Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am good. Well, I have a splitting headache, wait, no, had. I took a bunch of Advil and slept an extra 30 and it is fading now. Last night I decided, “you know, I feel like a whiskey I will have a whiskey” and it was probably my only whiskey of 2021. Hrm. Actually, no. I had some at my father’s funeral. But other than that. My body is not especially used to it anymore. It was delicious though, and it was awesome being a little tipsy for bed. I drunk-read the hell out of that book. But of course today I’m paying the price. Alas.
In better news, it is day 12 of my no nicotine journey and I am on Sparks album number sixteen. But I only have one or two more until I get to the ones that I’ve already heard, so that is pretty exciting. Big times. CRAZY.
Talked to my best friend from high school Frank on the phone last night. Don’t get any ideas, people, it was a one-off and I still don’t want to talk on the phone because phones are terrifying and weird intrusions into your life. But I made an exception for Frank, and we had a chat. He just won a criminal trial — he’s a defense attorney. It is insanely rare for cases to go to trial and even more rare for defendants to win them, so that is a thing. But even more of a thing is how many people have just been sitting in jail for the last year because there were no trials. This client of Frank’s couldn’t make bail, so he just sat in jail, for twenty months, for something he was ultimately acquitted of. This is happening all around the country, or was. Different rules for different states. A year with barely any trials, no mitigation of bails. Just insane. What a country that we did that and barely anyone wrote anything about it. The rich, of course, made their bails.
The sixth amendment has to be the most completely disregarded of all of the amendments. We literally just ignore the word “speedy.” The entire country does. Just a routine, universal ignoring of citizens rights and we all ignore it. Kind of amazing.
Also had a Zoom yesterday where I showed my face on screen, with a friend whom I’ve been (sort of) helping with his startup throughout most of the pandemic and he told me they got into TechStars in Portland, which is very exciting and reinforces my desire to visit all my friends in Portland, though I don’t think I’ll be doing that during TechStars, which starts next month. But someday. Portland. Where the action is.
So, I am having a bit of a spiritual crisis here and starting to think that perhaps Robert Caro got a fact wrong in his magisterial 4-volume biography of LBJ. It is a minor fact, but still somewhat alarming. It is kind of like the recent problem I discovered in Nicole Perloth’s This is How they Tell me The World Ends, wherein she claims that Dune is a book that takes place “in the near future” and on a planet “ravaged by drugs.” Of course this fact had very little to do with the substance of a book about cybersecurity, but getting such an elementary fact wrong throws you into a tizzy of doubt. If they can’t even get this easy fact wrong, what about the more substantive ones? I suspect there is nothing to this, and it should probably actually be a named fallacy, and maybe it is, but in any case, it feels real.
In Caro’s case, it involves an ashtray.
Ever since I finished volume 4 of the LBJ series and joined the ranks of those eagerly awaiting volume 5 (please make it), I have been trying to obtain an LBJ ranch ashtray, described in a scene where LBJ is giving an interview at the ranch. Maybe it was book 4. I’m not 100% sure because search is not enabled on the LBJ books on the Kindle. I mean, at least they’re on the Kindle, unlike Power Broker (mostly). ANYWAY, this ashtray was an LBJ ranch tchotchke, something you could buy in the giftshop. And — this is important — it was shaped like Texas. As I read the book, I thought to myself “well, that sounds like a fun thing to own and stick in the ‘ole knick knack library, I’ll just set up on eBay alert here and pick one up someday can’t be too expensive.” And that whole plan has more or less worked, except!
Except there are no Texas-shaped LBJ Ranch ashtrays. They all look like this:
You will notice this is not Texas-shaped.
It’s been three years since I finished Master of the Senate, and this specific design of LBJ Ranch ashtray has come up for sale a dozen times, and not once has a Texas-shaped one come up for sale.
Now, have I got back and double-checked that Caro actually said that the Ashtray was Texas-shaped? No, I have not. Do you know big that book is?
And am I definitively sure that there is no Texas-shaped LBJ Ranch ashtray? No, I am not.
But after three years, I am beginning to have a doubt.
Save me, Saint Robert!
Yesterday was my mother-in-law’s birthday. Jane made her a card, Emma got up early, Jane put on a dress that Janet had made for Emma when she was three, and we had a little mini birthday party at 10 AM. Jane looked so cute and ridiculous in this 70’s/80’s dress. And, weirdly, the dress was big on her. Janet said she was pretty sure the dress fit Emma correctly back in the day, so we are wondering if Jane is smaller than Emma. Which is weird because the doctor says she’s right at average, and it’s not like I’m introducing “small person” genes into this situation. Anyway, it was very cute.
Watched — or, rather, finished watching — The Green Knight last night. It was very good, but I really wish I had seen it in a theater, or at least on the big screen in the home theater with the lights out and paying attention, but who am I kidding I don’t have that kind of attention span at home, I need to be physically trapped in a movie theater with a bucked of popcorn to sit through a film like that in one sitting. So instead I watched it in two sittings, one while watching Jane in the evening. The film is beautiful, but I swear to god fully half the film takes place in the dark and all I could see was the reflection of the room lights in the screen and Jane playing with the LEGOs (sorry LEGO bricks) behind me. Still, though. Cool film.
OK we’re gonna cut this short today because it’s going to be gruelingly hot out today and I want to go water the plants before it feels like a hundred and six out there. Rain starts back up tomorrow so hopefully this is a one-off. I love rain. I love lamp.
Let’s do a mix. Four days of listening to nothing but Sparks has made me kind of light on the playlist backlog. But we have this swell noise and metal one ready. This one is pretty brutal, not gonna lie. Gonna be a hard listen. Not 100% sure I can recommend it but each of the songs is pretty awesome individually anyway.
I have a board meeting today, wish me luck. Hope your Tuesday goes swimmingly. Remember to floss.
LBJ had molds made for hamburgers in the shape of Texas -- maybe that's what you're thinking of?! https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Years_of_Lyndon_Johnson_Master_of_th/U87rzAqVhbwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=texas+shaped+intitle:lyndon+intitle:johnson&pg=PA426&printsec=frontcover