“And when you’re done, when the last man’s standing on top of a pile of bloody bones, he can come over and we can work shit out,” Adam says. “What’s the endgame of capitalism, if not a big fat white man sitting on top of a pile of bloody bones with no one around him, crying because nobody’s around to make him a sandwich?” (Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, from A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear)
BOOKS
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. Originally published in 1886.
The fourth of four books contained in my Stevenson compendium, which I’ve been reading over the past several months, is his rousing adventure tale of David Balfour, whose father dies, leaving with him instructions to go Edinburgh (more or less), where he’ll stay with his uncle, who’s an unpleasant fellow. David ought to inherit the estate, because his father was the first-born (something David did not know), but his uncle arranges to have him taken away by a sea captain to the Carolinas, where he will disappear into indentured servitude (the book is set in 1751). David, of course, is shipwrecked on the western coast of Scotland, and he and the man he befriended and helped rescue on board the ship (the crew is not shy about attempting to rob people, and they try to rob him after they fish him out of the water when they accidentally hit his boat) try to get across Scotland before Johnny Law catches up with them — his companion, Alan, is a Jacobite, so the English would love to catch up with him.
You know the story, and I did read a Classics Illustrated version of this when I was but a lad, so I knew it, too. Stevenson is a fine writer, giving us a really marvelous travelogue of Scotland, as David and Alan make their way across it — the descriptive passages of the book are quite lovely. David, like most heroes, is a bit too moral for his own good, as he says what he thinks all the time, even when it might get him in trouble, but he’s still a perfectly acceptable protagonist. Alan is a bit more complex, as you might expect, and Stevenson does a nice job showing the divisions in Scottish society thanks to the ’45, which Alan kind of represents. He believes in his cause, certainly, but there’s that air of melancholy around him thanks to the disaster at Culloden and (with Stevenson’s hindsight) the fact that a Stewart never again sat on the Scottish throne. There’s also some nice class consciousness in the book — David, it turns out, is landed gentry, but he wasn’t raised that way and doesn’t act like it, as he mixes with the “lower” people in the Highlands and gains an appreciation for all kinds of folk. The ending is a bit disappointing, as David’s uncle goes quietly when he’s confronted by David and his allies, but overall, it’s a fun adventure.
So that’s all the Stevenson stuff I’m going to read for a while. I might read some others, but these have been the big ones, of course. Stevenson is a good author. Give him a look if you’ve happened to miss him in your life!
TELEVISION
The Audacity season 1 (AMC).
In a post-Silicon Valley world, it’s hard to do satires of the tech industry that don’t feel like pale shadows of that seminal show, but Jonathan Glatzer’s program does pretty well, as the show focuses on tech bros who have already conquered the world and are trying to hold onto it and also their families, which the more focused Silicon Valley did not. Billy Magnussen is the head of a data-mining company, and he’s very good as someone partially completely over his head (he’s not the smartest person at the tech side of things) and also completely in his element, as he’s ruthless and quite smart at the business side (despite his occasional idiocy), so he’s able to navigate some serious ups and downs in his fortunes. He’s seeing a therapist (Sarah Goldberg), who’s using the information she gets from her clients to engage in insider trading, and Magnusson blackmails her into helping him with his business problems. Goldberg goes along with it because she lives in Palo Alto and wants good things for her son, but she and her husband, another therapist (Paul Adelstein, who’s one of the very few quasi-decent adults on the show), don’t make enough money to live there. Zach Galifianakis is an older tech bro who comes out of semi-retirement to initially partner with Magnussen but who eventually takes over his company, so Magnussen wants revenge on him. Rob Corddry (who’s the only truly decent adult in the show) plays a Gulf War (the first one) veteran who wants Magnussen’s company to help him with a project for the VA, and that goes awry, as you might expect. Simon Helberg — good old Howard Wolowitz himself — is developing a remarkable AI, and his wife, Meaghan Rath, thinks it would be a boon to Magnussen’s/Galifianakis’s company, which it is, but not in the way Helberg expects (Helberg playing a soft spoken, somewhat philosophical dude is funny, given how obnoxious he was for so long on TBBT). A lot of the drama comes from the way the parents raise their kids, as they are all pretty terrible at it, leaving the kids — Everett Blunck (Goldberg’s son), Thailey Roberge (Helberg’s daughter), and Ava Marie Telek (Magnussen’s daughter) — somewhat adrift. It’s often very funny, as these people flounder to do things that are often quite terrible, and the show does raise a lot of questions about the kind of world these people are giving us (and what our complicity is in it, which is nice touch). One thing you can’t lose sight of is that no matter what happens to, say, Magnussen, the dude will remain rich, so some of his travails seem a bit ridiculous, because he could always just walk away and live a nice life somewhere else. The show doesn’t make it too textual (subtext! how about that!) that none of these people can walk away because they’re deranged in one way or another, but it’s there. There are some nice, quieter storylines — Corddry’s gradual disillusionment with everything, the slow corruption of Magnussen’s tech chick, Jess McLeod, who just wants to create cool stuff — but it also goes big a lot, and it’s pretty well done. I don’t love how the final episode ends with a bleak moment, because it didn’t feel quite as earned as it could have been, but such is life. The stage is set for a second season, so we’ll see where it goes.
