Monthly Archives: November 2019

comrade trump has thoughts about a dog

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This is the actual transcript of Comrade Trump presenting Conan the dog to members of the news media. For the sake of brevity and my own sanity, I’ve edited out most of Vice-Comrade Pence’s lickspittle remarks. Okay, here we go.

“Good morning. So this is Conan — right now, probably the world’s most famous dog. I don’t think — I have to use the word ‘probably.’ And Conan is an incredible — it’s an incredible story. I learned a lot about this particular type of dog. And it’s trained that, if you open your mouths, you will be attacked. You want to be very, very careful. But Conan came over from the Middle East — just arrived — with some of the great people from the Special Forces that did the incredible fl- — it was a flawless attack. And al-Baghdadi is gone. But that was a flawless attack. And I just met quite a few of them. And we just gave Conan a medal and a plaque. And it’s really — and I actually think Conan knew exactly what was going on. But a dog that is very, very special and we could maybe say — Mike, come on over. Maybe you want to say something about the type of dog and — They were going to put a muzzle on the dog and I thought that was a good idea, but then it gets even more violent, John. So I had a choice. But, no, the dog is incredible. Actually incredible. We spent some good time with it. And so brilliant, so smart — the way it was with the Special Forces people that it worked with. And for obvious reasons, they can’t be out in front of the media. But they did a fantastic job. Conan did a fantastic job. And we’re very honored to have Conan here and to have given Conan a certificate and an award that we’re going to put up in the White House.

Mike, would you have something to say?

Vice-Comrade Pence spent the next couple of minutes licking Comrade Trump’s butt. He reminded Trump that it was his decision to launch the mission that “took down the leader of ISIS” and that “having this extraordinary dog here today is all a reflection of our armed forces” and also that “it’s a real joy to be able to help welcome him here to the White House with you.” He gave the president a look that might have been an approximation of an expression he thought of as ‘joy’. Then it was back to Trump.

“It’s true. And Conan was very badly hurt, as you know. And they thought maybe was not going to recover. Recovered, actually very quickly and has since gone on very important raids. As you know, we captured 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate. When I took office, we had almost nothing. It was as though they were just forming again, and now it’s 100 percent. And we have done a lot of work since then. We have done a lot of work since the raid. Certain things have happened that are very important. So we’re in very good shape. We’re in very good shape. We’ve had a lot of help, too, from other countries. We’ve had a — we’ve really done a job. I just want to thank you all. So, this is a special time for Conan. And we really appreciate it. And I was told about the breed. I was told about Conan himself. And Conan is a tough cookie. And nobody is going to mess with Conan. I asked one question. I said, ‘So, what chance, with Conan…’ I got to see how fast Conan can move. I said, ‘What chance would a strong man have — really strong, tough, a fighter — what chance would this person have against Conan, without the guns? What chance? And I guess the answer, pretty much, was ‘none.’ He would have no chance. So, it’s amazing. And yet, you see how beautiful and how calm, during a situation like this, is. And you’re very lucky he doesn’t — he’s not in a bad mood today, Jeff. [Laughter] Not in a bad mood. You’re safe. Anyway. So I want to thank you all. Thank you very much. And this is a great honor to have Conan here. A great honor to have the Special Forces here. They’re in the Oval Office.”

Two members of the press asked Trump 1) are you going to adopt the dog, and 2) is the dog retiring. Seriously, those were the questions.

“I love this dog. No, Conan is not retiring yet. Conan is primetime, age-wise. Primetime. I asked that question. They go for about six years — like an athlete. Six years. They start — they like to get them at one and a half or two years old, and they’ll go for about six years from that time. After that, it happens where maybe the reflexes aren’t quite as good. You know, things like that happen. It would never happen to us. But the dog, primetime, is those six years after two. And they’re very special dogs. They’re very hard to get. This particular dog is — this is the ultimate fighter, ultimate everything. Ultimate in terms of sniffing drugs. We have a — we’ve spent a tremendous amount of money on drug equipment at the border. And I was talking to the people, and I say, ‘Well, is there anything better than this equipment?’ ‘No, sir. The only thing better is a dog.’ A dog — this type of dog, exactly, because it’s a certain type of dog. And it’s pretty amazing. But they are really better. We had a case where we had drugs in a — the cylinder of a car. And it was undetectable by this very expensive machinery, which is really amazing machinery. But still, it was undetectable. The dog came in — wah, jumped on the hood, pointing — you know. Opened the hood and knew exactly. It’s incredible, the sense of smell or whatever it may be — probably sense of smell. So they’re incredible animals. And thank you all very much.”

