Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 10/25/24
I Can’t Drive 55 edition
As of this writing, the Bunker Administrator is wrestling with his most recent of milestones, the awkward descent into the ripe old age of 55. As this is a milestone birthday (after the age of 30, we only count the 5’s and 10’s), it puts me squarely in the category of “middle aged,” for at double-digit five-five there can be no doubt or dissembling about that. The day was, well, who has special birthdays anymore? Adults, I mean. I am not one of those people that insists on a “Birthday Week” or worse, a “Birthday Month.” No judgement if that’s your thing, but it always brings to mind the scene from Twilight Zone: the Movie (1983) when Ethel at the dinner table says, “Another birthday? With presents? And wishes?” Anthony’s response to her is to telekinetically flip her dinner plate over. That’s how I feel, minus the telekinesis. I figure if I can somehow manage to have a nice dinner, that’s the best any of us can hope for.
That’s not to say I didn’t get my share of loot, including the new NECA Target exclusive Planet of the Apes Gorilla Soldier, a couple of books I was really wanting, and a few gift cards from people who have long since given up trying to buy for me. A few of you even followed the links from last week and bought a book or two, for which I am very grateful. It wasn’t a review, but hey, cash is good, too.
Also, I received—please forgive the use of technical jargon here, but I don’t know how else to say it—a shit-ton of well-wishes, memes, PMs, DMs, videos, and a couple of phone calls. It’s always humbling and overwhelming to see so many of you saying nice things and giving me shit for being one year closer to the age of 100. I don’t know what else to say except THANK YOU three thousand. I love all of you. Well, most of you. Okay, like, 40%, maybe 41%. Some of you are just going to have to try a little harder. We are all a work in progress.
Fifty-Five, and Why I Can’t Drive It
The build up to this birthday has been one of navel-gazing, something that’s a bit tricky now that I don’t have one. I tried to make a few lists, labeled “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” but that didn’t work out like I expected. Instead, I’ll point out a few truisms that the other bloggers won’t talk about because it’s not sexy. Side note: I hate that most movies, TV, and books are aimed at Millennials and Zedsters, because their concerns are way different than those of Generation X, who seem to have once again gotten the shit end of the stick. To which I say, in the language of my people, “Pfft. Figures.”
Starting with the unintended consequences of aging, I must mention the random hairs that spring up out of my body, unbidden, devoid of color, and with the same tensile strength as a porcupine quill. These hairs seem to pop up overnight, Wolverine-Claw-Style, and grow straight and true to a length of 4 to 6 inches in length. Most commonly found in my eyebrows or coming out of one nostril. That’s not the worst of it, but that’s the best example. Where I want hair, there is none to be found. Where I don’t want hair, I get these creepy proto-feathers like a Chinese dinosaur, capable of drawing blood if I can figure out how to shank someone with my face.
A non-functioning metabolism is pretty much a given at this point. I am in the process of evaluating the caloric needs of the human equivalent of a giant sack of aquarium gravel. I’m willing to bet it’s somewhere in the 1,000-calorie range, but even that may be too much. And it’s all dependent on getting an appropriate amount of exercise to offset what I’m tamping down into the corners of my battered carcass like Play-Doh being loaded into a piping bag.
Lastly, there’s a societal shift that happens when people start using the phrase “...of a certain age,” an overly polite euphemism that’s trying to sound kind but just comes off as smug and judge-y, especially when people are describing your symptoms and ailments back to you. Everyone calls you “sir.” Okay, I don’t mind that. But there’s a perception change that hits when you get into your fifties. There’s this sudden awareness that your parents were here first, and thinking back on how they were with you when you were in your twenties and thirties, you realize that no “youngster” is obligated, legally or otherwise, to listen to anything you say, ever. This sucks doubly hard because I feel like I’m at the age now where I’ve figured some stuff out and can talk about it. Impart my wisdom, so to speak. See below. And the people that most need to hear my brilliance would rather I just hobble into the kitchen and make them a grilled cheese sandwich, cut on the diagonal for easy scarfing.
There is an upside or two, of course. I have thankfully managed to keep my brain healthy and so my memory is still intact. There’s a thing humans do called “offloading” whereby they take painful memories or simply unused information and “delete” them, or overwrite them with more relevant and pertinent information. It’s a survival thing. Our brains need to prioritize the most important facts.
Since I don’t have kids and dragged my feet turning into a grown-up for as long as I could, I’ve still got facts and info in my head that a lot of people offloaded to make room for their children’s birthdays and favorite colors. It’s nice, being able to remember things from the 1970s and 1980s—and before you say something snarky, no, it’s not all Star Wars trivia and comic books, okay? Anyway, popular culture is still culture, so that’s that.
