ROLEY

  • Tuesday, November 19th, 2024

    Yesterday, I wondered if Rachel Maddow would have anything to say about their channel throwing themselves prostrate on the tiled floors of the Craptastic Compound to save their access, jobs, or whatever. She did not, so she is complicit in their new surrender policy. We must then assume that MSNBC no longer cares about journalism, or if they ever did. What they care about is eyeballs, ratings, and ad revenue. If that is the case, we should refer to cable news—and MSNBC specifically—as For-Profit News. Up to you if you want to trust anything that prioritizes money over truth, but I won’t. I’ll see if I can find something trustworthy to share. Someone suggested Democracy Now as an alternative. I’ve never seen it, so I have no idea. I’ll let you know.

    The Manhattan DA’s Office recommends to Judge Merchan that Trump’s sentencing be delayed so that the Court can hear Trump’s motion to dismiss. Of course, this case will get dismissed, because we have two levels of justice here. The only ‘Lawfare’ being practiced here is what Trump has proven he’s very good at, using the court’s rules against itself, and getting away with it. He will tell you that makes him smart.

    This might be a rhetorical question, but If a culture warrior falls in the forest and no one is there to hear them bitch about Starbucks Cups, books and other people’s junk, do they make a sound? Was there a race between Boebert, Greene, and Mace to be the first person to drop a bill about Ladies’ rooms in the Capitol? Good to know that lot are taking care of the really important stuff, those utter wastes of space.

    Related: I’m reminded of something Michael Stipe said to Tabitha Soren once along the lines of “The only time you should be worried about what I’m doing with my dick is if you’re sitting in my lap.” I would amend that to “The only time you should be worried about what I’m doing with my dick–or if I even have one–is if you’re sitting in my lap.”

    I suppose that this is just a sample of what we’re going to be in for, at least until January 2027 if we’re lucky.

    On a lighter note, caught the first episode of Dune: Propecy last night. Wonderful bit of world building here. Long before the events of Dune, it’s the early days of the Bene Gesserit. If you liked the Recent Dune movies, you’ll like this. Something nice to chew on while we’re waiting for Dune: Messiah.

  • Monday, November 18th, 2024

    The big reveal this morning–that Joe and Mika went to the Craptastic Compound–should be the death of cable news. At the very least, it should be the death of MSNBC. I wonder what the Monday Prime Time contingent has to say about this, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a big rift between Rachel and Joe. It doesn’t matter. They’ve burned their reputation for something they won’t get.

    One of the things I’ve taken to watching during my recovery (I’ve had plenty of time), is Yellowstone. I didn’t think that was going to be my cup of tea, but like every other person who’s been suckered in by this show, it’s all about the next batshit crazy thing Beth is going to do. I’m starting Season 5 next, I understand I’m in for a ride. The guy who created the show has got another one in the works called 6666, the ranch in which Jimmy spent Season 4. I certainly hope that means we’ll be seeing more of Jimmy. His character arc was awesome.

    Managed to get a little B-Roll of time-lapsed stuff over the weekend. Nothinghuge, just the skyline at what passes for a Downtown here in Virginia Beach, and some shoreline at the Chesapeake Day during the very windy weather on Saturday Morning. It looks good, and one of these days I might have a reason to use it.

  • PODCAST: Roley for November 17th, 2024

    * welcome back

    * Heart attack

    * Evolution of personality.

    —

    * Tyson Fight/ Netflix: stress test for RAW?

    * Cabinet appointments.

    * Changing vote? Too late.

    * Tariffs? 80s Movie out front should have told you.

    * I can ignore it, but there’s a reason I can: They hate all of us, but it’s by degrees.

  • Friday, November 15th, 2024

    I know I mentioned one aspect of this yesterday, but another thing I like about this new design is that it’s clean not only when you’re reading it but also when I’m writing it. It wasn’t always this way with WordPress; the Classic Editor was an insufferable GUI, but it was the best you could do back then. This is true WYSIWYG for both of us. I start a new post with a blank dark blue canvas in front of me. If I go full screen on my Mac, it’s almost like those distraction-free writing tools that were so popular ten years ago. I didn’t see the use in them back then, I do now. I think I can get used to this.