The entire episode was cringe-worthy. Trump never touched the dog. Melania looked slightly scared. Pence managed to resist the urge to hump Trump’s leg. Even the dog seemed to understand there was nothing normal about this — which maybe proved Comrade Trump said at least one thing that wasn’t a lie: Conan knew exactly what was going on.

war crimes

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There have been Trumps in the United States since 1885, when Friedrich Trumpf emigrated here from Kallstadt, Bavaria to 1) escape poverty and 2) avoid mandatory military service. His failure to serve, combined with his failure to notify the authorities of his departure, led to a royal decree banishing Trump from ever returning to what was then the Kingdom of Bavaria.

Since their arrival in the U.S. Trumps have had the opportunity to serve their adopted nation in two world wars, the Korean war, Vietnam, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They haven’t. Not a single member of the Trump family has spent a day in uniform (to be fair, Trump’s parents sent him to a private military school when he was an unruly, wayward 13-year-old). Comrade Trump his ownself famously dodged military service during the Vietnam war through a bogus medical deferment.

That’s okay. We don’t have any mandatory service in the U.S. and it’s hard to blame anybody for not wanting to fight in that particular war (or any war, for that matter). I can fault with the system that allowed Trump to dodge conscription because of his family wealth, but I don’t fault him personally for not wanting to fight.

I do, though, fault him for celebrating war. I do fault him for using the military as a prop. And I especially fault him for honoring war criminals. I fault him for interfering in the military justice system to benefit murderous fucks like Eddie Gallagher.

If you’re not familiar with the Gallagher case, here’s a quick take. He’s a Navy SEAL Special Warfare Operator. He’s done eight combat tours; he’s been trained as a sniper, as a medic, and as an explosives expert. He’s been awarded two bronze stars and was, apparently, under consideration for a silver star. He’s also been accused of multiple war crimes. He was acquitted of some of the most serious crimes (murdering at least two civilians — an old man and a young girl) because of the absence of physical evidence (it’s hard to collect DNA evidence from sniper victims in a combat zone). Basically, Eddie Gallagher is a hero who is also a murderous fuck.

Loyalty is a big deal in the military. First loyalty is to your buddies, then it spreads out to your squad, to your platoon, your company, your battalion, and so on in an expanding circle. Because loyalty is such a big deal, it’s incredibly telling that Gallagher’s squadmates reported his criminal behavior repeatedly. It’s telling that they were willing to testify against him in court. It’s telling that they were so concerned about him, they even sabotaged his weapon — they altered the optics on his sniper scope — to keep him from killing innocent civilians.

Eddie Gallagher in Iraq.

Here are two really really ugly truths. First, the military has a need for people like Eddie Gallagher — people who are murderous fucks. They need people who are willing and capable of doing horrible things. There are situations in combat, for example, when it might be necessary to kill children. It appalling that we ask people to be prepared to do that, but it is sometimes necessary. Here’s the second ugly truth. We need to punish those murderous fucks who act indiscriminately. We need laws to regulate war, to define and distinguish between what murderous fucks can and cannot do. Murderous fucks are only useful to the military when they can effectively channel their murderous fuck potential. There are really good reasons the military talks so much about ‘good order and discipline.’

