Few days after the Chinese New Years

On to the year of the horse. 

Social Security Prediction

I've been wondering about Musk's interest in the federal government's funding system. Last time there was a debt ceiling crisis under Trump, some Republicans wanted to prioritize debt payments. They were told to pound sand and that the system couldn't work like that.

What if payments could be prioritized with Musk's tinkering? I imagine them not paying social security to people in states that voted for Kamala until the debt ceiling is lifted. 

Creepy Podcast

I made it through the 32 days of horror for the Creepy podcast. It's my favorite horror podcast. I don't believe I've made it through all Halloween episodes before. My favorite one was about the scarecrow on the reading pathway. 

Election Prediction 2024

Blogger seems as good as any place. Two weeks out, I predict that Harris will get 3,110,000 votes in PA and Trump will get 3,280,000. 

99. How to be both by Ali Smith

I’ve been terrible reading books since I finished A Dance with Dragons in 2011. I read the A Song of Ice and Fire books shortly after they were published but haven’t read a book since. I can blame George R. R. Martin for my lack of reading by not finishing the series. (By the way, I’ve heard the worst conspiracy about the series; so bad that I won’t pursue or mention it.)

I’m using the New York Times list of the 100 Best Books of the 21^st Century to get back into reading and I’ll write comments here to keep this blog from being deleted. (Woe to maintainer at Google who keeps Blogger backwards compatible for 20 years.)

I started with book #99 How to be both by Ali Smith. I am out of practice, and it wasn’t my style of novel when I was reading. The narrative is in two parts, and I didn’t realize the second part was a spirit reflecting on observing the first protagonist. I thought it was precognition from a live person. Reviewers spell the name of the spirit Francesco, but the book spells the name Francescho. I guess spell check is on. Now that I look at the first page of the Francescho part, I see that he’s rising from the dirt. I had a no opinion on what he was doing on first pass.

Anyhow, the story is non-linear and pivots wildly in one sentence like much of modern literature. Narratives like this throw me and I have difficultly keeping track of characters and plot. I thought that the author used some gimmicky techniques. For instance, I thought the gender of George was obfuscated for more pages than it was. Francescho explained why he used colons instead of periods for sentence breaks. The text changes to periods once he loses his virginity, but that wasn’t the reason.

Shrugs…

2 out of 5 stars

 Hello and happy Leap Year!

Testing?

 Does this still work?

The End

I thought the top photo was the best one from my trip. I shot it through a spy hole at the Sydney Barracks. I don’t know what the cutouts are doing.

All good things must come to an end. I decided that I wasn’t posting photos consistently enough to make the blog worthwhile anymore. I’d rather focus on making a photo album and moving on to new adventures. For example, I must find better job leads. Plus, I watched my last region 4 dvd tonight Once Were Warriors. What a downer. I’m glad that I didn’t make it to Auckland. The last photo is the sun setting over Kings Country.

Walking Up the Path

I copied three other people's photos of the Cass retreat, so I have a disproportionately large number of photos of Arthur's Pass. Here's a nice one of Dietrich's and Mareike's backside with entomology guy walking up the path.