We're going to War! Wait, no we're not! Wait, yes we are! Wait, no we're...

On this week's episode of "The Celebrity Apprentice:  Washington", Mr. Trump ordered missile and air strikes on Iran, but then after commercial break decided to call it off at the last minute.

Plenty of people have had lots to say about it.  There is a general sigh of relief that we don't find ourselves at war with Iran (yet);  there are questions about what really motivated the President's decisions; there are questions about why Trump didn't know from the get go if maybe 150 people would be killed; there is worry about who is driving the foreign policy bus.  There is also the intriguing idea, floated by some (including General Petreus), that it is what Trump had intended to do all along, a sort of mock execution where at the last minute the gun is pulled back and Trump yells out "never, ever, EVER, come into my casino again!  You got that?  NEVER!"  Which would send a message that we could reach out to Iran anytime we want to and that they are on a very short leash.

Trump may have made the right decision in this case:  a strike on Iran, which would have almost certainly caused casualties, is not a good response to losing a drone in disputed air space.

The problem of course it is a decision he shouldn't have had to make at all.  Here we see the consequences of withdrawing from the nuclear deal, which has to be the worst foreign policy decision the administration has made.

The best we can hope for is that Iran buckles under the pressure and sits down to make a new agreement.  But in my opinion its hard to see that happening and I wondering if we will get anything really better than what Obama was able to achieve after years of diplomacy conducted by professionals who hadn't professed a desire to change the regime (at least openly--- Hillary Clinton's monthly kaffeeklatches don't count!  What happens at kaffeeklatch, stays at kaffeeklatch) .  Trump will be lucky to get the previous terms.

Of course, if he does, he will declare victory by solving a crisis of his own making.

Movies You May Not Like: The Favourite

For some reason New Years Day in Hampton Roads is always gray, damp, and unseasonably warm.  It sucks.

So its a perfect day to go to the movies, and it has become something of a tradition for me to pack myself off to the theater to start the new year.  This year, I saw The Favourite, because it was a movie that my wife did not really want to see and it would allow me to get back home by 1:00 in the afternoon, just in time for the customary Upper Malakvian New Years lunch of salted Cod, salted Potatoes, salted beans, salt, and Schlivovitz -- who wouldn't want to miss that!

The Favourite was very well done, engrossing, and kind of unsettling, in a way, mostly due to how the movie ends.  Part farce, part political drama, it is (loosely - very, very loosely) based on actual events, where the favored advisor to Queen Anne, the Duchess of Marlborough, is slowly supplanted by Abigail Masham (nee Hill).  It imagines them in a sort of love triangle, which is, apparently, actually possible but not substantiated.  I think its been shortlisted for some awards and for good reason - Emma Stone and Olivia Coleman give fantastic performances; Coleman's Queen Anne in particular being fascinating.  The costuming and sets are incredible, it is well shot, the soundtrack is haunting.  I would recommend it, though I found the movie a bit depressing, in that it is another one of those movies that has no real hero, no positive influence, and the ending is abrupt and stark and really sticks with you.  I think the last good movie in which I saw something of the heroic was Dunkirk, and that was going on a year and a half ago.  These are dystopian times.  And I am sure there is more that I can say about the movie's sexual dynamics and the #MeToo movement and all of that stuff, the cultural moment we find ourselves in and how the movie reflects on some of that.  But my friends, I simply don't have the cultural acumen to do it.

Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne in The Favourite

But I do have some historical acumen, and that might come in handy if you decide the movie.

Here's the thing:  aside from the fact that it was set in the 1600s or 1700s, I had little idea what it was going to be about.  I knew there was a Queen, and some sort of power struggle, and that it was supposed to be good, and because I do whatever the New York Times tells me to do I should go see it; but that was about it.

To my joy, I found that I was in the one situation in my life where my smattering of British history was actually useful, as I could draw on some useless trivia to give me a firmer footing in a film that otherwise may have been rather confusing from the start.  Maybe the film-makers would rather you didn't have any background at all - but I found it to be useful.  

It isn't much, but this is what I brought to the table: 

So at the beginning of the movie there is reference to a war that is ongoing and draining the British purse, and this war comes to dominate a lot of the political machinations the characters go through as they struggle over the decision to fund it by taxation or sue for Peace from an advantageous position.

Now,  I know that I recently said "No More War Movies" in 2019, but fortunately the combat is kept far away and my new year's resolution is intact.  

Anyways, in this scene at the beginning of the movie, Queen Anne speaks of a great victory and, thinking the war is over, is prepared to give the Duchess of Marlborough a palace.  

The war in question:  The War of the Spanish Succession, fought in the early 1700s over who would be king of Spain (I suppose).  The Bourbons in France had a claim, and the British, Dutch, and others were determined to stop them.  Much of the war was actually fought in what is today Belgium (I think).  

The victory is probably the Battle of Blenheim, a massive victory by the British and their coalition over the French in 1704 that changed the course of the struggle.  The leader of the British forces was John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, husband to (and here is where the connection comes in) Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough and aide to Queen Anne.  And yes, John Churchill is the ancestor of THAT Churchill, old huffen und puffen, trinken und sleepen Winston Churchill himself, with those stupid paintings of his.  You know who was a great painter?  Who could paint one room, in one afternoon, two coats?  I'll give you two guesses. 

The palace proposed at the beginning of the movie was built in honor of the Battle of Blenheim, and is actually called Blenheim Palace.  I think in the movie they refer to its name one time.  We also see the Duke of Marlborough (who second to Wellington is probably Britain's greatest military leader of all time) occasionally but he is a minor character.

And that is really it.  The war would drag on until 1714.  Of the political intrigue in Queen Anne's Court I had little notion.  

As I write all this, it makes me think that maybe it was a conscious choice of director Yorgos Lanthimos to divorce the action on screen from the details of the actual back story, placing the action in a sort of alternative reality where the rumors behind the relationship between the three protagonists is allowed to flourish with all of its Sapphic fire.  If the movie hewed more to a more likely reality it may have only left a sort of tension between the three that may or may not have been sexual in nature, though again the actual relationship between these three women is, based on what I know, difficult to be sure of.  They may has simply been every effusive in their letters to each other, or they might have been true bed fellows.  The only ones who really know, probably, are Queen Anne, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Abigail Masham.  And maybe their dogs and those rabbits the Queen liked to keep in her bed chamber.  All long gone.    

The ending of the movie is what makes it so dissonant, but I will leave that to the brave.  The Favourite; run time two hours; rated R for some fruity language, some sex acts, and the odd nipple here and there.  

  

In Which I go Very Public with My New Year's Resolutions

A new year is upon us!  And what better way to start the new year then by laying bare my deepest ambitions for the entire world to see!

I did  a decent job with my 2018 New Year's Resolution, keeping 2 out of 4.  I maintained a presence at the gym -- even if it at times that was by having a past version of myself haunting the One Life Fitness in Newport News.  Did you feel that chill go down your spine as you walked towards the rowing machine?  That was the ghost of my better intentioned, more motivated self circa May, before I got deep into Summer, baseball games, and Nachos.

I also managed to complete the reading of 23 books this year!  That was an increase on last year's 20.  It does not include the many books I started, got anywhere from 10% - 60% through, and gave up on.

So not bad!  I did not write as much as I would have liked too -- far from it.  And I also did not progress as much with my German as I would have liked either.

So here, with 5 hours left to go before the end of the year, are next year's resolutions:

1.  No war movies in 2019 (with some caveats)  

I have watched too many war movies, and I am not sure why I do it - they are on the whole depressing.  It was the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I so I watched, this year, some excellent movies commemorating the war (2017 Journey's End is one I would highly recommend).  But I've decided, at last, I can take no more.  They don't do me a lot of good.

