Pun Salad

Another fine book by Christopher Moore. This is number three of a series; the first two were Bloodsucking Fiends (read back in 2011) and You Suck (read in 2016). As you almost certainly guessed from the titles (because I can tell you are a good guesser, reader), vampirism is involved.

I don't much care for vampire books, but it's Christopher Moore, and he does a great job of infusing the genre with humor, profanity, likeable and interesting heroes, nasty villains, and unexpected sweetness. As a consumer note: if you decide to tackle the series, I don't recommend taking a span of seven years to read them. Important plot details fade on that timescale.

Many surviving characters from the previous books are here: Tommy, the aspiring writer from the Midwest, now turned undead, and trapped inside a bronze statue. But he's trapped therein with the lovely Jody, also a vampire. Unfortunately, their help might be needed because there was another cliffhanger in the previous book: Chet, the huge shaved cat, was also vampirized, and he's busy vampirizing other cats, and they've taken to terrorizing the Streets of San Francisco. Initially removing street people, mostly the homeless and hookers, but on their way to eliminating everyone.

Also present is the delightful, R-rated, teenage goth, Allison Green. She calls herself Abby Normal, and she's thrown herself into the vampire thing with a passion. She desperately wants to be one. And (small spoiler) she gets her wish. But (another small spoiler) this turns out to be a very bad idea.

A lot of fun.

• Proverbs 13:8 may be as close to a joke as Proverbs gets:

  ⁸ The rich can be sued for everything they have,
      but the poor are free of such threats.

  Oops, I'm sorry. That's "The Message". Let's go back to the more reliable NIV:

  ⁸ A person’s riches may ransom their life,
      but the poor cannot respond to threatening rebukes.

  OK, now it doesn't sound so bad to be rich, does it?

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• Novelist Jessica Knoll writes unapologetically at the NYT: I Want to Be Rich and I’m Not Sorry.

  Success, for me, is synonymous with making money. I want to write books, but I really want to sell books. I want advances that make my husband gasp and fat royalty checks twice a year. I want movie studios to pay me for option rights and I want the screenwriting comp to boot.
  
  To accomplish this, I spent months researching the publishing marketplace before sitting down to write my first book. I pushed to be the one to adapt it for the studio. Now I am working toward producing, directing or running my own show. TV is where the money is, and to be perfectly blunt about it, I want to be rich.

  I think this is the point where I'm supposed to say: "You go, girl."

  ---

• We commented yesterday on UCSD's demand for "Ideological Purity Statements" for wannabe faculty. Don Boudreaux has a pretty good response:

  If I were applying for a faculty position at the University of California at San Diego, I would boast that I spend lots of time promoting so-called “diversity” by arguing against minimum-wage legislation – legislation that inflicts disproportionate harm on low-skilled minority workers.

  It sounds crazy, but it just might… no, wait, sorry, there's no way that could work.

  But speaking of "what works": you might think that progressive academics would take a step back and take a hard look at whether all their initiatives toward "diversity" and "inclusive excellence" were actually working. Do they have any objective measures of their efficacy?

  No, of course not. They don't have much, if anything, to show for all the resources they fling at this ill-defined problem.

  Which should lead us to wonder: do they really want to "solve the problem" at all? Or are they simply interested in virtue-signalling, flaunting their saintly motives?

  It's uncharitable to believe the latter. But… well, I'm sure there's a lot of self-deception going on, too.

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• So (you may have heard) there was a White House Correspondents' Dinner, and there was a lady named Michelle Wolf who gave a talk containing a lot of … well, some say "jokes". The most tasteless were aimed at White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was in attendance. And some people are upset. But Katherine Timpf has an interesting take: Don’t Be Mad at Wolf’s Sanders Jokes if You’ve Never Been Mad at Trump.

  Sanders was visibly upset the entire time, and many people on the right rushed to her defense — saying that Wolf’s jokes were inappropriate and an outrage. Here’s the thing, though: Many of those same people have absolutely no problem with it when President Trump makes fun of people, no matter how low the blow.
  
  Yes. In case you’ve forgotten, Donald Trump also really likes to make fun of people. On the campaign trail, he referred to Marco Rubio as “Little Marco” and Jeb Bush as “low-energy Jeb.” During a debate, he readily agreed that he’d compare Rosie O’Donnell to a “fat pig,” “slob,” “dog,” and “disgusting animal.” He mocked Carly Fiorina, saying “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” During his presidency, he made fun of Mika Brzezinski, saying he once saw her “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” The list goes on and on.

  As I've been told by various people nearly my entire life: "I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed."

  Trust me: I'm easily amused. So why am I so often like Homer Simpson here?:

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• Schools are removing analogue clocks from exam halls as teenagers 'cannot tell the time'. As you can tell, from the wacky spelling of "analog", it's happening in Old Blighty, as reported in the Telegraph:

  Teachers are now installing digital devices after pupils sitting their GCSE and A-level exams complained that they were struggling to read the correct time on an analogue clock.

  Silly pupils.

  … although my kids grew up in a nearly-all digital household, and I do remember the (otherwise brilliant) Pun Daughter struggling a bit when I told her I'd pick her up somewhere at "a quarter to four" one afternoon. That's 3:45, kiddo.