Various on a Tuesday

And a good Tuesday to you, Stroock's Books reader(s). We're sore after back-to-back days at the gym and are, as of this writing, sorely tempted to bail on our planned weightlifting session this afternoon.  

The inner party seems to be coalescing around Joe. We wonder about their calculus. Maybe Angkor believes they can fraud the vote no matter their candidate. Or maybe they just think they can ride out another four years of Trump preparatory to installing the next president. We hedge...we hedge...Yet another poll, the fourth by our count, shows Trump winning bigly. We admit the polls are the polls, but this blog won't believe those polls till the rightful president puts his hand on that bible. A friend and fan accuses us of being a doomer. He's right. 

In Israel, more polls show a new rightwing party led by former PM Naftalli Bennett, Gideon Sa'ar, and Avigdor Lieberman would get something like 30 seats in the Knesset. Don't get aroused, peaceniks. Liberman thinks Israel should attack Iran right now. Bear and mind that Bennett and Sa'ar are former Likudniks whom Netanyahu pissed off, and Liberman holds a deep personal hatred for the man. This super-right party would be an acceptable alternative for Stroock's Books. 

The Paper: We'd like to call attention to a pair of clips from Ron Howard's The Paper. Here is the morning office meeting, jovial, filled with cracks, quips and bad jokes. Here's the afternoon pre-deadline meeting where everyone is at each other's throats. We experienced this dynamic (on a smaller scale) firsthand writing for the Wesley College Whetstone. Everyone got along just fine in that cramped little newsroom till they didn't. The office was filled with backbiting, backstabbing, name calling. The editor (a 30 year old army and air force vet who might as well have been our dad) once threatened to kick the crap out of one of the writers for showing him up. 'Mike, I could kick your ass, fucker!' he shouted, fingers pointed. Ah, Ted, Dave, Mike, Lisa, Joy, Mandi, Karen, Phil and of course, Will. 

We awoke to see World War 1990: Norway has dropped out of the top 20 of its Amazon category but now has 15 ratings scoring 4 + stars. Reviewers seem to really like it. Not bad for a novel which we were convinced had become disjointed and over edited. We await our Norwegian friend's opinion. There will be a couple of surprises in there for him. We wink.

We didn't set aside some time to write last night, but we did spend some mental energy on War Night. This was energy not well spent.