Day 3

Post-dating again, trying to record these events in something resembling chronological order as I have access to the internet.  I'm dating this October 31, but it's actually November 1.

Remember that I said I heard a tree falling that fateful morning but with no impact to my house minutes before a tree actually did hit my home?  Turns out, it was one of the larger trees in the neighborhood, an heirloom oak up the road, and it fell over, crossed the road, and took out the power lines, even though it managed to narrowly avoid hitting any houses.

That Thursday morning, after I had called in my claim to Allstate and after I showed off the damage to the neighbors, I took a short nap, having been up for some 24-plus hours at that point.  As I fell asleep, I heard the reassuring sounds of chainsaws off in the distance.  The power-company crews must be clearing the lines, I thought, and fell asleep content that power would be restored in a manner of hours.

But I was in a fool's paradise.  After I woke back up and walked outside to see how they were progressing, I was disappointed to find no power-company crew anywhere in the neighborhood.  The "chainsaws" I head were actually the leaf blowers of yard-maintenance firms, out clearing off the leaves, twigs and branches littering other neighbors' yards. No one was working on the fallen tree.

The tree remained there all day Thursday with no crews anywhere around to remove it and restore the power.  No one showed up all day Friday, either.   

It wasn't until around 2:30 pm Saturday (Halloween) that tree-clearing contractors and the power company appeared in the 'hood.  Starved for any other entertainment or distraction, I stood nearby and watched them, eventually joined by first one neighbor, then another, then several more.  Eventually, an impromptu block party broke out - someone set up a table with candy for the trick-or-treating kids, someone else provided some beer, and eventually the table was loaded with hot dogs, hors d'oeuvres, wine, and the makings for margaritas.  Another neighbor ran a cable from his home generator to power  a boom-box playing classic rock hits.  We had a bona-fide, impromptu, Halloween watching-the-contractors party going.

The tree guys finally got all the wood off of the power lines by around 7:00, and it was a little disheartening to see them drive off while we were still in the dark (plus it was right around sunset and getting dark).  But as they pulled out, the linemen's trucks rolled in, stringing up new power lines on the poles and checking the blown transformers.  A collecting cheer and chants of "Power, Power" broke out at 8:30 pm when the lights finally came back on, some 64-plus hours after they had gone out.

I went back to my house to make sure the tree damage hadn't caused any short-circuits in the wiring, and that the revivified power supply wouldn't result in a house fire.  Once I was convinced that the house wasn't going to burn down, I went back outside and rejoined the party for another couple hours before calling it a night in my now electrically-lit and heated home. No cable or internet yet, but that would be asking too much.

Short version: power's back and seems to be working in my damaged house.  And happy Halloween!

Day 4

 

Tree?  What tree?  You mean that pile of logs in the foreground?

Everything's always better the next day after a night's sleep and some time for the brain to adjust to the new reality.  Things might still suck, but at last they don't suck as bad as they seemed to the day before 

I got to thinking about the resources that I have at my disposal and how I can utilize them.  My roof might immediately need some blue tarp on it to keep any future rain out, but I live in an awesome neighborhood and my brand-new next-door neighbor just so happens to be in the commercial roofing business.  He doesn't do residential houses, per se, but he knows people who do and he made some phone calls on my behalf yesterday and before you know it, I had a tree-clearing firm lined up to remove the tree this morning and put the tarp on my roof.  I also had some of his roofing-specialists contacts and disaster-recovery guys over to look at things and begin to develop quotes on rebuilding what's left.  Thanks, good neighbor!  Here's what's left of that goddamn tree:

Fall on my house and I'll put you out on the curb like last week's trash.

The power is still out, some 36 hours now as I write this with no calvary in sight.  Trees are down all over the neighborhood and although only mine hit a house, most took down power lines.  But Collier Road, a major east-west route in this area and access to the interstate for Piedmont Hospital, has been blocked by two fallen trees since early Thursday morning, and no one's even working on it.  Georgia Power's current prediction is we'll have our electricity restored by 7:00 pm on November 1, two whole days from now. Not a good situation and there's not even a single work crew to be seen in the area.  

Living alone, there are only so many things you can do in a powerless home.  One, drink.  There's that, but I've been abstaining thinking that if a new crisis comes up, me being drunk won't help much (that and there's no ice and I can't keep beer cold).  Two, try to read by candlelight.  Trust me, it doesn't work very well.  Three, stare straight ahead into black, empty space  examining your thoughts.  Years of Zen training have prepared me for that one, but I wouldn't recommend it to the uninitiated.  Four, play around with your iPhone until the batteries run out.  Not recommended if the power won't be restored to recharge the battery for the next day.

