Yearly Archives: 2017

bullshit with icing

Posted on by
19

I have a friend — an artist (by which I mean an actual, no-shit, serious artist who not only makes art, but thinks about art and the nature of art and what is meant when we use the term ‘art’) — who recently said he wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole Masterpiece Cakeshop situation. To which I have two responses.

First, what the fuck does that even mean? How can you not know how you feel about something? I can totally understand having mixed feelings. I can understand having contradictory feelings. But surely it’s pretty obvious how you feel about any given thing at any given moment because you’re actually in the process of feeling it.

Second, stop over-thinking the Masterpiece Cakeshop situation. Which probably leads a lot of folks to this question: what the hell is the Masterpiece Cakeshop situation? It’s your basic situation in which a Christian doesn’t want to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. There’s a good chance you already think this crap has already been settled, and you’d be mostly right. The law is pretty clear. If you’re providing goods or a service to the public for commercial reasons, then you have to provide those goods and that service to ALL the public. Even if you don’t like or approve of them.

If you run a rental agency, you can’t refuse to rent a folding table to a Muslim just because you hate Muslims. If you run a landscaping business, you can’t refuse to landscape the lawn of a Thai family just because you dislike Asians. And if you bake cakes for a living, you can’t refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex couple just because you think homosexuality is evil.

A baker can refuse to bake a cake if the customer is requesting a personally objectionable decoration. You can refuse to bake cake in the shape of a penis. You can refuse to decorate a cake with I ♣ My Wife. You can probably refuse to bake and decorate a cake if the customer behaves like an asshole. But you can’t refuse to bake a cake simply because you object to the customer’s race, gender, marital status, religion, and all that.

Jack Phillips, cake artist

But here’s why the Masterpiece Cakes situation is a situation — and why my artist friend and his feelings are so confused. A baker named Jack Phillips, who owns a bakery called Masterpiece Cakeshop, refused, for religious reasons, to bake a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. He also refuses for religious reasons to make cakes that celebrate Halloween or a divorce, and he won’t bake a cake that includes alcohol. What makes this situation a situation, though, is that Phillips is NOT claiming he won’t bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because they’re gay, but because they’re getting married. His religion states marriage should only be between a man and a woman. He says,

“I’m being forced to use my creativity, my talents and my art for an event — a significant religious event — that violates my religious faith.”

In other words, Phillips sees his custom cakes as works of art, and he shouldn’t be required to make art that offends his personal sensibilities (in this case, it’s his religious sensibilities). His lawyers argue that forcing him to create a custom cake for a same-sex wedding threatens the “expressive freedom of all who create art or other speech for a living.” And let’s face it, the law wouldn’t force a Jewish painter to accept a commission to paint a portrait of Hitler. The law wouldn’t force a Mormon sculptor to accept a commission to sculpt a giant stone dildo with the face of LDS founder Joseph Smith. So why should the law force Christian Jack Phillips to accept a commission to create a cake celebrating a marital union his religion opposes?

It’s because of this free expression argument that the Masterpiece Cakeshop situation is a situation. This is why four of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have agreed to hear arguments on the case at some point in this term. And hey, if we agree that art is protected by the free expression clause of the First Amendment (and it is), and if we agree that decorating a cake can be a work of art (and sure, it can be), then that sounds like a solid argument in favor of Phillips.

But it’s not. It’s just bullshit with vanilla icing.

Happy birthday!

It’s bullshit for this reason: it’s still about the wedding. it’s about the purpose of the cake, not the decoration. Let’s say the gentlemen who wanted the cake asked Phillips to create a three-tier wedding cake decorated with rainbow hearts and with two tuxedoed male figures arranged side by side on top. Phillips refuses, saying he shouldn’t be required to use his talents to create a custom wedding cake because his religious views oppose same-sex marriage. Now let’s say those same gentlemen asked Phillips to create a three-tier birthday cake decorated with rainbow hearts and with two tuxedoed male figures arranged side by side on top. Unless his religious views forbid him from celebrating birthdays, he’d be required to make the cake.

It’s the same damned cake using the same ingredients with the same decorations created using the same artistic skills. The only difference is the purpose, and the purpose in the Masterpiece Cakeshop situation is to discriminate against folks having a same-sex marriage.

