I (31m) was married (still am, but divorce isn't final yet) for 3.5 years to a complete whirlwind of a human being (39f). It's the single greatest mistake I've ever made. We have a son which I wouldn't trade for anything, but the lows of the last few years nearly outweigh the highs. I was at a really low point in my life in a same-sex relationship with someone I wasn't really into when this beautiful, dangerous, quixotic woman appears with all this zest and charisma and idealism and I was instantly hooked. I dumped my boyfriend, we got together for real a few months later and we were married a few months after that.
She would drink like a fish and casually do meth in front of me, but I didn't care. All the warning signs in the world couldn't sway me. Her erratic behavior should have given me pause, but I had already managed to convince myself that she just needed someone to properly love her and care for her and that would help bring her peace. I was a goddamned fool.
We moved to the middle of Montana, away from all the family I knew, and we had our son. She didn't drink or use meth during the pregnancy at all, but started drinking again soon after. Sometimes I would come home from work and find her face down on the floor nearly passed out at 5pm. Once she had to be hospitalized because she had been drinking on the clock as a bartender.
She could also be a really anxious person and she had to be in control. Rarely was anything I had done for her good enough, and she let me know it. She would always tell me that I never did enough and that everything was on her shoulders, and that I wasn't really a man, that I was a pussy/faggot/niggewhatever other bullshit she could throw at me, usually when she was drunk, which was usually.
It started with her throwing things at me, things like TV remotes. Then she tried to gouge my eyes out with her thumbs and some time after that, she punched me in the face multiple times while I was holding our son. At this point she was working as a supervisor at a restaurant that had newly opened in town and I was a stay at home dad. After a couple months of this, she couldn't hack it so she quit her job and I still didn't have one, so we moved back to where we had lived before, to at least have some support from my family.
I got a job as a waiter at a casino and she would work events for a catering company. I'd worked at this casino before we moved the first time and had some really good friendships with some moderately attractive female co-workers at the time. I saw two of them without my wife knowing. Nothing happened, though I wouldn't have minded. As it happened, it was pretty awkward in both cases and my wife found out later and that caused a lot of problems. The drinking and violence continued. One time she kicked me in the face while I was in bed with our son. Eventually we reached what I'd call an unsteady peace.
The year was 2019. I got kicked in the face, slapped, and sucker punched in the eye. Different occasions. Once in either November or December I called the police on her and she was taken away, but I didn't press charges. I picked her up the morning after. There were good times somewhere in there, but it becomes harder to remember exactly what or when.
January of 2020 came around, and there was a new co-worker I'd met, a supervisor of another department, probably the most stunning woman I'd ever seen in my entire life. She was friendly to me and we would talk a little whenever I'd see her. I never shared with her that I was married. I knew she liked to drink in the bar downstairs after work, so I started to drink there in the hope that I'd see her. Eventually it worked, she waved me over and we talked the first time for a good 30 minutes. In the week after I'd become completely consumed with the thought of this other woman and was starting to be more distant with my wife. She could tell something was going on. At one point in that week, she asked me if I was interested in someone else, repeatedly and insistently and I finally caved and said there was. I foolishly told her the other woman's name.
Nothing came of it that night, but that weekend I met the other woman at the bar again, this time for close to three hours. We had all this stuff in common and there was all this chemistry. At close to three hours, my wife knew what I was up to and called me an Uber. When I got home, she sent a message to the other woman on facebook and blew up everything. Honestly, despite everything else, it was incredibly justified. Looking back, I hate that I did any of that. In the moment though, there was no fairness to any of it. I sent a message to the other woman, but the damage was already done. That night, I just kept drinking to the point that I was a blacked out mess of a man, stumbling around and screaming. I broke our TV and our son's bed. My wife called my father to come over and collect me and I stayed the night at my parents' house.
Work the next day was exceedingly awkward, as was any day that followed when the other woman was nearby. In the week after that all went down, I was convinced that I was done with my wife. She stayed at an Airbnb for a bit but ultimately we "reconciled". She could be very persuasive. Of course she still continued to drink.
In early March, after a night of drinking she punched me in the eye out of nowhere. It was a good one. So good that she was actually concerned and came to me to see if I was okay. I lost it. I'd had enough. I punched her in the stomach and she went down immediately. I berated her then as we made our way into the living room. I punched her stomach again and kicked her literal ass really hard. The fighting eventually defused as we slept in different spaces. The next morning somehow we were both willing to act like it hadn't happened. I was in a state of shock that I had done anything like that. Never before in my life. I did it, but I feel that I'd never have done anything like that if not for her and I hate that I did.
Covid-19 of course really took off in mid March and we both lost our jobs. Facing the real possibility of eviction, my ex-wife's parents offered to let us stay with them across the country in N. Carolina. My parents didn't have the space for all of us, so we left in early April. With the added pressure of living with her parents, I thought she might do better somehow. For a short time I was right, but then it started all over again. In late May, she had at least five 9.something % beers in less than an hour and started in with her shit again. Starts with the punching and hair pulling, trying to goad me into a reaction. She was trying to start a fight with me to make it look like I'd started it in her parents' house. Then she started threatening our son, which she had never done before. I grabbed my son and went on a drive and made the decision to get the fuck out.
