At the Dog Park

My dog Heywood at the dog park in our town. He's the little one to the right swimming desperately after his two new friends. (Photo by the Kid.)

We also met this nice boy, whose name is Gunner, according to his collar at least

Update on Update

Here's a couple articles about the great bank robbery!

One

Two

We were about a mile away from the bridge pictured in the first article.

Update

We retrieved the kid from Fayetteville yesterday, in a speedy trip up the mountain. We wanted to get back down the mountain before the big storms hit, which we did, just barely -- the tornado went by just ten miles behind us, where we were stalled on the interstate.

Which is another story.

As we were leaving Fayetteville, about six minutes down the interstate, traffic suddenly came to an absolute standstill. No traffic was coming in the other direction either. We assumed it was a huge wreck. Police cars wailed past on the shoulders, and one ambulance -- just one.

"Must be some wreck," I mused. I had turned the car off and we were waiting. I was watching the weather, but it looked like the huge storm would miss us, despite the near constant warnings that kept coming on NPR, telling us to take shelter at once. (Where? Not even any ditches on that stretch of the interstate.)

After we'd waiting nearly an hour, the traffic started moving again. We passed about sixty police cars, their trouble lights spinning, up under a bridge. No wreck that I could see. Also, about a mile on, we saw the police had shut down the north-bound interstate, and it was still closed. Traffic backed up for miles.

"That's odd," I said, but we were moving, and I got the car up to 80, getting home just as the storm reached the Fort.

Later we found that someone had robbed a bank in a town near us, and the police had shut down the interstate in both directions to swoop down on the bank robbers and arrest them. I guess they didn't want to risk shooting passing motorists?

We're home, anyway, and the Kid is home, and our house is still not flooded.

Ads and Pop-Ups

I used to read six or eight conservative blogs and news sites because I wanted to keep in touch with people not like me.

But lately these sites are so filled with pop-up ads and auto-play commercials as to be unreadable -- literally so, my browser freezes trying to load them.

It's a metaphor, y'all: late-stage capitalism destroying speech.

Rod Dreher is the specific example I was just trying to read, but it's true of so many right-wing sites. I mean, Dreher is no big loss, given that all he writes lately is shills for his book and outrage about trans people daring to exist, but still.

Neal Schusterman's Unwind Chapters 32 -34

More Unwind Fan Art

We get a little more back story in this section, but it's as bizarre as the rest of this narrative.

This is Part 5 of the novel, and Schusterman starts it off with a tiny excerpt that explains what an airline graveyard is, I guess for those of us who live in caves and don't know what one is.

Chapter 32

This chapter is just a list of rules for the Graveyard, which the Admiral makes every Unwind kid memorize. None of them seem unreasonable, for a guy taking care of 432 kids in the middle of the desert. For example, boys don't live with girls, everyone has to work, no teen rebellion. The only one that might give us pause is Rule # 3: My Way is the Only Way. The Admiral is the boss, with no checks on his power or authority. Except, I guess, the check of teens rebelling, which frankly -- give the origin of some of the Unwinds -- is something he should be worrying about.

I can't decide if we're supposed to read the Admiral as a villain or not. Maybe it will come clear later.

Chapter 33

Our main characters get assigned jobs. Risa is a medic, Connor does repairs. Roland, cast as our most apparent villain, gets assigned to helicopter maintenance. (The Graveyard has a helicopter, plus a pilot who flies the Admiral around.)

They're assigned these jobs by the Goldens, a group of five kids who are the Admiral's second in command. Don't get attached to these kids, btw.

Chapter 34

Connor's point of view. He notices Roland building a coalition of kids around himself, via his evil manipulative ways. Connor builds a coalition of kids around himself too, but that's okay, because he does it with his natural integrity.

Also Connor is changing. Why? Because Risa. He thinks of Risa before he acts, and this makes him act more carefully and with more forethought. See? All bad boys need is a good woman to civilize them. (Also, that's the job of women: civilizing bad boys.)