So, no war movies in 2019.

You must understand, this cuts a rather wide swath  through today's cinema.  Yes, the classic war movie is one in which a young man or woman finds themselves in an army or a flying corps and has their innocence dashed by the brutality of conflict and must grope their way through the experience of warfare - the most complex human experience on earth, I'd reckon - as their friends die around them, over which they must lay the matrix of the many reasons that have brought them to the war in the first place, be they good, bad, or senseless.  And/or the veteran comes home from the war and tries to readjust to civilian live, maybe the second most complex human experience on earth.  The classics are ones like Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Jarhead (the first one), Glory, The Patriot, Bridge on the River Kwai, Dunkirk, the list goes on and on and on.

But you have to add Superhero movies to the list as well.  Or at least most of them.  Batman fights crime, sure.  But Transformers?  Those are war movies.  Wonder Woman, admirable though it may have been, was definetly a war movie.  Star Wars (GASP!!!) are -- well, as the name suggests, war movies.  Even those damn Alice in Wonderland movies that Johnny Depp plays the mad hatter in are war movies.  Forrest Gump?  War movie.

So there will be a lot of stuff I can't see.  There are two caveats:

Caveat a:  If a war movie comes that is hailed as truly being transcendental, something that is just going to be amazing and needs to be seen in theater, I'm willing to relent and go to it.  Dunkirk was such a film.  Something on that level.

Caveat b:  If a decent movie on Napoleon, or the Napoleonic Wars, comes out, or if the BBC/HBO can put together a half decent mini-series of the subject, I will see that too.

2.  Keep up at the gym

I did  stick with the gym this year, though you might have gathered I did not go as often as I probably should have.  Often enough to make it monetarily worthwhile - the price of membership was not wasted - but not often enough to really look or feel much different.

So a little more gym going in 2019. 

3.  Read (complete) 25 books in 2019

Pretty self explanatory.  This two more books than I managed to complete in 2018, so it may be difficult.

4.  Improve on my German

This is an odd one, it may seem.  I have no German ancestry and have little need to know German for my profession.  Yet my inability to speak a foreign language has always gnawed at me.  German is my best shot, because I took it in high school, took some more lessons through a friend at St Mark, and have kept at it through various means.  It is probably better than it has ever been, but there is so much more room to improve!  Plus, the SAWE Conference in 2020 is in Hamburg, and I am going even if I have to swim for it.

I did improve in 2018, but would like to continue doing so in 2019.

5.  Write more in 2019

Probably the most important.  I had the goal last year of writing 50 poems and 3 other things.  I did not even come close...I wrote maybe 20 poems an a few blog posts.  I really, really, want to do more in the new year.

6.  Present an Open Hand Rather than a Closed Fist

I don't really think of myself as a closed fist, but we could all be more open, more understanding, and kinder, and sometimes I can certainly be hard-hearted.  So it is my hope that I can cultivate some more compassionate virtues the new year.

That is it.  A pretty long list but with a few tweaks I think I can get there.  Number 6, actually, may be the hardest.

Well, 2018, you were a hell of a year.  Trump was Trump, the planet is dying, and many of my friends have had a rough time of it, and the Hokies nearly blew up their bowl streak.  Sometimes it is hard enough to gin up the energy to push the boulder up the hill everyday, much less do it joyfully.

Here's hoping for a better 2019!

In Which the Link Between a Luscious Nude and a Factory for War Machines is Pointed Out.

So here is a question for you:  What could possibly be the link between this:

Cabanel's Birth of Venus, sometimes referred to simply as "The painting of the woman with the boobs and the water".

And this?

Newport News Shipbuilding, sometimes referred to as the place where they build the things that launch the things that deliver things that make other things go boom in the name of Freedom.  

The answer is this:

An unlikely link between the two, though if you are smart you can probably guess what is going on here.

So what is all this then?

The first picture is The Birth of Venus, by Alexandre Cabanel, a huge hit at the Paris Salon of 1863.  Napoleon III, upon seeing the painting, purchased it immediately; probably not because of its artistic value but rather because in addition to some highly polished brushwork and a rather realistic depiction of an ocean wave it features - rather prominently - a very naked woman.  Perfect for adorning the study of the man who has everything and is worried that his adventures in Mexico are beginning to flounder. 

All joking aside, though, the painting really was very much adored.  It was just within the bounds of propriety of the time, where painting nudes was okay if it fell into the historic/mythological schools of French painting, featuring seamless brush strokes, accurate depictions, and a purpose of either imparting a moral lesson, exemplifying beauty, or telling a story from France's glorious past.  We might look at this Cabanel and see it as something not much better than soft core pornography, laden with all the chauvenistic baggage that western culture has loaded on to itself.  But for the Parisian of 1863 it checked the boxes.  The most scandalous aspect of the painting, the thing that was up for debate at the time, was the look that Cabanel's Venus is giving as she peeks out from under her arm.  Is she actually in repose, or do her eyes suggest a sort of post-coital contended grogginess?  The critics in Paris battled it out, could not agree on any kind of consensus, and the mild whiff of controversy only added to the overall warm reception to Cabanel's work.

I'm getting a bit off track here, but it should be noted that the adoration of Cabanel's nude was in direct contrast to the derision hefted almost joyfully against Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, exhibited at the 1863 Salon des Refuses (a special sort of extra Salon held featuring paintings rejected by the Paris Salon jury of 1863, after there were objections that the jury was too harsh).  One of the problems with the painting, as the Parisians saw it, was that the men were wearing contemporary clothes and were in a contemporary setting.  In 1863 this just wasn't normally done.  Pictures of everyday life took a back seat to stunning histories or mythological settings, usually featuring men wearing nothing but plummed trojan helmets and women in various stages of undress, modesty sometimes preserved by the fortuitous fold of a toga.

Manet was one of the first to paint the modern people of Paris with all their glory and grit going about their everyday lives, doing things like going to horse races, listening to music, drinking absinthe, and having lunch with naked women in the city parks, because that is apparently what normal French people do.  Anyhow, the idea that painting contemporary people going about their ordinary lives could actually be meaningful required the artistic mores of the day to undergo a pretty significant adjustment.

Secondly, the painting depicts the woman as a likely prostitute; the everyday clothing of the men, the casual discarding of her clothes, and the frog placed towards the right side of the painting all suggest that this woman was being paid to be there, and though prostitution was rife in Paris in the 1860s it was not kosher to depict the workers who plied their trade.

Third and final:  critics found the woman in Manet's painting to be ugly, and painted without technique or depth, the uniform pallor of her skin akin to a photograph.  People didn't like that.  Though somewhat risque, Cabanel's Venus by comparison was seen as a charming painting of a beautiful naked goddess as opposed to a rather brash work depicting a scene of questionable morality that did nothing to further the study of the beautiful. 

Manet's controversial Le déjeuner sur l'herbe.  I have no idea what the bather in the background is there for.  Don't ask.  

So now to Newport News Shipbuilding.  The Shipyard was founded in 1886 as the Chesapeake Dry Dock and Construction Company by Collis P. Huntington. Long before that, he made a ridiculous amount of money building railroads (he was heavily involved in building the transcontinental railroad), and was known for being fairly unethical, which in the world of 19th century business and politics is really saying something.   Still, he is known for saying the words that are inscribed onto every shipbuilder's heart:  "We shall build good ships here;  at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good ships".  Later, when he found out the rum runner he was building for Johnny K. Chesterton & Sons was going to be behind schedule because the paint had failed due to the high levels of humidty present during the summer in Hampton Roads (something he clearly did not think hard enough about), he uttered the immortal shipyard motto:  "It is what it is."

