Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 194

Cherry Saturday, January 20, 2018

Today is Penguin Awareness Day.

Are you aware of penguins?

The gif is there because it’s always good, even if it is fake.

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This is a Good Book Thursday, the Late Edition

So, whatcha reading?

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Structure and Nita’s First Act

This is another wonky post about structure, so you have been warned.

I’m obsessed with structure.  Structure has a huge impact on meaning in a story the way that structure has a huge impact on meaning in a sentence.  So when I went back to Nita’s Act One, currently logging in at an unsustainable 37, 236 words, it was time to analyze the structure.  In the beginning, I look for two things: word count of scenes and scene sequences (scenes that grouped together form a narrative unit of their own).  If I’ve planned my scene sequences right, a one sentence description of what happens in each should tell the story of that act.   I do structure analysis in Curio because it’s the easiest way to diagram out and color code a scene.  So let’s start with the Curio doc of Nita’s First Act:

There are seven narrative chunks of scene in this first act:

Character set-ups and foreshadowing of conflict
Nita meets Nick, worlds collide, relationship begins
Aftermath and more weirdness as challenges to assumptions about the world
Breakfast, beginning of partnership/relationship, new stability
Work day: more instability because of new knowledges, surprises
Hell: Nick tries to maintain stability there,  intro Max and Mammon
Crisis and Turning Point: Nita accepts the supernatural, Nick acts emotionally, story changes.

So Act One is Nita and Nick trying to maintain a stable world in the face of huge revelations and conflicts, finally accepting the new normal and each other as necessary to keep their responsibilies.

Part one is low key because it’s set-up, but I like introducing Nita and Nick in separate scenes because it involves the reader.  She may not be sure in the first scene who’s going to be Nita’s love interest (assuming she thinks this is a romance), but when Nick shows up in the second scene, she’ll think, “There he is,” and then as his scene plays out, start to expect things of the next scene which will surely be their meet.  That gives me reader expectation and anticipation, neither of which is to be sneezed at.  I think, looking at them now, that  I need to do more parallel structure.  Nita tells Button that keeping her island safe is her responsibility; Nick tells Vinnie that he can’t leave until he’s found the gate, the missing agents, and the guy who ordered Joey killed because it’s his responsibility.   Also in both scenes, Nita and Nick are clearly the ones in charge, the ones calling the shots, the ones who keep people from interrupting or eject them from the scene.   So that stuff is in there, I think I just need to focus it more, probably by cutting some things because those scenes are a little long, especially Nita’s; the anticipation pay off is in the next scene sequence.   Still, after two years of reworking, these scenes are pretty damn close to what I want.

Then comes the second sequence, Nita and Nick in the bar.  The first scene is the meet and beginning of conflict between the two, the second scene is Nick on the phone with Belia, which introduces Belia and Max and a lot of the Hell stuff, the next scene is Nita vs. Nick with the scupper, which is the most fun so far, I think, and the last scene is Nick holding an unconscious Nita and then dealing with her surprise return to consciousness, something that foreshadows the end of the act.   Since the fun stuff is in the third scene, I’m okay that that’s longer. I put the second and fourth scene word counts into green because they’re short, but I think this scene sequence belongs to Nita, so I’m going to let that ride.  The first scene in this sequence, though, maybe be too long, and the entire sequence, clocking in at over 5800 words, could definitely use trimmed.  The key here is that this is where the fun really has to start, so this is where the story has to begin to move.  

The third sequence is the aftermath of weirdness of the second sequence, showing how the two teams process what happened and how their relationships shift because of it.  There’s also some payoff for the reader there, because she sees both sides and knows things that neither Nick or Nita knows, so she can look forward to them sorting that out. Mostly, though, these scenes serve to deepen the supporting characters–Chloe, Mort, Jeo, and Rab–because of the way they interact with Nita and Nick.  They were introduced in the first sequence, this sequence develops them and their teams.  I think it’s a necessary sigh space, too, a resting place for the reader who just survived the second sequence; she has to process it, too.

