Scott Rhee > Recent Status Updates

"Calling All Monsters"---After reading, one may want to rethink one's "organ donor" status...

"The Dead Line"---A depressing story about a man whose wife is in a coma and essentially brain-dead but is being "harvested" for body parts and organs by a near-future health care system. This is the third story in a row about "organ donor" body horror.

"Today's Special"---A local Jewish butcher fires one of his employees, Luttfisk, who happens to be everyone's favorite. So, by popular demand, he's bringing Luttfisk back. This one is straight from an old Tales from the Crypt...

"Machine Demands a Sacrifice"---A frightening futuristic look at privatized---and ruthlessly competitive---paramedics...

"The Pitch"---a mean little story about a salesman hawking kitchen utensils to annoying housewives, only these utensils are missing a few parts, especially ones that make them safe to use...

"You Can Go Now"---Not sure about this one. It seems to be about a man locked in a loop of death and grief and guilt; dying over and over again in different ways.

"Daughter of the Golden West"---Two high school buddies investigate the mysterious disappearance of a third friend. A quiet new girl may hold the secret.

Slow build to a crazy out-of-left-field reveal at the end...

"We Have All Been Here Before"---A woman helps the police with her psychic powers to solve crimes, but, as the story progresses, the reader discovers that the psychic may not be helping anyone but herself...

"The Walking Man"---A very weird story, one that may take multiple readings. It's a definite nod to crime noir, filled with noir tropes---the femme fatale, the private eye, a morally shady narrator---that doesn't really go anywhere, and yet it's still riveting and terrifying due to the things that lurk beneath the surface. Reminds me of David Lynch's brilliant noir/horror film "Blue Velvet"."

"It Only Comes Out At Night"---A couple traveling a desolate desert road at night. A rest stop. Deserted cars with layers of dust. Wait, is that a person's silhouette in the front seat? What's that in the back seat? Is that--- Etchison lets your imagination run rampant in this one. And you'll never want to stop at a rest stop at night ever again.

"Sitting in the corner"---Man walks into a laundromat..."

historian Simcha Flapan: "The military campaign against the Arabs, including the "conquest and destruction of the rural areas" was set forth in the Hagana's Plan Dalet." ['Dalet' is the Hebrew letter 'D'] The aim of the plan was in fact the destruction of both the rural and urban areas of Palestine."

"People who lie about the end of the world will keep lying until the world ends."

"The cheerleaders wrote books to spread rationalization memes: we are getting smarter (we're not); it's not as bad as the newspapers portray (it's worse); in the end, maybe all this is just a simulation (it's not); so we are not responsible (we are) and shouldn't worry since we don't really exist (we do)."

"...Reagan's cowboy hat and boots brought an image of conquest but no frontier to conquer."

"Since the decade of Reagan, Americans have been drowning in the syrup of a postimperial immobility: sweet references to a time when Americans could move forward and upward, the 1940s through the 1970s, to distract from the crystallization of an oligarchical social order. The political trick was to swap real social mobility for just the intimation of imperial mobility, which was no longer possible."

"On social media, our attention is divided into fragments that are the right size for analysis of us but not by us. Our minds flutter hither and thither, landing nowhere. Attention is no longer about a special state of mind but about eyeballs on screens. Things get our attention, but we no longer pay attention. And then we do not remember. When memory fails, our future has no past, and we are not really present."

"Life rebels against all uniformity and leveling; its aim is not sameness, but variety, the restlessness of transcendence, the adventure of novelty and rebellion against the status quo."---Vaclav Havel

"...When Giuliani arrived late to the meeting, he laid into [Federal Prosecutor Sidney] Powell, too. Scanning her affidavits, he said, "This is gibberish. Nonsense."

"Trump did not, however, want Powell to stop. Gibberish has its uses. But the clash with the rest of the team had become untenable. Henceforth, the White House announced, she would be "practicing law on her own," an unofficial combatant..."

"It's nearly impossible to know exactly how much money Trump and his allies spent in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Some of it is public and traceable; for instance, Trump's political action committees spent about $8 million on legal fees in the first half of 2021 as they fought the election and his impeachment. But Trump also pays associates through LLCs, which makes those payments impossible to track.."

"Irony, in some cases, is not real. It does not matter what someone really believes. They don't always know what they believe. If they believe it enough to laugh at it, they believe it enough. If they believe it enough to drive halfway across the country to march for it, they believe it enough. And if they believe it enough to mow down twenty-six people for it, they believe it enough."

Machen detested secularism. He was a good Catholic boy, apparently. The "horrors" in many of his stories have to do with a society that has turned away from the traditions of the church toward materialism, consumerism, and worldliness. Also, I think he was afraid of midgets, or what we call "little people" today. Strangely enough, that's what he called them, too...

To fully understand and appreciate Arthur Machen, one must understand the Victorian-era mindset predicated on the very real fear of forbidden sexual knowledge (i.e. anything that wasn't sanctified or approved by biblical precepts). Basically, sex was the Devil, in a quite literal sense.

"In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously proclaimed that "there were no such thing as Palestinians... they did not exist," and that they had never existed."

Well, that's one way to deal with a problem: completely ignore it.

I'm taking a break from this one, not because I don't think it's worth reading. On the contrary, I respect and admire Justin Baldoni's attempt to write about a very serious and important topic---toxic masculinity. My problem is that Baldoni is a much better actor and speaker than he is a writer. He even admits, early on, that he didn't want to write this book, and I hate to say it but it shows.

I'm in a holding pattern on this one.

Stalled out on this one. I'll get back to it at a later time, but for now, I need to read something a little less dry and academic. Crick spends a lot of time on Orwell's childhood, of which Orwell wrote very little. Lots of boring minutiae, plus Orwell's childhood was depressingly absent of any teen sexcapades, dysfunctional family drama, or enchanted wardrobes.

While I'm fascinated by the train wreck that was the Bush/Cheney Administration, and while Peter Baker's "Days of Fire" is a thorough and in-depth look at the behind-the-scenes starting from inauguration to the day Bush left the Oval Office, I just have to put this book on hold for now. It's extremely dry reportage, with an emphasis on rather unnecessary details while overlooking important ones. I'll finish later...

Getting psyched for the new season of "The X-Files". It's only been about 15 years. This anthology of short stories is fun, and the stories aren't bad. I've just read the first four (out of 15). The best one, so far, is about A.D. Skinner, who is forced to solve an X-Files case by himself. One story, "Dusk" is a silly little rip on Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" series.