The Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

I have just finished reading a book with this unlikely title, and I thought I'd tell you about it!

The main character is a girl of 14 years, Mona, an orphan, who was taken in to live with her aunt and uncle, who are bakers by trade.  This all takes place in an alternate universe that's actually quite unremarkable, except that there is magic.  Only a small minority of the people have magic, and Mona is one of them.  She doesn't have a lot of magic, but when she finds out that their city is under threat, Mona finds herself a part of the city's defenses. 

The author, T. Kingfisher, is excellent.  She puts in just enough humor in the story to have kept me chuckling all the time (though there were many suspenseful episodes, enough to satisfy a teenager with quite dark tastes), so much so that I wished I had written the story myself!

Kay

Class? What's That?

I've been complaining about the subjects that artists on DA choose: girls with large breasts; barely dressed women; just a few pieces with girls with tasteful clothes on. 

And when I get shown posts about Caitlin Clark, and how they were rough with her during the playoffs, she always responds with: well, it goes to show how tough a game basketball is, and I had to grow into it, etc, etc.

That's class. 

Some people don't like that sort of gentle speech.  They say: no, let it all hang out; say what you mean.  Be sincere. 

That gentle speech, what is it?  That's the Christian teaching.  I've told everyone, I'm not a believer; I try to rein my agnosticism in when I write fiction, and my characters are all spiritual, in the sense that they behave as though there is an eye in the sky that's watching us.  Even if there isn't, many people—a great many people—choose to live as though there is a limit on how horrible we can be, without penalty.  The penalty is self- imposed; it's our conscience.

A lot of people like to get others to accept religion, because they fear what 'godless' people might do to them.  Well, it looks a lot like there are some religious people who are perfectly okay with shooting others, or stringing them up.  All you have to do is watch Trump talking on video, and his (desire for) retaliation is not at all restrained.  The courts want to send Trump to jail.  In contrast, he wants to kill people.  (His apologists assure us that it's just Trump being threatening, or being funny.  I'm very doubtful.  There could be another motive; Trump likes to attract people who like violent retaliation to vote for him.)

If Caitlin Clark ever loses her way of talking gently, with restraint, about women who have been clearly brutal with her, I think it would be a very sad thing, a tragedy. 

Kay

Wednesday, October 16

It's just about 3 weeks before elections; Trump's running mate Vance is said to be coming to our town tomorrow, and all the Trumpees are excited.  Lots of Republicans are far from delighted, but many of them will vote for Trump, even if not all of them do.  Many of them are cold, calculating businessmen (and wives of businessmen), and they watch, and listen to Trump, shaking their heads, no doubt.  But he's their man, and what are they to do?  They'll hold their noses and vote for him. 

The flood of junk mail is overwhelming, especially, I guess, in homes where they're registered Democrats or Republicans, asking for money, and for what?  To pay for yet more junk mail, and TV advertising.  I hardly ever turn on the TV these days. 

Meanwhile, I'm thoroughly confused as to what's happening to Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever.  There are rumors that Clark has given up basketball and is going in for golf, that she's heading out to play basketball in Europe, that the Fever has been asked to sign up free agents, whatever those are.  And Facebook has signed me up as a Caitlin Clark fan, without asking me.  Now I get asked to 'like' Caitlin pics a dozen times a day.  Things are seriously getting out of hand. 

OMG.  Now that I have been kidnapped by this pretended CC fan club, I'm getting to see a lot of sports griping, and it's ugly.  Caitlin seems to serenely go on her merry way, but all sorts of athletes are seriously grumbling, saying they should be given more money!  (I don't know whether it's the athletes themselves, or some people who have maintained web pages, supposedly on their behalf.)

Sports writers write the most atrocious English—probably many of them were too impatient to stay in school and learn to write—and a lot of the writing is illogical and ill tempered, and arrogant.  Caitlin was very humble, and took all the blows she suffered with patience and grace.  If she ever decides that she can't take all this crap lying down (I hope that never, never, never happens), it will be a sad day for all of us.  In contrast to all the athletes who feel slighted by the huge pay packets that Caitlin is being offered ("I'm worth more than she is!"), I don't believe Caitlin has actually demanded big bucks. 