When his first wife died of cancer in 1883 he married Arabella Yarrington Worsham, a Richmond courtesan who somehow struck up a liason with Collis P. Huntington after the Civil War, perhaps thanks to Huntington's love of cards and gambling and her presence at a popular Richmond faro house doing...stuff?  Not sure, really.  The details are vague.  But she became his mistress at the age of 19 and was moved to New York City with her entire family where she and Collis carried on for 14 years until finally getting married in 1884.

Even before their marriage, Arabella was one of the richest women in America.  And when you are filthy rich, with all the power and status that that entails, you need a painting of yourself, a portrait, that shows to everyone else how fucking filthy rich you are, yes?

And here is where we come full circle back to Cabanel.  In addition to being a very gifted painter of T&A, he was a renowned portrait painter.  Portrait painting was the bread and butter of the many less successful artists of the time and Cabanel was so wealthy and famous he really didn't need the money - but he apparently enjoyed it, and many of his portraits of fully clothed and very wealthy men and women (even one of Napoleon III himself in 1865) would receive acclaim in Paris Salons well beyond that of 1863. He gained international fame and during the Gilded Age was the best known French painter in America, aside from maybe Messionier; many Americans - especially women - desperately wanted to have Cabanel paint them.  It was a fairly meaningless status symbol, the tricked out SUV of the day.   

Cabanel never came to America, so in 1881 or 1882 Araballa Worsham arranged through an agent to sit for Cabanel and she made the trip over to his Paris studio to sit - or rather stand - for her portrait, which is the third picture shown above, entitled "Mrs. Collis P. Huntington", completed in 1882.  I would note it is unusual, in that most Cabanel portraits of the time were 3/4 length, but here we have Bella Huntington in full length glory, perhaps showing the stature she commanded at the time.  It is also noted that the title of the painting seems like a reverse anachronism, as Arabella was not married to Huntington at the time; though perhaps in 1882, with his first wife (Elizabeth Stoddard)* dying and Arabella well established in society, she may as well have been. 

So there you have it.  The future wife of the founder of Newport News Shipbuilding had her portrait painted by the very same man that wowed all the men of Paris with a painting that they could study with great intent in the name of the artistic beauty that it inherently stood for, examining some parts perhaps more closely than others.

It is amazing, sometimes, how such things are connected to each other.

The portrait was donated to a museum in California by her son Archer Huntington, who incidentally founded the Mariner's Museum.  But that, to use one of the cheapest endings of all time, is another story.

If you want to learn more, I recommend the book "The Judgment of Paris" by Ross King and a couple of articles online; one about Arabelle Huntington and the other about Cabanel and his portrait painting.  A lot of the facts I allude to, but perhaps don't quite set correctly, come from these sources.

NOTE:

*Aside from the fact that she was Huntington's childhood sweetheart, little is known of Elizabeth Stoddard.  She apparently lived a rather quiet life in her New York City mansion as her husband criss-crossed the country.  It is possible that Elizabeth knew of and accepted Arabella, as documentation shows that Arabella and her mother helped during Elizaebth's illness.  One wonders what kind of woman she was, and what kind of life she lead.  

In which the Guardian's Johnathan Wilson Wins 2018 Simile of the Year

One of the small joys of the Premier League season, so far, has been the delicious schadenfreude of watching the Shakespearean Tragedy of Mourinho at Manchester United play itself out. 

Barring a miraculous return to form, Mourinho is certainly out at the end of this season.  But he is not going quietly, he is raging against the dying of the light, persevering in playing a particular brand of negative football week in and week out.  His players aren't happy, the fans are not happy, and I doubt he is happy either, as United find themselves in eighth place with a goal differential of one. 

I watched the lastest twist in the story on Wednesday night, when Man U hosted Arsenal.  It ended in a slightly disappointing 2-2 draw (disappointing, at least, if you were waiting for Mourinho to finally get sacked.  If he had lost 5-0 or something, he probably would have...).  It was a chippy game, and all the goals were....well, kind of crap, in that none of them probably should have happened.

But it was compelling enough, and I was eager this morning to read some additional analysis from the Guardian sport's desk.  I was reading Johnathan Wilson's take on the game when I came across this: 

A 2-2 draw against a team who are now 20 games unbeaten is no disgrace, of course, not even when that team are Arsenal, who haven’t won in the league at Old Trafford since 2006, who on Wednesday night still seemed to be drained by the emotional frenzy of Sunday’s north London derby, who lost players every four or five minutes to injury and who at times regarded the ball in their box with all the decisiveness of a group of nervous Victorian maidens spying a butterfly on their first jaunt out with a raffish lepidopterist.     

To which I said:  What the fuck?  I mean, I am known for conjuring some crazy shit out of nowhere, some of my work emails are epic; but what Wilson wrote is just really, really, out there.  Where in the world did that come from?  What was going through his mind when he came up with that one? 

I was not entirely sure what lepidopterist was.  Turns out it is someone who collects and studies butterflies or moths.   

So it was with raffish.  Rakish is a word I am familiar with, but raffish was a bit beyond me.  It turns out that they are almost the same thing, as Google saith, it is means some one who is "unconventional and slightly disreputable, especially in an attractive manner".  Rakish is a synonym of raffish, bohemian, unconventional.  It looks as though use of the word hit its peak around 1950, which might explain why it was so unfamiliar to me. 

So yes, that is one for the refrigerator door.  But the beauty of it is that it really is a perfect simile, because it describes the Arsenal defense on Wednesday night so well.  I mean....I want to try to improve on it somehow, to try and to explain it deeper.  But I can't.  It's perfect.  Absolutely perfect.  Well written and a perfect description.  It just about took my breath away. 

So, I am happy and honored to award Johnathan Wilson, of The Guardian, the 2018 Nicholas Marickovich Simile of the Year Award.   I extend to him my warmest congratulations, like a fan fiction devotee giving their favorite author a pair of mittens that they knitted themselves with Merino wool in the coffee shop, out of love. 

I know, I know.  But I have never won the Nicholas Marickovich Simile of the Year Award.  Johnathan Wilson has.  So again, well done Johnathan! 

In Which Brett Kavanaugh Gives Beer Drinkers a Bad Name

Well America, that was a tough, emotional day.

I did not watch the hearing, but caught up with it through the day by reading the Guardian's minute by minute coverage.  I find if you can't watch something, be it the Chelsea v. Liverpool match or a politically motivated witch hunt, I find its minute by minute coverage second to none.  And yes, I read all the coverage, both of Blasey's testimony and Kavanaugh's.

"BEER!  NOW!" - the Hon. Brett Kavanaugh

First, I will say this:  I believe Dr. Ford.  I feel her account to be very credible, and I know too many victims of assault to just openly dismiss a credible accusation.  We will never truly know what happened - Christine Blasey Ford knows the truth and and the "Honorable" Brett Kavanaugh knows the truth.  The rest of us will never really, truly know, and I doubt you'd ever get a charge to stick in court so far after the fact.

That leaves us in murky territory.  If Kavanaugh had been accused of pulling the Great Clockmand Diamond Heist, but never was found guilty in a court of law, he’d still be innocent and would be eligible for the Court, at least in my eyes.  You might even respect him a bit for having the audacity to pull something like that off.  But with assault it’s different, because the victims rarely get their day in court, rarely come forward for a number of reasons, and even if they do are often not believed.  While Kavanaugh may have forcefully denounced Blasey Ford’s accusations as a political charade, much to the delight of Trump who seems to equate anger and fight with credibility, I find it difficult to trust him.  Senator Mike Lee extended his "most profound sympathies" to Kavanaugh, but I find mine are much more solidly with the accuser unless her claims can be credibly disproved.

