Riding The Wake

The Speed Bumps Are A Feature

I went on a short vacation last weekend to southeast Oklahoma with some friends. I say “friends” but I barely know most of them—my wife talks to them more through our homeschool group. My schedule changed at work recently so I should be able to actually make friends with the dads now.

Part of the vacation festivities involved tubing on a boat on a lake. I took a ride with my daughter, who insisted she wanted to go fast, until the tube crossed the figure-8 wake patterns and started really tossing us around. Wasn’t so bad for me, but she took a beating and tapped out, understandably.

There’s a metaphor in there, I’m not going to torture it, but basically that’s life. The bumps come and the more you ride them, the less of a bother it is. That said, it’s nice to take a rest from time to time.

Now I just have to used to a regular sleep schedule.

Reading

Finished some audiobooks, as one does, and I knocked out a few pages in SAINTS & STRANGERS, a nonfic about the Pilgrims (because of course I would.) The more you dig into these people, the more fascinating they become. I really don’t think the masses appreciate the religious turbulence of that era and why it drove Brewster’s congregation to leave Britain.

And I started the long, slow reading of Shelby Foote’s Civil War narratives. Strong start, I like what he’s got so far.

Writing

I wanted to get some good writing in over the weekend and never did. I hate losing the weekends, it’s so hard to make up for that time. Plus I got edits back on FOSSIL FORCE and I need to tackle that, so I’m putting fires out bigly. I’ll get it done, I just need more time.

Comics

Last week’s books were Spider-Man & Wolverine #4 and Transformers #23. The S&W book has had great art and a good story, with the former point being the major seller. Transformers is the real heavy-hitter, with #23 justifying a lot of seemingly oddball story beats over the last two years. Issue 24 is going to be incredible.

The guy on the cover is Ultra Magnus, not Optimus Prime. I wasn’t sure how they were using him when he first appeared in this series, but his heroic charge in issue 23 made it all make sense. Superb.

Video

One of my favorite channels is The Lore Lodge, they cover a lot of missing persons cases and I appreciate their approach to facts in their reporting. This week they released a video over seven hours long, compiling a number of reports they’ve done over the years about related disappearances in Wisconsin. I listened to it at work yesterday while languishing in 116 degree heat with gnarly humidity. This is my life.

News

The big story in my circles right now is the illegal alien trucker who did a super illegal U-turn on a highway and struck a minivan, killing three people. The attention on this story has brought similar instances to the forefront, continuing to highlight why the hell we have laws and screening in the first place, to minimize exactly this sort of thing. Not only does he not belong in this country, he doesn’t deserve a license for commercial vehicles, but the commies in California disagreed and unleashed him on our highways, resulting in the deaths of three people.

It pisses me off in particular for a number of reasons. This is obviously my bread and butter, and for 12+ years I’ve made a living by complying with strict laws that govern my usage of a CDL. It has cost me money and time and privacy, landing me in numerous government databases, and I accepted that as the cost of security in an inherently dangerous industry. But I guess that’s what I deserve for having the audacity to be born as a legal American citizen, while every excuse must be made for Harjinder Singh, who is functionally illiterate in the English language—which is how he ended up killing three people.

Here’s Singh shortly after killing three people. Look how annoyed he is. Go to hell.

It also might not be the first time he’s done something this bad in a semi-truck. There was another Harjinder Singh who wrecked a bridge in Arkansas in 2019, though I still haven’t heard confirmation as to whether it’s the same guy. The name is common among Punjabis.

Anyway, I only mention stuff like this here because the news gives me ideas for writing. When I can’t do anything else about it, I’ll put it in a story and hope people understand. It’s a plot element in one of my forthcoming novels that a family has their whole life flipped upside down when an illegal driver paralyzes the father in a car crash. More on that as it comes.

Drive safe. See you out there.