The Philter

It’s nice to have an axe that cuts good wood well. But it’s equally important to have an axe that cuts bad wood good.

The Longest Day

by | Jun 20, 2025 | Whatever Else | 2 comments

So the Summer Solstice is almost upon us again, and frankly not a moment too soon. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sun and welcome its presence. But enough is enough.

I don’t really need these super-long days, with the sun worming its way into the bedroom at 5 A.M., any more than I need the super-short ones at the other end of the cycle. Sometimes I think I’d like to live closer to the equator, and lately the idea of getting out of the United States seems appealing. But it’ll probably never happen.

Made it out to the protest last weekend. I’m glad we did it and hope we do it again; it was marvelous and vibrant and uplifting. But I’m afraid the only real effect was to further outrage the demon in the White House, who at this point is pretty much a creature of pure anger. His response to accusations of fascism has been a rousing “Yes and…,” and I fear we will be continuing down that road for the foreseeable future.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that he seems to be finally falling to pieces for real. In a recent public appearance with the British PM, all he had to do was hold a couple pieces of paper, and he couldn’t do it. The photos of him glowering sleepily at his Parade of Sadness as squeaking tanks rolled by were almost poignant in their pathos.

Today he is locked in a debate with himself about whether to bomb Iran. On the one hand, he spent a lot of time arguing — for once correctly — that the war in Iraq was a colossal mistake, and even some members of his usual coterie of ass-kissers are pushing back against this one. On the other hand, the big beautiful bomb is called a “Bunker Buster,” and how cool is that? His inner 5-year-old is excited by the idea, and that kid has a lot more sway over the 79-year-old man than is healthy. Especially now, after the parade was such a dud.

Welp. Not much point to these musings. Just wanted to click “Publish” again, it’s been a while. Keep cool and carry on.

Reading Report, May 2025

by | Jun 5, 2025 | Read it in books | 0 comments

Books Acquired:

Books Offloaded:

Progress Made:
Message from a Lost World, Stefan Zweig

Books Finished:
The Old Devils, Kingsley Amis
VALIS, Philip K. Dick
The Black Count, Tom Reiss

He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness…. Live then and never forget that until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words — “wait and hope.”
—The Count of Monte Cristo

My search kept me at home; I sat before the TV set in my living room. I sat; I waited; I watched; I kept myself awake. As we had been told, originally, long ago, to do; I kept my commission.
—VALIS

Right at the beginning of the month I knocked off three almost-finished books right in a row, boom boom boom. I was particularly glad to be done with The Black Count, not because it was a bad book, but because I have a tendency to get bogged down in nonfiction. Looking back I see that I started this one back in… em… June of last year. Yikes.

As you have surely forgotten, The Black Count is a biography of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas. Born in Haiti, Thomas-Alexandre was sold into slavery by his own aristocrat father — who, to be fair, later paid for him to be freed and brought to France. Raised as a scion of nobility, Thomas-Alexandre was a legendary man of action who rose to the rank of general in the French army, only to see his career undone by Napoleon, under whose regime racism thrived. (Reading this book confirmed me in my belief that Napoleon was an asshole.)

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