I would think the way forward would be to pause the nomination and investigate the claims against him.  I, for one, would certainly like to be assured that we are not about to send someone with a history of assault to the Supreme Court where he will make rulings for decades to come.  Further, if this is all a sham, if it's all an elaborate Left Wing Conspiracy to keep Kavanaugh off the court, I would kind of like to know, because that would be a horrible thing indeed.  An FBI investigation is the only way to get to the bottom of any of that, to get as close to the truth as we can. 

And yes, of course there is a political aspect to this.  I would not be surprised if the Democracts did leak the letter at the last minute to try and stall the process; they are justly angry over what happened with the Merrit Garland nomination and want to stick it to the Republicans as they try to consolidate power in the Courts.  I can't blame them for that.  But I don't think that automatically makes Ford's claims null and void.  Far from it.  It means that they must be handled with greater urgency, nothing more.

And they must be handled with respect.  Try as they might, the angry Republican men of the Judiciary Committee have not done that.  When Kavanaugh came out swinging, they smelled blood, got whipped into a frenzy, and had no problem extending their support to Kavanaugh, denouncing the whole process, and effectively dismissing the accusations.  Yet they cowardly refused to say anything, really, to Dr. Ford during her testimony.  I understand the political calculation in all of that, that it would look bad for these men to be questioning Ford on such sensitive matters.  But what you saw was cowardice writ large, plain and simple.  In their efforts to be respectful, they ended up dehumanizing her by treating her differently and acting through an intermediary. 

Likely, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote to confirm him on party lines, and then it goes to the full Senate.  Based on today's performance, even if he IS actually innocent, I do not want this angry, condescending, blowhard to get onto the Court.  I didn't want him anyway, of course, as his politics and mine are, shall we say, "not aligned".  But I was willing to shrug it off, say "those are the breaks", and try to get on with my life as best I can.

 But now? 

All I can do is open a whiskey (no beer for me tonight, thank you), drink to the good health of Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor, and wonder what in the world we have become. 

Some of the Republicans said this was worse than the Anita Hill hearings, and they are right; it shows how little things have changed and how much further we, as a nation, have left to get when it comes to understanding rape, assault, and harassment.







 

I’m not a Political Scientist or Anything...But I think Donald Trump may be in Trouble Here.

Uh oh.

So finally, finally, Trump has been implicated, under oath, of breaking the law.  Cohen has stated in no uncertain terms that he was directed, by "The Candidate", to violate campaign finance law and pay hush money to a playboy model and a porn star with the purposes of influencing the election.

And it's all, I find, rather anti-climatic for me.

It just feels disappointing in a way, doesn't it?  We are 1 year, 215 days, 5 hours, and maybe 30 minutes or so into this shambolic administration (at least, according to -- and I shit you not -- howlonghastrumpbeenpresident.com).  Almost the entire time there has been so much smoke that says collusion and conspiracy, and if it's true, if he actually did it, wouldn't it kind of be amazing? Not by any means good, and not as impressive as eating a whole wheel of cheese, maybe, but still...diabolical.  And in 20 years we'd be like "wow, he really did pull it off, didn't he?  He was terrible, you may as well have elected my cat president, if my cat was a TV-watching diet coke guzzling womanizer who's mind was stuck in the mid 1980's. But all the same he and his little team of waspish cronies pulled it off and nearly brought us to our knees". 

I mean, here's Trump, the man who must win at all costs, selling his soul to the Devil (or maybe rather refinancing the mortgage on it for the third time) to emerge trumpumphrant in an election.  And here are the Russians, who are so ingenious in their own sort of brutal way, butt fumbling into solid gold - a chance to finally bring the west crumbling to its foundation by engineering the election of a Reality TV Star.  The two parties meet, shake hands, get the measure of each other, and hatch a cockamamie scheme to steal the 2016 election that even the A Team would be proud of: intricate, precise, meticulously engineered, with a chance maybe to blow something up; and in the middle of it all is Trump, playing the buffoon populist to the crowd so no one can see him for the suave political operator he actually is, deftly pulling levers behind the scenes with an unlit cigar clenched between his teeth.

But no.  Instead, Trump's reckoning may finally come down simply trying to cover up some sordid extramarital affairs.  It's an old, old, stupid story of pasty, doughy, entitled rich men.  And it's not at all surprising either.  Of course Trump cheated on his wife, of course he cavorted with McDoughal and Clifford Ltd.  He's Donald Trump! Did you expect anything less???  And when those two women saw their chance to cash in (and, please, I think we should give them their money; if I was offered $130,000 dollars just to eat dinner with the man I would think twice about it, and that price is going way, way up if even one stitch of clothing comes off...) they took it, and Trump did what he always does and tried to buy their silence.

And in the normal world of Donald Trump this is perfectly legal, and he's probably done it plenty of times.  But in the world of Donald Trump the candidate it is not, as the rules preclude this kind of thing.  He has been implicated in breaking the law, and then in trying to cover it up he has been possibly obstructing justice.

Will Trump be impeached?  I am not so sure.  Yes, it is the only way, at this point, to hold him accountable for his actions, and by all means he should be.  But impeachment is a political act, and while the House of Representatives may have the votes to kick off the Articles of Impeachment, I am not sure 2/3 of the Senate will actually vote to remove the man while he remains so popular among Republicans.  Of course that assumes that Trump, in a fit of anger, doesn't do anything really stupid, like fire the AG or DAG, or pardon Manafort, or try to shut down the Mueller investigation or start burning books or something like that.

Still, the walls are closing in.  This is not, I believe, the only crime Trump has ever committed, and it certainly shows that he has no ethic at all outside of his own self promotion.  It may be time to make a deal with the master of all deal makers.

So I'm happy to report that I am working out a plan that might get Trump out of a jam and the nation out of a real mess, so that we can all come together to start putting out the dumpster fire that has engulfed our Once Happy Republic.

Because if Trump can be the president (It's still kind of hard to believe we did that, guys) then I can be a political scientist/expert negotiator/savior of the country.

...I'm Back!

Don't call it a comeback!  It's a blog back!  It's the real thing!  It's happening! 

So after a long hiatus I desired to fire up the old blog again, for a number of reasons, but chief among them is the notion that if the world is going to burn down around me, I may as well grab a fiddle and get up on the roof.

There is so much to catch up on, so much has happened, and I'm not in blog shape.  My fingers are stiff from not typing, I'm sluggish, I'm slow, and my wit is dull.  It's going to take a lot of chicken chasing to get back into fighting trim - though I have never been very quick on my feet in an argument; in a rhetorical knife fight I usually reach down into my pocket and pull out a kazoo, which of course is not going to cut it.  

So to kind of kick things off, I'm not adverse to cutting corners and using a prompt.  No cheating, first click totally random, the prompt is....

What are the values you cherish even though they run counter to societal values?

Come on!  You've got to be kidding me.  That is like some kind of prompt for a college essay, or a question that your therapist might ask you.  It is not a prompt for an old, unsuccessful, out of practice blogger trying to kick some dust of his writing boots.  

But I try to be an honorable man so...

You know?  I really respect people who have a love of cheese, but not for those cheeses that are easy to love, like your chedders, your mozzerellas.  I'm talking about people that really love those stinky, funky, fusty cheeses; your Stiltons, your Stinking Bishops, your Époisses de Bourgogne, the ones that I simply cannot appreciate, the ones that really remind you that are basically eating something that came out of a cow's udder that has been allowed to go bad in a very, very precise way.  

So that is not really a value of my own.  The respect I feel for these brave individuals is a value, I suppose, but that is hardly counter cultural.  But the point of a writing prompt is not necessarily to answer the prompt but merely to see where the muse, the spirit, the chicken, leads.  

Today, it has led to cheese.  

And there, we will have to simply let it be.  The worst thing you ever write, are those things left unwritten.  I think this blog post challenges that maxim, but I think you get the idea.  