The military tends to treat their murderous fucks the way a family treats a lecherous, drunk uncle at a holiday gathering. They try to quietly control them, to put limits on their opportunities to be drunk and lecherous, to keep it in the family unless their behavior becomes so awful they have to notify the police. The military will demote their murderous fucks, they’ll re-assign them to posts where they have fewer opportunities to be murderous fucks, they’ll discharge them from the service, and when it’s absolutely necessary they’ll prosecute them for war crimes.

Eddie Gallagher in handcuffs.

When Comrade Trump, the President of the United States, interferes with the prosecution and sentencing of murderous fucks — when he absolves them of their crimes, when he celebrates them, when he says he actually wants them to campaign with him — he essentially erodes the necessary restraints the military puts on them. In effect, Trump encourages murderous fucks to become more fucking murderous.

This would be egregious in any president. It’s especially galling in a president who knows nothing about military life, a president whose entire family has avoided any sort of military service. Eddie Gallagher is as unfit to serve in the U.S. military as Comrade Trump is to be the Commander-in-Chief.

it’s worse than that

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The Republicans are lying. But it’s not just lying; it’s worse than that. The Republicans are also spreading disinformation. Disinformation is deliberate misinformation intended to distract and deceive. Disinformation is worse than a lie because it’s meant to cast the concept of truth itself into doubt.

Here’s a lie: Russia didn’t interfere with the 2016 presidential election with the intent to help Trump. It’s demonstrably not true. Ukraine was responsible for the meddling in the 2016 election — that’s a lie, but it’s worse than that. It’s disinformation. It’s designed to deliberately mislead people, to plant misinformation into the discussion. Disinformation forces truth-tellers to dispute both the lie and the false information as well.

Let me say it again. Republicans are lying, but worse than that they’re spreading disinformation. But it’s even worse than that, the disinformation is part of a Russian intelligence campaign. It’s designed both to aid Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and to sow dissent and discord in the domestic politics of the U.S.

The Russians are really very good at this. They didn’t invent disinformation, but they were the first nation to develop it as an cohesive intelligence strategy. Even the term ‘disinformation’ itself was created as disinformation. In the 1920s, a Russian black propaganda program began using the term dezinformatsiya, suggesting it was translated from a French word (désinformation), which didn’t exist. That allowed them to claim the concept had a Western origin. With the creation of mass media and the internet, disinformation in the post-Soviet era has become a critical facet of both the Russian military intelligence and the SVR — the Russian Federation’s foreign intelligence service.

And, again, Republicans are disseminating a disinformation campaign designed by an intelligence agency hostile to United States’ interests. It’s worse than that. At this point, they’re doing it knowingly. Fiona Hill told them under oath that the idea that Ukraine was behind the 2016 election ratfucking was “a fictional narrative” created by Russian intelligence. But even if they dismissed her sworn testimony, Congress was briefed by U.S. intelligence agencies that “Russia had engaged in a years-long campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election.”

Treason for the tackiest of motives — partisan politics.

They know. They know it’s a lie, but they still tell it. They know it’s disinformation, but they still spread it. They know it’s a critical element of a Russian intelligence operation, but they continue to repeat it. They fucking know, and they don’t care. They are, in effect, providing aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States. That’s treason.

It’s worse than that. It’s not treason for ideological reasons, or treason for money, or treason as an act of dissent, or even treason for personal power. It’s worse than that; it’s treason for the tackiest of motives — partisan politics.

all the horrible things

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I’m kinda down this morning. I had one of my bi-annual PTSD nightmares last night, and this morning it’s gloomy and rainy and cold, and Comrade Trump is…okay, wait. I should probably oughta take a short (honest, it’ll be short) tangent here.

Everything is horrible.

Kinda down is what I have instead of depression. I don’t really get depressed. I used to think I did, until I talked to folks who experience real depression — and you guys, that’s a whole nother thing. That shit sound really fucking grim. Kinda down is basically just a short-term grumbly dissatisfied unhappiness. I’ll be kinda down for…I don’t know, maybe a few hours, tops. Or until the cat does something weird. Or I see something interesting somewhere. I may have an entire day in which…no, that’s not true — maybe an entire morning or afternoon…that’s sporadically, episodically kinda down, but that’s about it. This is how lightly kinda down sits on me: when I get kinda down, I also feel kinda grateful that I don’t get actually depressed. The truth is kinda down is a pretty candy-ass negative emotional state.