It’s not about art and it’s not about free expression; it’s about refusing to obey laws against discrimination.

literally a moron

Posted on by
7

Yesterday Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, actually had to stand in front of a microphone to dispute the claim that he called Comrade Trump a moron in a meeting of White House national security officials and members of the cabinet. And he didn’t deny the remark.

He didn’t confirm the report, of course, but Tillerson danced around the issue, calling it ‘petty nonsense’ which means he probably did call the president a moron. And that’s okay with me, because the guy literally is a moron. I am NOT just calling him names.

Not an idiot, not an imbecile, but absolutely a moron.

Back in 1910 the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded (and if you find that name offensive, consider that it was originally called the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons) released a report classifying developmentally disabled folks. This was actually a scientific advance, a result of the research the ASSFM (yeah, I know, not the best acronym, but hey…it was 1910, give them a break) conducted into “the causes, conditions, and statistics of idiocy, and the management, training, and education of idiots and feebleminded persons.” The idea behind it all was that classifying folks into categories would allow more focused treatment.

Here’s what they came up with:

The feeble-minded may be divided into: (1) Those who are totally arrested before the age of three so that they show the attainment of a two-year-old child or less; these are the idiots. (2) Those so retarded that they become permanently arrested between the ages of three and seven; these are imbeciles. (3) Those so retarded that they become arrested between the ages of seven and twelve; these were formerly called feeble-minded, the same term that is applied to the whole group. We are now proposing to call them morons, this word being the Greek for “fool.” The English word “fool” as formerly used describes exactly this grade of child–one who is deficient in judgment or sense.

So it would be inaccurate to call Comrade Trump an idiot. Or an imbecile. He’s more likely to be a moron. Of course, I can’t say with any high degree of accuracy that his intellectual development was arrested between the age of seven and twelve. But neither can I say with any certainty that he’s progressed beyond that.

Consider the fact that he has packed his cabinet with people who are either actively hostile to the agency they run or are manifestly incompetent to run it. That’s the act of a twelve-year-old boy going Nyah nyah nyah, you can’t stop me. Consider the fact that just this morning Comrade Trump sent this on Twitter:

Why Isn’t the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!

Tell me that’s not moronic. That’s a twelve-year-old boy shouting I’m rubber, you’re glue; it bounces off me and sticks to you! Consider the way Comrade Trump signs and executive order, then shows it to everybody like he expects them to stick it on the National Refrigerator along with his artwork. And consider this:

If you consider all that, it’s hard to escape the fact that right now These United States are being led by somebody who is ‘deficient in judgment or sense.’ It’s hard to escape the fact that this guy is a fucking moron.

fuckwits and cowards

Posted on by
11

We are a nation ruled by fuckwits and cowards. There are people in this nation who truly believe a continuing cascade of mass shootings is a reasonable price to pay for the freedom to…to what? To own a lot of guns? And there are politicians who know there are practical ways to reduce that body count, but are too afraid of losing their job to actually do anything about it. Fuckwits and cowards.

We can talk about honoring the first responders, but it’s all bullshit if we’re not going to even attempt to reduce the horrors they’re responding to. We can talk about honoring the dead, but fuck them — they’re dead and they can’t vote, and even if the families of the dead make a fuss they can’t outspend the National Rifle Association. We can talk about honoring the Constitution, but it’s just a head fake — we routinely shit on chunks of the other amendments. We can talk, but don’t for a minute believe talk will result in anything. It won’t. Not as long as we’re a nation ruled by fuckwits and cowards.

Here’s a sad thing: I can no longer sustain any outrage about the butcher’s bill. 20 second-graders dead, 32 college students dead, 50 gay folks dead, maybe more than 60 country music fans dead. They’re becoming meaningless numbers. Meaningless deaths. Because we all know we’re not going to do anything about it beyond muttering something about thoughts and prayers. They’re good at that, the fuckwits and cowards; they have a never-ending font of thoughts and prayers.

It’s not just the mass shootings, of course. Every day about a hundred people die by the gun. They’re not all murders; some of them are suicides, some of them are accidental, some of them are a result of negligence. The fuckwits believe those deaths are inevitable, which means the world is a dangerous place, which means they’re afraid all the time, and because they’re fuckwits they believe the only way to protect themselves from people with guns is to have guns themselves. The cowards know better, but they encourage that circular thinking because it helps them stay in power.

