Content Creators: Slacktivist

November 7, 2020 3 of 8

I’ve been a reader and occasional commenter at Fred Clark’s Slacktivist blog for a really absurdly long time. I think I was still married to Thomas when I found him. I checked him out for the reason that most people do — his deconstruction of the Left Behind books.

In the very, very late 1980s, my college roommate fell in with a group of young women who believed that the end of the world was right around the corner. When Geraldo Rivera had his show on the now-debunked Satanic panic, they had a prayer meeting in my dorm room.

I’m a Christian, but I don’t believe that there’s going to be a physical second coming of Jesus. Most of the Bible verses that are used as “proof” that such a thing is going to happen at all are taken out of context. Personally, I believe that most of it was about the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD.

But anyhow, I’m getting away from myself here.

This whole school year, with the constant talk of the rapture and everything in my room, where the only way I could get away from it was to hide in a friend’s room, was pretty scarring for me. My floormates who were near it, but not right in the middle of it, developed an allergy to this sort of talk, as well.

Left Behind hadn’t been written yet when this all went down, but a lot of the things that Fred talked about, like the Scofield Reference Bible, were things I’d come into contact with during that year. His deconstruction of that worldview, and the community that built up around his blog, was very cathartic for me.

Over the years, Fred has covered a lot of religious topics, and also political topics, and he’s talked about his own life, and upbringing, and baseball and places where any and all of those topics overlap.

Frankly, Slacktivist is one of the first places I check out when I sit down at my computer. I have trouble keeping up with the comentariat, both in terms of how fast the threads go and in terms of what they talk about, and really that’s a great experience for me, because I’ve learned so much over the years.

So I highly recommend that you check it out. If you lean progressive for your politics, or your religion, or anything like that, I think you’ll enjoy it.

And for my Gratuitous Amazon Link, I guess my comic book reading project is appropriate for this post. I first learned about Kamala Khan, the current Ms. Marvel, in the comments of Fred’s blog. So today it’s Volume 5: Super Famous, by G. Willow Wilson, Takeshi Miyazawa, Cliff Chiang, Adrian Alphona, and Nico Leon

So, Biden Has Won

November 7, 2020 2 of 8

I seem to recall wondering how many words I can get out of “pleased astonishment.” I think I’m still in “stunned disbelief.”

I hang around with a lot of people with anxiety disorders and I’m starting to pick up on their attitudes I keep thinking that something’s going to happen. That there’ll end up being a lawsuit about this and the Supreme Court will decide that Trump won and then we’ll get the second Civil War that the people on the ends of the theoretical political horseshoe have been wanting.

I took this from inside the conservatory at the United States Botanic Garden when Alex and I were in DC in 2011.

What political horseshoe? There’s a theory that the people on the very farthest ends of the political spectrum are actually more alike than they are different. I’m not a political scientist, so I can see both sides of the argument whether there’s a horseshoe or not. Back in 2016, I did see people who at least claim to be on the far ends of the spectrum claiming that electing Trump would hasten the downfall of our current political structure and then we could build a new constitution with new rules. The problem is that I can’t see us coming up with a new constitution with new rules without an actual Americans-killing-Americans civil war.

And so, if the Supreme Court would decide that, then I can’t believe that the American people who voted for Biden would take that lying down. And the winner would be the side that has most of our armed forces supported.

I’d love to be able to breathe a sigh of relief, but I really won’t believe it until Biden’s inauguration.

Or maybe we could have a street party here in San Antonio, like they’ve had in cities like Philadelphia. Being surrounded by people who know that everything will go smoothly would probably go a long way towards that sigh of relief, too.

Since I’ve been on a comic-book-reading roll lately, this post’s Gratuitous Amazon Link is Volume 4 of the Ms. Marvel compilations, Last Days, by G. Willow Wilson, Dan Slott, Adrian Alphona, and Giuseppe Camuncoli.

