AlexPGP's Corner

I'm grumpy because one of my clients just sent me a ginormous assignment. My favorite method of making money involves glancing down at the ground & picking up that $50,000-bill nobody else has noticed, not laboring over a keyboard.

However, I should be grateful since the U.S. is clearly in a recession, even if they haven't called it yet. Time to start stuffing money into that mattress! Although that dollar bill you stuff into your mattress today will only be worth 90¢ next week.

Recession plus inflation—just about the most horrible economic formula you can possibly imagine.

I'm cheering myself up by thinking thoughts like, Well, it's really not going to affect me! I'll be dead soon!

Which when you get right down to it is not a particularly cheerful thought.

###

Meanwhile, Adrienne had chided me—deservedly—for not updating the Shawangunk Dems' website for months & months & months, so I spent yesterday morning working on that.

Then Ichabod called & chided me for my insufficiently progressive views on the racial divide. Yes, I do believe in color blindness—say it loud & say it proud!—and you're gonna have to reset the starting marker for history at some point else the current (completely unacceptable) situation is just gonna go on & on & on. So why not do it now?

Then I trotted off to the Shawangunk Dems' monthly meeting where I learned that Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill cut all Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. Not just for abortions! But also for birth control and Pap smears. And this made me very upset indeed. There's not a single thing I can do about it, though.

In the evening, I watched a documentary about Charlie Sheen who ingested more drugs than any other single person on the planet, & I decided—Work in Progress alert!—to borrow his crack cocaine habit & give it to Flavia, since that's an ongoing motiff in the Work in Progress: Neal is gonna save each of the sister wives from some incipient doom. Flavia's doom will be drugs, Daria's doom will be some mountain hike, but I still haven't figured out what Grazia's doom is, and I need to come up with it before I can start Chapter 3.

I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage. --Charlie Kirk, 2022

###

Went out canvassing with Adrienne yesterday.

"I'm a bit nervous about going out today," she confided.

"Why?" I asked. "Because it's September 11th?"

"Charlie Kirk," she said.

Oh.

###

I don't think I ever heard the name "Charlie Kirk" before yesterday, when the youthful conservative activist became the year's 46th victim of a school shooting just as he was answering a question about... school shootings! (Who says the Universe has no sense of irony?)

There was another school shooting in Denver a couple of hours later: one death (the shooter turned his gun on himself), two injuries. This shooting got minimal news coverage.

Having never heard of Charlie Kirk, I had no real thoughts about his death—beyond the cursory disclaimer that violence is always a bad solution, blah, blah, blah, which I totally believe but which seems like an increasingly irrelevant aside in 21st-century America.

###

The countryside Adrienne & I drove through was beautiful. Though leaves were falling, the trees were (mostly) holding on to their green. We canvassed Jansen Road, a back country road with newish asphalt and a line of modified A-frame houses probably built in the early oughts, backed by scrub forest. I wondered briefly who the original "Jansen" had been: the farmer who'd originally farmed this land?

We rang around 10 door bells. This area has been zoned for two-acred lots, and many of the houses had circular driveways with a giant flagpole in a small center island. The Stars & Stripes flapping gently in an almost imperceptible breeze and beneath it, various auxilliary flags: "Don't Tread on Me," "9/11-Never Forget."

Not a liberal NYC-minted Democrat like Adrienne's natural constituency, in other words.

###

About 9/11, I have no deep thoughts either. Beyond wondering at what point they will start doing 9/11 reenactments.

Maybe I would feel differently if I'd actually been in New York City on that day, but I was not. I watched the whole thing unfold on a television set in Monterey, California, and the most immediate effect it had on my life was that they closed the Monterey Presidio. Before 9/11, every day I walked Xena the Jack Russell terrier up Franklin Street through the Presidio to Huckleberry Hill Park, and it was a really pleasant tromp; after 9/11, I began having to take her to the beach, which she didn't enjoy as much.

###

Several people I liked, though, did a complete 180 as a result of 9/11. One of them, Gerard Vanderleun, was a guy who made his Big Buck$ writing dirty letters—Dear Penthouse Forum, I have an etiquette question: When I ask that stripper with big, pink, pendulous pussy lips to sit on my face, should I remove my glasses?

I knew Gerard from the Well.

Gerard was an excellent writer, if a bit fulsome. And an even better editor. One night, he'd driven up to my then house in East Oakland in an enormous white Cadillac to waft me away to the bar in the Claremont Hotel, where we sat drinking Manhattans and storyboarding the apocalypse. Gerard was an amazing riffer, right up there with Robin Williams; practically every stray utterance out of his mouth was brilliant, sardonic, hilarious, rife with subtext. I came away with a bit of a crush. He was never what you would call a political liberal, though. Maybe a libertarian. He worked for a while for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

After 9/11, though, Gerard metamorphosed into a right-wing extremist. Nobody got tearier than Gerard watching Old Glory flapping in the breeze! Nobody was more thankful for Jesus's love! Nobody more deeply loathed wily, two-faced leftists! He started a blog called American Digest, which attracted a deeply loyal readership as obsessive as he was. He died a couple of years ago.

