Carrie (on your way back home)

 This year I am embarking on my own Great Stephen King ReReaD - following in the footsteps of some great appreciators of Stephen King, including Grady Hendrix (whose novels and appearances on The KingCast I have come to appreciate very much), Richard Chizmar (whose essay links all seem to go to the Cemetery Dance Main Page today), and my own Brother Andy (who read Carrie* again way back in 2024 to mark the 50th Anniversary of its publication).

Grady started his re-read in 2012, and Richard his in 2014 (perhaps a nod to the then 40th Anniversary that was upon him), and since I have always enjoyed a bit of calendric calisthenics, perhaps I have started in on this venture as both a nod to the 50th Anniversary of the release of DePalma's Carrie.  Perhaps this ReReaD will be as much a celebration of King Adaptations as it is of the novels themselves, and so maybe I also started Carrie now because Mike Flanagan's new miniseries is due just two months from today.

Carrie (1974) 

The first thing I noticed, that had never before occurred to me before (likely because I first encountered Carrie White in any of its various versions in the late 80s or early 90s when all this was in the far past), was that even though the novel was written in '73 and published in '74, the events of the book occur in 1979.

This seems at first just a throwaway factoid, but it's certainly an odd choice, even for a science fiction adjacent book.  Most stories unless specifically set at a specific moment in history (or future history!) happen in a vague "now" and that illusion only fades when we encounter a calendar or an event poster that sets it in time (or with the passage of time and it feeling 'dated).

Stephen King has just opened the Stephen King Universe (SKU) with this novel, however, and as we will come to learn, There Are Other Worlds Than These.

And so I submit to you, Dear Reader, that the placement of this novel 5 years in the future is very intentional, even if King himself may not know quite why yet.  Another SKU touchpoint in the novel is when Carrie destroys Teddy's Amoco on her way from the high school to home - a gas station owned and operated first by Teddy Duchamp and later by Teddy's son after Teddy's death in 1968.  

Teddy Duchamp is also, of course, a resident of Castle Rock, Maine in "The Body", and could almost be the same person who operates a gas station in Chamberlain some years later, but probably not.  I would submit that these two Teddys are Twinners - the same person (or almost so) but in another world.  Just like in some King works The Overlook Hotel is a real place that was destroyed (e.g. Billy Summers) and other times its the place in that horror movie about the haunted hotel, I would suggest that one of these worlds (the world of Carrie or that of "The Body" is a bit more real than the other one.
(7.22.26 - 8.3.26)

Carrie (2002)

This was my first ever encounter with this version of Carrie, a made-for-TV movie that aired on NBC in 2002.  While the budget constraints and moment-in-time definitely shows through in the special effects after Carrie absents herself from The Prom, the version on the whole is a fair adaptation - not exactly a whole lot new - but it hits most of the right notes, mostly.  The shower scene is less cruel (tampons pop out of Carrie's locker, rather than being pelted at her in the locker room), adjusted for the less direct form of bullying found in late 90s / very early 00s high schools. 

It's interesting to me that technology plays such a small part of this movie, given the moment and the ubiquity of ICQ, aolChat, etc.  The frame narrative of the police interview works well as a call back to the documentary nature of the novel, which switches between narration and citation from various books and interviews on the subject of "The Carrie White Incident".

Perhaps most interesting in this version is the change in the ending, that Carrie lives, and the hilarious randomness of Sue Snell driving her to Florida - where presumably a telekinetic teenager can just kinda blend in...
(8.12.26)

Re-Revolution

There was a show on NBC (back when shows were on NBC) called Revolution in and around 2012 - just around the same time that I was teaching a course called "Theories of Revolution" at UW-M.

In 2012, I think it was a fun post-apocalyptic storyline that like most post-apocalyptic storylines didn't make a whole lotta sense in the actual world... Take zombies - like, ok, Max Brooks says its fun to figure out how we all figure it all out, but most of it seems a bit... speculative

Even in 2020, when I re-read The Stand and first read Station Eleven during the COVID-19 pandemic - neither story felt particularly prescient (although both are, very much so).

I think they c/should re-issue the same show right now and it would gain ground - but a re-boot, understanding how corrosive technology (particularly social media, but maybe AI and quantum computing, nanites - who knows what we don't know yet!) will be on our society - suddenly it makes a ton more sense.

[btw, NBC, you can have this idea for a very small figure - like literally 5 (or 4!) figures].*

I have long been a fan of near and far future stories, mostly haunting and harrowing, but the Star Trek Universe is probably my favorite of all future tales, so it's not all dire.

I am curious how history will view these times we are currently living through, but I think a new Revolution series may have some interesting guesses.

* this constitutes a legal contract

Incomplete Completionist

We watched Despicable Me 3 last week - picking up the series after several months hiatus - but I'm glad... I think it's possible that I would never have seen any of this entire series if the first one hadn't been released in 2010 - my summer in Miami - when I saw pretty well every single movie released that summer and before... It's not a great movie series, but it's better than good,,, really quite good

Daredevil was for many years the comic book character who I declared as "my favorite!"  I think it's true, too, but even if not, I've loved the filmic variations of the characters.  I think my favorite characteristic of Daredevil's that I never, perhaps, identified as the reason why I loved him - weirdly - is his religiosity.  

This may sound somewhat counterintuitive as I am a generally irreligious person myself - but I think that's why I gravitated toward him when I was young and still full in the midst of full blown indoctrination... to find a hero who was struggling with his faith - often questioning it, but still allowing himself to be guided by it.  I remember when Daredevil showed up on a made-for-tv-movie of The Incredible Hulk and I just about blew a gasket!

It was almost exactly 10 years ago now that the Daredevil series premiered, and - by my calculations - I finished the first season in about a month*, give or take.  The second season, otoh, I didn't finish until March of 2018 - a full two years after its debut, and in the midst of my trying to catch up on the entirety of the The Extended Marvel Universe Chronology.  

I'm pretty sure I started that second season of Daredevil right away, but faded away, losing interest in the whole The Hand sub-plot (though when I did finally go back to it, the development of a new Elektra portrayal made the season worth it on the whole - if still not great).

Once Charlie Cox started showing up in officially sanctioned MCU stuff I still didn't go back and watch Season 3 until now, with the premier of Daredevil: Born Again coming along now.  Season 3 is GREAT, and I'm on the verge of finishing it.  I am starting to suspect that I may not ever finish TV... (let alone movies!), but to have left 'my favorite' behind for so long I feel like I've missed out.

I've got quite a lot of catching up to do with Marvel Netflix Universe (let alone finishing TV), but glad to be starting down the road with some new Daredevil stories.

* I am not a huge binger, especially with material that I have never seen before.  Even if it's not new, if it's "new to me", I like to parse it out, watching a single episode or maybe two and then moving on to something else for a few days.  (It is for this reason that I almost never watch anything wholly with my wife - she generally leaves me behind in a series - gets all the way through it, and then if I'm watching it again later, she'll dip in for a re-watch)

dark matter indeed

{Warning: Spoilers ahead!}

I 'just' finished Dark Matter, Season 1 on Apple TV+* and I think it might be my strongest television recommendation possibly since Lost (!?).  I will say that this show is not for the faint of heart.  It's not scary, precisely, but the philosophical implications of this particular theory of multiverse are somewhat harrowing.  

The show (and evidently Blake Crouch's novel from which it was adapted) seems largely based upon^ my own personal theory of the multiverse, which was initially a bit surprising, but as the season progressed, made it comforting.  The wrinkle I hadn't anticipated (and what I found most disturbing about the show) was the extent to which navigation of the multiverse is dependent upon Mind.  

I'm not sure I find the science too compelling (a bit too human-centric {self-centric} for my taste), but for the sake of storytelling, the plot mechanic is inspired.  Jason Dessen (the protagonist, played by a very good Joel - Joel Edgerton) is a physicist in Chicago who has invented The Box, a giant version of a box several versions of him have invented that allows particles to exist in superposition (in this case existing within multiple iterations of the multiverse simultaneously).

