What I hope happens to Musk and Trump

To try to post more blogs, I made a schedule I try to keep to.  Like, on the first Tuesday of the month I try to post a “Whatever I want to talk about” blog.  When I saw that the first Tuesday of April was on the first, I wondered if I should do a themed post.  But our country is currently being destroyed by fools, so I wasn’t in the mood.  But it did lead me to this post.

In the last few months, I’ve written a few stories about Musk and Trump.  (I even made a page that lists all of them.)  A few of them are actually about one or the other being assassinated.  Given how things are going, in a few months they will probably be grounds for me being sent to a gulag.  I was thinking I should do a post about why I don’t want either of those assholes assassinated, just to make my position clear.  And figured this was as good a day as any to post it.

What I hope happens to Musk

I do not want Musk to be assassinated.  Ideally, he should be investigated and if – as is a near certainty – he’s committed any crimes, he should be tried.  And if convicted – as he probably would be in a fair trial – he should rot in prison.  But since that is unlikely, my hope is that whichever of his kids is stuck with him, just puts him in a rundown retirement home.  Hopefully, most of the staff are black, and his neighbor incessantly talks about their favorite granddaughter, who used to be their favorite grandson.

What I hope happens to Trump

Trump belongs in prison.  Period.  The fact that he isn’t, let alone that he is destroying the country from the Oval Office is an utter failure of our justice system.  The only way to repair the system would be to remove him and all his cult assholes from the government, hold the Mar-a-Largo Trials (like the Nuremberg Trials) and throw most of them in prison.  But since that is unlikely ….

Ten years ago, if you had asked me if assassinations should play any part in a functioning democracy, I would have said, “Absolutely not!” But I think it was 2018, or 2019, when I caught myself thinking that, “Assassinations shouldn’t play any part in a functioning democracy, but I’m starting to see the appeal.” Just to be clear, I am not planning the assassination of anyone, let alone Trump.  I also have no knowledge of any assassination plans.  I don’t want to know of any assassination plans.

But the system has failed.  Repeatedly and horribly.  Which raises the question, do we need to go outside the system?  I don’t want Trump assassinated, but I feel that is his likely fate.  If he is assassinated, I’d say there’s a one-third chance it’s by someone on the left for a multitude of reasons.  There’s probably another one-third chance it’s by someone on the right whose kid was needlessly killed in some pointless, bullshit invasion of Panama, or Greenland, or wherever.  And there’s a one-third chance he’s assassinated by the dark powers tired of putting up with his shit.  And then Vance – who they can handle better – can blame transgender, immigrant, Tesla-haters or whoever so they can forge their Crap World Order. 

The only real negative of Trump being assassinated is the damage his cult will do to avenge their Dear Martyred Leader.  Picture sports hooligans when their team loses the big game times a thousand because it would be across the country instead of limited to one city.  It’s possible they might actually do more damage than a living Trump would. 

The fact that his actions have made me more concerned about what his cult would do if he was assassinated than the horror of a politician being assassinated, is one of the reasons I absolutely hate Trump.  When he dies – however – I will not shed a tear.  But I will not cheer, because I fear it will just be the start of a new battle to save America.

I really am a gardener

I grew up on a farm and we’ve always had a garden.  The only time I didn’t have a garden was when I moved away for ten years.  For the first four of those years, I did have some house plants.  For the other six years, my apartment had a little balcony and I – pretty unsuccessfully – grew some plants, like potatoes and zucchini.  But about fifteen years ago I moved back to the farm to help my parents out and to have time to write.  And to have a garden.

