I’ve long said that singers from Scandinavia have a lot of soul. And, in fact, that’s probably one of the lone parts of the world where rock n roll remains pop music in the traditional sense.
I come to grow fond of the Scandinavian singer Sigrid. Her music is in the sweet spot of pop-rock that I really like. And, yet, something about how young she is gives me pause for thought.
She’s only 26! (Oh, to be 26 again. Sigh.)
Now that I’m 50, I find myself feeling uneasy even listening to the music of someone so young.
I suppose some of it Sigrid represents youth culture and, alas, I ain’t young anymore. But what am I going to do about it? Age is immutable. I can’t change how old I am.
I try to be hip, you know, a cool kid. So, I’ve found myself listening to lesbian twentysomething vocalist Fletcher. She’s really good. And, yet, being an Old, I sometimes feel a bit lost.
Fletcher
She talks about the angst associated with being around 25 and I feel like smoking a cigar and turning to her to say, “Uh huh. Is that so.”
Then there is all her pining for hot chicks. Fletcher, herself, is a hot chick, so I feel a bit out of place listening to her talk all dreamy about some hot young woman she wants to fuck.
I have no idea, for sure, how tall Ron DeSantis is. I have a few leads, but, oddly enough the last time I checked a few days ago, Wikipedia does NOT say how tall he is.
This leads me to believe that there may be an active campaign on the part of his would-be presidential campaign staff to obscure how tall he is. Here’s what I know:
And yet, if this is the case, how come Wikipedia doesn’t have his height? This leads me to believe that maybe however tall DeSantis is, he’s short enough that he doesn’t want anyone to know.
Or, if you want to get all paranoid about it, you could even go so far as to say that this is a ping from a future where DeSantis is POTUS and, well, lulz, America has become a Russia clone.
Speaking of Russia — Putin is pretty short, too, and that hasn’t stopped him from being Russia’s president for close to 30 years. And, what’s even more amusing — it’s not so much DeSantis’ height that I would be worried about so much as his weasley voice.
His voice is really, really fucking annoying. And, yet, even with him being short and having an annoying voice, non-Trump MAGA cocksuckers are so in love with the “idea” of DeSantis that he could very well be the next POTUS.
Believe the hype about Fleabag is all I gotta say. It really is as good as you’re led to believe. I’ve seen a lot of clips on YouTube, but only by watching the show all the way through do you get some sense of its pathos.
Phoebe “Fleabag” Waller-Bridge
Not since Mare of Easttown have of I watched a TV show that made me realize I need to really work hard as possible to make the character in my first novel as interesting as possible. If the audience has been exposed to Fleabag, then I really need to do my best to make my novel’s characters — especially the female characters — as thought provoking as possible.
I totally get how some people watch the first season of Fleabag and are totally destroyed by it. The only reason why I didn’t burst into tears after watching the first season of Fleabag is I’m an Old and I’m so jaded that I am able to distance myself from the whole thing.
The only thing I can compare Fleabag to is The Wolf of Wall Street. The two have a very similar vibe to them — they challenge the audience in various ways. They’re both very thought provoking in their own way.
Now, I have to start watching season two of Fleabag.
As I grow more and more alarmed about what is going to happen in late 2024, early 2025, I think I’m going to add more books about the French Revolution to books that I buy then wait years to read.
It seems to me that because of income inequality, the United States may burst into civil war and revolution as part of the 2024 presidential cycle. And, honestly, sometimes I think it’s just a matter if its Blues or Reds who are going to be the ones who get fed up and bolt the Union. (Spoiler Alert: it will probably be Blues.)
But the United States is so huge, diverse and powerful that if we collapse into civil war and or revolution, it will one of the biggest events not just in American history — but human history. The only thing I can compare it to would be the 1789 – 1799 French Revolution combined with the American Civil War.
The world really will be turned upside down if the United States should buckle – it probably would prompted WW3. The entire global order would be thrown up in the air until everything was sorted out one way or another. And just because Blues might leave the Union to start their own center-Left nation doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be mission creep and, ultimately, there would be a global conflagration that would totally re-arrange the entire global framework.
But, before I go down that hysterical path TOO much, remember — I’m always wrong. I think, in the end, that DeSantis will be elected and initially, any changes in the United States will be rather subtle. It won’t be until 20 years of DeSantis consolidating power that we’ll endup invading Canada to overthrow the “woke cancel culture mob” there.