But then I remembered another resource at my disposal.  I have a gadget, I called it the "doo-hickey," that converts an automobile cigarette lighter to a USB port, so I can recharge my phone using my car.  There.  One problem solved.  What next?

Well, even playing around on a rechargeable iPhone alone in the dark gets old after a while (you can only check your Facebook status so many times), and besides, all the food in my refrigerator is starting to spoil.  But I have another resource - the unsellable condo in Vinings, Georgia that's empty right now, but has power, heat, a working refrigerator and microwave, and so on.  All the comforts of home, except, um, furniture.  I'm there now, typing this on my laptop on a kitchen counter, accessing the internet via a wifi hot spot set up using my phone. I just reheated and ate some of the casserole I made on Wednesday, before the world ended, and when I'm good and ready after posting this, I'll go back to my dark house and go straight to bed to prepare for another fun day (Halloween!) of solving problems and dealing with the home-wrecking capabilities of Hurricane Zeta.

Day 5

 

Please allow me the indulgence of post-dating this entry.  Today is actually Friday, October 30, but I'm postdating it to Thursday, October 29, in order to better relate recent events.

Hurricane Zeta came through Atlanta early Thursday morning as forecast.  It started raining at around 2:00 am, and by 4:00 I was starting to think the whole event was overhyped, as is so often the case in these weather events. But the reason I was awake at 4:00 am is because the day before, the National Weather Service started issuing some pretty dire warnings about hurricane-strength winds, and advised people to immediately make survival plans for life-threatening conditions.  It specifically warned about falling trees and the possibility of those trees hitting houses.

That was more strongly worded than most NWS warnings.  Here in Atlanta, by the time most hurricanes reach us after making landfall on the Atlantic or Gulf Coasts, they've lost a lot of their initial intensity.  They'll bring a lot of rain to be sure, but they've already been downgraded to tropical depressions and the winds aren't so much of a factor.  They're a nuisance and quite annoying, but not generally life threatening or requiring life-or-death survival plans.

My survival plan was not to let Zeta catch me in bed, unprepared and underdressed, so I figured I'd pull an all-nighter on this one and stay up to monitor the situation. I played a video game (Shadow of the Tomb Raider) to keep my mind off the storm outside and up until 4:00 am, the few times that I did look outside, it didn't seem to be so extreme.  The big orange blob on the NWS radar maps seemed to be tracking northwest of me, with only the outer edge of it passing over Atlanta, and by 4:00 am, it looked like most of it had already passed.

But that back end was where all the action was.  Starting at around 4:00 am, the wind started howling and the rain dramatically picked up in intensity.  To be frank, it was pretty frightening.  I tried to immerse myself in the game to keep my mind from worrying, but that effort failed at 4:30 when the power went out.  I lit some candles and although I knew that the power would be out for several hours, I consoled myself that there was just a little bit more time until that orange blob completely passed the Atlanta metro region. 

At 5:00 am, still some three hours before the first light of day this time of year, I heard the distinct sound of wood cracking and a tree falling.  I braced myself for the impact, but heard nothing.  It must have been a tree elsewhere in the neighborhood.  I did hear several branches strike the roof with loud bangs that scared the cats to behind the couch, and a steady fall or acorns and other tree products on the roof.  This went of for a while and the rain was starting to let up in intensity, although the wind was, if anything, picking up.

And then it happened.  At 5:30 am, sitting in the dark on the sofa in the den, I heard the loudest crash I could imagine.  My mind registered it at first as thunder, a lightning strike directly to the house, it was that loud.  It wasn't thunder or lightning though, even though some small part of my memory still holds that initial impression - it was the dreaded 70-feet-tall, 36-inch-diameter poplar in the back yard, finally falling from the hill out back onto my house, just as I had feared (dreaded) for 16 years now.  

Don't know if I screamed or not. Can't remember if I did or didn't.

After I collected myself a little bit and realized I hadn't just died, I searched around the house by candlelight (remember, the power was out) to see if any room had collapsed.  No damage found on the inside.

Even though the rain had let up a little from earlier, it was still coming down pretty hard, but I put on a raincoat and went out to examine the exterior.  As soon as I stepped out the front door, I was confronted with a maze of dangling gutters, wood, and branches.  I made my way through the rubble and didn't see much else.  My car was fine parked out in the driveway and I didn't see any more branches or wood dangling from the roof - perhaps the loud crash was just one large limb that broke off a tree and landed on my front porch?