The big Box allows not just a particle to exist in superposition but a whole thing - a person, say or even a couple of people - to enter the box and navigate through the multiverse.  The tricky bit is that the way that you determine which of the infinite realities you are going to emerge into when you once again open the box is based on your mind - not just your conscious thoughts, but your unconscious and subconscious state of mind when you open it (plus all of the same of those who you might be traveling with!).

Source: https://tinyurl.com/564drzcz

There's a bunch more plotty bits that happen that make for a really great season of television, but what struck me hardest was the moment when Jason emerges into a Chicago in a world that has been ravaged by plague.  He makes his way back to his house to find his wife, visibly ill, shocked to see him (because this world's him succumbed), and she is wrecked.  It's a very realistic glimpse into what a truly catastrophic outbreak might look like at the street level in America...

I'm most of the way through Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, a sweeping chronicle by Kyle Harper of how all of human history has been shaped by (or guided by) the micro-organisms that have made us sick.  Alternately it's a history of how human civilization has created and caused the uniquely massive variety of tiny little things designed to (and actively getting better at) kill us because we've gotten so good at existing... The book is really a constant questioning of which of those definitive interpretations is more true at any given time in human history, and emphasizes the degree to which our collective Thrownness operates not just on an individual level, but also at a biological level (and also at a cosmic level, naturally).

The version of you that you get to inhabit is inherently arbitrary, but certainly doesn't feel that way to us.  Choice - Action - Self... These are the things from which we build our narrative - our lives, right?  The idea that it is chance and circumstance where we find ourselves runs contrary to our modern American sensibility.  We work harder and harder to get further and further away from The Uncomfortable Truth** by filling our attention with screens and faiths and mantras, but the reason that the uncomfortable truth is truth... well, it's because it is, right?  

But I think it's easy to interpret The Uncomfortable Truth as something akin to Nietzschean nihilism, but the comfort (!!) of Humanism is its clear antidote.  We may not be much, us, here toiling away at living on this small out of the way planet - but our over-arching trend, tending toward progress for more of us - and constructing our grand Civilization, which endures and attempts and evolves - that is the thing that we're all here for.  What is a civilization but a narrative - a collection of all of the little narratives, most forgotten (heck, most of them were side quests to begin with!). 

So I suggest that you enjoy your story - if it's not exactly the version of it you were hoping for, rest easy in the knowledge that there very might well be another one where it's that, but you can soak up what you can here... maybe strive for a bit more of that other preferred one, but as Jason/Joel learns when he gets in the Box, you may like the look of another version, but you were made (or perhaps you made yourself) ready for this one right here, and no other.

Enjoy it (and by it, i also mean Dark Matter... it's really good).

 

* It seems to me that Apple TV+ produces nothing but bangers - like they just aren't interested in getting content out for the sake of content, but everything is really quality.  (That's not to say that I have seen all of it, nor that all if it is necessarily my thing, but I just went through a list of their productions, and everything on it that I've seen some or all of is really quite very good!).  In this era of lapsing quality in all things, that is really quite remarkable, but I'm going to put a pin in it for the moment, and move back to my starting point.

^ keen observers will note that Crouch's novel hails from 2016 whereas my own theory wasn't articulated fully on Roman Numeral J until early 2018.  

** I've been reading around a bit as well in the self-help and satirical self-help genres (it's often hard to tell those apart) in Mark Manson's Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope, and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and reading Lead it Like Lasso earlier this year as well as a bit of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits.  Generally these are not my types of books - but I've been on a bit of kick on the concept of "Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable" and working on a project, for now it's just a PowerPoint presentation, and I'm figuring out if it's enough to be even that, or maybe something more - a blog post, perchance a little book (!?)...

a work in progress...

There was once a place on the erstwhile internet called "Seen Reading" (which seems now to have become a book, because, sure, I guess, let's print off the whole internet!).  The premise was a brief observation of a person, usually on public transit, who was reading a book, noticing what page they were on in that book, and then quoting on that page.

This premise of seeing where a person was - both in their reading journey of a particular book and in transit - I suppose it's a bit fanciful, but it feels like we might gain some insight (imperfect and incomplete to be sure into a person who we see where they are in their journey.

When Tim asked me (a bunch of us really) a month or so ago what we were currently reading, I answered him a list of 7 books - a sort of typical number that I'm usually in the middle of.  So I thought a current reckoning - not only of books, but of shows (and perhaps any movies too) that I'm in the midst of completing.

I've been on goodreads quite a bit more in 2025 than ever before, because I'm planning on writing a short review of each book I finish this year, not just cataloging them.  They have a feature of the "currently reading" list called 'tabled', so I'll go through my active reads and watches, and then see if I can complete a catalog of tabled texts as well:

Books (Updated 7/7/25)

[I thought it might be fun to occasionally revisit this list from time to time... and indeed it now seems an opportune moment, half a year later, and having just finished the last of the original five books just this weekend...]

1. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
2. The Final Girl Support Group, by Grady Hendrix
3. American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures, by America Ferrera
4. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
5. The Quest For Tanelorn, by Michael Moorcock
6. Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain
7. Swan Song, by Robert McCammon
8. Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor, by Lynda Barry

[It may be that I just revisit this list with books going forward... I did manage to finish both How I Met Your Mother & Dark Matter from the previous "tabled" section, and at least a few of the shows & both movies, but I feel like the "tabled" section overall grew, and maybe that it and the books bit is the only relevant part to come back to]

tabled (still or now...)

[I'm not sure if I intend to finish some of these, or most of these or what, but l started them all with that in mind, I'm sure.]

Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl

Time Bandits

Franklin

What If, Season 3

Northern Exposure

The Sticky

Castle Rock, Season 2

Pop Culture Jeopardy

The Magic Island, by William Seabrook

An Island Away, by Daniel Putkowski

The Journey of Natty Gann

Dune: Prophecy, Season 1
Star Trek: Prodigy, Season 2
No Good Deed, starring Ray Romano & Lisa Kudrow
mr. & mrs. smith, Season 1
The New Yorker Presents, Season 1

Books (Original Posting)

[This feels like a fairly low number of active books for me, but in part, I don't have any of my typical encyclopedic works that I am working through, of which there is usually one or two]

1. Light in August, by William Faulkner
2. Frank Talk: The Inside Stories of Zappa's Other People, by Andrew Greenaway
3. I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger
4. The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley
5. Plagues Upon the Earth: Diseases and the Course of Human History, by Kyle Harper

Shows 

[of course there are many shows that I am between seasons for - I've watched 3 seasons of Barry, but not the 4th again.  I watched The Bear, Season 1, but not the rest,,, yet]

1. Dune: Prophecy, Season 1
2. Laid, Season 1
3. Fast Friends, hosted by Whitney Cummings
4. Star Trek: Prodigy, Season 2
5. The Decameron, created by Kathleen Jordan
6. No Good Deed, starring Ray Romano & Lisa Kudrow
7. mr. & mrs. smith, Season 1
8. The New Yorker Presents, Season 1

Movies 

[I may actually adjust this list before I hit "Publish", as I'm working my way through one of them now]

1. The Raven, starring John Cusack
2. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, starring the BeeGees!

tabled 

[I'm not sure if I intend to finish some of these, or most of these or what, but l started them all with that in mind, I'm sure.]

Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl

Time Bandits

Franklin

What If, Season 3

Northern Exposure

Dark Matter

The Sticky

Castle Rock, Season 2

Pop Culture Jeopardy

The Magic Island, by William Seabrook

How I Met Your Mother

An Island Away, by Daniel Putkowski

The Journey of Natty Gann

baby please hang on...

I have undertaken A Song of Ice and Fire (now that I'm driving most nights I couldn't come up with any more excuses why not to start {except for the fact that the books [at least the first two!] are ridiculously popular on the library circuit with a typical wait time of several months}) and am attempting to watch along again the HBO adaptation as I'm reading along.

