I saw the Pickle Rick episode of Rick & Morty last night, and all I can say is…that was pure raw genius. Short synopsis: Mad scientist Rick turns himself into a pickle to get out of a therapy appointment, and then has to construct an exoskeleton out of cockroach and rat parts save himself after falling into a sewer.

Yeah, you’re saying that sounds nuts.

Stick with it, though. It’s amazing. After this elaborate series of improbable events, Rick does finally end up with the therapist and there’s this wonderful dialogue (taken from Film Crit Hulk, which really gets into this episode):

Therapist: “Rick, why did you lie to your daughter?”

Rick: “So I wouldn’t have to come here.”

Therapist: “Why didn’t you want to come here?”

Rick: “Because I don’t respect therapy. Because I’m a scientist. Because I invent, transform, create, and destroy for a living. And when I don’t like something about the world, I change it. And I don’t think going to a rented office in a strip mall to listen to some agent of averageness explain which words mean which feelings has ever helped anyone do anything. I think it’s helped a lot of people get comfortable and stop panicking, which is a state of mind we value in the animals we eat, but not something I want for myself. I’m not a cow. I’m a pickle – when I feel like it – So… you asked.”

Therapist: “Rick. The only connection between your unquestionable intelligence and the sickness destroying your family, is that everyone in your family, you included, use intelligence to justify sickness. You seem to alternate between viewing your own mind as an unstoppable force and as an inescapable curse. And I think it’s because the only truly unapproachable concept for you is that it is your mind within your control. You chose to come here, you chose to talk, to belittle my vocation, just as you chose to become a pickle. You are the master of your universe. And yet, you are dripping with rat’s blood and feces. Your enormous mind literally vegetating by your own hand. I have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy. The same way I’m bored when I brush my teeth and wipe my ass. Because the thing about repairing, maintaining, and cleaning is – it’s NOT an adventure – There’s no way to do it so wrong you might die. It’s just… work. And the bottom line is some people are okay going to work and some people, well, some people would rather die. Each of us gets to choose.”

That last bit — after 20 minutes of unbelievable adventure and violence and exotic super-science — suddenly grounds the whole story in mundane reality and speaks of a far deeper truth than is possible with a talking pickle.

It would be good to use this cartoon in a discussion of bioethics, except that I fear students might be more distracted by the hyper-violence that comes before. But man, I know a lot of people who would nod enthusiastically to everything Rick says, and would spit on everything the therapist said…when the therapist is the one to bring some real insight.

Maintain, everyone.

I know that Elon Musk has said and done some stupid things publicly, but I had no idea that his personal life was also such a mess. His first wife, Justine Musk, has some stories to tell. It seems he regarded her as his Starter Wife, who he tried to shape into his Trophy Wife, and who he then discarded when she was sufficiently obliging.

Still, there were warning signs. As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, “I am the alpha in this relationship.” I shrugged it off, just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious. He had grown up in the male-dominated culture of South Africa, and the will to compete and dominate that made him so successful in business did not magically shut off when he came home. This, and the vast economic imbalance between us, meant that in the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold. Elon’s judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking. “I am your wife,” I told him repeatedly, “not your employee.”

“If you were my employee,” he said just as often, “I would fire you.”

He maintains that same transactional, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, and treats his assistants like disposable crap.

Here’s a good lesson for anyone thinking about asking for a raise. In his biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” author Ashlee Vance tells us what happened when Musk’s assistant, Mary Beth Brown, asked for a big raise after working for him for 12 years.

According to Business Insider:

In response, Musk told Brown to take two weeks off, during which he would assume her responsibilities and see if she was really critical to his success.

When Brown returned after two weeks, Musk told Brown he didn’t need her anymore.

Musk also told Vance that he offered Brown another position at the company, but she never returned to the office again after that.

That is also, by the way, a really out-of-character article for BoingBoing. It essentially blames Brown for asking for a raise from a billionaire, and tries to advise her on the proper way to be an indispensable corporate slave. I guess that it would also explain to Justine Musk that, despite having five kids by him, she was a terribly inadequate Starter Wife and deserved to be discarded by Musk.

That was a book that was one of those profound disappointments — I heard so much gushing over it, so much praise and enthusiasm, that I opened it with high expectations…and instead found page after poorly written page of drivel wrapped around 1980s pop trivia. It’s a crappy work of soppy nostalgia for bad computer games and bad TV and bad fiction. I read the first couple of chapters in disbelief, and then riffled through the rest looking for any redeeming qualities at all, and they just weren’t there.

So now Steven Spielberg is turning it into a movie — a sappy, treacly movie that he probably likes because it’s about his glory days and also features lots of praise for sentimental old Spielberg movies. There is so much good science fiction that could be turned into a movie, and this is what he chooses to throw millions of dollars at? I am so disappointed, and so unsurprised, since this book was a calculated attempt to cash in.

My repulsion for this book was so great that I am relieved when I see reviews that share my views — I’m not an out-of-touch weirdo after all!

Jeb Lund tears it apart at length, and he’s also not impressed with Spielberg picking it up.