I’ve also been fortunate enough to meet and even work with some of my heroes; authors, artists, musicians, and other creative people in my life are just a few of the wide and varied acquaintances I try to keep that includes actors, lawyers, various doctors, medical and otherwise, and even a few members of the clergy. I do have an inner circle, of course, and a large collection of people I consider to be close friends. I’ve also got friend groups, arranged around a common experience, activity, fandom, and/or time period. It’s very weird sometimes when these disparate groups meet up. Many is the time when I’ve had friends over at a gathering or a party and the only thing they have in common is that they know me.
And what would getting older be without the increased wisdom that accompanies it? The expression “wise beyond their years” is levied against younger people who display that kind of long-range, top-down approach to a problem or a complicated issue. Wisdom is a by-product of living life. As you get knocked around, you pick up things; life lessons, hacks, tips and tricks, and also, a longer and sometimes wider perspective. You get to apply your learned experiences to the thing right in front of you and thus (hopefully) not repeat a bad decision or make a wrong choice. I know, this is something that isn’t valued in our current culture, but I want to remind you that we are the architects of our own lives. My solution to being inundated with artifacts of “youth culture” is to simply not be where that stuff is flying about. That’s why I don’t have a TickTock account.
This is the first year since I rounded the corner on 50 that I finally feel like I’m ready to be my stated age. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not tossing the action figures out. I’m just a lot closer to retirement age than ever before and that gives me pause. It’s time to start figuring some stuff out. Better late than never, I guess.
Voting in Texas
I did my civic duty on Tuesday. I’m well aware that the Electoral College will render my vote null and void, a thing that’s happened twice in the past two decades. My tacit acceptance of that fact doesn’t make me any less angry about it. A lot has to happen within and without both parties before any of that will be addressed.
No, what I’m holding out for is the Senate race. I cannot stand Ted Cruz; I think he’s a terrible person, one of those people who makes being an asshole such a point of pride. I’m certain that in high school, when people were making plans to go out after the football game and piled into the car with the largest back seat, they turned around and found he’d gotten in with everyone else, but no one remembered inviting him.
This guy ran on the Tea Party platform. He shut down the government, going so far as to reading Green Eggs and Ham during his filibuster. He’s got one of the most punchable faces of anyone I’ve ever seen in my life. His natural expression is one of smug condescension. He’s done nothing except gum up the works. None of his peers like him, either. I’m baffled that he has made it to three terms. On what? Pity?
I’ve not been shy about calling him out. I really wish we cared more about who we elect to the senate and house on both a state and federal level. Chalk it up to our shitty public school system, which our esteemed Governor Abbott is really trying to privatize so that Ted Cruz’ daughters don’t have to mingle with the commoners and the plebians.
Did anyone else have trouble with the paper ballot? They printed it out for me, handed it to me, and then I had to scan it into the machine, make choices on a touch screen, whereupon the paper was printed BACK out, with my choices blacked in, and then I had to take it over to a second machine, which scanned it in (I was told it didn’t matter if the paper was right side up or upside down). It said that my vote was recorded and I guess I believe it. But how is that better? Safer? Less tamper-able?
For the record, I don’t believe that there was widespread voter fraud four years ago. And I don’t believe there will be widespread voter fraud this year, either. I know not everyone saw the results of the lawsuits and the court cases that confirmed the elections were fair and the voting officials and the voting machine company were awarded damages for the libelous and slanderous things said about them in public.
That being said, I have noted with grim amusement the various early voting scams, tricks, and schemes being thrown about on social media, along with the usual watchdog admonishments and (probably too late) attempts to head off the bad information with good. It’s not the voter fraud Trump talked about—you know, bags of ballets cast using dead people to stuff the ballot box, a scheme which hasn’t happened since Tammany Hall in NYC in the 1920s—but it is an attempt at voter suppression.
I’m not going to accuse any one group of people because there’s no way I can know where the bad info came from. Russian hackers? 8-Chan disruptors? Florida? I really don’t know, and anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ve noticed that these tricks and scams aren’t brought up or even discussed when we talk about the non-issue of widespread voter fraud. It’s not the democrats that are trying to do it, anyway. They typically want to register people to vote. Part of that whole “democracy” thing.
I realized today that those online Internet tricks aren’t the problem here. It’s the way in which one side has stacked the deck. Nothing illegal, mind you. They don’t need to do anything illegal. In fact, the things that they do, like gerrymandering districts, passing legislation, and so forth, all fall under the category of “perfectly legal.” See? It’s not wrong. It’s perfectly legal. I mean, it’s morally bereft, and ethically suspect, and scrupulously absent, but legal? Check and check.
