i get it now!

I have been re-watching the Star Wars saga chronologically in preparation for Episode IX.  I've reached, at long last, The Last Jedi (Die Letzten Jedi, as i like to refer to it, to show that it's plural!) and have been watching all of the Forces of Destiny shorts in order as well as a few of the other ephemera.

So far, i have read several of the comics and working my way through a few novels that are now considered "canon".  Of course, i have throughout my days read some of the Star Wars universe literature (Timothy Zahn's trilogy, Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, and Splinter of the Mind's Eye), now all disavowed.  But now i plan to make a slow crawl through this new canon.

Source: funko.com

I promise not to drag it out here and bore you all with an epic play-by-play (as i have been guilty of for some other sci fi universes...), but the pop-cultural mass-production machine has put a mythology together which is vast and rich.  They will spend the next decade exploring it in upcoming tv shows and a new trilogy and more Star Wars Stories (i expect)...

With this third trilogy about to finish its arc (as well as put a closing argument on the entire nonology), I think it's worth noticing both how each trilogy was a set of its time, but the themes of the entire story are timeless and timely.

Much attention has been paid to Kylo Ren's line about "killing your past to become who you were meant to be".  I think this has been read largely as a millennial claim of the future (from the hands of the likes of, say, Boomers like Kylo's annoying dad and his former teacher).  While this trilogy does serve to pass the torch to a new generation, it's also a reminder to us all to leave behind the vestiges of the prior generations that would hold us back in our whole new world.

Kylo's request of Rey (implicitly at this moment and explicitly later) to join him and join the existing corporate power structure {aka "The Dark Side"} and help him overtake it) is one of multiple poles in the power nexus in this galaxy far far away (and so too ours as well).  We will call this particular position the Zuckerberg Lane, a young upstart acquiring a vast amount of power while the primary great powers of government (The Empire & The Rebellion) are focused on consolidating their own power against each other.  

Another "power pole" (i don't love this term...) that explicitly states its case in The Last Jedi is when force ghost Yoda says to Luke that "we are what they grow beyond.  That is the true burden of all masters."  This is an acknowledgement of the idea that our next generation not only will be our betters, but must be.  It's a radical acknowledgement - and one that used to be inherent, unspoken.  When we look back, we (the "now people") look better, smarter, more intellectually sophisticated compared to our ancestors.  This doesn't mean we don't honor them and appreciate them, it's just a different stance from blind fealty.

It's easy to think of the Jedi (current and former) as a bloc of good - all light side, all the time - but I think they more closely resemble something like, say, "Democrats".  Sure, they mostly do good things most of the time and are generally on the right side of history, but in order for them to truly have power we also have to accept the Joe Manchins and John Bel Edwards who may think some things we don't want them to sometimes, but also mostly agree that governments (Galactic Senates or domestic ones) can do some good.  As a bloc, they have also accepted some evils (whether those be Southern Segregationists or an Imperial Clone Army), but those are products of historic naiveté, and must be accepted within its historical context in order to build the movement, n'est-ce pas?

Yoda's line about passing history on to your progenitors is fundamental to a progressive perspective of history.  Each generation must both believe itself to be the best, most enlightened, best suited to move history forward, and also willing to let the next generation be better than they were once their time has passed.  

This is the era we now inhabit, where our "resistance establishment' (pro-Biden Democrats - also perhaps Deval Patrick's constituency) is struggling to make arguments against The First Order (the Tea Party ==> the Trump Party), but hand wringing and hemming and hawing at the radical approach Democrats who want to let the system crumble and build it up new (here Yoda and Luke are played by, I guess Bernie and Warren?? - I think this all ultimately will come to mean that Rey is AOC & Stacy Abrams wrapped in to one, and we will pass the keys on to them soon enough...).

This closing trilogy of the Skywalker Epic is unfolding in tumultuous political times not just here in the US, but globally.  Trumpian politics are dripping even in the first installment in 2015 with the First Order taking out a vast portion of the inner planetary systems and the existing establishment politics.  "Draining the Swamp" as it were.  

The Prequels began in a pre-9-11 moment, and the world they introduce us to in the first installment, it's a dreamy vision of the always better erstwhile.  The Phantom Menace's Coruscant (and even moreso Naboo) are an idyllic past to the familiar worlds we knew from the original trilogy.  While there is a nod to Clinton-Era political squabbles and self-dealing, the world is an "OK, Boomer" dream status that will never be revived. 

It's the middle trilogy, the original set, that comes from an era of our world when they didn't know yet what they were really all about.  It's a big part of why the themes of the movies are so general and mythological.  The trilogy knows it's about struggle, but what that struggle is wasn't clear until much later.  1977 - 1985 was just at the start of the Era of Inequity that we live in now.

