2020s
Well, I’ve gone and installed Roboto on my iPhone and it’s currently set as my main typeface in Drafts, thanks to Fontcase 2.0.
Adam’s story is worth the price of admission alone. More John Knox, please!
Rest in peace, sweet Winston. You were a very good boy.
Rest in peace, sweet Winston
Since the fall of 1991, when my fiancée-now-wife and I got a black kitten with lottery winnings, there has not been a night in our home without a pet in it. Until now.
Since early 1992—with the exception of an approximately one-month window—when we purchased a Pembroke Welsh Corgi puppy from a local breeder, there has not been a night in our home without a dog in it. Until now.
Today we said good-bye to our sweet Winston. The slow kidney failure that had plagued him for nearly a year finally caught up, and it was time to let him go.
This one hits our family a little differently than the other two dogs we've had. With our first, Linus, it was just me and my wife, no kids, and we were quite devastated when his time with us was cut short from a tumor on his stomach. Our rebound dog, a Shar-Pei/Pit bull/couple-of-other-breeds mutt, Clancy, was equally sweet, and very protective of our firstborn when we brought him home from the hospital. But Winston was the first dog who truly had his boy. And our oldest was the first of us to truly have his dog.
Winston joined our family when our oldest was four. A friend who fostered dogs for the local humane society, and lived in the same neighborhood as us, knew of our love of Corgis from Linus. She called us one day to say, "I have a Corgi at my house." She was informed we'd be over shortly. The first day was our meeting Winston; the name was one given to him by the humane society, and we liked it so we kept it. The second day was Winston meeting Clancy on neutral ground there in the neighborhood. That went well enough that the next day Winston spent the night at our house to see how he'd get along with the two cats and the general goings-on of our household. That was a Friday, and Saturday was going to be his first day of availability to be adopted from the humane society. They were having a big event at our local pet store. Winston did not make an appearance.
I will not forget the look on the humane society volunteer's face when we told her we were there to adopt a dog, she asked which one, we told her, and she got confused that we didn't have a dog with us. "Where is he?" she asked.
"At our house," I replied with a smile. And then she got the above story, we got paperwork to fill out, the humane society got a check, and we had a second dog in the house.
When it was time for this ultimate decision to be made for Winston, there were many tears from all the humans in the household, but especially from our oldest. In my wife's words, he and Winston were "two peas in a pod". Bad day at school? Go lie down with Winston for some puppy therapy. Bad game on the ice? Go lie down with Winston for some puppy therapy. Mad at your parents because you're a teenager who's trying to figure out who he is and you're bumping up against the boundaries of authority? Go lie down with Winston for some puppy therapy.
I was with Linus and Clancy each when their time came, and there was no hesitation on my part that I would do the same for Winston. I left the decision on whether he wanted to be there as well to my oldest. There was no hesitation on his part, either.
Winston rode in his boy's lap on the drive from our house to the vet's office. He stuck his nose out the window a few times to sniff the air. He got lots of love and was talked to constantly.
It took both of us to gingerly get him down from his perch on his boy's lap to the ground. He had developed arthritis in his left back leg on top of all the internal turmoil he was enduring. He had to be helped over the curb from the parking lot to the grass surrounding the office. But he spent his last moments before being led inside by a tech sniffing the ground, exploring a relatively unknown space, and dutifully doing his business and making his mark.
When the moment came, there were many tears from me and my son. There was also a new pain and sadness to consider, one I hadn't experienced with our other two dogs: the pain a parent feels seeing such sadness of loss from his child. Sadly, I know this will not be the last time for that, but such is life.
We thanked God for bringing Winston into our home. We thanked Him for the love that poured forth between this sweet little, teddy-bear puppy and the humans he shared an abode with. We offered our hope to Him that we be reunited some day.
Until that day, I will miss you, sweet Winston. I love you.
Not only was the autographed bookplate for @MansfieldWrites' latest book, Men on Fire personalized, the envelope it arrived in was hand-written as well. Thank you, sir!
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m most looking forward to the volcanic honey badgers and the bearricanes. twitter.com/TheBabylo…
“Electric Jesus followed you”
Of course, @ejesusfilm, this instantly made me think of Bride’s “Psychedelic Super Jesus”…
As an ‘80s kid who was into Christian hair metal bands big-time, I cannot wait to see this. twitter.com/tonywoodl…
My favorite pop-punk band—seriously, if the Ramones and the Go-Gos had a love child, it would be The Dollyrots—has put out an album of all the covers they’ve done, and it’s so much fun. Support an indie band giving their spin on favorite tunes!
Twenty-eight years ago today. flic.kr/p/UicS6e
On @BookstoreThor’s recommendation, I listened to @VerbalDiorama’s episode on Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. If anyone can make the objectification of Jude Law sound utterly adorable, it’s her. Must be the accent. 😉
Also, her episode on Dredd is spot on.
There’s a new episode of The Empowered Parent Podcast out! We interview foster and adoptive parent Jillana Goble about her work helping foster kids in Oregon, and her book No Sugar Coating: The Coffee Talk You Need About Foster Parenting.
You have never heard Black Sabbath’s “Changes” the way Charles Bradley performs it. Stunning and heartbreaking.
What do you get when you mashup Danzig and The Temptations? Yes, I said Danzig and The Temptations. You get “Mother Was a Rolling Stone.”
Shout out to the @EmilyBestler/@AtriaBooks/@simonschuster staffer who hand-addressed my and who knows how many other envelopes for the sweet @JackCarrUSA patch.