My understanding is that this is easy to do with the first season and first book of the series, and damn near impossible to accomplish thereafter.  I'll try to do it anyway - watching as much as I deem aligned from what I've read, and will try to comment along the way as I go.

But as I am approaching the end of the first book (and first season), I'll make some initial comments, and observations then add (either to this post or in the comments) as I make my way along.

Unlike some other recent takers on of this challenge, I watched all of Game of Thrones as it was airing, and highly enjoyed the series (and yes, even the deemed bad last season, which seemed in a damned hurry, but I thought was overall satisfying).  As it turns out, I may never watch through the entire series again, although all reports are that Mr. Martin is in acceptable enough health he still has two doorstops to write to round out the (planned) 7 book series.  After Stephen King's near death encounter with a van in 1999, I think I sort of made an agreement with myself to not risk an epic fantasy series again that hinges on an author's mortality.  Better to deal with authors who are either safely dead or series that are neatly wrapped up, 

But here we go again - and so far, I'm quite enjoying the ride.

A Game of Thrones (Book 1) / A Game of Thrones (Season 1)

My favorite surprise discovery so far has been the characterization of Tyrion, which I thought as I've been reading through the first book was quite different than the tv series.  I thought of all the casting and acting decisions made for the series that perhaps they had made with Tyrion one of their few mis-steps.  Not that casting Peter Dinklage was a mistake - he is magnificent in this role - but I thought as I was reading through that his take on Tyrion was more grand and epically heroic than the novel was making him out to be, but I realized as I watched the first few episodes that I was mistaken and my memories of Dinklage's take on the character must have been from later seasons.  In this early going, Tyrion is quite as small, in every sense, as he is made out to be in the novel.  Clever and cunning to be sure, but also petty and pitiful - a far cry from the "I drink, and I know things" hero he will grow in to.

The show and novel have some differences to be sure (e.g. in the novel it is Catelyn who insists that Ned Stark must take on the role of Hand of the King, whereas in the show it is Ned's own honor that compels him), but for the most part this is a one-to-one transliteration of the novel, both equally enjoyable and well executed. (7 January 2023)

A Clash of Kings (Book 2) / A Game of Thrones (Season 2)

By something of a fluke of schedule, I began this round by reading nearly a third of the book before even starting in on episode one.  When I did finally get back to the show and watched episode 1 (the only I've revisited up to this point) it felt a bit like a speed round of the book, quickly covering nearly everything I'd read up to that point.

As the season and book have moved along, it has been a fairly even split, and it seems like they may eventually catch up with each other.  There is a lot (as always) that has to be skipped or skimmed over for the filmic version, but what is shown is mostly shown as it was in the novels except for a few specific choices:

• when Arya is brought to Harrenhal, in the show she serves as cup bearer for Tywin Lannister because it makes for better for TV with her interacting with a primary character rather than the way she takes up the role once Roose Bolton and the north take back the castle.
• This difference is exacerbated when Arya asks Jaqen H'ghar to help them free the Northmen to take over Harrenhal in the book, but only asks him to help them escape (which totally is not nothing!) in the show
• So too where Jamie Lannister finds himself in the show in a war camp prison is not so nearly as horrible as the dungeon he is being held in at River Run when he is freed by Brianne of Tarth & Catelyn Stark.
• A fascinating conversation between Davos Seaworth and his son a few minutes into episode 9 of Season 2, where his son is blindly faithful to the Lord of Light and their imminent success, where in the novel Davos's sons are all on separate ships and far from him, but he worries for them as the battle for King's Landing is about to start.

in every iteration (so it seems) Tyrion turns out to be a hero of the night of Stanis' attack on King's Landing.  The Hound - it seems - might be a different case, where he is heroic in battle, but ultimately loses his position (but mostly, like all of us, because he deems himself unworthy rather than anyone else doing it for him...).

The TV show ties up most of the loose threads and aligns fairly well with where this second novel ends, with a few exceptions.  Bran's party remains together at the end of Season 2, whereas in A Clash of Kings, Osha takes Rickon while Bran & Hodor head off in another direction (to keep at least one of the boys safe, the hope is).  Robb Stark also marries a woman in the final episode who (I think) has not even been introduced in the novels as of yet... but mostly we are still aligned at this point. (7 March 2023) 

A Storm of Swords (Book 3) / A Game of Thrones (Season 2:10 - Season 3 - Season 4 - Season 5:1 - 6)

The opening chapter is the perspective of Jamie Lannister (his first of the entire series), and is almost entirely (although very differently)  portrayed in this book 3 while he travels south to King's Landing under the protection of Brienne of Tarth, which almost entirely occurs in the final episode of Season 2..  This final episode of Season 2 also seems to contain a lot of storyline that feels a ways off in the novelization (and the third novel's early chapters seem to have a lot of filling time that never made it to the show). 

As Season 3 of the show begins, the scene north of the wall seems to echo the prologue of Storm of Swords, but the Nights Watch who are far north of the wall are heading home rather than planning a stand against the Wildings - much of the other scenes in the first episode match up to the first 20% of the novel or so.

• Theon Greyjoy's narrative seems to moving forward more quickly in the show than the novel, but it's possible that this is just an illusion as he no longer has any chapters following his progress in the book.  It's possible that as he makes his transition to Reek, he may no longer get a perspective in the book, so his story is ended...
• In this novel - the Red Wedding happens just past the half way point, whereas I just started episode 5, and we won't see it on screen until the penultimate episode of this season.  In many ways, though, this season seems again a straight-up adaptation of this third book - some things are happening out of order from the other, but I think these versions of the same story are both unfolding at about the same pace.
• The Purple Wedding is just a short while after the Red one in book 3 (and in actual show time, I think ends up just being a few episodes after it), so it seems that Book 3 will be taking us well in to Season 4 of the show, without any major noticeable storylines that are far behind the novel.
• Gendry gets taken by Stanis' Red Woman in episode 6, and here's maybe the first point where the show is starting to conflate portions of the novels - Gendry and Robert's bastard from Storm's End whose blood the Red Woman uses get condensed into one character
• As I enter the final 10% of the third novel it has already blown past the end of the third season of the show, and further (I'll figure out exactly how far once I get there as I'm currently on episode 3:8).  The one aspect of the book that is much farther ahead of the show at the end of the third of each iterations is the Wildings and the Wall - the battles at Castle Black and trying to take the Wall have progressed much further in the book and seem to be leaving the show behind. 
• The "Mhysa" moment is a lot more affective in the show because it is the finale of Season 3, whereas its buried in the lost middle of Book 3.  However, Daenerys's story seems to occur in a different order in the books from a show, but hits all of the same notes. 

Book 3 ends AMAZINGLY, and it did not make the show (might have made the Tom Savini version of the show).  I do appreciate that the show gives us the chance to see a lot more perspectives, not just the points of view of the primary characters.  We see the Wildings build-up to their attack on Castle Black and the Wall in a way that it only gets explained afterward when Jon goes to play diplomat / assassin after the attack.  And we get an insight into what Theon Greyjoy's transition to Reek has been like (although, I do sense that this storyline is moving faster in the show than in the book - just as Night's Watch {and particularly the White Walker's} storylines are further ahead in the book than in the show).