They’ve Gotten Rid of Google Play Music!

November 7, 2020 1 of 8

I’m going on a road trip tomorrow. I’m taking Mila and driving up US 281 to probably Burnet and then back down, hitting all of the state parks on the way. So I’ll have some state park posts later.

Preparing for this, I’m downloading music, a Pimsleur lesson, and audiobooks onto my podcast phone (a Samsung S5 from 2014). And just setting this up is more of an adventure than I though it would be.

Until October, when I started focusing on Pimsleur, I primarily listened to ChinesePod in the car. And I used Google Play Music to play the lessons.

And now Google Play Music is gone. They say I have to use YouTube Music to play things from now on. Will I be able to use YouTube Music on my podcast phone (a Samsung Galaxy 5 that I got in 2014)? Will I be able to find my ChinesePod lessons on YouTube Music if I *can* use YouTube Music on my podcast phone?

Okay, so I downloaded YouTube Music (I was totally expecting Google Play to laugh at me for even trying it), and moved my next ChinesePod lessons into Google Drive. Then I opened Google Drive on my podcast phone and downloaded the files to my phone.

Where are the files in YouTube Music? I found them under Albums -> Device Files.

Welp, I ended up downloading most of them twice, so I have nine podcasts in that directory. Better than zero, I guess.

Great. I closed the app and now I can’t find Albums anymore. Ah-ha! Library -> Albums -> Device Files.

And the files play! And if I delete the extra copies from My Files, it gets rid of the extras. Yay!

Now, let’s get El Ladrón del Rayo sorted out. I need to download the book completely, because my podcast phone doesn’t have an internet connection; I have to use wifi.

Yay! It’s working!

Okay, so I have my Pimsleur lesson (half an hour), five ChinesePod lessons (another two-ish hours), and El Ladrón del Rayo (10.75 hours). Yeah. That should get me through the day. I’m only planning to go as far as Burnet, which is two hours to the north, but there will be some driving around in the state parks that I visit.

I also picked up my travel snacks — “wasabi” peas (they’re actually flavored with horseradish), almonds, Golden Grahams S’Mores bars, Skittles, pop, and water. Also, I’m going to bring dog food and two kinds of dog treats for Mila. I’m going to stop on the way for a Subway with veggies (spinach, green peppers, cucumber, tomato, black olives, and provolone cheese — yum!) Mila will want to eat my snacks, but she can’t have any of my snacks, except for the water. I’m trying to train her out of begging, but it’s going to be a long road.

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! For this one, it’ll be The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe by Ryan North and Erica Henderson. This one was awesome. I love The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. And she really is unbeatable. She wins by befriending the villains. This is a skill that more of us need. This is a skill that *I* need.

A New Topic? Maybe?

November 6, 2020 3 of 8

I had a dream. I dreamed it for you, June.

No. That’s Gypsy.

I did have a dream, though. In it, The Doctor was in front of some kind of governing body of invading aliens (not unlike in the Invasion of Time storyline), but in this case, the conflict wasn’t about Gallifrey but was, instead, about Earth. The invaders needed a Time Lord/Lady to solve the problem, but they also needed someone with a stake in Earth’s future to solve the problem. So, The Doctor ended up turning Sarah Jane Smith into a Time Lady. When I woke up, I (a) wondered if Sarah Jane Smith would fare better than Donna Noble had, (b) wondered if this was me in a way mourning for Elisabeth Sladen (belated, I know, since she died nine years ago (!)), and (c) kinda missed the days when I was a huge Doctor Who fan.

I’ve had a number of fandoms in the past, Doctor Who was probably my first one, and definitely was the one that lasted the longest. But I’ve also been a fan of two soap operas (Santa Barbara and Sunset Beach), well, okay, three soap operas, because even though Dark Shadows is its own fandom thing now, and I was just a baby when it was on the air, it still aired as a soap opera originally. I was a fan of Roswell and of Beauty and the Beast (the 1980s version) and of Smallville. I know there are others, but that’s pretty much it for me right now.

