Do I need to buy a gun?

I’ve never owned a gun. I’ve never wanted one, and am actively repelled by the idea of having one in the house. I think my wife is even more opposed to the idea.

But we have this presidential debate coming up this week, and I’m not optimistic about the outcome. I’m not concerned that Trump might triumph, but that it won’t matter. We know that Trump and his campaign are making pre-emptive excuses, against a backdrop of fanatical Trump cultists who will announce him either the winner (no matter what) or if he’s beaten, that the game was rigged or Biden cheated or that Satan fooled everyone. There will be no resolution. It’s going to be a trial run for the big event in November, a mere 5 months from now.

Various right-wingers have been gleefully predicting civil war for years now. The mob still claims that Trump actually won. We had a practice insurrection on January 6th a few years ago. Imagine if Trump loses a second time — the fury of aggrieved MAGA assholes will flare up all across the country. I live in the middle of red rural America, part of a liberal university that will focus their hate, I can picture the seething rage that will rise up.

Even worse is if Trump somehow wins. He is already announcing the suspension of the rule of law and purges…and we know that education and teaching will be targeted. He loves the uneducated! I don’t want to even think about his attitude towards atheists, and how we’d be such an easy sacrifice for him to make.

So I’ve been thinking about defending myself. I might nail a few doors shut in October to make the house a little less vulnerable. I’ve got a great big picture window in the living room, will I need to board it up like a hurricane is on the way? Should I get a handgun? Or would it be more likely to be turned against us? I could probably fortify the basement fairly easily, since it has only one entrance…but that could turn it into a trap.

You can tell I’m not optimistic about the coming Fall. Maybe what I should do is pack everything up and move to Norway…or maybe Canada.

Honesty is no way to get rich

The Museum of Atlantis is opening! Take the AI-guided tour of empty rooms and missing evidence and a well-stocked gift shop.

I was a bit disappointed, though. At one point they show a gallery of promoters of the myth, featuring Graham Hancock and Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky, and you’d think they’d have learned. When there’s no evidence, just make it all up! Don’t show empty rooms, fill ’em up with dioramas and animatronics and cheap mannequins and wall signs! Learn from the modern master, Ken Ham.

I’m still reluctantly impressed at the Ark Park’s brilliant strategy of filling empty rooms with empty crates and announcing that the animals were inside.

The Museum of Atlantis could be a fabulous money-maker, all you need is imagination and a gullible public…and the US has the latter in great overwhelming masses.

‘Rawdogging’?

No, just no. I know that language evolves, but sometimes it degenerates in confusing ways. Would you believe “rawdogging” has acquired a new meaning? I know what it used to mean, but now it’s something very different, entirely harmless, and actually rather effete.

A 26-year-old Londoner named West (who asked to use only his first name) went viral in May when he posted about his decision to forgo any entertainment and pass a seven-hour trip watching the flight map. “Anyone else bareback flights?” he asked in the caption.

The concept—referred to in a vivid and perhaps unfortunate parlance as “rawdogging,” “flying raw,” and “bareback”—resonated with many in the comments on West’s TikTok page, @WestWasHere. “Yup, from London to Miami this week…pure bareback no food or water,” one wrote. “I swear barebacking flights make it go quicker,” another added.

“I’ve got DMs on Instagram like, ‘Bro, you need to teach us how to bareback flights,’” West tells GQ.

This has got to be a joke. You need to be taught how to sit quietly doing nothing on a flight?

But West and others have also come to see rawdogging flights as a kind of challenge, like the Tough Mudder or No Nut November, the goal being to see how fully participants can deprive themselves of creature comforts, up to and including free snack and drinks and even bathroom visits. A true rawdogger takes no indulgences.

Wait…I usually take the cheapest flight I can get, with few entertainment options, and since the pandemic I don’t take my mask off for the entire flight. I’m a rawdogger now? I thought I just wanted to avoid catching a disease.

It begins. Again.

I’ve been away this weekend. I walked back into the lab a short while ago, and here’s what I found.

A Parasteatoda egg sac had hatched out.

A second Parasteatoda egg sac hatched.

And another black widow produced a third egg sac.

Ooof. I know what I’m doing tomorrow.

The real mission

I lied. We weren’t on a spider-hunting trip this weekend. We were visiting our granddaughter and delivering a bicycle. She took to it enthusiastically, and was pedaling all over her neighborhood with us chasing after.

“We” meaning the crotchety, rickety old grandparents, because Iliana’s mom is still recovering. Skatje has some titanium screws holding her tibia together and her patella is somehow secured in position, and there’s an awesome long vertical scar over her shin, so she can’t keep up. We contributed by bringing her daughter a rapid transport device and turning her loose. She was busy biking all over their apartment when we didn’t take her outside and point her at a sidewalk. I know, grandparents are just the worst.

Then we had to make the long drive back home — 7 hours each way! — and I got my usual reward. I got to stand around awkwardly while Grandma got all the hugs and sad farewells, because I’m the homely, repulsive, off-putting, superfluous male, the danger-even-if-not-a-stranger guy. At least I get to console myself with spiders.

Iliana was a natural, though. She’s going to bicycling across country to visit us (or at least, grandma) someday. When she’s 18, she said. She’s 5½ right now, she explained, so she can’t go that far, yet.

Vacation trip!

It’s been quiet here on the blog over the weekend because Mary & I took off on a short road trip. Obviously the purpose of the whole drive was to find more crab spiders.

Also, the grass spiders have arrived! You can find their silk platforms in the morning, callecting dew.

See? That’s all it takes to draw me away for a few days.