###

On September 11, 2001, Gerard watched the disintegration of the Twin Towers from the vantage point of the Brooklyn Heights promenade. He wrote an excellent piece about the experience, which I wish I could find to link to, but which—alas!—seems to have disappeared into the same cyber-La Brea tarpit that American Digest itself got sucked into.

The detail I remember best from the piece was a description of the slow current of debris wafting out from the explosion, advancing across the East River silent as snow, settling on his clothes, clogging his nostrils. The debris was made up of pulverized concrete, granulated glass, metal, plastic, paper, asbestos, and, of course, human cells.

Now! It is quite possible that had I, too, stood on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade that day & watched those planes assault the towers, that I, too, would have metamorphosed into a fulminating right-wing extremist. One's own personal experiences, after all, are always infinitely more persuasive than reasoned analysis or logical exposition.

But since I wasn't, I tend to view 9/11 as just another pretext for American exceptionalism. Yes, for sure: 9/11, just horrifying! But was it any more horrifying than what's currently going on in Gaza, which our elected officials would prefer us to ignore?

It isn't.

In fact, what's going on in Gaza is a whole lot more horrifying.

The salient detail: Only it's not happening to us.

###

Anyway, nobody slammed any doors in Adrienne's face. The majority of people we talked to were polite though I have no doubt her campaign materials were swiftly dumped in the trash the moment the doors closed.

And nobody mentioned Charlie Kirk.

I went home, and set my browser to Facebook for a quick peek before I started doing Useful Work.

Fuckin' amazing! A miniaturist whose work I sorta follow ('cause you know I like 28mm-scale miniatures of D&D archetypes as well as the next person) had posted this:

Normally I try to keep this page only about miniatures and fantasy in general but something has changed and I feel compelled to make a statement.

I am Right Wing. I am STAUNCHLY Right Wing. I will make no apologies or explanations for that. Think whatever you will of that. If it is intolerable to you I will not miss you. Be gone. I do not want your money. I do not want your friendship. I do not want your encouragement. I do not want your support in any way shape or form. I do not care who you are how long we have been friends or associates. I do not care what this costs me to say. I want NOTHING to do with you. And being totally honest I want to know who you are. I will not keep company with cowards or louts or liars.

Charlie Kirk was a good man. He was a moderate who opened a stage for anyone to debate him in a public forum with no censorship. Yesterday he was murdered for that and last night and today there are people mocking him and celebrating his murder.

If you are one of those people...... FUCK YOU. I hate you.

If you are one of those people who choose to ignore the destruction of Europe and Australia and America by the importation of hordes of third world savages. FUCK YOU. I hate you.

If you are someone who despises the Right Wing or uses " White " as a pejorative or wants the destruction of European Culture and White People in general.... FUCK YOU. I hate you.

Gods Rest You Charlie Kirk. You were a warrior and did not die a straw death.

SKAL!!!

And that was just one post among many.

I mean WT-actual-F?

It really is a race war, isn't it?

The Cro-Magnons versus the Neanderthals.

This is deeply Not Good.

My virtual tax instructor lists his hobbies as "horror movies" and "video games." So, I guess I'm in the right tax class.

I was surprised by how many of the other students had thick accents and names most mainstream Americans would find difficult to pronounce. I guess H&R Schlock employment is a well-known step on the ladder that leads to the dizzying heights of the American dream.

The class wasn't as bad as I feared it might be. Spying on those differently accented students was actually quite interesting. And Microsoft Teams turns out to be an efficient tool.

###

Afterwards, I met up with Belinda whom I mostly avoided all summer because she voted for Trump, and after Brian died, my tolerance in general went wayyyyyy down.

I informed Belinda that I would not be TaxBwana-ing this coming year.

And she said, "Well, then, I'll go to H&R Schlock and tell them I want you to do my taxes. I trust you."

Which I guess is flattering.

We had lunch at the falafel shop in Rhinebeck where all the movies stars go when they come to Rhinebeck. (A surprising number of movie stars come to Rhinebeck.)

And then we drove up to an apple stand just north of Valatie.

I'm not sure from whence comes Belinda's fixation on this particular apple stand; it is not remarkable in any way. But the drive through rural Dutchess & Columbia Counties, past fields of sunflowers and corn, and patches of scrub woods, was lovely. It was a crisp, sunny day, distinctly autumn. The leaves on the trees in those woods have not yet begun to turn—I guess because there was so much rain this year? The color changes of leaves is more related to tree hydration than to temperature changes.

