by bill | Jul 16, 2024 | Bread and circuses |
There was an assassination attempt over the weekend, and now everyone is trying to figure out why. Maybe Thomas Matthew Crooks knew pure evil when he saw it?
Probably not. More likely this is the result of brain worms of some kind. As we all know, the worms want RFK Jr. to be president. That would be why they ordered the shooting and why, if you opened up the head of Joe Biden right now, you would most likely find a mass of wriggling larvae. (Sorry, Joe. Love ya buddy.)
Possibly the worms have our best interests at heart. Bobby K. may be insane but he seems unlikely to usher in the Fourth Reich, which is seeming more and more imminent with every day that passes.
I could be wrong. I really, really want to be wrong. Somebody tell me I’m wrong.
by bill | Jul 3, 2024 | Read it in books |
Books Acquired:
The Rachel Papers, Martin Amis
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Philip K. Dick
The Wonder Effect, C.M. Kornbluth & Frederik Pohl
Progress Made:
Shogun, James Clavell
The Black Count, Tom Reiss
White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day, Richie Unterberger
Books Finished:
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Philip K. Dick
Star Trek: Log Two, Alan Dean Foster
Browsing in Eureka Books one day I came across a first-edition paperback of Philip K. Dick’s The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, his last book, vintage 1983. It was going for a mere $5 so I snapped it up despite already having a later edition at home. Or so I thought — upon perusing the PKD shelf I found no such thing, though I’m pretty sure I owned it at some point.
Suddenly it became urgent that I read the book, so I did. It’s quite linear and coherent by Dick standards, told entirely from a single point of view — that of Angel Archer, daughter-in-law of the title character. Timothy Archer, an Episcopal bishop, is a brilliant, learned, and beloved man who is also completely out of touch with reality.
Only after writing the last sentence did I realize that that expression rests on the presupposition that there is a reality, one we can all agree on. And of course questioning reality was Phil’s whole thing, no less so in Transmigration, where Timothy Archer — a passionate if rather exasperating seeker after truth — keeps finding the ground shifting beneath him.
As the novel begins, Archer has just begun to suspect — based on newly uncovered archaeological evidence — that Jesus was a fraud. This seed of doubt seems to undermine his entire world, gradually consuming his son, his lover, and finally himself. Only Angel, a beacon of relative sanity among the swirling madness, is left to bear witness.
(more…) by bill | Jul 2, 2024 | Bread and circuses |
Yesterday we learned that Splash Brother Klay Thompson would be leaving the Warriors to play in Dallas, and it was not even the worst news of the day. That’s just basketball, after all.
On the week of Independence Day this country took another long stride down the dark path to authoritarianism when the Supreme Court ruled, in effect, that a president can’t be prosecuted for anything he does while in office. Yes, they left the door open for some semi-official or nonofficial acts to be prosecuted; but that fact that nothing considered “official” can be used even as evidence seems to allow only a very, very narrow window for accountability.
One of the TV talking heads said that somewhere Richard Nixon was smiling, but I think not. I think Tricky wishes he could have had a lapdog Supreme Court like this in his day. He not only would have finished his term but pulled some kind of Jan. 6-style shenanigans to keep himself in office indefinitely. His jarred head might still be running the country today.
Well, there’s one silver lining: Joe Biden is now free to declare the Former Guy a threat to national security and have Seal Team Six take him out. No jury will ever convict him.
