A Satisfying Conclusion

Really crushing the reading. Blazed through 600 pages of Lady Joker, volume two in two days. What can self say? Detective Yoichiro Goda and his lonely quest to catch the Lady Joker just got under her skin. Even though she was sick as a dog yesterday (Don’t worry, it’s not fun, but at least it’s not covid), she just had to see how it ended. Since he’s been such a lonely, reticent soul, and seemed to be sinking deeper into the well of despond with every encounter with his superiors, she feared he was about to go all Mishima. In fact, at one point, he does start putting his affairs in order, giving away things — like from his long-dead marriage — Oh no!

But, suffice it to say, self was thrilled, THRILLED by that epilogue. Five stars to Lady Joker, volume two!

Next: Ling Ma, BLISS MONTAGE: STORIES

Fairy Tale, p. 138: The Mysterious Shed

Self knew it, she knew it! SOMETHING is trying to get out of the padlocked shed in Mr. Bowditch’s backyard!

First, the dog starts barking, using her “Intruder Alert” bark.

• She was facing the shed, her ears laid back and her muzzle wrinkled to show her teeth. Foam flew from her mouth with each bark. I ran to her and grabbed her collar and tried to pull her back. She didn’t want to come, but it was clear she also didn’t want to go closer to the locked shed. Even with the fusillade of barks, I could hear that weird scraping, scratching sound. This time it was louder, and I saw the door moving a little. It was like a visible heartbeat. Something was trying to get out . . . Something inside the shed hit the door hard enough for me to hear the thud.

The MC, Charlie, has heard those sounds from the shed before. Since the door to the shed is padlocked, and he doesn’t have the key, he has taken to banging on the door. Whatever is inside quiets after that.

But today, the sounds are loud and manic. The dog, who is old and arthritic, turns tail and runs, “not a single sign of a limp.”

Mr. Bowditch comes outside and yells at the boy to “get away from there!” He straps on his gun, which “looked like something out of Gunfight at the O. K. Corral.” (Self is very impressed that an American teenager knows enough old movies to compare Mr. Bowditch’s gun to the one in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Surely Charlie wasn’t even born yet when the movie came out.)

Then, Mr. Bowditch does this very strange thing: he takes a key from his pocket, unlocks the padlock, walks inside the shed, and closes the door.

Eeeek! Don’t look, self! Cover your eyes! But she has to keep on reading, to find out what sort of strange, malevolent creature is locked in the shed. She hopes it’s not one of those creatures like the ones from the movie Signs. Or one of those click-click creatures from The Last of Us. She’s about ready to scream in terror, though it’s 8:18 a.m. and bright morning. She hopes she can sleep tonight.

Strangely enough, the barking dog’s name is RADAR. She is always the first to sniff out danger, so the name fits.

Stay tuned.

The Ship (You Sexy Thing) Acquires a Point of View, p. 88

The ship, aware of everything happening in its interior, could not help but notice. He was memorizing the ship’s interior, the Thing thought, despite the fact that the ship could change it unexpectedly. Was the creature unaware of that, or did it not care? Was there some other purpose to the mapping? The ship could not think what that might be, but there was something unnerving about the way that the creature moved down the hallways, its hood pulled back to expose its face to the air, its eyes entirely — as far as the ship could tell — closed.

As it continued, another thing alarmed the ship. The creature was now exploring without bothering to open its eyes at all, but it was not stumbling or tripping as it did so, as though it already knew the space.

— You Sexy Thing, pp. 88 – 89

A Ship Named You Sexy Thing

Aside from that very unique name for a spaceship, the ship itself is alive, sentient, its inner walls actual skin. The governing intelligence is not a computer, it is AI. If someone spits on the floor, that spittle is immediately absorbed and analyzed, to ascertain whether that person’s health falls “within expected parameters.” The plucky crew (Plucky crews seem all over science fiction these days) boards to escape an attack on TwiceFar Station, at the outer edges of the known galaxy, after the death of the ship’s captain — but not before the captain gives the crew the magic password, I believe in miracles. It turns out that the password is code for: I’ve been murdered and these people are trying to steal my ship; go directly to the prison planet. All arguments are futile: the password has been given, the ship cannot deviate from its course. Luckily, the crew includes two entities known as Thorn and Talon, twin children sold to the Holy Hive Mind by their mother. Thorn and Talon are made into the Holy Hive Mind’s “shock troops” — they can transform from human into battle lion, “fierce and nigh unkillable, with a lion’s ferocity armored by nigh impenetrable magic, fangs and claws metal augmented, deadly.”

Let’s see what Thorn and Talon can get up to, shall we?

Also: self is so dense that she didn’t get the connection between the song (You Sexy Thing) and the password (I Believe in Miracles). Thanks to Tony Robles for sending her the link to the song.

Stay tuned.

The Birther Theory, Effectiveness of

Trump instinctively understood the power of such wishful thinking — perhaps because he himself lived in a fantasy world, in which everything he touched turned to gold and he was always a “winner”, despite numerous bankruptcies. So those Americans who could not bear the idea that they had a Black president were fed the emotionally satisfying lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and was therefore not a legitimate president. Trump loyalists who could not accept the idea that he had lost the 2020 election were told instead that their hero had been the victim of electoral fraud. Senator Ted Cruz, who had once accurately called Trump a “pathological liar”, ended up defending Trump’s biggest and most consequential lie, about a stolen election, from the floor of the Senate.