There was a cunning little distillery in the corner of the apple stand, so multiple opportunities for ArtPhotos™!!!













That last photo is not an apple stand ArtPhoto™, but a photo from Italy sent me by the real-life Daria with the note, On our walks, four of ‘em, every time we saw a cat Brian would stop and snap a pic, “for Patrizia.”

It made me sad...

Though I must say, I am simply filled with admiration & awe for the real-life Daria for staying her mountain course, keeping to the adventure!

Under similar circumstances, I probably would have hopped the next train to London, spent my remaining days abroad huddling inside the British Museum, ruminating on what a hideous failure I am.

###

Speaking of cats, the kiskas brought me the corpse of a very large mouse this morning.

They were very proud!

I showed the corpse to Icky who stared at me like, What do you expect me to do about it?

Well, you're the fucking landlord, Icky. Figure it out!

Finally, he mumbled, "I guess I should start setting traps in the basement again."

I guess you should!

Dreamed I was in magic school, taking an exam.

The first question on the exam was absolutely incomprehensible: You were supposed to figure out the nature of a quality floating around a girl from the absence of other qualities floating around her sister. A very strange mathematical equation with odd coefficients floating in space, & I could not solve it!

Go on to the next question, I told myself. Forget the math! Do the language problems! You'll get all the language problems right!

But I would not let that first question go! I kept trying & trying to solve it!

Two girls who were also taking the test began talking & laughing in loud voices.

Stop talking! I yelled at them. You're breaking my concentration!

One of the girls began to cry. She was kind of an amalgamation of the two girls who represent careless youth at its prettiest to me right now, A________ & H_____ (though A________ must be close to 40 these days, come to think of it.)

I finished the exam an hour early, sniffed the crying girl. And it's unfair to just make me sit here doing nothing—

Fine, I said. Don't.

And slammed my exam book shut. Hurled it at the proctor.

I'm not doing this shit anymore, I announced.

And began to stalk off.

Knowing full well the proctor would come after me!

Because everyone thought I was so immensely talented.

###

In other news, did 1,500 words of Remuneration and 2,000 words on the Work in Progress (when it flows, it flows), and somehow managed to fuck up my left knee. Who knows how? I did tromp—in between rain storms—and tromping was effortless. But my left knee and my left soleus are sore today—

This is the worst thing about being old. Things hurt without proximal cause!

###

Also, Ichabod texted me just after I went to bed. Venting! he said. We'd talked on the phone earlier in the day as he was driving up to San Francisco on the way to judge some local law schools' Battle of the Mock Court.

So, I locked my keys in my car!

Triple A had had to open his car for him.

I was seized with anxiety: When you're in the type of mood where you lock your keys in your car, you're also in the mood when you get into an automobile accident, and I kept picturing Ichabod lying in a ditch somewhere near Morgan Hill.

Maternity!

Not for the faint of heart.

Awakened again in the middle of the night. What's up with that?

###

Went downstairs to make coffee and discovered Icky (freshly arrived) had acquired four new chickens! Two half-grown chickens and two half-grown chicks.

He'd put the half-grown chickens in the coop with Black Chicken. We wandered out to check in on them. Black Chicken seems ecstatic! She will be Boss Chicken! And no, that's not entirely anthropomorphism: Chickens actually have very complex emotional & social lives.

Icky took this opportunity to interrogate me about the peach tree from which nearly all the peaches had fallen.

"Yeah, I baked a pie with them," I said. "Pity they don't stay on the tree to ripen more—"

Icky scowled. "What are you talking about? They're ripe! That's why they fall off the tree."

"You think? They taste good when they fall off the tree, but they're so small & pale. At the pick-your-own places, they stay on the tree till they're larger & more golden—"

"So, you have made up this complex theory to disguise the fact that you're just wrong—"

I stared at him, incredulous. "Iggy, I don't give a fuck. I am just talking to be polite and pleasant. My ego is not invested in this conversation. Believe whatever you want to believe. I truly do not care."

That shut him up.

###

The two half-grown chicks are currently hopping around downstairs as they are too young to be introduced into the coop. Black Chicken would lead her newly assembled merry band to peck them to death.

I personally would not want half-grown chicks, however adorable, running around through my house. Half-grown chicks shit, & chicken shit is icky. But Iggy is Icky, as we all know, so maybe it's a matter of kindred substances finding each other.

The kiskas are confined to quarters until the chicks find housing elsewhere.

####

Other than that, yesterday was kind of a wash.

The sentences aren't quite condensing.

Meaning I can kind of hear their rhythmn and intuit their layout on the printed page, but the individual words aren't coming.

I tell myself that this will all get resolved in the second draft, but I'm not entirely convinced.

Still. I've got to stick with the schedule I've developed for myself. Next week, I start tax classes, & that means I'll be juggling three balls in the air. Three balls is a lot.