So, I’m kinda down this morning because (see above)…and Comrade Trump is still horrible and still POTUS. His POTUSish days are probably numbered because of the coming election, but the bloated bastard is still lumbering around in the White House, and that casts an ungly (yeah, I misspelled ‘ugly’ there, but I sorta like the way ‘ungly’ looks and sounds as a word) shadow on the entire United States.

No, really, things are horrible.

I’m kinda down because yesterday in San Diego a man shot and killed his wife and his three sons, then killed himself. I’m not down because of the murders themselves (though I probably ought to be, because that’s just horrible); I’m kinda down because killing your whole family and yourself doesn’t count as a mass murder. Seriously. The most common definition of a mass murder (and c’mon, it’s fucking horrible that we have to have define it) states the murders have to take place in a public place in which four or more people are killed in a single episode, excluding domestic, gang, and drug violence. This guy killed 1) his family 2) at home so hey, bingo, NOT a mass murder.

And I’m kinda down because Venice is underwater, and the air quality in Delhi is so bad some ‘entrepreneurs’ have opened an ‘oxygen bar’ where they SELL a few gulps of fresh air to folks who can afford to pay for it, while Trump continues to roll back EPA clean air and water regulations, and his mob of MAGAwits are still falling for the lie that climate change is a hoax.

No, horribler than that.

I’m kinda down about an article I read on some Irish news site (yeah, I periodically check Irish news sites because I’ve Irish roots, and Irish news is so much nicer that US news; the Irish are maybe the happiest miserable people in the world, with the possible exception of the Finns because, c’mon, those poor bastards have to live in Finland) about how difficult it is for trans folks to shop for clothes. Shopping for clothes ought to be really easy for everybody. You need a shirt, you go to a store, you find a shirt you like, you buy the damned shirt…that’s it. It never occurred to me how buying a shirt (or a blouse or pants or whatever) would be so massively difficult and traumatic for trans folks. But of course it is. Why doesn’t Target or Kohl’s just create a sort of trans-wear section, like they have for young men or sportswear or coffee pots, for fuck’s sake. You know, just some place where trans folks can buy a pair of pants without having to deal with other folks’ horribleness.

I’m also kinda down because yesterday I picked up my camera and didn’t remember how to use it. I’m talking about my actual camera camera (well, one of them) instead of using the camera in my phone, and when I say I didn’t remember how to use it, I mean I’ve forgotten how to do certain technical things (like use spot metering NOT in the middle of the frame, if that makes sense). Technical things that were second nature to me a year or two ago. And was the menu organization always that cumbersome? Am I going to have to be reduced to using program mode for a while? I mean, program mode? Did gremlins get hold of my camera as it sat idle on the shelf and re-arrange everything while I wasn’t looking?

Also? I’m kinda down because…well, no. It’s over now. I really wanted to get one more horrible thing here — and lawdy, there are SO MANY horrible things — but I got a Twitter notification so I looked away and lawdy, Stephen Fry has posted a photo of himself with something approximating a mustache. And now the cat wants my attention, and there are brownies for breakfast, and tonight I’ll watch the new episode of The Good Place and despite all the horrible things…sorry. I almost said something trite and ‘inspirational’ here, and there’s nothing more annoying than trite inspirational stuff.

So, that’s it then.

craziest goddamn moment in U.S. history

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Okay, a quick heads up. I’m going to write a really long sentence. Really long. The kind of sentence writing instructors warn students never to write because readers will either lose interest in the subject and decide to go see what’s on television, or get massively confused halfway through and have to start again at the beginning. It’s going to be longer than the sentence you just read. It’s a long sentence because the craziest goddamn moment in U.S. history demands long sentences. So you’ve been warned.