But then I got to the back of the house and saw the real damage - that poplar was down, and formed a bridge about 10 feet above ground from the top of the retaining wall holding the hill back and the top of my roof.  The tree extended clear across the house, and the tangle of branches out my front door was just the upper reaches of the now fallen tree. This was bad, but at least it didn't collapse any walls or penetrate the ceiling.

There wasn't much else I could do in the pitch black of 5:30 am during a hurricane, so I went back in the house, sat staring straight ahead in the dark, and waited for the light.  

This is what I found.

I called Allstate to file a claim, and reassuringly, they said I was in good hands and that they would take care of it from here, but then disappointingly said that they were getting a lot of claims right now, and that it might be several days before an adjustor called me.  In the meantime, if I needed to hire someone right away to stabilize the situation, I could go ahead and proceed, but make sure to keep all receipts.  Also, watch the price - there's a lot of gouging going on after events like this, and they won't pay extortionist rates.

I wasn't sure exactly what to do next.  I was traumatized, I was depressed at the prospect of a long and expensive repair to the house, and I hadn't slept for almost 24 hours.  I showed the damage to several neighbors out taking stock of the damage (I was by far the worse hit, the "victim" of this event although I had been spared so many previous storms).  Then I took about a three-hour nap to give my mind some rest and relaxation before taking on everything that needs to happen.

It's going to be a long haul.  2020 kicked my ass, real good this time, and I won't get past this ass-kicking for a long while.

Day 6

Waiting for Zeta  Should pass over ATL sometime early tomorrow morning.

I've lost track of the number of hurricanes and tropical depressions we've experienced so far in this virus-begotten year of the plague 2020.  If you don't think the dramatic increase in the number of hurricanes is related to climate change, you're kidding yourself.   If you don't think that the climate change causing the additional hurricanes is related to man-made carbon emissions, you don't understand science.

Let's elect a new president. a serious candidate this timen not a reality-TV character.  Let's reenter the Paris Agreement and let's get serious about reducing carbon emissions.

Day 7

Pendulums (pendula?) swing both ways, as the political Right will soon learn.

The American Right, which controls the White House and the Senate now but not the House, have abused their majority power.  Yesterday, as everyone knows, a mere week before the presidential election - one which polling suggests they are going to lose and lose badly - they rush-approved a new Supreme Court justice to the bench.  This after four years ago, the same Senators maintained that 10 months before an election was "too soon" to even hold hearings on another SCOTUS appointee.  Ten months is "too soon" for the other side, one week is perfectly acceptable for their side.  Hypocrites.  They are going to lose their re-election races, but that should be the least of their worries.

And the SCOTUS nomination was only the most recent of their abuses of power.  Pick up a newspaper and read if you need more examples.

But very soon now, the White House, Congress, and probably the Senate will be in Democratic hands. If the Democrats don't swing back and swing back hard with the same kind of power politics to undo the grabs of the current Republican majority, it will in effect legitimize the Right's actions.  The Republicans have tilted the pendulum so far to the right, that the inevitable swing back in the opposite direction should be devastating to them.

Doing what they did right before an election that promises a transfer of power wasn't very strategic for the Right.  It's like poking someone in the eye right before you hand them a billy-club.

Pack the Supreme Court?  Absolutely!  Appoint five, seven, nine new justices with Far Left sympathies to the Supreme Court.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex to the bench!  Sounds good! Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib too, for that matter.

Abolish the Electoral College?  Long overdue.  That undemocratic remnant of slavery politics has twice resulted in the loser of the popular vote winning the Presidency in the last 20 years.  

And why stop there?  Reinstate Obama Care in full.  Amend the Constitution with access-to-abortion.rights.  And regulate and register guns, and confiscate them from those in violation of the regulation and registration.

Why are there two Dakotas?  Why do a bunch of prairie farmers have twice as many Senators and Electoral votes, and more representation in Congress, than the entire state of California, including LA and San Francisco?  Re-allot  representation in the House and Senate to more democratically  represent the population and if the Right don't like it, tell them to go talk about it to Amy Coney Barrett, one of the five conservative Justices on the new, 15-member Supreme Court.

It's time to be ruthless (now that Ruth is gone) and to play hardball.  It's time to give the Right a taste of their own medicine, and let the chips fall where they may.  They brought this down on themselves, and deserve what they get.