We escaped in early June under all of their noses. My ex-wife was at work. My parents bought my son and I plane tickets back to where we lived before. She took it surprisingly well. She held out hope for a little while that we could reconcile, but that eventually faded. She started to work on herself. Started seeing a therapist and stopped drinking. She's been sober since mid June. I was taking care of our son alone since then and as much as I love him, indeed he's the person I love most on this whole planet, he has a speech delay and he is really fucking hard. Starting in July I began to work on myself too. Since then I lost 15 pounds and began regularly working out, finally got my driver's license and a pretty decent used car shortly after, found a job I like at a big, nationwide liquor store.
After a while it seemed my ex-wife was doing much better and she wanted our son to live with her. At first I was resistant, but I honestly needed the break. In the first few years of his life, I was often more of a parent to him than she was. And N. Carolina is cheaper than where I am now. And I couldn't keep him from her forever. So at the start of October I flew out there with him and it was immediately clear that she had actually changed. No anxiety, no yelling, no guilt or shame, no fighting. She was actually calm and positive for once. I stayed for a few days to ease the transition and make sure everything was okay. It still seems like they're doing well.
I came back October 5th. The next day after work we were having a going-away get-together for a coworker at a bar and there was a girl there that I'd sort of gotten the sense that she liked me. We ended up slow dancing together that night. She buried her face in my chest and I held her close. After the last three years, that moment felt like everything to me. In the week after that, we started interacting at work more often and I couldn't get her out of my head. She's a totally driven go-getter, sharp as a tack, social butterfly, competitive, logical yet impulsive. My complete opposite. Eventually I got her number through Instagram and we started chatting and eventually I asked her on a date. I wasn't even sure if I could be ready for this, but I couldn't live with that regret. We finally went out for food and drinks and it was the best date I'd ever been on in my entire life. Conversation flowed, despite being nearly opposite we had a lot in common, amazing chemistry. After dinner we went to a nearby bar for more drinks and stayed out for at least two more hours. I drove her back to her car and we just sat and talked some more. As she finally went to her car I got out with her and we kissed, just really passionately.
The next night after work she invited me over for a drink at her place after I'd failed to make myself a good gin and tonic at home. Said she could make me a better one. I went and we drank (her gin and tonic was definitely much better than mine) and we talked for a while lying on her bed, inching closer and closer to each other the whole time. Finally we started to kiss, everything started to come off and we had long, heavy and passionate sex there for probably around an hour. Over the next several days at work things are nice. She leans into me which feels in the moment like everything I've ever needed and more, she gives me these light caresses as she passes.
The day before yesterday we went on our second date, which was very nearly just as good as the first. There are these small moments when I'm with her, the way she'll say something or an expression she'll make, when everything else fades and I just feel a really deep liking for her. I'm not in love, but I felt I could get there in time. Later that night we went back to her place and had sex again. Afterwards as we laid in each other's arms, she asked me what I want from her. I was taken aback, but after thinking a moment and as honestly as I could answer, I told her that I really liked her and wanted a real relationship with her. She asked if it'd be horrible if she wanted something else. She told me then that she liked me too, but didn't want an actual relationship after having recently gotten out of a relationship that had been a huge part of her life for the past few years. That it's her time to be selfish. She asked me if I can live with that kind of ambiguity. I told her I could, but in the time since I haven't been sure. It didn't feel like there was any finality in that moment, but maybe I just didn't see it. At the end of that night we still made out before I left and it was still just as good, but on the way home I wasn't quite sure what had happened.
She's about to go on vacation with her family tomorrow for several days. Yesterday at work I asked her if she'd like to go on another date when she gets back and she said yes without any hesitation. She told me she'd text me. I've hardly heard a thing from her today. When we talked before, on our dates and at other times, we touched on all these things we should do together. We should watch this, or go do that, or make each other really good grilled cheeses (it's a slight matter of contention who makes a better grilled cheese). It wasn't just one person saying these things, it was both of us...
I don't know if I can handle this.
I drink much more now and have a far shorter fuse. I try to be considerate and noble and good, but it's harder now. I'm prone to more depressive spells. Bitterness subtly sneaks into my thoughts. I clutch my steering wheel with quiet desperation when I drive. Sometimes I would give everything to just scream, but I know I can't. I have to get a fucking grip.
I've started seeing a therapist over video chat. My second session is next week. Maybe it'll help, but I don't know that I'll get what I need. I need to be more assertive and more resilient. I need to properly come to terms with what happened to me and what I've done. I'm so fragile right now, but I'm gonna to get better, even if I can't see the path from here. The world isn't gonna beat me down. I know now that I want to find someone I love who loves me the way I deserve to be loved. I've done some bad things, but I know that I'm good enough to deserve... something. Maybe it'll be this girl eventually (I still can't get her out of my mind), maybe it's someone else. Maybe it can only be me.
submitted by Continuing… That being handled, I leave a wakeup call for 0430 as I want a shower and a couple shower-sunrisers before we leave. It takes me about 10 minutes to pack. I call home to let Es know what’s going on. She’s not in, so I leave a message. Same for my friends Rack and Ruin of the Agency. They’re thrilled so far with my reports.
The security forces here are absolutely going to freak if they reverse-review my phone records once we leave.
Covert? Schmovert. I’m too old for playing such games.