Spielberg is 70 now, nearly 20 years removed from his best films and on a mostly downward trajectory from challenging work. He’s burrowed into American nostalgia, reflexive emotional cues and variations on modern myth. He couldn’t even let you walk out of Saving Private Ryan with your own conclusions about a nonfictional war, instead bookending the film with scenes that forced you to measure the worth of the story in terms that were either cloying or extortionate.

By those lights, Ready Player One might have seemed a luxury. There’s no need to fretfully anticipate how audiences will respond to the story because it’s made exclusively from preexisting stories that have already been successfully audience tested. His only job is to put his stamp on iconic elements of other movies—images, gadgets, effects and stakes already provided by the history of film and television. Spielberg finally gets to do Blade Runner without worrying about lacking the temperament to explore its alienating meditation on consciousness. (And, in any event, Cline gives him no means to either.) There are other films for him to copy and paste from anyway.

If you removed every nod, homage, riff, and instance of outright poaching from this book, it would cease to exist. Wiping the movie WarGames from the face of the earth would destroy the first act, just as doing the same to Holy Grail would annihilate the finale—both of which entail earning points for literally parroting the scripts in time. There is little of the plot—or its entirety—that can’t be condensed to a Hollywood elevator pitch. “What if The Matrix was also The Last Starfighter?”

Alex Nichols is even more brutal.

Nearly every one of Ready Player One’s faults is a direct result of Cline’s authorial narcissism. The writing process appears to have begun with the question: What if the entire world revolved around me, and the specific video games and movies I like? The rest was assembled around that essential core. Cline is far from the first author to write a self-insert wish fulfillment narrative, but he may be the first to write one this lazy and self-indulgent. To place oneself in the character of Wade Watts, an 18-year-old video game trivia knower, requires no imagined heroism or personal growth. It simply constructs a world around the reader, where his comfort zone, his passively acquired knowledge of retro video games and Star Wars, is enough to effortlessly make him a Great Man of History. A fantasy this mundane is barely a fantasy at all — just a desire to be unjustly rewarded for mediocrity. And, thanks to Steven Spielberg, Cline’s mediocrity has been rewarded beyond his wildest dreams.

I agree with both reviews of the book. I can’t imagine that the movie can improve on its awful source material, so it’s definitely one I will skip — the nausea I would feel on an attempt to cheerfully revisit the era of Reagan is unimaginable.

I had no idea there was a Morris community forum. Apparently most people don’t either, because there’s hardly anything there, and it goes for months without any entries. I’ve been missing out, though, because years ago someone found it important to discuss something I posted, Botanical Wednesday: I see it as giving the finger to the heavens. I have fans in my home town!

true beliver in god

if you belived in the higher power of this unvirst you would not be giving it the finger living in morris is like i a a point of hell with out morals of god are the belife that all man is creATED EQUEAL BY COLOR OFF SKIN AND LIFE WE WILL ALL BLEED RED BLOOD AND BE BEARD IN THE GROUND THE SAME UNDER THE SAME GOD YOU POEPLE SAY YOU BELIVE IN OPEN YOUR EYES LIFE IS SHORT LIKE THE THE BIBLE SAY LOVE THAY naborght as a he thay lord say because thay dont know ohw will are what color the person that may be thier to save your life so be kind to who you see know matter what the color of the skin be kind because you dont know when god will seen donw and angle when you need its hand to save your soul black or white are what every color it human form may be hate by color can be the end of your life but god will always love us as and equel

Uh, never mind. I’m not answering the door to anyone anymore.

Yesterday, I spent the day in Minneapolis, because my daughter and son-in-law were passing through, and we had a chance to have lunch with them, before they left me again. It’s as if they have their own life to live.

Today I’m heading home all alone because I ditched my wife at the airport. She’s flying to Spokane to go on a road trip of indeterminate duration with her sister, and without me. I have to prepare for classes.

I’m lonely already. It’s going to be just me and the evil cat for a while.

Michele Ashbaugh has this YouTube series where she interviews people while in the bathtub, and she asked me to join in, so I did. Don’t worry, we’re both only seen from the neck and shoulders up, so you’re not going to get a show.

There are others in this series, if you’re curious what people sound like when they’re naked. Turns out they still sound like ordinary people.

Last year, in hopeful anticipation of a contractor finally getting around to giving us new siding, we hacked away all the brush and shrubbery and saplings sprouting all around our house. We were disappointed: he didn’t get around to us that summer (life in a small town: limited supply of available contractors, high demand).

So this year, he has promised! We gave him a giant bucket of money! He ordered all the supplies! So we took another look at the vegetation around our house.

It had all grown back.

So this morning we’ve been out with pruning shears and weed-eater, trying to destroy the jungle. I think I need a machete and a chainsaw. Or a flamethrower. Or to call in an airstrike. Thinking about exotic plant poisons, or hiring a herd of elephants.

See, this is why I was trained as a zoologist. Plants are apparently my nemesis.

A poll was taken in 1859, and nothing has changed.

YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS. (Reading Times, 1859) pic.twitter.com/l1pIOPS7tw

— Undine (@HorribleSanity) July 27, 2017

It’s true. I too wear one to avoid being taken for an Englishman.

Coke Zero is being discontinued. Hot on the heels of this pronouncement that Like it or not, life is all about successful reproduction and nothing else really matters, I’ve lost all reason to live.