Ready Player Two

My latest kindle book from the public library is the science fiction novel Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline.

Here's a bit of the blurb from the Amazon page ...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The highly anticipated sequel to the beloved worldwide bestseller Ready Player One, the near-future adventure that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg film.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST • “The game is on again. . . . A great mix of exciting fantasy and threatening fact.”—The Wall Street Journal ...

I really liked the first book, Ready Player One, and mentioned it in a number of past posts. If you saw and didn't like the movie adapted from that first book - and I didn't - you should still try the book itself because it's way better than the film.

I don't think this second novel is as good as the first, but if you did like Ready Player One you will probably still enjoy this second installment of the story. And if you get the audio version, it's read by Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation), as is the first book :)

Biden & Pope

President Biden, a Catholic, meets with the Pope. They all seem happy :)

Bet the US Bishops are grinding their teeth. They don't want Biden to be able to take communion because he is pro-choice. But the Pope has said it's ok (Biden: Pope said he should receive communion, despite U.S. bishops’ rift on abortion rights).

The guns

[...] we're living under a corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns ... how many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people? ...

This is the Republican party now. The makers of death threats, and at times, killers. Why are we surprised? These are the people who believe Democrats are satan-worshipping child-abusing cannibals. This is the gun-totting crew that Trump and his enablers have massaged with the Big Lie. We'd better start taking this seriously.

Medicare

Watching the news - it appears that the plan to expand Medicare (vision, dental, hearing) is going to be cut from the Democrats' reconciliation bill. They will keep on all the child programs, but apparently old people are just meant to crawl under a bush and die when their bodies start falling apart. So disappointing :(

Storm

Terrible weather here today. A storm that has been raining at 100% forever ...

The back yard is a swamp and a stream has developed right through the middle of the pop tent that is back there for the cats.

The driveway is like a swimming pool and it's emprying into the garage,under the doors. Last night i tried to make sandbags with cat litter to stop that, but they haven't worked, so now the garage is a swamp too, with all the cats' furniture getting wet.

And the pop tent on the front porch where the cats have a couch keeps filling up with water and then splashing over the sides, despite all the pool noodles ...



I finally had to cut holes in it to let out the extra water. Anyway, the cats are wet and miserable (except Yoda) and so am I despite my plastic rain slicker.

I'm pretty depressed. What cheers me up at times like this is music. I have saved most of my favorite tunes as Quicktime MP4s on the computer, converted from music videos online. Here are a few of the cheerful ones ...







I wish the cats could cheer up as easily too.

Eric

Eric Clapton, 2021, The Lady in the Balcony: Lockdown Sessions

OK, I know Eric Clapton is not only an anti-vaxxer who contributes money to that cause and promotes conspiracy theories ... is it wrong that I still find his guitar playing a pleasure to listen to? Or maybe it's that my young self's romanticized image of him is still more real to me than his actual self. It makes me sad that he can play music I like and still be a nut :(

Manchin

Video from writer Don Winslow. I am so sick of Joe Manchin ruining every effort of Democrats to make the American people's lives better. His latest? Threatening to quit the Democratic party if Biden doesn't bend to his will on the reconciliation bill.

Electric!

I've been using an electric lawnmower and electric weed-eater since I moved back here to live with my mom in 1989. Here's is the old beast (Black & Decker) we bought back then, which lasted until 2014! ...

Then I bought a newer B&D electric one from Amazon, and a couple of years ago I got a Greenworks, again from Amazon ...

They all have worked fine. Not expensive - the latest one was about $140. The only inconvenience is the cord. The yard is pretty big so I have four cords hooked together so I can make it to the edges. My sister's electric mower uses a battery but they are not good for hours at a time, and they make the mower weigh more, so I'm sticking with the cords.

Father Pete

I think most of us would agree that Tucker Carlspn's homophobia is repeleent.

But it's not just Trump Republicans who nurture, express, and try to spread these kinds of beliefs. This is also the official stance of the Catholic church and of that warm and fuzzy Pope that everyone so loves - Francis.

The Pope has said that children need heterosexual parents. And in his exgortation, Amoris Laetitia, he wrote ... There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.

The church won't let married same-sex couples adopt children from their agencies, and they spent millions lobbying against marriage equality.

So why is it that we all recognize that Tucker Carlson is a poop-head, but we don't hold Pope Francis to the same standard? We shouldn't give him a pass because he's Christian - most Christian denominations (and bible scholars) do not believe what he believes.

