rlfj: Blog

I think I will take this opportunity to report to everybody that neither Carl nor I are Communist, Socialist, or sleeping with Nancy Pelosi. Since I don’t think Carl was very different in political thinking in the last chapter than in any of the preceding chapters, I find it amazing that anybody would last through 126 chapters before proclaiming Carl is too liberal to keep reading. Please, don’t write me on this. If Carl is too liberal or too conservative, just stop reading and don’t complain.

Several readers were disappointed that Carl didn’t take his knowledge of the bribe to the Justice Department or the newspapers in order to destroy George Bush. I actually considered doing that but didn’t think it would work for the story for several reasons. Yes, it would have destroyed Bush’s Presidential run. It was a very tight election, and even though lawyers would have kept it clouded and confused, only a few percent of voters would need to be switched.

On the other hand, let us assume that Carl manages to really pull it off, with George doing a perp walk and getting thrown in jail. If he gets arrested before the convention, the Republicans will end up nominating McCain. (Carl is not officially on the ticket until the convention.) If George gets arrested after the convention, it’s not 100% clear to me, but Carl might be the Presidential candidate by default but will undoubtedly lose. Either way, Carl will be a pariah to his party and undoubtedly lose his position as Whip.

Finally, does Carl really want Bush to lose, if the alternative is that Al Gore wins? Gore is much more liberal than Bush or Clinton. Carl probably would prefer to be the voice in Bush’s ear than the Whip in a Gore presidency. We’ll just have to see.

Everybody seemed to like Chapter 128, although a few thought it was a bit contrived and over the top (well, okay, it was!) One person complained that there is no real Springboro, Oklahoma. Nor was there a tornado on July 20. This is fiction, and I make shit up. There is no real Westminster Diner, either. Again, I make shit up.

Several people wonder about the level of the political crap that gets thrown at me, and I thought I would pass along an email I got from somebody. I mean, I’m inventive, but even I can’t write stuff like this!

“Yeah, he "thinks only of other people" that's why he's a billionaire with a jet and vice president, because he couldn't think of any way to help others with all those billions except of course himself. What a crock of shit.

Your protagonist, AND YOU, are Lawful Evil. You believe in laws, in the system, in hierarchy, but deep down, you're evil and rotten to the core. You have no ideals, you have no principles, you have no core values. There is nothing you believe in or CAN believe in because your brain is totally fucking broken and can't support any such thinking.

It doesn't take youth to be passionate and idealistic. It takes a *superior kind of brain*. Whereas you have an INFERIOR kind of brain. One which is always 100% focused on ME ME ME ME ME. Egotistical selfish fuck.

Just because you're passive or submissive, like 99.5% of the human population, just because you're a COW, doesn't mean that you're any less evil and self-centered. 'Good' is beyond you as the whole NOTION of Goodness is totally and utterly incomprehensible to you. You probably think that Teresa of Calcutta or Gandhi or Tenzin Gyatso (to you the Dalai Lama) are Good people. The TRUTH is that they are EVIL. Evil in the extreme. They appeal to you only because they're POWERFUL Evil people. And because they're YOUR kind of Evil: Lawful Evil.

(sneer) Ugh.”

Wow! How do I respond to that!? Well, at least I won’t have to worry about explaining it to Saint Peter when I show up at the Pearly Gates, because now I know I’m heading south. It’s like I said, even at my most inventive I can’t write stuff like this! It’s not clear to me whether this reader is liberal or conservative. I guess liberal, since Carl shouldn’t be rich. Some of the stuff I get from the conservatives is just as bad.

Hey, folks, it’s just a fucking story! FICTION!

One interesting note from Chapters 121 and 122. Carl wrote another book at that time about the Republican Party and demographics. I was reminded recently that a critical part of running for President these days is for a candidate to ‘write’ a book about how they grew up and what they believe in (supposedly). Recent ‘authors’ include Governor Shapiro, Governor Newsom, Senator Booker, and former VP Harris, and several other politicians have books coming out shortly. I have serious doubts as to whether they actually wrote them or had them ghostwritten.

Would Dick Cheney have considered what happened in Chapter 126? Everything I have learned about the man says he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. He would have made a fortune off his Halliburton stocks and options during the Iraq War and after the 2005 energy bill with the ‘Halliburton Loophole’ which stripped the EPA of its right to regulate hydraulic fracturing fluids.

Some interesting responses: Everybody thought Cheney would have done this, without hesitation! 99% thought Bush was a real fucking dummy and incredibly lazy. However, not everybody thought Bush was that venal, in some cases because he was too stupid and lazy to be that venal. (Their words, not mine! Don’t write me on this.) This also came from some readers who had actually met Bush and Cheney. Fascinating!