The fourth sequence is Breakfast, which comes in over 4000 words.  That cannot stand.  It’s a crucial scene for a lot of reasons, a turning point in this act, but 4000 words is insane.  So I need to go back and look again at what has to happen: Nita and Nick have to form a temporary truce over food, Mort has to break the news about the doughnuts, Nick needs to foreshadow Button, the Mayor has to show up . . .  argh.  So what I have to do is sit down and diagram this scene out.  Protagonist: Nita.  Antagonist: Nick.  Conflict: She wants him gone because she’s suspicious of him; he needs to stay because of responsibility (see above).  What I don’t have is escalating scene beats, I just have a lot of Stuff.  Just hell.

The fifth sequence is an even bigger clusterfuck.  It’s supposed to be the stable work worlds Nita and Nick live in disrupted, but it ends up being a party mix of Stuff.  The first two scenes are Nita and then Nick dealing with authority and surprises which knock them off their assumptions.  Then they regroup and go to work for the next seven scenes; that’s too many I think.  The fact that two of the Nita scenes are in Chloe’s POV helps break things up some, but still too many.  So looking at the word counts and the antagonists, it’s obvious that I combine Chloe’s two scenes into one and Nick’s two scenes with Fenella into one.  If I separate the two authority scenes off into their own sequence and deal with them as a separate setback, that leaves me with Chloe vs Nita, Nick vs. Vinnie, Nick vs. Fenella, Nita vs. Vinnie, Nita vs. Mr. Crome.  That’s a mess.  So can I cut the Nick vs Vinnie scene entirely?  That would give me Chloe vs. Nita (and Lily), Nick vs Fenella, Nita vs. Vinnie, Nita vs .Mr. Crome.  There’s still no meaning in that structure.  Must cogitate.

The sixth sequence in Nick in Hell, first scene in Nick’s PoV, second in Max’s.  Nick’s is shorter than Max’s, so I think I just need to do a scene analysis on both and then cut Max’s.  This is not hard to do.

The last sequence is everything blowing up in Nita’s face: Nick meets her in the bar, they go back to the motel and find Forcas, Nick struggles with Richiel, Nita struggles to accept what she’s seen and what Nick is.  At the end it’s a whole new story, so strong turning point.  I think the second scene here can be sharpened, but bringing this sequence in at around 4000 words is pretty good.  I want to end fast.  

So given those changes, my scene sequence sentence summary is:

Nita tries to find out what happened with the shooting by talking with Chloe, Nick tries to find out what happened by talking with Vinnie; both are safe in their normal worlds.
Nita and Nick meet and clash and discover there’s something very not normal about each other, challenging their views of how the world works..
Nita and Nick separately process what just happened and get another surprise, knocking them farther off their normal assumptions about their lives.
Nita and Nick eat breakfast together and establish a tentative truce/new stability.
Nita and Nick separately are stopped by authority figures who add more instability to their lives.
Nita and Nick separately try to proceed through a normal workday and are surprised at every turn, again challenging their world views..
Nick goes to Hell and tries to put a lid on things there so there’ll be at least one part of his world that’s stable..
Nita and Nick together solve Forcas’s disappearance and fight Richiel; Nita realizes the supernatural is real; this establishes the beginning of a partnership and a new stability, which Act Two will, of course, kick the slats out from under.    

Protagonist’s Arc: Nita moves from knowing everything about the island and herself to knowing that she’s missing huge parts of both.

Relationship Arc: Nick kills Richiel to save Nita, even though it means he’s lost an important source of information; Nita believes and trusts Nick. 

So all I need to do now is rewrite that act so it’s shorter, sharper, and tells that story.  Actually, it’s pretty close now, it’s just the Breakfast That Lasts a Thousand Years and that mess of a workday that I have to clean up.  Nothing but good times ahead.  Except the second act is also a mess, but later for that.

 

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The Minimalist Office

Over the years I’ve posted pictures of my office, usually to the horror and amusement of everyone, especially Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Noted Neat Freak, who always replies by posting pictures of her lavish office which is professional and spotless.  If you haven’t see the pictures ( 2005 here, 2007 here, 2016 here) my office always looks like Staples threw up in it.  But my entire cottage has now reached critical mass, so I’m rethinking everything, including whether I even need an office (“Why do we even HAVE this lever?”). 