We also find out about "Work calls," which are basically when the Admiral sells Unwind kids as slave labor to people outside the Graveyard. It's all work like cleaning houses and clearing land. The kids do not get paid, though they do get hidden from the Unwind Authorities.

Roland starts a rumor that the Admiral is also selling kids to the Unwind authorities, and benefiting by getting organs and such himself. Frankly, it's a believable rumor.

Lev is brought in with a new transport of Unwinds. Connor punches him and then hugs him. Later, Lev warns Connor not to punch him again. Connor says he'll only punch Lev when he has it coming. Lev accepts these terms.

Violence is justified if someone misbehaves, apparently.

The Admiral pretends his coffee pot is broken (he lives in an old Air Force One plane) as an excuse to get Connor to come "fix" it -- really to get enlist Connor as one of his spies. He shows Connor the bodies of the Goldens, and claims "someone" among the Unwind kids has killed them. A rebellion is brewing!

Or the Admiral killed these kids himself, a possibility that doesn't occur to Connor, and seems hella more likely to me. Connor suspects Roland, but how would Roland kill five kids who are older and better connected than he is?

The Admiral thinks Connor's constant fighting is just fine. He's using violence to "fix" things, see, so that's okay.

This comment does not set off alarms in Connor's mind. I don't know if we're supposed to think Connor is really smart or really stupid.

We find out the Admiral had his own son unwound.  Once again, this sets off no alarms in Connor's mind. Instead, he feels pity for the poor Admiral who "had" to kill his own kid.

We also get some background about the "Heartland War," the big war between Pro-Life and Pro-Choice people which led to people being Unwound.

“There were dark days leading up to the war. Everything that we think defines right and wrong was being turned upside down. On one side, people were murdering abortion doctors to protect the right to life, while on the other side people were getting pregnant just to sell their fetal tissue….It was beyond madness!"

Wow, yeah, that does sound crazy. And I suspect this is one of the places which made the Library Journal call this book "fair and balanced."

But in fact, of course, while it is true that "Pro-Life" people are killing doctors and nurses and bombing women's clinics, no one on the Pro-Choice side is actually getting pregnant just to sell their fetal tissue. That's not just a lie, it's a vile and ridiculous lie.

Anyway, the Admiral says he helped write the "Bill of Life" because it stopped the Heartland War.

We brokered a peace by bringing both sides to the table. Then we proposed the idea of unwinding, which would terminate unwanteds without actually ending their lives. We thought it would shock both sides into seeing reason—that they would stare at each other across the table and someone would blink. But nobody blinked. The choice to terminate without ending life—it satisfied the needs of both sides. 

This is insulting to both sides of this argument. It assumes that "Pro-Choice" people just want to kill children, and don't care how it happens. And it assumes "Pro-Life" people are fine with killing 13 year olds if those 13 years deserve it.... which, well, okay, that's not too far off the mark. But still.

The Admiral says this is why he had to send his son to be Unwound -- because he helped write the bill, and because his son was a trouble-making kid. The sort, the Admiral adds, that we would have once sent to the military.

I mean, boys will be boys, right.

But now, the Admiral says sadly, we just Unwind such kids. Boys cannot be boys anymore. It is so sad. (This does not fit with all the kids we've seen being raised to go into the Army, but go off, I guess.)

The Admiral says in memory of his son, he started this Graveyard, to save Unwinds. He says he's saved more than a 1000 kids so far. Given that there are 432 kids at the Graveyard now, this is also a red flag, but Connor doesn't notice anything. I guess he's bad at math?

Also we find out Connor knows some things about guns. How? Who knows.

We're 60% through the book. At least things are happening again now.

Links

I love this story by Ellen Kushner

Here's the stupidest argument you'll read today

In case you're still pushing the narrative that trans people are mentally ill -- yeah, no

Or in case you think kids today are silencing speech they don't like

On the other hand, this is what happens when you access (and believe) bad sources

In case anyone thinks pregnancy is no big deal

Our economy is broken

Update on Floods

With the bridges closed, the only route out of our city was State Hwy 59. And since so many people live on one side of the river and work on the other, Hwy 59 had jammed to a standstill by dawn this morning.

