Scott Adams, the creator of _Dilbert_ and general troll, died yesterday at the age of 68. _Dilbert_ was helpful in building my cynical resistance to the inanity of cube-farm life when I was in technical support in the 90’s. His book _The Dilbert Principle_ also had some very good ideas on how businesses should be run in a way that respects their employees. Needless to say, his advice is rarely taken. I know Adams cosplayed as a business consultant and spat out pure nonsense to sales people and executives and was taken far too seriously. I considered him a helpful troll in the hellscape of American information work. It was from this book I think I picked up the idea that your employer considers your chair more important than you. Then I gave up on him. In 2012 he publicly endorsed Mitt Romney and I didn’t see any valid reason in his arguments. I seem to remember them as being completely unreasonable. _Dilbert_ lost its fanbase and then he got diagnosed with prostrate cancer. At least he didn’t (as far as I can tell) attempt to grift millions for his hospital bills. It’s funny to think that the man he was early in his career will be missed more than the man he became, or possibly revealed himself to be. I suppose I could have been mourning for him for at least 14 years now, but I generally stopped mourning the loss of people I never knew. I don’t know if we’ll understand why he threw so much away, or if he was always like that. So I can’t say rest in peace, nor can I say good riddance. It’s a shame our medical system is more concerned with getting rich rather than helping someone fight cancer. Goodbye, Scott. You were helpful for a while, then you became a stumbling block. I’m glad I learned to walk away from people like you.

Christopher Nolan has directed a new version of _The Odyssey_. The movie comes out in July 2026 but the trailers have dropped and people are mocking it for its ahistorical costumes and setting. It was apparently filmed in Scotland, which bears little resemblance to the Mediterranean, and the costumes are not one would call historically accurate. To which I have to ask: does historical accuracy matter? A movie about real people should have historically accurate costumes and sets, but the dialog would only be flavored by it. _Hidden Figures_ was set in a real place and a real time about real people. It had to be designed to fit that. _Frost/Nixon_ was constrained by it. Even movies like _The Godfather_ constrained itself to a real time and a real place. _The Odyssey_ , however, is mythology. It is philosophy. Yes, there is historical evidence that there was a sack of Troy, so *The Iliad* is time- and place-bound, but it is also mythology. We don’t read _The Odyssey_ to learn about geography or history. We read both of these works to explore humanity, emotions like rage, freedom, loss, bravado, hubris, honor, and bravery. We read these stories for their human element and an illustration of how humans viewed divine figures. It has also proven to be a powerful connection for refugees. In 2015, Robin Bates related an anecdote from a professor teaching the work and it’s effects on the students fleeing Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. Mythological storytelling allows for a wide variation in how it is presented. St. Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scenes and they have never been historical. They have always depicted the birth story of Jesus in local clothing, with people who look like the locals. The story is important, but not historical fact. (That Jesus was born I accept as fact, but the star, shepherds, inns, and magi are mythological in my opinion.) This is true most of all in Shakespeare. I’ve been going to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for decades. _Comedy of Errors_ in the wild west or a jazz club. _Romeo and Juliet_ in the barrio. _Julius Caesar_ in the US Senate and also in a Nazi camp. The mechanicals of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ as hippies in a VW Bus and the fairies as tutu-wearing punk rockers played by men. Shakespeare is also mythological storytelling. We watch the plays to learn about being human, not about the economic struggles of a Jew in Venice. So I will refuse to wring my hands over the costumes that look more like Batman than Bronze Age. I may even decide to see the movie when it comes out. I saw it put on as a play several years ago and it was wonderfully done but I don’t recall it being historical in its costumes at all. Nolan has proven himself as a storyteller, and _The Odyssey_ is one of the big stories that fueled western civilization for a long, long time.

Today I saw an announcement from the Python Software Foundation that they were withdrawing from a National Science Fund grant because the bigotry in the White House included language like this in the grant contract: > “…do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.” Apparently there are further threats of clawing back money it feels was spent on DEI. It’s not just the money from the grant, but ALL funding in any organization that gets a grant is affected by these contracts, and presumably something the government feels they are entitled to. It always hits hard when I see such brazen examples of Newspeak. This passage is trying to do a couple of things that are downright shady. First, the basic claim that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is racist towards white people, but then to try to redefine the acronym. This is the sort of thing the fascists do. Orwell made it pretty clear that they shape language to have no permanent meaning. Doug Muder wrote about this in 2021. This sentence cannot make any sense within itself. You must not follow an ideology while adhering to an ideology. They try to escape this by claiming their ideology isn’t an ideology but “the way things are” and only ideologies deviate from the norm, but they are lying to themselves and everyone else. They can’t stick to a definition of anything, which makes any discussion with them difficult. We need to call it out for what it is: fascist bullshit.