Democrats aren’t good at this. They are still under the misbegotten impression that their esteemed colleagues are playing fair and they continue to bring knives to various gunfights. This is the work of the senate and the house of representatives and their various leaders, all of whom are bought and sold with the monies given to them by anonymous superPACs and giant, unfettered corporations that usually have the word “big” in front of their industry, like Oil and Pharmaceuticals.
Get the money out of politics? I completely agree. Who does that, I wonder? We all know about Executive Orders now because they’ve been in such widespread use since the Tea Party oozed into Washington with the stated intention of gumming up the works. If only there was some way to get those feckless brigands out of the political machine that, like it or not, we rely on for these complicated systems of governance. If only...
Vote, dammit. Representatives and judges are as important, if not more so, than the Presidential election. The Oval Office may not touch you but once or twice in four years—does anyone remember the $300 check from G.W.? But congressmen and senators are like herpes. They stay with you forever. Until we can get some term limits, and who do you think votes on that? We need to clear the decks. It’s a campaign of inches. It takes a mile to turn a battleship. This won’t happen overnight. But we can sure as shit get it started, can’t we?
Classifieds, Redux
I put this down in the Media Review section last week, but I don’t know if anyone read it and thought I was fooling around (a reasonable assumption considering the source). So, let me restate it here, sans comedy: I’m looking for someone with book designing skills, who can work with an art director’s brief and create InDesign templates for book covers and interior pages. This will require coming up with dummy text and photography layouts in parent pages, but will not include actually having to lay out the manuscript into book form. If you or anyone you know might be interested in working with an art-savvy author on a small-scale but graphically intensive project, please reply in comments or by private message and include any relevant portfolio links, if you have them. I need a book that is designed well above my skill level and I am sick and tired of having to add more skills to my character sheet for a single project. Working alone is awesome, except for when it’s not.
2024 Roanoke Writer’s Conference
Saturday, November 9th, Roanoke, Texas
This is my first year participating in what has become an impressive one-day event, full of workshops and seminars and books and writing and all that kind of thing. My workshop will be all about writing a heist for your novel or short story. They just put up an Author’s Spotlight on the blog, featuring me (and also many others) if you’d like to check it out. I’ll be talking, reading, and signing books. If you’re in the Metroplex area and would like to stop in and hobnob with the North Texas Literati, admission is FREE and you are most welcome! I hope to see you there.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Note: we are nearing the end of our Halloween watching. We hope you got something out of these and hopefully the collected Top 5 book will happen next year. In the meantime, enjoy!
Brothers (Amazon)
Two minor criminals from a criminal family reunite for one final criminal act. What could possibly go wrong?
Who doesn’t love a good caper flick? I wanted so badly to like Wolfs and some of the other lackluster offerings this year, which is why Bad Monkey and now Brothers have redeemed the genre outright for me.
Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin are actually quite compelling as twins and their chemistry is great. Both of these guys are known for playing straight and/or dramatic roles, so it’s wonderful to see them cutting loose. Then, on top of that, there’s Marissa Tomei and Glenn Close. Feel free to scratch your head now, and wonder how the casting director got these crazy kids together. Oh, and Brendan Fraser as a heavy! It’s such odd casting, but it works. In Tomei’s and Fraser’s case, it's like getting back to their roots.
As crime stories go, this one has a lot of gonzo action, bordering on slapstick, along with a truly disturbing scene that I won’t spoil, but I will invoke Finn’s first law of filmmaking, which states there is no movie on earth that cannot be improved by the judicious application of a man in a gorilla suit. Make that, an ape suit.
On top of that, they actually managed to leave just enough of a dangling plot thread to work up a sequel. I question the need for that, because this movie feels like lightning in a bottle and it would take a deft hand to meet or exceed the sum total of Brothers.
Ted Cruz wasn’t just the guy who invited himself for rides. He was so obnoxious and deliberately unlikeable that he got the shit beaten out of him every day after school by the anime club.
It's not the Electoral College rendering your vote null and void, because that's precisely what it was established in the first place to prevent. It's the state of Texas that does that, as do 47 other states that long since opted to use the loophole added to the original design by the elite who absolutely hated the idea of the peasants having a say in government (and still do, needless to say) that allows the states to give all their EC votes to the popular winner instead of allocating them by district the way those who designed it intended.
That's why there's been a push for eliminating it, accompanied by propaganda designed to make the peasants believe it's "undemocratic". It's working because they stopped teaching civics decades ago, so most people haven't even read the Constitution much less done any kind of dive into its history. Which history, btw, is fascinating.
Belated happy!