The good news is that one of the bridges in now open again -- the river rose more slowly than AR-DOT had been expecting.

The bad news is more rain is expected to fall in Oklahoma and Kansas, both of which feed into the Arkansas River.

We're fine where we are, though, and I'm hoping to get the Kid tomorrow, before the water from OK/KS arrives.

Flooding in the River Valley

The part of Arkansas where I live is on the Arkansas River. This is downstream from the all the massive storms that have hit Oklahoma over the past month.

So our river has been rising steadily over the past week, and starting flooding the city a few days ago. This evening the state closed almost every bridge that goes across the river -- there's still one open, but we would have to drive way out through Oklahoma to reach it, and also from what we've heard, it might close soon too.

This means we're stranded in our little city, I hope for only a few days. The kid is up the mountain, in Fayetteville. We were supposed to go pick him up on Wednesday, to bring him home for the rest of the summer. I'm hoping the bridges will be open by then.

Meanwhile, everyone is stripping the shelves at the Wal-Marts, buying mostly bottled water, from what I could see. I bought ginger ale and extra cream, because I cannot live without my coffee. Also, I don't expect that we will lose water. But someone started a rumor that our water had been contaminated, and there you are.

Add caption

Photo from this video

Neal Schusterman's Unwind Chapters 26 - 31

Schusterman has this book divided into 'parts,' and each part starts with a quotation he's found somewhere.

Part Four, which we have now reached, starts with a note from eBay. Apparently in 2001, someone tried to auction off their soul on eBay. eBay took the offering down, providing the explanation that either souls didn't exist, in which case this was fraud; or they did exist, and thus -- because auctioning off parts of the human body is against eBay's policy -- the auction violated the policy.

It's a clever bit of reasoning, and I guess Schusterman includes it because in Unwind, people's body parts get auctioned off? Maybe. Who knows?

Chapter 26

We're back with Lev, but this chapter comes from the point of view of the owner of a pawnshop. The one thing this chapter makes very clear is that Schusterman has never been in a pawn shop, and knows nothing about poor people and why they pawn items.

Here's why people pawn items, usually: it's two or three days until payday, and some emergency has come up. Maybe the car needs a water pump. Maybe the kid needs antibiotics. They need a couple hundred dollars, and they have no one to borrow it from. So they pawn something pricey that they own -- a nice shotgun, for instance, or grandma's wedding ring.

Mostly these things are reclaimed when the people get paid, though sometimes there's not enough money to get them back in time. Pawnshops are like the pay-day lender for people who are broke but have kept a few nice things around.

Schusterman thinks people come to pawn shops because they're junkies, and also I guess bums. It's illegal to sell things you don't own at a pawnshop, just FYI, and the pawnshop owner won't let you pawn things unless you have a valid ID.

ANYWAY: The pawn shop owner is impressed by Lev, since he's not a junkie bum. But he doesn't want to buy the fancy diamond necklace that Lev has to pawn (an item stolen by CyFi), since buying stolen goods is illegal.

Lev explains to him how he can get away with buying the stolen necklace. Lev knows more about running a pawnshop than the pawnshop owner does. Which makes perfect sense, given that he's the sheltered son of rich conservative Evangelicals. They always know about pawn shops.

Blah, blah, blah, Lev sucker-punches the guy and steals all the money in his safe, but he leaves the necklace behind, because he's not Evil, I guess.

Kind of a pointless chapter.


Chapter 27

Back in Conner's POV. Another sort of pointless chapter.

The Unwind kids at the Underground Railway stop get packed up in crates and flown out. The plane is being flown to an airplane graveyard. It's abandoned there with the kids still in crates, but don't worry, people come to get them out.

There is a very elaborate explanations of the details of all this, which is fine, except it makes no sense. Obviously the pilots are part of the Underground Railway, since they're loading this cargo into a plane that's going to the graveyard. Why not just load the kids in the plane and fly them out? Especially since it turns out that some of the kids die, suffocating in the crates.