Until later, 

Nick

My Virginia Tech Football Memory

Virginia Tech football celebrates its 125th year this year, and the various alumni groups and Hokie Sports sites are asking us to share our memories.  Here is my submission to the so called "Bracket of Memories":

"I will never forget the night that Virginia Tech played against West Virginia on November 20, 2002.

For one, it was a fucking Wednesday. Wednesday!  Why?  I never really understood that one. Wednesday was a bad night for me.  That was the night that my ultra heavy metal band, DeathSpoon, played at The Underground Underground, a sort of concrete bunker underneath the Underground Pub.  But in all honesty, the band wasn't doing so well, and I was just a bass player. Bass players are a dime a dozen after all (it isn't that hard to just go bommma bom bom bom bom bom bommma!  Da bomma bom bom bom bom bom bomma bomma!) and if they really needed one they could just pick one up from the six or seven bass players who kind of camped out in front of the Mish Mish, just waiting for a van to pull up and offer them some work.  Painting, strange bass player sex stuff, even sometimes bass playing, just whatever those guys could get.  Just enough to keep the dream of being a real life bass player alive.  In any case, I could read the reading on the wall.  DeathSpoon would at least go on without me, and perhaps cease to be altogether.

So though it was school night, and I probably had an exam soon to come, and my impending expulsion from the band weighed heavily on mine heart, I decided that a Wednesday night in Lane Stadium (any night in Lane Stadium, really), was worth the cost.  So off I went.

I don't remember much of the game.  Just that at the half, the Hokies were winning.  I am not sure why I decided to leave at half time, aside from maybe the delicious notion that leaving at the half showed my complete contempt for the other team, a real Edward the Longshanks kind of move, retiring with the battle still raging but clearly well in hand.  I also think someone in the stands may have thrown up on my shoes, thereby dampening my enthusiasm for the contest.

So I walked back home, which at that time was a townhouse on North Main.  It was a long walk, and no doubt a thoughtful one.  I suffered with depression on and off through college (as I still do), to the point where at times the only thing I was capable of doing was sitting in bed eating a bag of Krispy Kruellers and reading "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt".  Doing anything else was just too hard.  I don't think I was there yet on this particular day, but I am sure something was on my mind.  I do remember looking in the window of a restaurant, a puddle of light on a dark November night, and seeing a few patrons sitting around a table, some of the few people in Blacksburg who were NOT at the football game.  I admired their cool disdain, their lack of concern that not one or two miles distance the mighty Hokies, THEIR mighty Hokies, were engaged in combat against the Barbarians from the Northern Coal Districts.  I wished for a moment that I had their confidence and comportment (be it ever so smug), and imagined they were interesting artsy people who wore black turtlenecks and read dead French philosophers. For a brief moment I almost decided to walk in and introduce myself, asking them to take me in like a band of jaded soldiers takes in a stray dog, for the sheer pathos of the thing, the idea that anything could be alive in a world so cold.  But the moment passed, and I walked on.

In any case, by the time I got home the third quarter was well underway and Tech was losing.  I was upset, but not really all that surprised.  We ended up losing that game 18-21.  Won't forget that anytime soon.

So yeah.  Happy 125, Virginia Tech Football!  Wishing you many, many more."

Vice President Pence Visits the Schiffkraftwerk!

Oh wow!

I know, I haven't written in a month.  Over a month.  I've been so busy, and so tired, and I've been trying orchestrate a coup within the Peninsula Engineers Council (it failed, but by God did we get close.  So close we could almost taste it).

But I'm back!  And there is only thing that could bring me back out of a long slumber....sponsorship.  So while you're reading this, why don't you kick back with a Commander Sterling's Chocolate Pudding Blast! Commander Sterling's:  We're all going to the same place anyway, so why not enjoy yourself?

Commander Sterling's offers you a vast array of products
to make your life both more enjoyable and shorter,
 including "Commander Sterling's Vodka Cremes"

But also is the news that Vice President Pence will be visiting the Shipyard this weekend to be keynote speaker at the INDIANA (SSN 789) Christening.  This is a big deal...normally the most high powered person to attend a submarine christening is the Chief of Naval Operations or his deputies, the head of Naval Reactors, and maybe a few Senators.  Powerful people, yes indeed.  But not nearly as powerful as the Vice President of the United States.
Wait.  Strike that.  Reverse it.  No one potentially as powerful as the Vice President of the United States.  I would argue that a high ranking Senator would beat out a Vice President, as a rook on a chess board is worth more than a bishop.  But then Vice President Pence, like a stretched spring or a boulder hovering above Wiley E. Coyote's head, is full of potential, just one too many buckets of KFC away from the most powerful position in the land, if not the world.

Of course, Vice President looked pretty powerful when he was in the DMZ last week, staring down North Korean guards in his totally sweet bomber jacket.  And, as Pence cannot actually land on the deck of a Submarine (at least this one, as it is currently inside the yard's building outfitting facility) much of speculation around this visit concerns that bomber jacket....i.e. will he wear it?

I know I'd be dissuaded from launching an ICMB with a look like that.

Probably not.  Typically at a Christening Cermemony if you are going to speak or be up on the VIP stage you really wear your best.  Not black or white tie, of course (who does that anymore), but The Navy Personnel on hand will be in their dress uniforms in full regalia, men wear their suits and ties and women wear dresses or....pantsuits.  Are we really still going with pantsuits?  We haven't come up with anything better?  Or at we at the point in our society where a suit is just a suit?

Anyway.  A bomber jacket would be a little out of place.  The toughness aspect of the thing would be welcome, but it really isn't in line with convention.  Pence is a pretty conventional guy, and I'd expect him to follow the rules.

But then this is an administration that doesn't really care much about the rules.  When Trump visited the USS Gerald R. Ford he didn't take his hat off inside the Carrier as he toured the mess decks, which is typically done.  He was in a place where hats, generally, are not worn; but there he was with a big old USA hat...in red no less.  Generally the Damage Control Department wears red hats so that you know...well, you know that something is going down if one of those guys goes running by.  So not only was he wearing a hat in a place he shouldn't have been wearing one, but he was wearing a color that generally should not be worn onboard ship unless you have a particular reason for doing so.

And then of course just last week wunderkinder Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, and Kid Rock toured the white house.  Pictures surfaced of The Nuge and The Kid in the white house, leering in front of a portrait of Hilary Clinton along with The Chick, with their hats on.  They were not ball caps, sure, but they were still hats.  And then another picture, of the trio inside the oval office with Trump, and those two paragons of patriotism still have their hats on!!  

 Now listen.  Wearing a hat indoors is bad enough.  I was always taught that inside of a building, any building, if you are wearing a hat you take it off.  Pure and simple.  I have lost a lot of hats this way, incidentally, as in college a few times I took off a ball cap, put it under my desk, and then forgot to put it back on my head again when I left.  Truly.  It wasn't screwed on, so I forgot it.  I'd realize maybe an hour later that I didn't have it, and when I returned to the scene of the crime it was usually gone.

But that is the price one pays for decency.  I know a lot of people don't follow that rule anymore, just as most people don't follow any rule anymore unless they feel like it...but I would think, the White House, where the likes of Lincoln and Roosevelt have sat and made monumental decisions that affected our country, one would at least have enough respect to remove one's hat, hat hair be damned.

All that is to say, simply, that if the basic rules of hat etiquette are out the window, than anything is possible viz a viz Mike Pence and the bomber jacket.  Of course, one problem is that in April it can get rather hot in Hampton Roads, and I wonder what these guys are going to do when it gets warm and they still want to look tough?  I mean, you may be as tough as balls, but if it's 90 degrees and 80% humidity, you probably aren't going to wear a bomber jacket.  If I have a guess, they'll go with a Motorcycle Gang style cut, leaving the arms bare and cool but still telling all your enemies that you mean business.  Plus, there is the added bonus of having plenty of room for patches.  The overall effect:  Don't fuck with these guys, or we'll pop some cruise missiles in your keister.

