"Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the duo behind HBO’s Westworld, are developing a science-fiction show for Amazon that is based on the Fallout video game franchise." - Scrounging for Hits, Hollywood Goes Back to the Video Game Well by Brooks Barnes, The New York Times, May 24, 2021

I unironically believe that if anyone can take Fallout from the video-game realm into prestige television, it's the creative forces that breathed such innovative life into Michael Creighton's creaky old Westworld novel.

Ordinary Mind

 

From Taking the Path of Zen by Robert Aitken.

Next Chapter

It's finally over and done (done and over?).  Repair work on my house is finally finished, with no "except for" caveats.  I've paid off the contractors, and now it's all complete.

For those of you new here, late last October, a tree, a large white ash, fell on my house when Hurricane Eta passed through Atlanta, destroying my roof and badly damaging sheetrock throughout the house. Amazingly, the ceilings were never breached and the house was still habitable.  

I had the tree removed almost immediately, but spent the past 6½ months negotiating with my insurance company, negotiating with contractors, and then trying to manage the actual repairs.  My entire roof had to be replaced - not just re-shingled, but the actual rafters and beams supporting the roof had to be replaced. I had new facia, soffits, and gutters installed completely around the house.  Exterior spotlights and wall lamps had to be replaced.  The bricks on one wall all had to be removed for some reason and then all put back in place.  Inside the house, the ceilings were replaced in the living room, dining room, and kitchen, and the floor replaced in the master bedroom.  The rear, kitchen door was replaced.  Cracked drywall was either replaced or repaired, and most of the interior was repainted.  I had to move out of the house for a full month while some of the heavy-duty work was being performed in the interior.  

All of this activity, the negotiating and the contracting, the actual repairs, waiting through inexplicable disappearances of work crews, haranguing my prime contractor when progress seemed to be stalling, dominated my life the past ever since that tree fell.  Now that it's all over, I wonder what  to do next.

I'm retired, I'm vaccinated, and the pandemic restrictions have mostly all been lifted.  But without the impending crisis of trying to get my house repaired, I suddenly find myself directionless, rudderless, wondering what to do with myself next.

By the way, the house looks great, better than it's been in like 15 years.

Grow Up, You Baldhead!

II Kings 2:23-24 (New World translation):  And he (Elisha) proceeded  to go up from there to Bethel.  As he was going up on the way, there were small boys that came out from the city and began to jeer him and kept saying to him: "Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" Finally, be turned behind him and saw them and called down evil upon them in the name of Jehovah.  Then two she-bears came out from the woods and went tearing to pieces forty-two children of their number.

Even by Old Testament  standards, doesn't killing 42 young children for teasing an old man, and killing them in one of the most gruesome ways possible, seem a little, well, Old Testament?

And what's more Elisha didn't "call down evil" in the name of Jehovah.  He called down evil in the name of his fragile and wounded ego.  Sticks and stones may break your bones, but old bald-headed Elisha couldn't even withstand the words of little children.

And Jehovah went along with all this?  The so-called loving God looked down, heard Elisha's distress at being teased, and had two she-bears maul and kill 42 children?  What kind of monster does that?

17-Year Anniversary

Back At the Brickhouse

I'm back home!  After the entire month of April at The Unsellable, my condominium in Vinings, repair on the house has finally progressed to the point where I could move back in.  The movers picked my stuff up yesterday and delivered it back here to this pile of bricks on a hill (where they had picked it all up on March 30).

Funny story - after they unpacked the van, one of the movers approached me with a pained expression on his face and admitted that they left a piece of my bedframe back at The Unsellable, and therefore they couldn't reassemble the bed.  I told them that was impossible - I had made a sweep through the condo before we left and confirmed that everything was gone.  Perhaps they left it outside next to the van as they were staging my stuff for the trip back? He was as sure that didn't happen as I was sure it wasn't still inside the condo.

But we travelled back anyway to make sure, because where else could it be? And they were correct - it wasn't outside near where the van was parked.  And I was correct - it wasn't inside The Unsellable, either.  What the hell?  Where was it?

We drove back to the house again, and I looked at the frame carefully.  It was all there after all. The frame consists of three pieces, and the mover's sense of symmetry may have expected four pieces.  We quickly assembled the frame and mounted the springs and mattress, and the movers went on their way.

What I didn't expect as I settled back into the house was to find all of my shoes in the shower stall.  The contractors had replaced the bedroom floors, including the closets, and the shoes must have been in their way.  But what really confused me was why someone saw fit to run the shower and soak the shoes, as well as the hand-crafted leather shoulder bag I bought from a craftsman in Tuscany back in 2003.  And it didn't appear that they were just accidentally spritzed for a second or two - not only was everything still soaking wet, even though the contractors finished the work Tuesday morning, but the floor outside the stall was wet and the shower head was still dripping.

Several of the shoes were ruined.  A pair of black Merrill slip-ons were so mildewed that appeared to be white (and they stunk to high heavens).  My REI hiking boots have certainly gotten wet before while out on the trail and should probably survive, and I wiped down the leather shoes before they got any worse, but really?  Who turns a shower on when the stall is full of shoes and other personal belongings? What's wrong with these people?  

 

But still, I'm home.  I have television once again, and cable access, and a high-speed internet connection.  A new roof over my head.  A new bedroom floor beneath my feet.  I just don't have as many pairs of shoes as I used to.