This is the struggle of our era - it's the fight of our lives.  We will see what the Rise of Skywalker has to say about it in a month's time.  And then, let's see what we do next in 2020 in our own response.

*      *       *

17 December 2019

Watching Star Wars: Behind Closed Doors from REELZ (is that a thing?), and the clarity of misunderstanding of the prequels is made clear.  A lot of the critique of the prequels is couched in storytelling - i.e. the original trilogy made the battle versus good and evil the main point, but the prequels are so bureaucratic, administrative and political.   The new trilogy has been exciting and modern and definitely better than those pesky prequels.  It's a fair argument, but i think is the argument for what i said above.

The simple way to say this is (unfortunately) that people were simpler.  But it's not just that.  The more important function of (American) history is that the era of the prequels (1999 - 2005) was an empty era (i know, i know - 9/11 happened then, but 9/11 is a logical conclusion of the 1970s/80s Islamic Terrorism that we ignored for most of the 80s and 90s).

Politically, and culturally, it's a kind of boring time.  1999 was a kick-ass year for movies, and the era of prestige tv was about to begin (or maybe did, i don't have exact dates), but it was sort of easy politically.  [NOT HISTORICALLY by the way!!!  Bush v. Gore, then 9/11, then re-electing the (up to then) dumbest person we had elected president.  And culturally, the technological superfuture was still sorta basic. 

My argument basically is that folks watching the original trilogy needy clarity (good vs. evil, dark v. light) because they'd just come out of Vietnam, Watergate, hippie reclamation, etc.  The prequels came out when it was only just becoming clear that all of the powers that be (Republicans and Democrats and large corporations and big tech {whatever that might be!} and all of it were aligning against actual regular people who weren't already rich and had maybe just trusted the hangover of the New Deal to carry them through to retirement could just start to grasp that everything was conspiring against us, the regular people.

I think in this context the prequels read amazingly well.  They are prescient, not just of Anakin's turn to the dark side, but of a vast chunk of America - first in the re-election of a war criminal president, and then later in the historic and wonderful and also par-for-the-course election of Barack Obama who governed as a Compassionate Centrist (and i love him dearly and what he accomplished, but by the time The Force Awakens comes out it is clear we are off the rails and are going to elect someone for our times like either Donald J. Trump {or Bernie!}.

EPIC (bad) Game Day

Few things in day to day life are worthy of being described as "epic".

Hangovers - to be sure.  A few times I've gone to a good man's home in Waukesha for Epic Game Day (and sometimes have played board games that fit the epic description).  There's a company that calls itself "Epic", but I don't think that it really is all that epic...

Today was an epic sports day for me, and it went so so badly...  Almost all of my selected sports teams were playing today - and they all failed to win.

My night ended with the end of this season's road for Minnesota FC, who a short time ago lost their first ever playoff game.  The Loons are in only their 3rd year of existence as an MLS team.  I started following them closely during the summer of 2018, when I started following a number of European Clubs closely - checking fixtures and watching games when they are available for tv consumption.

A few hours earlier, my Chicago Bears played a craptastic game and lost badly to fall to 3-3 for the season.  In a classic Bear's move, the team suddenly came to life and scored 2 TDs in the final 2 and a half minutes (and even appeared to grab a second onside kick) even though the game was fully out of reach at that point...

I've written of my Bears fandom, but never I think, specifically, about how completely they are the absolute worst fucking team to be a fan of ever with the way they give and take and seem like they're something and then pull a rug out from under and then totally suck, but show signs.  The Double Doink was pretty much the moment my entire Bear fandom had been leading up to for most of my life... and now this.

Prior to the Bears barf-fest, my Liverpudlians failed to win.  They did tie, but meh - now that we win so often, it's a bit of a let-down (though we were somewhat lucky to equalize...).  And, although it was available on ESPN+, I missed the earlier Nottingham Forest match - which we lost to fall out of the top spot on the table.

Tyler Ledger Joker Fi

I went and saw Joker last night - dutifully.  It was violent, very well made, well acted (and heavily acted), wonderfully shot, all like you've heard.

I would also like to submit that it may just be the most thought-provoking piece of cinematic commentary on our current socio-economic condition in decades.

It is a radical film full of radical ideas and radical violence.  Although it saddens me that it is radical to say that the current economic status quo is wildly immoral and that an existential cognitive dissonance is necessary to participate in the system honestly.