Day 8

Look, I don't wish harm on anyone, not even conservative tool Amy Coney Barrett.  But a Supreme Court appointment is a lifetime position, and she either leaves the job voluntarily or in a box.  

Not that I wish her a short life or early death, but Trump's planned super-spreader celebration for her appointment could potentially result in both.  Impermanence is swift; life-and-death is the great matter.

Also this:

 

Day 9

 

Day 10

And lo, after all these days and some 66 hours of gameplay, I've finally beaten the game Nier: Automata.  Five times.

The game officially has 26 different possible endings, labeled A through Z.  Some of the endings are most decidedly not you beating the game, but rather the game beating you - if your character dies in the opening sequence, as happened to me during my first run-through, that's Ending W.   If another character gets curious what a random button does at an industrial facility, he dies and that's Ending G.  I understand that there are other endings, some based on certain achievements and others that are basically just jokes, but there are five main endings (A through E) and on this rainy night in Georgia, I completed the last two of them.

Five different endings doesn't mean you have to play through the whole game five times over.  The first ending comes after you play through the main story line as the female character 2B (they're all androids and have appropriately robotic names).  The second ending comes after you play the main story line but this time from the perspective of the male character, 9S.  They're not always together, so the stories are somewhat different, plus not only do you not have to repeat the side quests, there are enough of them in the game that you can play a whole bunch of new side quests on the second playthrough.

I've probably already revealed too many spoilers above, but I'll add one more and say that the last three endings (C through E) are achieved after completing a second story line that takes place after the events of the first.  So, no, the game is not repetitive.

It took me a while to get used to the feel of the game.  It's Japanese and not necessarily anime-based but certainly influenced by anime, and some aspects of the game felt a little too childish and immature for me.  The central couple, 2B and 9S, behave like children, at least when they're not mercilessly slaughtering lower forms of robots, and while they obviously fall in love, there is no sensual or sexual aspects to their relationship.  This despite the fact that both characters' designs, especially the female 2B, are sexy as hell.  It was also somewhat disturbing that because of her ultra-short dress, you had near constant up-skirt views of 2B   I'm way more familiar with her white underpants than I should be.  Not to sound like a prude, but the fact that she walked and talked like a prepubescent teenager while looking like some sort of robotic sex toy was more than a little bit conflicting.

But those concerns aside, it was all very, very clever.  The action takes place in an imaginative variety of settings - a forest, a cavern, a desert, an amusement park, a treehouse village, an abandoned city, and more.  The play style changes frequently, at times being a 3-D, open-world, sandbox game at others a 2-D shooter game, and still others a text-based program.  After the first two playthroughs, you frequently change the character that you're playing.  In something of a directorial triumph, one of the climactic battles towards the very end of the game involves a major boss fight by two of the characters, and the game rapidly switches the player from one character to the next, which involves not only fast-changing POVs, but different fighting styles.   

And the score was excellent - probably the best original music I've heard yet in a video game.  There was a specific track for each location, which lent as much to the presence of each area as the visuals, and there was specific music for battle scenes and foes. Even if you couldn't see the monitor, you'd have a pretty good idea of what was going on from the soundtrack alone.

So, if you recall, I bought this game back in 2018 but couldn't play it on my somewhat underpowered laptop.  But rather than return the game, I kept it in my library until I got a better gaming computer.  I finally started playing it after I got a new PC last month and, frankly, I'm glad I kept the game and didn't return it.  It's been a fun ride.

Day 11

Is it better not to post anything on a day when you have nothing particular to say than to post just something - anything - to keep the one-post-a-day streak going?

Day 12

I'm posting this at 8:30 p.m., one half-hour before the Final Presidential Debate (final ever?, I wonder). For some reason, I have an odd sense of foreboding, as if this isn't going to end well for anyone.  

I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

Update:  I was wrong and I'm glad I was wrong.  Nothing apocalyptic happened - in fact, I'm relieved that it was kind of boring, in a wonky kind of way.  

Day 13

 

Day 14

 A luta continua; a vitória é certa!

Day 15

Some of the few moments of solace I've found in this virus begotten year of the plague 2020 have been the Bang On A Can marathons.  For the uninitiated, Bang On A Can is a modern chamber collective that plays and promotes adventurous, non-conformist new music.  The BOAC All-Stars are a group of the regular performers, but their presentations and shows include many musicians from the classical, jazz, and rock communities beyond just the All-Stars.  