Despite all my years gardening, it wasn’t until this week that I truly felt like a gardener.  I was at work thinking about all the things I had to do on my days off, and I realized, that even though it is barely spring and we still freeze a couple nights a week and I think there is snow in the forecast, I already feel like I’m behind in my gardening.  There are these … weed trees I’ve been trying to get rid of for the last few years, there’s some plants I want to move, there’s stuff left in the garden from last year I didn’t get around to cleaning up before the snow fell, I have raised beds I’m trying to fill, I want to move my compost bins, I need to get some seeds started, I want to get some cuttings off some apple trees ….  And it seems like every day I plan to focus on one of these things and be done with it, it rains.  Or I sprain my wrist and don’t feel like making it worse doing a bunch of heavy work.  I just need like two solid weeks of good weather, were I’m not injured, and I don’t have a hundred other things I need to be doing. 

Being a gardener is very tough.  I have no plans on quitting.

Random thought about Tesla

 I live in a pretty rural area.  The kind of place where electric cars would be called Woke, or worse.  I'm sure somebody within a hundred miles of me has an electric car, but I've never noticed one.  And given how poorly cybertrucks are as trucks, that they apparently can't handle a bit of rain let alone the snow and stuff we have here, and that they get recalled every other day, it's unlikely I'll ever see one of those monstrosities.

But I was thinking and wondered what I would do if I came out of a store and saw someone spray-painting a swastika or something on a cybertruck.  I figured I would look around to see if there were any cops or some pissed off dudebro running towards us.  If I saw any, I would announce it, loudly.  If I didn't see any, I'd wait until the person finished and stepped out of frame, then I'd take a picture of it.  And then I'd go about my day.

Random Story – Was that a Christmas tree?

This is just an odd little story from my life.

I have two routes I can take going to work.  Route A – my preferred way – is about two-thirds on back roads and one-third on a main road.  Route B is about one-third backroads and two-thirds main roads.  There are a couple of reasons I prefer Route A.  For one, I don’t have to drive through the town.  Also, the main road for Route B seems to have more trucks as well as people who apparently need to be somewhere.  But the main reason is that I like driving, but not when there are other cars around.  When I’m driving home – I work 2-10 – there’s usually some traffic on the main roads, but once I turn onto the backroads, I only have to watch for deer.  But Route B is important whenever it snows because I’d rather have two-thirds of my drive be on roads that are plowed and salted than on roads that might not be. 

Anyway, one-time last summer, I drove to work on my normal Route A, but a couple hours later a big thunderstorm rolled in.  Our power blinked a few times, but stayed on.  Once the storm passed, we started getting customers saying that the other side of town had lost power.  Apparently, it’s a different grid section, or whatever.  People also came in saying power was out along the Route B main road. 

When it came time to go home, I decided to go Route B because with every storm there are branches knocked down and there’s a heavily wooded area on Route A.  There are wooded areas on Route B, but not as much and those roads are more trafficked.  I didn’t feel like having to stop to clear branches from the road.  I also wanted to see how far out the power was out, and wondered if it would be out at home.

So I started home and got to the blackout area of town, which was a bit weird.  But then going out Route B was even weirder.  It’s not heavily populated, but there’s usually at least one house in view at any one time, and about half have a light of some kind on, but this night it was all darkness. 

And then, about half-a-mile from the turn on to the backroads to get home, there was a house with lights on.  I don’t think we lost power at home, so I think I just crossed into a different grid section. 

This house is situated a bit off the road, but it was the first lights I’d seen in miles, so I looked at it closer than normal.  I’ll admit, there is a part of me that is curious about how other people live.  Like, I’d love to go into my old apartments to see how people furnished them.  Oh, they put the couch there?  Interesting.  I’ll admit to having some curiosity, but I’m not a voyeur who looks through people’s windows.  But for this house, I could see into what I guess would be their living room, and I thought I saw a Christmas tree.  I forget exactly when this was, but it had to have been May or June.  And I only had a split second of looking through a window of a house set back from the road, so it is possible I saw some random shapes that my brain just interpreted as a Christmas tree.  But it left me wondering about it for the rest of the night.

Maybe a week or so later, I was running some errands one afternoon and going home the same way.  So I had to look.  Just to see if it was a Christmas tree or what.  Unfortunately, they had the blinds down and I didn’t see anything. 