The next morning, after a sudsy shower and a couple of vodka-infused shower-beers; I’m in the lobby with all my kit, checked-out, and waiting on the tour leader. My passport was stamp-stamp-stampity-stamped here at the hotel, which I thought was weird, but after spending time in this here country, not all that unusual.
At 0545 on the dime, the tour bus pulls into the lot. Without a word, bellhops grab near all my kit and escort it out to the waiting bus.
After tipping each extravagantly, I fire up a huge cigar, and wander around outside, loitering by the bus. I see members of my team at the front desk, checking out. Everything’s been paid for already, they just have to sign documents that they’re not secreting hotel towels or televisions or errant nationals in their luggage.
It’s a weird country.
I see them loading box breakfasts for us as well as box lunches on the bus.
Hell, they’re actually doing ‘field trip’ correctly.
If the bus us fueled up, we can go for days at this rate. There are several coolers bearing the hotel’s brand and I sidle over to see what they’re carrying.
Case after case of iced-down beer and a couple of cases of various high-octane potables; and over there? A couple of boxes of mixers…ah, soda…pop…carbonated citrusy goodness.
“OK”, I sigh, “All is as it should be. Now the field excursion may begin.”
My teammates filter outside as does their luggage. I suggest they get out and keep what is necessary for preliminary outcrop excursions; such as a backpack or knapsack, hammer, acid bottles, field notebooks, Brunton compass, lighters, cameras, personal tobacco products, and the like in the bus. That way, we don’t have to go tearing through all the luggage at every stop.
I pull out a bundle of 100
Hubco™ large geological
dual-sample bags. That’s right: ‘dual’ sample…
I distribute these to everyone on the team. I ask that they devise their own numbering system and make absolutely certain I have a copy of it when we’re done. I’ll be correlating and curating all the samples when we get back to the world.
I ask that a cooler of drinks are left on board the bus, rather than in the hold. It’s humid, sticky, and muggy today. We must expend valiant effort in remaining hydrated and this will help.
Luckily, the bus has on-board lavatory facilities.
We are seated on the bus, my 10 collective team members, myself, our 4 ‘guides’, ‘Yuk’, ‘No’, ‘Man’, and ‘Kong’; our driver, relief driver, one incredibly shy national geologist, Myung-Dae Soo, and four of the shiny suit clan.
The hotel wheels out a large cart laden with pastries and a huge coffee urn. A bit of a “
Bon Voyage” from the casino and bar crowd, as they put this together for us when they heard we were leaving.
“Hey. That’s really nice of them.” Dax notes.
Dax handed over our raw “elevator waiting” funds as we didn’t have time to run it through the casino-machine before we left. We donated over 75,000 won to our friends at the bar, casino, and massage parlor. The ones delivering our going away present assured us it would be divided equitably.
“It best be”, I laughed, “You never know when one of us might be back!”
There was a collective horrified look on their faces for the merest moments. Then they all laughed and said that they hoped we would return someday soon.
“Nice folks”, I thought, “Stupid as shit country, but nice folks.”
We had all separately left tips for the room maids, bellmen, and matrons back before we checked-out.
There was a flurry of handshaking and goodbyes. Not a bad hotel experience here in the so-called land of Best Korea.
Serious dark coffee was passed out amongst the riders, but Ivan, myself, and Dax were already giving one of my emergency flasks a workout.
Ivan smiled and said: “We drink our coffee the
Russian way. That is to say we had vodka before it and vodka afterward. HA!”
Ivan and I are cut from the same bolt.
Faux-doughnuts, pseudo-bear claws and fake-long johns all distributed; the bus is fired up, and rumbling. We are exhorted to watch our drinks as we pull away from the hotel and into the wilds of Northern Korea.
I’m humming away:
On the road again -Just can't wait to get on the road again,
The life I love is bashing rocks in the field with my friends.
And I can't wait to get on the road again
On the road again.
Goin' places that we've never been,
Seein' things that we may never see again…
--
“Rock?”, Dax inquires.
“Yes?” I reply.
“Do please shut up.”
“Music hater”, I muse and comply.
We’re rolling down the highway, as it were, headed generally north. We all have cameras of one kind or another; and rather than relieve us of them, they quietly and without much fuss, slowly darken the windows.
They claim it’s to keep the sun out and temperatures down, but just before things go all black, we’re seeing sights and scenes of the true North Korea. They’re trying to keep us from seeing that en route to the outcrops.
This new bus has some sort of electronic tint-control gizmo for the windows. However, if one has a pair of polarizing sunglasses, as all good field geologists do, you see right past that and can view the passing scenery unencumbered.
I return from a quick beer-recycling loo trip and am amused to see 10 Western scientists, sitting in a blacked-out bus, all wearing polarizing sunglasses.
It was just the surreal note this trip needed as we left the confines of the capital city.
We traveled north, and the empties pile began to grow. We had a few trash bags we had liberated from the hotel, but the shiny suits were very insistent that every empty can, bottle, and bag, yes they had beer in bags…had to be repatriated to a box in the far back of the bus.
Evidently, they either were paid a bounty on each container or were accountable for each vessel. They were soon to realize just the capacity for drink that a group of 11 seasoned very Senior Field Geologists, and one stowaway geologist-in-training can amass.
As we ply our way northward, we see the agricultural side of North Korea. The contrast between rural areas and the capital was striking. There were miles of rice paddies being harvested by people with sickles in their hands. And no cars on the highway. It was most destabilizing for this Westerner.
