Altruism, Manchuria, Potato, Tomato
welcome to the brat coded potus race
Note: this was written july 23, 2024, before the election.
I know the word is uncoverging right now but I am not going to talk about politics anymore. I am on season 4 of Succession (RIP). I didn’t watch it during its lifetime. Some things, I am wrong about. It’s fantastic.
Their dad just died and the kids are in charge of overseeing election night on the FOX coded affiliate they helm. The boys just called their election for the right wing guy. In a tense series of phone calls and face to faces, Shiv Roy wrings the last gasp of hope for the Democratic Party from her own brother’s abject, unsuspecting, pleading-to-be-liked face by faking a phone call to the candidate’s consultant (her affair ex partner!) and giving Ken a hearty thumbs up which he completely believes for all of four minutes before some representative of The Disgusting Brothers (her estranged husband/network chief Tom and his moral tiramisu gofer Greg) blows her spot right tf up.
I said I wasn’t going to talk about politics.
Succeed in keeping this one Sam Irbyesque. That’s the goal. Excellence in nonchalance. When i think about who or what or why I want to read, it’s conversational that comforts. Actually, I’m loving reading The Cases That Haunt Us for the same reason. John Douglas may prove a bit self-serving, but when your stated goal was a document concerning interpersonal crime to rival the DSM, I don’t think that chutzpah melts away.
The Cases That Haunt Us concerns notable failures of behavioral science and criminal profiling- JonBenet, Jack The Ripper- the big unsolveds. If you ask me, Who’s On Judge Mathis accomplishes the same end. Reading either, I come away equipped with detailed observation (right down to wardrobe and accessories), well-summarized background detail, sensitive human interest with a side of psychoanalysis, and of course all this splashing in the many muds of Crime.
I said I wasn’t going to talk about politics.
I watched Love Lies Bleeding, at the mild recommendation of my analyst. I like stories about drugs and guns and girls. Some graphic intersections between egg yolks, cigarette ash, and muscles. Ed Harris plays an arms dealer. He shoots his daughter Kristen Stewart in the leg. Her steroid-shooting bodybuilder girlfriend turns into a giant and saves her. Her dad taught her to kill (we see in flashbacks), and that’s how she solves the problem of her needy clingy not taking the hint ex-girlfriend after she and said giant escape. Lots of pain, viscera gore/goo, and corpses. We, girls, taught to kill by men who want to kill us.
I said I wasn’t going to talk about politics.
Vote Brat.