The central question of Joker is whether any of the events of the movie actually happened or not within the confines of the fictional Batman universe.  This question is revealed in the final moments of the movie when Arthur is locked up for treatment of his mental illness.  It becomes clear that this moment is chronologically prior to all of the violence that has previously occurred in the film.  Arthur describes all (or possibly just some) of that violence as a "joke" that as occurred to him as we was speaking with his case worker.  When she asks him what it was, he says that she "wouldn't get it".

Source: tvOvermind.com

This 'final reveal' parallels the 20-year-old final reveal of what I consider the last really radical movie focused on these same themes, Fight Club.  In that movie we learn that our previously reliable narrator was actually Tyler Durden the whole time.  (Also, in a partial re-viewing the scene where Lou drops in on a fight club evening, Tyler's hysterical laughter after having his ass kicked by Lou is preminiscent of Arthur's own manifestations of his mental illness).

Earlier in the film, it is revealed that Arthur's mother was diagnosed with delusional psychosis and narcissistic personality disorder (a diagnosis that may be pretty close to part of Arthur's own plus a dash of schizophrenia - which is reified in the moment when Arthur is actually standing in the room as an adult when his mother is being booked into Arkham after abusing him as a child).  While many reviewers have made much of the portrayal of mental illness in the film, I think the underlying argument of both of these movies is that some forms of thought and action (including some violence) that we casually refer to as mental illness are in fact radical responses to the immoral status quo.

To be clear, I am not condoning any real world violence here, but I do think that artistic depiction of radical political violence can pose important questions that perhaps can't be voiced within the current socio-political climate.  Questions like - what might happen if we take the modern-era royalty (i.e. the super-rich) out of power.  In Joker the one piece of violence that we know "really happens" (although perhaps not exactly as we see it occur in the movie) is the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne.  This event is formative to the future Batman, so it has to occur within the larger mythology of the film.

We also tend to forget in our modern and enlightened era how rare it is to have massive social change without violence.  Although the "clowns" in Joker are easily read as violent criminal thugs engaged in looting and riots, they are also the lumpenproletariat activated by their clown prince.  They are engaged in a modern iteration of the French Revolution and their King Louis XVI (i.e. Thomas Wayne) needs to topple.  One wonders what, exactly, this makes Batman in this historical parallel?

We Got a Party like it's 1999

So, i was away from home last night and duly started watching the debate on DVR when i got home... and promptly fell asleep.

I did get through most of the first hour +/- and what I saw felt like an argument between 1990s / early Aughts-era Democrats.  Except people were taking the Kuciniches and Browns in the debate seriously.

I'd like to offer the following argument and any of the rhetoric to Mr. Yang or Senators Warren or Sanders (or anyone else who wants to lead us truly forward - like progressives) with no strings attached:

The fundamental economic arguments of our era are founded on a false preconception.  Our politicians argue about how to deploy resources and whether some services to citizens (for example the ability to offer health care to all of them regardless of their level of wealth) are "too expensive".  The central question of cost, though is the falsehood that we are living under.

Since The New Deal, the rich and powerful have been clawing back control of the money.  All of the money.  This is most visibly and simply illustrated in tax rates over time.  Prior to The Great Depression, the top income tax rate bracket was 25% for income over $1.3M dollars (in adjusted dollars). 

After the great crash, and the fundamental understanding that things had to change for most people (but prior to FDR or any New Deal action), that top rate jumped to 63%.  This top rate was only for income of over $16.75M dollars - but $1M was now at 35%.  It's important to note, this change happened in 1932, before FDR and our current "modern" progressive state came into effect.

Thereafter, top rates jumped to 79% (for any income over around $81M per year) to 81% (in 1941) to 88% to a high of 94% (again, only for the most egregious amounts of annual income).  This top rate (closer to 91%) stays in effect for 18 years or so (1945 - 1963).  Thereafter it only falls to about 70% for the next 19 years until 1982 (a year after the "Reagan Revolution") when it falls, first to 50% in 1982 and then to 38% in 1987 (approximately our current levels - though that doesn't tell near the whole story).

The entire premise of the "Great" America (which Republicans imply is something that needs to be found... "again") came out of the New Deal, and a promise by our country that workers ('the working class') can have a Middle Class lifestyle.  Of course our racist, sexist process of unfolding this promise wasn't the real fulfillment it was meant to be, but these tax rates were at the foundation of our first attempt.

Whenever someone asks in a political conversation whether or "how we can afford" some of the largest ideas of universal healthcare, universal basic income, or the Green New Deal there are two clear answers:

1. We truly cannot afford not to do these things.
2.  Also, we could simply raise the income tax rates on top earnings* back to the historical levels we had in the 1950s, under Republican leadership, which lead to the opportunity for anyone working a job to take part in the Middle Class^

* Note: it's important to point out that the 90% top tax rates doesn't tax all of the income from high earners, only that income that is above the approved amount.  This means that the first $100K or so that those people earn is taxed at the exact same rate as people who only earn that much - the higher rates only apply to the excessive income.