Now that I am well finished with the book, and just catching up on episodes it looks like I will reach the end of Season 4 before I run out of material from A Storm of Swards, and while that is undeniable, I am not sure that there is anything happening in the show that hasn't happened in the book yet.  It occurs to me that what is ahead in the show as I watch episode 4:4 seems to be Tommen & Margaery's story - in the book, Tommen is a boy of 8, and while all of the children in the show are older than in the novels (lest the show be banned!).  Jamie also sends Brienne out in search of the Stark girls (or at least Sansa) to bring them to safety in a way that never happens (yet) in the books, and we get the adventures Brienne & Podric!  Stannis and Davos also venture to Bravos in the show (to try to get a loan, exciting banking adventures)

Bran is also way ahead of schedule in the show - he is reaching the Children / (the big GodsWood) by the final episode of Season 4, but isn't anywhere near that in Book 3.  (The Three Eyed Raven seems a lot older and a bit more "Big Trouble in Little China" than I recall him being...).  Right on schedule as the Season 4 finale closes is Tyrion who is in a box on a ship leaving King's Landing with the aid of Varys (24 May 2023)

A Feast for Crows (Book 4) / A Game of Thrones (Season 4:10 - Season 5:1 - 10 - Season 6:6)

Season 5 of the show begins much as Book 4 does - in part - Tywin Lannister's funeral and power-brokering in King's Landing, but the other storylines feel a long way off (either back from Book 3 or things that seem a long way off).  Interestingly, there are no chapters in Book 4 for Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, Bran Stark, nor Daenerys Targaryen - whose stories are moving forward in Season 5, so it seems some of the storylines will be a long way off by the end of this book.

Book 4 has had a lot of storyline that mostly never made it in to the show for Brienne on the trail of Sansa Stark (a quite long storyline in the book that gets wrapped up neatly in about 11 minutes of screen time in Episode 2); Cersei recombobulating her power basis in the wake of her father's... wake; the politics of Dorne, and the fate of Princess Myrcella and her King's Guard protector (which seems to have gotten translated into Jamie Lannister heading southward to insert himself in their scene); Samwell's trip to Old Town, which is just a carriage ride in the show, I think (I haven't seen it again yet), but is an arduous boat trip in the book, where he runs in to Arya Stark!; and the Iron Born's sorting out of their new king.

• The religious fervor around the new, more lowly, High Septum and all of his Sparrows is evident in both the book and show, although in the book the church's army is explicitly rekindled by Cersei, whereas their power in the show is a bit more looming and lurking and softer power. (Oh, no, it turns out it's just as explicit on the show once we get a few episodes in to Season 5).
• The battling through this religious fervor is fought through Marjorie in the books, but Ser Loras takes the initial brunt in the show
• Sansa's story is far ahead of things in the show, getting married to Ramsey Bolton, and sending Brienne off.
• And now, after having just finished the book, frack!!, I know TV series (or movies) have to oversimplify plots and sometimes combine characters, but the TV show seems to mark any character with a Valerian Sword for the Last Battle (at least as I recall it now), but a lot has changed here...
• Also, Sansa's betrothal in the book, is all to do with the politics of The Vale (maybe the Boltons are off in her future, but for now), she is being promised to the future heir to Jon Arryn's domain...
• Jorah Mormont takes Tyrion captive to bring him where he's already going in the show, which is a delightful moment that hasn't happened in the book at all.
• Arya (aka Cat of the Canals) seems to actually be on track here in Season 5 / Book 4... she gets blind, and I haven't seen the results of that in either version yet...
• In the book, Jamie Lannister heads to take out the Blackfish (instead of rescuing his daughter from Dorne), and that happens in episode 6 of Season 6

This is the best guess of episodes (Season 5: 1-6 & Season 6:6) for this book, and I've honed and revised as I watch more and start in to the next book, but because A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons happen concurrently, there is just too much happening in the show that hasn't been hinted at yet in the books, I am going to stop watching any more episodes for now, but I feel like episode 6 of Season 6 is worth watching (even if it's a big jump for some bits): 

• Sam is arriving home (in the last chapter of Book 4 he arrives at Old Town, with a plan to return to Horn Hill next) 
• Margaery is playing the devout prisoner, which she is also beginning to do just as Cersei is first imprisoned (not sure if that has happened in the show yet or not).  Margaery's crimes in the books are much more inflated and Ser Loras is the one who is truly accused in the show, rather than him being killed retaking Dragonstone
• Jamie gets sent off to Riverrun...
• Benjen Stark saves Bran & Meera (which may never happen, or is at least a long way off in the books), but it seems to fulfill his role that he had for Sam & Gilly in Book 3, I think (16 June 2023)

A Dance With Dragons (Book 5) / A Game of Thrones (Season 5:1 - 10)

It's funny, the first scene from Book 5 that happens (kind of) in Season 5 is Tyrion getting out of his box, and immediately finding some wine to drink, promptly vomiting that wine, and then drinking some more wine.  While this happens, Vaerys is explaining whose house they are in, and the large cabal that he is a part of (which becomes a huge part of Book 5 with a second Targaryen claimant to the throne, Griff, {aka Prince Aegon Targaryen} none of which will happen in the show).

• Drogon shows up at the end of episode 5:2, which is being hinted at a lot by the book, but ever seems no nearer.  Given the title (ADWD) I suspect all 3 will be running wild, and protecting Dany's interests by the end of Book 5, and probably at least by the end of Season 5 
• There is a lot less religion in Book 5, at least a lot less of The Seven - maybe there's a bit more of the Lord of Light, and in the mid-going of Book 5, Bran Stark is learning a lot more about the Old Gods & the Godwood Trees than we ever learn in the show. 
• Sansa (the real Sansa) is the substitute in Season 5 for a fake Arya in Book 5 who is set to marry Ramsey Bolton.  In the books Sansa is disguised as Alayne, and Arya is actually Jane Poole.
• The death of Ser Janos Slynt in the show feels a lot more shocking having seen in on the show (Season 5:3) and the politics of The Wall are more complicated in the book, more factions and betrayals (and re-betrayals?)
• For Daenerys, it seems things happen a bit out of order - Ser Beresten dies in episode 4 (or just before episode 5) of Season 5, but he's still alive and kicking through nearly 90% of the book.  And Drogon shows up very excitingly in the book, whisking her away, which I remember now will happen in the show (but hasn't yet in episode 6).
• Tyrion, meanwhile has almost completely caught up to his narrative in episode 6, getting captured by Ser Jorah Mormont, and then sold into slavery with him (minus Penny, which is a whole other thing), and then blows right past the books in the show, taking up the role of advisor to Queen Daenerys.

I'm not sure how to follow the goings on in Dorne - with Jamie Lannister and Bronn there - a lot of the political machinations surrounding Myrcella seem to rhyme, and I expect they will both end similarly, but having Jamie there, when in the books he is up retaking Riverrun (and MEETING AN OLD FRIEND!!!) tends to muddy the adaptation a bit.  The Iron Born's story has also been almost entirely ignored in the show so far, except for Theon's suffering.  It seems to me that I need to watch at least as far into the show to see some of that.  Theon & Yara Greyjoy have just been reunited in the book with just a few chapters to go.

I've just about finished up the book this evening, with just the Epilogue to finish, and as I now begin my long wait, here is where things seem to stand:

• The trip to HardHome has been much talked about in Book 5, but has now happened in the show (Season 5: Episode 8)
• Stannis's camp is attacked in the night by Ramsey Bolton in the show (5:9), while in the book Ramsey sends a dire letter to Jon Snow, claiming to have killed Stannis, and ended his claim to the Iron Throne.  In the show, his attack on Winterfell fails, but his ultimate end comes from Brienne, who avenges Renly's death.
• So there's some stuff in the books that could never make it into a show, it's so horrible, but the one thing that isn't in the books (yet at least), but happens in "The Dance of Dragons" (5:9) is that King Stannis burns his daughter alive, as a 'blood of kings' sacrifice.
• While Tyrion did get to her a little early, Daenerys gets saved by Drogon in 5:9, too.
• Cersei makes her walk of atonement in episode 5:10.  Interestingly, in the Epilogue of Book 5, her uncle, Ser Kevin Lannister promises that his niece Cersei will get up to no more in the future.  Needless to say, in the show, she does, a lot, so we will see how that plays out in the Books to Come...
• John Snow is left for dead at the end of episode 5:10, he hasn't gotten up again in the books after he met the same fate in his final chapter, so if Season 6 ever sees him rise, I will perhaps pause, but there is more (I think more from Book 4 than 5) that is missing in the show from what has happened in the books, so I'll venture forward at least a bit, as I finish Book 5.