I think we saw a maximum of three tractors, as most of the work was done with ox power, there was very little evidence of rural electrification. Oh, hold on. We saw many more tractors, I should correct that: we saw three
running and not rusted
into oblivion tractors.
The farmers we see are using equipment that is quite literally medieval - single-share plows pulled by large, cranky bovines; sweeping sickles to bring in the harvest, and twin-engine, bilateral, botanical-fired ox-carts to transport it. It’s hard to believe that this third-world level of poverty exists in the same country that’s capable of building rockets, nuclear weapons, and tall, well-appointed hotels.
But when we stop at a motorway service station for fuel - a bizarre alien spaceship-like building squatting over the empty carriageways - we do encounter a
jangmadang, or semi-official market. Here they are selling cans of knock-off Vietnamese Red Bull and Malaysian-made King Cobra™ Cola.
It reminds me of Russia right after the wall fell. Off the Trans-Siberian Railway in Krasnoyarsk, the Gateway to Eastern Siberia. You can buy Chinese hams, Chinese sodas, Chinese knock-off liquor, and those bloody delicious little bullets of Vitamin-C, Chinese mandarins.
Here, it’s similar. You can get most anything you desire, except it isn’t of Korean manufacture. That stuff is even too shitty to pawn off on tourists.
Instead, it’s knock-off Malaysian, Chinese, or Indonesian beer, wine, or soft drinks.
“Tiger-brand energy drink. Now with 40% more real tiger.” Here? I believe them.
Vodka from everywhere not known for its vodka distilling prowess. Rural hotel shops sell nastily stale crisps, gummy gummies, filling-ripping ‘chewy’ taffy or caramel, and biscuits with a severely limited choice. Rural hotels do not have full electricity so beer is warm and often tossed on the table, waiting for tourists to arrive - as is the food. We were warned to be prepared for cold rice, cold fish, cold potato – and plenty of kimchi and tofu.
Back on the road again, we’re passing small burgs that are not on any of our maps; even the ones we traded for back in the hotel that are specially marked: “For Internal Use ONLY!”.
They were amazingly the same. Clean. Bright. Uncluttered. And attended by cadres of prim, uniform-clad, though non-military people. They were all doing a day’s work keeping everything neat and clean.
There were no cars, trucks, forklifts…only rickshaws and ox-carts. However every one of these ‘towns’ were identical, and exactly, as Ivan pointed out, ‘X’ number of minutes apart.
“Watch! Is so!”, Ivan said. We passed one of these villages, and exactly 3 minutes later, an exact copy. Three minutes later? Another one. 3 more minutes? Xerox-city.
“What the fuck?” Dax asked.
“Potemkin village.” Comrade Dr. Academician Ivan replied.
A Potemkin village is any construction, literal or figurative, whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country which is faring poorly. It is for making people believe that the country is faring better, although statistics and data would suggest otherwise.
“Russia pioneered the process,” Ivan noted with no small amount of pride. “During Cold War with West, entire cities were built, moved, raised, and razed. Ever hear of Krasnoyarsk-25? Atomic Research City? Supposed place of weapons study and manufacture. Huge ‘accident’. Entire city demolished, total populace relocated supposedly, after massive nuclear calamity.”
“Is that true? Cliff asks.
“No. Not at all.” Ivan smiles, “Deliberate misinformation. At least for K-25. It was diversion for actual towns where accidents; nuclear, biological, or worse, had happened. West so concerned about K-25 because it was big, near big capital city of Krasnoyarsk and suitably located out in the taiga. Easy to spot, easy to watch. Kept Western satellites busy while real towns of I-33, U-10, and AR-13 out in the forest were quietly demolished and people relocated or mass buried after some horrible, horrible accidents...”
“You think it’s the same here?” I asked Ivan.
“No, Dr. Rock”, Ivan smiled, and helped himself to my freshly constructed, but untouched, Yorshch, “This is all fake and bluster. Make West think everything is all A-OK, is that right idiom?”
“Yep.” I reply, “Precisely.”
“Make West believe all is OK and green”, as he winks at me, “And bustling and growing. Cover up what is real case here. We all see it and we see right through. Shoddy even for Asians.”
We all had to snicker and smirk as the shiny suit squad, who sat up at the front of the bus, and were not supposed to be listening; reacted like every cell in their bodies were just hit with a drop of pure lemon juice.
“Comrade Dr. Academician. Decorum, please.” I snickered.
“Oh, fuck them!”, Ivan replied, “I am old Russian. They try and pull burlap over my eyes? St. Petersburg? Moscow? Krasnoyarsk.? I’ve been there, seen them. They think this display of tawdriness…Even goofy American and Canadian can see the fakes they are. Britisher? I’m not so sure…”
“Damn, Doctor., I said to Ivan, “You’re just making friends all over the planet today.”
We all knew it was in jest; but the shiny suit squad certainly had their feathers ruffled and either didn’t care or wanted us to know we were under their observation.
“Fuck them twice”, Ivan said, “Ask them for bottle opener. I’m too lazy to search for my field jackknife.”
I hand him my pocket Leatherman and he pries the top of another bottle of ‘Budveiser’ beer.
“They can’t even make fake the name correctly”, he smirks and drains the bottle.