Oh! Babylon Five! That’s my traditional move whenever the people around me get into Star Wars vs. Star Trek. I throw B5 into the mix and sometimes will gather a sizable group who agree with me. I came to B5 pretty late, but I think it still counts.

I was a huge comic book fan for decades, and I guess you can be a fan of book series, and I’ve got a lot of those. So, I guess I’ll sometimes be blogging about my fandoms. Maybe.

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! Today, it’s See How They Run, the second Embassy Row book by Ally Carter. I just read it about a year and a half ago, and I can remember bits and pieces of it, the ending made an impression, though.

I Wrote a Post Yesterday

November 6, 2020 2 of 8

It was mostly about how tired I was.

I worked until 6 yesterday and then got Mila and went to a hotel preparatory to her spay today. I mean, 6:00. That’s still early, right?

Yeah. That’s what I thought. Until yesterday.

I got off work, then grabbed a bag of dog food (spoiler: I didn’t need a bag of dog food) and then met Evelyn at my house.

The vet told me to start fasting her at 8:00 pm and so we had to hurry to get checked in at the hotel we were staying at (so that the dog wouldn’t bother my dad — also it’s been over two years since the last time I stayed in a hotel and I miss it). Then, after all that, Mila wouldn’t eat. I ate dinner while Mila ignored her food. I brought some pasta salad in a disposable container and a fork and I remembered after we left that I put the empty container and the fork in the fridge. I guess I should’ve put it in the car when we took the food down.

I left the food out until 8 and then we went downstairs, I put the food in my car, and we went to the park.

The park was mostly deserted, which freaked me out a bit, so we did one quick turn around the park and went back to the hotel. At the hotel, we explored the floor a while and then returned to our room, where we stayed until time to leave for the vet appointment.

Mila stared out the window pretty much all night, which led me to not get a lot of sleep, either. Overall, she did really well for her first time in a hotel. Clearly she was out of her element, but she didn’t bark at every noise or anything, which I was afraid would happen. If she does become my travel buddy (which is my hope), she’ll do really well, I think.

As for why I ended up redoing last night’s post, well, I composed it on my circa 2012 tablet computer (it might have even been 2011 — I just remember that I had it in Hawaii) in Polaris Office. Apparently, Polaris Office didn’t (maybe still doesn’t) support ctrl+s to save a document. I wrote the first couple of paragraphs, used file->save as to create the document, then pressed ctrl+s to save the document every paragraph. Then, when I came back to pull it up and post it today, it was only the first couple of paragraphs.

I’d given myself 131 words towards NaNoWriMo for the day for that post, which made my projected finish date move to mid-December, and then I lost them. I think I’m okay, though, because the count for NaNoWriMo is cumulative, so the algorithm has probably taken 131 words out of the post I made earlier today (while Mila was at the vet’s) and so everything’s good. I’ll aim for 50,131 anyhow, just in case.

Now, for my Gratuitous Amazon Link (and I still have trouble typing “gratuitous”). I noticed that a lot of the Ms. Marvel comics compilations I have in my Goodreads queue have no read dates. So I’ve been rereading the Ms. Marvel compilations and adding read dates to them. Today, I read the first of the ones without dates — Crushed, by G. Willow Wilson, Mark Waid, Takeshi Miayazawa, Elmo Bondoc, etc. This starts out as the Valentine’s Day issue and goes forward from there.

US Politics

November 6, 2020 1 of 8 (maybe?)

I’m not sure where to start. Well, that’s kind of why I’ve been doing this — to make myself just jump in and start writing.

