Greetings from my Social Media Break

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, friends!

I started my social media hiatus on Friday, December 15th, which was about ten days ago. I drove up to the University of Vermont that day to pick up my eldest daughter Hannah, making it easy to leave Facebook and Twitter behind. I'd found myself getting a little too obsessed with seeing reaction to things I'd written, mostly for As For Football, over the previous months. I therefore wanted to break the habit of checking in with the world-at-large. 

Merry Christmas from Casa Cabeza!

It had gotten a little too easy to doom-scroll my way through the day, and with that had come a lot of unfiltered bullshit. Too much of what passes for opinion comes from miserable bastards looking to outsource their own unhappiness. I've missed interacting with AFF's Firstie Club, but the cold turkey approach seemed like the best thing for the moment, and here we are.

I've read quite a bit, I've listened to a few audiobooks from my local library, and I've watched a few movies. The beauty of all of this is that I've gotten to do it in the vacuum of my own space, allowing an easier place from which to form my own opinions.

Audiobooks

I've listened to three this month. These include the two most recent books from Robert Galbraith (i.e. J.K. Rowling in her guise as author of the The Strike Series) as well as Jim Butcher's Brief Cases anthology, extracted from The Dresden Files. 

I listened to the Strike books before my social media hiatus, primarily on the train ride home from the office and/or at home while doing household chores. I hadn't realized that Rowling had released two books since 2020's Troubled Blood, the book that got her canceled for her anti-trans views, nor did I agree that Troubled Blood was anti-trans, whatever Rowling's personal politics. I've long since decided not to let my politics affect my willingness to enjoy others' art and entertainment, and so I enjoyed Troubled Blood quite a bit. 

The weirdest thing about that whole thing is that there aren't any trans characters at all in the book!

Which is how we get to The Ink Black Heart, a book that serves primarily as an examination of toxic fan culture. I understand why the topic is of interest to Rowling, but I'd argue that Twitter is not a great place to set a murder mystery. Worse, I realized at some point during this book that Rowling has a real tendency to give vent to her personal sense of auteur-aggrievement in this series through ever other iteration. So all of the even-numbered books have been kind of lousy because they tend to get a little self-indulgent. On the odd-numbered books, Rowling's sense as a professional storyteller comes back to the fore and presents a ripping good murder mystery.

The Cuckoo’s Calling - A really great murder mystery set against the backdrop of upper-class London.

The Silkworm - Rowling punches down at self-publishing authors and literary dreamers.

Career of Evil - Bloody macabre mystery about a serial killer.

Lethal White - Strange book with overwhelming literary pretentions. The weakest of the series by far.

Troubled Blood - A really interesting cold case murder mystery.

The Ink Black Heart - Rowling punches down at Twitter trolls.

This brings us to the newest book, The Running Grave, which might just be the best in the series. Rowling takes on cult psychology this time, building a book that's only slightly murder mystery but mostly a straightforward paranoid thriller. This gives the book a truly fascinating structure. It's long, unfortunately, but all that length pays off. Rowling builds the moments of tension with painstaking patience, and once this thing starts delivering, it really delivers.

So. I've written all of this to tell you that I really liked The Running Grave, but I don't know that you can read it in a vacuum -- or that you should. Do with that what you will.

If you're a fan of The Dresden Files, then Brief Cases is also fun, especially in the back half. Butcher spends a lot of time with Dresden's former apprentice Molly, a fascinating, definitely underused character. But the best story is the one told from the perspective of Dresden's dog, Mouse.

Rebel Moon

I loved Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon and have been surprised by the weirdly negative reactions its gotten from movie critics. Do these guys want more recycled IP  bullshit? I mean, what were they expecting from a Zack Snyder "Star Wars" movie?

And let's be honest: this is less Zack Snyder's Star Wars movie and more his Warhammer 40K movie. The real indictment here is that only one critic even picked up that up, and he's not even a real critic!

Alan is my favorite Star Wars talking head. Yes, Star Wars talking heads are a thing! I agreed with his take completely.

While we're talking about Star Wars, I also started working my way through the 2016 Dr. Aphra series from Marvel. It's a clever deconstruction of the Original Trilogy characters and probably the best comic ever set in the Star Wars Galaxy.

New Beat-Navy-Mobile

My daughter is taking my old car back up to UVM. I therefore had to get a new car, and after a LOT of research and debate decided to lease a new Subaru Crosstrek Sport. It's gray with a gold racing stripe. 
Glorious!
There is so much crazy AI crammed into this car that it freaks me out. I actually turned down quite a bit of automation, and it's still nuts. For example, when you set cruise control, you can also set a follow-distance from cars in front of you and enable lane following, and the car will essentially drive itself. It will stay in the lane it's assigned and follow the car in front of you at whatever distance you prescribed. 
What a world.
Anyway. How are you guys doing out there?
If you're wondering, I'll be back in the Firstie Club after the New Year. Not heading back to Twitter, though, until we hit the start of Army Lacrosse season. I also have no plans to read reactions to this post, so send me a text or reply right here.
Happy New Year!