This Week in Review: Trump, Bill O'Reilly, Aaron Hernandez, Tom Brady and Sean Spicer

Photo: from isitfunnyoroffensive.com, here (at your own risk). United's newest "passenger removal specialist."

Hey, it's been a few weeks! Mostly my absence was due to an illness that felt like a minor-league flu, but wasn't (I think). Fever up to 101 for a few days; really bad throat and ear pain; fuzzy and congested head (which I have normally anyway). I still have a lingering minor cough and fuzziness/congestion and ear pain, a few weeks and two different antibiotics later. Twice a doctor has shined a light into my right ear and said, "Whoa, there's a lot of water build-up there." Could've been worse, I could've met United's newest employee, pictured above, who calls himself a "passenger removal specialist."

Anyway, there's been a lot of crap lately to get my mind off it. Among these:

--Bill O'Reilly, who's made a (lucrative) living blowharding about "values" and telling people how to behave, has been paying off women over the last 15 years so they don't sue him for sexual harassment. To the tune of $13 million, that is, and I'll bet that's conservative. (See what I did there?) What a hypocrite! Is it me, or does it seem that everyone who makes a living telling others how they should live is a hypocritical dirtbag?

--And even then, Fox only let him go after the sponsors started pulling out. Which shows you it's, unfortunately, not about sexual harassment, but about dollars.

--By the way, O'Reilly's publisher, Henry Holt, has stated that it will still work with him. "Our plans have not changed," Holt said in an email, according to the New York Times. O'Reilly's latest best-selling book titles: Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Patton, and Killing Reagan. I am not making those up. Read into the similarities what you will, but you don't need to read books from Henry Holt Publishing anymore, right? I don't (if I do already). I don't normally advocate not reading, but we don't need to support this dirtbag. There's plenty of other things to read.

Photo: from his own Wikipedia page. 

--And in any dictionary, next to the word "smug."

--Bill O'Reilly was given a severance package as high as $25 million, by the way. Add to that the approximate $13 million Fox paid to women he sexually harassed, and that's $38 million Fox had paid to kiss his butt, not counting his actual salary. His latest contract, just recently signed, was for $18 million a year--which he won't collect. Fox had an out-clause: it was void if any new allegations and lawsuits were filed against him. Hmmm...You think Fox knew anything?

--And this is after Fox Chairman Roger Ailes had to resign over his own sexual harassment woes. Despite this, Fox was still willing to pay the money for O'Reilly and sweep him under the rug. Rather than clean house all at once, Fox was willing to let it go on.

--And Fox has been putting on conservative "news" for years about proper values and behavior. Sexually harassing women? Check. Gay marriage? No.

--Scumbags.

--Speaking of scumbags, so Aaron Hernandez was (somehow) acquitted of double-homicide, then hanged himself in his cell with a bedsheet, the same day the Super Bowl-winning Patriots visited the White House. If you think that's a coincidence, I want to drink your Kool-Aid. This is what narcissistic sociopaths do, right to the bitter end. That'll show them, he thought.

Photo: from the Huffington Post, at this website


--He also scribbled John 3:16 on his forehead. It reads: "For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in [H]im may not perish, but may have life everlasting." That's a narcissistic That'll show 'em, too. Again, all about him. That's not religious belief. That's self-importance. And power. Actual religious people are the ones not killing people. This act is an offense to every Christian out there. Narcissistic sociopaths will do anything, and believe anything, that benefits them. Unless you think he was actually seriously religious. Again, I'll take a glass of that.

Photo: Tom and Gisele, from the International Business Times, at this website. These two are so used to the limelight that they know they'll look better together if they're looking in opposite directions.