First of all, while it looks like Biden is going to win the Presidency, it also looks like the Republicans are going to keep control of the Senate (by one vote). This is bad from my perspective because, well, even if Biden gets a chance to rebalance the Supreme Court into a direction that won’t take away gains made in women’s health care (Roe v. Wade), and in marriage equality (Obergefell v. Hodges), it would be difficult because the Senate has to approve the appointment and if he can’t convince at least two Republican senators to approve (that’s assuming all of the Democratic senators would vote for his appointment, which is far from guaranteed, trying to get the Democrats onto the same page is like herding cats, as it were), he might as well not even bother.

One of the observations someone in my social circle, years ago. I thought it might have been at the time of the 2016 elections, but I guess that just shows how long these last four years have been. We’ve been bandying it about for so long that I don’t even know where it started, it’s just one of those things that we now take as true. That is that Tip O’Neill’s assertion that “all politics is local” doesn’t just mean that keeping a national seat requires local pork projects (more on this maybe in another post) and backroom deals, but if people who share your ideas of how the world should be don’t get elected down the ballot, you’ll probably never see the world be how you think it should be.

Like, I want politicians who propose, advance, and pass laws that make our whole nation “sheep” in Jesus’s parable of the Sheep and the Goats. We should all be feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, providing healthcare to the sick (and preventive healthcare to the well, for that matter) and so on.

The way the Republicans claim that this is a “Christian nation” and then fail to achieve the things that Jesus said were the way into Paradise (Matthew 25:34) just boggles my mind.

Crap. New thread. In the same social circle, one of my friends quoted someone who said that the Pledge of Allegiance’s statement of “liberty and justice for all” or the Declaration of Independence’s statement that We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, or the Bill of Rights can be either definitional (we’re the United States so we have these things) or aspirational (we’re the United States so we can achieve these things). I’m in the second group.

Anyway, it seems to me that a lot of the people who believe that these are definitional think that our society cannot be biased against any group. People of Color make less money and have worse outcomes? They must be doing something wrong because we’re the land of the free and the home of the brave. I’ve lived a virtuous live and have these things (actually many don’t — a lot of them are very hard-up for money and have chronic health conditions). So your vices must be keeping you from them.

But so many of our ultra-wealthy are mired in vices. And I’m not just talking about entertainment figures; I mean our captains of industry. They steal. They steal pay from their employees, and I’m not talking about underpaying their employees, though they do that. I’m talking about not giving their employees what little money they’re owed.

It’s called wage theft. Companies underpay their employees, or refuse to let them have meal or rest breaks, refusing overtime pay to people who earn it, or just not making clerical errors right once they’re discovered (something that happened to me in 2015). Corporations make millions of dollars a year from wage theft.

People who run companies that engage in wage theft, whether it’s an honest mistake that can’t be fixed or a standing policy, are by definition not virtuous. They’ve saved themselves money by stealing it from their employees. After all, a penny saves is a penny earned. So by saving themselves money, they’re making a profit illegally. So, if the virtuous are rewarded with financial success and the wicked are punished by financial failure, why are these employers not being punished with financial failure?

Because that’s not how the world works. The world is not automatically fair, we do not automatically have equality, liberty, justice, the pursuit of happiness, or any of the rest of it just because we’re the United States. And we cannot trust the system as it stands now to give people these things. We need to change the system and time has shown us that appealing to the better natures of those who steal, or who cheat, or who lie, doesn’t work. We need laws that force these better behaviors for generations until the way things are now seem barbaric (which they are) to our descendants and they won’t want to go back to how things are now.

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

November 4, 2020 1 of 8

That “1 of 8” is kind of a joke today. It’s 10:58 pm. If I can write seven more posts today, I’ll be very surprised. Particularly since I’m pretty close to dead tired and I have an early shift tomorrow.

In December, I may go back through and straighten out the numbers, making them “1 of 3” or “1 of 1” or “1 of 20” (as if!).

Anyway, I play three phone games, primarily.* Pokemon Go, Harry Potter Wizards Unite, and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. I know I’ve written about Pokemon Go, I think I’ve written about Wizards Unite. Have I written about Animal Crossing Pocket Camp? I don’t know. So that’s what I’m going to do now.