And so, the book has ended, and now my watch begins - the Epilogue (as several of them have been) was full of unexpected twists and turns.  Lord Varys makes an unexpected appearance (at the end of the show as well), but half a world away), and seems to be throwing King's Landing into chaos.  I will start Season 6, but feel like I won't get very far before almost everything gets ahead of things from the books. 

The Obligation of Cinematic Nostalgia

2021 was a banner year in content creation - content maximization, really - for the MCU with 4 new movies (its most ever) and 5 original series on Disney+.  In 2022, 5 separate Star Trek series will release new episodes: FIVE!!!  

Source: medium.com

When The Matrix: Resurrections was released on HBOMax, I decided to sign up for a month of the service to see the new movie.  Before I did, I decided to watch Reloaded and Revolutions again, because I was sure I had seen the original movie several times, but each of the sequels maybe as few as twice each.  Upon starting Reloaded, I was completely lost, and realized what I was expecting to see was actually the back half of the original, so I went ahead and took most of my month's purchase time to get through the full trilogy again, and then - finally - watched Resurrections on the last day that it remained streaming on the service (for now).  The reboot / sequel / most recent installment was... okay.  Pretty good in fact, with a fun and inventive central conceit... but really just the same again as before (which I really think is kind of the central unintended theme of The Matrix franchise).

The Matrix was released in 1999, which was hands down the peak year of movies in America (and don't take my word for it).  My personal filmic consumption was also at an all time high, so I was hooked on most anything that was being doled out.  Ergo, The Phantom Menace (which I first saw pirated on a desktop computer because I was living in Germany, and it wasn't releasing there until the fall {by which time I was going to be back in the States!}) was such a pleasure when I first saw it - seeing the Jedi at their peak (or their early decline) - rather than something to be scoffed at.  

In a year when Fight Club and Office Space were working to undermine contemporary late capitalism in America from opposite ends of the spectrum (and at a time where the political spectrum wasn't the only spectrum - rather the spectrum in this case is Fight Club's chaotic, anarchic direct action on one end and Office Space's radical, satirical inaction on the other) and realities of all sorts were called into question (whether it's cyberspace v. meatspace {The Matrix & eXistenZ}; spiritual reality {The Sixth Sense}; temporal {Run Lola Run}; documentary v. fiction {Blair Witch Project}; cosmic {Being John Malkovich}; or gonzo-comedic {Man on the Moon}), most of the main modern mythologies were at or near their (then) peaks. 

Since that time, of course, we've had the dawn of the MCU, plus the continuation of the Star Wars prequels and expanded universe, Star Trek trying out a prequel series and then a reboot, before its full establishment of an STU, The Walking Dead becoming a cable tv phenomenon and then (likely) overextending its reaching to create a fuller, awesomer universe, and now everything wants not just a movie deal, but a whole universe that can be endlessly capatilistically exploited.  The Harry Potter Universe (HPU), the DCU, even the dream of the SKU.  Did you know, for example, that Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead happen in the same world?

But it's not just that the maximal capitalistic exploitation feels so oppressive - it's the compartmentalization of it all.  Streaming has only made it more ex-stream! - the ability to only consume the same thing that you always want to consume.  Discovery+ is the most extreme version of this (only because most of it is not my speed), but it's the logical, cultural extension of the political media self selecting that has been talked about for decades.

And the outcome, like the natural outcome of late capitalism, is alienation... we will forever become more separate from each other (on a referential level, but also a relational level), and that alienation is helpful for capitalism (especially late capitalism).  The less we notice the suffering of those immediately around us (not our families, but our neighbors - or if you're weird and still friendly with your neighbors, then I mean the people who live two houses down from your neighbors... yes those neighbors) and the more that we feel that we are alone in our own*.

So, as I'm watching an episode of Star Wars: Rebels, and two Lasat survivors identify a location of a new homeworld for their people, my first thought is <<what is a Lasat again?  Have I encountered these before and why do I care?>> and then <<ok, yeah, I care even if I don't know who they are, because I'm a) invested in this universe and b) generally care about the well being of anyone who isn't always already known to be a prick>>.  

It turns out it's easy to love what you love.  When Discovery zapped its characters into the late 32nd Century, the emotionality of the series ramped up to 11 - at least for those who were invested.  The dismantling of The Federation in the 900 years or so since the crew came through is tragic, but the melding of Vulcan and Romulan species in the newly formed Ni'Var is sublime.

But the trick, i think, is 

* our own suffering, that is...

this is a prat

 15 years ago today... I saw a dude at my Barnes & Noble (is that link still working?) who I knew from TV...

I guess it's possible that I have grown up (just a small bit), but in reading my proto-hot-take on Mr. Matt Geiler from that day in 2006, it feels a bit judgy (or at least a bit dismissive of his interest in astrology). It's not to say that my feelings about astrology have evolved any (although the world's penchant for bullshit and pseudo-knowledge has expanded exponentially since 2006, so maybe astrology should be given a lot more space today than then        ¯\_(ツ)_/¯          ).  We are so enmeshed in an era of faux-expertise where wealth is misidentified as success, credentials are misunderstood to be knowledge, and time passed in any capacity (regardless of quality) merits respect. 

We are in an era where scientific certainty is on the wane (to be clear, scientific knowledge is - and almost literally always has been - at an all time high, so while our scientific models get better and better, the more data we have the less sure we can ultimately be about the final answers or outcomes.  Ergo, the best scientists try to ask better and better questions, rather than giving better and better answers.), outward statements of certainty and expertise, from basically anybody are at an all time high.  In fact, our economy (and essentially our entire culture) is one of grift - figure out a way that you can get people to think you know what you're talking about and then fleece them for everything you can.  This is most obvious in our new crypto and NFT economies, but also in the job market (see "recruiting" as a "profession), and especially consulting, and then again most definitely in the retail economy and in the RobinHood app options economy and in the real estate inflating economy.

And so our lives are now such that you would be an absolute utter moron (economically speaking) if you didn't spend all of your working life trying to scrape and take and fleece every shred of value from any customer or company or rube, rather than spending any of your working life (idk) doing something good or worthwhile in the world, let alone something you care about or enjoy (ha!, as if).  Perhaps best most recently said by Mr. Ken Klipstein (who I do not know).

And bully to Mr. Geiler for carrying on with the comedic career!  Best of luck to you!

Gracegiving

 Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

We're sitting here watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while our turkey grills out in the garage (yeah, turns out that a thing!!).  Hoda and her partner just tried to sell me a bunch of NFTs (it's ok tho, it's for a good cause), and a pirate gravy boat float sponsored by Heinz just floated by followed by the Sinclair Oil dinosaur balloon (causing Brooke to ask if that is their mascot because the oil is derived from fossil fuels, namely oil created from the bodies of decrepit dinosaurs!?, and yes, that is true, although they tend not to talk about it much anymore)...

And I KNOW iknowiknowiknow that American Thanksgiving has been commercialized and exploitative for generations now (this is the 95th annual rendition of it being Macy's Thanksgiving), but it's all just ew, right?

With the eldest Boomers turning 75 this year, I'd like to propose a modest adjustment to our American holidazzle traditions.  While the name of the holiday naturally suggests the lame tradition of going around the table and saying what we're thankful for, I'd like to submit that this practice is actually quite self serving.  Coming off of 15 - 20 years of New Deal policies in action as they came of age, the Boomers (who I expect started the bone-headed tradition of saying out loud what you're thankful for once each year rather than actually appreciating and being grateful for the civilizational wealth and prosper that you have been fortunate enough to be born in to) benefited from a society that valued individual sacrifice at the expense of our collective health and wealth.  Looking at everything you have, and saying thank you for it is well and good, but ultimately it's all about yourself and what you already have.