Yesterday, at the same time Congress was holding the first public impeachment hearing to determine if Comrade Donald J. Trump is fit to continue to occupy the office of the President of the United States, Trump was meeting with Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, who last month launched a military offensive that bore all the hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kurdish forces who had been the chief ally in the U.S. fight against ISIS for years until they were suddenly, unexpectedly betrayed by Trump’s inexplicable decision — which came immediately after a late-night phone call with the president of Turkey — to remove U.S. military forces from the Kurdish-controlled territory in Syria.

This was an extraordinary conjunction of events, even by the loopy standards of the Trumpverse. As I said earlier, it’s the craziest goddamn moment in U.S. history. While two patriotic career civil servants (one of whom is actually a deputy assistant secretary of state specializing in anti-corruption efforts) were testifying under oath that Trump had betrayed his oath of office by engaging in corrupt activity, Trump was publicly celebrating a different corrupt betrayal — and doing it with the corrupt dictator who directly benefited from the betrayal. Not only that, Trump openly confessed to a war crime. Although he’d claimed he pulled U.S. forces out of Syria to bring them home, yesterday he said this:

“We are keeping the oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for the oil.”

This is a clear violation of Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions, which categorically states pillaging (taking something of value from a location seized in a time of war) is prohibited. It’s also perfectly on-brand for Trump, who argues that corruption committed in the open doesn’t count.

This is the craziest goddamn moment in U.S. history. Democrats and civil servants are systematically and methodically demonstrating the corrupt practices of the Trump administration while Republicans are spouting insane conspiracy theories and mocking Congressional witnesses for drinking water (I am NOT making this up) and POTUS is calling himself a ‘big fan’ of a foreign dictator who a few weeks ago had openly insulted him by saying he’d thrown Trump’s threatening letter in the trash. What the actual fuck is happening here?

How can all this crazy shit be happening at the same time? It almost makes you want to believe in astrology, because it would be nice if we could explain it all away by pointing to some lunatic arrangement of planets. That would actually make it less crazy; that’s how goddamn crazy this moment is.

And don’t even think about pulling me aside and whispering, “Forget it, Jake…it’s Chinatown” because it’s NOT CHINATOWN. This is NOT a Chinatown situation. Sure, Kurdistan is as dead as Hollis Mulwray, and Trump is treating the Constitution the way Noah Cross treated his daughter, but this isn’t policing in Los Angeles in the 1930s. It’s actually possible for us to know whether our foreign interventions are helping victims or exploiting them.

Okay. Okay, I got a tad carried away and veered off into a tangent that probably won’t even make sense to folks who’ve seen the movie. Sorry. That’s what living in the craziest goddamn moment in U.S. history will do to you.

There’s another public hearing schedule for tomorrow. Maybe it’ll be less crazy. Or maybe Comrade Trump will hold a press conference with Ming the Merciless. I’m not going to rule it out.

Somewhat Related Editorial Note: If you haven’t seen Chinatown, WTF is wrong with you? Go watch it. It’s brilliant. Cynical, yeah, but one of the best films ever made, even if it was made by Roman Polanski — and there’s a tangent I’m going to avoid while I still retain some semblance of self-control.

this is bullshit

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I’ve been seeing this particular meme popping up in social media for a couple of weeks now. I generally find this stuff easy to ignore — especially the lightweight pseudo-Zen philosophical near-aphorisms that sound profound but aren’t. But for some mysterious reason I find this particular meme more annoying than most (although, now I think of it, the reason isn’t at all mysterious; the reason is because it’s almost officially winter and soon I’ll be dealing with the reality of snow).

This is bullshit. It stinks of Zen, which is to say it has the appearance of Zen philosophy without the substance. It co-opts the notion of mindfulness; mindful fitness may be a real thing, but it exists outside of a hashtag. It suggests I’m somehow at fault for NOT finding joy in snow. It suggests joy is something I can somehow force myself to experience rather than a spontaneous reaction to the moment. It suggests I’m unwilling to ‘find’ joy in snow, and that my unwillingness is a personal failing. It also suggests joy is quantifiable, that it’s something you can add to or subtract from and measure against some sort of baseline standard.

