The blame game

It seemed totally and utterly clear and obvious why things resembled a train wreck in slow motion, the last several months since young Donald KWHX. Trump took office.  Trump and his assistants engineered the catastrophe.

It seems like a catastrophe to us; and perhaps to Trump himself, because he understands things in formulas, like oh, that's the Pandora Effect.  (I just invented that; there's no such thing.  But as long as the tragedy has a name, it can be explained to Donnie in terms of various effects, that can be invented on the fly.)

Think of how the Tarriffs did not work.  They probably told him "It was going to work, but at the last minute, the Warriff Not Twerking effect cut in.  But at least it got the Elites screaming mad, which was worth it!"  Whoever built the Project 2025, those people are delighted.  But their objectives are to destroy the government, and especially the tax structure.  There are so many things that the billionaires could be upset about; the IRS ought not to have been their biggest bugaboo.  But I think it is.  Just go check out the Project 2025, and think about why these geniuses want to accomplish those things on the list.

It's interesting.  I don't believe these people are as brilliant as their friends give them credit for.  In the end, funnelling the nation's wealth into the hands of the Billionnaire Class is really not difficult.  They've been doing that since Reagan.  It's much harder to keep some of the the money flowing into the coffers of the Bezoses and the Ellimans and the Musks, while still enabling the rest of us to have a reasonably comfortable and healthy life.  (Honestly, many people dream up inventive ways to make themselves sick; actually, all they have to do is to talk to Bob Kennedy for a few minutes.)  Trump and his rotating team of boyes and girles have increased the chaos; what we call the Entropy of our government.  Pushing the clock back is going to take a lot of ingenuity.  The Chaos team probably think that we can't do it, and the odds are that we can't, not in two years. 

To summarize:  it was a lot easier to screw the government up, than to put it back together. 

Also, there are a lot of furious Democrats, thinking in terms of retribution.  But most of Trump's Boyes are hardened criminals, and not afraid of doing time, especially if the people managing the (private) prisons are good friends.  But to put the IRS, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the Armed Forces, USAID, UNESCO, Higher Education, Obamacare (Affordable Care Act), the Dept of Justice, and so on, will take a lot of work.  It seems a better use of our time to try to repair the damage, than to investigate the corruption. 

Kay

Another Story by Iris

Well, I was going through the stories Iris B. G. has published, and one caught my eye, so I acquired that, and read it through. 

[Incidentally, it's not that I'm ignoring the election results; it's just that it's not clear what's going to be the consequences of it, and I hate to make a pronouncement of it, and risk being completely wrong.  There's one writer who guesses that Trump is going to enjoy fighting against the (Democrat) Congress and Senate.  I hate the thought of Trump enjoying anything.  It's becoming clear that Trump was not dancing to the tune of the GOP, which I expect they wanted us to believe.  His strings were being pulled by a few expert string pullers: Putin, Koch, Epstein, Netanyahu, Saudi Princes, and a few other shady crooks.]

This new book is not clever in the same, painful way as "I think This is Yours."  The funny parts of this story (Eight Minutes) are quite successful; Iris measures out her humor as if she might run out of it too soon!  But the plot is simple, and she had to spread out her micro-analysis enough that she has a book, not a short story.

But I have to admit that her prose is very poetic.  You know how poets stretch the work that a word is doing, almost to snapping point, and that's what makes poetry?  Metaphors pushed to their limits.  Iris does this; and she's good at it.  She hasn't yet arrived, but I think she's going to be a great writer.  But this story promised to be something that warms your heart.   Instead it heats you up like a high-frequency radiator; intermittent warmth.  The writing is embarrassingly self-conscious, but in the end, more successful than This might be yours.  There, the writing is really confident, but ...

I'm only about 75% of the way through.  But I've read lots of stories about a celebrity connecting beautifully with a non-celebrity, which delivered much the same feelings, with a lot less drama.

Kay

I Think This Is Yours

I have just finished a new story—with the title above—by Iris Blythe Grey.  (Hang on, while I check that—yeah.)  It's about a girl who's finding it hard to make ends meet, and reluctantly goes into a fertility clinic to sell one of her embryos.  (Apparently, worth about $1000 each.)  By accident, she's implanted with another woman's baby.