Astrid season 4 (PBS). Sara Mortensen and Lola Dewaere continue to solve cases in Paris and have a nice friendship as we reach the fourth season (of course, the fifth season has already aired in Europe, but they had to put it on a slow boat that struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and went down with all hands, so who knows when we’ll get it!), with Raphaëlle (Dewaere) and Nico (Benoît Michel) finally getting together after some dumb, 1970s-sitcom-style hijinks and misunderstandings (which I hate; be grown-ups, you people!), while Astrid thinks about getting busy with her dude, Tetsuo (or, as he’s known to comics nerds, TETSUOOOOOOOOO!), whom we find out at the end of the season might have to go back to Japan because his visa hasn’t been renewed. Oh dear. Meanwhile, the cases continue to be intriguing — the writers mix some things up nicely, putting Commander Coste on a plane coming back from Croatia with a dangerous prisoner (and, of course, there’s a murder on the plane); sending our heroes off to Brittany for a case, which feels like the writers just wanted to a Gothic mystery; giving Raphaëlle short-term amnesia and putting her in a car with a person who’s been murdered, so she’s the prime suspect. I’m always impressed by writers for murder mysteries, because they have to just sit around in a room coming up with outlandish scenarios and then trying to create a story around it. Television murder mysteries are never that difficult to figure out, but the circumstances of the murders are often quite fun, and so they are here. Mortensen and Dewaere continue to anchor the show, as Mortensen keeps coming just a bit more out of her shell each episode, while Dewaere continues to try to find love and encourage Mortensen. It’s an excellent dynamic, and it makes the show good. Nothing spectacular, but continually good.
Patience season 2 (PBS). Someone at PBS has a sense of humor, as they put the second season of Patience on right after the fourth season of Astrid — Patience is the English-language knock-off of Astrid, so that’s fun. Ella Maisy Purvis (find me a more English hipster name, I dare you) plays Patience as far less socially awkward as Mortensen’s Astrid, but she still has problems due to her autism, and in a big change from the French show, the “Raphaëlle” role changes this season, as Laura Fraser got offered a job on Mint and left the show, getting replaced by Jessica Hynes. So early on in the season, Patience is bummed that DI Metcalf is gone, especially because DI Monroe has no time for her particular set of skills. Naturally, she comes around, but it takes a bit. The cases, as usual, are weird and interesting — there might be a vampire; a man is killed in a crowded boardroom but no one saw anything; an autistic girl is the only witness to her father’s murder, but she’s non-vocal, so Patience has to figure things out; there’s a weird murder in a monastery; Patience and Monroe are held hostage by a woman who claims she was innocent of the crime for which she was imprisoned. Patience and her boyfriend — she dates more easily than Astrid — have a nice relationship, as he’s willing to do the work but she thinks she’s too much to handle, so she dumps him, but they still dig each other, and unlike the one between Dewaere and Michel in Astrid, it doesn’t feel like shenanigans, because the participants are young and one of them is autistic. Meanwhile, Rhiannon Clements shows up as a woman trying to improve the image of the York police via social media, and Patience becomes her star (something Patience does not want and which will presumably become a problem in the next season/series). Clements is absolutely awesome, bulldozing her way through any objections anyone has and just posting things like mad (plus, her character is named Zinzi, which is just perfectly absurd). The show is set in York (and filmed there and in Belgium), so it looks neater than Astrid, as York is extremely picturesque, so that’s neat. Anyway, we’ll continue to watch it, and if the people at PBS really had stones, they’d put the next seasons of these shows back-to-back!