That’s all bullshit. That’s not how joy works. Joy isn’t an emotion you elect to feel; it’s a natural, unpremeditated experience. Being open to joy can be a conscious decision, but it’s not a response you can compel. You can choose not to be miserable about a given situation — or at least not to give in to misery — but you simply can’t strong-arm or manipulate yourself into experiencing joy.

The idea behind this meme is laudable. It’s saying snow will happen independent of your emotions, that it will fall regardless of how you feel about it, that snow is a natural event over which you have no control, so you may as well get some pleasure out of it. (Well, the real point of the meme is to get you to visit a website and buy snow-related sports products, which will bring joy to the business owners.) I actually like the idea behind the meme — the non-capitalist part, but the meme itself is misleading and it’s bullshit.

There are a LOT of natural events that will take place independent of your emotions and regardless of how you feel about them. Some of them are pleasant. A rainbow, for example, or the way leaves change in autumn. Other events aren’t pleasant. A flood, or a drought. An earthquake, or a mudslide, or a volcanic eruption. Or, if you live in California, a wildfire.

If you choose not to find joy in the wildfire, you will have less joy in your life but still the same amount of fire.

See how massively stupid that is? I’ve been through natural disasters — floods and tornadoes and hurricanes. None of them brought me joy. (That’s not entirely true; I felt a weird fierce joy at seeing a tornado, while still dreading what it could do.) I can honestly say that even while dealing with the ugly aftermath of those events, there hasn’t been a single day when I didn’t experience some sort of momentary joy. 

It’s going to snow here. It’s inevitable. When that happens, I absolutely WILL feel joy watching it fall. I’ll probably feel some degree of joy when I take a walk in the snow. But I can also guarantee you I’m NOT going to feel joy when I have to shovel it off the driveway and sidewalks. There IS a certain meditative contentment in the repetitive act of shoveling, and some emotional gratification in doing it well. But that ain’t joy.

faith, hope, and tax exempt charity

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You guys, I’m a tad confused about this latest — well, one of the latest — scandal involving Comrade Trump and some really trashy shit. I’m talking about Trump being forced to cough up a couple million US dollars in damages for “misusing funds from a tax-exempt charity.” Here’s what confuses me: I’m not sure which particular charity scam is involved.

Is this the ‘charity’ Trump founded with the millions of dollars given to him by the guy who runs (or ran…does he still run it…did he ever really run it…does it still exist? I have no idea) the Global Fake Wrestling Event of the World (or whatever it’s called) and whose wife was appointed by Trump to run the Small Business Administration? Or is it the ‘charity’ that held events at various Trump golf resorts to raise money to help kids with cancer, while it was actually pouring the cash into the resorts themselves or was redirecting the cash to other ‘charities’ connected to Trump’s family or business interests?

“Look, I’m trying to be nice here. But get your sticky fuckin’ hands off my desk, okay?”

Maybe it doesn’t matter which charity scam Comrade Trump is being punished for. The important thing is he won’t be able to do it again. Well, not in the State of New York. In addition to fining Trump, the judge also forced him to “submit to extra monitoring of any future charitable activities in New York” in order to prevent future “persistent violations of the law.”

You guys, how bad is it that the President of These United States can’t even be trusted to run a charity to help kids with cancer? Pretty fucking bad, is how bad.

In the dimension of time and space we used to inhabit, something like this would signal the end of a president’s administration. But here in the Trumpverse, it’ll be replaced by another scandal in…oh, maybe about forty minutes. And then it’ll be forgotten.

All we can do is bow our heads and pray to the Sweet Bearded God of Goats to have mercy on us and burn this whole motherfucker down to the topsoil.

Or, you know, we could vote.

hardboiled

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A couple days ago an acquaintance asked me a question and recommended a television show. The show is called Stumptown, which according to my acquaintance, is sorta kinda about a woman private investigator. The question was this:

Are real private investigators actually hardboiled?