Finished the first draft of Chapter 1 and stashed it in the usual online places so it won't disappear if my computer decides to self-destruct or if human civilization vanishes & sentient cockroaches need a Rosetta Stone.

Chapter 2 should be relatively easy to write since it will mostly be the Amazing Adventures of Grazia & Neal, lifted with a bit of embellishment from my copious diaries.

So, I am actually thinking more about Chapter 3, in which Neal has to save Grazia in some way.

Plus, one of the (unexpected) things that came out in Chapter 1 is that Grazia is religious in a weird way—this is a prime example of how characters sometimes run away with their own story arcs—so Chapter 3 will have to include Grazia's Come-to-Jesus or Come-to-Bodhisattva or Come-to-Kali-the-Destroyer moment, and optimally, it will involve some colorful locale far from Ulster County, New York, because the fourth part of the novel will be a third-person description of the three women, Grazia, Daria, & Flavia, scattering Neal's ashes in various colorful locations, and it would be good to foreshadow those locations.

Chapters 4, 5, & 6 will be first-person Daria's POV and will have to contain an analagous Neal-rescues-the-gurl scene—hey! this is chick lit, where politically correct empowerment plays second fiddle to romantic fantasy—as well as some colorful locale.

Chapters 7, 8, & 9 will be first-person Flavia POV—where in addition to above, we have to stage a Mimi suicide attempt. This will come about when Flavia evicts Mimi from Neal's cabin.

Chapters 10, 11, & 12 will be the road trip & I have no ideas what to write for that beyond a vague impulse to set part of it at Wall Drugs in South Dakota. Which would just be so wrong on so many levels.

###

Anyway.

I won't be writing any fiction today because today I must Remunerate.

I finally realized there is absolutely no way I can go back and forth between economic analyses and light fiction writing on the same day. The brain is bicameral for a reason!!!

So, I'm gonna try out an every-other-day schedule.

The novel writes itself when I'm in the shower. Or driving in my car. Places where it's not easy to take dictation.

###

One of my favorite literary anecdotes of all time comes from Michael Chabon, talking about a block he encountered while writing a major scene in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.

At the time, Chabon was enrolled in an MFA program at U.C. Irvine. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was his master's thesis.

The novel is about a young man who simultaneously falls in love with a man and a woman—very gaspworthy at the time (1988).

Chabon was writing about the moment his protagonist & the male objet du désir first have sex.

He didn't want to make it porn. (And then he unzipped his pants & unveiled his massive trouser trout...)

He didn't want to make it funny. (Ditto.)

He didn't know what to write and was afraid the novel was going to end right there.

So, he decided to go for a walk. It was some time past midnight.

Now! Anyone who has ever spent time in Southern California knows that nobody ever walks in Southern California. And especially nobody ever walks after dark.

In the comic I'm imagining, Chabon's this very, very tall man with seraphic wings of long, long hair and an antiquated waistcoat, chiaroscura-ed against the monotonous, endless, vapor-lit expanse of empty Irvine Center Road (though actually, Chabon's shorter than I am and doesn't have a Victorian sartorial fixation).

Chabon walked and walked and walked. And finally after a couple of hours passed another human being—a man holding a wad of tissue to his nose because he was having a nosebleed.

Eureka!

The perfect detail to denote the loss of a particular kind of virginity.

I love this anecdote because it demonstrates so perfectly how the Universe is always willing to collaborate with you if only you can keep yourself porous enough to be open to its suggestions.

###

Meanwhile, I trotted off to a craft fair yesterday.

It was a very bad craft fair filled with uninspired stuff and very high price tags. Bad people-watching, too. I suppose nobody uses the slang term "yuppies" anymore—invented by my pal Alice Kahn! And my X-boss Lanny Jones invented "Boomers"!—but that's what these craft fair goers were.

I passed a mirror and saw reflected in it an older woman with large strained eyes and a sagging jawline—and ohmyGAWD, that woman was me!

I tried to explain my shock on the phone to Ichabod afterwards: "No, honestly, it wasn't vanity! It was, well... This is really the first time I've noticed that my chin is starting to go. I'm finally getting what Marybeth used to call 'crepe neck.' I can't pass anymore."

"Pass as what?" Ichabod asked.

He loves me but finds me vaguely irritating—as the offspring of all parents with over-sized personalities do.

Pass as somebody younger? No, that's not it. I've never dissembled about my age.

"Pass as somebody who's not a caricature of themselves," is the best way I can describe it.

###

On the Work of Progress front: I have indeed come up with some very obnoxious behavior for Mimi. In fact, it may be too over the top for a chick lit novel. I blame David Foster Wallace.

But anyway, I can see the end of Chapter 1. Though I may not be able to finish it today because Remuneration.