I read comic books. I usually read the X-Men, Moon Knight, Captain Marvel, and Conan (currently at Titan). I pick up a Dark Horse title when they catch my eye. As a rule, I don’t read DC. Lord knows I’ve tried. When I could get them through the library I read the collections. Batman and Wonder Woman, mostly, with a rare Superman. I wanted to get into Green Lantern but I just couldn’t, even though Darkest Night is (on paper) my sort of jam. So why did I watch the latest Superman? I’d heard good things about it. My sister in law comes over once a week and we watch movies or TV shows. A few months ago we watched the 1978 Superman with Christopher Reeve. It was just a silly as I remembered from my childhood but even worse in storytelling. My writing experience and my general experience as an audience member left the 1978 moving lacking in so many things except the soundtrack, because John Williams is a god of music and I shan’t be convinced otherwise. The big problem (from my modern view) in the 1978 Superman is the origin takes way too long (and opens on a scene that doesn’t even appear until the second movie but that’s an editing/studio mistake). Gunn makes things very clear and easy at the start with a little reading and then lets us see Superman right after someone has kicked his ass. It worked for me. I’m tired of origin stories. Corenswet does a good job in both roles, although Clark Kent doesn’t get a lot of screen time, the few moments we have of him work. I think putting even a big guy like Corenswet it too-big clothes (those must have been a bitch to source) helped a lot, as well as the silly mop of hair he had in Kent mode. Corenswet was not instantly likeable like Reeve was. Reeve played the role with more charm and confidence, but that’s more stylistic. The character’s core problem is he’s by definition the toughest guy around so challenging him seems pointless. But here he is challenged. It is the nature of an audience to root for the guy the movie is named after, and I did feel some tension as things got progressively worse, but mostly my experience was hating ~~Jeff Bezos~~ Lex Luthor. In every shot ~~Bezos~~ Luther is clearly the biggest asshole who ever assholed. He’s nasty, mean, vindictive, and selfish. There is a movement to humanize the bad guys and Gunn, refreshingly, throws that movement out the window. There’s nothing about Luthor to like. He has wasted his life and energies and considerable talents on ruining other people because of his envy. When he tells his minions that they may have to die to do what he wants, he’s fine with that. At least he owns up to his faults, but that’s about the only thing about him that’s worth a damn. That Superman would win seemed inevitable, but I didn’t find myself cheering the ending as much, and I think the supporting cast was to blame. Not Rachel Brosnehan as Lois Lane. She was fine. She got her heroic moment and in general chose to do the right thing. No, the other metahumans were the problem. While I tend to enjoy Nathan Fillion, there is nothing about Guy Gardner that I found appealing. I understand that of all the Green Lanterns, Gardner was probably the most undeserving. We got a good chuckle of the fists overturning tanks with a middle finger, but the character sucked. He wasn’t a hero, and I think Lanterns are supposed to be different. Hawkgirl didn’t get many lines, screeched a lot, and was underdeveloped. Mr. Terrific had me thinking _Is this a real DC superhero? This guy?_ The power set was nice, but the costume was strange (who the hell wears a plastic T on their face?) and the character denied me the chance to even like him. And of course we are expected to know about them, which is a problem I’ve had with most DC movies. I’ve skipped most of them, but did end up watching a cable TV cut of Grumygus vs Superjesus: Wonder Woman ex machina, and even a Justice League where it was like, hey, here are some characters in cool costumes, the costumes are cool, right? please tell me we’re popular. There’s just so much noise in the cast I don’t know that I can bring myself to care. One of the main plot problems with the 1978 movie was having Supes spin the world backwards to reverse time. The idea that he has to be in two places at once is a good challenge for Superman, because it’s something he cannot do. This Luthor does the same thing: forces Superman to decide which of two events to deal with, and the Justice Gang has to solve one of them. Sure, it gives them a reason to be in the movie, but still … why? In worldbuilding this movie makes a lot of the same sort of mistakes the 1978 movie does. In 1978 there is the recording played to baby Kal-El where Einstein is mentioned by name. What the fuck? It’s established that a) they considered humans primitive on Krypton so why would that be the name they used, and b) the script adds that baby Kal-El was in space for hundreds of years and therefore was put in the crystal comet thing before Einstein was even born. In the 1978 movie, Luthor figures out a meteorite that landed some time ago was from the same planet as Superman because, well, I don’t know they never explained it. In 2025 Luthor manages to convince the world that a bunch of linguists can translate Kryptonian language? And then the failing of the plot itself. Luthor has a clone of Superman, and goes through all of this crap to make Superman unpopular. Dress up your clone in the blue and red and have him knock over a building, kill people, be a jerk. There was a much simpler solution. Hell, even after pushing the lie (assuming it was a lie), having his clone then try to make good on the threat of taking over Earth would have given him immediate backing to kill Superman. I guess I enjoyed the movie as long as I didn’t think about it. I did appreciate Pa Kent’s big moment: * Pa Kent: Your choices, Clark. Your actions… that’s what makes you who you are. I’ll tell you something, son… * [_starting to choke up_] * Pa Kent: I couldn’t be more proud of you. (At least, according to IMDB, that’s the quote.) I also love that Ma Kent called him Ol’ Mush. So I think I’m done thinking about Superman for a while. If you saw it, I hoped you liked it.