‘Town’ after ‘town’ and even that parade gets uninteresting. We’re headed north and finally come to a crossroads.
The bus driver, who must be a regular paranoid-maniac because he actually stopped to look for oncoming traffic, which we have seen precisely none since leaving the capital city, made a hard right. We’re heading back and up into the hills, leaving the bright lights of the big city far behind.
After an hour or so of driving, we pull off to the left-hand side of the road.
“Rock, Ivan, Cliff…holy shit, look at this!” Dax was uncharacteristically excited.
It was an open field that leads to a series of low outcrops of polychromatic, obviously sedimentary rocks. Magentas, greens, purples, rust-reds, browns, blacks, olive greens…holy shit. A real sedimentary pile.
We filed out of the bus with our field gear. The shiny suit squad started in with a bullhorn.
“You will wait for tour guides!”
“You will listen to group leaders!”
“You will not stray from the designated paths set up…”
No one heard them as the group of 11 remaining Western geoscientists were already across the highway and hieing for the exposures like outcrop-seeking multiple-warhead re-entry vehicles.
“You must wait!” we heard from exasperated voices back at the bus. “You must stop!”
“You must piss off!” Cliff said, “This is what we’ve been waiting over two weeks to see!”
“They are very angry with us”, Myung-dae the young Korean geologist said. “I find that just too bad.”
“And you are?” I asked.
Myung-dae Soo, the young Korean geologist, introduced himself.
“Well”, I said, “Welcome aboard. I’m Dr. Rock.”
“They are very, very angry”, he repeats.
“So? Are you tagging along to give them internal reports?” I asked.
“No, Doctor”, he replied, “I too am a geologist. I want to get away from those assholes and see some real rocks.”
“Who are you with?” I ask, “What group?”
“I am 5th-year student at Pyongyang College. I am not
officially here. We were told in class that you were coming. I decided to see if I could join you. This morning, I was standing by bus and they thought I was hotel worker or orderly. I was given cooler full of beer and told to find place for it on the bus. I did and after that, just stayed in the back. I am stowaway. I am ashamed, but I had to see for myself. But, I like Western field trips so far!”
“No shit? Well, then”, I said, “Double welcome aboard. None of this ‘I am ashamed’ shit. You’re a geologist, but you haven’t even worked through your first field-evening get-together with us. But this is no pleasure cruise. It’s real work, real geology, real serious science shit. You savvy?”
“Yes, sir, Doctor Rocknocker from Sultanate in the Middle East.” Myung-dae smiled.
“And you fucking stay close to me”, I smirked.
I fired a couple of
BLAAATS! from my portable air horn.
“Field Meeting! Field Meeting! Assholes & Elbows!” I called aloud.
Everyone gathered within earshot.
“OK, guys, here’s the deal. We do not know how long we’ve got here. So, let’s split up into teams. Geophysicists, go do your structural thing. Stratigraphers? Field relations. Geologists? Let’s go talk to some ronery-rooking-rocks. No offense, Mr. Myung.”
Myung-dae was laughing up a storm. He got that reference. He later told us all around the campfire he thought ‘Team America’ was a “fucking hilarious movie.”
Oh, we are going to be a
real bad influence on this poor kid.
The groups spontaneously broke up into 4 or 5 sub-groups. They headed for areas they thought were important and they were photographing, measuring, pounding on rocks, and arguing within minutes.
“No, you idiot! It’s continental. Look at those adhesion ripples.”
“The fuck you know. It’s only a little low-level eggbeater tectonics. Where the fuck would you get continental collision-size energy around here?”
“Oh, the fuck you say. It’s non-marine. Those are mud cracks. Look at the sandy aeolian infill, fer chrissake.”
Formal? Proper? Detached Doctors of Geology?
Not when you’re in the field. It all goes out the window when different opinions collide like subducting plates.
“The music of my people!” I said to Morse.
“I thought that was the ‘Safety Dance’?” he chided.
“We’re a big family. We can have more than one.” I snickered.
We’re wandering around the site, with individual purpose.
We are looking for or looking at
items of interest.
We’re hacking at the outcrops.
We’re all looking at…
things.
It’s hard to describe. Get a load of geologists or geology students out of the office, lab, or classroom; stick them out on a bare expanse of heavily weathered rock and it’s simply…numinous.
We’re rebuilding worlds here.
This rock says this.
This rock says that.
And you’re not fluent in that dialect. Here, let me interpret for you…
We’re at each other’s throats, in the academic-metaphorical sense. Tempers have been known to run hot. There has been the occasional bloody nose or rocks sailing down an outcrop without the obligate “HEADACHE!” call. Hammers and Marsh Picks have ended up swimming without the owner’s knowledge.
But once we’re back; settled in the hotel room, tavern, or around the campfire, we’re all a Band of Brothers again. It’s an odd thing to watch; as if you’re not of the clan, you’d need an interpreter. It defies all boundaries: political, sexual, educational, geographical, linguistic, social,
et cetera.
We’re all geologists first. We share the common scientific bond of Geology.
That’s why Geology is
the First Science.
Plus we tend to drink a serious fucking whole bloody awful lot.
We’ve all been on that ‘crawlin’ home puker’.
We’ve also been to the ends of the earth: the deepest depths, the highest heights, we deal with the greatest pressures, the hottest temperatures; we’ve been to the mountain, we’ve seen the elephant, and we’ve held a bear’s nose to dogshit.