Anyway, while he's in this crate with three other runaways, Connor and the other kids have a long discussion about whether being Unwound kills you or not, and also what happens to your soul when you're Unwound.

Hayden, one of the kids, suggests that people who are Unwound don't have souls. God always knew they'd be Unwound, he explains, so they were never given a soul. Like unborn babies, he says, except another kid is outraged, since unborn babies do have souls, from the moment they're conceived. It's the law, he says.

Connor says the law is an ass. He says unborn babies don't have souls. He says when they're born, that's when they get souls.

A kid named Diego agrees with him, though everyone else is outraged. Diego says that the mother loving the baby is what gives it a soul. Connor says what about Storked Babies, don't they have souls? Not unless someone loves them, Diego says.

I think this is the part that made people say this book was "balanced." Schusterman lets someone say that souls exist from the time the sperm meets the egg, but then he goes on to have our point of view character, and this Diego, say something different. The final answer, though, is given by Hayden, the rich kid whose parents got him braces before they shipped him off to be Unwound.

Hayden says he doesn't know when the soul enters the body. Everyone agrees that's the best answer.


Chapter 28

Risa's point of view. We're at the airplane graveyard -- which is just called the Graveyard -- and runaway kids are milling about, being organized by other kids, these kids wearing khaki clothing. "Army surplus," one of the kids tells Risa. "Stolen clothes for stolen souls."

So I guess we're going with Unwinds having souls then.

Blah blah blah, Risa hears some kids died during the trip, suffocating in one of the crates. She's afraid one of them might be Connor, and realizes how sad she would be if he's dead. Schusterman tries to build up some tension here, except we already know Connor survived to land in the Graveyard, so it's just dull.

She finds Connor. Surprise, he's alive. Risa doesn't fling herself into his arms, but she wants to.

A man named the Admiral shows up in a golf cart. He's clearly military, Risa thinks, though she doesn't tell us how she learned to recognize 'clearly military' guys. He's around 60, and was in the Heartland War, the one that led to the Unwind Amendment.

His uniform is blue. Risa can't remember whether that was the color for the Pro-Choice or the Pro-Life side, and then realizes it doesn't matter -- after all, both sides lost.

The Admiral says they will stay at the Graveyard until they are 18.

(After you're 18, it's apparently illegal to Unwind you, which really makes no sense. Why would they not -- for instance -- be harvesting organs from criminals of any age? If we've got a fat market in organs, why not profit off people of any age? I know it's because this is a YA novel, and Schusterman wants to make kids the victims, but this is some terrible world-building, frankly.)

The Admiral says running away, as they have done, is illegal, but the Graveyard isn't a law-free zone. They will follow the law -- his law.

“We are a community here," [the Admiral says] "You will learn the rules and you will follow them, or you will face the consequences, as in any society. This is not a democracy; it is a dictatorship. I am your dictator. This is a matter of necessity. It is the most effective way to keep you hidden, healthy, and whole.” 

I hope Schusterman meant this to be disquieting, because it is.

So far the Admiral seems fairly benevolent, and he does make sure the kids have water before he marches them off toward...somewhere.


Chapter 29

Back to Lev. He and CyFi are now entering Joplin, MO, which is the town where the kid in his brain came from -- the Unwind whose temporal lobe CyFi has. This kid is somehow compelling CyFi to come home to Joplin.

I hope there's something the kid wants done. Otherwise this will be a very pointless digression.

Lev is now in charge, by the way. The Magical Negro can't be in charge, obviously.

CyFi asks Lev why he hasn't dumped him, left him to fend for himself, and Lev says it's because he's here to bear witness.

I mean, that's very nice and poetic and all, but neither Lev nor CyFi know why they're in Joplin. I guess Lev read ahead in the book?

Blah, blah, blah. They get to Joplin.


Chapter 30

CyFi's point of view. He's pretty wonky, but he knows the kid in his head wants something. They wander around Joplin (I think Schusterman thinks Joplin is the size of Mayberry) until they find a place CyFi recognizes, an ice cream shop the kid used to eat at. He realizes the kid's name is Tyler.

