminded me of this moment, which is probably why Harris's team had her do it: 

Yes Obama made a dick joke during his DNC speech. https://t.co/m1rCWSIXVR pic.twitter.com/9QV14XrSvC

— Nick ✨ (@slothropsmap) August 21, 2024

My Kid Does Art

This is off a photo I took, probably around 1988, of my brother sitting on a rock in Northern California. I forget just what river that is. Somewhere in the Sequoia Mountains, I think.

Watercolor on paper.

What's This?

It was 58 degrees when I woke up this morning, and only 60 degrees now. That's cool enough to open the windows and doors. The cats are very happy.

How It Works

So I'm on this Fort Smith site on FB, which group members use to post questions, comments, and general news about the city. It's a cesspool of meanness and spite, so I usually don't read what's been posted there. I should really delete my membership to the page.

But then I would have missed this! On Wednesday of last week, where someone was asking why the Singaporean flag* was being flown at the air force base, someone said (as a joke) that it was because Fort Smith was going to be made a sanctuary city.

It was clearly a joke -- no one from Singapore is a refugee, for fuck's sake -- but by the next day someone had posted a question to the page, about whether Fort Smith was really going to become a sanctuary city.

And today people are stating, as a fact, that Fort Smith is a sanctuary city, and that's why we have so many homeless people and so much crime.

Misinformation becomes data becomes worldview. Welcome to your Red State experience.

*Here's why the flag was actually being flown

It's Official

I submitted my intention to retire letter, and it has been officially accepted. Last day of work: May 13, 2025. I can see the end from here.

When the kid was little, and we were driving back and forth to Fayetteville, or to Clarksville for our writing group, there would often be a moment when, as exhausted as we were, Dr. Skull and I would begin to feel like we would never reach home.

As we passed a mileage marker (49 miles to Fort Smith), one or the other of us would say, "Fort Smith is getting further and further away."

The kid would often say, "It's not! What do you mean? It's NOT."

Now he says he understands what we mean. He was coming home from teaching on the bus and he was like, "Home is getting further and further away."

That's me right now. Retirement is getting further and further away.

Weather in Arkansas

It's September 6 and we're supposed to get some cooler weather tomorrow: like a low of 57, and a high of 82,

After that, it's back up in the high 80s for the next ten days. 

It's almost fall. Two more weeks. I need cold weather.

I Am Very Excited Today Because

I'm very excited today because not only does Natasha Pulley have a new book coming out, but also I scored a review copy. 

Second go! This is the US cover of The Hymn To Dionysus, which will be out next year. I feel like a purple book is a good book. pic.twitter.com/SFJieAXw45

— Natasha Pulley (@natasha_pulley) August 20, 2024

Reading 1950s Science Fiction

George O. Smith,  The Fourth 'R' 

I picked this one up at a used bookstore, because it was cheap and the cover looked interesting.

This cover

I'd never read any George O. Smith before, though Wikipedia tells me he comes from the Golden Age of science fiction -- Isaac Asimov's buddy, contemporary of Heinlein, worked with John Campbell (and apparent ran away with Campbell's wife -- spicy!).

This book was published in 1959, and is about a kid whose parents invent a machine which educates the child from toddlerhood on, packing data into his young brain. This is apparently all it takes to give someone an education -- they just gotta know a lot of facts. Once you know a lot of facts, like the times table for instance, and a bunch of grammatical terms, and who Aristotle is, why, you're automatically a genius. That's all it takes: having facts crammed into you.

Smith doesn't think much of the educational system of his day, which he shares with many other SF writers from that era. When little Jimmy is sent to school, for instance, he runs into trouble with a "progressive" teacher who thinks all children were created equal, and "had to stay that way." In the early pages of the book, Smith also takes a swipe at John Dewey. 

