The Writer's Poke

Wednesday isn't a good night for a concert, but it's been maybe 8 years since I last saw the Birthday Massacre in concert. That show went on until 12:30 in the morning, and as best I remember, they played 21 songs. The concert went on for so long that Linda fell asleep and eventually made her exit back to the car. This show was shorter: 19 songs. It was over by 11:15, but people were already starting to head for the door by 10:30. Just a few, and then a few more, and so on. Did they really have to be somewhere else, or did they simply need to get to bed for an early morning? I like small concerts with bands that a ton of people don't necessarily know or like. The Fine Line has a capacity of maybe 600, and I'd say they almost had that. Most of the people were maybe in their 30s, but it's hard to tell. I did feel like one of the older people there. I basically found a post in the back and stood by it.  Great show. Glad I went. Glad I'm not too old to go to a conce...

Bill Bennett is a very common name. Right now, I'm reading a book by the Australian film maker Bill Bennett. He hiked the Camino in 2013 and then wrote a book (and made an Australian movie, not available in the U.S.) about it.  Seems he kept a blog about that hike, too. I went to look for his Camino blog, and found he started one years after the hike, but he didn't post regularly... His last post from 2022 announced his had Parkinson's and had kept the diagnosis secret for 4 years.  Now that almost three years have passed from that post, I wonder what's happened to him.  Blogs are weird. They just sit there. Anyone can stumble upon them, and read them. So I decided to keep looking for his Camino blog.  https://billbennett.blog/home/ *** And I found another Bill Bennett, this one from New Zealand, who keeps a microblog. It's current and updated. "What's a microblog?" My wife asked. Well, I said, it's a small blog. Just a sentence or two for a post. ...

When someone does something repugnant or slimy, I often wonder: Who hurt you? With JD Vance, I've found myself thinking, "Bless his heart. He's just being Trump's bitch. I wonder who hurt him. Was he bullied much as a kid?"  I've read Hillbilly Elegy, but I don't remember much in it. Below are a few places where he mentions being bullied: "When I was younger, I was the new kid in town. And as I quickly learned, the new kid always gets bullied." (Chapter 1) "At school, I was constantly picked on, and I couldn’t understand why. My classmates would make fun of my clothes, the way I talked, and the way my mom acted." (Chapter 2) "I was a poor kid with a messy home life, and I became the target of constant teasing, and that made me even more ashamed of where I came from." (Chapter 3) "It’s hard to be proud of yourself when every kid in your class has more than you, and the people who tease you are just one reminder of your soc...

 When I was in Guatemala a few years ago, a guide said, "We're really proud of our bridge. It's the only one like it in the entire region." While it was a nice enough bridge, I felt jaded. We probably have a million bridges like that in the U.S., I thought.   But I'm sure that this bridge made life much easier for the people who lived in this region. Because that's what bridges do. They make life easier.  In the United States, we have 600,000 bridges. Some small, some big. They all serve the purpose of making life easier. What's involved in designing and building a bridge? How does a bridge go from imagination to reality?  1. People decide a bridge is needed.  2. Politicians agree, and the process begins -- funding, designing, building, and so on.  3. Once the bridge is built, it will still require maintenance -- more funding, monitoring, and so on.  4. A good bridge will probably last for decades.  Elon Musk's DOGE is tasked with cutting a $1 tri...

Eight years ago, I was putting together a GOP Principles Handbook. Why did I stop? And do the principles from 2017 apply to the political world in 2025, or are there a whole new set of principles? I'm guessing some of the old principles still apply. This week, for example, all GOPers were saying that it was a "mistake" that an Atlantic journalist was included on the Yemen warplans chat. In fact, in an interview with CNN, one Representation said, "It was a mistake," and when the reporter tried to ask a follow-up question, she smirked and said, "I've already given you the soundbite." It's funny to me. They know they're playing a game. We know they're playing a game. It's not like the playbook is a secret. But of course they play the game because there are no repercusions. They aren't willing to penalize others for their incompentency, because incompentency made by party members is just a "mistake," and as the Preside...