Of course, that's a stunning accident, both for the girl now implanted, and the girl whose embryos these were. 

The story moves along in a strange way, as the two women begin to relate to this highly peculiar situation, in a strangely rational way, almost as if they were AI's, analyzing everything that happens, and everything they feel, almost mathematically, in a utterly strangely similar way to each other. 

All throughout, the author uses very specific vocabulary.  Initially, I think, to underscore their highly similar thought-processes, and eventually to show how they learn to trust each other, and become intimate—not physically, but in their relationship. 

Though they're very similar in some ways, the author manages to make them very different people; interestingly different.  They're each perfect in her way—but,  of course, in different ways—but, over many, many weeks, the reader can see them beginning to see each other as potential mates. 

One of them is a lawyer, and the other is a medical student, so of course their vocabularies are very precise, and they each is articulate enough to understand exactly what the other is saying.  Only the reader might be out of the loop, but not intentionally. 

At first, I thought this stiff vocabulary might be how the author thought and wrote.  Structure.  Lists.  Manipulation.  Framing.  Architecture.  Performative.  Decision and execution.  These are not unusual words, but they're used so systematically that one keeps wondering: what's going on?  I'm going to have to read another story by Iris, to see whether I'm going to have to wander among the decisions and executions for another couple of days. 

Spilt

For a while, I've leaned on my credentials as a former college instructor of writing, to address matters of style and grammar and usage.  (I was not an English professor.  I was teaching a content area, in a course where a lot of writing was required.)  But I'm getting to the point where I can't justify the rules I lay on you folks; that is, I can't give you reasons, any more, for why one usage is no good, and another usage is better.  A good teacher should be able to do that, even if the student isn't terribly interested. 

Think about the word "spilt", for instance.   A common instance is "There's no use crying over spilt milk."  You could use spilled instead, and that would not be wrong at all.  When using the word as a verb, spilled is the only word that seems correct to me.  When using it to describe a noun, such as milk, either of spilled or spilt will work.  I wish I could tell you why!  But I can't think of a reason, though I'm sure that I could have, at one time. 

I'm reading a story about the attraction between two women, one of whom is dealing with an elderly mother, who's bewildered by the onset of Alzheimer's Disease*.  Spilt has nothing to do with the condition, in case you were wondering.  The story is The Christmas Elf.

Kay

* Google this condition; there seem to be interesting new insights. 

The Inside

The inside looked as if an art gallery and a tiara had a baby.

That's brilliant!  I guess that's a not uncommon sort of cliche, but even familiar cliche constructs can be better than the run of the mill!

Kay

Lent, Leant

I just saw an unexpected confusion in a story:

"Valentina lent over and pinched both their cheeks, earning squeals of pleased protests."

'Lent' is the wrong word.  The idea is that  Valentina was leaning towards the kids; the past tense of Leaning is Leant.  It isn't a very common word, but ... this mistake is sort of jarring.

Well, it is a sort of cute gangster- related rom-com, but I'm only a quarter of the way through it; I may abandon 'cute' by the end of it.  It's Dangerous Game by  ... somebody.  Oh, Bel Blackwood!  Of four books by her I've read, I liked three.

OK, boys and girls, we'll meet anon.

Kay

Cherry Turnovers

Today, I went with a friend to Wengerds, (a Mennonite grocery store / supermarket), where they have really amazing stuff for sale: meat,  bread, oil, juice, cold cuts, and pies, and of course, these Cherry Turnovers.  Many of you must be familiar with the triangular filled turnovers, made with sort of puff pastry.  I brought one to eat at home (eating them in the store is sort of depraved, IMO), and it was SOO GOOD!

I love puff pastry, anyway, and this pastry was just perfect: a touch of salt, and sugar on the outside; and I heated the thing up in this little toaster oven, and gave myself over to floating up to heaven!

A thousand blessings on these Mennonites; their store is just so nice; I'm going to shop there by myself, and have to try getting more of a variety of supplies than just pies.

(If the Republicans win, I wonder whether these markets will continue to exist...)

Kay