I'd like to propose, in this era of divisiveness, polarization, and derisiveness, that instead of thanks, what we really need to give everyone - and especially those who we are particularly divided from, enraged by, and/or derisive of - is grace.  Grace is the simple (and yet uncanny) ability to recognize and believe that every other individual human in the entire world is a total and complete being with their own thoughts, feelings, and drives, and to respect those entities - all of them... even the ones you very much disagree with and want not to respect.  Grace for the unvaccinated, the mean spirited, the lost and the over-woke.  Imagine there's no bad people... just bad information and bad outcomes.

golfing in the end times...

 I've decided to watch The Walking Dead from the start again with the final season starting this week. I'm well over 2 Seasons in, and quite an awesome thing occurred to me: I need to work on my golf game.

I know it's not where everyone's mind goes to while getting re-acquainted with the Governor and his Woodbury gang, but in one episode, he has set up a tee off the top of their wall, and whacking balls out into the street and at any oncoming walkers, and it occurs to me that after the end times come, and the breakdown of society (whether it be zombie-caused or Super-Flu or something else totally unexpected), we are all going to have a lot of time on our hands.

I know leisure time is not what we generally see depicted when people tell apocalyptic stories - it's all busy busy gather gather fightfightfight. Because activity is helpful to narrative, however in reality, once you're holed up somewhere there will be a fair amount of down time.

The Governor's impromptu driving range is hardly the first golf go-round for a zombie-infested world. When we meet Bill Murray in Zombieland he's just come back from "playing nine holes on the Riviera". Robert Neville, when he waits each day at noon at the Manhattan piers opts to do some practice driving rather than playing a full round (although I'm not sure there actually are any golf courses on Manhattan Island where he is stranded).

And it's not just zombie-ravaged worlds where golf seems like a good hobby to take up: even Hugo sets up a short course on their island on Lost. It's Hugo's course that I modeled the proposed Turtle Greens Golf & Beer Club (or TGBG) after in the Hellwaukee setting - after everything fell apart, it's a great place to unwind.

Evidently, my prescience on this issue had spawned an upcoming hit video game on this very theme.  I'm realizing that this post may need to become a perpetual post, as I think I have run out of examples of golf in apocalypses, so I'll add them as I find them, and please let me know what I haven't thought of yet!

In support of The Random

In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, I had an idea for a TV show that I think could quite possibly save the world.  It's a U.S.-based show, so in fact, perhaps, it might only save our country (but given our nuclear arsenal and disproportionate influence around the world, mayhap the world is right!).  

The concept is (and, I officially submit it here for consideration): 

A weekly news / talk program which features three guests and a host / moderator (ideally me, but if someone else takes on the project, I just ask for an associate producer credit {as well as the asidementioned 0.003% of all profits}).  The guests are completely randomly selected from across the country (and of course, because of my self-sabotaging tendencies my primary focus thus far on this project has been on how, precisely*, to define a randomly selected person in America), and each of the guests would be asked to submit a topic for conversation - whatever they are either most interested in or feel they would most like to cover - and then the four of us (3 guests plus the moderator) spend an hour or so talking about those topics.  Prior to each episode, the moderator would generalize and contextualize the topics enough so all guests could contribute (and the audience would care)^ and that's the show.

I have long suspected that randomly selected people would generally be better at most (general) tasks (like talking on TV or governing, say), if given the opportunity, than those who do it currently who have foisted themselves upon us.  I dare say that if we were to repopulate the entirety of the Halls of Congress (as well as all of the state legislatures and city halls) with randomly selected citizens of their respective states and districts a lot more generally good things for most people would get done more often.  I'm not the first to have this idea, and I must admit that in our current hyper-polarized climate I would be more than a little worried at who, exactly, would get selected in the first few cycles.  Information is the gasoline for a democracy, and we are currently living in a bad information age (think sugar in the tank).

Although we are living in the age prophesied by The Colbert Report - and beyond, where truthiness has given way to Choose-Your-Own-Truth-Venture where what you want to be true becomes true, because it supports your already existing pre-conceptions.  However, I don't think the state we find ourselves in just now needs to be permanent or even particularly long-lasting.  The main problem we have in our current culture is the monetary value of leveraged truths.  Getting people to believe your version of the truth is worth so much money to so many interests in terms of media messaging, political fundraising, and expenditures in our managed economy (i.e. which winners & losers we pick going forward) that the practice of swaying opinion is more important in most parts of our civilization today than actually studying to learn any particular truth.  A debate over whether Climate Change is real is worth much more to capitalism writ large than actually investing in combatting climate change (which, for the record, is real).

This doesn't need to be a permanent state of affairs, however, it needs to start with a majority of humans deciding and then actively advocating for the fact that improving the lives of the majority of humans is more important than continual marginal gains year over year in the Dow Jones Industrial and everyone's 401(k)s and capitalism's perpetuation.  That doesn't even have to mean, necessarily, that we need to end economic growth or overthrow capitalism... it just means that we have to agree that helping out the vast majority of humans so they can have adequate food, shelter, and dignity is at least slightly more important than 6% annual growth in your (and EVERYONE's) portfolio.  That's it, that's the ask, and it is astounding to me (and yet hauntingly familiar to me) that this is not a consensus proposition in America... at all.

* The random selection process would be a part of the weekly broadcast (or a separate "mini-episode"), and would entail some pomp & circumstance.  Because not every person in America will willingly partake, I think the best way to select a person is to first choose a community randomly (which can be done by a series of "weighted rolls" - e.g. if California is 70 times more populous than Wyoming, it would get that weighted probability and so too would every other state; from there, a county is chosen in the same way and so on down, until we get to a specific neighborhood, village or city block).  The plan would be to offer a month of free, high-speed wifi in their area as well as a goPro or similar easy to use, low-cost web cam to the chosen guests both as a thank you and a way to convince people to take part.

^ Ergo, if guest #1 says what is most important to him is his neighbor's tree branches encroaching on his yard and dropping leaves all over his yard and he should be able to make his neighbor come over and rake because it's the latest tree to drop leaves in the whole city, and always after the city's yard waste pick-up has ended and I hate MY NEIGHBORS AND THEIR SCREAMING KIDS IN THE BACKYARD... ahem... - that conversation for the panel may be neighbors and community changing over time from front porches to fenced-in back yards to NextDoor...

There is no date in history

I've posted "on this date" posts since the very earliest days of RNJ (at least after one full cycle around the sun), and I feel like they are a vital part of this blog project.  I have often returned in this blog to the theme of nostalgia, and made a few contradictory arguments about it, I think...

 As I looked back on my March 2nd posts, I found one that has now got me quite flummoxed... It's a post from March 2, 2009, and it reviews the "new" Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.  It also includes a brief comments conversation, also dated in early March 2009.  As I was re-reading the post, I thought to myself, "wow, I can't believe Fallon has been hosting this show for 12 years already," and then I really pressed myself and thought that no, it simply wasn't possible that it has been that long... 6 or 7 years, maybe, but not more than 10.

[side note: I have now reached an age where these sorts of things occur to me frequently, and I think to myself things like, wait, this or that event in history (personal or writ large) cannot be as far away in time as it appears to be, and yet it usually is.  Time has gotten tricky, but this time, I felt like I must be in the right.]

joel is baffled

And, it turns out that I was -  Fallon took over the show in 2014 (specifically 17 February 2014, so I could have been writing on March 2nd of that year, but the tone of the post is as if it's happening presently, not looking back a couple weeks).  In 2009, Conan O'Brien did take over The Tonight Show, but not until June of that year (and the post is all about Fallon, not O'Brien).

So now, I am baffled, and feel like I can't trust any dates ever again, and wtf is going on?  I enjoy calendrics and synchronicities and rhyming history, but now I'm not sure of anything anymore.  

In the end, it's okay, as I'm not actually typing this post (at least this part of it) on March 2nd anymore anyway, but I did originally have the thought to post this then, so there it will be forever classified.  I hope this warns us all to not let time slip away from us any more than we can help it.  It's a funning thing about time - you can spend it or you can pass it, you can definitely waste it (see Roman Numeral J).  I am hoping "Having Enough Time" wins the inaugural Tournament of Greatness (although it would be quite the upset as a 10-Seed).  