    Possibly a podcast this weekend. It’s all hinging on whether I can get some other “HoneyDo” projects done first without tiring myself out. That’s something I’m having some trouble with lately. As it gets later in the day, I’m exhausted. I might make it to 9 pm on a given day, but I can not promise. I think it has something to do with the strength that my heart is ejecting blood. My first consult after the heart attack says that it was around 40 percent. That number needs to improve, and exercise is about the only thing that will do it. I can’t go straight back to lifting weights; I’ll never make it. No, I literally have to walk before I can run here. Just to get my heart rate up consistently. It’s all cardio, strangely enough.

    If there is to be a podcast, you will see it here in two places. One is here in a post on the front page. The other, for the more observant of you, will be the podcast page at the top right of the site. What it is to be remains to be seen, and I’ll yeet myself off that bridge when I get there. Hey, here’s a shocker, I’ll do whatever the hell I feel like.

  • Thursday, November 14th, 2024

    If you gave me a list of all the people Orange Julius Caesar nominated to be in the next administration, I would have guessed that he was giving us a bait and switch. It goes something like this: If I give you the most outlandish option I can think of and you say no to that, then you might say yes to my second (real) choice because it seems more reasonable than my first option. That was my opinion until the Butthead from Florida resigned from Congress. That gives a little weight to these being real picks. That said, it’s Butthead. He may just be stupid. As I said on Threads last night, the Senate can do something hilarious, reject him and send him back to Tallahassee jobless.

    Back to my favorite dark blue/gray/white palette, you’ll notice a new design here. WordPress has released v 6.7 and with it the Twenty Twenty-Five theme. It allows me to have a clean and simple blog, and it just serves as a reminder of the evolution of my online footprint over 25 years. Here’s one link for the current domain, and another that goes back to 2001. There’s another shared domain (locnetwork.digitalchainsaw.com) from 1999 to 2001, but the Wayback Machine doesn’t appear to have it. You can see the start of it in HTML, to WP to Squarespace, and back. All sorts of bells and whistles as we went on over the years, and now back to a plain old blog, which is what it should have always been. Also how the owner of the blog should have been. I, like the blog, have gotten unnecessarily fancy and dropped it all in the past few years. The heart attack has accelerated it if I’m being honest. I don’t have any more time to be fancy or waste energy on things or people I don’t need, what you think of me, or me being nice just to keep the peace. That, along with other shit, is what got me here in the first place.

    Consider me not on Xitter (pronounced Shitter) anymore. I’m not deleting my account, but I’m not going to post there actively unless I have to post something every thirty days or so to keep my handle. I don’t want to free my handle up for anyone else, like spammers or fraudsters. I am on Threads and Bluesky. Bluesky has blown up since the election as a Xitter replacement. Threads has more users (Meta, duh) but Bluesky appears to have the old pre-Phony Stark DNA imprinted in the source code. Same handle everywhere, so jump on if you like.

  • Friday, Nov 8th 2024

    When we last talked, I said I was going to be doing some weeding. Let me tell you what that looks like.

    First, I’m once again deleting X from my devices. I think for me the final straw was Phony Stark saying “For anyone, whether in America or other countries, who finds this result shocking, they should reconsider where they get their information. This trend was obvious on 𝕏 for months, but almost all the legacy mainstream media pushed a completely false reality. They lied to you.” Well, I don’t buy that for one second. At the very least, I don’t buy that X of all places has the market on objective journalism, or reality for that matter. I feel the same way about MSNBC/CNN/FNC/NewsNation/NewsMax/Insert Right Wing Propaganda Streamer here. Frankly, the whole system of news gathering and dissemination is broken. It’s been that way for a long time, and the reason is simple: straight news on TV sucks, and no one wants to watch it except for a few freaks of nature. Like me

    I remember CNN at the very beginning, pre-Desert Storm. June 1st, 1980. It was a very different animal. Lou Dobbs’ still seemed like a reasonable human being, for example. It’s evolved into something else, and at long last it’s just not watchable. The cable news networks have a bias just like Elon Musk has a bias. I’m not ready or stupid enough to call it ‘woke mind virus’, because anyone who uses that stupid term has a hard enough time defining what woke is beyond trying not to be a dick to other people. So, I’ve deleted X. I’ve removed any news or opinion based podcasts from my feed. I’m swearing off tv news. What do I trust? Well, I trust NPR to some extent, and I trust the AP. Even then, I’m not going to seek out news any more. I just can’t with this crowd. We’ll never get back to Uncle Walter telling us the way it is, but I wish we could. I feel very strongly about Shepard Smith being able to pull it off, but I don’t hold out hope that he’ll ever make a comeback. He certainly knew where we were headed.

