Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I've written a few blogs already about minor character Mike in season 3 of Better Call Saul. While I've quipped that main character Saul hasn't appeared yet that's partly an amusing misdirection on my part.... Main character Jimmy McGill certainly has a story arc the first few episodes of season 3. It's just that he hasn't yet adopted his new name— the one we know from Breaking Bad and the one that's promised in the title of this show— Saul Goodman.

Jimmy's story in season 3 picks up from the season 2 finale, where Chuck tricked Jimmy into admitting on tape he tricked Chuck by falsifying documents. Chuck continues his manipulation of Jimmy— and other people— in 3.01 by tricking one of his company's legal assistants, into revealing information about the tape to Jimmy through Kim. Chuck, who if you recall was all high-and-mighty about "You hurt people, Jimmy, that's just what you do", seems to have absolutely no ethical problem with destroying other people's careers to punish Jimmy. He does this to provoke Jimmy into breaking into his house to steal the tape. He's so sure Jimmy will do it that he hires 24/7 security for his house, at his employer HHM's expense, to wait in his house to be witnesses when Jimmy makes his move.

In 3.02 Jimmy storms into Chuck's house demanding the tape. I caught myself talking back to the screen, "No, Jimmy, don't do that, it's wrong and it's a trap," but like teens in a horror movie following a trail of monster slobber around a blind corner, he does the stupid, self destructive thing anyway. It's part of his character that he's impulsive. And he's really pissed at Chuck for manipulating him into the confession.

You taped me?! You asshole! [...] You pulled that heartstrings con job on me?! You piece of shit! "Oh, my brain used to work, I'm sick, I don't know what to do!" Asshole! No wonder Rebecca left you! What took her so long?!

Jimmy finds the tape and destroys it. Coincidentally Chuck's law partner, Howard, is also there, hiding in the kitchen along with one of the private investigators Chuck hired to wait in his house. All three men are witnesses to Jimmy breaking in and destroying property.

Episode 3.03 picks up minutes after this. The police have been called to Chuck's house. Jimmy is being arrested. Jimmy, no stranger to what happens to criminal defendants when they're caught red-handed, goes outside to await his fate (handcuffs and a free ride in the back of a police car, followed by a night in jail) quietly. Chuck comes out to lecture him sanctimoniously:

Here's what's going to happen. The police will arrest you and I'm sorry, but I will be pressing charges. I told you there would be consequences. But I have to believe you'll face those consequences and you'll come out the other side a better man. I know it's hard to see right now. But Jimmy, this is an opportunity. That's why I'm doing this. Not to punish you. To show you... truly show you, that you have to make a change. Before it's too late. Before you destroy yourself. Or someone else. And I believe you can change. You'll find your path. And when you're ready... I will be there to help you walk that path.

Jimmy fires back at his brother:

Here's what's gonna happen. One day, you're gonna get sick again. One of your employees is gonna find you, curled up in that space-blanket, take you to the hospital, hook you up to those machines that beep and whir and hurt. And this time, it'll be too much. And you will die there. Alone.

I agree with Jimmy on this one. Though Jimmy did the crime and deserves to be punished, Chuck in his zeal to see Jimmy punished has completely discounted the years of sacrifice Jimmy made to help him. Chuck, as we've seen through various flashbacks up to this point in the series, has a lifetime of bitterness against Jimmy. He's bitter because he believes their parents loved Jimmy more than him despite him being the good son and Jimmy being the bad one. So yeah, fuck Chuck. He can die alone. In reality he'd be dead already from running  those stupid propane lanterns inside his house.

Edited to add: In episode 3.05 Chuck refers to the legal maxim, Fiat justitia ruat caelum. Translated from Latin it means, "Let there be justice though the heavens fall." How ironic it is— how self-unaware Chuck is— that he espouses this philosophy when, through his monomaniacal zeal to punish Jimmy, it's the heavens he's pulling down on his own head.

Okay, I know, I'm a week behind on catching up with speeches at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Just this evening I watched some of the highlights from Night 2, which was last Tuesday. But please— no spoilers! I haven't finished the series yet. 🤣

Night 2 featured a bunch of great speeches. Some who were made fun of even on not-rightwing programs actually did pretty good jobs. Doug Emhoff and J.B. Pritzker, I'm looking at you. Former President Barack Obama spoke; and, as usual, he was eloquent and inspiring. But even his oration paled slightly as he had the toughest act to follow. The standout speech of the night was delivered by his wife, former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Much has been made of how Michelle Obama then— in her speech to the 2016 DNC— is different from Michelle Obama now. To me the difference was like this:



Okay, Michelle didn't actually say, "Lemme tell you about this weird, orange-faced mf...." But it sure felt like it. 2024 Michelle Obama spat some fire in her speech.