Fuckwits and cowards. And the rest of us? The rest of us are worn out. You can’t win an argument with a fuckwit because they’re fuckwitted. You can’t win an argument with a coward because cowards lie. Making arguments you know you can’t win is just fucking exhausting. And discouraging. And disheartening.

But damn it, we still have to do it. Call your members of Congress today. It won’t matter, but do it anyway. Why? Because there are a bunch of dead country music fans to go along with our dead gay folks and our dead college students and our dead second-graders and all the dead spouses and girlfriends and co-workers and children and neighbors and siblings and no matter how fucking tired we are, we can’t just stay quiet.

If we stay quiet, then we’re also fuckwits and cowards.

taped

Posted on by
2

It’s like this: you’re walking through an art center you’ve visited several times, chatting idly as you pass the art work, stopping occasionally to study or share a comment on a particular piece. There’s a Grant Wood, there’s a Hopper, there’s a Mapplethorpe and an O’Keefe. It’s normal, it’s enjoyable, it’s casual and easy, and then you turn a corner and encounter…well, this:

It’s hard to describe. But try to imagine if the xenomorph from Alien and Tolkien’s arachnid nightmare Shelob the Great mated, and the resulting offspring could extrude packing tape. To come across it unexpectedly is wonderful — and I mean wonderful in the earliest definition of the term. It inspired wonder.

And then as you stand there gawking, you realize there’s a person inside it. A person. Inside it. And moving.

It’s an art installation by a collective calling itself Numen / For Use — three industrial designers (from Germany, Austria, and Croatia) who create large-scale, site-specific interactive projects. They’ve done similar tape projects in Melbourne, Paris, and Vienna. This is their first tape installation in the U.S. And it is spectacular.

 

In this case, Numen / For Use used about 1400 pounds of translucent polypropolene tape to create an object that’s a cross between a giant spider’s web and a cocoon. There’s a single small circular opening in the bottom of the installation through which it can be entered (with the help of a small stairway). Folks can crawl, scoot, wriggle, and worm their way through the installation. At some points, it’s large enough to stand up inside.

On its own, this installation is singularly strange and oddly delightful — but even more strange and wonderful are the reactions of the people. Nobody can look at this without becoming at least momentarily childlike. You want to touch it, to crawl up inside, to wander around beneath it — you want to play with it even as you admire its beauty.

My friend and I spent maybe an hour with it. Then we went for tea. Then came back again for another thirty minutes. And it’s still not enough. We’re going back again today.

It’ll be enchanting and astonishing folks in the I.M. Pei wing of the Des Moines Art Center for the next three months.

taking a knee

Posted on by
29

It’s become popular among some Republicans to claim Comrade Trump isn’t really a Republican at all. They act like he’s some sort of chimera — a semi-mystical, implausible synthesis of disparate bits of different animals. Part liberal, part conservative, part patriot, part iconoclast, part traditional, part unconventional, part who the fuck knows. A new type of politician, they say.

Bullshit. Trump is the distillation of everything the Republican party has become in the last couple of decades. He’s selfish, self-centered, cruel, mean-spirited, fearful of anything different, completely unscrupulous, alienated from reality, dismissive of science, contemptuous of facts, mercenary, fundamentally dishonest, sneering, arrogant, judgmental, and too privileged to give a shit about anybody or anything that isn’t useful to him.

In brief, Trump is an asshole. Over the last couple of decades the Republican party has gradually shed any semblance of a conservative philosophy of governance and replaced it with being an asshole. You want to know what the Republican position is on any given policy? Ask yourself this: ‘What would an asshole do in this situation?’ The environment? More coal, fewer regulations. Epidemic of gun violence? More guns, fewer regulations. Healthcare? More regulations, fewer people insured.

This is what you can expect from the president when the president is an asshole. Free speech? Call NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem ‘sons of bitches’ who disrespect the nation, and encourage owners to fire them.

Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you’d say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired,’

You have torch-toting nazis marching at night in an American city? An asshole would say there are some “very fine people” among them. A football player who takes a knee during the national anthem to protest violence against African-Americans?  An asshole would call that “total disrespect of everything that we stand for.”