I remember the time that Tim sang the Hootie & the Blowfish song "Time" at karaoke, and it quickly became clear that it is the worst of the Hootie songs generally available to choose as your karaoke number.

The Debate

It's clear to me now - that the reason that Bernie and Elizabeth can't fully get their message across is because the two of them know just how much money the top 1% of wealth-holders in our country have siphoned away from all of the rest of us.  Most people can't fathom these amounts.

** 7:48 **

I can't believe Delaney has come back with his "my dad..." line.  That's kind of awesome.

** 7:49 **

Talking 'bout my generation.  Mayor Pete has called out his generation several times.  He's a few years younger than me, but he's in the Cusper mini-generation.  I was born in 1978 so technically I had a few years before the "Reagan Revolution" kicked in.  Pete did not.

He has literally lived his entire life in an era when money has floated upward (it's more like steam than "trickle down" water) and decimated the middle class.

** 7:54 **

Just realized that i had paused to fix a drink and chase the puppy around the back yard and stop him from eating all the freshly cut grass, so I'm a few minutes behind...  Which will make this post hard to track.

I'll try to remember when i'm caught up after a commercial.

** 7:56 **

Ugh... The CNN format is really unfortunate.  Bash and Tapper (Lemon hasn't spoken yet, it seems) are being prosecutorial, but getting stuck on dumb points of argument.  "But are you going to raise taxes!!!..."  "But should we decriminalize crossing the border!!!..."

They seem to think they are on a Sunday show trying to stick one guest to a specific answer.  It's like they think they all are the guy from The Newsroom.

** 8:03 **

Mayor Pete made himself seem young again!  He was in high school during Columbine!

But Amy is seeming tough.  She's cool  A bit conservative for my taste, but yeah - she would win.

** 8:05 **

But yeah, Governor  Bullock - he will likely lose.

** 8:06 **

I wonder how you say "drain the swamp" en espanol?
(that's a Beto joke)

** 8:12 **

Almost caught up now... And, yeah - Hickenlooper is still on the lose list.
He is a look-back candidate.  He's grown up and gonna make things nice, but not shake things up too much.

Governor Hickenlooper, please listen - nobody likes their health insurance company.  They may want to have health insurance (rather than not!), but everyone hates the company that bureaucratically manages their insurance.  They don't even care about insurance.  They care about health care.  That's what they want without going broke.

** 8:15 **

Ugh, now CNN has the question written "is Senator Sanders too extreme to beat President Trump?".  Fuck you, CNN.  That's so CNN of you.

** 8:19 **

Delaney is getting a lot of screen time...
It's mostly grinning waiting to talk time.
When he talks, he really hurts his chances.

(the Delaney haiku

{and NO!, haikus don't need to be a specific number of syllables - it's about being able to say within a single breath [though, i'm not sure if that's each line or the whole thing, in which case mine may not apply]})

** 8:26 **

Starting with Delaney on the climate crisis.  He seems to be getting a lot of time...  Maybe that means Yang will tomorrow?

I hope he tells about what his dad used to say about the sky.

** 8:32 **

Oh God!!!  Tim Ryan, i like you and the funny way you say some of your vowels.  But NO!!!  Let's not base our future plan on "making things in 'Merica again".

Robots should be making things.  And yes, we will have a lot of people - a whole generation of people who work and worked with their hands.  And you want them to elect you, but don't lie to them.

Those people need to be given health care and food and a UBI (a "freedom dividend!"), and then they can work in other industries.

** 8:45 **

Sorry, paused for several minutes and am behind again.

** 8:46 **

"Look, Bernie..."  Bullock doesn't seem sure that climate change is real yet.
Ugh.
And Beto, stop talking about jobs.  Work, democrats should talk about work and not jobs.
But Mayor Pete scores!  Pete v. Don and how Pete wins...

** 8:47 **

Where have all the 60 second questions gone?

** 8:50 **

I expect that my groups will change in terms of who will win and may lose to The Donald.

** 8:53 **

"Domestic Terrorism" and "I Have a Plan" - It's hard to not see Warren as the natural choice to take the nomination in 2020 for Bernie voters of 2016.

I love Bernie - I actually love a lot of these folks tonight... and will vote for any one of them who wins.  But, Warren is a serious political plan person and also a movement candidate (not a revolution candidate - though she's that too, but a movement candidate).

Warren reminds me a lot of my mom - she's an earnest broker.  She's honest, she is tough and she is kind.

** 9:01 **

Oh my gawd - Tim Ryan STILL wants to give me another boss - a Chief Manufacturing Officer.  I have caught up somewhat, but still behind.  And starting to realize that this is a fucking 3 HOUR debate!!!

wtf CNN?

Like, I'm a political nerd, but 3 hours?  6 hours of debates?

** 9:04 **

Delaney loves TPP... Who's down with TPP (oh, just John Delaney).  Also Hilary Clinton (until she wasn't) and Obama, and probably Biden (i wish we could find a way to ask him)...

** 9:06 **

Love a re-direct to Beto... Yeah, i'm sure he'll know.
Nope, he doesn't, but bueno efforto, mi amigo.

** 9:10 **

Buttigieg is still young.  Younger than you (statistically).
And he knows scripture!

** 9:12 **

a softball "my dad" question for Delaney.  He has mentioned his family.  But turned it around to capital gains move.
Yes, he's exactly right (and also totally wrong) - capital gains should be taxed at (or higher) than a working rate of tax.

** 9:32 **

Can we use nuclear bombs?
                   - CNN 7/30/2019

Argle Barlge!!!!  Stop it.  Why are you so bad at this!?
If you don't understand global nuclear politics, don't talk about it, please!

I use the same policy for our fool president.  He shouldn't talk about nukes publicly, because he doesn't understand (can't understand - hasn't the empathy).

** 9:38 **

Just starting back up - and we're to closing statements!

So, it's only 2 and a half hours!

Bullock - "Bootstraps!"
Williamson - "down with Corporate Overlords!"
Delaney - "Can't we all just get along?"
Ryan - "there is some difference between the center lane and the moderate lane, right?"
Hickenlooper - "it's possible you may die tomorrow"
Klobuchar - "It's not your fault" (repeated ad goodwill hunting-ium)
O'Rourke - "Texas could be in play?"
Buttigeig - "Rut Roh - but i can fix it"
Warren - "I understand your life, and I can help"
Sanders - "I'm Bernie Sanders... wtf, why not vote for me at this point - seriously?"

Night Two!

** 7:17 **

Why was Michael Bennett talking so slowly?  Is that all he came up with for his minute, and wanted to make sure he finished too soon?
But De Blasio was on point... "Tax the hell out of 'em" makes for a good bumper sticker.

** 7:20 **

We're going back, to the Future!

** 7:24 **

Not sure what the protesters were yelling...
But Yang was very likable and articulate in a way he wasn't in June.

** 7:27 **

I like how Biden's campaign is a "they" for Harris's health care answer, but her planning is done by an "I"

** 7:34 **

Is anyone else kinda bored?  It's like all the back and forth, but none of the knowledge.

** 7:37 **

Tulsi quoted Marianne Williamson...

** 7:42 **

It seems that these candidates watched last night's debate, and are trying to do it again - but don't know as much.
Are they intentionally ignoring Andrew Yang?

** 7:45 **

Yang nailed his first question!

** 7:50 **

Biden says "Anyway..." and basically said, "my time is up..." again.

** 7:55 **

Oh, going back to Biden?
Neat.
Also he can't seem to remember anyone's names.  And Castro had to tell him that he could go on, and that "that things on" and we can hear him.

** 8:03 **

Had to make a vodka tonic, so i'm a bit behind now.
But Yang!, man.  I wonder if he is going to be the one to finally stop the Marianne Williamson bubble nonsense from last night.  He is saying totally different things than anyone else, but it's not malarky (ha!, see what i did there?)

