Day: December 27, 2024

The Writing Moment

I entertained myself over the last few days with novel writing. Unexpected directions and ideas were advanced. Muses introduced settings, characters, and moments I’d not anticipated.

Then, last night and this morning, panic. OMG, how does this all fit together? Some of it comes across as a little friggin’ nuts, as in crazy, insane, and maybe…cringe…ridiculous.

A brave contingency of being spoke up, trying to soothe me by reminding me, don’t worry, don’t overthink it, just get out of your own way and let it happen. This is good that you’re uncomfortable and nervous about what’s happening. They cited numerous writers who claim that if it’s going too well, it’s probably bad, ergo, feeling bad about progress is actually good.

Yes, sure, I try to accept that. Tell myself, swallow hard. Keep going. Don’t judge it until it’s done as one piece.

Easy for you to say, the neurotic doubters retort. Then all agree, let’s just go write like crazy, at least one more time. See where it takes us.

And away we go.

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Vagafloof

Vagafloof (floofinition) – An animal who enjoys wandering. Origins: 15th century Middle Floofish.

In Use: “As much as he cringed from what could happen to Turbo, Patrick accepted that his pet was a vagfloof, familiar to all of the neighbors in a radius of several blocks.”

In Use: “Although now a fair-weather floof, Mouse (a misnomer if ever there was one) was a vagafloof in the house, visiting Carol while she worked in the office, and periodically checking on all rooms and activities thoughout the day.”

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Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Vagabond Scholar’s jon-swift-roundup for 2024 took me to perrspectives.com’s roundup:

Trump’s Top 10 Broken Promises on the Economy

This is an excellent summary of Trump’s promises before his first messed-up term. Then, as now, Trump belched out grandiose promises and grandly failed to meet any of them. Yes, those of us paying attention knew that going into 2024. Reading it in an orderly, fact-loaded page is a sort of emotional and intellectual comfort food for me. Kind of thing needed as we slouch toward Trump’s second term.

Of course, reading the summary also triggers my anger at Trump voters, minions, and enablers. They’re either so awfully cognitively impaired that you wonder who is dressing them, deliberately obtuse because the truth is an ugly, scary critter to them, or know that Trump speaks shit but delight in the chaos he generates, or finally (looking at you Musk, RFK Jr, any Kushner, and Vivek), are just base, greedy opportunists who care about nothing except making themselves more money at the expense of others.

Well, honestly, I think Trump was swept in on a toxic melange of all of those things. We’re already hearing about voting remorse, infighting, and exclamations of surprise and disappointment, and he’s not even in office. We’re also witnessing some crowing about how he’s already changing the economy and the world, with people acting like he’s already in office.

The latest infighting erupting is about tech right’s desire for more H1B visas. They cite a need for these because Americans are ‘too retarded’ for the work they need. The charge for these is being lead by those billionaires of bullshit, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

“If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win,” Musk wrote on X.

“I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning,” Musk wrote in another post on Thursday. “Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct.”

Ramaswamy, a first-generation US citizen whose parents immigrated from India, concurred with Musk while defending companies that look outside the US for labor, arguing tech companies hire engineers who were born outside the US or born to American immigrants because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” citing portrayals of smart students in TV sitcoms “Boy Meets World,” “Saved By The Bell” and “Family Matters” as evidence.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG,” he wrote on Thursday. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

Over in deep MAGAland, the reaction was predictably WTF angry. Isn’t the whole thesis of Make America Great Again predicated on Americans being the greatest but undermined by those pesky immigrants, immigrants are who not as great as Americans, who — reminder — are the greatest? Immigrants who are stealing ‘Merican jobs? And here are two MINOs — MAGAs in Name Only, Musk and Ramaswamy, calling for more immigrants.

And so the MAGA base that took Trump to power already begins eating itself and falling apart.

And PINO-elect Trump is not even in office yet.

Brace yourself: 2025 is going to be a wild, wild ride.

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Frida’s Theme Music

Mood: Decembristism

It was a dark and gloomy night but dawn broke as a bright, sunshiny day. Rain clouds knifed in during the intervening hours between now and then, thwarting the sun’s stalwart efforts to give us light and heat. Today is Frida, December 27, 2024. We’re surfing a 54 degrees F day, which t’aint a bad temperatures. The winds that scoured us last night have retreated. A kittenish breeze teases the trees.

Dreams rocked my night. All of ’em were quite personally oriented. Awakening from them had me thinking long and hard about them and what they meant, if anything. That’s often the issue with dreams: any meanings which your brain could be sharing gets wrapped and warped by confusing elements. Do they mean something, or are they just neurons gaming your consciousness?

Ran into a friend this morning. Well, not literally; we encountered on another. We’d not seen each other since October. I may’ve mentioned in posts here that I had ankle surgery in October and then immobolized by the recovery process. He didn’t know that and wondered where I’d been. I presented him a situation précis, with the main point being, that’s life. Afterward, walking away, The Neurons brought up a Dire Straits fave of theirs, “The Walk of Life”, into the morning mental music stream (Trademark aging). I originally associated the song with sports, especially baseball. Listening more closely, I recognized that it was about someone singing songs, and several references to rock and roll songs are heard throughout. An interview with Knopfler, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist behind the song, later confirmed this. Now I associate the song with anyone trying to make good through strife, keeping on toward a goal. This is life; you do the walk.

Days of 2024 vintage are trickling away. 2025 is coming up like a full moon over the trees. Time to rock on one more time. Here we go with the music. Cheers

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