As I’m writing this, I realize that gameplay is actually fairly complicated. I may have to write this a just a basic outline and then go into each item in more detail in other posts (but not tonight; It’s 11:27 now and I’m pooped).

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp is, just like it says on the tin, one of the Animal Crossing family of games. In this one, though, the player is managing a campsite for animal villagers to visit. There are four animal villagers at other places in the camp, and you have to bring them items from other (or occasionally their own) part of the camp.

So, the lower right-hand corner is the saltwater beach. You can collect saltwater fish, shells, and coconuts there. Then, progressing counterclockwise, there’s a forest with fruit trees, a freshwater river, with more fruit trees and freshwater fish, and a tropical island with bugs and coconuts.

You trade with the villagers kind of like this. The villager on the bug island wants an apple, and you have one in your bag, so you give them the apple. In exchange they give you things – in-game currency, raw materials for manufacturing things, etc.

Then you take the raw materials to make clothing, furniture, amenities, and so forth.

There are smaller things, like a booth where you can buy fortune cookies that contain more clothing, furniture, and so forth. There’s a boat that you can send to smaller islands to trade for raw materials, clothing, and sometimes the boat will bring back a map that leads you to new villagers. There’s a marketplace where several vendors switch out from time to time. You also have your own campsite and a cabin.

Then, while you’re doing all this, there’s a monthly rotation of events — a gardening event, a fishing event, and a scavenger hunt. Each of these also brings you clothing, furniture, decorations, etc.

Everything cycles around. Every three hours, the villagers leave or arrive at the campground and all have new requests. Alongside this, every three hours the event flowers mature, or the fish come back. The scavenger hunt refreshes more like hourly.

Then, the first week of the month is the gardening event, then there’s a small event for a couple of days, then the fishing event, then another small event, then the scavenger hunt. Then the next month it starts all over again.

Relaxing? Maddening? You decide.

You may be wondering what the point is. I haven’t figured that out myself. You accumulate more furniture, clothing, amenities, and so on. You gradually build more bonds with the villagers. Occasionally they have special events where you can use leaf tickets (the premium in-game currency) to buy limited-time items. They recently had an event where you could buy yukata and interior design items designed by Japanese designer Sou Sou.

Gratuitous Amazon Link time (and then bed!). Today is The Strangers, the first book in the Greystone Secrets books by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Chess, Emma, and Finn, kids of a single mom, are living a happy life until three kids with their first and middle names and birthdates disappear. Then their mom takes off, and leaves them with a woman who protects abused women and children. But the kids don’t take their mom leaving lying down. They’re determined to find out what happened to their mom. The Greystone Secrets series is supposed to be a trilogy. I hope the rest of the books are as good as this one was.

Content Creator: The Try Guys

November 3, 2020 4 of 8

<Keith Habersberger voice>In 2014, in Los Angeles, California, the people at BuzzFeed decided to make a video called “Guys Try on Ladies’ Underwear for the First Time and so was The Try Guys born.</Keith Habersberger voice>

I think I’ve told this story before. In 2019, one of my Facebook friends (I think it was Thomas’s brother) posted an article claiming to have proof that people who see live concerts live nine years longer than those who don’t or something. My guess is that, to the extent this is true, it’s probably more that the people who have that kind of disposable income probably have more food security and better health care. Either way, though it inspired me to look at the list of upcoming concerts and found someone called The Try Guys.

Now, the name sounded familiar. I was pretty sure that some of my Facebook friends had posted links to videos by them. Now memory is malleable, but I think that one of the first videos I thought of was their impaired driving series.

So I went digging and watched every one of their videos over the course of, I don’t know, a week or two? And they were every bit as funny as I recalled.