They're well known for their Marathons, 12-hour performances of the newest of new music, usually held in Brooklyn.  But because the world is sick with the covids right now and live performances seem to be a thing of the past, they've been instead offering zoom-style on-line Marathons, free six hour events on occasional Sundays.  There have been four on-line Marathons so far this year, and I've watched every hour of every one (24 hours in all now).  Each one has been at times challenging, fascinating, immersive and unique.

They've been my high points of 2020.

But here's the thing:  the performances are not overtly political, but one does get a sense that the unconventional free spirits are probably not Trump supporters, although for all I know, one or two of the musicians may harbor sympathies.  But yesterday, one performance by composer, violinist, and activist Daniel Bernard Roumain performed by BOAC All-Star cellist Arlen Hlusko was titled Why Did They Kill Sandra Bland? 

The live webcasts feature a Comments widget on the screen, where viewers compliment the performers, thank the organizers, and give each other shout-outs.  It's 99.9% friendly and supportive, a rarity among online comment sections.  But in 24 hours of Marathon performances, it wasn't until Why Did They Kill Sandra Bland? that the trolls came out of the woodwork and disrupted the harmonious proceedings.

To be sure, there appears to have been only one troll, who used that moment in the Marathon to rant about the election and urge everyone not to vote in the upcoming election.  "It won't make any difference," he wrote, "Don't accommodate the powers by participating in their farce," or something to that effect.

Naturally, several people, including Daniel Bernard Roumain, the composer of the piece being performed, and "Tim from BOAC" disagreed, and the Comments screen briefly resembled almost every other online political forum these days.

But why, I wonder, did the original commenter, the one who doesn't want us to vote, wait until Roumain's composition to speak out?  Could it have been that he thought Why Did They Kill Sandra Bland? would have a larger-than-average number of black viewers than the other performances, and he wanted to suppress the black vote?  Was he so triggered by the title that he just couldn't restrain himself?

It may have been a coincidence, that out of 24 hours on live performance it just so happened to be during that one that he decided he needed to be heard and discourage people from voting, but I sincerely doubt it.

Our divisive, so-called "president" in enabling and emboldening white supremacists, neo-nazis, and other groups to come out from the shadows and speak their hateful minds, and last night was only but one example of what that looks like.

In two weeks, we'll finally have an election and a chance to remove Trump from office once and for all, and also begin the slow, painful process of healing from all the mistrust and anger he's unleashed in this country.

Seize the moment.

Day16

 

Atlanta: Morning Shot

Not my picture.

 

Dreaming of the Masters

 

Day 19

Day 20

 

Time, they say, is a flat circle.  I'm not completely sure what they mean by that - I'm not completely sure they know what they mean by that.   But I do know that I experience time differently than I used to.  Not faster due to my older age - that's the same experience of time, only at a faster rate.  My new experience is . . .  different.

The best that I can describe it is I used to feel that I was floating along on a river of time.  Sometimes, like a river, it moved fast and sometimes it moved slow.  But I was in time; time was something outside of me.

Now I experience time as something within me.  Time "goes" slowly because I am being slow, and time "goes" fast when my mind is quick.  I am not in time, time is in me.

I doubt that anyone understands what I mean based on that, but it's not an experience that is easily expressed by words.  You need a time machine.

Any comfortable seat will do.  Sit quietly in a comfortable position, take a deep breath, and then let all the air out of your lungs.  Allow your lungs to refill naturally and from there, simply let the breath be natural. Don't try to hard, just sit back and relax and watch what happens.  Be patient.  Before too long, you'll escape the "river of time" and experience time more like an emotion than some external, cosmic force.

Give it a try.  I'll be rooting for you, cuz.     

Day 21

 I'm still hung up on the question of if I met myself, would I like that person?

I've settled some 900 miles from my childhood home and birth family.  I have few friends and I've managed to drive out of my life every woman who had ever loved me.  So the empirical evidence is not very promising.  

On another note, I've got my degree in geology and am registered to practice the science here in my home state of Georgia, although much of what I did day to day in my career didn't really qualify as "geology."  But I've met many geologists in my lifetime.  Some are brilliant academics well versed in scientific theory and experimental technique.  Some are  rough and tumble field geologists, equally adept at avoiding bear attack and foraging for edible backcountry food as they are at identifying the provenance of a zircon crystal in a gneissic matrix.  And some are petroleum geologists - part wild catter, part entrepreneur, part corporate drone.