--I normally don't give a damn about the politics or beliefs of my favorite athletes, but I have to give kudos to Tom Brady, who at the last minute pulled out of a visit to the White House this week. He'll deny it was a political move, but a) Gisele posted an anti-Trump tweet this week (and as Gisele goes, Tom Brady goes); and b) Tom Brady has been quoted many times supporting Trump, speaking for him, and basically being Defense Exhibit A of why I don't care about the politics of my favorite athletes (See also: Curt Schilling). But to blow off Trump at the last second on a worldwide stage is a gutsy move, because we all know it will anger him. And it speaks very loudly, no matter what PC spin all three will put on it. I don't know why he did it (except, as Gisele goes, so does Tom Brady), but I'm glad he did. I might actually try his workout and diet plans, too. Which are really out there.

--Prince died a year ago. I can't believe I just typed that, but it's so.

Photo: from entertainment.ie, here

--There've been idiots in American politics since there's been an America, but Sean Spicer must be the most verbally handicapped one I've ever seen--and I've been keeping track since 2001. He makes Dubya look like he actually passed Yale with his own intellectual capacity. Dubya is an Oxford don next to this guy. If all the crap Spicer said before this week didn't open your eyes, drop your jaw and make you shake your head like a wet dog, surely this week's verbal diarrhea did it for you. Hitler didn't use gas?!? Holocaust centers?!? Bottom line: this is a national spokesman who cannot speak. And this doesn't just shock and awe Americans. It pisses off people across the world, including Germans, who haven't been our biggest fans since Trump refused to shake Andrea Merkel's hand, twice. What is it with this administration's problem with Jews, anyway? (Look up "Trump" and "National Holocaust Museum.") Now that O'Bannon is out, let's see what happens. If nothing does, we'll have to face the fact that it isn't just him, but the entire administration. (P.S.--It's all of them.)

Prince

I'm not one to get choked up about the passing of celebrities. The bottom line is: I don't know them. I don't feel that I do because I've listened to their music, or seen their movies--or, in the case of Prince, both.

But the passing of Robin Williams and of Prince have jolted me a bit, and I don't know why. Yes, I was a big fan of both at a critical time. I was aware of both when I was about 12, which I guess is when you consciously become a fan of somebody's, and when you decide to stick with them.

Maybe I connected to both of them in ways that I still don't quite get. I don't know. But I've been saddened a bit by the passing of both; I didn't know them, but somehow I guess I felt I did. I've been a bigger fan of others who've died, and I haven't felt the same about it. Inexplicable and depressing.

Writing Because of Music

I finished a pivotal chapter, in which my main antagonist arrives in the area.  Kept it short, too--just 2 double-spaced pages.  This WIP is movin' along.

I thought I'd write quickly on images music evokes for me before I've created something for them to go with.  In fact, the creation starts with the music that, unbidden, just jolts me into scenes and images.  They come out of nowhere.  Apocalypse came to me very suddenly when I was 14, when I heard Ravel's Bolero and Tchiakovsky's 1812 Overture (with the Russian male voices in the beginning) in the same half hour.  Tons of images flooded my head that day, I still remember it, and they haven't left me since.  I can't explain it, except you have to go with it.  I'm not yet ready to write those chapters, as they need an expertise greater than what I have right now, but they still flutter around in my consciousness every day--and with the music attached.  (If there came a day when they didn't flutter around in there, I'd write all the scenes and images immediately, calling out of work if necessary.)

So for this new novel, I have music that invokes images fit for the book, and I couldn't begin to tell you why.  A mixture of the NH mountains and Brandi Carlile bring to mind fields and mountains (or hills, or even forests) of isolation and loneliness.  I play her stuff every day and the same images and gestalt flood in.  The WIP wouldn't be the same without her.  Her melodious, strong and sad voice, with a sometimes slight or strong tinge of country, bring all this to me.

Then, more recently, I heard Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" at the end of the movie Zodiac, and each time I get visions of evil, especially when the lyrics mention that times of horror bring the Hurdy Gurdy Man and he brings times of love.  But what if it just looks that way?  I see huge fires and Death dancing in slo-mo when I hear that song, God knows why.  And the rest of Donovan doesn't work for me like all of Brandi Carlile does.

There are many more examples.  I can't explain it.  I just go with it.  I can work very well to Prince songs, don't know why.