The Try Guys, as I recall one of the Guys saying, became a sort of thing because they were the four guys at Buzzfeed who were the most comfortable taking their pants off in front of a camera. In fact, one of their running gags is that Ned likes the way his butt looks. That trope goes all the way back to the beginning. It’s there in Guys Try on Ladies’ Underwear for the First Time.

In 2018, they left Buzzfeed and began their own production company, 2nd Try LLC. This is why, if you search YouTube for them, you’ll see that some are published by Buzzfeed and some are published by Try Guys.

The Guys have stuck together through all of the stresses of the creation of their own company. They have group videos and also have their own video series, and in 2019 they began a series of podcasts. The main podcast, called TryPod, is the podcast of the central four Guys. The they started one called You Can Sit With Us, which features Ned’s wife Ariel, Keith’s wife Becky, and Zach’s fiancee, Maggie. I don’t know if Eugene’s partner, Matt, has ever appeared on that podcast. He kind of stays out of the limelight. And recently, Ned and Ariel started a podcast called Baby Steps, which is about their growing family.

The Try Guys has long been sort of my “home” on YouTube. It’s the first channel I check for new videos, it was the first channel I subscribed to, and if I ever have Patreon money, it’ll be the first YouTube channel I donate to the Patreon of.

I can’t subscribe to their Patreon, but I have given the Guys some actual money. I bought their book, The Hidden Power of F*cking Up, and both Keith and Zach have started sideline businesses, Keith sells a hot sauce specifically for chicken, and Zach sells tea. I’ve bought both, but every time I have chicken, I forget to try the sauce. And this reminds me that I haven’t tried Zach’s tea yet, either. It’s 11:30 pm right now, which sounds like a good time for his Mission Chill bedtime tea. The tea smells heavenly. I hope the taste is half as good as the smell.

What Is Olivia Reading Today?

November 3, 2020 3 of 8

I am in the middle of so many books right now that I think I should maybe put some up for later.

The two books I’m spending the most time on right now are El Ladrón del Rayo, the Spanish translation of The Lightning Thief, the first book of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Woman who Would be King, Kara Cooney’s book on Hatshepsut.

On the back burner at the moment are Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, the Italian translation of Harry Potter and the (Sorceror’s/Philosopher’s) Stone, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, and La Travesía del Viajero del Alba, the Spanish translation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I think that’s it.

I also have another Fantastic Strangelings book club book coming in the not-too-distant future (the next week or two), Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin.

I also might have another couple of things I’m working on on my Kindle. Oh! I noticed that my Ms. Marvel and maybe my Unbeatable Squirrel Girl compilations may not have read dates on them, so I’m going to probably be rereading them so they can fit into the Gratuitous Amazon Links. And for this post, you’ll see that our Amazon link is less gratuitous than usual.

And my current National Geographic issue is August 2020. I need to get back to that one.

The Easiest Recipe Ever

November 3, 2020 3 of 8

Well, maybe not the *easiest*, but still pretty damn easy.

Now, as a warning, as far as I’m concerned, a little seasoning goes a long way. So if you’re like my mom, and like things with so many leaves and twigs and things of seasoning that they’re crunchy, move along.

So, this is the seat-of-my pants recipe for my pasta salad.

Ingredients: Rotini, carrots, olives, Newman’s Own Classic Oil & Vinegar dressing (or other salad dressing), other vegetables to taste (I usually put a little broccoli in there, my mom used to like radishes (don’t ask me)).

  1. Boil pasta according to package directions
  2. Drain pasta
  3. Put pasta in fridge
  4. While pasta chills, chop vegetables
  5. Mix pasta and vegetables
  6. Cover with enough salad dressing to . . cover
  7. Serve
  8. Put leftovers in the fridge for later meals/snacks/side dishes

Serves, um, however many people want to eat however much pasta you made.

See? Easy.

I bought the olives and salad dressing months ago, the rotini weeks ago, and the carrots the other day.

So I’m having this for dinner tonight.