Dear Republicans: I see you couldn't help yourself. You've nominated Donald Trump for President of the United States. Really. His obvious psychological problems didn't stop you, or his obvious stupidity. They may have even been selling points. You are going to rue this day for a long time. But what's really remarkable is that you, who have been one of the two major parties for a century and a half, have nominated a third-party candidate for president. Congratulations, I suppose.

Free Heidi Cruz!

Let's be clear:  Hillary and I are all for playing the gender card.  Hell, men have been doing it since the dawn of mankind. (See what I did there?)

Official Transcript

Date: June 26, 2014

Location: Moretti Grand Ballroom at The Watergate Hotel, Washington, D.C.

So, the day we found out Prince died, we also lost Joanie Laurer, who wrestled in the WWE during the "attitude era" as Chyna, where she used the nickname "The Ninth Wonder of the World."  If you're not a wrestling fan, you know that there are seven wonders of the world.  If you are a wrestling fan, you know that Andre the Giant is the world's eighth wonder and that Chyna was the 9th.

Tomorrow marks the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death (and Miguel Cervantes's death, too). There are celebrations worldwide, and there will be ongoing Shakespeare events and celebrations throughout 2016. (If you don't believe me, believe twitter, and search the #SHX400 hashtag.)

First we lose Bowie, now Prince?  Friends, this is no way to run an economy and it's definitely a damned poor way to run a culture. I want a word with whoever is making these decisions.  They need to be removed from office, at the very least, if not put on trial for out and out incompetence.

Where the heck have I been? Short answer: doing Shakespeare stuff. (Much more about that soon.) But now I'm back in Cleveland, where the Republican National Convention is on its way, John Kasich is governor, and no one understands exactly how these two things relate to each other. So let me ask an important question this election season: What on Earth is John Kasich thinking?

I don't have to tell you that when it comes to Big Money I know nothing. Beyond coming deliciously close to balancing my checkbook once in a while and/or putting a few pennies away in a sock or a next-to-no-interest savings account, finances are a complete mystery to me. I know people who do know something about Big Money but when they talk about it, it's in a foreign language. Pretty sure. When they're talking about billions and trillions they might as well be talking about the enormity of the galaxies. No comprendo, buddy. Don't even waste your time.

Infinite Jest is back on the shelf, a little more than two months after I had decided to re-introduce myself to the complex opus.  I think I remarked in my first post how impressive it was that in the fledgling days of the internet and the height of MTV that David Foster Wallace decided that he could succeed by releasing an entertainment both long and difficult and requiring work from the reader.

But Wallace always found pleasure in work and must have bet that others would, too.

“The time comes when each of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

This one goes out to you, whomever you may be...

The significant numbers of city mayors or EMs closing schools, then creating private charters with TFA instant teachers? 

I have just reached a scene in Infinite Jest where 17-year-old Hal Incandenza reflects, in conversation with his deformed brother Mario, about the monsters he once feared and what he fears now:

'Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no well to tell. The ones who give nothing away.'

'But then how do you know they're monsters then, then?'

Hmmm... I swear there was a post here, but it disappeared.

No matter who wins the nomination and ultimately the presidency this year, the Democratic Party is in trouble. For almost two decades, after the economic successes of the Clinton administration went sour, after things got rough again for the 99 percent, my party didn't try hard enough to repair the damage. They made enemies on the left and made bullies on the right. And now, when it seems they're finally waking up, both the left and the right are going after them, loaded for bear.

Infinite Jest is a terrorism novel. This is, in a lot of ways, no surprise.  David Foster Wallace counted Thomas Pynchon and Don Delillo as influences and both of them were interested in the topic of terrorism.  Also, it's an interesting topic for fiction and though we tend to talk about it in terms of a post-9/11 vocabulary, terrorism has always been a way that a few people have tried to influence masses and it hasn't changed all that much.

Social media has given us the gift/curse of being able to express our fractal selves in a variety of ways. In society we're (x); at home we're (y), but on social media we can be whoever we want to be. The person in our profiles can be a refined caricature of ourselves or a new creation that reflects our deepest desires. Our social media personas, in many respects, have become as real as our flesh and bones.

I'm at a rare books library this week, with politics happily tuned down to a lower volume. That's true even though the library is around the corner from the Capitol Building, and almost across the street from the Supreme Court. So I was in town for Mitch McConnell's continued resistance to the eminent Merrick Garland, but I am busy doing other things.