And then there's the consulting environmental geologist, my field.  I'm sorry to say that with some exceptions (your truly hopefully included), they are a fairly uninspired bunch, marginally literate and lacking in curiosity.  Most seem content to apply as little knowledge as possible to as broad a canvas as they can find, and deeply resent being told of new ways of doing things, or being asked to creatively solve a new problem.

Wait a minute . . .  that judgement, that crankiness.  Is that why I've been so successful at repelling those around me?

Day 22

So many memes posted on line are tired old cliches trying to pass for "insight" or "wisdom."  But there's often power in tired old cliches - that's how they managed to stay around for all those years.

I saw something today that stopped me in my tracks.  I forget the exact wording, but it basically asked, "If you met yourself, would you like the person you are?"

I'm not sure I can answer that in the affirmative.  I have to think about it - and work on myself a little more.

Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day - Christopher Columbus was a criminal.

Day 23

The remnants of Hurricane Delta still haven't completely cleared out of the Atlanta metro region yet.  It's cloudy outside, and it rained intermittently for most of the morning  The current forecast says the rain is over and sunny days are expected next week, but we'll wait and see what Mother Nature has to say about it.

Unsurprisingly, all that rain resulting in flash flooding yesterday.  Peachtree Creek jumped its banks and passed the minor flood stage to rise to the major flood stage.  With all of the urban pavement that covers the ground, there's nowhere for the rain to infiltrate, so it all runs overland and through the storm sewers to the Chattahoochee River and its tributaries, like Peachtree and Tanyard Creeks.  Krog Tunnel (above), which passes under CSX railroad tracks, is prone to flooding under even light rain, and reportedly had over three feet of water at times yesterday. 

According to the National Weather Service, over 4½ inches of rain fell yesterday, breaking the record for the day (set in 2018) by over an inch.  

Like warm weather and an increased number of wildfires, more intense and heavier rainstorms are another effect of anthropogenic global climate change.  These storms are going to keep coming, even if we start making  major adjustments to our carbon footprint now.  

So why bother reducing carbon emissions if we're going to pay the price anyway?, I ask rhetorically.  Because, I answer myself, if we don't reduce the emissions, these intense rain events will be the least of our problems - things can, and if we don't start acting soon, will, get worse.

Day 24

 

It's another night of intense rain, high winds, and tornado warnings.  The remnants on Hurricane  Delta, the 30th named storm this year, are blowing over Atlanta even as I write this.  On a scale of 1 to 10, the fear factor on this one is about a 7.

It's not that we don't have things to worry about.  The coronavirus pandemic, the end of constitutional democracy in America, climate change.  So far, no one's seen the murder hornets they were talking about earlier this year, which only brings up the question, where are they hiding? Oh, according to Yahoo News, venomous caterpillars are swarming in Virginia, so there's that.

I don't mean to be an alarmist and I don't let fear dominate my thoughts, but when you're watching the Georgia-Tennessee football game, one second left in the first half, Georgia with the ball on the Tennessee one-year line, and just as the ball is snapped, the Emergency Broadcast System cuts in with its raspy, electric beep and a voice-over announces that a tornado warning is in effect your entire county, well. that gets your attention (Georgia didn't score on the play, but I didn't find that out until 5 minutes later).

So far (knock on wood), I haven't lost power.  Yet.

The rain is forecast to last until about 5:00 p.m. tomorrow afternoon, and then we'll have to deal with the next scary emergency 2020 has up its sleeve. 

Day 25

Steve Schmidt (Republican, former campaign manger for George W Bush and John McCain) had the following response to our so-called "president" after Trump disparaged him on Twitter:

You’ve never beaten me at anything.

This is our first dance. Did you like, Covita? We are so much better at this than your team of crooks, wife beaters, degenerates, weirdos and losers.

You are losing. We heard you loved Evita. You saw it so many times. Where will you live out your years in disgrace? Will you buy Jeffrey Epstein’s island? One last extra special deal from him? Or will you be drooling on yourself in a suite at Walter Reed? Maybe you will be in prison?

I bet you fear that. The Manhattan District Attorney may not be around to cover for you or your crooked kids anymore. Eliza Orlins doesn’t believe in different sets of rules for the Trumps. What about the State Attorney General? You know what you’ve done.

Oh, Donald. Who do you owe almost $500 million in personally guaranteed loans to? It's all coming down. You think you and your disgusting family are going to be in deal-flow next year? Are you really that delusional?

