The Non-Queen's Gambit

Much like many folks during this pandemic, I've watched a lot more television.....or at least tried to. Unfortunately, the pandemic closed down the movie and production studios as well, so there hasn't been a ton of new shows to watch. As such, you get some shows that EVERYONE sees, just because there's nothing else on. Tiger King is one of those shows and yes, we watched it. But we also watched Queen's Gambit, a six episode show about an orphan chess prodigy in the 1960's. 

While only six episodes, it was an extremely compelling story about savants and how they deal with life as a savant (in whatever area, this one happened to be chess). As a child in an orphanage, the 9 year old heroine sees the janitor playing chess and eventually has him teach her how to play.  You can imagine that it starts out a little rough on her, but she catches on surprisingly fast (as you would expect from a savant) and away the story goes. 

She learns many lessons along the way and one that she learns early and that the story flashes back to a few times, is that you lose gracefully. When you are defeated, you resign. You don't play out every last move wasting people's time, you resign. You don't abruptly get up and walk away either; you tip your king or just stand up and shake your opponent's hand. We just watched the last episode last night and it struck me as a great life lesson for people of all cultures, but certainly here in the U.S. Our competitive nature is often like that of a child; play until there's no more hope instead of resigning with dignity and acknowledging your opponent.

Now, in some sports you play to the whistle as they say and that's absolutely fine. But down by 30 with 2 minutes to play in football or a similar amount in basketball or hockey, seems to make less sense. 

In politics, t-Rump continues to embarrass himself, the republican party, the presidency and the U.S. with his ridiculous, hopeless, classless lawsuits. When cornered by multiple pieces and no where to go, he opted to play it out to the last, filing some 57 lawsuits including one just the other day with the SCOTUS who has already sternly rebuffed him once. Any dignity that t-Rump had was lost probably before he did his television show, but he is clearly now showing how much of a buffoon he has always been. He would have been a reprehensible chess player. 

Giving Thanks

It’s hard to believe that there’s much to give thanks for after the year we have. Two days ago was the anniversary of Laura breaking her foot, which was the swizzle stick stirring the Molotov cocktail that would become 2020. There’s always something to be thankful for.

For instance, Laura ended up with a blood clot in her leg that was diagnosed on her final visit to the doctor for her broken foot.  Super thankful that it was discovered. The doctors, while checking for blood clots in her lungs, found out she had pneumonia. Very thankful that they discovered and treated that as well. Very thankful that we have great access to doctors.  

Having good health insurance is another thing to be thankful for as I had asymptomatic ventricular tachycardia for a long time and it flared up over the last year. After getting all sorts of scans and monitors, I think it’s because I started getting a large iced coffee in the afternoon and it had a bad effect on me. Since cutting back to a medium coffee in the afternoon, I’ve been fine! We’re also very thankful that we have solid home owner’s insurance when our sump pump and backup both failed in January.

Nobody in our family has contracted Covid-19 (yet) thankfully, despite another resurgence of the disease that’s killing 130 people a day in Illinois alone. Just awful. Our cleaning lady, neighbor and one of my business partners have all contracted it. Not fun for them. Fortunately, they have all recovered as most people do who contract it. If you’re immunocompromised though or have certain underlying ailments, there is no recovery. There’s no good time of year for all of these people to be dying, but it’s a particularly bad time of year. As I’ve said since April, we need these inexpensive, quick turnaround tests distributed and available to people as quickly as possible. If people can quickly and easily test themselves at home, they will quarantine themselves. If people don’t know if they’re sick for sure, they’re going to go about their daily routine and infect other people.

And of course we’re thankful that the slug of a human, t-Rump, has been ousted from office, despite his ongoing disbelief. Recently he actually said that he would leave office if the electoral college voted as such. NO SHIT SHERLOCK! Such an unbelievable dumbass. Every case his monkey Giuliani has presented in court fighting the election results has been thrown out for lack of evidence, most of them when they were first presented to the court with the comment from Rudy’s team that they didn’t have any actual evidence but that they believe there was fraud going on (https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-attorneys-described-giuliani-deranged-122255613.html). Nice work Rudy. Good choice t-Rump. What a clown. Now he’s pardoning anyone and everyone he can, even from prosecution for charges yet to be brought. Why? Because you know damn well he’s in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution (Saudi room rentals, et al) and likely treason for asking foreign governments to interfere with the election. He was already impeached for obstruction of congress and if not for a republican stacked senate, would have already been removed from office.  One pardon was Michael Flynn, the guy who confessed to lying to congress for t-Rump. Unbelievable.

The ability of outgoing elected officials to pardon people is a farce, always has been. Whether POTUS or Governor, it should not be allowed. It really shouldn’t be allowed AT ALL in fact, whether you’re an outgoing official or not. A court and jury have declared this person guilty and now you have, potentially, some television personality with the attention span of gnat deciding they were wrong. It’s just not the right way for a judicial system to run. At best, maybe, they should allow for another trial. At best! Even that has a negative taxpayer consequence.

On a lighter note, Santa came into my office today and said he shaved his beard, changed his glasses, shrank and oh yeah, made himself less old. Ha! Outstanding. Love that kid a ton. Oh, the non-smile was him being very matter-of-fact about his statements.