Various on a Monday

Good afternoon Stroock's Books reader(s).

The temperature climbed all the way into the 50s yesterday. Heat wave! We did some more garage cleaning and found a box with stuff from 2009. These boxes are filled with childhoods that won't come back. We were both amused and depressed. We consumed way too many carbs over the weekend. We did get back-to-back days in at the gym, weights then cardio. 

So we started posting a lot on Substack, which has a Twitter/Gab like function called Notes that compliments long form writing. We're getting 'traction' as Middle Daughter would say. Of course, this 'traction' hasn't resulted in more subscriptions or more book sales. We shall keep posting. Why not? 

The Regime let a UN resolution calling for an immediate Gaza ceasefire go through. Trump wouldn't have allowed it. Does the resolution matter? Not really. Actually the resolution also calls for the release of Israeli hostages. We asked an Arab source if the Regime's actions will help Joe with the Arab vote (because one person can speak for the entire Arab community at large). Said source didn't think so and argued that the 'damage is done'.

Moscow Massacre: The Russians just catch the perpetrators hours after the massacre?* Everything is unfolding too easily. It's all too pat. This stinks. Maybe it won't stink later. Plots within plots, we detect. We're not saying the attack was a false flag. We're not even saying the Jews did, though the imams warn they are clever. We're just saying we don't know. We once again await events. 

What Will's Watching: Game of Thrones. In 2015 we binged the first 5 seasons of GoT on the couch recovering from a cardiac catheterization. We admit it's all kind of a blur. On a whim we rewatched Episode-1 last night. Entertained, we were. We've no idea if we'll keep going. We did watch episode-2 of House of the Dragon yesterday. King Viserys is a good man but weak king. What a cataclysmic error in marrying Alicent. We admit we can't wait to see what Prince Daemon does to these crab men. They made the wrong enemy. 

Will Writes...: ...and has nothing but questions. How to write a scene where a troop of cavalry scouts rides into a Mexican town without relying on tropes? Of course tropes exist for a reason. How to make these three or four paragraphs interesting? Exit question: what is the difference between a trope and a thing that would just happen? 

Monday Metal: Cleaning out the garage, we found this:

That's a cassette case holder, purchased at the Walmart in Dover Delaware, fall '92. It's filled with mostly heavy metal awesomeness, with tapes going back to the mid 80s and all the way up to 1999 (Def Leppard's Euphoria). We've owned some of these tapes for neigh on 40 years. We don't even own a tape player anymore. Oh, the flashbacks we've had this afternoon. We remember where and when we bought most of these tapes. We think over the coming weeks we'll be posting pics for Monday Metal. These tapes were once our friends. 

*Tim McVeigh was caught hours after the Oklahoma City bombing. So who knows.