I’ve decided I don’t.

Every winter it gets really cold here.  (Still haven’t replaced the single-pane windows, and plastic and thermal curtains can only do so much.)  So I retire to the guest bedroom, aka Krissie’s room, which is 10×10 with doors (my office is open concept to the max), crack up a small heater and the electric mattress pad, and spend January and February in bed with my laptop.  So today I looked at the stuff that had migrated in with me, which was pretty much pens and graph paper.   The water carafe and cup, pens, power cords, and rechargers were already in here (I run a great guest room),  Which made me think: what else would I need to move in here to have a minimalist but fully functioning office?

I came up with the printer, the scanner, printer paper and ink, both black and red fine point Sharpies. my clipboards with paper, and of course Post-Its, without which I cannot function.

When I asked Krissie what else a minimal office would need, she added clips (paper & binder clips of various sizes), pencils, eraser, non-sharpie gel pens,  a stapler, staple remover, scissors and scotch tape, plus blank notebooks, legal pad, 3 ring binders and a three hole puncher.   I added the stapler even though I probably wouldn’t use it, the scissors and the tape, but I draw the line at blank notebooks because I buy them (SO PRETTY) and then use graph paper.  Same with legal pads: GRAPH PAPER OR DIE.  Binders and a three-hole punch can stay in the workroom where I lost them months ago.  

Then I added envelopes, stamps, and cards/stationary because they’re the one thing that doesn’t overlap between crafts and office.

It was a much longer list than I’d realized, too much to drag into a 10’x 10′ guestroom, but easily confined to a narrow table with one shelf and a wall unit in the living room beside the front door, which is where I drop the mail now, except it’s on a chair and I lose it..  Of course, all that office stuff is an ugly look for a living room, but I can work around that.  I spent too much money on a wall unit I’m probably going to use forever that will hold most of it.  The table is an old mission couch table I spray-painted white ages ago so it’ll look good.  I bought a stapler and craft knives that are blue, a tape dispenser that’s a concrete rabbit, and a post-it dispenser that’s a bear, and I can put everything else into pretty cups and boxes. I’m gong to try covering the printer and scanner with contact paper.  I won’t be fooling anybody that it’s posh home decor, but it should look fun, and most important, I’ll actually be able to find the stuff I actually use.  And since I’m posting here about it, I’ll have to actually DO it because one of you will demand a picture.  (There’s always one who wants a picture.)

I’ll tackle the work room later.  Argh.

Here’s my list:

OFFICE NEEDS:

Bottom Shelf of Table:

Printer

Scanner

Printer paper

Graph paper

Wall Organizer:

Printer Ink

Rechargers

Cables

Black and Red Sharpie Pens

Pen Cups

Blue Stapler

Blue Scissors

Craft Knives

Envelopes

Stamps

Note Cards

More Note Cards

Graph/Grid Index Cards

Table top:

Bear with Post-its

Rabbit Tape Dispenser

So what did I miss?  What can I get rid of that’s not really necessary?

Better yet, what’s on your list?

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Cherry Saturday, January 13, 2018

Today is International Skeptic’s Day.  

Maybe.

 

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The Going-Home-Again Story

My Book Bub feed has been full of blurbs that start out “When Betty is forced to return to the small town where she grew up . . . ” and it makes me wonder: What’s the lure of this story trope?  I’m not criticizing it, I’m just puzzled as to why it’s so powerful that it’s become a sub-genre.  

Full-disclosure: I grew up in a small town and if I never see it again, that’s okay.  I thought that said more about my childhood than it did about the town until my best friend from high school who had lived all over the world got married and moved back home.  At one point, I mentioned to her that my parents wanted me to move back.  “Are you insane?”  she said.  “NO, NO, NO.”  So maybe it’s not just me.  One factor: we’re both flaming liberals and the town is probably Trump Country; I don’t know for sure because my only connection to the town at this point is my brother, and I love him a lot, and he loves me, so we never talk politics.  Ever.