Grantchester season 11 (PBS). I don’t know why this show ended, whether it was ratings (doubtful) or just the cast and creators wanting it to end (probable), but it goes out well, as we get decent closure for everyone involved. Rishi Nair, whose mother showed up at the end of last season, gets some time with her to understand why she left him on the doorstep of a Christian orphanage, which makes him question if he’s really a Christian or if he would have been something completely different had she left him somewhere else (the answer to that question is “probably,” but also, “who cares?”). Robson Green gets promoted, and it seems like he’s grooming Bradley Hall to take over as DI, which is very odd as Hall’s Larry was such a doofus early on in the show, but Hall turned him into a decent and competent character. Al Weaver is still unable to settle down, as he’s doing good work with his halfway house but misses being in the church, even though his partner, Oliver Dimsdale, keeps telling him he’s doing the Lord’s work in other ways. Their relationship continues to be a very nice part of the show. Kacey Ainsworth and Tessa Peake-Jones are still running their boutique, and that comes into the plots a bit more this season, as Ainsworth is dazzled by an accountant’s efforts with their books to make them a mover in the fashion industry even though anyone can see he’s a bit of a scam artist. Melissa Johns is still the absolute best, making Larry a more sympathetic character and keeping Green’s Geordie Keating on point. Johns was pregnant during filming, and they incorporated it into the show, which is bittersweet because at the time, she wouldn’t be allowed to keep her job, and so she loses it. They give her a happy ending, though, as she goes to work in the boutique, presumably doing the books, because it’s the kind of show that gives people happy endings. There are some interesting cases — we get a few that are almost “bottle episodes,” as one is set on a train on which Nair is travelling after visiting his mother, while another is a hostage situation in the ladies’ boutique — and we get Nair dealing with some alcohol problems when his relationship with his mother turns sour and Green fights for his life at one point, but all’s well that ends well, and it remains just a pleasant, “cozy mystery” show. Despite the switching out of the co-leads from James Norton to Tom Brittney to Nair, the strength of the show has always been that the creators allow the characters to grow and change, and even the different vicars are a reflection of that. On a lot of shows, the characters remain relatively static, but on Grantchester, they did change, which is nice. It’s a nifty show.
House of the Dragon season 3 (HBO). The Game of Thrones prequel continues merrily along, as the civil war between blonde Targaryens and their allies keeps ramping up and HBO keeps throwing money at it, so it looks absolutely fantastic (lots of dragons this season — more, it feels like, than the previous two). Early on in the season, Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra simply walks into King’s Landing and takes the city while her foes are away (she does, at this point, have more dragons than the other branch of the Targaryens, so it’s a bit easier), but she discovers that actually ruling is difficult, and a lot of the season is about how shitty it is to be the queen when you aren’t just fighting for survival. Her uncle/husband, Matt Smith, wants her to rule with an iron fist, but that’s not really working, and her adviser/lover, Sonoya Mizuno, is telling her she kind of has to placate people, but that’s not working great either. The show does a nice job focusing on the “small people” — the lower classes — and this season, we get more with Kieran Bew and Tom Bennett, two bastards with Targaryen blood who were able to claim dragons, and how their concerns are somewhat at odds with Rhaenyra’s, and she ignores theirs at her peril. D’Arcy is pretty terrific, as they’re really in an impossible situation and can’t find a way out, and D’Arcy shows this really well on their face and the way they talk to others. D’Arcy’s scenes with Olivia Cooke, who betrays her sons in order to save her daughters, remain the show’s highlights, as both actors really work well against each other. Of course, Cooke’s sons — Aemond and Aegon — have their own adventures: Aemond is off doing dumb, violent things, just like Matt Smith continues to do dumb, violent things on the opposite side, while Aegon is incognito for most of the season, until he’s able to regain some of his mojo. The best addition to the season is James Norton as Ormund Hightower, who’s on Olivia Cooke’s side because the characters are cousins. Norton (the original vicar in Grantchester, see above) is terrific as this dude who effects a civilized, learned side (and he is quite learned), but turns out to be just as much of a scumbag as anyone else, despite his hilarious distaste for violence. Norton is such a joy to watch, because he’s so much fun but we also want him to die in as horrific a way as possible (and I’m certainly not going to spoil whether he dies or not, but we’re certainly rooting for it!). The effects are spectacular, the battles are intense (there’s plenty of violence, but only two big battles, which bookend the season), and things are set up nicely for the final season. That’s not bad!