As the current forecast high is 85 degrees in Hampton Roads on Saturday, I'll put a box of donuts on Mike Pence showing up in this bad-ass Commander in Chief cut.

President Trump visits der Schiffkraftwerk! Part II

INTRODUCTION

Thursday, March 2nd, dawned clear, cool, and windy.  There was a...palpable?  Sure, I'll go with it...palpable feel of excitement in Newport News.  I mean, you could actually reach out and just squeeze the excitement.  It was supple, full, and smooth, like the breasts of a ca. 1980's Playboy Playmate, hair held up with enough hair spray to puncture a small hole in the ozone layer above the little cornfed American town in Iowa where she grew up, emblematic of the time when Trump was King of Atlantic City and a rapscallion robber barron of Real Estate.

But my goodness how the times do change.  That is what someone pointed out to me on Thursday as I walked towards a meeting on the waterfront.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

The shipbuilder I was talking to nodded over towards the CVN 72, berthed in the James River, currently in the closing stages of its RCOH.  Every morning the ship puts music on its loudspeakers while the crew carryout their cleaning stages, shop vac and broom replacing Captain Aubrey's Holystones.  "When I was in the Navy, no one spoke Spanish," he said.  "Now the CVN72 is playing whole songs in Spanish".  I listened a little closer and he was right.  "You see," he said again, sheer happiness spreading across his face "times do change."

"Yes," I answered.  "Sometimes for the better."

In this day and age it seems that every act can be interpreted as a political act.  I don't know how the CVN72 picks their music (it isn't always Spanish...one morning it was Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper", with extra cowbell), and I'm not suggesting it was a dig at Trump.  It very likely was little more than a coincidence.  But I found it, nevertheless, an interesting counterpoint to the day, and to the man due to arrive that afternoon.

REPORT

And so he did.  A few minutes before 13:00 there was the massive "fwhomp-fwhomp-fhwomp" that signaled the arrival of millions of rivets flying in formation, three V-22 Ospreys and two Marine Ones, some carrying Trump and his entourage, the others empty, presenting a befuddling shell game to any intrepid would-be-terrorist.  ISIS scientists are wise to it, and apparently have been playing endless versions of a five shell two pebble game of "find the pea", trying to get down into the American psyche and find any discernible patterns.  Luckily, nothing to show for it so far.

Hats off in the Wardroom!!  What, is he cold or something? 

Those of us not at the event all ran to the windows of our buildings like school children to see the huge craft (and the Ospreys truly are gigantic).  The lucky few (about 2500 shipyard workers) at the event all let up a boisterous cheer.  They had been there since around 10:00, milling about in the ship's hangar bay, squeezed in between Sailors and Press.  They had been subjected to long replays of Foghat's "Slow Ride" until an astute officer on the CVN78, professional as always, pointed out that to continue to do so who would constitute a most grievous violation of the Geneva Conventions.  So they switched to Zeppelin, which went down a lot smoother.  The fact that both bands were British was not lost on the few Tories in the audience, still desperately clinging to the dream that America would realize the error of its ways after nearly 250 years of Independence, and come crawling back.

That slim sliver of hope was dashed when Trump, after touring the ship with the CO and other dignitaries, was lowered into the Hangar Bay on one of the Ford's massive aircraft elevators to the strains of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA".  People everywhere felt a collective shiver in their spine, a great disturbance in the Force, as the muses of taste and tact once again screamed aloud in terror, and were suddenly silenced.  That song certainly has legs.  You'd think over the last 37 years we would have come up with something better.  But no.

Trump arrived wearing a recently obtained aviators jacket that made his hands look a little small and a CVN 78 Gerald R. Ford hat pulled low over the eyes, which he had wisely substituted for the red USA hat he was seen wearing after getting off Marine One (and also onboard ship in round table discussion).  To some he looked tough.  To me, he looked more like a baseball manager.

Trump Calls for a Squeeze Play.  Bold Leadership from a Bold Man.  Photo by the New York Times

He stepped up the podium and gave....well, it was a speech. He stood up, he looked sort of Presidential, gave a second grader's cliffnotes report on the Battle of Midway, and he managed not to say anything too stupid. An atypical politician giving a typical speech, as the Pod Save America guys said of his Grand Address to Congress on Tuesday.  There is a reason that Trump's secret service call sign, apparently, is "The Dancing Bear."

We were all very impressed.  He did say that he wanted to build more ships, and more planes, and more boats, and that it was all going to come "very soon."

Oh Trump, you silly, silly man.  One does not simple open the tap and get more ships.  Though the additional money proposed would certainly help.  Sequestration hasn't really caused a lot of job loss in the Shipbuilding industry, at least at NNS, but it has certainly made the work there more difficult, and made the workers more frustrated.  There is not enough money to do the things that the Navy is wanting to do.  It just isn't there.  So I don't necessarily oppose additional spending for naval assets.  I do think that the idea of stripping down other programs (among them the state department and foreign aid, those things put in place to help avoid having to go to war in the first place) seems, to me, to be incredibly short sighted.

Anyways, after 16 minutes of speechifying it was all over.  He got back on the elevator, was raised up (thankfully) to the flight deck, and then he and his merry men fwhomp fwhomp fwomphed away.

ANALYSIS and CONCLUSION

The intent of the speech was to highlight the $54 billion increase in defense spending Trump had asked for in his address to congress.  It think it was also an optics thing.  On the heels of the Tuesday speech, in which the bear managed to dance for over an hour, this should have been an easy win.  Nobody appropriates military hardware for his own grandeur while simultaneously distancing himself from responsibility of sending our military into the fight better than our President, at which the buck stops here, or there, or maybe over there.  Maybe one day he will get it.  Right now he doesn't.  A bust of Churchill in his office, indeed!

But the Ford speech was overcome by other events.  March 2nd was also the day that Jeff Sessions became fully embroiled in questions concerning his contacts with the Russian Ambassador to the point where ultimately he had to recuse himself from any further investigations over Russia, which now seem likely to continue.  As of this morning Trump tweeted that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower after the election and before the inauguration, without offering any proof of those allegations.  It's hard to know what to make of THAT, exactly.  I can conceive of various intelligence agencies doing so as part of the their own investigations, but to put that on Obama's head directly (who seemed and seems to me very, very careful to stay out of the the current fray) is bad, and only gives credence to those saying that Obama is trying to somehow have a soft coup and take over the government.  It's amazing to me how the spectre of Obama and..just the naked fear and hate so many people have of him continues to haunt our country - and maybe even our leadership.  Let it go my friends.  Just let it go.

Oh, and he also took a moment to mourn the death of  The Apprentice, which is being cancelled. Christ.  So much for looking, acting, and being Presidential.  Maybe the Bear can't dance after all.

Trump may still well get his money to rebuild the military.  But I would say that, aside from the people at Newport News Shipbuilding, this speech has already been well forgotten, a mere blip in yet another rough news cycle for a troubled administration.

Ultimately, Trump will not be judged on these sorts of silly events, but rather on what he actually does.  So far, in the grand scheme of things, he's done very little.  I fear that if he doesn't pull it together, his administration will be a full stop failure.  While it would raise the prospects of him getting voted out in four years (which so far I would support), there gets to be a point where failed leadership will hurt us all.

POST SCRIPT

Though it won't hurt my prospects for the musical I am working on, simply called "TRUMP!  The Musical".  In the Second Act, Trump goes aboard the Ford and he sits down to the round table discussion, a group of sailors sing an extended aside:

***

SAILOR ONE:  Look at that big shot over there.  

SAILOR TWO:  Yeah, look at him.