[Added later: There needs to be nothing 'fair' about commercial sponsorship, as everyone should know; businesses can give a much money for white athletes as black athletes.]

Well, a happy October to all of you, and now that Halloween is truly close (unlike before, when the stores were getting excited over nothing) we can go out and decorate our fronts of houses with pumpkins (and little witches on brooms),

Kay

Once Again: Goldie Hawn!

I'm so relieved that Goldie Hawn is old enough to be my grandmother—if she had really tried—otherwise I would have spent so much time dreaming about her!  I just saw a photo of her somewhere, and that has derailed me, as always!

This is her in 1964.  I think her eyes are the dreamiest ever, but when she smiles ...

 

Strikes Twice

Well, I'll be damned!

One of my favorite pieces of writing is Jane, and it's a story about a girl who takes up glamour photography just to keep body and soul together, and then falls in love with two of her models.  For some reason, I had trouble finishing the story off, and let an episode take over the entire story line, which sort of staggered off into the sunset!

This detour—which sort of hijacked the story—centers around an actress called Lisa Love, and Jane—the main character—is hired as a makeup artist for a film that Lisa is in.   Only, it turns out that the producers think it would be a great idea to introduce a lesbian romance between Lisa's character and another character in the movie. 

Well, I was just re-reading a book I had bought some time ago, with the title Not in the Script , and the exact same plot twist is there!  Now I have to wonder: did I borrow the plot twist from this book, or did I invent it independently?

Money Ruins Everything

Caitlin Clark was an Iowa kid, who lived to play basketball, and was amazingly good at it.  She played when she was in college, at the University of Iowa, and the team were the regional basketball champions. 

Then Caitlin was scouted out by the Indiana Fever (a professional basketball team), and joined them for the 2024 season. (Actually, they drafted her, something I don't really understand.)

At first, she focused mainly on getting hoops from whereever she was on the court whenever she got possession, and the team only did moderately well, or actually, quite poorly.  Then, by some magic, the team began to do better; they put together moves that involved several of the players in combination, and began winning games.  After the Olympic break, the Fever came roaring back, and began to get the big reputation. 

Ɓut there were lots of challenges to those who claimed that Caitlin was instrumental in the team's improved playing.  There were initially challenges to Caitlin's value from rivals within the team; it was said that the media was ignoring senior players who had put in years of service to the team, in favor of this rookie who was the big sensation from college.  There were remarks that the media loved Caitlin mostly because she was White, in contrast to most of the other players. 

Meanwhile, the statisticians were pointing out that the WNBA was making millions of dollars more from ticket sales and TV ratings than they had ever done before, and were ascribing it to Caitlin's presence; people wanted to watch Caitlin play, they declared.  The league, and the Fever, were rolling in money that they had earned since Caitlin had joined the league.  That seemed to clinch the argument: Caitlin was making money for the WNBA, and the Fever.

At this point, I was thoroughly frustrated.  It seemed to me—being unfamiliar with the way things are valued in sports—that this attitude cheapened Caitlin's value as a team player, but there was no sign that Caitlin herself was disappointed. 

Meanwhile, the athletic bean-counters were gleefully estimating how much more money Caitlin was going to make the Fever and the WNBA over the season, once they had got into the playoffs. 

But the Fever was eliminated in the first round.  And an entirely expected—to me, anyway—consequence was that the Caitlin fans stopped watching the Fever games, stopped attending the playoffs, and stopped watching the women's basketball sportscasters, and all the organizations that depended on TV ratings started losing money. 

At first, I was quite amused.  Well, there you go, I thought to myself, Caitlin may not be as great a player as we thought, but once she stops playing, the WNBA sure loses a lot of real money. 

Well, it's not money that they had already earned; it was money that they were hoping to earn.  It was chickens they had counted that hadn't been hatched yet.  But it seemed to me that a lot of professional sports is about estimating unhatched chickens.