To my knowledge, Trump is still alive. But I’ve been thinking about what will happen if he dies in office. The Heritage Foundation has to have a plan. They’ve been planning a corporate faschist takeover of the United States for 50 years and Project 2025 was the culmination of their efforts. I’ve been wondering how long they would deny Trump’s death. I would expect some really crazy executive orders that are clearly beyond presidential authority (revoking the 14th and 19th amendments, for example) that will be signed in the days after his actual death but before we are informed about it. Then they will announce it and that the last batch of orders must be upheld as a “dying man’s wish”. THEN we’ll learn Trump was already gone before they were signed. They’re that scheming, and that stupid. At least, they think the rest of us are stupid enough to accept anything without thinking about it. Trump’s populism is hard to explain. All my life I’ve watched this man and never once did I think he was authentic about anything other than the grift. I probably learned the word grift just to understand this buffoon who kept demanding my attention and my money to buy his steaks, vodka, or university. He has never done anything to appeal to me, and until he got into politics, nothing he did affected my life. I don’t see how people could look at him and attach any positive trait like “trustworthy” or “kind” or “intelligent”. When I measure Trump against the Stoic cardinal virtues all I find are the vices. When I read through Jung’s Archetypes I only recognize him in the shadow side of the children. When I measure him against a scale from Zero to Jesus he doesn’t even get a score. I don’t get it. I don’t get how people could look on him favorably, but I’ve always been an odd duck who marches to the beat of his own drummer. However, I think Project 2025 is doomed to fail without Trump. Trump’s narcissism has forced him to surround himself with people even more stupid and incompetent than he is. No one in the administration has this strange charisma that gets people to listen. I doubt MAGA will follow Vance or Miller or the rest of them. They want, as far as I can tell, a leader who tells them their troubles are someone else’s fault and it’s okay to hate them for it. Nobody can do that like Trump. The televangelists have been trying for decades and Trump won’t let them near him. He gets the D-List televangelists who tell him he is the second coming of Christ without laughing or going up in a puff of sulfur. The news these past weeks has not impressed me with the idea that Trump is healthy. In fact, he’s never looked healthy to me at all, but he seems to have slipped from deliberately stupid to dementia in the past few weeks. Trump seems to finally understand that he will die. I think basic human mortality finally reached him. He won’t accept it, of course, because everything he values (money and egoboo) can only be found here, as far as we know. If everyone is rich in heaven, it will be torment for Trump and his ilk, because if everyone has money, you can’t have more money than anyone else, and that’s his ideal. Maybe he heard Jesus talking about building up treasures in heaven and realized he hasn’t done so. It’s more the pity that he has spent his entire life not knowing what happiness is. So when Trump does pass away, I am sure I will feel relief. The nightmare will soon be over.

1h