There were several nights this winter I took Route B home, but I don’t think I ever looked to see if they had a Christmas tree in that room.  Not because I forgot about it – I still think of it as The Christmas Tree(?) House – but because most of the nights I drove home that way it was snowing, and I had more important things to do than to see where these people I’ve never met put their tree.  Or why they’d keep it up year-round.

New and … worsened

We recently got a new computer system at work.  After a couple of weeks, I’d say there are five or six things the new system does better than the old.  For example, in the old system if a certain situation came up, there was no way to fix it.  You basically had to void everything and start over.  But in the new system, there’s a button that will fix it.  Well, I think it would fix it.  This situation only happens every three or four months, and hasn’t happened yet with the new system.  But one night when I was fixing a related issue, this drop-down menu showed up, and as I read through the options, I realized that the solution they had for the related issue should also fix the problem that comes up every three or four months. 

Other situations are only “technically” better.  Like, this other issue that comes up four or five times a shift, in the old system we basically just had to go back a step and start over.  Easy to understand, but it took maybe an extra fifteen seconds.  In the new system, the problem can be fixed in like five seconds.  But the way to do it is … odd.  Basically, this one problem is a screw, while there is this other, related problem that is a nail.  There is a hammer subroutine that takes care of the nail problem, but instead of making a screwdriver subroutine for the screw problem, they just used the hammer.  Technically it works, but every time it happens, I can’t help but wonder if the system could have been designed better. 

It’s been a couple decades since I’ve done any programming, but I bet if I sat down with someone who knows how to code, we could come up with a very user-friendly system in like a day.  When I say user-friendly, I mean whenever an issue came up, there would be a clear, logical way to solve it.  Like, options would show up on the screen and you could pick which one best suited the situation.  Instead of having to remember that whenever Problem X happens, you follow Steps 9-12 in Appendix Q.  Admittedly, there were issues like that with the old system, but it was probably designed 20+ years ago when computers were far less capable.  You’d think better computers with more memory should make things run smoother.

All this got me wondering, Why do so many businesses find it difficult making good user interfaces?  Like, I remember years ago, there was an email service that made a big deal for their new layout.  And I looked around it, and was like, That’s nice you have a hundred bells and whistles I’ll never use, can I just check my email?  And after I checked my email, I went to sign out, but the Sign Out button was gone.  It used to be right at the top of the screen, but now, there was nothing.  It was almost by accident I discovered that when you clicked on the, I don’t know, Settings button, there was a drop-down menu with Sign Out as one option.  Why did they hide something so important?  I don’t know.  Maybe having this big button right out in the open threw off the aesthetics. 

The real problem, is I’m pretty sure the people who designed this system at work never used it.  Or if they did, it was for five minutes showing off the various capabilities to some corporate schmuck who also never had to use the system for a shift.  They’ve never had to use it in a real setting.  For example, in one of the ways the new system is worse, is selecting an operation.  Basically, about 49% of all interactions in a shift involve Operation A, 49% are Operation B, and the other 2% are for Operations C, D, E, F, etc.  The old system defaulted to A, but you only had to hit one button to get to B, C, D, etc.  In the new system, you have to hit a button for A, and two buttons for B because the first button calls up a drop-down menu that also has Operations C and D.  I know that doesn’t sound like much, but when you do hundreds of operations a shift it adds up.  Especially since for the old system the buttons were on a keyboard that was at a comfortable height and angle, whereas the new system is a higher, vertical touchscreen that has other stuff around it so it can’t be adjusted.  I’m wondering if lifting my arms to hit the screen so much is bothering my shoulders.  (I’ve also been splitting firewood, so it’s hard to say what’s causing issues.)

I know corporations are all about making short term profit, but surely somebody, somewhere up the corporate ladder has to understand that going with the lowest bidder can save you money upfront, but you may end up paying more in the long run.  Of course, such thinking is probably only for the people on the bottom who actually have to work for a living.