Because all of those football players are paid huge amounts of money to entertain the public, assholes will claim they should keep their political opinions to themselves. Because most of them are black, assholes will feel victimized by that exercise of free speech while at the same time complaining to other assholes that the players are being uppity.

But here’s a true thing about assholes: they polarize people. Today there are probably folks — standard NFL fans — who were maybe mildly offended by the decision of players to take a knee, who are now applauding the practice. Today there are probably folks who don’t care at all about professional sports who are appending #takeaknee to their social media posts. Today there are probably folks who are supporting the ‘take a knee’ movement NOT because they agree with it, but just because they’re just fed up with having an asshole for a president.

By the way, those NFL players? Some of them are assholes too. But a LOT of them, even though they’re making obscene amounts of money, are also showing up at soup kitchens, they’re standing up against bullying, they’re helping with flood relief, they’re raising and donating money to hurricane victims, they’re supporting research to cure diseases, they’re fighting homelessness, they’re actually out there doing stuff for their communities while assholes are sitting at home and complaining.

Let me also say this, since I come from a military family rather than a sports family. In the military ‘take a knee’ means to take an immediate break, right where you are, because you’re just fucking exhausted. It’s a moment — and only a moment, which is why you’re only taking a knee — to stop, catch your breath, allow your sore muscles to relax, and consider what to do next.

I think this whole nation needs to take a knee.

never shocked

Posted on by
11

This is what I used to do. Wake up, start the coffee, look out the window to see what sort of day it is, read a chunk of whatever novel I was reading at the time, pour myself a cup of coffee, turn on the computer, spend maybe 30-45 minutes reading and editing whatever I’d written the day before, check my email, then turn on NPR and start the actual working part of the day.

That’s what I started to do sixteen years ago. But during the editing period I got a phone call. Normally, I’d have let the phone ring; I discourage interruptions while editing and since I didn’t have Caller ID back then, I’d no idea who was calling. But for some reason I answered it, and it was an old buddy. I don’t recall his exact words after I said ‘Hello” but it was something like “Are you seeing this?”

A few months earlier I’d moved from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to a massive old farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania. It was quiet there, tranquil, no distractions aside from the occasional sound of a tractor in a nearby field, ridiculously inexpensive to live — a perfect place to settle down and work on a novel.

“Am I seeing what?” I asked. And he told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Which was absolutely ridiculous, of course. The towers of the WTC were huge, and not in any air traffic lane. “Maybe a helicopter,” I said, “but no way a plane would crash into the towers.” He said, “Go see for yourself, it’s on television.”

About a year earlier that friend had come to NYC for a visit and slept on my futon-sofa. We’d done a few tourist things — the usual things New Yorkers take visitors to see. FAO Schwartz, the toy store. The boat pond in Central Park. The Bethesda Fountain. And always the top of the World Trade Center.

“Go see for yourself,” he said, and since he’d called on the land line, I had to hang up and go to the living room to turn on the television. And sure enough, the north tower of the World Trade Center was on fire, with a large hole in the side where something big had hit it. I watched for a bit, and was about to call my friend back and admit he’d been right. That’s when the second plane hit.

When I lived in NYC I belonged to a reading group. We’d meet once a month at somebody’s apartment, eat snacks, drink a bit of wine, and discuss what we’d read. It was easy and pleasant and fun. One guy, Joe, occasionally brought along his dogs, a pair of Cavalier King James spaniels, one of which had a heart condition and always got extra attention from the group because we weren’t ever sure he’d make it to the next meeting. Joe worked in the South Tower. We later learned he’d called his sister after the North Tower was hit. He told her his office was evacuating the building as a precaution. He’d taken the stairs down to the Sky Lobby on the 78th floor and was waiting with others to take the express elevator ground level. Nothing to worry about, he told her. The second plane struck the building between floors 77 and 85.

A friend from graduate school. Mark, worked for a social research group located north of the WTC. We figure he must have left his office and walked to the towers after the first plane hit to see what was happening. He was apparently killed by debris, probably from the same crash that killed Joe. They identified Mark’s body fairly easily, since he was largely intact. Joe was confirmed dead several months later, apparently through tissue samples. A neighbor of Joe took in his dogs until a family member could claim them.