The Librarians: The Next Chapter season 2 (TNT). I didn’t love the first season of this series, but it was fine, so we watched the second season, and it was a bit better than the first one. They added Dominic Monaghan as a season-long guest star — he’s Merlin, who wakes up in the modern world and decides he kind of digs it, as long as he controls it a bit. Meanwhile, there are other, usual problems: a freed genie grants wishes to everyone, even if they’re not consciously making them; Peter Pan is stirring up trouble, as you might expect (the “Peter Pan kidnaps kids” trope is played out, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong); cooking show hosts might have nefarious reasons for their show; a superhero might not want to use the thing that gives him his powers; there’s a monkey’s paw story with an interesting twist; a puppet comes to life at a resort and wreaks some havoc; a kid left alone at night in his bedroom is haunted by a demon; there’s a way to communicate with the Victorian era, so the librarians help out on a case from that time. The cases are a bit more interesting this season, and because the team is already assembled, there’s less of that “getting-to-know-you” vibe that can certainly work in a show but felt a bit off on this one. The cast is more comfortable with each other, and while none of the principals — Callum McGowan, Olivia Morris, Bluey Robinson, and Jessica Green — are what you would call powerhouse actors, the fact that they’ve built up some chemistry with each other goes a long way. Monaghan is fun, Christian Kane (who’s always fun) shows up a few times, Flula Borg (who’s always a treat when he shows up on The Rookie) is nifty as one of the cooking show hosts, and the season is fairly pleasant. The climax of the season sends the group back to Arthurian times, which is hilariously ahistorical, but what are you going to do? It’s still not a great show, but it’s getting better, which is nice.
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Let’s take a look at what I spent in these three months:
1 July: $58.09
8 July: $131.01
15 July: $133.09
22 July: $189.09
29 July: $78.90
Total for July: $590.18 (2025: $408.78; 2024: $434.13; 2023: $569.95; 2022: $740.07; 2021: $699.79)
5 August: $217.75
12 August: $76.25
19 August: $91.93
26 August: $125.71
Total for August: $511.64 (2025: $629.70; 2024: $717.26; 2023: $720.40; 2022: $1000.03; 2021: $871.59)
2 September: $73.69
9 September: $75.45
16 September: $197.77
30 September: $329.58 (!!!) (I was out of town on the 23rd, so I didn’t get my comics — it’s still a lot, but it is for two weeks)
Total for September: $676.49 (2025: $525.05; 2024: $690.42; 2023: $528.08; 2022: $862.76; 2021: $855.20)
Year to date: $5161.79 (2025: $4714.95; 2024: $5023.77; 2023: $4919.26; 2022: $8131.59; 2021: $6859.07)
Despite comics becoming more expensive, I’m holding steady with spending. I’m just getting fewer comics, which is fine with me!
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The past three months have been, well, as depressing as the previous decade, to be honest. We have had a lot more deaths than usual, it seems, which is a bummer. In the world of comics, Brian Holguin, Dave Lanphear, Roger McKenzie, Andy Fish, and Joshua Cassara have died in the past few months. Sheesh. Holguin (d. 14 Aug., aged 62) was a decent writer who wrote a lot of Spawn stuff and Aria back in the day, and came up with some interesting ideas in his own work that worked for the most part, although Holguin was never excellent. Lanphear (d. 18 Aug., aged 58) was a prolific letterer, mostly for Comicraft. McKenzie (d. 21 Aug., aged 75) wrote a lot of different things, but he’s almost solely known for being the writer of Daredevil for the first part of Frank Miller’s seminal work on the title. Fish (d. 5 Sept., aged 60 — and his middle name was Tiberius, which is pretty keen) was a pretty good artist with his wife, Veronica. I’ve read his Sabrina book and Blackwood, and they’re both very nice-looking. Cassara (d. 22 Sept., aged 46) was one of those Marvel “Stormbreakers” that they would tout in their comics but who rarely seemed to actually draw comics. He was a really good cover artist, and his work was very nice, but it would have been nice if he had had a good run on a series that we could enjoy. It’s very weird that we’ve had so many comics people die in such a short period of time, and a lot of people I’m friends with on Facebook were close to some of these people, and it’s been nice to see the tributes.
