The sodfather; a warm day; a blood test; blurbs

Man ends 80-year career when bureaucrats tick him off (USA Today).

“They can’t tell me what to do anymore!”

… says the “Sodfather.”

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Wednesday: so warm, so dry, I let Samuel and Daniel have the run of the back yard. In shorts. We had a lovely time.

As of this afternoon, there’s snow-slush everywhere.

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Daniel went to his one-year checkup. They gave him five injections and poked him to test his blood. Seems a bit much, doesn’t it?

Anyway, he has too much lead in his blood.

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These are the best blurbs I’ve seen upon one dust jacket.

Re: the book:

“No summary or catalogue of details

will do it justice.” (Age)

Re: the author:

“Brilliant.” (Australian)

“Inspired.” (Sun-Herald)

“Irresistibly entertaining.” (Time Out New York)

“The genuine article.” (Australian Book Review)

“Gutsy.” (Australian’s Review of Books)

“Fast, funny, fabulous.” (The Adelaide Advertiser)

“World-class.” (Canberra Times)

“A cracker.” (Australian Bookseller & Publisher)

“Towering achievement.” (Guardian)

“Stone classic.” (Independent [UK])

“Top-class.” (Telegraph [UK])

“Startlingly good.” (Sydney Moring Herald)

“Powerfully economical.” (Bulletin)

I read the book. It truly was all of those things.

P.S. Australians are savage.

Cat hospital

For gentle entertainment, I recommend Cat Hospital, a documentary TV series from Ireland. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Cute kitties; cute pet owners; cute veterenarians and volunteers; cute Irish accents. Lots of greenery.

Cats look funny when they’re anaesthetized.

Sometimes, Karin & I try out a movie or a show, and after fifteen minutes we decide it’s trash (tonight’s disaster was The Staircase, with Toni Collete and Colin Firth). To recover, we watch a nice episode of Cat Hospital.

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I finished reading The Premonition. I got madder the more I read. Is it very widely known that the Trump administration flew illegal immigrants from Texas to California to strain California’s public health system? I guess it is (though perhaps the story wasn’t previously told with quite the same emphasis). I’d never heard of this travesty; then again, lots of important news gets past me.

In this book, this episode is just an aside, a minor misdeed.

The book really is about the characteristic failings of bureaucracies. Two chapter titles summarize a couple of the key points.

“The L6”: The person who is capable of solving a problem is buried at the sixth level of the hierarchy (give or take a couple of levels).

The person at the top is pretty useless.

“Plastic Flowers”: Lots of effort goes into “dressing up” a bureaucracy, hiding its deadness, making it look nice. Making the top level look nice.

I already have another COVID book on my docket: Peter Baldwin’s Fighting the First Wave.