This is what I do now, this is what I’ve done every single day for the last 16 years: I wake up, I start the coffee, I look out the window to see what sort of day it is, I say to myself “Let’s see if any planes crashed into buildings” and I look at the news. It’s a sort of mantra — a ritualized phrase and a ritualized process. I check the news to see if anything horrific happened while I was asleep. Every morning. I don’t know why; it’s not like I can do anything about whatever has happened, any more than I could do anything about the 9/11 attacks. But except for making coffee, nothing gets done until I’ve checked the news. Nothing.

It seems like a pretty small life adjustment. But beginning the day by asking about a terrorist attack means the news never really shocks me. A school shooting? A forest fire? A devastating flood? An explosion at a fertilizer plant? A deadly tornado. A ferry sinking? A terrorist attack in a major European city? The news can make me sad or angry or distressed or upset, but I’m never shocked by the ongoing list of tragedies. Because I begin each day wondering if a plane has crashed into a skyscraper.

first you catch a tuna

Posted on by
12

See, this is exactly what happens when you elect somebody whose arrogance is fueled by ignorance. You end up with a president who makes bad decisions about problems he doesn’t understand, without any awareness of the consequences.

As late as one hour before the decision was to be announced, administration officials privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump might not fully grasp the details of the steps he was about to take, and when he discovered their full impact, would change his mind, according to a person familiar with their thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity without authorization to comment on it.

This particular quote from The New York Times is about Comrade Trump’s DACA decision, but it applies to just about every important decision he’s made in his time in office entire career. As a businessman, Trump was used to entering negotiations, telling folks what he wanted, then wandering off feeling self-satisfied while his crew of lawyers and managers banged out the details and tried to find ways to implement some/most of what Trump wanted. If it worked, Trump assumed it worked because he was a savvy negotiator; if it didn’t work, then it was the fault of his staff.

“Nobody understands the system better than me.” For Trump, the ‘system’ is this: “I want a thing done; somebody go do that thing.” He apparently thought that would work just as well in government. Obamacare? Crime? International trade? Immigration? North Korea? When Comrade Trump said “I alone can fix it” what he actually meant was “I’ll tell my people to handle it.”

I think Trump is legitimately surprised to discover that ‘his people’ can’t just handle stuff for him in government. I suspect he really assumed that if he told his people — in this case, the Republican Congress — he wanted a health care bill, that it would just happen. Remember this? “I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” It’s NOT complicated if all you do is say “I want this thing done.” Remember when Comrade Trump had dinner with Chinese president Xi Jinping and suggested China should lean on North Korea to stop missile testing? I suspect he actually believe China would act as ‘his people’ and, you know, do something, after which missile testing would just stop.

For his entire life, I believe Trump has simply assumed ‘managing’ meant ‘giving orders’. If he wanted a tunafish sandwich, all he had to do was say “Fetch me a tunafish sandwich.” He didn’t have to think about the person whose job it was to make the sandwich. In fact, it probably never would have occurred to him that before the tunafish sandwich process could even begin somebody had to go out on a boat and catch a goddamn tuna.

A tuna is a massive fish. The average size of a bluefin tuna? Six and a half feet. Somebody has to catch the big bastards, somebody has to take them apart, somebody has to process them and jam them into a tiny can. Somebody has to make that can. Hell, somebody has to mine the metal necessary to make the can. Somebody has to take those cans of tuna from the processing plant and deliver them to markets. Somebody has to grow and harvest the wheat to make the bread for the sandwich.

If you bother with the details, you realize that making a tunafish sandwich is incredibly complex. A tunafish sandwich costs millions of dollars.

Comrade Trump has made a decision affecting the lives of 800,000 young men and women whose parents entered the U.S. without proper documentation with the same level of concern and attention that we give to ordering a tunafish sandwich at the local deli. That’s reprehensible.

Editorial Note: Yes, I know ‘tunafish’ is properly ‘tuna fish’. And yes, I know ‘tuna fish’ is redundant since there aren’t any non-fish tuna. But I like tunafish as one word, and there it is.

my day so far

Posted on by
7

Woke up. Always a good start.

