Ain't nothin' hurt me but my back and side.

  Well, this is just fine. Not only did I let this one slip past me, but I also forgot to actually post it after writing it. It's early Wednesday morning as I speak, but you really didn't miss anything.

 I finally finished that goddamn Network of Time book. All of those pop science books that deal with general relativity, quantum mechanics, or both spend the bulk of the book rehashing all of that. Which is fair, frankly, because that is heavy stuff that changes ever-so-slightly every four or five years, completely changing the paradigm. Anyhow, by the time you get to the meat of the book, it's hard to give a good goddamn. Since whatever's the meat of the book generally hinges on that ever-so-slight change, you really can't skip it.

 Anyhow, time is a result of a network made of collapsed but intertwined quantum effects. Or something like that. To be honest, the damn thing blipped out because near the end of the book the author said, essentially, since we'll never really know the book was a waste of time. That's a problem with e-books; you lose the satisfaction of tossing a book across the room when it pisses you off.

 Don't get me wrong, I liked the book, more or less, and frankly find the idea that reality is sorta-kinda made up of a bunch of interconnected decohered states that, to my mind, make up sort of a lattice or netting. That's one of the reasons I read these books, is that it helps me come up with new versions of reality. Granted, I'll probably never do anything with it - and trust me, no one wants to hear me ramble on about it - but it's fun to think about nevertheless.

 I'm not going to bore anyone by wallowing in tired misery about being unable to gear up any fiction or, for that matter, any writing of substance beyond The News and an occasionally bright idea that finds its way here. That is a well-tread path that I'm sure no one has any interest in going back over. I will say, however, that... I don't know what I was going to say, however. Oh well. Must've not been that important.

 Changing tracks, I sometimes wonder what's behind the zeitgeist. Now I'm not one to think the vox populi is being controlled by the media or manipulated by old men with cigars behind the scenes, but it'd be foolish to think there wasn't something going on, even if indirectly. For example, I'm convinced that a good bulk of the initial animus the conservative mainstream has for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is based on someone in the media who tried and failed to get into her pants. That she refuses to shut up is the rest of it.

 That being said, I can't help but wonder what is behind the conservative movement against the COVID vaccine. I'll save it for tomorrow's (today's) News, but Tennessee has called a half to all vaccination outreach programs for school children. Not just COVID, but everything. Measles, chickenpox, everything. They still offer them, they just can't say anything about them.

 That state's in a weird place, man. The state government recently fire the doctor who was heading up its COVID program for telling people about COVID, particularly the dangers of the Delta variant. Or, in other words, they fired her for doing her job. I wonder how long it'll be before Dr. Thomas Hobbs pisses off the wrong person in Jackson and he finds himself up against it. He's not been silent about how the Delta variant is affecting kids, mainly because adults are refusing to get vaccinated.

 Okay, I understand "parental choice," sure. But they're acting like this isn't what saved millions of lives during the 20th century, within living memory. But that's the hoi polloi. I don't understand the government's goal behind this, particularly Republicans. Again, I'm not one given to flights of fancy thinking there's some sort of sinister motive behind this apart from greed and hubris. Most of the time, that's plenty.

 But still. It's weird, man, just weird.