In the wider world, we’ve had some celebrity deaths that have hit people hard. Peter Cullen (d. 26 Aug., aged 85) is the most comics-adjacent, as he was the voice of Optimus Prime in the original Transformers cartoons. A few days ago, Dennis Haskins (d. 27 Sept., aged 75), who is best known as the principal on Saved By the Bell, died. Of course, the two big deaths were Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, who both died on 25 August and were both 80 years old. My secret is that I think the only Dolly song I’ve ever heard is “9 to 5,” which I heard because my mom took me and my sister to see the movie in the theater when it came out. Why my mother felt the need to see a movie with notorious Commies Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin is beyond me, but it’s a very fun and far-too-relevant movie, even today. Dolly seemed like a superb person, and one of the great things about her is she did a ton of stuff and never made a big deal about it. In a world where far too many “Christians” talk on and on about their charitable works (something the Bible tells us is not a great idea), it’s nice that Dolly just helped as many people as she could and never drew attention to herself. Curry, of course, was a wonderful chameleonic comedic actor, and he managed to embody at least three absolutely iconic roles. My daughter watches both The Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island quite a bit, and the way both actors approached the roles is worth noting: Caine said he pretended that all the muppets were human, while Curry said he simply pretended that he was a muppet, and both approaches are brilliant for what movie they were in. It’s not sad to me, as I don’t get bent out of shape about celebrity deaths and both Dolly and Curry had full lives, but it is too bad they’re gone.
The deaths of these people is sad, certainly, but it gets a bit lost in the rest of the shit. The election is fast approaching, and I have no confidence that Our Glorious Buffoon will not completely cheat to keep power, and I don’t know what anyone can do about it. I saw something that Democrats are trying to distance themselves from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because she’s too “radical,” which makes me so angry. I like Ocasio-Cortez, but I’m not crazy about her. I think she’s a pretty good politician, and the idea that she’s a crazy radical is kind of ridiculous, and the fact that Democrats still think they have to be moderate after a decade of people getting fucked in every orifice and realizing that maybe we should be a bit more socialist enrages me. The “Democrat-Socialists” seem to win elections, yet a lot of Democrats are still thinking, “Hey, we need to get those squishy people in the middle who will turn on us at a moment’s notice!” Motherfuckers. I still want the Democrats to crush the Republicans, but why they feel the need to straddle both sides of the fence when anyone even close to the right side of the fence will fuck you right over as soon as a fascist waves some nice repression in their faces baffles me.
Anyway, all is … decent? here in the desert. The shitty economy is getting to us a bit, as the rise in interest rates means that my wife’s work — mortgage underwriting — is slowing down, and we’re just hoping she doesn’t get laid off before the economy revives, which might not happen anytime soon. My daughter finally got covered by the state insurance, a process that only took a whole damned year, which means she’ll get secondary health insurance, access to day programs (she has been out of the house very little since she left school in May 2025, and she’s really bored), and access to nursing and respite care (which might be more beneficial to her parents, but still). Once she gets into a day program, I can actually work a bit more as a substitute, as it’s hard now because it’s difficult for my wife to take care of her, and she’s working anyway so she doesn’t have a ton of time. There are several jobs, but I can’t take many of them, but if Mia isn’t at home because we find a nice day program, that’s taken care of. She also really enjoys being out and about, so we hope we can find a good one.
I hope all is going well with you all. The world might suck right now, but we can all try to make the best of things! If you’re in the States and voting by mail, remember to get your ballots in early so The Great Gaseous Fascist can’t stamp them out, and if you vote in person, please do! Have a wonderful day!
