Monday Madmen

Beginning week three with Mrs. Stroock away on family business.  She's planning to return next Monday. Even the Stroocklettes are tired. It's 0712 hours and not one of them has stirred. Actually this is spring break week, so at least we won't have to worry about getting those little monsters off to school. 

We're binging Madmen. Every time we want to say Don Draper, and we just did this now, we almost say Dirk Diggler [Why am I not surprised?-Ed]. We think they're over doing the smoking thing, but when the show came out, that was a big deal. Did men really act like complete jackasses in the office? We worked in several offices and what we're seeing in Madmen was just unthinkable by the mid-90s. It's perfectly acceptable if you're Andrew Cuomo. Back in our direct-mail fundraising days, we had a very pretty co-working who wore the same dress every other Friday. [You knew it was every other Friday?-Ed] You're damn right we did. And so did she. 

We'll be transitioning [Phrasing!-Ed] to The Final Storm this week. So far we got a bunch of briefing scenes: The Tornado bomber squadron from Polish Storm, Savage and the B-2s, The Aussie F-111s, the Italian F-104 Starfighters and a squadron of Tornados, also a squadron of Israeli F-15s flying out Crimea, Samurakami planning a Japanese F-15 strike in the Far East, Task Force 60 in the Barents Sea, F-117s out of Banak in Norway....Who am I forgetting? Who do you people want to see?

In a post about an appallingly privileged Boomer author, gentlemen adventurer Adam Piggott talks about the realities of book sales. 'I decided to check out this author and see how she rates. When I hear of an author selling everything and moving to France to continue her stellar writing career, my first assumption would be that she has somewhat of a track record. A back catalogue, if you will, to keep her in French red wine and baguettes. Well, I think that my millions of readers will be shocked, truly shocked, at the news that this woman has a single book to her name. Now, yours truly has two books to his name, but the money that I make from the sales of my two blockbusters is barely enough to keep up with my underwear payments. So moving to France on those proceeds would be somewhat foolhardy, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Yet, it turns out that her one and only book is rated at #7,581,863 in Books on Amazon at the time of writing. Now my main book fluctuates between say 3,000,000 and 100,000 on that list depending on the winds of fortune. Based on those numbers I will confidently predict that she is selling around 4 books per month. Good luck with that.' One of Piggott's books has 51 reviews. That's a solid number. We wonder how much Piggott thinks his blog helps sell books.

MV Evergreen is freed but Israel remains stuck. Here's a long article from the Times of Israel about The Man who Divided Israel. The author argues that given everything, Bibi really should have eked out a win here. We know we thought so. Yet he didn't. Americans get sick of a president about midway through his second term*. 'What the electorate, in its apparent wisdom, ultimately did at the ballot box was to require Netanyahu’s opponents to prove that they really meant it when they claimed, as they did day-in, day-out on the campaign trail, that the prime minister has become inimical to Israel’s interests.' At this point we're inclined to agree. Go find something else to do, Bibi.

Monday Metal. We really got nuthin' today so here's the the staff at Cooper-Sterling enjoying the cha-cha and Chubby Checker:

*Note how we unconsciously assumed presidents get two terms. Everyone but you know who in our lifetime did. Of course, the Dems stole it.