^ Note: We are now able to work more toward making this distribution fairer, and must work to overcome the mistakes of the past (e.g. reparations, equal pay for women, LGBTQ equity, student loan forgiveness {perhaps high-interest predatory lending debt forgiveness entirely}.

Looking for the Joel Chicago / Wisco Sweep!

It's a mini-Lake Michigan Circle Tour sports eclipse with the Green Bay Packers playing tonight at Soldier Field in Chicago against the Bears, and the baby bears of Wrigley Field playing in Milwaukee against the Brewers.

I am likely fairly unusual in my rooting interest for this event, hoping the Brewers sweep the Cubs this weekend (to move into a tie {at least with them} for the Wild Card race) and the Bears dominate the Packers in an embarrassing entree for their new head coach, Not Mark McMurtry.

* 6:56pm *

Brewers are holding a 2-1 lead so far in the 3rd and i'll comment later as we go.  I predict the Brewers go 3-1 and the Bears win 27 - 10.

* 7:21pm *

Virginia McCaskey intros the 100th season - the Cubs have tied it up (grrrr), but i still think the Brewers will win 3 out of 4 (to clarify) and will hold the Bears to their score (though i want to up the win margin because of Aaron Rodgers' douchebag moustache - is #douchebagMoustache trending yet?)

* 7:35pm *

Arcia is at second with 1 out!  Packers have gone nowhere in these first 5 plays...

* 7:47pm *

Jackson walks a lead off man after Eddy Pineiro hits his first ever field goal!

Now there's a second on base and Jackson makes a BIG PITCH to get Khris Bryant...  And a first pitch gift against Rizzo...

* 8:38pm *

both enemy teams are on the threat...

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!

Pre-prequel

Anticipatory plagiarism is a concept I used to struggle with - coming up with a brilliant idea only to come to realize that someone else had thought of it and published it decades or even centuries earlier than you had the opportunity to get it down.

This also happens in literature when a writer unwittingly writes a similar story to something they had never come across. In general, this happens by some sort of collective osmosis (perhaps it’s a Jungian phenomenon) by which these thoughts and ideas are in the ether - part of the existing background. It’s in the groundwater. 

This morning I read a short story in the Bradbury-edited collection that I’ve been making my way through.  It’s called “Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman”, by Helen Eustis. It is an unintentional prequel to Piers Anthony’s On a Pale Horse (by which I mean of course, Anthony unintentionally wrote a whole series of novels {of which I’ve read the first few but not all} as a follow up to Eustis’s very fine story).

I've been getting back into Wikipedia as of late, particularly as I've been reading Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow, edited and with an introduction by Ray Bradbury.  As I started digging into the stories, I was struck first by the sense of time - of being tales from a different (but not entirely unfamiliar) era.  Much like when I read The Thin Man last year, one of the most enjoyable parts of every story, is a real insight into how folks lived 'in the before'.

The stories have also been enjoyable in their own right, but because they are primarily speculative as opposed to pure fantasy, they each have been deeply and fundamentally rooted in the time they are written (or when they are portraying in the rare case it's not meant to be "present day").  Bradbury finished the introduction on 1 July 1951, which means the collection is made up of stories all from before that time (and likely mostly well before, given that they're mostly being re-produced and collected here in this book).

As I read the first couple stories, I wondered who the collection of writers were that Bradbury had collected.  I've heard of many of them, but the first two at least were completely unfamiliar to me.  Henry Kuttner's story, particularly, excited me as he had worked within the Cthulhu Mythos (and had corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft).  Kuttner also worked closely in collaboration with his wife, C.L. Moore and the authorship of much of his work and her work were intermingled (so much so that the story in this collection could likely have been in good part her work).

 I plodded forward, and for each story resolved to read the Wikipedia entry for each author in concert with the story.  Which brought me to Christine Govan's story, where I found no corresponding wiki-entry (though she was mentioned in a few other articles, often as a family member to someone else).  A writer in her own right, I created her article and have now noticed that Helen Eustis also has one missing.

Govan and Eustis were the second and third woman authors collected in this book, and the first two authors in the book without their own wiki-entries.  It's a problem and I am working on solving in a small way.  I created a stub for Govan, in the same way that I had Faustin E. Wirkus years ago.  I don't have the time or inclination to go in depth and create a full article, but a sourced stub about someone who definitely deserves a wiki-page will grow on its own.  It takes time, but eventually the world will help do the work (as long as it doesn't get deleted!).