The question had to do with the show. I hadn’t watched the show, so I couldn’t say anything about the hardboiled character of the protagonist, other than in my experience television PIs are about a realistic as television doctors or television lawyers. Which is to say not realistic at all. In fact, television PIs are probably even less realistic. TV writers (and viewers) almost certainly have some limited first hand experience with doctors and lawyers, but relatively little experience with real life PIs. So they’re mostly making shit up based on what other writers have made up about PIs.

So, are real PIs actually hardboiled? Before the question can be answered, we have to decide just what the hell that term means. It generally refers to characters who are cynical, jaded, sarcastic, tough, world-weary, wisecracking, violence-prone, stubbornly persistent, but with an unspoken code of honor/conduct.

 

Most of that is nonsense. Most of it. But some of it absolutely applies to real private investigators. How much it applies depends partly on what type of PI you’re talking about. Just like lawyers and doctors, private investigators tend to specialize. The more technical your specialization, the less hardboiled you have to be. A PI who does mostly accident reconstruction or forensic financial investigations probably doesn’t have to be hardboiled at all.

The more your work involves human frailty, the more hardboiled you have to be. PIs who specialize in, say, domestic investigations — divorces, pre-marital investigations, cheating spouses, that sort of thing — tend to be a lot more hardboiled. Insurance investigators, folks who missing persons, even PIs who specialize in deep background investigations need to be somewhat hardboiled to be effective. The same is true of criminal defense investigation, which was my specialty.

Where the fictional hardboiled character diverges from reality the most is in being openly sarcastic and making wisecracks. At the heel of the hunt, most PI work is about getting reliable information. You won’t get that from folk you’ve pissed off. Worse, when people get pissed off, they sometimes get violent. That’s fine in fiction, where a PI can get beat up or shot and shrug it off the next day. In real life, getting beat up seriously fucks up your ability to work — and if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Being a smart ass isn’t just stupid, it’s bad for business.

In real life, being hardboiled is most apparent in your attitude. It’s more about being emotionally tough than physically tough. It’s less about being cynical than it is about losing the ability to be shocked by the shit people do to each other. Some of the most hardboiled people I’ve ever met were emergency room nurses.

Believe it or not, the only television or movie PI I’ve seen who came close to getting the attitude right was Veronica Mars. Not the smart-ass Veronica, but the skeptical and persistent Veronica. She also showed the long-term debilitating effect of being skeptical and suspicious all the time. By the end of the third season, Veronica Mars was pretty fucked up. That was realistic.

The protagonist in Stumptown.

I decided to watch the first episode of Stumptown, the television show that sparked the question. I had low expectations (hardboiled, remember). And yeah, the show isn’t at all realistic. But the protagonist has the attitude down. She wasn’t actually a private investigator, but she was hardboiled. And she was a smart-ass, but not in the usual hardboiled television style. When she was sarcastic, it wasn’t like she was scoring points or showing off or trying to belittle somebody. It was more like she couldn’t be bothered any more…to be nice, to be cute, to be clever, to be friendly, to be anything other than being completely fucking weary of dealing with other people’s shit. The tone of her voice and her flat affect was more disinterested resignation than anything else. We’re becoming used to women characters who say, “I can’t believe I still have to deal with this shit.” We like characters like that. But this woman was more “Yeah, I’ve seen this shit before, I’ll probably see a lot more of it, but it’s your shit, so don’t expect me to care about it.” It made the character, in those moments, believable.

I said earlier that being hardboiled has a lot to do with losing the ability to be surprised. Stumptown surprised me. Not the action (which was over the top, but well done), not the plot (which was predictable), but the protagonist’s attitude. And, of course, she has the one thing that all true fictional hardboiled characters have — the sense that what she’s doing won’t change much, if anything, but might give one person a slim chance not to fuck up their life.

I enjoyed the show. I’ll watch at least one or two more episodes, even though I’m skeptical that any network television show can manage to avoid turning an interesting character into another dull, predictable clone. (Hardboiled, remember.)