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OMG and fuck a duck, it has been 3 days, well, 2 and a half because it’s morning now, since I’ve written my last blog. I knew I’d missed a day, but had no idea that this particular combination of Covid protocols, retirement, summer, and my own preferred source of entertainment and mental stimulation, which is to smoke pot until I can’t move, had led to such a malaise. So, it’s time for a gratuitous Netflix review, which has zero bearing on the world situation or the improvement of human civilization, and a weak promise, to myself more than my readers, all half a dozen or so of them, that I’ll crank out a couple of blogs a day for the next couple of days to restore the balance.
Yesterday I finished watching ‘Rake’, 5 seasons in less than two weeks. I find it hard to believe that in the olden days we’d watch shows one episode at a time, an entire bloody week apart.
It’s an Australian (which I like) lawyer show, comedy/drama, bordering on the absurd at times but generally believable. I’ve been trying to convince my wife to watch it (which would mean I’d have to watch it again, but that would be O.K.), and she’s almost there, as it does not contain any of the elements that I love but she hates…robots, time travel, aliens, stuff like that…but she keeps asking, what does ‘Rake’ mean?
Well, that’s pretty much the essence of the show, the definition of the main character. A cad, a bounder, a rogue, a jack the lad, definitely a ladies’ man, (the show is a cornucopia of hot women and strange sexual relationships), a drinker, a user of drugs, a glib talker whose version of the truth is rather fluid to say the least, a gambler but not a very successful one, and a lawyer very much in the pattern of Jimmy McGill from Better Call Saul. It’s sort of a cross between ‘Better Call Saul’ and ‘Monk’, but set in Australia.

In summary, I totally recommend it. 5 stars. It’s got intrigue, it’s got sex, it’s got some big belly laughs, it’s got a large cast of people who are fascinating in their own right, and just enough social commentary (lawyers and, even more so, politicians, are all irredeemably corrupt) to be relevant without being obnoxious.
I highly recommend it.

I just saw something on Facebook that I am of two minds about. On the one hand, I thought it was offensive. On the other hand, it’s possibly genius marketing. Put those two together, and I’m pretty sure you’ve got the future.
It was a sponsored ad (Why can’t they just say ad? It’s sponsored in the same way all ads are sponsored, by somebody paying for it.) for a Charlie Watts t-shirt. It had his picture, and a big number 80, which I suppose is because he was 80 when he died, like, yesterday, and his dates of birth and death, and some platitude at the bottom.
Well, in the comments section below, I was with the majority who were saying it was tacky, it was taking advantage of grief to make a buck, it was too soon, it was tasteless, etc…
But, then I considered it from a business model point of view. It’s on-line orders, so it’s print on demand, so they basically can’t lose money. However many they sell, they are going to make a profit. So what if people criticize them for being ghouls? And, plenty of people, genuine fans, probably shelled out as soon as they saw the ad, because it looks like a cool t-shirt, and it’s an homage to a great musician.
It may seem sleazy and morbid now, but if it works at all (and, as I said, I expect it will) you’re going to start seeing stuff like this every time a rock star, or a movie star, or any popular figure dies. There may well be a t-shirt when the Queen dies, which will be purchased by royalists and anti-royalists alike.
It reminded me of an episode of Deep Space Nine I watched recently, in which Quark thinks he’s dying of some rare Ferengi disease, and so he auctions off dried portions of his dead corpse, as is the Ferengi custom, and they can be purchased by relatives, friends, admirers or, as turned out to be the case in this episode, somebody who really, really wanted to be sure he was dead.
I still think it’s tasteless, but it’s kind of inevitable.

There is a phrase which irritates me. ‘Weather is not climate.’ Of course, this is factually true and if someone is using that to clarify the scientific point, that would be one thing. But, it’s most often used in a dismissive sense, i.e. “Weather is not the same thing as climate, wake the fuck up, sheeple.” As if to say ‘Yeah, we’ve had a few years in a row of record heat spells, continent destroying wildfires, snow and ice melting in places snow and ice shouldn’t melt, hurricanes, floods and stuff like that but that’s just weather.”
The weather is to the climate what a raindrop is to the rain, a microcosm to the macrocosm. The weather is screwy, therefore there is something not right with the climate, just as a fever or vomiting indicates an illness. One year is an anomaly. Two years could be a coincidence. When you’re up to three years or more, and we are, it’s a pattern, a pattern in the weather that is signaling to us loud and clear that there is something seriously wrong with the climate.
If the human race does go extinct because we spewed too much carbon into the air (which would be the macrocosmic equivalent of some guy accidentally going to sleep in his car in a hermetically sealed garage, with the motor running) it will be because people took the phrase “Weather is not climate” a bit too literally.

It was a lovely day at the cottage today. Isabel and I picked the red currant bush bare, we had peaches, and plums (I picked one plum tree bare), and I tried picking blackberries but it was still early and no more than a handful were ripe, I took a walk up to the top of the town, which is a town of a few houses either side of the street that goes up the hill, total population is under 100, I’m sure, and the road almost turns to meadow and you can see a long way in any direction, and we had coffee and cream roll thingies with coffee (beer for some) in the stillness of the afternoon. It was time well spent, a recharging of the metaphorical batteries.
Now we’re back home, and I’ve smoked two joints and watched 3 episodes of ‘Rake,’ quite an interesting lawyer drama/comedy, he’s sort of an Australian Jimmy McGill, except it tends to more slapstick and the web of philandering is almost Benny Hillish.
I’ll worry about Afghanistan, and global warming, and Gavin Newsom’s recall election, and the ever worrisome condition of the human species tomorrow.

For the second time in two days (three will be a certain harbinger of the apocalypse) an event has happened which scientists have described as ‘unprecedented in recorded history.’ Yesterday was the chimpanzees attacking, killing, and eating gorillas. Today it is rain on the Greenland ice shelf. It is only the third time in recorded history that the temperature has gone above freezing. The problem with rain is that it accelerates the melting of the snow, which was already happening way too fast.
I don’t know what it will take to convince the deniers. I don’t know if we can reverse the damage.

Another thing happened today which isn’t important at all and I just want to blog about how unimportant it is and I don’t really care one way or another. As viewers of the cult game show Jeopardy know, they need a new host to take on the part of Alex Trebek, who died last November after hosting the show for 37 seasons. They had one guy picked but it turns out he’d sent some offensive e-mails in the past. So, he’s out and his career is ruined. This is the world we live in. Among the candidates I’ve seen suggested, I would like them to choose Mayim Bialik, because she did such a great job as co-host of Fun With Flags. I also think LeVar Burton would make a good choice, except I always think of him as Geordi LaForge, so it weirds me out that he has eyes.
Actually, anybody could do it. You chit-chat with the players a bit, and moderate the game.
They’re not going to find another Alex Trebek.