Backstage from Trump's Apprentice Days

not exactly subtle

 

It's a Cookbook (Having Fun with AI Illustrations?)

 

Who's the Marxist?

 

Heroes

 There's a very low budget movie starring Sigourney Weaver called The Guys about an editor helping a fire captain write eulogies for his firemen who died on 9/11. I used to assign it to my journalism students since it's a dramatized lesson in sensitive interviewing for simple illustrative anecdotes.

This tweet says that at a New York firehouse the names of the firemen who died that day - the "riding list" - are preserved under glass. "Heroism" is a word subject to debate depending on context. But not here.

https://x.com/JaniceDean/status/1833674580679934409 

Where Have All the Dirty Old Men Gone?

In the newspaper today was a story about a California politician (female) who required a staffer (male) to provide her with sexual services, apparently strenuous enough to cause him a back injury. There was a bit of spicy detail that I thought certain male friends might find of anthropological interest.

But as I prepared a mental list of such friends, I realized how many of my male acquaintances who might enjoy such a naughty tidbit were no longer among those of us who trod the earth. I mean who are still alive even if mostly inert. It's mid morning, and I have yet to do significant trodding.

Odd - or perhaps embarrassing - that the item of information that made me aware of, that brought into focus, the sorrow of lost friends was a saucy detail about sexual role reversal. It wasn't a salsa recipe or a viral cat video.

You might say I need better friends, but I really liked the ones I had.

The Won'ts of Wills

 

Even the most innocuous of decisions can cause anguish. Our will is straightforward: a few bucks for nieces and nephews, provision for our cats, a list of charities to divide up the rest (assuming there is a 'rest.')

No heavy lifting here. But we put off the list making and put it off again, and when I finally put our decisions on paper, it felt suicidal. I did not realize the extent to which delaying the making of a will can feel just a little bit like postponing the eventuality for which wills are made. 

So many impediments to the human race evolving to the point of basic common sense. I doubt we ever get there.

First and Five-to-10

 

Appearance at the DNC of members of the high school football team that Tim Walz helped coach to a state football championship was inspirational but give Trump a year and he'll be able to bring out a football roster of his own - from The Longest Yard.

From 14 Years Ago, When We First Brought Charley Home

Darwin's California Cat : Practicing on Charley: Playing with iMovie

This Will Be Said So Many Times, And I Won't Be Saying it First But...

 The only thing worse for Kamala Harris than having RFK Jr. endorse Trump would be RFK Jr. endorsing her

Eydie is Much Amused by This, and Telling the World So ...

 

The great upstairs bathroom remodel marches on. Last week one of the contractors showed up early. Needing to consult and hearing Eydie's voice, he walked into the kitchen and glanced down the stairs to the lower part of the house, and there was I, in all my Edenic glory, emerging from the lower bathroom.

That young man has since abandoned his career in the trades to become a Mormon missionary.

Not really. We simply pretend it never happened.

Except for Eydie, who wants to turn it into a podcast and then a graphic novel.

The Kind of Fundamentalism I Can Get Behind

 J. Michael Luttig, the retired appellate judge who became one of the most famous conservative legal critics of Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election, endorsed Kamala Harris in a statement yesterday.

 “In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own,” Luttig wrote, “but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”

Remembering Pat, Remembering Rose

I Love Stories about How Old Age Makes You Wise

 Though in my case it just makes me sleepy.

Here's some words from someone named Jonathan V. Last in praise of Joe Biden, wondering where Biden got the courage to step aside when it became clear that even if his critics were wrong about his inability to beat Trump, if they were convinced he couldn't beat Trump and said said so publicly ... well then, in fact he couldn't Beat Trump! (Talk about crazy making.) 

The big question for me is: How was Biden able to make (the decision)?

I believe the answer is his age. Biden’s age was his electoral weakness. It was also his superpower.

Aging isn’t for the faint of heart. It is a process of having things taken from you. Your status. Your health. Your freedom. Eventually, your life.

But in return, a well-organized mind accumulates wisdom. If we age correctly we develop perspective: About the full breadth of the human experience. About love and loss. About what is, and is not, important.

I submit to you that it is precisely because Biden has lived a long, rich life that he was able to make those decisions which saved our democracy.

Joe Said What He Had to Say Last Night and Did What He Had to Do

 But if it had been the fourth night of the convention and the job was convincing enough swing voters and dispirited Democrats to vote for him - or just to vote at all - it wouldn't have been enough.

Writing Club Tonight

Every other Monday from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. I zoom with my writing club. We are working on fictional projects of one kind or another. I am working on a fantasy novel about a big orange cat who is in his ninth life because - didn't I mention this already - it is a fantasy novel. 