Lev notices a police car is watching them. But CyFi knows where to go now. He stumbles off toward Tyler's house. Memories come to him -- apparently Tyler's parents are abusive assholes.

When they reach the house, Cyrus's two dads (the ones that got mmarried) are waiting outside, along with more police officers; but Cyrus screams at them that he has to do this, and they (and the police) let him. He goes up to talk to Tyler's parents who are (justly) horrified.

"Give it to me!" Cyrus screams at them. They don't have any idea what he means. He figures out he wants a shovel, and then uses the shovel to dig up a briefcase filled with jewelry, that I guess Tyler stole from his parents? Or from people around town.

CyTy, as he's now calling himself, flings these jewels at the feet of Tyler's parents, saying they can have it all, they can take it all, he doesn't want it, just please don't unwind him.

Cyrus realizes Tyler doesn't know he's been Unwound.

This is a pretty good scene, I have to admit. Good for Schusterman.

Chapter 31

I was going to stop at Chapter 30, but Schusterman has us at a cliffhanger, so I went on.

This chapter is from Lev's point of view, and he's screaming at Tyler's parents. Tell him you won't do it! he screams. Say you won't unwind him! Promise!

Tyler’s parents still huddle together, comforting each other instead of comforting Cy. It makes Lev even more furious. “TELL HIM YOU WON’T UNWIND HIM!” he screams. 

Lev threatens Tyler's parents with the shovel, promising to bash their heads in if they don't tell Tyler want he wants to hear. They say it, and Cyrus collapses into the arms of his two dads. They tell him everything will be all right now, and Cyrus agrees.

Lev runs away. For some reason the police do not stop him.

A Tradition

Dr. Skull came home from work tonight and wandered around awhile. He changed his clothes. He fixed some water.

Then he said, "Hey."

Me: "What?"

Dr. Skull: "You know what today is."

Me: "What?"

Dr. Skull: "It's our anniversary."

Me: (checking the date on my computer) "Oh shit."

This is how we have celebrated (very nearly) every anniversary so far.

My Beloved Dr. Skull

Crabs in a Bucket

This is an idiom that I've had to explain to people more than once. It's like we have a collective insistence on forgetting what it means.

Or maybe you just have to have done some fishing and crabbing at some point in your life, in order to understand it to your bones.

See, you put crabs in a bucket as you trap them. The crabs try to climb out, but you don't  have to worry about that -- the other crabs, the ones still in the bucket, will pull those trying to escape back down into the bucket.

This is America.

You would think those of us who are less well off would try to help each other. We'd celebrate workers who held a successful strike and increased their pay. We'd be pleased at people getting their healthcare and their education paid for by the state -- which is how it ought to be done, obviously.

Nope. Instead, here in America, we want to yank our fellow workers back down in the bucket. How dare you make $15/hour? When I'm only making $20/hour myself?

How dare you get healthcare? How dare you demand to be free from drug testing? How dare you expect to be educated without going into crippling debt?

Here in America, we won't even allow retail workers to sit down during their shifts, even when it makes perfect sense for them to be sitting (those running registers, for instance). How dare they ask to be treated humanely?

I'd say this stems from ignorance, but in fact it stems from the American worship of capitalism. Here in the USA, poverty is not just a crime, it's a sin.

The Sockdolager

The Sockdolager is back up!

This is the magazine that published several of my favorite stories (the favorite one I myself wrote, I mean).

Check them out.

The Kid Moves

We spent today helping the Kid and his roommate move to a new apartment. The kid's uncle helped. (A friend will help you move. A wonderful friend will help your kid move.)

It was unseasonably cool for Arkansas in May, so our suffering was not great. I did learn that I am not 100% over whatever that disease was that laid me low for four or five months last year. I thought all my strength was back; but apparently it was only day-to-day strength, rather than helping-to-move strength.

The Kid's new place is nice, though -- two bedrooms, big windows, lots of light.