SAILOR ONE:  I mean, doesn't he know that you got to...

Music begins, sort of a peppy kind of pop rock high school musical thing

SAILOR ONE (singing):

You got to take your

Hat off in the Wardroom!

You got to take your

Hat off for chow!

You got to take your

Hat off in the Wardroom, yeah

SAILOR TWO (joining in):

You know it's so rude

And he's being so crude 

Yeah, you got to take your

SAILOR ONE, SAILOR TWO, and CHORUS:

Hat off!  Hat off!

Yeaaaahhhhh you got to take your

Hat off! Hat offfffffff......

You got to take it off!

***

It's a work in progress.  For now, I'd call it a sort of tragi-comedy.  Or is it a comi-tragedy.  Not sure.
 

President Trump Visits der Schiffkraftwerk! Part I

So yesterday we found out, via company email, that the Shipyard is going to be hosting President Donald Trump on Thursday.  As of blog time not too much is known about the visit other than he will be on the as yet to put to sea USS Gerald R. Ford and he expected to say...something.  Probably.

"Will he bringing donuts with him?" was my first question to upper management.  I still maintain that no amount of donuts would get me to vote for Donald Trump...at least for now, based on the first 40 some odd days of his administration.  But it would still be pretty cool if he was out there at 5:30 AM, handing out donuts and shaking hands.  I know I would appreciate that.  Unfortunately, based on what I know of the man, he stays up late watching cable news to see how he himself is viewed by pundits and people, and it would probably be difficult to get him up quite so early in the morning.  So much the better.  "Trump Triumph's over Adversity; Awakens early to Deliver Donuts" would be a great headline.  And it would be a great story to tell your grand kids someday, about what life was like before the war.

But more important for Trump, no doubt, is the optics of the whole thing.  How do you make someone who has heretofore served almost no cause other than himself look impressive while humbly serving at the behest of the peoples?  How do you convey to everyone that this man is the real dope shit?  How do you convince everyone that he is Big League? Simply strolling out onto the flight deck or a hangar bay might have worked for George H.W. Bush, because as a veteran of World War II and a long time public servant he already had the necessary gravitas.  But for Trump it simply will not do.  Gravitas must be upgraded into solid gold plated magnificence.  

So I imagine, in a great flash of brilliance, he looked around at his aides over lunch and said "Wait a minute now.  It's an aircraft carrier, right?"

"Well....yes sir, it is, technically."

"Why don't we put an aircraft on it?"

So hence we have Option 1, shown in Figure 1 below.  In this option, Trump lands on the flight deck of Gerald R. Ford aboard Marine One, perhaps flanked by a couple of V-22's or maybe even some Harriers, which would just be wicked awesome.  Consider your most greenest, pacifistic, cupcakey liberal alive who would just as soon take our carriers and turn them into giant floating carbon neutral hemp co-ops; I'll wager if you put them in the vicinity of a Harrier doing a vertical take off or landing, that even they would have to utter "Oh my God that is just....it's just so fucking cool!"

Figure 1:  Trump Arrives on Marine One, with Musical Accompaniment.  Harriers and/or V-22s not shown.

And of course some kind of music would be playing.  Maybe the theme from Air Force One or the opening music for "Glory" with the choir and the drums and such, while the people picked for the event stand on the flight deck with their flags and an honor guard waits at attention.  It would all be quite grand and stirring, reflecting on the magnificence of Trump, his administration, his incredible election victory, and his beautiful (and sizable, he might add) hands.

The irony in this is that Marines, piloting Marine One, Harriers and/or V-22 Ospreys, would be the first to land aircraft aboard a Ford Class Carrier, something that I am sure the Marine Corps will never let Naval Aviation ever, ever forget.

But there are some aides that remember the last time a sitting President landed on an Aircraft Carrier, and how that President's latest and greatest feat of arms devolved into a god awful shitty mess shortly thereafter.
So we have Option 2, as shown in Figure 2, in which Trump actually jumps out of Air Force One and parachutes onto the flight deck with a huge American Flag flying as various fireworks are zinging and banging through the air and the 1MC plays some variation of  "Rock Flag and Eagle" by Charlie Kelly.  Maybe with the Flying Elvises, maybe not; their loyalty to the present administration remains uncertain.

Figure 2:  Trump Arrives via Parachute and Musical Accompaniment.  Flying Elvises Not Pictured

If you question the wisdom of letting a 70 year old man jump out of a perfectly good airplane, let me remind you that Trump is in the most magnificent, most excellent health, perhaps the best health of any President ever.  Lincoln?  Constipated.  Horribly, horribly constipated.  Trump?  You can set your watch by him, like a grand old clock. He may be 70, but he feels like he's 39 (not 40 mind you, but 39, as John Oliver noted in a recent issue of Rolling Stone).  So no worries.  Trump's got this.  Just like he's got the Country.

But even parachuting out of a plane just may not be enough to really show us Trump's vision of our nation in the world.  So we at last come to Option 3, in which the mighty ship is raised out of the James River by Trump's incredible mind power, kind of like Yoda only better, and placed on a Hyuge Transporter, and wheeled at the end of a Triumphant Trump Triumph parade, with a statute of ol' "Fire on the Uproll" Trump on the bow, in full naval regalia (including the hat!), saber drawn, leading us into war and onwards to eternal victory.

Figure 3:  Trump Triumphant!

Against whom?  That, my friends, is the question, though I think I remember Bannon saying the South China Sea is awfully nice this time of year.

I'm sure excited.  As for me, my money is on Option 2.      

In Which Nick Answers 40 Stupid Questions About Himself

There is always some sort of "answer questions about yourself" thing going around on facebook, because your friends obviously don't know enough about you as it is.  Leave no stone un-turned!  Let everything come to the light!

I usually don't go for them, but I saw one today and I figured what the heck?  I've been looking for something to write about lately that isn't books or Trump, so why not myself?  It worked for Montaigne.

So, without further ado....

1. Do you like Blue Cheese?  Only if it's Blue Cheese dressing, and then only if its being dipped into by a buffalo wing.  So I guess the answer is....no, not really.

2.  Do you smoke?  About once a year I will have a cigar, provided I have forgotten they taste like shit.  About half way through I will begin to regret my decision, and wonder how I could have been fooled yet again into thinking that smoking a cigar would actually be a pleasurable experience.  So....no, not really.

3.  Do you own a gun? Maybe I do, maybe I don't.  Knock at my door at 2AM and see.

4.  What flavor Kool-Aid?  Grape.  I used to drink grape kool-aid all the time on the Appalachian Trail, double strength, enough to make YOU want to run through walls and say "Awwwww Yeah!" or whatever that dude said.

5.  Do you get nervous before a Doctor's Appointment?  Not usually, unless there are needles involved, or we are going to talk about depression and suicidal thoughts (which is never easy), or my ears are about to be irrigated, or I have to get any blood drawn, or if the visit involves dropping my pants in anyway.

So....yes.

6.  What do you think of hot dogs?  You should never put ketchup on a hot dog if you are over the age of 12.

7.  What is your favorite movie?  Well, I would normally say Master and Commander, because I find it is a movie I can watch many times and not really get tired of.  I like the feel of it, and the look of it, and the general plot.  Though the more I watch  it the more I find little things that about it that annoy me, like how the actors are trying to fake playing the cello and violin and just a couple of hitches in the acting that I think are awkward and hokey and silly.

Now, if I was judging things on purely cinematic merit, I would have to say Braveheart, which is probably the greatest movie ever made in a technical sense.  But I've soured on Mel Gibson...

Tom Hanks is always good.  Saving Private Ryan is an excellent movie, though very hard to watch.  Forrest Gump, now, my Dad thinks that is the greatest movie ever made and it's hard to disagree.  But that's HIS favorite movie and I don't really want to have a favorite movie that someone else has...it should be more unique.