    Now, I realize that I’m in a position where I can ignore all of this and curate what I want to consume. I also know others can’t, because it affects them directly. However, I do know this much: Important news finds us, we don’t find it. I will put my trust in that knowledge, and stay off the goddamn news platforms. I don’t need it.

    I was reminded this week that Tunnel Of Love by Bruce Springsteen hit number one on the charts this week in 1987. I know, you wouldn’t think I’m a fan of Bruce, but I am. ToL is one of his best, and in some way I think it’s better than Born in the USA. it’s a deeply personal album, based on what was going on with him at the time. If you’ve never had the opportunity, I recommend giving it a listen.

    I’ve started S3 of Yellowstone. It tickles the part of me that watched Dallas/Knots Landing/Dynasty/Falcon Crest back in the day. True to the formula, there has to be one character in the series you can’t ignore, and on Yellowstone, that’s Beth. Some of you already know this, but…man. Just…wow. If you don’t know, may I suggest looking for her on YouTube, there are several shorts that cover her character very well. That’s what caused me to go find the show in the first place.

    Provided I have the time, I’m going to start working on what a Roley podcast looks like in this day and age, and how we might accomplish it. It’s time to remove the AC units from the windows around here, and while the day time temps will be livable, it’s going to be in the 40’s at night by the end of next week.

    Monday, as ever, is a coin flip. See you then, possibly.

  • Thursday, Nov 7th 2024

    I’m not going to say that Donald Trump is the leader of a cult, but I’m telling you that he’s cult adjacent. That’s funny to me when you stop to consider that some of the people from my life who are members of the Cheeto Temple are the same folks that said the same thing about me and Rush Limbaugh back when I was 20-ish. Memories are short.

    In the end, it’s really not surprising. We have become accustomed to—addicted by—anger, drama, and chaos. We had four years of Joe Biden and his lack of drama that we missed it. We demand that our media both sides and make horse races out of politics and elections and then cry about it publicly. Privately, we need the horse race, and the drama, and the both sides-ism. We can’t live without it. So, now, we don’t have to. We have four years of anger, drama, and chaos. We get what we deserve.

    We deserve this next four years of hell because of the previous forty where we have allowed the Limbaughs and Hannitys and Becks and Olbermanns and Maddows to tell us what we’re supposed to think. Critical thought is no longer required in this society, just flip the switch on your radio or TV and flip the switch off your brain. “No thoughts to think, no tears to cry, down to the very last breath…we have amused ourselves to death.”

    The other thing I can’t help but think as I see the line of ass kissing from Tim, Zuck, Jeff, Elon, Sundai, and Satya is that we have handed the country over to the Tech Bros. It doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies. The Tech Bros will undoubtedly view this opportunity to remake the US in their incel-infused image, which will solidify the idea that women are less-than, that their way is the only way. They’ll sooner put the torch to this country—to democracy itself—than to admit their eventual failure. Make no mistake, they will fail. They will fail because the country is not a product or a platform, and when you fail at the country level people get marginalized, injured, or dead.

    That’s enough for today. I have some weeding to do, which I’ll share with you tomorrow.

  • Wednesday, Nov 6th 2024

    Breathe.

  • TSUNAMI Part 3: Mr. Popularity

    Like a lot of things in The Dregs, it’s not a pretty sight. A block of concrete and neon, with one darkly tinted window on the right side of an unassuming door. A flashing green sign atop the building says The Dock. I stood outside the building for a long time until it occurred to me that the kind of courage I was going to need was on the other side of that door, so I walked in.

    It was dark. It was always dark in here, and that might be a mercy considering the kinds of things that went on here. I recognized some other trackers near the back, I nodded in their direction and turned my attention to the bar. “You’re new,” I said to the bartender, “What do you recommend?”

    “Leaving,” said a nasal, gravelly voice from behind me. “Kimbal, for someone who swore they were getting out of here, I hear you’re down here a lot.” Stepping out from behind the kitchen wall, a pale stick of a man stood before me, and he didn’t appear to be pleased. “Every time we see your face down here, somebody has to clean up your mess. What did you do to poor Stamp?”