** 8:08 **

I kind of wish FiveThirtyEight was tracking mentions of Obama, too... because Biden seems to say Obama most times he talks tonight...

** 8:11 **

He said "Shit!"

** 8:12 **

Fuck, seriously, you're going back to Biden!!!

** 8:13 **

Biden's teeth are super white.
And wants to teach prisoners how to read and write...
Fuck, and now he cut himself off again and volunteered to stop talking.

** 8:15 **

And now he seems to have mistaken Cory Booker for Barack Obama...

** 8:19 **

"I want to bring in Mr. Yang.  I want to bring Mr. Yang!!"
            - not any of the CNN moderators, that's for sure

** 8:23 **

Oh, right - Kamala Harris is here, too...
I totally forgot that you go here!

** 8:26 **

Shit, Biden looked up some facts about how racist Harris and Booker are.
That looks not great, n'est ce pas?

** 8:28 **

Yeah, Harris being a former prosecutor is not going to wear well as a democrat.  It's a better job for republican candidates, methinks.
I'm not sure what a fancy position on a stage is...

** 8:31 **

Yang is the 4th highest polling candidate on the stage.  I don't think he has received the 4th highest number of re-directs or direct questions to him.
I'm not even in the #yangGang yet, but see this as mass media prejudice against radical thought.

** 8:35 **

Huh, so MLK DID support UBI... #freedomDividend

** 8:41 **

Why won't anyone look at the fucking camera!!!???

Well, now they switched cameras, so at least Biden is in the general direction.

** 8:51 **

I read on Five Thirty Eight that Elizabeth Warren showed up in tonight's debate too... hearing a lot of blah blah blah so reading a bit further afield while they catch up on screen.

** 9:11 **

Fuck - just got woken up when Biden tried to jujitsu the lady question by bringing up his dead wife...

** 9:31 **

ok, i'm back for closing statements:

De Blasio: "tax the hell out of 'em & taxTheHell.com"
Bennett: "___" (forgot i was listening)
Inslee: "but this time, it really matters..."
Gillebrand: "I'm a rich, Christian, white person who cares about economic divides, religious divides, and racial divides, for serious."
Gabbard: "World War 2 is over... we're gonna go home now..."
Castro: "adios to Donald Trump"
Yang: "I hate ties...  and i should win"
Booker: "back to the reality tv show!"
Harris: "you've got to prey just to make it today..."
Biden: "3-0-3-0... what was that?"


A summary image, again, from 5-38:

Yang's (of course last, because of alphabetical, but nobody is talking about the alphabetical-disparity in the two night's debates!  The second latest letter in the alphabet is I!  Fracking I!  Two Americas indeed.) is kind of a sentence or a thought...

Bennet's might be better, actually, but the rest of these candidates make absolutely no sense!

Mike Judge - Prophet

Two of the more brilliant films of all time in my life have been Office Space and Idiocracy. 

The two films anticipated life on earth as i have come to know it... in many ways.
We all suffer the times that we are born into.  Gandalf, perhaps, said it best, when he explained to Frodo:

Frodo: "I wish the Ring had never come to me. ... Gandalf: "So do all who live to se

Source: https://ktismatics.wordpress.com

e such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

Judge's films imagine eras that seem so familiar, but were both (in their way) revelatory of a future state that we all knew was coming but didn't want to believe. 

I am a man of odd emotional effusions.  Shiva's death on TWD in many ways was in many was sadder than those of the rest of the Kingdom earlier in the episode.  I can't watch or hear any part of Emma Gonzalez' speech last week without crying.  Deep Impact, ID4, Jurassic Park - action movies often work to elicit lame emotional responses (or pile ons), and i am afraid i'm often susceptible to them.  Real or simulated, pop song or news broadcast or Hallmark movie...

Humor, like melodrama / sob stories, are emotional manipulators.  A comedy film allows itself to make extreme arguments without being scrutinized.  In Con Air, Steve Buscemi's serial killer character says that even though he is seen as the crazy one, his definition of insanity is reporting to the same job for 40 years only to be told one Friday that you're redundant, being let go, and left to flounder.  Office Space makes much the same argument.

Idiocracy is a movie that makes the argument that US Americans are de-evolving.  Becoming stupider due to a decades-long anti-eugenics program.  It's essentially Republicanism run amok.  The Trump presidency looks a lot like 2 or 3 administrations prior to President Camacho.  Idiocracy was a funny movie when it came out - and prescient.  It felt right, but now it feels like it's actually unfolding in front of our eyes.

Comedy is an opportunity to say out loud - to scream!!! - everything that you see that is wrong with the world.  When i saw Ricky Gervais a while back, he talked about growing up in a funny family (i, too, was raised in a funny family).  He said there was one rule when he was growing up... that was, "if you think of something funny to say, you must say it."

... part of the background

Multiverse theory has been a part of science fiction literature for a long time.  It's part of my underlying philosophy, and, as an amateur theoretical physicist, it is the core of my understanding of the world.

I know "amateur theoretical physicist" isn't a thing as we ordinarily think of things.  Marshall McLuhan (and Robert Oppenheimer) knew that our obsession with specialization and expertise would be our undoing.  As leading experts in each and every field refine their skill and knowledge, their focus sharpens and their view tightens. An entire flowchestra of new ideas and different thinking is lost in this honing. And capitalism pours gasoline on the spreading conflagration of narrowing knowledge.

And so it is that I am an amateur theoretical physicist. As such, I have created a theory of the universe, and in particular, of dark matter, which has yet (to my knowledge) to have been disproven. I devised this theory in the late 1990s, wrote it down on a scrap of notebook paper, and promptly lost that piece of paper – but the theory goes something like this:

We live in a multi-dimensional universe. Sharing our same space are other us-es and more of what is ours and on which we stand, it’s simply not perceivable to us because we are ‘out of phase’ with it in some fundamental way. (This phasic concept is something articulated well in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it’s not anything that I’m beholden to with regard to this theory).

Source: www.bnox.be

These neighboring universes may well be the product of probability (i.e. each time Schrödinger’s Cat is dead, it’s also alive in the universe right next door). If this is true, then these multiverse are also the product of choice – that is, when I turn left I also turn right and the two near twins split ways. As you continue down that rabbit-hole, all possible (and perhaps impossible?) worlds exist.

It’s also plausible that these neighboring universes are (perhaps also) a copy of our own, but at a different moment in time (this was the theory of that short-lived Terra Nova show, that stepping into the faraway past was not moving back in time in one's own universe, rather it was stepping into a parallel universe, which was existing at that long-ago moment).

Regardless of the makeup of all of these alternate realities, my theory is essentially that all of the matter and energy that makes up all of 'those universes' is perceived (though not seen or felt) as dark matter and dark energy in our own familiar world. The vast amounts of stuff in all the infinities of the multiverse outweighs the somewhat less vast (but not insignificant) amounts of the dark stuff in our universe.  It's 'dark' because our ability to perceive through the veil between universes is virtually non-existent.  The vastness of the amounts of it all gives us the glimpse we have. 

I account for this theory because it is an important part of my background noise.  My purpose in setting out today, though, was to investigate to what extent multiverse theory has become a part of most everyone's background radiation.

Not so long ago, any voicing of serious statements regarding an alternate reality was met with glances toward the wings (expecting madman collectors with those big sticks with hoops on the end to enter, naturally).  Of course still today, it's a scoffed at science, but the conversation can be entered speculatively.

More than any other response, I find that after a bit of mental drubbing - people eventually come to a point with regard to alternate realities where they say, essentially, "well, if they're inaccessible and can't be observed in any way, what difference does it make whether they're real or not?" 

I find this question both conclusive and inconceivable.  Scientifically, asking a question that may not be able to be answered (because it can't be tested, investigated, or observed) is an empty exercise.  Philosophically, cosmologically, theoretically, spiritually, psychologically, and in most other ways I think any interesting question is worth asking.  Particular when that question is central to the nature of our existence.