Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Dealing with a bad muse today. Experienced with my buttons, she’s pushing them to get her way.
See, I should be editing and revising. It’s round number five on this novel in progress. It’s coming along well but it has a big appetite for my time. I hope, with another round or two, that I’ll have a finished tale that satisifes me. But that comes with a big sigh cuz I’m a little weighed down with the novel. Sixty pages of editing remain of a section which was expanded and shifted in the last two go-arounds. Complicated, they were sloppy and overwritten so I’m addressing what I see. It’s satisfying but tedious.
Bad Muse knows this. She knows that I’m addicted to the creativity experienced while writing a new novel. So Bad Muse is pushing buttons to continue with a new novel in progress. “It’s going well,” she croons, “and it’s fun. Time away from that other one will give you distance and you’ll find the editing is more easily done.”
I don’t know if her logic is right but I don’t like her tone when she says ‘that other one’. So disdainful. Not calling it a novel. Not even referencing it as a book or manuscript. Like she’s talking about another woman, a past girlfriend or wife or such. Oddly, that tone cements a decision that I’m going to edit ‘that other one’.
Take that, Bad Muse.
Floofatize – (floofinition) – To change something from being for a human or human activity to one suiting animals. Origins: early 1960s, American homes.
In Use: “As soon as the rescue dog acclimated to his new home, he began floofatizing certain sleeping locations to claim it as his own.”
In Use: “Within a short time of adopting two cats, the patio was floofatized into a catio.”
Warning: snark might be encountered ahead.
I want to give a shout out to the US Postal System. Rates went up again recently. We know that probably means systemic improvements…right?
Of course! Although, um, postal workers in my area are concerned with mail not being picked up. Thanks to the price increase and a new modernization effort, we’ve gone from having five trucks to collect the mail and start its journey. Now we’re down to one. Wow, that’s efficiency!
Except, ah, my Visa credit card people are often concerned, sending emails, reminding us to pay our bill because the due date is coming up. “They should have received it,” my wife and I agreed. She added, “It’s due the fifteenth and I mailed it before the first.” This was back in November. “Maybe weather delayed it,” I put in. But this had never happened before. Now it’s happened three times.
Jeremy Schilling, president of the American Postal Workers Union Local 342 here in the Rogue Valley may have given us the answer. Going from five trucks to one doesn’t work well, he asserts. “Talent and Phoenix are now on the same route as Ashland. As a larger population center, Ashland requires its own truck. That being the case, the one truck (for all three cities) is already full when it reaches its next stops. This is happening across the whole state right now,” Schilling said. (h/t to rv-times.com)
This is the plan that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year “Delivering for America” plan has delivered to us. Besides the one truck replacing five idea, his plan calls for dropping the second daily pickup. So instead of racing to the Post Office to get something into the mail before the early collection time, it’s just the one collection at five PM.
See what higher price stamps get us?
But it’ll save a lot of money, DeJoy asserts. Schilling’s response speaks for me. “With this new truck route that saves so much money, are they telling me the money saved is because they’re going to abandon mail every day because the truck is too full?” Schilling asked. Seems so from my vantage, but I’m only a customer, which makes me an outsider.
Reduced trucks and fewer collection times are just two of the improvements which DeJoy has imposed. Under his plan, there is consolidation in the name of efficiency. The Institute for Policy Studies asserts what this could mean for me and my mail in their study, The USPS Network Consolidation Plan: What’s at Stake for Southern Oregon. Among their findings are Potential slower delivery times and Risk of transportation disruptions, which you always want when you’ve established an improvement plan for your delivery system.
The study found that under DeJoy’s improvement plan are several nuggets.
Under the USPS plan for the Medford facility, mail and packages posted by local residents and business will travel to Portland for processing – even if the destination address is in the local tri-county area. The state of Oregon has just one major artery going north-south, Interstate highway 5. In normal conditions, the 280-mile route between Medford, which is near the California border, and the Portland regional distribution and processing center site at the northern edge of the state takes about 4 hours and 28 minutes, or 9 hours round-trip.
A First Class letter shipped from Klamath Falls in Oregon to Sacramento, California would today travel 387 miles and take 6 hours. Under the consolidation plan, that letter, passing through Portland, rather than Medford, would travel twice as many miles, and take twice as long to make the journey – 858 miles and 13 hours of travel time.