Voter Registration Drive Book Sale!

The other day I saw something about the deadline to register to vote for some special elections is like, next week.  I don’t live anywhere these special elections are happening, so I haven’t paid much attention to them.  But every election is important, especially now.  If you want to vote, you need to be registered.  And who knows what new hoops will be added to the registration process in the coming years.  So if you are an American citizen over eighteen, now’s the time to register.  The information to do so should be on your state’s website, but you can also check out Vote411.  And if you’re already registered, these sites should also let you check your voter status, because while voter lists need to be updated as people move or die, some go overboard.  Any “mistake” found now can be fixed long before the next election, making the election run smoother.

To draw a bit of attention to this, and to give some slight encouragement to register, I’m running a book sale from Monday February 24th, through Friday February 28th.  For that week, four of my ebooks will be free to download on Kindle.  I think it is against the law for someone to offer you something to register to vote, but it’s not like I’m offering you a million dollars to vote.  And it’s only four ebooks from an unknown author just to register.  If I was rich and famous, I’d be doing other things to pull democracy from the jaws of authoritarianism. 

If you’re not an American, you can still grab my ebooks.  I just ask you to participate in your government however you can.  Since America is no longer the leader of the free world, someone else will need to step up.

***

Political Pies

Everybody complains about politics, but does anyone do anything about it? My attempt to do something about it is to collect forty of my short stories with a political element into my Political Pies anthology. The stories are either politically neutral or equally condemning of the national parties. Instead of trying to sway you to one ideology or another, my goal is to just get people thinking about politics in the hopes a rose might grow out of all the political manure.

Useless Cogs

Useless Cogs is a collection of forty, of my science fiction stories. They range from only a few dozen words to a few thousand and are filled with time travelers, AIs, clones, aliens, even sexbots, although not often as you would imagine. As example, there’s a time traveler that’s always a step behind, an AI that’s late on rent, and a sexbot with bad software. Some of the stories are humorous, some horrifying, and some … depend on your point of view.

The Only Certainty

On The Day, for reasons unknown, people began changing. They went to sleep as their old selves and woke in their beds in different bodies: bodies that had belonged to other people. And each time they fall asleep, they wake in a new body. Set months later, “The Only Certainty” follows Derrick Gorton on an average day in this new world as he deals with food shortages, the semi-collapse of society, and how to finish his latest novel.

The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars

Over the last few years a lot of people have caught Mars fever. It seems a week doesn’t go by without a report of some new group wanting to send people to Mars, or some big name in the industry talking about why we have to go to Mars, or articles talking about the glorious future humanity will have on Mars. All of this worries me. In my opinion, a Mars base is currently not sustainable because there’s no way for it to make money. A few missions may fly doing extraordinary science, but if it’s then cancelled for cost the whole Mars Project may just be seen as an expensive stunt.

Fortunately, there are other places in the solar system besides Mars. While bases on the moon and amongst the asteroids won’t be as inspirational as one on Mars, they will have opportunities for businesses to make goods and services as well as profits, meaning less chance of them being outright cancelled. This will make life better on Earth and secure a firm foothold in space for humanity. The essays in The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars allow me to describe my ideas on what can be accomplished on the moon and with the asteroids, and why Mars isn’t the destiny of humanity its cheerleaders make it out to be. 

Short story – “The Unerring Word”

“The Unerring Word”

“Ria, how’s eternity treating you?”

“Hey Oaoex.  Same old, same old.  I managed to appear in a vision to a human last week, but then he was put in a mental institution.”

“That sucks.”

“I know.  I mean, what’s the point of being a god if you can’t get people to believe in you.  Anyway, what are you up to?  Appear in any visions?”

“No.  I’m trying a different approach.”

“Really?  What?”

“I started a blog.”

“A what?”

“It’s a way for humans to read my message as I intend, without anyone botching the translation.”

“Hey, what’s done is done.  Let it go.”

“A pox upon middle men.”

***

Image from Pixabay.