Dewey had some influence on the educational system of the time, and pissed off a lot of conservatives. Dewey thought that for American democracy to work, we had to educate even people who weren't brilliant geniuses. As I recall, Harper Lee also hated Dewey's influence on education. In To Kill a Mockingbird, she has the young narrator react scornfully to her teacher's attempt to teach all the children in the class to read. Because Scout herself can already read, she's bored, and this is somehow a flaw in the educational system. Fuck them other kids, am I right? 

This is probably the weakest part of The Fourth R. Knowing facts doesn't make someone a genius, or turn a five year old into an adult. And that's what Smith is claiming here -- it's not that Jimmy Holden is a genius and the brain machine just educates him really fast. No, he's a typical kid, and the brain machine makes him a genius, the equivalent at five of someone in their early 20s. We know this is so because later in the book, Jimmy uses the brain machine to make an extremely ordinary seven year old, Martha, into a genius just like him.

Well, not just like him. Martha is a girl, see, so she's not that interested in math. Instead she's interested in learning all about how to run a home. Like sewing and cooking. You know, that stuff that girl geniuses really love.

Anyway, before Martha shows up, Jimmy is a victim of his evil godfather, Paul Brennan, who murders Jimmy's parents and then becomes Jimmy's guardian and the executor of his estate. Brennan mistreats little Jimmy by taking away his Meccano set and making him play with blocks instead. This is because Brennan wants the brain machine all for himself, so he can make money with it. The wanting to make money with it is not the problem, as Smith makes clear: the problem is that the machine belongs to Jimmy, because his parents invented it, so only Jimmy should be making money from it.

 Jimmy foils Brennan's plan by destroying the brain machine. Good thing Jimmy's parents didn't leave blueprints, am I right?

Anyway, Brennan is trying to blackmail Jimmy into building a new brain machine for him. Jimmy knows how to do this, because the machine taught him how. I guess you could say that's how Jimmy's parents stored the blueprints, in Jimmy's brain. 

There's some talk by Jimmy's grandparents into beating him into compliance, but Brennan doesn't want to use physical torture, since that would leave marks which Jimmy could complain about. So he sets out to bore him into submission instead. Clearly no court will care about Jimmy being forced to read Little Golden books instead of Aristotle, or being given blocks and finger paints instead of oil paints and canvases. 

Again, knowing facts in conflated with having knowledge -- even though Jimmy is five, he can and wants to read Aristotle, and paint with oils, simply because the brain machine put data into his brain. This is all it takes to make a genius, embedding facts. Later, when Jimmy is ten and his Pygmalion playmate Martha is nine, Martha's mother, Janet, is fine with leaving a nine and ten year old on their own for three or four months, because they've been made into geniuses by the brain machine. 

You gotta wonder if Smith had ever met a genius, never mind a ten year old genius.

Anyway, fleeing Brennan, Jimmy sets up housekeeping on his own, funding his existence by writing science fiction. (It was, in fact, possible to make a living writing in the 1950s, so I won't mock Brennan here.)

He needs to hire Martha's mother Janet as a housekeeper to act as cover; he chooses her because she has a young girl, which he knows will make her desperate enough to stay in the job. He convinces her to let him hook Martha up to the machine because he needs a companion, and also he thinks that will be yet another thing that will keep Janet working for him. He offers to hook Mom up to the machine, but she's not interested. All she wants to do is have the machine embed some "pet recipes" into her brain. Because (1) she's cooking without knowing those recipes and (b) that's what women like to do, cook and keep house.

The plot swerves a little when Janet starts dating a local guy. (Jimmy has set up housekeeping in a small town somewhere.) Now Jimmy, who's nine now, has to try to figure out sex. Remember this is before the internet. The local public library has nothing useful. He buys books through newspaper ads, but they don't really tell him what he wants to know, which is why Janet wants to have sex. It's a puzzler!

Anyway! Eventually Jimmy decides the time has come to settle with Brennan. So he makes himself into a lawyer by having the brain machine embed a bunch of law books into his brain. That's all it takes. No need to learn how to argue or think critically! You just gotta know the laws! There's a courtroom scene, and Jimmy gains control of his machine and his life and sets up academies where other children are made into geniuses with brain machines, but to be honest I just skimmed through the last 20 or 30 pages, because I had long since stopped caring about any of these characters. 

