Friday Forward

Shabbat Shalom, Stroock people. 

We awoke tired, tight and sore from the gout. Actually, we managed to get to the gym yesterday, completing another cycle of weights, cardio, and machines. As per normal we feel based, based AF. But with the residual gout we also feel gimpy. The chronic inflammation saps both energy and spirit. 

Related, and pointing out once again: 'Gout is often associated with drinking too much or not eating healthily enough, but research suggests genetics play more of a factor in developing the arthritic condition than previously thought.' Most interesting. Red meat has most certainly triggered gout for us. But sometimes it seems to pop up for no damn reason. Stress seems to be a big one for us. We already got gout, might as well drink, no?

Mrs. Stroock returned as scheduled. 

Well that was a heated exchanged in the Oval Office between Zelensky and Trump with Vance piling on. JD Vance is so awesome, we're man crushing. We admit to cringing a bit and not really knowing what to make of the whole thing. All the right people are outraged though and that is good. We didn't even know about 'the incident' till a 'furious' European friend sent us a link. Other thoughts: hey Zelensky, how about you say thank you and just shut the fuck up?

The IDF has released an initial report on October 7th. To state the obvious, the IDF was completely unprepared. They were caught by surprise and the border was undermanned.  This was a failure of intelligence but also imagination. The Israelis never thought Hamas could put together a terrorist force of thousands and storm the border.  Israel's was a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 like failure. The buck stops with Netanyahu, just as it did with FDR and W.

Oh look, FB keeps throwing ads for Irish stuff at us. Wonder why? The effort is wasted on us, though. Let's just say it'll be a while before we buy Irish. [Even beer? You're out of Smithwick's-Ed]. Uh oh. [This is so sad. You don't hate Ireland. You want to hate Ireland. You wish you hated Ireland. It's just like the French and America. The bloody frogs secretly love America-Ed]. 

DOGE report: yesterday we went through several scenes in the battle of Derry. Everything is much better. We wrote a new scene, getting some Orange Order street tuffs into the brawl. We also submitted the back text to our cover design people.