So here’s my question: Why is the going-home-again trope so hot in romance?  Is it a generalized reunion fantasy where you go back and show everybody how cool you’ve become?   Is it akin to the old-boyfriend story it’s often linked with?  Is it nostalgia for a simpler life in small towns (which is a complete crock; living in a city is INFINITELY simpler than living in a small town)?  Is it a romanticized version of the small town that leaves out the gossip, the social pressure to conform, the warring factions, the lack of choices, and the incredible insularity?  I’m clueless on this one.  What do you think?

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This Is A Good Book Thursday

So whatcha reading now?

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The Glass is Cracked, But It’s Still Half Full

So America is in the middle of a massive stomach churn of the body politic, heaving while half of it freezes and the other half burns (climate change is a myth, part of SoCal always slides into the ocean during January).  The Evil Empire that Trump put into office is cancelling net neutrality, funding Big Coal, releasing the oceans to drilling, and trying to criminalize pot again.  Also Trump is still President.  So it’s bad.

But it’s not that bad, it may even be good, and I am not a glass-half-full kind of person.   Why am I delusional about this?  Here, have some random optimism:

The FCC under oafish bro Ajit Pai, decided to rescind the net neutrality rules because, hey,  regulations are bad unless they’re about whether you can decided to smoke pot, have a baby, or marry the person you love because we gotta draw the line somewhere and it’s sure as hell not gonna be putting watchdogs on corporations because corporations are people and people are . . . not?  Where was I?  Oh, yeah, Ajit Pai gave the internet to Big Business instead of to the American people.  Then he made fun of the people who said, “Whoa, there, One Percent, you can’t just steal the net.”  So the people and some of their reps in Congress mobilized under the leadership of Edward J. Markey, whom I had not heard of before but whom I now kinda want to have his baby, and got enough signatures to send to the Senate floor a vote to overrule the FCC.  Forty people have already signed on, and now the other sixty are going to have to go on record as to whether people have a right to an open internet.  See that little spinning ball that makes you want to throw something at your screen?  The Dems are going to put an elephant on that sucker if Congress doesn’t vote to overrule.  So that vote’s going to be fun to watch.  

Then Rick Perry, noted idiot (“Oops”), issued a proposal to fund America’s coal industry, which sounds like something Rick Perry would do, whereupon his Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) which is composed mainly of Republicans, said, “No.”  Actually, they said, “This plan is dumb as snot” (I’m paraphrasing there), and Perry said, “Oh.  Okay.  Thanks.”  God knows what he’ll do next, but it probably won’t be sending tax dollars to an industry that helped cause the godawful weather we’re having, not to mention black lung disease and the rape of the environment.

Then there’s Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke who just opened all of America’s coasts to drilling for oil because how could that possibly go wrong?  How fast are Democratic candidates rushing to save the coasts while Republicans are stuck pointing out that BP disaster wasn’t THAT bad?  Pretty damn fast.  And what is the Trump administration getting in return?  Lawsuits.  Lots and lots of lawsuits because states have a great deal of say in what happens on their shores.  Remember Trump’s “I think the states should decide” mantra whenever he wanted to avoid making a decision?  Yeah, that’s coming back to bite him.  Fun fact: you can’t run a pipeline to the shore of a state without that state’s permission.  Another fun fact, most of those coastal states are blue, not red, so there really aren’t that many Republicans to fight for something that was abysmally stupid to begin with.  Even Rick Scott, not a voice of liberalism, opposes drilling off the Atlantic shore.*  The military opposes drilling off the Atlantic shore.  Drilling in the Arctic region of Alaska is so iffy that other companies with permission gave up trying.   Once again, the current administration has done something so unpopular and dumb that it’s galvanizing everybody else to fight back .  