Wow, longer time and further distances for things to be delivered! That has to be better, right, because more is better, isn’t it? Apparently that’s how DeJoy thinks. And think of how this will affect traffic, air pollution, and additional costs in gas and wear and tear on vehicles. Win win win! Fortunately, they are moving to electric vehicles. Money has been commited, but the transition has been slowed by none other than DeJoy.
You might be thinking, where have I heard of Louis DeJoy before? Well, the man was put into position by President Donald J. Trump (but not appointed), and we know that Trump is all about efficiency (yes, that’s sarcasm) and has an eye for capable people (yes, more sarcasm, given how many positions in his A team turned over in his only term. Answer: 92%. President Biden’s is 71%). Likewise, Trump’s cabinet appointments turned over more than Presidents Obama, Dubya and his pops, and Reagan.
DeJoy advocates for privatizing the USPS. So he doesn’t really want it to excel as a government service. What better way to gain advocates for privatizing a government system that’s working than by sabotaging it?
DeJoy is also the guy who handicapped the USPS and its ability to support dealing with COVID-19 and ensuring mail-in ballots arrived as expected during the 2020 election.
So he’s doing a heckuva job, as President Bush told Brownie ten days before Brownie resigned because he hadn’t done a heckuva job at all.
Yep, heckuva job, DeJoy. Way he’s going, it’ll cost a dollar for a stamp and the mail will take a month to reach its destination. Such efficiency!
The woman beside me at the coffee shop seemed so familiar that I had to speak. We talked about where I might know her from but nothing was uncovered.
I shrugged it off. It’s a small town and we’re similiar ages. Maybe similiar politics; I’m progressive and there are many progressives in town. I’ve probably seen her at a rally, protest, shopping, or concert. It’s one of those small-town perks.
Mood: coffeetastic
Hey, Terra fans, welcome to another edition of Tuesday. Today, for the first time ever anywhere*, we bring you March 5, 2024. It’s a robust 37 degrees F right now in Ashlandia but we’ll soon be soaring to 43 F before sun pulls its light from our valley.
All the snow is gone (which somehow triggers “all the leaves are brown” from “California Dreamin'” by The Mamas and the Papas in the morning mental music stream).
Rain continues its beat (bringing The Neurons to start “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s in the morning mental music stream) (Trademark coming in two weeks, I swear, and it’ll be the most beautiful trademark anyone has ever seen). But then, thinking about the Go-Go’s, I ended up with “Going to a Go-Go” by the Miracles from 1965.
The version done by the Rolling Stones also floated along the meandering morning mental music stream, though. I prefer Smokey and the Miracles version. It’s just tighter to me, but one can’t easily just dismiss the Stones.
However, another song was in the MMMS, freshly peeled from a pass through the guest room. On the bed in there is a pillow which says, “Be Our Guest”, navy script on oatmeal. Goes well with the dark blue duvet cover. As I glanced its way, “Be Our Guest” kicked up in the MMMS. I knew the song but remembered nothing else about it except it was a while back that I learned it. A net search rewarded me with Jerry Orbach and Angela Lansbury singing “Be Our Guest” from Disney’s animated version of Beauty and the Beast from 1991.
Odd underlying connections do bring some of these things together more. Besides the go-go connections between the Go-Go’s and “Going To A Go-Go”, and the guest room pillow and “Be Our Guest”, the Go-Go’s debut album, which featured “We Got the Beat”, was called, Beauty and the Beat. Wild how the mind can work. Those Neurons are sly little tricksters.
As I mused through all of that, I wondered what folks remember about things like go-go’s, which were forerunners of discotheques, which were forerunners of discos, which themselves were born from dance halls (at least as I see it), and which begat things like raves and dance parties. That’s my impression of it all from what I recall at this point, just starting on coffee, from my life.
My housefloof, the black and white cat hailed as Tucker, is doing much better as he prepares for his dental surgery later this month. I cut back on his pain med because he was sleeping all day long. I wanted him to be a little more active and eat more, which he didn’t do while asleep. He seems to like the shift and ate very well today.
Stay positive, be sensible, remain strong, lean forward, and vote. The list is getting lengthy. Coffee helps me remember it all. Here’s the music. Cheers
* We don’t really know if this is the first time that there’s been a March 5, 2024 but as far as we can tell from memories and all the records so far discovered, this is it, kids.
Michael Seidel, writer 