Also it is now de rigueur for apartments to come with a washer and dryer, just as once upon a time they only came with stoves; and then they started coming with stoves and refrigerators. Now it's stoves, refrigerators, washer-and-dryers, a microwaves.

Also built-in wifi.

Neal Schusterman's Unwind Ch 22 -25

Apparently some people like this book enough to have done fan art of it? So it has a target audience out there, who ain't me.

Here's Connor holding the Storked Baby, which, you know, is interesting, since he holds the baby once in the entire book, when Schusterman wants to write that touching paragraph. Otherwise, it's Risa stuck carting the infant around, and feeding it, and changing it, and dealing with it when it wakes up crying at 1:00 a.m.

But yeah. Connor holds it once. He's a hero.


Chapter 22

Risa's point of view. The Underground Railway has dumped all the AWOL Unwinds in a big warehouse with no bedding, no heat, and only one bathroom (no bathing facilities) for over 40 adolescents. Also nothing to do except some ancient board games (Schusterman doesn't tell us which board games, but I'm guessing not Life, since how would anyone fit 10 kids in one of those little plastic cars?

Fights and friction ensue. Risa cleverly susses out that the bully from their first stop on the Railroad -- Roland -- is trying to take control of all the kids. Why? You got me. They're all going to move on soon, I assume?

Anyway, so we get Risa explaining group dynamics to Connor, who has apparently had social anxiety or maybe a touch of Autism. Risa defines this as him being a hero, since he's willing to fight "for his rights," she says, but actually he just fights when he's over-stimulated by crowds and noise.

The kids are being guarded by seven people in camouflage fatigues, and also armed with rifles. This leads to a surprisingly good passage, when Risa asks one of the guards why they're helping the Unwinds.

“Saving you and others like you is an act of conscience,” the woman had said. “Doing it is its own reward.”  

The Fatigues all talk like that. Big-Picture-speak, Risa calls it. Seeing the whole, and none of the parts. It’s not just in their speech but in their eyes as well. When they look at Risa, she can tell they don’t really see her. 

Chapter 23

Connor's point of view. Nothing happens. Connor feels bad for losing Lev, Conner notices that Risa's analysis of what Roland was doing is correct. Connor is sad.


Chapter 24

Risa again. It's Christmas day. The guards bring their food, and Risa goes to use the bathroom while everyone else is eating, except Roland follows her in and tries to rape her.

Connor interrupts and acts like he doesn't care if Risa gets raped, because, as he says, "We broke up this morning."

It's okay to rape girls in this world so long as their ex-boyfriends don't care about it.

But no worries! Roland was only raping Risa to get Connor to fight with him. (Why, when we've already seen that the guards don't care when the Unwinds fight? I have no idea.) So when he finds out Connor has ditched Risa, he loses interest in raping her and leaves.

Which was Connor's cunning plan all along.

Connor had done the right thing. For once, he had seen the situation more clearly than she—and he had probably ensured that Roland wouldn’t physically threaten her again, at least for a while. And yet there’s a part of her that can’t forgive him for just standing there. After all, heroes are supposed to behave in very specific ways. They’re supposed to fight, even if it means risking their lives. 

Risa is disappointed that he is clever instead of violent. Heroes are supposed to be violent and dumb, I think is the subtext here?


Chapter 25

Connor's point of view. Nothing happens. Connor is sad that Risa is mad at him.


We're 40% through the book. I hope this really dull sidetrack episode ends soon.

Links

It's been a rough week. Here's some links, most of which will not cheer you up, I'm afraid.

But facts and evidence are better than ignorance and propaganda.

This has happened before

More on that

It's a feature, not a bug

N&M have more links, and ways to take action

This is America

A mother's day post

See also this

I like this AOC. 

Also Warren. If AOC were just a bit older, we could have a Warren/AOC ticket in 2020.

A wonderful short story

Linguistics

I love this comic

Mice in Space!

As I often tell my students, don't let people who hate something define that thing for you:

Also, as I noted above, this has happened before:

"Are you going to be loyal to me or to that f*cking Constitution?"