This is typical of 1950s science fiction, in my experience -- there's a cool idea, which is then used to explore the author's personal bugaboos. Pretty much no attempt at characterization, setting, or realistic dialogue. 4/10, only interesting for historical purposes.

I mean, Who Knew

Apparently trans kids can get gender affirming surgery at public schools. WHO KNEW.  We had to go through years of therapy, and find about ten thousand dollars, and hunt down a certified surgeon, and go through several more months of working with them, and...

This is honestly what today's "conservatives" seem to believe, that a ten year old child can be convinced that they are trans by someone, usually a teacher, and two days later get gender affirming surgery (or, as these "conservatives" usually put it, get some body part "chopped off"), no therapy needed, no questions asked, no parents consulted.

And, of course, they're absolutely obsessed with trans people. It's not just a delusion, it's monomania.

LOL

 

Woman brings a new baby into the office.

Walz: *shakes tiny hand* Pleasure to make your acquaintance, miss. Glad to see you didn’t inherit your dad’s looks.

Vance: *stares silently for 30 seconds* She already has all the eggs she’ll ever have.

— Jean-Michel Connard 좆됐어 (@torriangray) August 29, 2024

Advice I Give My Workshop Students

I'm always telling them to trust their readers -- that is, to believe that their readers will pick up what they're putting down; but I like this advice better:

 

Can't remember who came up with this, but it remains one of my favourite pieces of advice for writers of fiction: Write as if your reader is cleverer than you.

— Simon Spanton (@simonguy.bsky.social) Aug 29, 2024 at 6:32 AM

(Skeet: Can't remember who came up with this, but it remains one of my favourite pieces of advice for writers of fiction: Write as if your reader is cleverer than you.)

I also tell my writers that they can't write for their worst readers. Don't dumb that shit down, don't try to keep your bad-faith readers from being offended. Write like the world's on fire and you're the only one with water. Give the readers that water.

What I'm Reading Now

Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

Picoult is one of those authors I like to read without really being a big fan of her work. This is a departure for her -- it's part historical novel, part contemporary. In Elizabethan England, we have Emilia, who lives in the orbit of Elizabeth's court, and who is sold at age 13 to be the kept woman of an English lord. (He sells her to someone else when she gets pregnant.) It's Picoult's theory that this woman is the actual author of some of Shakespeare's plays.

In the present, we have Emilia's descendent, Melina, who has been unable to succeed in New York's playwriting scene, while mediocre male writers win accolades and see their work staged. 

I was put off this book by its main idea, that of someone else writing Shakespeare's plays, and I still don't buy it; but Picoult makes an interesting case. I'd also heard all the arguments for why men sell more books/get more reviews/are taken more seriously as authors in the present day before, so that part of the book bored me a little. Picoult makes a good argument in both parts of the book, I guess is what I'm saying, but I'm probably not the intended audience. 

I liked the Elizabethan sections a lot more than the modern day sections -- Picoult might think about writing more historical novels.

I am reminded of one of my professors when I was in the writing program who set us a question on a big exam: name a writer we thought was not as famous as they should be, and say why. I named a woman writer, and made the argument that she was not receiving the fame she deserved specifically because she was a woman writing historical novels. That (male) professor wrote historical novels, and I think he felt attacked, because he gave me a low grade and claimed my argument was "wildly corny." And yes, I'm still holding a grudge.

Peter Heller, Burn

Speaking of mediocre male writers.

Honestly this is a typical Peter Heller book. Two guys in a homosocial (definitely not homoerotic) relationship go through some shit. There's weird spacing which I agree has an effect on how the narrative reads. No dog in this one, but there's a small child in a lion suit which kind of stands in for the dog.

The event that causes the guys to have trouble is a civil war, kicking off not in Texas or Alabama as you would expect but in Maine. I kind of liked that, it's a bit fresh. 