You are lucky Chris Wallace interrupted you after Joe Biden said you weren’t smart. You started to melt down. That’s the place that hurts the most. Right? Fred Sr., knew it. You’ve spent your whole life proving it. You aren’t very smart. You couldn’t take the SAT on your own. What was the real score? 970? We both know you know.

Are the steroids wearing off? Is the euphoria fading? Do you feel foggy? Tired? Do you ache? How is the breathing? Hmmm. Are you watching TV today? We will have some nice surprises for you. Everyone is laughing at you. You are a joke. A splendid moron turned deadly clown.

Did you watch Martha McSally in her debate against American hero, fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly? She is so embarrassed by you. She is ashamed and full of self-loathing for the choice she made in following you over the cliff. She is in free fall now. She will lose, like most of them, because of you.

We hear from the White House and the campaign everyday. They are betraying you. They are looking to get out alive and salvage careers and their names. It’s Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner vs. Donald Trump Jr., and Kimberly Guilfoyle on the inside. They are at war over scraps and who gets to command what will be the remnants of your rancid cult.

It’s almost over now. You are the greatest failure in American history. You are the worst president in American history. Disgrace will always precede your name. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will grow up ashamed of their names.

One day, I suppose there will be some small and not-much-visited library that bears your name. It will be the type of place where a drunk walks by, staring at the wall for a minute, before deciding it is beneath his dignity to piss on. That’s what is waiting for you.

Joe Biden is a better man. He’s smarter. He’s winning.

Do you remember when you didn’t want to name Donald Trump Jr., Donald because you were worried about him being a loser named Donald? You were right about that. He is.

But it is you who will be remembered as America’s greatest loser. You will be crushed in the election.

Shhhhhhhh.

Day 26

 

Day 27

There will be a debate on television tonight, this time between the vice-presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Mike Pence.

What's even the point of political debates anymore?  Will anything that either candidate says really change anyone's mind about who to vote for?  Will some great policy initiative be proposed, or will some nuance in geopolitical strategy be revealed?  I strongly doubt it.

These debates today aren't about policy or geopolitics.  They're just two candidates trying to get meme-worthy zingers in on the other side, slings and arrows to be reposted tomorrow morning on Twitter and Facebook.  They're about moderators tossing out hardball questions to further their own news reporting careers.  They're factories that manufacture the grist for the punditry mills, providing content for commentary and bloviation and  dissection.  

They're not about changing any voter's mind.

Given that we're in a global pandemic and given that at least one of the presidential candidates has already contracted the coronavirus, wouldn't we all be better served if we just skipped this political theater and just let the voters have their say?

(Don't take this to mean I won't be glued to the screen tonight watching this.)

Day 28

Before mass leaders seek the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it. - Hannah Arendt

Note From the Gaming Desk

As previously noted in these pages, last month I splurged on a new gaming PC. If I'm going to be spending all of my time indoors cooped up playing games, why not do it on hardware designed for the job?

I don't regret the decision.  

The first game I played on the new rig was Peril On Gorgon, the brand-new DLC for The Outer Worlds.  I picked that one first not because of any technical issue or due to favoritism, but because I wanted to play it before I saw too many spoilers on line.  The new rig handled the game well.

Next I played several hours of Ark: Survival Evolved.  Actually, I'm 10 days and 22 hours into the game according to the Epic statistics, and by "10 days" they mean 240 hours.  That's 262 hours in total play time, and I'm no where near ending the game (if the game even has a real ending).  I had played the game on my old laptop and had to re-start it when I got my new PC - when I downloaded it to the new rig, I couldn't open the game from my last Save file.  All those hours isn't because it's necessarily such a great game, it's just one of those games that consumes lots and lots of time, and having to restart the game again from the dreaded Level 1 - where even a mosquito bite can literally kill you - consumed all those hours.

The new PC handled Ark just fine as well, although the notorious glitches and bugs in the game - texture rendering, glare, etc. - were still present.  It's the game itself, not the hardware it's played on, that causes the glitches.

After enough hours of Ark, I decided to give the PC a run for it's money.  Two year ago, I bought the game Nier: Automata on a Steam sale, but it wouldn't play on my old laptop.  The game would either freeze up or crash altogether anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes into play, and I tried again and again, adjusting to different settings each time.  Steam allows you to return a game that you don't like as long as you've played less than 4 hours, but by the time I accepted the fact that there was just no way the game was going to run on my laptop, I was well past 4 hours.  I decided to keep the game in my library for the inevitable day that I upgraded my hardware.