    “What did I do? What did—hang on Andrews, that bastard put me through a wall! I didn’t exactly get the deets before he tried to kill me, y’know.”

    “Stamp wouldn’t have hurt a fly.” Andrews sat next to me at the bar. “Why he would have gone after you is a mystery.”

    “Well, that’s why I’m here.” I looked at the bartender. “Just a pint of whatever the usual around here is.” He went off to draw a pint, and I turned back to Andrews. “Look, we were already into it when he started screaming that it wasn’t him. Then he shut down and…well, he rebooted. Then he pounced on me and was about to get nasty before he completely shut down.”

    “Odd,” Andrews was running a finger around the rim of the glass he was nursing. “So something happened to him?”

    “Aces. Here’s the headline. Something hijacked his MEMBRAIN implant and wiped him.” I want to show you something.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a clear rectangle of plastic. Waving my hand over it, it connected to my own implant and showed the image I was thinking of on the face of the rectangle. The screen showed the image of the main board with the word TSUNAMI on it. “This is a scan Pointer made after Stamp shut down. What do you make of that?”

    Andrews looked intently at the image on my screen, and I watched as a look of worry overtook him. “Damn,” he said. “I knew that shit was no good”

    “You know what this is?”

    “Unfortunately,” he replied. “TSUNAMI. It started appearing down here maybe two or three months ago. Didn’t think Stamp was the type.”

    I looked up from my drink. “What, is this a drug?”

    “Sure acts like one,” Andrews was looking straight ahead at the mirror behind the bar, then turned back to face me. “It jacks into the MEMBRAIN directly, and as near as I can figure it’s a hallucination. I don’t go near the stuff, and I don’t have an implant anyway.”

    “You don’t have anything, right?” I looked him over. If he had any augments, nothing was obvious. “No, I always thought it was hideous. I consider it a diminishing of who I am, and who we are. I’d like to stay human. Fully human.” He took a sip of his drink. “Whatever it is, it’s killing people, that much is certain.”

    I looked up from the bar and turned to face Andrews. “Ok, but how about this: If it’s a physical interface with the MEMBRAIN port, then why didn’t Stamp have…”

    “Have what? Andrews raised an eyebrow.

    “Can’t be sure until I get back to home base and do some research, but I don’t think Stamp had anything attached to him anywhere. Not sure I got a good enough look at him, though. I can get Pointer on that while I…ah…hmm.”

    “Talk to the cops?”

    “Well, maybe not the one I have in mind, but if this is some deadly kind of drug maybe they should know.” I got up from my stool to leave when Andrews put his hand on my shoulder.

    “Folks topside aren’t gonna care about The Dregs, Kimbal.”

    I reached up to take his hand and squeeze it gently. “I do. I’ll figure it out, or we might have dead augments above and below.” I turned to leave. “Andrews, tell Jack…something.”

    “You’re gonna have to face that sometime.” Andrews sat back down and stared at his drink. “There’s less time than we all think.”

    The door shut behind me and kicked up a cloud of dust.

    ——

    Detective Peter Robinson can best be described as an anomaly, a thing that should not exist in this time and place. My job is to find things, and sometimes those things are throwbacks, and you’d think I’d have jumped for joy when I happened upon Peter. Technically, he happened upon me, and not particularly gently I might add. That’s a story for another time. We had forged what I think could be called a unique relationship; We annoyed each other considerably, but I could count on him, and he learned that I could be counted on. As I told him once, “I’m not a crook, I’m just a rogue.”

    We had a good laugh about that one just before he threw me in the slammer for possession of a combustible engine car. My client wanted it for a private collection, and while I didn’t see the appeal at first, it was a beautiful thing to behold. A light blue 1955 Thunderbird, it was called. Impossibly old, well-kept, and a goddamn homing beacon for the police the second I turned the key. It ended well enough, the client got the car, I got a slap on the wrist, a proper chewing out by Mike, and a relationship with a cop I’m not romantically involved with.

    “Heyah, Kimbal,” Robinson was staring at me. I had gotten so lost in thought I broke the sacred rule of visiting Peter at work. I looked down and found my feet on the wrong side of the painted line on the carpet. I looked up to find Peter still staring, but a bit more indignant than a moment ago. “C’mon, man,” he said.