There's never any explanation about why the Maine secessionists assassinated the president, but that works, I guess, since our two guys are as confused as the reader about why all this is happening. I also like Heller having the federal government pursue a scorched earth campaign against the rebel territory, like Sherman marching through Atlanta (which Heller lampshades in the text). The rebels turn out to be equally ruthless in their actions against the U.S. troops sent in to handle the rebellion. Both sides, am I right?

Anyway, it's a readable book. I read the whole thing in one evening. But since Heller is determined not to examine the ethics of starting a civil war, or even notice why the civil war is happening, the book is ultimately unsatisfying.

Also I see that Heller still has not figured out what women actually are or how one would act. 6/10, only read it if you're desperate for something to read.

C. J. Cherryh, Cuckoo's Egg

Speaking of women authors who don't get this fame they deserve.

This is a Cherryh novel which somehow I had never read. It's pretty good, and Wikipedia tells me it was nominated for a Hugo in 1986. An alien civilization (really well done by Cherryh here) has a brief war with some humans who arrive in their solar system. The humans are all killed, but the aliens are worried that they might come back, so they clone one of the humans and a Hatani from the alien world raises the child from infancy, training him up to be a Hatani himself.

Cherryh never defines Hatani (since everyone in the alien civilization knows what one is), or tells us why this Hatani has a human baby, so we have to figure this out as we go along. That's Cherryh's usual technique, and you either like it or hate it. I like it, for the record.

Cherryh's worldbuilding here is excellent, as usual. This is part coming of age novel (as the infant grows up) and part mystery (what's happened, why are these aliens raising a human?), and works pretty well, though the end left me wanting more. 

If you haven't read Cherryh and you like science fiction, highly recommended.

The Legacy

My kid has also started teaching, his university and mine being on the same schedule. He's taking classes besides, as well as shadowing his mentor-TA (or whatever it is called), and sitting in on the lectures that go with the lab he's teaching. So he's got a more than full-time job, is what I'm saying.

Anyway, he and I are commiserating on how exhausted we are. Looking back at previous semesters (FB memories now handily provides me with previous semester comments) I can see I was just as exhausted during all those years as well.

Partly it's the heavy class load (I'm teaching five this semester so I can teach three in the spring), partly it's the relentless heat, partly it's that my classes are scattered all over the campus, so that I'm putting in literal miles walking to them every day. I'll adapt in a week or two, I know, but right now I'm at the "Oh Christ not again" stage when the alarm goes off every morning.

Six weeks until Fall Break. 

The Election

I'm feeling a little better about the election right now, but I can't feel great, not after 2016. God, that was the worst night. 

Also, all over my FB page, there are Trump supporters squealing about how Harris makes no sense when she talks, and how she stabbed "her boss," by which they mean Biden, in the back to get the nomination. I assume these are Fox News talking points, since neither claim is supported by evidence, or even makes sense, for that matter. As I previously noted, living in a Red State is depressing.

There are also these Trump supporters making faux-earnest posts asking "liberals" to explain why they're voting for Harris without mentioning that she's a woman. These have replaced the posts that claim "liberals" want people to vote for Harris "just because" she's a woman, while also not being able to define a woman.

Honestly, I have not had much faith in my fellow Arkansawyers, not since the 2016 election. So it's not like I can still be disillusioned. But yeah, this sort of filth is depressing.

Their Candidate of Choice

A conversation I had with a Trumper last night...

Him: "I like Mellencamp's music. Sucks he's a stupid liberal Democrat, though."
Me: What's your beef with Democrats?
Him: "Are you a Democrat?"
Me: Yes.
Him: "You need to change your ways."
Me: Why's that?
Him: "You actually like…

— Craig Rozniecki (@CraigRozniecki) August 22, 2024

Also...

My phone keeps track of how far I walk each day (for some nefarious purpose I am sure), and I learned on Tuesday that just in the course of teaching my four classes I am walking 2.3 miles a day.

This is why I'm so exhausted.