We wear the scars attained in our travels like badges of honor.
We’re God-Damned
Scientists.
Back off, man.
Geologist comin’ through. Anyways, I’m looking at the bedding-plane boundaries between the purple unit and the underlying olive-green unit. The upper unit it looks, to me, continental in origin. Fluvial, perhaps. The lower unit is much finer-grained. Marine mudstone, perhaps? But what age?
The cadged Korean Geological maps are worse than useless. They never would go down to the outcrop scale. Consulting them, they don’t even note these exposures in a field sense.
Myung-dae, who is working about 35 meters down-section from me calls out, “Doctors! Sirs! Look here! I’ve found something!”
We all wander over as he is hacking away at the dusty, eroded rock. He stands and dusts off his find.
It’s a very large, nearly 1-meter diameter, coiled fossil cephalopod.
I wander over for a closer look. Dax, Cliff, Morse, and Ivan do as well.
“Blimey! Will you look at that? Outstanding, Mr. Myung!” Cliff says.
“Well, that confirms it. This layer, at least, is marine. Look at that suture pattern”, I say, dusting off an unweathered bit.
“Look at the radius of coiling.”, Cliff joins in.
We’re slowly wresting information out of this silent witness.
“Ornamentation?”, Dr. Ivan asks. “Knobs, bosses, and excrutions?” Oh, yes.”
In unison, we declare: “
Hyphoplites!”
Morse adds, “And therefore…these rocks are middle Cretaceous. Marine. Not bad…”
“Need to get some samples for geochemical analysis. Dig deep, gentlemen, we need unweathered samples for TOC (Total Organic Carbon) content.”, Dr. Erlen Meyer notes.
With that, we have a relative age of the rock, a good idea of its depositional environment, and therefore extent, ideas of field relationships, and an indication of some of its fauna.
Could it be source rock worthy?
Samples? Best get diggin’, Beaumont.
That unit is right smack in the middle of this pile of rocks. Dax and I will work up-section and Ivan and Cliff will work down-section. We’re going to see what lies above, what lies below, what trends we can discern, and develop an idea of what happened here some 100 million years ago.
This is what happens when you get geologists out in the field with the proper amounts of field gear, outcrops, and alcohol.
Overall, the deeper down-section, and therefore, earlier in geological time you go, the more marine the rocks are. Conversely, the higher you go in the column, i.e., up-section, into younger rocks, the more continental it appears.
We find fragments of marine fish fossils, sea-crocodile scutes and teeth, heaps of mosasaur coprolites, i.e., fossil shit piles, and other indications that the lower, older rocks are Lower Cretaceous ocean basin-fill.
But up higher; we find mud cracks, rain prints, land turtle shells, land-snails (
Bellerophontid gastropods), and what may actually be a fossil feather. All indications of a more continental, i.e., fluvial (river), floodplain, lacustrine (lake), and paludal (swamp) deposition.
That’s my particular bailiwick.
I’m ‘elephant walking’ along the upper outcrops looking for fossils. You basically bend over at the waist and sweep from left to right as you take exaggerated step after step, scanning the ground looking for…well…it takes years, but once you see it, you never forget it.
“Fossil sign”.
A disjunct endemism. Something not
in situ. Something
out of place. A bit of a different, out of context color. Out of context texture. Out of context size. Out of context
context.
Something that looks like it shouldn’t ought to be there.
I’m picking up 1 cm. square hunks of what look like an ordinary rock. I taste them. Well, I stick them to my tongue. If it liquefies and runs away, it’s ordinary mudstone, shale, or the like.
If it sticks…well, it might just be fossil bone.
“PTWTWOO!”
“Damn right, Rock”, Cliff says from behind me, “Fucking North Korea tastes terrible.”
“Still, it’s the best way I know to…” I paused.
“Got something?” Cliff asked.
“Look here.” I said, “Anthill. Big, nasty buggers. Look around the edges. Pieces of flat, cream-colored rock on this gaudy purple stuff. Tongue test? They stick like cockleburs. Let’s look upslope, see if there’s a drainage…”
There it was, a nice little drainage incised about 1.5 meters deep into the nearly horizontal rocks we were walking on.
“Any float?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Cliff said.
We followed the weak, little drainage that was cut into the outcrop, up another couple of meters.
There were very scrappy, very small, very scattered pieces of that same cream-colored rock. Some were ornamented with a scroll-work or some sort of striations. Most un-geological. More biological. We followed the trail, up here, around here, over there.
Cliff noticed it first, a soccer-ball sized lump of completely out-of-place crème-colored ‘rock’ working its way out by gradual erosion of the variegated pastels of the continental rocks upon which we were treading.
I got there first and began to clear the area with my Estwing.
“Careful. Careful”, Cliff admonished.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mind your Mincies. [Mince pies = eyes]”, as I’m swinging away at the reluctant, reticent, rocks.
The excavation grew, slowly. From the rounded dome, we could see small sutures that had developed…
Then condyles, fenestrae, then more ‘bone’. Then a jaw, teeth, vertebrae…
“HOLY DOUBLE-DAMN SHIT!” I tootled my air horn. We needed the group to see this.
It was a skull. A dinosaur skull. A small, non-avian dinosaur skull.
Everyone has crowded around and looked at the small quarry we had just built.