 I thought maybe it would be something appropriate for the whole family, but my characters keep wanting to have sex with one another. This is both a problem and an opportunity from a marketing standpoint.

The bartender came out of a door behind the bar about halfway down, carrying a bottle of dark liquor. He was the new thing, and she – so the cow presented and to question would have been disrespect - noticed him. She put the bottle down and leaned against the bar. She was …. Katt smiled. She was appraising him, nothing passive about that silent look, sizing him up, categorizing, arriving at conclusions. She was a cow, probably a Holstein, black and white coat, the usual huge beautiful brown eyes, full lips and full bosom, everything full measure and perhaps a little more. She gave a modest tug to her blouse – frilly, low-cut and engagingly kitschy – and sauntered over. ‘I think I’m supposed to call you stranger,’ she said. ‘What would you like? Which we probably don’t have.’ She leaned toward and he had a glimpse of one of the four nipples on her left breast.

Wow, This Blog is a Junkyard

I have *forgot how to change the settings*, which means this blog is littered with dead links and dead ends and code that has turned to gibberish. I need to houseclean so I can invite some people in.

He's Baaaaaack

Here I am beside a lake in Austria looking as benevolent as f*ck. Why should I not entertain? I see no reason why I should not spread some catnip on the carpet and set Darwin's Cat a-playing again. I call to mind a poem:

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,

 Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . 

Near them, on the sand, 

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; 

And on the pedestal, these words appear: 

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; 

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! 

Nothing beside remains. 

Round the decay 

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare 

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Check out my legs. I'm back.

The Last Days of Robertson Also Known as the Two-Fisted, Fighting Poet Doc

Two-Fisted Tales (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First let us unpack the title of this post. "Two-fisted fighting poet doc" is from a Sinclair Lewis novel, though I don't remember which one, and the fact I can so easily look it up means I don't have to look it up. (1)

Right?

But yes these are the last days of my time as a professor in the Department of Media Studies with special responsibilities in the Journalism Minor at the University of San Francisco. "Last days" is figurative language - a metonymy, I think - in which the part stands for the whole. Days stand for months. I do not retire until May.

Edith wants me to blog out this last seven months. Actually, she wanted me to start the first day of this semester - to create a bittersweet arc, recapitulating a 27-year career and ending on a note of sadness, gladness and/or madness, contingent on events. But I couldn't put my heart into it so I delayed. Somewhat too easy to turn this into an excursion through an archipelago of regrets since my time at USF has been sometimes very good and mostly pretty good and only occasionally not so good at all, though the last five years has been a little Eh a little Ugh and somewhat Oh Come On Not Really?

I do not like regretting. Though it is irresistible to regret since implicit in regret is an assumption of importance and agency on one's part. The sea slug does not regret the operas it did not write. On the other hand, I did some good things, mostly in the classroom, and I always enjoyed teaching and never (Edith reminds me) taught a class the same way twice, which means I never served the same metaphorical meal twice. And some metaphorically feasted and others - not so much. But each day was bright, new, fragile.

One occasionally gets kind notes from former students. One sometimes - oh you know - solicits kind notes from former students. Overall I conclude that over these years I did good. Not perfect. I'm sure if I keep at this journal of days I will not be able to resist identifying specific moments of misjudgment and malconduct. And yet and yet to the end - almost there; I can smell it - I enjoyed teaching and cared about it and could not resist throwing out what didn't work (and often what did work) and tweaking assignments and discarding assignments and writing new bits of lecture and bookmarking new websites and hyperlinking to new blog posts and news stories as if I were going to teach ethics and magazine writing and beat reporting again and again forever.

That's what I have always liked about teaching: Someday I'll get it (almost) right.

Footnote 1: Of course, I looked it up. It's from Arrowsmith, and it's wonderful:

Zenith welcomes with high hurraw
A friend in Almus Pickerbaugh,
The two-fisted fightin' poet doc
Who stands for health like Gibraltar's rock.
He's jammed with figgers and facts and fun,
The plucky old, lucky old son--of--a--gun!

Footnote 2: The Google, like Suzanne, takes you down to her place near the river and you can hear the boats go by and you can spend the night forever and you know that she's half-crazy but that's why you want to be there and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China and you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind and you know that you can trust her for she's touched your perfect body with her mind by which I mean I looked for a nice "last days" quote and found this:

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

-  H. L. Mencken

Occupy Oakland: Noon march 11.2.11

Occupy Oakland: Noon march 11.2.11, a set on Flickr.