Chekhov's Gun

I continue in a relatively jolly ground state, but there’s no denying that the world around me is in a really sucky state.

The official Paradise death toll is now 71; more than 1,000 people are missing and unaccounted for.

Unsecured U.S. household debt is higher than it was before the 2008 recession.

The Saudi prince tortured the journalist to death but we’re not gonna do anything about it because while other countries are dumping U.S. Treasury debt, the Saudis are actively buying.

I pop my Vitamin D and huddle under my full-spectrum light.

I think my karmic assignment is to bear witness.

I mean, yes—I have a tiny bit of influence on the world around me.

But mostly, I was chosen to sit in a corner and scribble notes.

I have no idea what happens to those notes.

But that, obviously, is my job.

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So, yesterday, I cleaned desultorily. I wrote about robo-advisory financial services, which are more interesting than you might think. I shoveled hideous white stuff from the sky!

And in the evening, I ventured forth to buy my N-95 mask.

Of course, this was the high point of my day because I got to take pix of America’s great retail wasteland, the Big Box Stores, and I also got to spy on the people who work there who are some of the most desperate, hopeless, dying-on-the-inside group of individuals I have ever laid eyes on. I think you’d see more happy faces on San Quentin’s death row.

And, of course, all around them were those ghastly Xmas decoration plus the mounting sound of those drumbeats announcing the imminent arrival of Black Friday, really the holiest of all holy days on the American calendar.

Outside the Big Box stores, the scene was suitably apocalyptic:



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Also yesterday, I ran across this photograph:



I gasped: Who are you? Why aren’t we married?

We aren’t married because that’s Anton Chekhov who died in 1904.