One set of responses was that Bush sold out for considerably less than what the market rate would be. $20 million? It should have been more like $200 million! Well, maybe yes, maybe no. Very, very few people would be able to cough up that much cash on their own, and Carl is one of them. The only other way to generate the $200 million is through a consortium or partnership. This is one of those things where nobody can know. Anybody more than the two people involved makes it guaranteed somebody will talk. (For instance, the partners start arguing about who gets what goodies.) This is a secret you take to the grave! Additionally, whoever buys the VP slot has to be a legitimate contender. If Bill Gates shows up as the candidate, even though he can write a $200 million check, nobody will believe he is legitimate.

I did get a few responses going the other direction, that $20 million was overpriced. I was reminded of John Nance Gardner’s quote that the Vice Presidency was "not worth a bucket of warm piss." I would simply point out that this was under the Presidency of FDR, who, whether you agree with his politics or not, was not a weak President. Bush was far weaker as a President.

Is it possible somebody would do this? Ask Rod Blagojevich, who spent time at Club Fed, for trying to sell Obama’s old Senate seat.

Finally, for everybody who was concerned Carl was just repeating history, I think this proves things can change. It is, however, a slippery slope…

Everybody seemed to like Carl’s response to Clinton’s staff. Chapter 124 is a longer chapter, so people should be happy with that. Also, we start to see some major differences in the timeline from here on out.

As to how much those changes matter, I’m not really sure. I have certainly heard from the ‘butterfly effect’ readers since the story started. That theory is that ever since Carl returned, his least little change would radically affect everything afterwards. In other words, he could not profit by his return, since history would be inconceivably altered. I hold to the ‘ebb’ and flow’ version of history, instead, that there are genuine trends, economic and historical, that hold sway. While Carl can make changes, he cannot alter the history and thoughts of eight billion people. Maybe I read too much of Asimov’s Foundation series when I was a kid.

The scene with the boys and the gun was modified from something that happened in real life. A friend of mine was down in his kitchen cleaning his shotgun when a young man came by to pick up my friend’s daughter for a date. Now, my friend owns a big old country farmhouse, and as is the case with a lot of homes like that, the kitchen is the main focal point. A lot of the driveways and parking lots are near the kitchen, so young Romeo parked there and knocked on the kitchen door. He was greeted by my heavily bearded buddy holding a shotgun. Scared the crap out of the kid! All this happened at roughly the same time the Rodney Atkins hit song Cleaning This Gun came out. I had told my wife the story, and she knew my friend also, so whenever the song plays on the radio we both start laughing!

Do I really think Bush 43 was so bad? This one I had to do some research on, since I didn’t want my personal feelings to interfere with Carl’s. I found a fascinating ranking of the Presidents on Wikipedia. The composite rankings of the Presidents had Bush 43 at # 34, in the bottom quartile of achievement. The names of those below him were a Who’s Who of disaster, including most of the Presidents who led us into the Civil War, and the hopelessly corrupt reigns of Grant and Harding. At least George W. Bush didn’t start a Civil War! His father was a respectable #22, right in the middle of the pack. And don’t get me started of the current #47, who also ranks #47.

I’ve had a few complaints that Carl isn’t changing enough things from the way things worked out on his first go around. He has just been repeating history, only with himself involved. Chapter 122 changes that, obviously. More changes are coming.

There were some complaints that Carl didn’t understand the procedure for impeachment in earlier chapters. He understood it just fine; he just didn’t need to go into the details at that time. There will be more on the impeachment in future chapters.

Approximately 10% of my readers commented that Clinton should have been impeached or prosecuted. Their arguments were clear, cogent, and accurate. They went along the general line that lying to prosecutors or in sworn testimony is perjury, regardless of what the subject matter is. If you don’t want to lie, take the 5th. However, lying is important, and failure to prosecute sends the wrong message to everybody else.

This is all quite true. On any kind of purely factual basis I have no way to argue with this. My response is simply that there is lying and then there is lying. I think it is important to differentiate what somebody is lying about. We aren’t talking about murder or money laundering or insider trading. We are talking about consensual oral sex. If we started jailing people for cheating on their spouses and then lying about it, we are going to have to build an awful lot of jails!

Regardless, from here on in there are going to be some major changes to the timeline. Up until now Carl has been surfing along and riding the wave of history, but now he has decided to make some changes, and important ones. You might not agree with all of them, but here they come!

120 is mostly about the 1996 campaign, with just enough family details to keep things amusing. We hit lots of little items. Otherwise, not a lot of commentary on this one. I did get a request for one of the recipes in the story. There are real recipes behind some of the meals mentioned. Email me if you are interested in trying one.