You can teach me lots of lessons. You can bring me lots of gold.

  We are on day two of the Big Freeze. Weather forecasts are saying it's supposed to get even nastier before the weekend comes. So far we've been lucky here in Enon Holler and in Mississippi in general, as there hasn't been much if any disruption in our power. It might happen in the next couple of days, though, but for now, this has mostly been a pleasant excuse to do nothing all day but nap and read. The only difference is, of course, a lack of guilt due to the outside world being iced over.

 It's been thus all over the country. That is, except in Texas. As we've all learned in the past couple of days, Texas is not part of any national power grid. Indeed, most of the state is self-contained. So, while Georgia Power, for example, might be a private business, the power lines are connected to all the rest of the power lines East of the Mississippi. There's one that covers West of the Mississippi. Fascinating stuff.

 Anyhow, Texas is all on its own because fuck you, they're Texas, and it wasn't prepared for such a vicious ice storm. Therefore, they've been without power since early Monday morning and folks there are getting pissed. Part of the reasons folks are hacked off is Texas' political leadership - Gov. Greg Abbott, Attorney General Dan Patrick, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, and Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn - have spent the last couple of years being dickholes about other state's power issues. Especially California. Wingnuts hate California. I don't know why, it's a lovely state. Expensive as hell, but lovely.

 People across the nation, no doubt tired of the shit that streams nonstop from the above-mentioned politicians, have been dickholes themselves about Texas' current deep freeze. Not cool. I mean, I live in Mississippi, which is rarely mentioned in any sort of positive connotation except for "thank god we're not as bad as Mississippi."

 That's part of the national consciousness, I guess. I grew up being told to hold the North in contempt and to look down on city folk. Living in the cities, I know they're told the same about country folk and I've been out of the South enough to hear a bunch of dumb shit people think about the South and Southerners. And I've been online long enough to be completely tired with "let the secede this time" or folks who're assholes about not living in cities.

 Anyhow. We'll thaw out by this time next week and I'm sure the state leadership of Texas will have learned absolutely nothing from this whole to-do. I'm not even sure why I'm bringing it up. I mean, it's perfectly within conservative ideology for the state to radically change the power structure because this will happen again. Not even considering global climate change, okay? You know this will happen again, just as you know Texas will be caught with its pants down again because that bunch of dingbats can't ever admit their misinterpretation of free-market capitalism might, at the very least, need a bit of tweaking here or there.

  Moving on. I have something of a quandary. I like to hype stuff here as much as possible, especially if it's art made by people who aren't getting the big bucks for it. One of the neat things about Kindle Unlimited - and yes, I know, Amazon is evil, but if there's a Hell below we're all going to go - is that it offers access to all manner of writers trying to Make It Big however writers are supposed to do it. Obviously, I don't know how that works or I'd tell them.

 What's come up is I've read a book that has a great premise but awful execution. Passably done, but cliched to the point of ossification. Seriously, when the Female Character showed her obvious attraction to the Lead Character, it was almost like an alarm going off on a clock. Once she was introduced, it was just a matter of time. Where Dead Shock seemed like it was being padded for the series' sake, this one seems like it was being unnecessarily rushed for the series' sake.

 There's nothing wrong with a self-contained book, y'all. My conundrum is whether or not to reveal the name of this book or its author. I'm not a critic anymore, so I don't see I'm doing anyone any good by pointing out what could've been better. So I'm not going to reveal any names here. I'll just say it has to do with a paramilitary strike force dealing with extra-dimensional nasties thanks to the Large Hadron Collider. That whole setup is incredibly cliched as it is, the delivery could've been a bit more original, is all I'm saying.

 So that's well over word count and I've got nothing else interesting to say. I've spent much of the Big Freeze napping and will probably go back to that. If something comes up, yadda yadda. Stay warm.