And then there’s Jeff Sessions, a fine nineteenth century Southerner mad as hell about being stuck in twenty-first century, so he’s decided to declare that marijuana is illegal everywhere before he re-institutes slavery and tells women to just take off their shoes, get back in the kitchen and have that baby.  In fact, he’s telling law enforcement officers to crack down on weed because “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.”  Swear to god, he said that.  Of course he also apologized for supporting the KKK by saying that he thought they were okay before he found out they smoked pot.  My fellow Americans, our attorney general.  So how’s that going for him?  Oh, badly, very badly.  The states that have legalized pot are benefiting greatly from it because law enforcement can now focus on things like crime, not to mention it’s profitable as hell, popular as hell, and taxable.  Lot of Republican congresspeople are not happy at a time when Sessions really needs Congress to like him a lot, since that’s all that standing between him and Trump’s wrath at his recusal from the Russian investigation.  Also enforcement depends on the various state prosecutors, most of whom rolled their eyes and went back to work ignoring him.  And of course, the states are talking about filing lawsuits.  Best of all, this could very well push Congress to make pot legal nationally.   You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Brownie Jefferson.

(Stop for a moment and consider that the Trump admin has tried to slow down the internet and take away pot .  All it needs to do now is outlaw pizza, and it’ll have the Most-Unpopular-Administration-in-the-History-of-America Trifecta.)

I could go on–remember when Trump banned trans people in the military and the military said, “Uh, no,” protected their trans members, and announced they were  accepting trans recruits?  Good times–but the bottom line is that everything that’s happening reinforces an idea I wrote about in October of 2016: America is going through an Extinction Burst, the cataclysm of resistance against change that happens when the body (human or politic) realizes that Something Is Really Different and tries to drag things back to The Way They Were.  If the body can power through the extinction burst, the new normal sets in and the resistance goes away.  The old “This is the Way Things Should Be” becomes the new “This is the Way Things Should Be.”   So “White Men Have Absolute Power” becomes “Me, Too.”  The popular opinion that “The President Should Be White and Male” becomes the viral “Oprah 2020.”  And (fingers crossed) “The Urban Coasts Have All The Power” becomes “Crap, The Flyover States Just Elected Somebody UnElectable, We’re Gonna Have to Pay Attention to Them.”   

So if you look at this as an Extinction Burst, the Trump Presidency is essential to the health of America.  An incompetent (thank god) who larded his administration with reactionaries has highlighted how harmful, cruel, and just plain dumb those old ideas were, and is slowly educating the country once again that our freedoms depend on us, not the President/Congress/Supreme Court. If we don’t want what we’re getting now, we have to change it, by staying informed and supporting the watchdog news industry, by sponsoring the organizations that are working to protect us, and by voting.

And the lovely thing is, we’re doing all of that. The Washington Post and New York Times are more profitable than ever before because we’re subscribing, Planned Parenthood and other liberal/progressive special interest groups are logging record membership and donation numbers, and the special elections have been a thumb in the eye to Trump-supporting Republicans, who have become endangered even in the safest of all of possible states (Welcome, Doug Jones!).  

Here’s a good example of a reason to be optimistic: The ACLU has had an amazing year (thank you, President Trump, for that Muslim ban, that was a YUGE help) and whoa, baby, do they have big plans: “Soaring after a banner year — the ACLU raised $93 million online in the 12 months after Donald Trump was elected president, up from $5.5 million the year before, and its membership quadrupled to 1.6 million — the civil rights group is in the midst of a dramatic makeover. The group aims to rival the National Rifle Association as a force on the left and become a hub of the anti-Trump movement.”  Think of that for a minute: The ACLU in a smackdown with the NRA.  It’s like the nerdy kid spent the summer bulking up and is getting ready to kick bully butt.  Meanwhile, Republican incumbents, the kind of congresspeople most likely to be re-elected, are retiring in droves, and the people who are lining up to run in their places would be giving the Republican Establishment heartburn if it had a heart. Joe Arpaio just declared for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat. Michelle Bachman is thinking seriously about running for Al Franken’s seat. It’s only a matter of time before Todd Akins decides that his  rape comment wasn’t that bad. And there’s the ACLU, sitting on ninety-three mill.  I’m telling you, the midterm elections are going to be interesting.

