Monthly Archives: November 2020

Do You Need Pleasant, Non-Stressful Viewing?

This year has been a very tough one for so many people and here in early November the television seems to be a device invented to deliver stress directly into people brains. However, there are programs that not only do not talk endlessly about the crumbling state of civilization but also are devoid of assault, murder, and other stressful act even when committed in fiction and I am here to bring one of those.

Travel Man 48 Hours in … is hosted by The IT Crowd‘s Richard Ayoade and follows in the wake of his program Gadget Man. Where gadget Man a program where Richard demonstrated various apps and gadgets came off as advertising way too much Travel Man is much more pleasant. (Aside from season one where there were still unfortunate elements of Gadget Man still lurking about.) The basic premise of Travel Man 48 Hours in … is that in each episode Richard travels a city bringing along a celebrity guest and that explore the location for two days, sampling food, buying trinkets, while providing a running comedy commentary. A good introduction to the series might be Helsinki which Richards visits with American actor and comedian Paul Rudd and we are introduced to a Burger King with a sauna.

Each episode runs about 23 minutes and makes for a very pleasant, entertaining, and utterly unserious break from the real world.

Travel Man 48 Hours in … is currently streaming on Hulu.

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Another Cliffhanger

I despise cliffhangers. Books that leave you in a lurch for 20 years, television programs that think it’s cool to have massive dramatic shifts at the close of a season, and nail-biting presidential elections, all are terribly frustrating.

As I write this the states called for Biden total to 253 electoral college votes with Trump’s total coming up to 214. Biden needs just 17 more to win the election, Pennsylvania does it, as do any two of the other five so the odds favor Biden but until the votes are tabulated we will not know.

What is clear is that the massive crushing destruction of Trumpism has not occurred. Even if Trump is defeated, which seems likely, the electoral attraction of Trumpism will remain a potent force in Republican politics. His blatant racism, sexism, and cruelty will be a weapon available for politician with an equal lack of moral but with great talent and intelligence to wield against ‘the others.’

White, male, grievance politics are not equivalent to conservatism, but they have displaced conservatism as the motivating force in GOP ideology. There are valid issues and questions that can be approached from a conservative perspective, what is the proper role of government in the economy? where does the line lie between an individual’s rights and the collective good? These questions have nothing to do with wanting to ‘own the libs’ or inflecting suffering solely for the point of suffering. There is nothing conservative is disregarding the painful death of nearly a quarter of a million Americans because it is disruptive to your election or ignoring the rule of law because adhering to it brings a painful price.

America’s future is very much in doubt.

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I Almost Feel Like a Pantser

Today is a day to turn my attention away, at least for a few hours, from the electoral crisis gripping our nation so I’m going to talk about my writing.

I am an outliner. I can’t tackle a long form piece of fiction without an outline. For me the critical junctions in a story must be known before I can start putting the words in a row. But my outlines are not all the same.

If I am remembering correctly my longest outline for a novel was a massive 87 pages and for my current WIP it is 21 pages.

However, as I am writing this novel it feels like there is so much more being discovered in the process that wasn’t even hinted at in the outline.

Oh, the act breaks are falling on the same major event and the plot aspects are proceeding perfectly on pace, but I am inventing and uncovering aspects I had not thought about that only arise as I try to fit myself into the character’s skin. Major emotional beats are coming from out of nowhere and with the foreknowledge of where I need to end up, I can incorporate them properly.

When I started I had a lot of trepidation about this project, it’s a genre I haven’t really written in before, its main character is a challenge, and knowing that it is very likely that someone already is holding expectations about it all pile on new levels of anxiety and yet it seems to be flowing rather nicely.

Here’s hoping that continues.

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Lives are on the Line

Election season concludes tomorrow with the US’s official election day, this year November 3rd. The consequences of this year’s election are incalculable but include, redistricting for control of congress, America’s standing in the world, to future of deep and binding relationships with out allies, corruption of our democratic institutions, the rule of law, but perhaps most pressing and certainly most immediate if the course of the pandemic in the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, due to the bungling of this administration, killed more than nearly a quarter of a million people in America. Our winter of discontent is unlikely to become glorious summer with the narcissistic, intellectually challenged, corrupt crime family of the Trumps still occupying the administration.

To save the nation, Trump must be turned out.

To save our national soul, Trump must be turned out.

To save our lives, Trump must be turned out.

Here is a chart showing the course of the pandemic in the US and it’s plain that the projections of horrific and unsustainable.

8_US Cross Curves

People often say vote like your lives depend on it, this election is not hyperbole.

 

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