D-Day Plus 2 and 3

Last evening, I kept working on my research project until I was just too tired to think. Then I went over to Netflix and watched Stranger Things for a while.

Some distractions from work follow. 

The Archaeologist Who Collected 4,500 Beer Cans - just some fun, got to have some.

No one is talking about going with a primary vote that puts all the candidates on one ticket like they do in California, or why is it the people are stuck with two parties: Closed primaries are in vogue with Indiana Republicans. But what would they look like? 

I don't live in Maine, so I've not been so concerned about Platner. There is a good case against him in What’s the Difference Between a Platner Senate and a Collins Senate? But also a good reason not to get one's knickers in a  twist:

 Democratic primary voters are still perfectly free to reject Platner on Tuesday in favor of their own Democratic governor. If they don’t, those tempted by consequentialist arguments to vote for a creep in November should first weigh the actual consequences—for Congress, as well as their own credibility and conscience.

It is a decision for Maine voters and they are not stuck with Platner. 

Sara Majka's Saint Andrews Hotel (Public Spaces) took my mind and slapped it around. I think I want to submit a piece to Public Spaces, only this story scares me to do so.

I walked down to the convenience store - out of smokes and Coke, I have been doing too much of both - with the clouds gray and thick and promising rain. When I came back, the apartment was stifling from the heat generated by one pan on the stove. Glad I got the inhaler. Summer has arrived with all its heat and suffocating humidity.

Oh, how things have changed - department stores with display windows?

 6/9

 Down a little later than the previous days and up a little later today.

Rejections are coming in again.

We appreciate the opportunity to read "Saved by Rock and Roll," and we appreciate the time and effort you spent crafting it. Unfortunately, we have chosen not to accept this story for publication.

Thank you for considering Orion’s Belt as a destination for your work. We wish you the best of luck in finding a home for this story.

Best regards,
Orion’s Belt Editorial Tea 

For “Agnes”:

Thank you for submitting to the 2025 Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers. We received many excellent entries this year and are delighted to announce that the winning story is "In America" by Sebastian Edward Bliss. 

Congratulations also to our runner-up, "Canary" by J.L. Zhang.

All stories will appear in an upcoming issue this year.

Sincerely,

Dusty Freund

Editor,Boulevard

“After Making Landfall” went to The McNeese Review and The Good Life Review. “Plain Tales From The Flatlands” went to Publc Spaces.

I worked on a couple of blog posts, one of which is published and a couple that will be. A trip down to the convenience store. I wonder about putting off the laundry.

 YouTube running the background, trying to learn a few things about America, or trying to reclaim knowledge. I will share this one now:

 scg

Indiana Poetry Magazine - The Indianapolis Review

 I am too thick-headed and too thick-tongued for poetry. However, this is an Indiana magazine, so I want to point them out.

The Indianapolis Review, established in 2017, is an online quarterly publication featuring poetry, art, and visual poetry. We work to promote artists and writers from our region, but we also showcase work from around the country and the world. We don’t limit ourselves to one particular school or style of poetry or art; we simply want art and poetry that surprises, sings, and makes us think.

We believe that poetry and art often (not always) save us from desolation, misunderstanding, and thinking we are alone in our suffering . We believe that creating and sharing creativity is a gift and service to one’s community and can shift the way we experience our realities. 

And everyone on their masthead is a Hoosier!

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History Lectures

 Thanks to YouTube, I continue my education,

Howard Zinn imparts humility.

 And so should this, a reminder we have much to overcome:

 That is if we survive Trump and MAGA.

 

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Monday Morning

I went to the dentist as planned, but what I did not plan was that insurance was not going to cover the job. $2800+. It is not life-threatening, and no one really cares what I look like. Old and fat and long past being of romantic interest to anyone.

I did get my inhaler prescription. The humidity is coming on hard and fast,

On the way to Open Door, I notice 3 or 4 men on the picnic tables belonging to the First Baptist Church. There was a family there with a car, kids, and dogs, too. They were cleaning the car. I hope they were not living out of their car, but I fear it is possible, 

Decided to clean out the videos I watched on YouTube yesterday. 

