Rants, Books and Stuff

First a joke.

Q: What borders on stupidity?
A: Canada and Mexico

Globally, there are 137,000 dead from COVID-19. More than 30,000 of those deaths have been in the US. For those of you keeping score, 4.4% of the world’s population live in this once great nation yet we’re home to nearly 25% of the planet’s deaths.

Warum? The greedheaded Republi/Fascists, led by the ratfuckingly dimwitted, weasel coiffed, serial biz failure sociopath and his cult of rubes – THAT’s why!

I only mention it but those members of the electoral college who foisted Bush and the current Tantrum Toddler in Chief on us should, rilly now, be sued into penury. All those newly acquired buckos? They can go toward rebuilding and improving our horrifically depleted Democracy.

Also too, EAT THE RICH! 

 Next on today’s hit parade – BOOKS! I broke down and ordered a few books and they’ve arroved. I’d MUCH rather browse the shelves of the Thomas Crane or the used book cellar of Paperback Booksmith BUT both are, of course, shut.

I just finished a wild, mind fracturing thriller/mystery by Stuart Turton – The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.

Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot.

The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. (source)

The publisher describes it as "Gosford Park meets Inception, by way of Agatha Christie.” It's a fabulous, deeply captivating, can’t-put-it-down read!

I’m now on 3001: The Final Odyssey By Arthur C. Clarke. Wow! There are some sections where it feels like he’s telling the story, live, in person, directly to me.

 The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood: as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and gemstone. In these, they roamed the galaxy. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.

Oh BAYBEE – sign me, the fuck, up! 

Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence. (Ed. note: I think it's safe to say that Mango Mussolini is BOTH perniciously vile AND malignantly incompetent.)

I’ve got Theodora Goss’s European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman on the to-be-read-STAT flight deck.

…Mary Jekyll and the rest of the daughters of literature’s mad scientists embark on a madcap adventure across Europe to rescue another monstrous girl … (source) 

AND A. Lee Martinez’s Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain

Intergalactic Menace. Destroyer of Worlds. Conqueror of Other Worlds. Mad Genius. Ex-Warlord of Earth.

Not bad for a guy without a spine. (source)

I think I’m all set for the next few weeks of shutdown-a-tude. The only other thing that I REALLY need is some motherfucking Chinese food. Mega sadly, all the local Chinese joints seem to be shuttered – not EVEN doing take-out. My heart and tum-tum are aching. 

Dry Sautéed String Beans and Veggie Chow Foon NOW PLZ!