Now that the day had finally come, I gave Nier a new shot.  The new PC handled it fine - no freezes, no crashes, not even so much as a flutter. And the graphics look great, too.  It's a beautiful game and you really have to appreciate the creative and highly varied environments in the game - there's a lot of artistry on display here, and the makers obviously spent a lot of time making up new and fantastical settings for the game.

It's a different game than I'm used to - it's Japanese and heavily influenced by anime, although the game itself is not in an anime style.  Like most new (to me) games, I didn't like it at first - it's different and I didn't know how things worked or what I was supposed to be doing - but with time I got used to it, as I usually do.  In fact, if anything, it's a little too easy, especially combat, as if it were designed for children, despite it's sexy, blindfolded protagonist.  Yes, I could increase the game difficult level to Hard or Expert mode, but then I'd die all the time, and where's the fun in that?  If I wanted to die every couple of hours, I'd play Ark.

Today was the breakthrough.  I entered the Castle of the Forest King, one of those varied settings in the game, and was confronted with  a challenging maze to navigate requiring several difficult jump moves, all while a seemingly endless series of enemy robots were constantly attacking.  It was a challenge and I felt like I had actually accomplished something by the time I finally made it through and beat the final boss. It was at that moment, just an hour or so ago but almost 20 hours into the game, that I finally came around to liking Nier.  

I'm not sure what's going to be up next.  

Day 30

 

Day 31

This shouldn't be difficult but we here at WDW unironically wish Donald John Trump a speedy recovery from the coronavirus.

This virus can be traumatic and painful, and our soul still hasn't been corrupted to the point where we wish pain and suffering on others, even those we deeply disagree with.  This virus can't humble and humiliate our so-called "president" - that's our job!

We can appreciate the irony that the man who called the virus a "liberal hoax" and who discouraged his supporters from wearing face masks that would have limited the spread of the virus came down himself with the very flu that he was denying.  We can laugh that his Supreme Court nomination announcement, which could very well result in the end of the Affordable Care Act and deprive millions of Americans of their health insurance, became a super-spreader event in its own right that so far has infected the First Lady, at least three Senators, several aides and advisors, and an unknown number of caterers, servers, security personnel, and others.

But we don't want to see him coughing up blood, put into a medially-induced coma and hooked up to a respirator, or unable to function above the very low bar he's already set for mental acuity.  That would be cruel and inhumane to wish for, and reduce us to his level of bullying and callousness.

But we will get this jab in - the man couldn't protect his own wife from the virus, he couldn't even protect himself.  Why would anyone trust him to protect them in this time of global pandemic to keep them safe?

Day 32

I voted today.  By mail.  Absentee ballot.

If you're wondering who I voted for president, you must be new to this blog.

The ballot also included the race to fill the unexpired U.S. Senate term of Georgia's Johnny Isakson (the other Senate seat, the one currently held by David Perdue, was also on the ballot).  There were a full 20 candidates running for Isakson's seat, including 6 Republicans, 7 Democrats, one Libertarian, one Green Party, and 5 Independents.  The Republicans included the classless Doug Collins, who, the day after she passed away, tweeted about the number of "murdered" babies pro-choice Justice Ruth Ginsberg would have to answer for, and the self-serving kleptocrat  Kelly Loeffler, who famously dumped her stock portfolio after a classified briefing on the covid pandemic, even as she was telling the public there was nothing to worry about.  The good news is that after the election, at least one of these two (hopefully both) will be out of a job.  I doubt any candidate will get 50% of the vote as required by Georgia law, though, and we almost assuredly will have a run-off election.

A friend of mine from California had asked me how I could stand living in Georgia, as the state was totally controlled by Republicans.  This year's ballot would have surprised him.  There were a full 8 positions where the listed candidate was running unopposed, for offices raging from the Georgia Senate and House, to judges, clerks and solicitor-general, to sheriff, to tax assessor.   We only had one choice on the ballot  (other than a write-in candidate) for each of these 8 offices, and every single one was a Democrat.  So much for "All-Republican Georgia."

There are 32 days until Election Day, so I feel safe that the Post Office will be able get my vote to the Secretary of State's office in time to be counted.  

Mid-Autumn Festival

Zen Master Dogen wrote Bendowa, the first fascicle of his Shobogenzo, on October 1, 1231.  Coincidentally, this date is also the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.