Okay, you got me. It’s been almost a month. A few things have happened that kept me from blogging, and without making excuses, the main two are the motherboard of my old computer going kaput, and the hard drive of said computer being somewhat mangled in the process. Then the last week has seen me rushing around like a madman at my paying gig due to the Easter holiday, but at last all that is behind me and I’m here with a new computer, ready to talk about whatever it occurs to me to discuss.
In playing catchup, let me put a few things out there. Recently, a customer at work asked me for Romaine lettuce, then rejected my stock on the grounds that it was too green. I’m not sure what her problem was, but I am convinced that mine is my job. So I started thinking about ways to improve my life. To that end, I have determined that I will self-publish a novel in the near future. I am currently revising one of my manuscripts so that I will feel comfortable publishing it, and hopefully it will not be garbage. I’ll let you all know when it’s available in case you’d like to check it out.
I have also taken on a bit of freelance work co-creating cover art for a friend’s novel, and will subsequently co-create cover art for my own. Having projects helps me feel like I’m not wasting my life, since life has little to do with catering to people who don’t know that Romaine lettuce is green. To that end, I have also decided to co-create a screenplay with another friend, who lives in Florida and pitched his idea to me. So there are various irons in various fires, and I find that’s when I am at my happiest.
There have been a few other things going on, too, in the world beyond the scope of my own interests. For one thing, President Trump has become very aggressive in his foreign policy, blasting Syria with 59 missiles and dropping a MOAB in Afghanistan. Tensions are rising with North Korea. It’s a little bit nuts out there.
I have always believed strongly in national defense. I grew up in a small town whose economy is based almost exclusively on a Navy R&D base, and my dad was employed on said base (and its manufacturing-based sister across the river) for more than 40 years. I am keenly aware that everything I had growing up, I have because of the Federal Government. Indeed, national defense is one of about two core functions that the Federal Government was chartered to perform in the first place.
With that said, though, there’s a difference between national defense and international offense, and despite the media seeming to mostly approve of the president’s actions, I’m not as in love with the current state of affairs. I’m not really convinced that Assad gassed anybody, at least not on purpose (it doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense, at least on the surface) and I certainly don’t think we need to be torqueing Kim Jong Un.
Then again, I have also never liked seeing my country cower in fear. If the last few months have proven anything, it’s that nobody knows what President Trump is going to do. But I remain convinced of a few things. I think he goes with his gut a lot, I think he remembers the last thing he heard, regardless of where he heard it, and I think he has a natural talent for creating conflict and finding ways to profit by it. I say none of that in admiration nor condemnation, this is merely my objective reading of observable data.
With that in mind, I think you can count on a few things. The first is that all this cozying up to China is probably part of an attempt to push them into settling the North Korea issue once and for all. It may not work, of course, but it’s likely the intent. Everyone who was freaking out about Steve Bannon can rest easy since he got kicked off the NSC, but that may not be what you wanted; he was all about NOT bombing anybody, but Trump listened to Jared Kushner instead, and here we are today. If you were going to vote for Hillary Clinton, though, bear in mind that she’s a hawk too, and the net result would likely have been little different where Syria and Afghanistan are concerned.
I think it’s likely now that Trump is going to continue to move away from the Libertarian/AnCap stance and ever more towards the standard authoritarian, mainstream Republican platform. He may still attempt to pull off some of his earlier promises, like healthcare, if ObamaCare crashes and burns, but I think we can all agree that he is turning out to be not what most of his supporters were hoping for.
However, he still isn’t Hitler, and thanks to a disastrous turn of phrase by Sean Spicer, we can count on basically nobody trotting out the Hitler comparisons against anybody ever again, so there’s that anyway.
I remain excited for Wonder Woman and Justice League in theaters this year; I am less excited than I used to be about Spider-Man Homecoming (it appears they Marvel’d it, for better AND for worse) and I am completely ambivalent about Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I’ll get into the movie stuff in more detail down the line.
Remember if you see Steve Stephens anywhere, stay away from him and call 911. I am increasingly convinced they’re going to find him dead in his car somewhere, but time will tell.
For now let’s call this the month in review.
