All That Chazz: Your Brain Tickle Destination

What a great day!

Okay, that was overcompensating. It’s not all that cheery, what with the Doomsday Clock moving forward to just 85 seconds to midnight. Then there are the protests where people are getting killed. You’re thinking Minnesota, but the terrors are visiting Iran, too.

In an excellent podcast interview everyone should hear, a friend of mine talks about what’s going on in Iran. You need to hear this. Find Sher Kruse, author of Stoic Empathy, on the Chicago Unscripted Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. It’s the January 28th episode: “Revolution and Death on the Streets of Iran.”

Sher believes a war with Iran is inevitable, but it’s not all doom and gloom. I especially liked her bus analogy. The bus won’t necessarily take you all the way to a solution, but it will bring you closer to better days. Too often, people say, “If we can’t fix everything immediately, we may as well not try to do anything at all.”

Striving for progress, not perfection, is how change happens.

In this morning’s episode of The Writing Life (and other things):

1. Don Lemon arrested.
2. A spam folder come-on. My work is headed for Hollywood! (Really? No.)
3. The final season of Queer Eye is done. The show’s uplifting message was somewhat undermined by friction within the cast. Karamo says he was bullied. If Antoni was in on that, I really don’t want to know and I’m not looking it up. He seems such a nice young man from Canada. It’s unthinkable. But Tan? Yeah, I can see that. And Jonathan must be exhausting. I always liked Bobby and Jeremiah.

The home reno was always the real workhorse of the show. For instance:

Tan: Let me show you the French tuck again to hide the belly.
Antoni: Sweet guy, heart on his sleeve. “Here’s how to cook with your family and elevate a burger.”
Jonathan: Says honey a lot. Dances. Clown manqué. Good at coloring hair, doesn’t do fades, needs to get more aggressive about trimming beards tighter.
Karamo: Asks the heroes good, thought-provoking questions. “Let’s go make you some business cards.”
Bobby and Jeremiah: “Let’s do the impossible in a week and transform your messy hovel into a lovely home.”

US News:

The Feds arrested Don Lemon for being a journalist!

The First Amendment (and Second, and Fourth) are just so old hat, I guess. Don Lemon spent a night in jail, but this prosecution/persecution is going nowhere (99.1% sure, anyway).

Maybe the Feds are using the Don Lemon arrest to distract from taking the ballots in Georgia. That will drum up a lot of propaganda about an election that has already been litigated and re-litigated. Trump has even accused Obama of election conspiracies when Obama was out of power. The poorest little billionaire whines that an election that he won was fixed. What?

Also, Pam Bondi? Speaking of distractions, any ETA on those Epstein files, or is the erasing of Trump’s presence there still not done? And by “presence,” I mean damning evidence.

Meanwhile, in Canada

Treasonous Albertans are trying to secede. I lived in Alberta for four years. Nice folks, generally. The few who fantasize about leaving Canada underestimate the cost to themselves of untangling from one of the greatest countries in the world. Going to US administration officials for big cash to facilitate this nonsense is treason, by the way. But bang on, ya knobs! Every insult is fuel for the wider, unapologetic patriotism among Canucks.

We didn’t always have a 24-hour news cycle.

Remember that? And yet, we can’t seem to squeeze it all in. So much news comes so fast, we’ve forgotten that policy-based politics is supposed to be boring. Distractions abound. Our attention is fragmented, and our bandwidth is too narrow. Some block out all the noise so they get no signal. Others are just busy trying to get through the day and make it pay. I can’t blame them, but those who can do something to save the future must do so.

This morning’s spam folder had this silly anonymous offer:

Hello,
I specialize in promoting high-quality book stories to film producers who routinely review written material for potential adaptation. When a producer shows interest in a story, authors are typically compensated in the range of $2,000–$3,000, depending on the strength and market appeal of the work.
Your book aligns with the type of material currently being reviewed. Would you like a brief overview of how the promotion process works? 

They could have at least gone to the trouble of signing it, making up a company, and telling me which of my books will soon go to the silver screen and win an Oscar. Bleh! Stop it!

FINAL THOUGHTS ON QUEER EYE AND MONEY

On the final episode of Queer Eye, the hero was a handsome, funny, and charming tour guide in Washington supporting a wife and five kids. Self-care is good, but watching this guy get told to be more present and take time for himself, all I could think was, “IN THIS ECONOMY?!”

NOTE: My wife worked as a tour guide and bus driver in Toronto, Quebec, and Niagara Falls for a few summers. It’s not a high-paying job. Tip: Next time you’re on a tour, tip generously if you can.

Anyway, the tour guide is dancing as fast as he can, and the Fab Five are telling him to somehow carve more time out of the clock and still make enough money to eat? His first kid was going off to college. I hope it was a great scholarship. The house renovation was nice. It was all nice. I enjoyed most of the entire run of QE. But that tour guide didn’t need a lecture on motivation and time management. He needs money.

The first episode of this final season was the best. Expect a few laughs and a lot of ugly crying. Expect to see Antoni Porowski as a judge on cooking shows from now until the end of civilization. Hopefully, that’s gives us all a lot of time.

That’s the wrap-up for Friday, January 8.

Bonus content below: