I missed 2021’s “Best, Etc.” post without realizing it. I almost skipped this one on purpose, thinking that (aside from a wildly disappointing election) it had been a relatively uneventful year.
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On reflection, though, there were perhaps a few things worthy of note. So here is this year’s relatively unorganized sampling of 2024, as I experienced it.
Most trenchant yet amusing (pop) philosophy books
In 2012, Aaron James — following, perhaps, Harry G. Frankfurt’s example with On Bullshit — released his amusing, and surprising rigorous, Assholes: A Theory. I’ve had it on my list for awhile, but finally got around to reading it this year.
Of course, Trump appears in it, even though it was written well before the Golden Escalator ride. But even if he weren’t mentioned in the book, the echoes would have been there, just as they are when I consider On Bullshit.
James’s work seeks to define and categorize assholes, and to explain why they affect us so deeply. In the end, drawing on philosophers from Kant to Nietszche to Hobbes to Rousseau, he comes up with a pretty solid definition: a person who, as a stable aspect of his personality, consistently takes special advantages out of a sense of entitlement that “immunizes” him against the complaints of others. And we react so strongly because they make us feel unseen or invalidated — and since they’re “immune” to our complaints, this leaves us feeling angry and/or powerless.
Four years later, James wrote a follow up: Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump. It is surprisingly generous, though perhaps it seems more so now that we’ve lived through four years of incompetence, plus January 6, and all the gaslighting that’s followed. Anyway, I felt a sense of catharsis — I felt seen, perhaps — despite my generalized sense of anger and frustration at the re-election of our Once and Future Asshole.
Most fun reminder of a cool thing
I’m never sure how, but from time to time I stumble across something that raises all the nostalgic feels. In this case, it was a video that the actors in the web series The Guild put together to announce their third season (with Microsoft!). It’s really funny, and really well done… and it got me to rewatch the series on YouTube.
Back in my The best, etc., of 2020 post, I wrote about one of the earliest web series, Tiki Bar TV (whose official site unfortunately seems to have disappeared from the web). The Guild started one year later, so this is one of the OG web shows — and it’s really fun. Indeed, it’s so fun I bought the DVD complete megaset.
And I’m not even a gamer!
Favorite Comic
For this one, I think I’ll just lightly adapt my review from Goodreads:
I started Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow believing that I wouldn’t like it — that I’d find it silly, at best. But it had appeared on more than one “must-read” comics list, so I thought I’d give it a try.
I ended up loving it. Supergirl, at least in this comic, is both fun and deep in ways I’d not expected from what little exposure I’d had before. And the narrative subtly comments on superheroes and comics — though not too often, and not too self-seriously.
Above all, Bilquis Evely‘s artwork is stunning.
Most delightful read
I followed Neil Gaiman’s Twitter account for a long time — right up until he left —, and I enjoyed the mix of seriousness and glee that he displayed when talking about working on the Amazon Originals TV version of Good Omens, based on the book that he wrote with the wondrous Terry Pratchett.
Someday I’ll get around to seeing the show. I know that I loved Netflix’s Sandman, and I know that everyone who’s seen Good Omens raves about it. If Gaiman’s name is on it, let alone his active participation, I’m confident that it will be excellent.
But — even though I don’t read as much as I used to — I’m still a reader first, so I thought I’d open the copy of Good Omens that I’ve had on my shelf for far too long. (Mine is the one on the right, with the black cover.)
It was wonderful. (I can’t claim that I didn’t cast Sheen and Tennant in the main roles as I read….)
Most Read Blog Post This Year
I neglected my blog this year — this is literally my only post for 2024. Nonetheless, there are a couple posts that somehow seem to chug along: my posts about The Swirling Eddies’ “Outdoor Elvis” (2018) and my low-iodine diet (2021) continue to garner views.
However, last September’s post about my burgeoning understanding of trans issues, Late to the Party, is on its way up, with a bullet. There’ve been no “likes” or comments on it (there almost never are), but in three months it has taken (a) the top slot in views for the year, and (b) the second slot for “all time” (second only to the aforementioned low-iodine diet, which has been up for three years).