Once upon a time, like more than 50 years ago, there was WTTV in Indianapolis. It was the independent station, and it had shows like Cowboy Bob and Sammy Terry. The latter did horror movies on Friday. It was a big deal when Mom let us stay up to watch Dracula; my sisters and me on the couch, ready to be scared. Mostly he showed the old Universal movies (towards the end, he was showing Japanese monster movies), but he also showed things like The Aztec Mummy. 

 I have not seen them in more than 50 years, and I am glad my childish opinion was not wrong. They put me off of Mexican movies until Like Water for Chocolate. One thought I had while watching the video: if Brendan Fraser is coming back with another mummy movie, why not go to Mexico? Do the job right.

Back in the day, the movie theaters at Castleton did foreign and art movies. Breaker Morant was one that I drove down from Muncie to see. Pretty sure TJ was along for that trip.

 Not sure if I really care about the rightness of Morant's conviction as I am reminded that it has been about 46 years since I saw the movie. It sticks in the mind, even if not in its entirety. For all that we have the internet and all our ability to stream movies, we seem to have also shrunken our notions of quality and importance. Not even freedom by way of algorithm, but the bondage of our imagination by mathematical formula.

Didn't TJ and Randy K and me see Heavy Metal at the Anderson Mall theeater? The really old ones? I remember being disappointed that it was not as wild as the magazine. I had been reading that since I was seventeen, maybe younger. Listening to the video, I found why it did not reach the mark I expected. 

 The movie I thought got the magazine vibe right was The Fifth Element.

I can no longer count how many times we watched Game of Thrones in prison. Three or four times, I think. Peter Dinklage and Sean Bean were all that I knew of the cast at the start. I have to admit until this video, I always assumed Dinklage was English. Worth listening to two intelligent men talk about their work.

 

Back to the research, getting inspired to have some fun tonight:

 

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A Grab Bag of Writing Videos

Take all advice with a grain of salt; these have made me think about my writing and in a positive manner. I hope it does the same for you.

 

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Not Exactly A Lost Weekend

 I started this post on Saturday with these notes.

Move over Middlemarch! Readers’ top 100 novels:

Ultimately, even the longest list will prompt thoughts of what we might have included had we been making our selection on a different day, in a different mood. Even a top thousand would result in regret, because the greatest thing about books is that there are an awful lot of them; too many to read in a single lifetime, too wildly various to contemplate in a single frame of mind. Called on to isolate what they think of as the best, readers often feel a flicker of panic – how to whittle it down? – followed by the deep pleasure of contemplating all this evidence of roiling creativity and imagination. We know that the world won’t leave us in peace long enough to read everything we want to – but that doesn’t deter us from the attempt. If lists such as these can never be complete, nor perfect, then they at least remind us that we’ll never run out of reading material.

The list itself. Still a bunch I'v enot read, and several I never had any interest in reading.

Here's an idea: that for all we promote John Locke, secretly we are all Hobbesians.

Finally, a Unit of Measurement for a Certain Kind of Moral Depravity… 

 The Trouble With Narrative History argues that history has no purpose; that is, it doesn't point to some goal that can explain existence. Okay, I can agree with that. That history would lead to a particular destiny put me off Marxism. Whig history with its belief that history showed humanity progressing towards a more moral future would have appealed, but me knowing 20th-Century history, But I am troubled by Alex Rosenberg's essay. He makes much of The Gulag Archipelago  not bringing down the USSR. It might not have, but it did have an effect on people's thinking, Perhaps what bothers me are the claims made for narrative history as the explanation for humanity when it is only an explanation. For I do agree with him about life being an experiment.

So, what should we rely on to cope with the future if not narrative history? The same resource we employ to cope with the biological, climatological, ecological, agricultural, demographic, and medical future: experimental science. We need only figure out how to apply the empirical tools that, with ever-increasing success, have enabled us to cope with nature to our psychological, social, economic, and political futures.