But why wait until then?  Three news stories broke today (“Slow News Day” is another victim of the Trump Presidency):

• Robert Mueller has notified the Trump legal team that he wants to question the President. Since the President likes to talk, thinks he hasn’t done anything wrong, and has the impulse control of a two-year-old, the legal team would be smart to refuse because he will definitely tell them about how he and Putin planned the election (“We have the best brains”), following it up with “But you should really lock up Hillary, she’s the nasty woman here.” But if the Trump legal team refuses, Mueller can subpoena him, and then the lawyers can’t be in the court with him, intervening to protect him. So that would be worse.   Maybe. You know, there’s just not a good scenario for the Trump people here.

• Diane Feinstein (I definitely want to have her baby) just released the transcripts from the Fusion GPS hearing, and it turns out that  the reason the FBI believed the Steele dossier was that somebody inside the Trump campaign had already called them to report that there were a helluva lotta Russians talking to a lotta Trump people. So that idea that everybody in the Trump campaign was corrupt and stupid? Not true. One person saw the handwriting on the Kremlin and called in.  

• Steve Bannon is out at Breitbart, climaxing his power castration at the tiny hands of Donald Trump.   

Come on, people. The glass is definitely half full.

*Several hours after I published this, Scott got Zimke to back down on drilling off the Florida coast because it’s a special case because Florida relies on tourism.  Countdown to when the other states point out that all coastal economies are based on tourism.

And then several hours after that, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to begin accepting DACA applications again.

I can’t wait for tomorrow.

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You Should Read (Maybe): Fire and Fury

This weekend in the comments, I said something disparaging about Michael Wolff’s book on the Trump administration, mentioning I was only half finished with it.  I’ve finished now, and I would change my reaction from “meh” to “huh.”  That is, it got better, but I’m still not sure if it’s worth reading since its general thesis was pretty evident before it was published.  I did laugh out loud once (more about that later), but mostly I had a Stengal-like reaction: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”  The following is not a review–this book has been reviewed enough–it’s a reaction to a description of the executive branch of our government that Monty Python would spit on as being too absurd..  A dead parrot would be a step-up in this administration, according to this book.  At least it wouldn’t tweet.

For those of you mercifully unaware of  Fire and Fury, it’s a recounting of the first nine months of the Trump administration by Michael Wolff, who is not considered a reputable journalist, but who is considered a damn good collector of gossip.   Wolff was invited to the Trump White House because he defended the President in print.  Then because the place was so disorganized, he just stayed, sitting on a couch near the Oval Office for months, taping conversations and interviews, a kind of journalistic Man Who Came To Dinner.  The Trump admin has declared this book all lies (Pot, meet Kettle), and the journalism world has warned that Wolff is capable of making stuff up, so many grains of salt should be needed, except . . . 

It’s all too believable.  

The stuff I can’t believe is the stuff that’s been on the news, the stuff that’s been proven true.  I started to list all the incredibly dumb things this administration has done, but the list was too long and too depressing.  These are the people who held meetings with Russians to discredit Hilary Clinton and then defended themselves by releasing e-mails that proved they’d had meetings with Russians to defeat Hilary Clinton.  How bad is the Gang That Couldn’t Govern Straight?  According to this book, Steve Bannon is the closest thing they have to a voice of reason, and he’s insane.

I knew it was bad on Pennsylvania Ave. (everybody knows that), so I wasn’t caught up in the book at the beginning.  And aside from a few new bits of info, I didn’t really learn anything important by the end, although that may be because the news has been doing excerpts for a week.   What I did get was a much greater sense of doom: Nobody is driving this train.  If this were a novel, there’d be a hero or heroine who worked behind the scenes to save the country, and there are plenty of people working behind the scenes, but they’re all out for themselves.  In the entire book of quotes and conversations, not one person is quoted as saying, “This is what America needs.”  It’s all about what they need.  Steve Bannon comes the closest when he talks about the need to get out of Afghanistan, but even he frames it in terms of Trump’s base: it’s their kids who are cannon fodder in the war.  And of course, he’s right.  He’s just right for the wrong reasons, trying to keep Trump in power so he’s in power, not to save blue-collar kids.  In that sense, this book is not only depressing as hell, it’s terrifying..