Or, put another way — I’m probably full of shit and why are you even listening to me at all? Wink.
I lived through the rise of the Internet and one thing I was obsessed with was micropayments. So, when I listened to the latest Pivot podcast and Scott Galloway ranted about how everything would be better now on the Internet if we had used micropayments instead of advertising, I started.
Now, I’m too lazy to give you specific names, but here, in general, what happened.
In short, the reason why we didn’t use micropayments as the basis for supporting the digital economy is Visa bought up all the micropayment companies then smothered them. So, there you go. With that done, the digital economy, out of desperation, turned to advertising instead with all the problems that entails.
I love the idea of micropayments, but Visa saw their widespread use as a direct threat to their bottomline, so they killed the technology to protect themselves. It’s all under the digital bridge now.
Ok. Here goes. I think, at its heart, “wokeness” is really about white Christians flipping out that America is careening towards a majority minority nation and, as such, “wokeness” is a debate about that transition.
As such, the white Christian “powers that be” scream about “wokeness” as an effort to rally other white (angry) Christian (men) in an effort to establish permanent white Christian minority rule. It’s a dog whistle for their broader fears about not being in the majority anymore.
So, ANYTHING they don’t like is considered “woke” because they need some sort of catch-all for the bad vibes that white Christians feel as a majority of the country becomes brown, secular and feminist.
I was listening to, I think, a Slate podcast about the Ozempic diet pill and I was struck by how they began to squirm at the consequences of it. I mean, if there comes a day when everyone can afford to just take a pill not to be fat….then all the woke ranting about “fat shaming” people will become moot.
You could hear, in real time, their natural woke tendency about how great and wonderful it is to be fat collide with the realization that growing numbers of people think it’s ok for OTHER people to be fat. But they, themselves, are willing to risk even cancer to be 10 or 20 pounds lighter.
Let me be clear — I have a beer gut and I need to lose 30 pounds. And I have no intention of doing anything other than eating better and / or exercising to lose that gut. And I’m indifferent to overweight people — you do you.
But there is a part of me that wistfully regrets that the olden days of us having places like the Victoria Secret Runway Show as a “safe space” for traditionally attractive people before all the fucking woke people decided to burn everything ground.
Now, with the Petite Singularity, it’s possible that in the near future, there really won’t be any excuse or reason for you to be fat. And then maybe we can have “normal” Victoria Secret Runway shows again.
No amount of “owning the libs” or rhetorically “destroying” this or that MAGA person means jack shit. This is it, the two sides are set — and they’re hardening their positions.
There are just 100,000 people in four or five swing states who will ultimately decide if we have a civil war with Red States leaving the Union or a civil war with Blue States leaving the Union. Or, even more likely, we won’t have a civil war at all, but rather, we’ll just slip peacefully into autocracy.
America is in a serious, lingering rolling political crisis with no obvious endgame in sight. In short, the one thing we all want — to remain in a traditional Western democracy — is the one thing that is the absolute least likely to happen.
The United States is careening towards a very dark future, one way or another. I just can’t figure out which one. A lot is going to depend on Trump. If he is the Republican nominee, the likelihood of a civil war grows exponentially. If he is not the Republican nominee, then either he splits the vote and maybe — just maybe — Biden wins a second term and we punt our problems down the road again.
Or, Trump folds and supports DeSantis and we become an illiberal democracy like Hungary.
Anyway, I hope to wrap up my novel in time to flee the country with all the smug liberals. Wish me luck.
Because of some dubious business practices by Amazon, I find myself with an Amazon Prime subscription AGAIN and, as such, I’m finally actually watching Fleabag instead of just YouTube clips.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, “Fleabag”
Even from just watching clips, I’ve long loved the show and to actually watch it end to end proves that it really does live up its reputation. It’s really, really good. It’s probably in my top 5 TV shows of the last 20 or so years. And this is coming from someone who hates most TV with a passion.
I have repeatedly noted how interesting is to me that the British press focused on how feminist the show is, while the American press just sees it for what it is — a great TV show.
In the back of my mind, I find myself thinking about how I might crib from Fleabag as I continue to develop the female characters of my first novel. The thing about Fleabag is how thought-provoking and honest it is — sometimes to a fault.
The appear of Fleabag is a lot of people — both men and women — see themselves as a Fleabag character, even when we aren’t. It’s too bad there won’t be a third season of it.
It would be interesting to see the character in NYC or LA.
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