“Back to Work”
It was back to work for me this week, with Diana joining me in the workforce on Wednesday. She had a couple of extra vacation days that she might as well use. Back to work meant Christmas was over and needed to be packed up.
The special guest on the BoH Tuesday night supper club was Butch Walker. We hadn’t heard of him but he turned out to be an excellent guest – a talented musician, great guitar player, and producer, who also appeared to be a really nice guy. He is currently producing a new album for Billy Idol and described him at 63, still rolling up on a Harley with his trademark sneer. He also recently produced an album for the Wallflowers. I attempted to follow Butch on Instagram so that I could watch the guitar videos that he releases regularly – I was all set up but couldn’t figure out how to get the videos to play on my phone. A call to my social media support tech (Alicia) revealed that I had quickly identified the big issue with Instagram and posted videos – not easy to watch them on your phone. Oh well, here’s Butch trying out a new Fender guitar and rig:
My Wednesday started out poorly – had to get a dental crown. Everything went smoothly and I did pick up a good story from Dr. Toney, who initially tried to make a living as a singer, before studying dentistry. A song, “Bluer than Blue”, came on and he commented that the guy who wrote the song, Randy Goodrum, played the piano on an album he made in Nashville back in the 70s. He went on to describe Goodrum’s piano style and tell me about a number of other hits that he had written.
I did something a wee bit crazy on Thursday – started the Couch to 5K (C25K) program again. Stop yelling. I know that’s what caused me to break my leg and this time I have some very fancy shoes and will be progressing through the program very slowly and building up strength before moving to the next level. In a few months I’ll be ready to run with McD again. We did head out for a run on Saturday morning with me alternating short runs with walks and Diana doing loops around me.
Saturday afternoon was reasonably productive. I worked through a list that included troubleshooting the Ring doorbell, helping Diana to stow Christmas back in the attic, fixing the outside floodlights, checking the sprinkler heads, hanging my new painting, Campbell’s photo guitar, and the fishing rod that my Dad hand made for me years ago (finally got it from Los Gatos), and bleeding the aromatherapy system in the steam shower. After all that I was ready to test out the steam shower – working perfectly.
A new octopus appeared in my section of the bathroom. A gift that Diana picked up on our visit to Pacifica. Would you like to suggest a name for him/her?
And while we’re thinking about names, how about one for this interesting cactus that we got from Adamo and Amy? It doesn’t have any roots – you just run it under the tap once a week for a couple of minutes.
Sunday has been a quiet day so far. It’s quite cold outside and we’re having some light snowfall. Dallas proper has an inch or two of accumulation but just wet ground here. I’m settling in to watch the New Orleans Saints play the Chicago Bears in the first round of the NFL playoffs in an hour or so.
I just received some great dogs in the snow videos. Here are our Austin Wolfhound friends:
And my co-worker Nikki’s three dogs, including the 8 week old Staffordshire terrier puppy:
And then the poor baby needed to warm up:
I enjoyed “Blacktop Wasteland” by S.A. Cosby this week. The story is about Beauregard “Bug” Montage, a loving father, faithful husband, and honest mechanic, who has a criminal past – those in the underworld know him as one of the best drivers in the business. He’s been trying to lead an honest life, but everything is crumbling around him. His stack of bills and final notices is huge. His daughter needs money for college. His mother is about to be kicked out of her retirement home. Bug tries to work through it, but the shiny new car repair shop in town has cut his business in half. That’s why he can’t say no when a former associate offers him a job robbing a jewelry store. Eighty thousand for a day’s work. But nothing is ever as easy as it seems, and someone knows who did it, and it’s not the police.
Cosby understands the psychology of the criminal mind, how money can turn someone into a criminal. He knows that good people often do bad things for all the right reasons. Bug is a complicated character who’s haunted by the ghost of his father, who was also a criminal and a driver, and the mix of guilt and pleasure he feels when racing away from the scene of a crime in a souped-up car. Despite that pleasure, he’s been to prison, so he knows what’s at stake, and the only reason he gets back into the life is because financial pressures push him to it. Crime means keeping his business running, his children fed, his mother safe, and giving his daughter a chance to be better than him by going to college. Prison is scary, but the temptation of giving your children a chance silences that fear:
“He would tell himself later that he had slept on it. That he had mulled over the pros and cons and finally decided the benefits outweighed the risks. All that was true. However, in his heart he knew that when Ariel told him about skipping college, that was the moment he decided to take the job with Ronnie Sessions and hit the jewelry story.”
Racial tension is at the heart of “Blacktop Wasteland.” Cosby, a Black man from southeastern Virginia, knows racism well. He understands what it means to be Black in places where things like the use of the Confederate flag (which comes up in the novel) are still being debated today:
“Listen, when you’re black in America you live with the weight of people’s low expectations on your back every day. They can crush you right down to the goddamn ground. Think about it like it’s a race. Everybody else has a head start and you dragging those low expectations behind you. Choices give you freedom from those expectations. Allows you to cut ’em loose. Because that’s what freedom is. Being able to let things go. And nothing is more important than freedom.”
In effect, this reported statement by Trump appears to be saying that he does not need to call for peace, because in his view, his supporters are not the kind of people who cause trouble. Trump’s statement about “my people” betrays a fallacy in reasoning that has repeatedly manifested itself in the 2020 election as well as in events leading up to and continuing after it.
The “no true Scotsman” fallacy is a rhetorical device used to gain an unfair advantage in arguments when a person, lacking facts and evidence, resorts to moving the goalposts. It can be an intentional evasion, or it can arise as the unintentional product of fallacious reasoning. The following example shows how the fallacy works (and also illustrates why it is called “no true Scotsman”):
Scotty: My uncle is a Scotsman, and he puts sugar on his porridge.
Angus: But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
No True Scotsman vs. Insurrection
Applying this fallacy to Trump’s “my people” statement, one gets a hypothetical situation something like the following:
Trump: What about the other side? No one cared when they were rioting.
Aide: But, sir, rioters have breached the Capitol! We’re getting frantic calls from Senators and Representatives!
Trump: My people are peaceful. My people aren’t thugs
Brent goes on to offer a useful example closer to home:
A slightly less hostile insurrection:
D: “I’ve drunken all my champagne! K, be a Scotsman and run out for another case.”
K: “Seriously, D?! Don’t give me this ‘Scotsman’ nonsense. It’s triple overtime in the Superbowl, the Cowboys are down by 5 but sitting on their 1 with 3 seconds left…”
D: “No TRUE Scotsman would let his wife go without bubbles.”
BP: “Brawp! Brawp! Brawp!”
K: “I’ll be right back.”