So I could take comfort in the fact that Wolff is known for playing fast and loose with quotes and conclusions.  Except that even the journalists who warn about his dodgy history have said that nothing in this book rings false, plus Wolff says he has tapes.  He must be praying that Trump sues him so he can play those tapes in court.  There are things in here that answer questions I’ve had all along; suddenly many inexplicable things make sense, if you’re living in a Trumpian world.  

For example, the Trump admin is notorious for being the leakiest in history.  Who, I wondered, would leak around a paranoid President?  Turns out, everybody.  Jared and Ivanka leaked about Bannon and Priebus, Bannon leaked about Jared and Ivanka and Priebus, Priebus leaked about . . . you get the picture.  And of course, the loosest lips of all belong to Trump and his Twitter finger.  There’s so much infighting in this book that it’s a war story more than a political book: they’re all knifing each other and cancelling each other out, and while they’re doing that, the country is careening toward the edge.  

Another example: What the hell was Anthony Scaramucci thinking when he made that call to the New Yorker journalist?  Turns out he wasn’t thinking, he was drunk on his ass because he wasn’t getting what he thought he’d get from Trump and his personal life was coming undone.  That’s the place where I laughed, by the way.  He told the New Yorker reporter that he wasn’t like Steve Bannon, “I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” and the next sentence from Wolff is,  “In fact, Bannon learned about the piece when fact-checkers from the magazine called him for comment about Scaramucci’s accusation that he sucked his own cock.”  I couldn’t help it, I laughed out loud trying to imagine that conversation.  “Mr. Bannon, Mr. Scaramucci has made a statement about your ability to self-pleasure yourself, and we were wondering if you’d confirm . . .”  

The book ends in October, 2017, and of course since then Bannon, who reportedly intended to run for President in 2020 because he knew Trump wouldn’t make it that far, has since been defenestrated for criticizing Jared and Ivanka, who come across as more venal and stupid than evil here, and are now facing down prosecution because money laundering is allegedly a hobby of theirs.  Then there’s the host of evil henchmen who have now been indicted and are cooperating with the special prosecutor who is in turn being targeted by Republican congressmen who evidently can’t remember Watergate even though most of them were around for it and therefore have no worries about being on the wrong side of history.  Meanwhile Trump is trading playground insults with the madman on the other side of the globe by telling him that his button is bigger (men should never be given positions of power unless castrated), and . . .

So this book is sadly incomplete because history keeps happening, and even more sadly, there will undoubtedly be much more to come.  One of the most depressing things about this book is that it portrays all of these people as incredibly stupid.  It’s also one of the most reassuring things.  They have immense power, and they ‘re ignoring it to play picayune power games in the White House.  If there was a governing intellect up there, we’d be in trouble.  Instead we have Trump who will most certainly have destroyed the ascendency of the Presidency over the other two branches of government to bring us back to three equal branches, Sessions who is singlehandedly making national legalization of marijuana a probability, and a Republican congress who have greatly increased the changes of a single payer health system and are currently doing their best to shoot themselves in the feet for the 2018 midterms.  That’s before we get to the other clowns in cabinet positions, all of whom are taking positions that can only be described as evil while they dash about the country on private planes at the taxpayers’ expense.  The final takeaway from this book isn’t just that the Trump administrations policies are bad, it’s that the administration is abysmally bad at making them a reality, and absolute genius at making voters hate them.  Thank god, these people can’t play this game.  

Vote in the 2018 midterms, people.   If you’re not sure that’s necessary, read this book.   

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The post You Should Read (Maybe): Fire and Fury appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday, January 6, 2018

Today is Cuddle-Up Day.  

Because if you’re in eastern America, you are freezing your freaking whatsit off.  MY GOD IT’S COLD.  It’s going to get down to five below zero tonight, but I cannot complain because up in Vermont, Krissie’s going to be facing twenty-five below.  Even so, I’m cuddling up with an electric mattress pad, three dogs, a good book, and chocolate in some form, which I will consume with my fingers crossed, praying the electricity doesn’t go out.

You know what I want?  A nice Cherry Saturday.  IN APRIL.

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The post Cherry Saturday, January 6, 2018 appeared first on Argh Ink.