So I am going to go with One Crazy Summer, where a bunch of kids fight to keep developers from building on top of their grandma's house or something like that.  Or is that Happy Gilmore?

Hmmm...

Let me get back to you on that one.

8.  What do you prefer to drink the morning?  Scotch.  Or Coffee.  But never at the same time.

9.  Can you do a push up?  I can do like 13 of them bitch, all in a row.  24 if I let me knees touch the ground.

10.  What is your favorite piece of jewelry?  I am rather partial of my wedding ring.  I got it because the pattern reminds me of the texturing in Van Gogh's paintings of Cypress Trees that he did while he was in a mental institution near Paris.

What that has to do with marriage I don't know.

11.  Do you have a hobby?  You're looking at it bucko.

12.  Do you have ADHD?  This would be a good time to insert a joke about how I am writing my answer but am then distracted by something shiny or a squirrel or something like that.  But I won't give you the satisfaction.

Though interestingly, did you know that Germans have a really tough time with the word squirrel?  It's a fact!

What were we talking about?  Oh right, I....dammit!

13.   Do you wear glasses?  Mmmm hmmm.

14.  Who was your childhood idol?  Roberto Clemente, outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3000 regular season hits.  Died trying to save others.

15.  For some reason there is no question 15, at least on the facebook feed I am looking at.  So I am not sure how to handle this one.  Let's move on to the next.

16.  Three drinks you usually drink?  Coffee.  La Croix Coconut Water.  Gypsy tears.

17.  Current Worries?  I think, when I am sitting still, I can slowly feel my teeth shifting around in my head.

18.  Things I hate?  I fucking hate Mannheim Steamroller and Trans Siberian Orchestra.  And it's because of their Christmas Music.

Trans Siberian Orchestra Christmas music is the kind of thing you would listen to if you were celebrating Christmas by attacking the Death Star or assaulting Sevastopol (which the British did, actually, during the Crimean War, thinking the fact that the soldiers were fighting on Christmas would give them a little boost in morale).  But that to me isn't Christmas.

Mannheim Steamroller because I think their music is cheesy but when you see them in a parade or something they are obviously grooving on it pretty hard.  The fact that anyone could get down to that sort of thing, could actually listen to it and say "woah man, that's far out.  You know who wrote this?  I did.  Isn't it cool?" makes me lose faith in humanity for a short time.

Mannheim Steamroller.  You'd think, considering their great success, that they would be able to afford better shoes.

19.  Favorite Place to Be?  You kidding?  Whether it's coming in at 2 AM to launch a new submarine, standing out on the shop floor waiting for something to arrive so that something can be fixed so that maybe something will happen today, or sitting hunched over a keyboard staring into the depths of a thrice rolled over spreadsheet while I take a sip from a another cup of coffee that closely resembles bunker fuel, there is no where I would rather be than working at Newport News Shipbuilding, where we build the most kick-ass ships the world has ever seen and we have a wonderful time doing it!

Why yes, I did recently apply for a promotion.  Why do you ask?

20.  How did you ring in the New Year?  I was asleep.  I didn't even try to stay awake.  My wife and I called game over at 10:30.

21.  Where would you like to go?  I've always wanted to go visit the landing sites for the Invasion of Normandy.

22.    Name three people who will do this?  Well, I know Donald Trump likes to talk about himself so I imagine he will do one, if he can sit still long enough to focus and keep his eye off the telly.  I think Don Draper from Mad Men would maybe do one but then crumple the paper in the trash before posting it.  And my neighbor Suvatjana, who comes from Upper Malakvia and doesn't speak English so good.

23.  Do you own slippers?  Fuck no.  But in spite of the emphatic negative, I think I kind of wish I did.  At least in the winter.

24.  What color is your shirt?  It's dark blue with white lettering.  Many of my shirts, actually, are dark blue with white lettering.

25.  Do you like sleeping in satin sheets?  Yes, but only in the nude.  Otherwise what's the point?

26.  Can you whistle?  I can whistle extremely well.  Annoyingly well.  Most Marickovich men, actually, can.  I've got good range, and excellent pitch.  Not very loud -- I won't be able to call a dog or get your attention from across a grassy knoll, or even cat call a beautiful woman over the clatter of Smitty's jackhammer (but who does THAT anymore).  But if you want someone to whistle the main melody lines of Bach's 3rd Keyboard Concerto in D major, with a bit of counterpoint to boot, well, I am your man.

27.  Where are you now?  Home.  What kind of a question is that?

28.  Would you be a pirate?  Depends.  If you are talking modern day Somali type pirates, then the answer is no.  If you are talking more of the Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow variety, I'd be willing to think about it if you threw in an official pirate hat.

29.  What is your favorite color?  Blue....no, wait.....AAAAAGGGHHHHHHHH!

30.  What is something you are afraid of?  Cows.  They are big, stupid, lumbering beasts that step on your toes and shit on your lunch without thinking twice, and they just stare at you with those big black eyes, eyes like a dolls eyes, and chew their cud, completely unafraid of you.  And you just wonder....what are they thinking?  Do they know that one day I am likely to be eating one of them? Are they wondering perhaps if the tables could be turned, maybe how best to serve a fillet of Marickovich - medium rare perhaps, with a side of garlic mashed potatoes, washed down with a nice beer served at a bar by a strapping bull with a trendy nose ring through his nose?  I wonder....

31.  Favorite Foods?  One of my favorite things to do is take a tortilla and wrap it around some cheese and just stick in the microwave for about 45 seconds till the cheese is all melty.  Almost any cheese will do, except for blue cheese which I think we deduced earlier I in fact do not like.

Other than that, macaroni and cheese, and peanut butter.  Not at the same time of course.

Although....

32.  What's in your pocket?  My wallet, $5, and a knife.  Everything you need to have an interesting night out.

33.  Last thing that made you laugh?  Probably a joke my co-worker told me.  But I can't remember what it was about.

34.  What is your favorite Animal?  Boom.

35.  What is your worst injury?  I rolled over my pinkie finger once playing soccer, and pretty much broke it.  Didn't seek medical attention, just got a mountain man with beaver blood on his work boots to reset it after drinking a big slug of Canadian Jack Whisky.  It turned black but I just put a little bit of Dr. Carruther's Wonder Elixir on it and after a few months the swelling went down.  Oddly, it's never been the same since.

36.  How many TV's in your house?  In reality only one.  Though every screen is a TV these days.  So if you count the smart phones, the computers, the tablets, and the TV itself....6.  Not enough really for a man cave (especially as not all of those screens are mine), but its a start.

37.  Worst Pain?  See that?  See that?  Marie Ann Moffett....she broke my heart!

38.  Do you like to dance?  Only if I am at a wedding, because everyone will remember the bride and groom and no one will remember that awkward man strutting around with his limbs all akimbo and his hips gyrating in a disturbing manner, like he was some kind of wounded bird.  The open bar, if there is one, usually helps. Otherwise, I really don't like to dance at all, much to my wife's chagrin, who is a wonderful dancer.

39. Are your parents living?  Yes, and they are well, thank you.  Though they will probably not be happy with the amount of curse words I put in this one.  But as they used to say in the back parlors of 18th century Paris...

40.  Favorite Book?  I got a lot out of The Brothers Karamazov, which I think is probably the best book ever written.  Though for sheer readability I would go with Krakauer's Into Thin Air or Harbach's The Art of Fielding.  Also would put The Crimson Petal and the White by Faber on the list. These are books I could read over and over again, which is something I don't normally do.   

But if there was a best history book category the prize would go to Fred Andersen's book about the Seven Years War, Crucible of War, which was masterful from start to finish.  Even the footnotes were worth reading.