    “I was distracted, Peter. I’m sorry.” I backed up to the other side of the line and raised my fist as if I were about to knock on an invisible door. “Knock knock, “ I said as cheerfully as I could. “It’s Kimbal. May I have a word with you?”
    Robinson lived for these little moments, I’d bet. He scooted his chair back, stood up, and straightened his shirt and tie. He looked up to make eye contact with me and then turned around to the hutch behind his desk and poured himself a cup of coffee. He took one obnoxiously loud sip of it, lifted his head up as if to savor the moment, took a deep breath, and then turned around to meet my gaze again.

    “Hi,” I waved and put on the silliest grin I could muster.

    He regarded me for a moment before looking down at his desk. He started picking up files and papers from his desk and turned around to put them in the filing cabinet behind him. I had always suspected most of those papers were for show; he had the only metal filing cabinet I’d ever seen. I asked him once if he knew what kind of price he could get for that antique. “Nowhere near the satisfaction I get out of it.” He replied, almost amused that I didn’t understand why he loved it. Standing here waiting for him, I believe I had a firm understanding.
    “Peter, I know we love playing this game more than we say we do, but I think we really might have a problem and I need to talk to you about it.”

    Peter locked his file cabinet and looked back at me. “Please,” I said about as humbly as I could. He raised an eyebrow at me as if hearing the word ‘please’ intrigued him. “Kimbal, come in and sit down.” I did as he asked. “Thanks for seeing me,” I figured getting to the point quickly would be in both our interests. “I think there’s a new drug of some kind that’s making its way around The Dregs, and it’s killing augments.”

    Peter’s face went from one of vague listening to…well, it got very red. I’d pissed him off somehow. He picked up his earpiece and hit a button on his desk console. “Get up here. Now”. He put his earpiece back on the desk and stared at me. “I’m trying very hard to kill you right now. It would actually be less stress on my heart to strangle you right here than to do what I’m about to do.”

    “I don’t understand, Peter. Usually, I know why you’re mad at me.”

    Myke suddenly appeared out of the elevator in the hallway. She saw me, and completely deflated. Stopping outside the painted line on the floor, she looked at Peter. “I assume I can just come into your idiotic invisible office?”

    “Now is not the time to test me, Hollings.” Myke also got very red-faced and looked up at me. ‘What did you do?”

    I took a deep breath. “I did some digging around in The Dregs and I got some information about what happened to Stamp. It’s a wider problem than I thought. I came to see Peter about it. This is the thing?”

    She snapped at me. “The THING you’re not supposed to know about, Kimbal!”

    “That’s it, I don’t know. Peter, I swear. I mentioned that I got the crap kicked out of me by an augment named Stamp that apparently had this in his system. She gave me no specifics other than to say there’s an open investigation about something related to what happened to me. I know nothing”.

    Peter was still silent and very red in the face. I loosened my collar to expose my neck. “I mean, if it’ll help?”

    He seemed to calm down a little at that point. “Look, I’m really not here to mess with your day. I had no idea. Let’s have a seat, I’ll tell you what I know.”
    “It’s not his day you need to be worried about, Kimbal,” Myke said as she stared a hole through me.

    “Getting that message, ma’am,” I replied. “Dig in. Here’s what I know.”

  • Monday, October 14th, 2024

    • There’s a belief about social media that goes something like this: Person A posts something innocuous like “I like cats.” This brings out all the cat haters, dog lovers, the gatekeepers who want you to name three cat breeds, and so on. I don’t get people sometimes. Anyway, Peace, Love, and Dodger Baseball.
    • Navigating this new world of cardiac care, I have a drug called Brilinta that I have to take twice a day. This drug stops platelets from forming and attacking the stent I had installed. If I don’t have this drug, the stent will clot, there will be another heart attack, and you can roll the dice on whether I come out the other side as still metabolizing. Funny thing: My insurance requires a prior authorization for this drug. So, if you understand all of this in context, my question is, “Prior to what, exactly?” Yout don’t schedule a heart attack. “Right, so we’ll handle the presentation at 9am, I’ve got that one on one at 11:30, and remember I have the massive coronary at 2:15? So get those questions to me by email by Noon. Not sure I’ll be on Teams later.”