Checked the perimeter (by which I mean the cat and I stood for a minute or so looking out at the back yard). Light breeze, sunny. The breeze made a small greyish feather skitter across the deck. The cat watched it with a sort of philosophical detachment until it blew off the deck. The cat lost interest and wanted fed. The perimeter was secure. I fed the cat.

Poured myself a large cold brew coffee. During the summer months I drink nothing but cold brew in the morning. Summer is basically over; tomorrow I’ll run out of cold brew and will return to hot coffee. Read the news. Donated another small sum to the Houston flood relief, this time to Operation BBQ Relief — a group of caterers, restaurateurs, and competitive barbecue teams that respond to disasters and feed victims and responders.

Edited the stuff I wrote yesterday. I always begin a writing session by editing the previous day’s work.

The cat complained about the lack of attention. Gave the cat some Laxatone, allegedly tuna-flavored (though how the hell would I know?), to reduce the odds that she’ll hack up a hairball someplace where I’m bound to be walking barefooted.

Thought about that feather. Not a particularly interesting feather, but I’d enjoyed the way the breeze made it sort of wiggle-waggle across the deck. Wasn’t a major flight feather; Maybe one of those smaller feathers from the upper part of the wing. Googled ‘types of feathers’  Discovered the feather the cat and I observed was probably an upper wing covert feather, which I’m told overlay the secondary flight feathers and serve to smooth the airflow over the wings. Nice.

 

Wrote maybe two or three hundred words.

Thought about the term covert, so researched the etymology, which was about what you’d expect. It comes from the Old French covrir which meant ‘to cover, protect, or conceal’. Made me think of a television show, Covert Affair, of which I watched the first episode a million years ago — mainly because it starred an actor with the improbable name of Piper Peribo. I remembered her name from a brilliant Christopher Nolan movie called The Prestige, though I couldn’t for the life of me remember what role she played. In the first episode of the television series, she played a CIA trainee who spoke a couple dozen languages and so was made a field operative. It was pretty awful. I never watched another episode, but I still like the actor’s name. I’ve no idea if she’s done anything else.

The improbably-named Piper Perabo

Picked up the cat’s dish and clean out the leftover Laxatone. The cat has disappeared to wherever the cat disappears to.

Wrote maybe dozen paragraphs, mostly dialog. Dialog is easy. Doesn’t take long.

Still thinking about the feather. Figured there was probably a website somewhere that cataloged feathers. Googled ‘feather atlas’ and hey bingo, there’s actually a feather atlas. Told myself I would NOT get distracted by looking at bird feathers. Did NOT get distracted by bird feathers. Got distracted by this:

READ THIS FIRST: Feathers and the Law.

Feathers and the Law — four words I’d never expect to see together. Totally clicked on the link, which opens a window with a few other links and begins with this alarming warning.

Feathers are beautiful and remarkable objects.  If you find feathers in nature, appreciate, study, and photograph them, but leave them where you found them.  It is illegal to take them home.

No fucking way is that illegal. Is it? Yes, it is. Sorta kinda. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 makes it illegal to hunt, take, capture, kill, or sell migratory birds or any part of a bird, including feathers, eggs, and nests. Of the 900+ bird species in North America, more than 800 are considered migratory. We’re talking birds like crows and mourning doves and chickadees — and it’s actually illegal to take their feathers.

This feather (not the actual feather mentioned) is TOTALLY illegal. Probably.

Of course, in reality, the government is only really interested in protecting a few endangered species, but you can’t expect a wildlife enforcement officer to be able to distinguish between the covert feather of a barn swallow and the covert feather of a Gunnison sage grouse. So the law covers just about all the birds and puts the burden of proof on the poor sumbitch who picks up a feather to prove it’s NOT from one of these protected species.

Got a wee bit distracted by the feather atlas.

From the Feather Atlas

Got interrupted in my distraction by a phone call reminding me I have a doctor’s appointment on Friday.

I confirm that I’ll be there, but I’m not actually thinking about the appointment. I’m thinking that somewhere in that illegal feather business are the bones of a story. But it’s not the story I’m working on, so I close every goddamned window on my computer and bang out another hundred and fifty words or so.

The cat reappears and wants fed. It’s noon. I haven’t had breakfast yet.

Ate breakfast, caught up on the news, Melania Trump wearing stilettos while touring the flooded parts of Texas. Wrote this.

My day so far.