Andy McCabe

You will recall that when Trump was president, he went out of his way to try to make James Comey, the then director of the FBI, into one of his toadies, asking him for personal loyalty and asking him to stop investigatitng his National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn. Comey wouldn't complu and so Trump had him fired.

The man who took Comey's place as director of the FBI was deputy director Andy McCabe. From the start of his tenure, Andy spoke truth to power, and that angered Trump. Trump had spread the lie that Comey had been vastly disliked at the FBI and that the Bureau was glad Trump had fired him. Andy told both Trump and Congress that this was not true ...



And then Andy had the FBI open an investigation into Trump and Russia and the election ... that guaranteed Trump would work to destroy Andy's carreer. Andy was due to retire that year, and Trump made sure that he was fired, under a cloud, just hours before his retirement, dooming both his reputation and his pension ...

Andy brought a lawsuit to clear his name and save his pension, and he has now been vindicated.

If you want to know more about all that happened and to know more about Andy McCabe, read his book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. I thought it was really good.

Bill Maher

Don't be complacent. We can't let this happen.

Squid Game

There's a new tv series on Netflix, sadly only for streamers, called Squid Game ...

a South Korean survival drama .... The series centers on a contest where 456 players, drawn from different walks of life but each deeply in debt, play a set of children's games with deadly penalties for losing for the chance to win a ₩45.6 billion prize.

Here's a trailer ...



It reminds me of the book, Ready Player One, in which future people who owe money on their credit cards are made virtual slaves for life by the creit card companies in order to pay off a debt that can never really be paid off (if you are like me, you know what that means).

As Jason Johnson says in the video at the top, this is so conservative politics.

Civil war

Watching the news today, I saw a Trump supporter at his latest rally say that a civil war is coming. A chilling prediction. Yeah, our side has the military, but that doesn't mean these nuts couldn't wage an asymmetrical war of attrition.

But anyway, the point is that Trump supporters are willing to use violence to achieve their ends. This isn't new - these are the same people who murdered doctors in the 90s (While abortion doctors were being killed, pro-lifers prayed in support of the attackers. And nowdays, 4 In 10 Republicans Say Political Violence May Be Necessary.

Scary abd depressing.

:)

If you fall into the intersection of being a cat owner and being a fan of Queen's song Bohemian Rhapsody, then you may find thiis as funny as I did :) ...

Blocked

A federal judge has blockd the Texas anti-abortion law, based on its unconstitutionality, but that's being appealed. There is a provision in the law that allows retroactive suing for anything that transpired during an injunction, so it's unclear what will happen now.

An example of the dishonest and cynical nature of the pro-life movement: the assertion by Susan B Anthony List that ...

"Now an unelected judge has interferred with the clearly expressed will of Texans"

All federal judges, just like those judges on the Supreme Court who allowed this anti-abortion law to go forward, are appointed, not elected. And this law does *not* reflect the will of the people of Texas - most Texans oppose a ban on abortion.

But lying and inciting outrage = standard operating procedure of the anti-abortion movement.

French church

So the Pope is sad. Really?

The Pope could put a stop to sexual abuse by clergy if he wanted to. ...

He could make it necessary for all clergy who become aware of abuse to go to the civil authorities and report it. He won't. (Pope mandates reporting of sex abuse to church, not police)

The Pope could make confessions from priests to other priests about their abusive acts free from the secrecy of confession so it could be reported. He won't. (Vatican Hits Back at Attempts to Break Confession Secrecy)

The Pope could fire - totally sever from the church - every priest who is known to have abused someone. He won't. (The Catholic Church Is Reinstating Priests Accused of Sexual Abuse)

The Pope could allow married people to be priests, he could allow women to be priests. That would vastly diminish the ability for the f*cked-up creeps who now populate the Catholic priesthood to get away with their abuse, and it would vastly diminish the number of those creeps in the priesthood. He won't. (Pope Francis Won't Allow Married Men As Priests, Women As Deacons)

So I don't actually believe that the Pope feels "sorrow" about the children who are being raped by his priests.

And the depressing thing is, most of the people who identify as Catholic don't care either. If they did, they would make the chuch change or they would leave. They won't.

Women's March

Most Americans want abortion to remain legal. Even most Catholics want abortion to remain legal (see Pew Forum) ...

If this reactionary Supreme Court decides to overturn Roe v Wade, allowing the Texas law and other such laws to stand, they will get an education on the perils of minority tyranny.