“Whatcha got, Rock? Cliff?” Joon asked.
“Fuck me, but I think we’ve got us a dinosaur skull,” I said.
Professor Doctor Academician Ivan walked over and cleared the area.
As Professor Emeritus, he had pole position priority.
“I agree.” is all he said.
I cleared the area and let others take a whack at opening up the quarry.
We may have been low on power tools, but we had a surfeit of opinions.
“OK,” I said, “Let’s look at the facts…”
- Age? Cretaceous. Probably lower to lower-middle Cretaceous.
- Continental deposits. That’s very fine sand we’re hacking away. Fluvial, without a doubt. Or, possibly aeolian; there’s no such thing as a geological certainty. Dunes? Ephemeral creeks? Low floodplain? Geo-talk… .
- Small size. Potentially a juvenile?
- Nope. Not a juvie. Sutures are closed, fused. This is, well was, an adult; perhaps a subadult, given its size.
- In situ? In place? Or washed in?
Hard to tell when all you’ve exposed is half the critter’s brain box.
“Look at that!” Myung-dae exclaimed, “Squamosal bones and the inner parietals…temporal fenestrae. It had a frill; a small one.”
“OK,”, I said, looking closely at the exposed scrappy remains, “Fucking-A Bubba. Nailed it.” I said, giving him the thumbs up.
“Ceratopsian. Look at those greens-grinder molars. There’s some small osteoderms on the skull; knobby old bastard. Early critter.” I continued.
Others looked around and confirmed my observations.
“Reminds me of
Protoceratops from when I was back in Mongolia,” I said.
Dax chimed in with, “Looks something like
Psittacosaurus from back in the Cretaceous Belly River of Canada.”
Drs. Ivan and Morse agree. “Most assuredly. It is definitely proto-ceratopsian. Young adult, as Dr. Rock notes by the cranial sutures. Do they have a record of proto-ceratopsians here?”
Myung-dae replies, “I have read reports of Korean proto-ceratopsian found in South Korea. Not long ago, 2019, it is called…ah…
Auroraceratops. It is a genus of bipedal basal neo-ceratopsian dinosaur.”
“Bipedal?” I query. “Well, there’s a fine how do you do. All the proto-ceratopsians I’ve known were obligate quadrupeds.”
“Well”, Ivan, Dax, Cliff, and Morse agree, “That should give the shiny suit squad something to report. That’ll keep them the hell out of our hair for a while.”
We photograph each step as we excavate the critter. It’s more or less
in situ, buried where it fell. Probably killed by a sand slip off a dune, or a river sandbar slip and burial. It’s not complete, but we do have the skull and a good portion of the post-cranial elements to about just before the pelvis. A good pectoral girdle, skull, jaw, frill, forelimbs, forefeet…easily half-a cute little herbivorous dinosaur. About the size of a smallish Highland Coo or large Great Dane.
We flag it with the team particulars, it’s GPS position, and carefully rebury the animal. We don’t have any of the equipment nor time to excavate it properly, but we can conserve it. Of course, we’ll be informing the proper authorities of our discovery.
I have an absolutely ancient Polaroid instant camera. Before re-internment, I take several pictures of our “
Koreasaurus”, as we’ve dubbed the animal, with items for scale; like a hammer, cigar, and oddly enough, a photographic scale. Then I get a photo of the whole crew standing around, drinking warm beers from their individual day packs, smiling about the find ‘they‘ made.
We hear the melodious tootle of the bus’s horns. We make sure to pack out all our trash and wander back to our terrestrial transport.
“You were gone too long!” the chief shiny suited character goes all ballistic on me.
“Watch yourself, Herr Mac.”, I calmly said, “You’re going to burn your nose on my cigar.”
“You left without your handlers…err…guides!” he fumed.
“Hey, Scooter. Cool out. We’re geologists. We never get lost.” I said.
It sometimes just takes us longer to get back than it took us to leave…
“Your impertinence will be reported.” He smoldered.
“Report this, Mother Chuckler”, I observed and held out the pictures of our newly discovered
Koreasaurus.
“Show those photos to
your handlers,” I said in a mocking tone. “We found a brand new species of God-damned dinosaur for you geezers. It took us less than two hours. You can spin it that it’s a new, never-before-seen species of very specialized dinosaur found right here in beautiful Korea del Norte. Be quite the scientific coup, don’t you think? Trust us. We won’t say anything.”
He immediately shut up and went into conference with the rest of the shiny suit squad.
“Doctor”, one of the clan covert asked, “This is a new dinosaur?”
I had a thunderbolt of an idea.
“Oh! Yes, it is. I’d stake my reputation on it. You’ve had no concerted search here for the beasts and well, with the normalizing of relations between your country and the world, it allowed your specialists to perform real science. In fact, on the bus is the young North Korean geoscientist who made the discovery.” I said. “Give me a minute. I’ll go and get him. I think he was off taking a shi…ah, using the lavatory. Just give me a minute.”
I did have an idea. A wonderful idea. A wonderfully evil idea.
Back on the bus, I ordered the doors closed.
“Gentlemen! Ears and eyes! Please.” I said loudly.