It was so refreshing to hear her put aside the quote from 2016 she's so indelibly linked with, "When they go low, we go high." Because the truth is, when your opponent lies as much as hers does, you can't just talk about your noble ideals. You've got to call out selfishness, hatred, and lies for what they are.

And yeah, I'm only, like, the 10,000th person to offer a meme about Michelle Obama. But here's the other thing about everybody celebrating her taking her dragging former President Donald Trump in her speech.... Going on the attack was only a small part of her speech. Michelle Obama was uplifting and inspiring. With just the right amount of ass-kicking.

Australia Travelog #27
Valley of the Waters, NSW - Fri, 29 Dec 2023, 10:30am

The first part of our hike down into Valley of the Waters was not exactly fun. The sky was gray, casting a pall over everything. And there was lots of descent— which not only ached my injured ankle going down but made me dread the pain I'd endure climbing back up. That cast a further pall over things.

The pall of pain I couldn't do much about except grit my teeth in determination. There is no "back", only forward.

As for the pall of the gray sky... well, that's actually good for visiting waterfalls. The dimmer sky creates a more intimate atmosphere down underneath the tree canopy. Moisture on the leaves from fog or light rain makes everything glisten. And the dimmer, more even light from the overcast sky makes waterfall photography more vibrant. ...That sounds paradoxical; dimmer equals more vibrant? It's because, technically, the dimmer light makes it easier to capture the the contrast of the scene with a camera's limited range of brightness sensitivity.

Now about those waterfalls....



Empress Falls (above) was the nominal star of the trip. She's the tallest on today's trek, with the upper set of cascades being about 80' tall. I thought this lower vantage point, showing the wider, shorter lower tier made for better composition. Update: I'll come back to the upper part in my next blog.

Below Empress Falls the trail kept going down, down, down. I wasn't sure how well I could make it back up but... in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. Or, there is no "back", only forward.



I was glad I kept going forward, as Sylvia Falls is quite beautiful. At less than half the height of Empress Falls I found it more enchanting, partly because it's right there next to you. And the gentler flow of water makes it even more intimate.

Trail reports had warned us that the trail is blocked below Sylvia Falls by a landslide. We didn't see any signs of closure of danger, though, so we continued forward.



We found one more falls (above) before the trail was blocked. This falls was much smaller than the others but even more intimate. Intimate, as in you could sit right next to it.

We weren't the only ones here. A family had arrived just ahead of us. An adolescent girl posed for pictures in the water (we waited for her to finish) while her older brother snapped lots of pictures with his DSLR camera.

Keeping Australia's Kids Off Drugs

I noticed the boy balancing his camera on his dad's shoulder. "I see you've got an impromptu tripod there," I ventured. "Are you using with a neutral density filter to take slow-exposure pics?"

"Nah, I need to buy one of those next," he answered.

"What filter size does your lens take?" I asked, seeing already that it was likely the same as mine. Once we confirmed it was the same size, I offered him my 6-stop ND filter (some technical discussion in this blog and another blog it links to) to try shooting some silky water pics. He enjoyed capturing several frames and then passed the filter back to me. Well, if he got some Amazon gift certificates for Christmas, I know one thing he might want to buy now. 😅 There's an old saying, "If you want to keep your kids away from drugs, get them interested in photography. Then they'll never have money left for drugs!" 🤣

Update: On the way back up we saw an amazing sight— climbers rappelling down the face of Empress Falls!

My D&D game was on a hiatus for a few weeks due to travel around Thanksgiving week. We played again last night, Friday night. It was session 4 of my adventure, City of the Dead.

Friday's session reminded me of a funny but totally true observation about roleplaying games, about how the GM and the players influence the story:


In that vein call this week's session City of the Dead: Fool Around and Find Out Edition.



Picking up from the previous session, which the players wrapped up by killing a flock of evil, bloodthirsty zombie sheep, the group gave chase to its two mounts who'd panicked at the ravenous bleating and bolted. One PC's riding horse ironically bolted past her into the cemetery; a pack mule bolted down the old trade road... toward the haunted City of the Dead. 😱

The group split up. Because, why not? When D&D groups split up bad stuff only happens to them, like, 98% of the time. 😂

The group split 4-1. The fastest PC swung atop his horse and spurred it into a full gallop to chase the mule. He knew his mount could outrun it, even carrying him on its back. He'd trained the horse himself. The only questions were whether he'd catch the mule fast enough, before it could get into trouble, and whether it would run straight down the road or might veer off somewhere.