Stories are for children and for the child in us all. Nothing will ever stop us from loving them, at least not until natural selection radically changes our neurology. Narrative historians, like other storytellers, will never want for an audience. But we will all benefit by recognizing what narrative history at its best and most harmless actually gives us — not knowledge or wisdom, but entertainment, escape, abiding pleasure.

 However, I disagree it does not give us knowledge. Histories are the record of the human experience. What we make of that record may be knowledge and wisdom, but that depends on the reader. Where science cannot explain, art might do the job.

 I worked on my research project, went to Payless late in the morning. I wanted to go over to the Farmer's Market but I did not think I could walk over there. The aching was a bit too much. I made it through some movies on Netflix using the Edge Browser. With that browser, I can open Netflix, have it running and alongside it I can have a window open with reading material. I gave up working fairly early in the night. Then I kept waking up throughout the night.

I woke about 7 AM and had trouble walking. Just worn out and hurting. I did not go to church. Later, I spent time reading, writing, and generally being lethargic. A trip to the convenience store was all I could manage. I gave up around 7 p.m.. 

I read part of Persepolis in prison, now Marjane Satrapi, creator of Persepolis and acclaimed French-Iranian artist, dies aged 56. The reason is a shocker.

It is 4:18.  I have a dentist's appointment later today and am not sure what to do between now and then. 

I watched Blonde on Netflix and was impressed. Ana de Armas surprised by being a damn good dramatic actress. I have never been a Marilyn Monroe fan, but watching the movie and remembering some things Joyce Carol Oates said about Monroe, I realized I find the person more interesting than the actress. That whispery voice grates on me.

There I will end this post.

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Misusing Our Military and Our Tax Dollars

 I need to get something out of my system: just being able to blow things up does not win wars.

The opposite I have heard often enough since Trump began his Iran War. I suspect inside President Trump's head there has been on a loop a monlogoue of “Blow up everything! Smash, smash, smash! They'll get down on their kness!”

I do not think Jonathan V. Last's headline of Very Low-IQ Trump Too Stoopid to Win War because under the vitrolic headline is a very intriguing take on the change in modern warfare.

It is true that Trump and the Military-Industrial Complex have been very stupid, but then so were Xerxes, Philip II of Spain, the Zulus at Roarke's Drift, and the French at Agincourt. If you don't get the references, then follow the links before reading any further here.

I could probably make a longer list of the larger military built along the then best practices lost to the smaller military with a new technology. There is money being made in the standard practice, there is prestige in commanding the standard order military, and both create the inertia that leads to defeat.

For us, that started in Vietnam; albeit there was never a clear military defeat there. 

American admirals with prestige were those commanding battleships. Another example of big explosions blinding their adherents to the damage done by one bomb from one airplane. Now, the same inertia exists with aircraft carriers.

English longbows destroyed the armored French nobility.

Smaller, faster English ships sent the Spanish Armada to the bottom.

Drones are doing all of that now. 

If bombs were enough, England would have folded under The Blitz, Nazi Germany would have surrendered during the Allied bombing campaign, and the Vietnamese would have quit at the sight of our B-52s. Even after the Tokyo firebombing and two atomic bombs, Japan almost made us invade them.

Our war plans have been for big wars against the Russians and Chinese. Big armies with plenty of expensive weapons, with the potential of becoming generals and admirals, were sold to us for that kind of war. Iraq was a small-scale version of that sort of war. Vietnam and then Afghanistan were oddities, soon to be discounted by the upper echelons. Only now, as we're seeing in Ukraine, they were the forerunners; the American Civil War's technology and tactics to the First World War's.

Donald J. Trump followed Philip II's into exposing the hollowness of our military's preparedness by misusing our soldiers's and sailors's lives and skills.

Smart, fast, and hard always beats the dull and plodding.

sch 5/29