— The Age of the Strongman, Ch. 7, p. 127

Pinocchio, Pinocchio

I was today years old when I read (thanks, Gideon Rachman!) about a favored strategy of Putin called “firehouse of lies” (Chapter 7 of The Age of the Strongman)

According to Rachman, a “firehose of falsehoods” is a “fundamental political tool. The idea is to throw out so many different conspiracy theories and ‘alternative facts’ (to use the phrase of Trump’s aide, Kellyanne Conway) that the truth simply becomes one version of events among many. For strongman leaders, a ‘firehose of falsehoods’ can serve important purposes. Importantly, it makes it easier to evade responsibility. All the evidence might suggest that Covid-19 originated in China or that Russian missiles shut down flight MH17, but Chinese and Russian spokesmen will spin out a variety of alternative theories to obscure the reality of what actually happened . . . There will always be takers for these theories among loyalists who want badly to believe the best of their leader or their country. This is a phenomenon that psychologists call ‘motivated reasoning’: a form of biased thinking that leads people to the conclusions they find most emotionally satisfying, rather than those that are justified by the evidence.”

In other words: Gaslighting DOES work!

I am so glad I decided to read this book!

Flashback Monday: President Trump

From the very beginning of his run for the presidency, and throughout his four years in office, Trump’s instinct was to govern like an authoritarian strongman rather than a democratically elected president . . . As president, Trump quickly made it clear that his appointees should be loyal to him personally, rather than to the law. When James Comey, the director of the FBI, was invited to a one-on-one dinner with the new president, Trump repeatedly asked him to proclaim his “loyalty.” Comey demurred and was fired a few months later. The letter sacking him was hand-delivered by a man who understood what the president meant by loyalty — Keith Schiller, Trump’s former bodyguard. At his first full Cabinet meeting, Trump extracted embarrassing pledges of loyalty from his cabinet members in front of the television cameras. Mike Pence, the vice president, set the slavish tone by proclaiming: “The greatest privilege of my life is to serve as vice president to the man who’s keeping his word to the American people.” Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, thanked the president and called it a “blessing to serve your agenda.” “It’s an honor to be able to serve you,” declared Jeff Sessions, the attorney general.

— The Age of the Strongman, Chapter 7: Donald Trump, American Strongman

Question: Chris Krebs was fired by tweet. Why does Comey get the special treatment (letter hand-delivered by Keith Schiller)

Ch 6: Boris Johnson and Brexit Britain

This chapter is fascinating, simply fascinating. According to Rachman, both David Cameron and Boris Johnson expected Yes Leave to lose. When it won instead, David Cameron resigned that very day, and the path for Johnson to become prime minister was suddenly wide open. That was the moment when, according to Steve Bannon, who was managing Trump’s campaign, he “knew” Trump would win. Nigele Farage was the first foreign politician to meet with Trump after his improbable victory.

The Boris Johnson/Donald Trump synchronicity:

• Melania, Trump’s third wife, was 24 years younger than him. Johnson’s third wife, Carrie, was twenty-three years younger than Boris.
• Johnson’s most important policy was to take Britain out of the European Union, while “Trump made it clear that he regarded NATO as biased against American interests and toyed with withdrawing from the Western alliance.”
• Both Trump and Johnson capitalized on hostility to mass immigration.
• Johnson believed that he alone “had the strength to deliver Brexit,” echoing Trump’s assertion that “only I can fix it.” He also brought up the “deep state,” a vast conspiracy to overturn the Brexit vote in the referendum.

Self remembers attending a talk about Trump’s dementia (That was the actual topic: Trump’s dementia, it was printed in the conference programme and everything, har har har). Who knew that Trump’s dementia would turn into accusations of “Joe’s dementia” the following year! The talk took place in a 12th century church in the picturesque Cornwall seaside town of Fowey. It was May 2019.

The speaker said he didn’t think England would go the authoritarian route because “England has the BBC; America has Fox News.” The bashing went so hard that, after the presentation, an English couple next to self felt compelled to apologize for all the “bad things” the speaker had said about Trump. Self said: “Don’t apologize. I agree with him!” Only a few months later, in August 2019, Johnson would “prorogue parliament . . . to prevent it from getting in the way of Brexit.” And the rest is history!

Unfortunately for Johnson, the same day that Britain left the EU (end of January 2020) was also the “day that Britain announced its first case of coronavirus.” And Johnson’s rhetoric could not get around this new reality. Both Trump and Johnson mis-handled their respective country’s national response to the virus.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Flower of the Day: In the Garden, After Rain

There was a break in the rain! Self did a quick inspection tour of her garden.

Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day.

Left to right: abutilon; Australian firecracker plant; lavatera

Sentence of the Day: Gideon Rachman

But even the paranoid have real enemies.

— Chapter 2, p. 45 of The Rise of the Strongman