Unfortunately, about 500 total views probably isn’t going to make a lot of difference in a world where the Once and Future Asshole has promised, “with a stroke of my pen on day one,” to “stop the transgender lunacy.”
If it were just his position, that would be one thing, but he was speaking to an Arizona crowd that cheered each additional anti-trans promise: to create Executive Orders to “end child sexual mutilation” (I wonder if he includes circumcision in that….), to “get transgender out” of the military and schools, to “keep men out of women’s sports” — and to make it “the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female. Doesn’t sound too complicated, does it?”
The cruelty is the point.
(Here’s the clip, if you need to see it for yourself.)
Project I’m Most Proud Of
Several years ago, I bought a cheap guitar to work on, to practice upgrading components and, perhaps, to paint without worrying about messing up a good guitar. It was a Hamer Slammer (not, I’ve learned, to be confused with a Slammer by Hamer, which apparently is a good guitar).
For some reason, I didn’t think to take a picture of the thing before I did the work, but the picture to the left is the same guitar. It’s really not very good: the wood is soft; the neck is kind of flexible, which makes it easy to pull notes out of tune. The bridge is stationary, making intonation almost impossible. The pickups are flabby.
Even the red is ugly — much closer to a pink than the deep cherry shown here.
This summer, I finally got around to upgrading things. I replaced all the electronics, including the pickups (well, technically, I replaced pickups on another guitar and installed the hand-me-downs into this one). I replaced the bridge (poorly; if I want it to be playable, I’ll need to redo that, I think).
And I painted it, using cans of Dupli-Color spray paint designed for retouching cars. It looks pretty good overall — a little better than one one YouTuber called a “six-foot paint job” (one that looks good from about six feet away), but not by much.
I learned a lot — including how amazing paint jobs on manufactured guitars really are, both in how beautiful they look and how durable the paint is. I will need to carefully consider if I will ever try this again.
Best Musical Purchase
When I originally bought the Hamer, I figured that it would at least serve as a two-humbucker, solid-body guitar, like the ’70s tobacco burst Les Paul that I had stolen from me back in the ’90s. It really wasn’t good enough to do that, by any stretch of the imagination.
I’ve also bulked up my collection with a lot of other styles of guitar: a couple semi-hollow bodies (one a mistake, one a joy); a Les Paul-ish Gretsch with a P-90 and Filter’Tron; a very old surfer-ish guitar with gold foil single coils. Of course, I’ve also had a Strat for forever, and I was unspeakably fortunate to have been gifted a friend’s family’s Tele. I have a great range of sounds, but none of them is even close to my old Les Paul.
So I decided to cash in some Rewards Points that I’ve been hording and hunt down a replacement — not an exact replacement, as that would be pricey. But I figured I’d probably go for one of those Epiphone “Inspired by Gibson” models, as they’re more affordable and have a solid reputation. (It helps that Gibson owns Epiphone.)
I dropped in on my local music shop, Foggy Mountain Music, to see if they had any such Epiphones. They did not. They did, however, have a handful of actual Gibsons on consignment, and I walked out with a lovely 2013 honeyburst Les Paul Studio Deluxe II. Beautiful.
The only thing I’m unhappy about: I don’t know why I waited so long to replace my Les Paul. No other guitar sounds or feels like it.
Looking Forward
I feel like I’m writing this from the eye of a storm, between the disaster of November’s election and the impending disaster of Trump 2.0. I mean, it’s not really an eye; nothing is calm, since the Once and Future Asshole and his Asshole Menagerie(s) endlessly “flood the zone with shit.”1 But I can only imagine what it will be like come January 20.
I mean, we’ll manage, but I’m not exactly sure how.
I do have one thing to look forward to, at least: This upcoming semester is my last, as I’ll be retiring at the end of the school year. I am so ready for that….
Top photo by Shutter Speed on Unsplash
- Steve Bannon: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” For a good explanation of how this “manufactured nihilism” works, see Sean Illing’s explanation on Vox. (I suspect that this flooding is a contributor to my silence on the blog this year….)