Retrophisch Review: The Man Who Never Was
Which brings us to The Man Who Never Was, the 16th novel in the John Milton series. Milton, who frequently goes by the nom de guerre John Smith, is formerly of Her Majesty's Special Air Service, and the ultra-black and, so far as we know, entirely fictitious Group Fifteen. Tormented by the many dirty deeds he did in service to his nation, Milton drops out of the life, gets himself into AA, and now lives attempting to balance the scales. Balancing the scales is foremost in his mind in The Man Who Never Was, where we find Milton going after the drug cartel figures he feels are responsible for the death of a friend. The novel picks up a few weeks after the previous one in the series, Bright Lights. When a damsel in distress turned out to not be entirely who she seemed, it resulted in the death of Milton's friend, Beau Baxter. Now, he wants justice for his friend, and it goes beyond the man who pulled the trigger.
Starting in the night life of Amsterdam, playing the role of an up-and-coming drug distributor, Milton, with the help of a small cadre of associates, including Beau's son, infiltrates the cartel's network. He manages to wreak a little havoc and find himself face-to-face with the boss herself in the jungles of Colombia. And it's there that Milton learns things really aren't what they seem, and the tension and action ratchet up.
If you're new to the John Milton novels, I would not recommend starting with this one. Most of the time, you can pick one up and enjoy it for what it is without having read any of the previous ones, but that is certainly not the case here. To really understand Milton's motivations, some of the characters, and the full weight of the plot, you should read the prior entry in the series. In the case of The Man Who Never Was, it is a solid brick in the John Milton wall, but not a must-read like some of the others. At some points of this book, I felt like Dawson wrote it simply because he felt he had to, due to the way he'd left things at the end of Bright Lights. Nevetheless, I enjoyed it, and cannot wait for the next John Milton adventure.
3.5/5 fins
College Memories Abound Tonight
In January 1990, the first week of the semester at LSU, my best friend, on his way home from a night class, was hit by a drunk driver. Twenty-four hours later, the head trauma Brett had sustained in the incident was too great for him to overcome. With zero brain activity being registered, his parents made the difficult decision to end the life support being provided by medical equipment, and would go on to bury the second of their two children, both killed by drunk drivers.
Brett and I met our freshman semester in August 1988, in AFROTC. We were assigned to the same flight, and along with John, formed a quick but deep bond over our love of country, LSU, and hard rock/heavy metal music. John and I, along with our friend Drew, were three of Brett's pallbearers. AFROTC Detachment 310 led the way, with participation from our Army brethren across the hall, in giving Brett full military honors, inasmuch as we were able to for a bunch of college kids. After the funeral, John and I stood in Brett's bedroom at his parents' house in Abbeville, and one of the memories John brought up was how Brett's left foot was always pounding out the bass beat when he was driving. Brett was a drummer, and it never stopped. Not when he was driving, not when he was sitting in a booth at Pizza Hut after that week's marching on the Parade Grounds, not when he was sitting and studying.
John would drop out of ROTC before I did. We gradually lost touch, connecting once or twice through the years. Drew is still a good friend; until three years ago, we had spent the previous 15 years living in the same neighborhood, two short blocks from one another. We have literally watched one another's kids grow up. And there was a fifth member in all of this, and that's Liz.
Liz was the flight commander for me, Brett, and John that first semester in AFROTC. She became a friend, a big sister none of us had ever had. Brett's brother had been older, and John and I both had younger siblings. Even as we each went our own way, Liz remained a common star we orbited around. One of the highlights, at least for me, of our family's annual trips since 2012 to Horn Creek in Colorado, is to take one day to go meet up with Liz, who lives in Colorado Springs with her family. It was Liz who, after I fell down a mountain in the Garden of the Gods in 2016, sat with me at an urgent care in Colorado Springs, waiting until I could get x-rayed and see how broken my arm was, so my wife could take our boys to get lunch. We may be able to only see one another once a year, if that, but there's Facebook for keeping up with one another, and calls and texting.
One such text came a couple of weeks ago. She was working on a spring cleaning of the house, and found a bunch of Brett's CDs she'd taken from his apartment. His parents had let those of us who wanted to take things to remember Brett by. I kept his Fudpucker's t-shirt, acquired during our base visit to Eglin AFB just the semester prior. Liz chose his music. But now they needed to go, and she wanted to know if Drew or I wanted them. Drew passed, but I accepted. Guess what arrived today?
So tonight I'm going down a rabbit hole, thanks to Ozzy, AC/DC, Van Halen—Brett loved Van Halen—and the rest. Memories of that year and half together are strong, as well as memories made after Brett's death:
- the LSU basketball game John, Drew, and I went to later that semester, meeting up at the ROTC building before heading across the Tiger Stadium parking lot to the PMAC
- seeing The Hunt for Red October in the theater with John, Liz, Drew, Marshall, and Connor (he always went by his last name)
- testifying, to no avail, at the trial of the drunk driver who killed Brett, then road-tripping to Houston to go to Astroworld with Liz, Trish, Carey, Connor, and I don't recall who else to drown our sorrows at the injustice in roller coasters and theme-park camaraderie
- the visit to England AFB in Alexandria, LA, where Carey's dad was a flight leader with the 23rd Tactical Fighter Wing; we got to go to the gunnery range and watch A-10 pilots practice their craft
- watching Star Trek: The Next Generation at Drew and Carey's apartment
- Liz's graduation party at her apartment, then her commissioning ceremony the next day
Finally, it was at Brett's funeral that a young lady in the Angel Flight auxiliary (now Silver Wings) first took note of one of the pallbearers. They would meet a couple of times over the next three months, but it was a mutual friend who set them up on their first date for the ROTC Military Ball that April. They have been together ever since.
So I will kiss my bride and raise a toast to you, Brett. Rock on, brother. Rock on.