The Group in the Graveyard

Meanwhile the rest of the group formed up a squad and entered the cemetery. They found the runaway riding horse lying on the ground, dead, with a pair of bükken tearing off chunks of its flesh.



What are bükken? They're an undead monster I made up for my game world. They're similar to ghouls with adaptation for burrowing. They were once human but now have dried, gaunt flesh falling off exposed bones. They can burrow through dirt like fish can swim. And they're blind (no eyes) but have tremorsense that lets them determine with pinpoint accuracy anything nearby that's touching the ground and moving. Oh, and like ghouls they carry a supernatural disease that sickens victims of scratching claws. Those infected with Grave Rot waste away over a matter of days until they die... and become bükken, too!

For the posse of four PCs this encounter was no challenge. Pretty much any one of them could have destroyed these lower level monsters in their own idiom. The one fastest on the button was the cleric of the goddess of death. ...The goddess who opposes undead. He thrust forward his holy symbol and intoned. "The power of the Lady of the Grave compels you, BEGONE!" And *pffffft* the undead monsters disintegrated into dust.

Herran Gets In over his Head

Herran, the group's scout, who'd gone off on his own to chase the mule, got into deeper trouble on his own. He followed the mule's tracks to the haunted city of Graymount. The literal City of the Dead. The city that has been mysteriously cursed for over 100 years, where most who go there die and anyone and anything that remains is corrupted by evil. Yup, the scout went right into that city. 😳

Herran found the mule soon enough. There was a sinkhole in the main road through town, and the mule had fallen into it. The sinkhole was about 20' deep.

As Herran rode up to the sinkhole, the edge crumbled away beneath his horse. His horse fell into the pit, though he was able to leap to safety as the horse fell. Now there were two injured animals at the bottom of a 20' deep cavern under the road. 😰

If Herran had any sense he would have reasoned that The City of the Dead is way too dangerous to be in, alone— more powerful people have died here, alone, like literally the person they're searching for— and that there was nothing he could realistically do to get his horse out of a sinkhole by himself. But he decided to secure a rope to one of the abandoned buildings lining the road and climb down into the collapsed cave.



As Herran entered one of the builds to secure his rope to something, an unexpected monster swung into action. In D&D there's a creature type called a swarm. It's made up a large number of very small creatures but it acts as a single in combat— with some characteristics that make it very hard for low- and even mid-level characters to defeat. The rule books give examples like a swarm of bats. I made up stats for a swarm of crows.

The crows were all quietly perched on the roof edges of buildings lining both sides of the street, sitting there ominously all Alfred Hitchcock-like, until the scout entered a building. Then with an cacophony of squawking and flapping of wings they descended to harry Herran.

Herran didn't really have any attack move that could affect the swarm. That's part of the unique thing about how swarms work in D&D. Meanwhile, they could harm him. Yes, by pecking at him. And also making him nauseated. All he could really do was withdraw.

Herran backed off. The birds settled back onto their roof perches. He tried approaching the sinkhole again. This time the birds stayed perched.

As he approached the hole this second time he saw something new. Three bükken had emerged from the ground and were attacking the two animals!



Now, any normal person at this point would realize the situation in the sinkhole screams "TRAP!" But Herran was really attached to his horse. He swiftly lowered himself down the rope, Army Airborne style (climb is one of his skills), to fight for his prized steed.

Down in the hole, Herran quickly found himself in over his head... literally and figuratively. As the first three bükken killed horse and mule, a fourth emerged from the ground to attack Herran. Soon all four were attacking him. He was skilled in fighting undead (Ranger class ability Favored Enemy) but fighting 4 of them, solo, was a tall order. I was kind of nice to him and left it at 4 rather than having 2 more emerge from the ground. He barely managed to defeat the four.

I was nice to him again as he climbed out of the pit, finally having the sense to flee town and find his companions, by not having the swarm of crows attack. I'd decided anyway that the crows had particular rules for what would trigger a swarm attack, and neither emerging from a hole in the ground nor fleeing the area were not one of those things.

Herran made it back to the cemetery, grievously wounded, just as his companions exited from their adventure. It had been a bad day for horses as Meraxes's horse had died, too— also killed by bükken. It had taken the foursome split of the party just as long for their side trip as Herran's, even though they had traveled far less, as Meraxes, the nobly born mage (who attended an elite magic school in a foreign country), cried a lot over her dead horse.

To be continued....

Update: the group decides to head toward danger, entering the City of the Dead, this time together.

Recently in my newsfeed I saw yet-another "Money Doesn't Buy Happiness" article. This one is based on an interview with Barbara Corcoran, star of the TV show Shark Tank. Example coverage: CNBC article 14 Jun 2023. These stories bother me because they're almost invariably written by or about people who are a) wealthy today and b) have never really been poor.

What's my stake in it? I grew up poor. Mind you, not poor-poor, but not higher than lower-middle class. We had food on the table but couldn't afford doctor visits except in emergencies, and I regularly wore shoes with holes in them. Although I'm doing much better, financially, in life as an adult after completing an advanced degree and building a well-paying career, I don't forget where I came from. I draw on that life experience to understand the challenges that people currently in poverty face. And it pisses me off when yet-another 1%er trots out that canard that poor people should be happier because "Money doesn't but happiness".

I call it a canard because while the statement "Money can't buy happiness" is literally true, the implied meaning, the meaning that almost everyone understands, is false. Money is actually pretty important to happiness in the 21st century US.

Consider these three basic determinants of whether a person can life a happy, satisfying life:

Money is critical to having a place to live— and not just having a roof over your head from night to night, but having certainty about your living arrangements. Couch surfing, where you depend on the generosity of friends week to week or month to month, creates a lot of stress.

Money is critical to having adequate food— and again, as with housing, it's also about food security. Not knowing if you're going to have money to buy food next week, or having to choose between buying food and being late with the rent check or utilities bills again, is hard.

Money is critical to adequate health care. Yes, you can show up at a hospital emergency room and technically they have to help you, but there's a huuuge gap between getting only minimal, life-saving emergency care and getting proper health care. You might not see that difference if you're young and healthy... but wait until you're older, or think about it again when you have a chronic health condition you can't afford to address.

It's pretty darn hard to be happy (in any non-self-deluded fashion) when you don't have certainty around housing, food, and health. And the reality for genuinely poor people in the US is they don't.

Tyrion Lannister, portrayed so well by actor Peter Dinklage, has a bigger part in the story in season 6 of Game of Thrones than anytime since season 2— when he rocked. Part of the fun with seeing Tyrion is that he's witty— and not evil. Tyrion delivers some great lines in S6E2, "Home".



( Minor spoilers on the context of this great quip & two others. )

Ever since we made an enjoyable trip to Spokane and the Inland Northwest several weeks ago we've been planning to return. "Another 72 Hours" I proudly called the plan I started hatching at 35,000' on the flight home from the first trip. But 10 days later we had to cancel that plan. So we planned it again... then had to cancel it again!

Along the way I cited Douglas MacArthur's famous line, "I shall return." Well, it's time for an update:




Of course, even General MacArthur didn't return to the Philippines as fast as he wanted. It took awhile before the troops, resources, and strategy were set.

For us, our third attempt to plan this trip was foiled by rental cars being unavailable. Yesterday we looked at alternate dates and determined we could make it all work— flights, hotels, car, and time off from work— at the end of the month. So, if nothing else goes wrong between now and then, the fourth time will be a charm!

Canceling our trip to Spokane this weekend doesn't mean we won't go. It just means we didn't go this weekend. Trips that get taken off the books don't disappear; they're put back on the list of places to go next time. "I SHALL RETURN."



General Douglas MacArthur famously said those words in March 1942, after having been chased out of the Philippines by the invading Japanese army. "I came out of Bataan, and I shall return." The refrain became a rallying cry for Filipino people enduring occupation and inspired Americans on the homefront.

I'm not waging a war here but I have already planned my return to Spokane. I booked all the reservations this afternoon. ...Yes, barely 24 hours after returning from the trip we took instead of returning to Spokane!

We'll return to Spokane over the July 4th weekend. We're taking an extra day off to make it a 4-day weekend. With that extra day we'll add in another day of hiking... and it'll be at a mountain that was too snowy to get to anyway this past weekend. Extra day, extra hike; our re-planned return will be better than our originally planned return!

And while the July 4th weekend is barely over a month away, this isn't even our next trip. It's our next-next trip! In mid June we're traveling to the east coast for the wedding of two friends in New York and a week of outdoors stuff in Maine. This, too, is a trip that engendered MacArthur like stalwartness. I planned and canceled it several times last year due to Coronavirus. Eventually the grooms and I got so tired of remaking and canceling plans that I got ordained as a minister and married them myself. But the groom's family wants a big, traditional, religious ceremony and reception. That's what's in New York in two weeks.