Continuing…
“The shiny suits have their knickers all a-twist because we don’t want to listen to them; the assholes. Fuck that. I’ve got an idea. Let’s make our young acolyte here, Mr. Myung-dae Soo, a national hero. He would probably get his ass in a crack for sneaking on board the Western bus today the way he did. Well, double fuck that. Let’s all say
he found the dinosaur. Let him take the glory for the homeland. No one else will ever need to know.” I said smiling.
“Fuck Yeah! You bet! Замечательное! Ihmeellisiä! Maravilhoso! Geweldig!”
Good to know we’re all on the same page. Geologists. You can always count on them…
“Mr. Myung-dae Soo? Front and center. Time to go and become ‘Hero of Best Korea’.” I smiled.
He was absolutely terrified.
“Doctor…I …don't…wait…no…” he stammered.
Cliff, Dax, Ivan, and I trotted him out to confront the shiny suit squad.
“Don’t worry, Myung. We’ve got your back. Trust us.” I said in a low conspiratorial tone.
The shiny suit squad turned as one and gave Mr. Myung the Stink Eye treatment.
“Here you go. The man of the hour. Mr. Myung-Dae Soo, young geologist and up and coming paleontologist.” I say loudly and with the utmost honor.
They look at him and the Korean erupts in rapid-fire staccato bursts.
Cliff just wanders in and interjects, “Yes. Righto. Top form. Found the float. Tracked down that dino like he was on safari. Highest marks. Good man!”
Dax adds more fuel to the fire. “Like he knew where to go, knew where to look. He’s a natural.”
Dr. Academician Ivan blustered forth: “Excellent scholar. Excellent field man. Banner geologist.”
I couldn’t have added more. The shiny suit squad was gobsmacked.
I asked Myung-dae what they were saying.
“They were talking about reprisals. Reporting to authorities. Then, they stopped. You have them completely confounded.” He said.
“How so?” I asked, quietly.
“Between an international incident where we don’t listen to our handlers and this potential important scientific discovery.” Mr. Myung-dae reported, trying hard to parse the evolving situation.
“Yes”, I added to Ivan’s bluster.
To the shiny suits: “I’ve worked as visiting Dinosaurian Vertebrate Paleontology Curator at all the major American museums. This is a find quite unlike anything known. It is a watershed discovery. It will help unravel the evolution and distribution of the clan
Dinosauria for the whole Korean Peninsula. Perhaps, even with international impact on the recent finds in China.”
I laid it on with a trowel.
I hit all the buzzwords.
“Yes. Yes, perhaps.”, the head shiny-suiter said. “I will report this bit of very good news to the proper authorities. Myung-dae, with us. We require more information.”
“Ah, we’d prefer him to ride in back with us if you don’t mind. Scientific courtesy, old man. He needs to be classically de-interviewed after such a find.” I insisted, making certain I stand as tall, wide, and menacing as possible while smiling like a damned Cheshire cat, one smoking a very large cigar.
“Very well. We are not far from our evening stop. We can talk later.” He agreed.
We all moseyed, laughing silently, back to the bus; literally supporting our young hero Mr. Myung-dae as he seemed to have gone all wobbly of late.
Myung-dae was ashen-white. He looked like he had just given birth to a basketball. He was visibly shaking.
We get on the bus and I whip up a stout Yorshch for the young hero of the hour.
“Here! This is for you. If you’re going to be a world-class geologist, you’d damn sure better start acting like one.” I smile broadly.
There were hoots, cheers, and cat-calls.
Beers were popped, bottles uncorked; cigars, cigarettes, and pipes lit.
“Damn Skippy!” some anonymous reveler added.
Myung-dae slurped a good half the drink. I offered him a cigar. He stopped shaking enough to accept the novel offer.
Remember “crawlin’ home puker”? He’s taken his first step into a larger world.
OK, just to recap. Here are the
dramatis personae left on the bus…
Bus driver (Kim) and his relief (Won).
My team and I. That’s 11 Western geoscientists: Morse, Cliff, Volna, Ack, Viv, Graco, Erlen, Dr. Academician Ivan, Joon, Dax, and myself.
Then there are our guides: Yuk, No, Man, and Kong.
Our stowaway hero geologist-in-training: Myung-dae Soo, aka, “Mung”.
And the four members of the shiny suit clan: Pak, Mak, Tak, and Jak. At least, that’s the names we used when we addressed them.
The bus was rumbling down the deserted highway. We were headed more or less due east, passing the occasional Potemkin Village. They knew we cracked their code long ago, so they didn’t bother with darkening the windows any longer.
We are passing a series of highway road cut outcrops. We’re only going approximately 35 or 40 miles per hour. Suddenly, Morse jumps out of his seat and runs up to the driver.
“STOP! STOP! Back up! We almost missed it!” he barks in heavily Russian inflected English.
The driver, shaken to the core, just slams on the brakes. The bus grinds to a stop. Good thing there’s no traffic out here.
Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Jak of the suit clan jumps up and asks “What is the problem?”
“How could you miss that?” Morse shouts. “Huge fault. Mineralization. I saw that from a glimpse. We must return to investigate.”
“Is not possible. We have appointment at the hotel.” Jak replies.
“Fuck that!”, Morse shouts. I guess he’s just really into faults…
I wander up and try to defuse the situation.
“OK, guys, cool out. Let’s be reasonable. Do it our way. Go back to that road cut. We spend a half-hour there then we go on to the hotel. The hotel will still be there when we arrive, won’t it? Even if we’re a bit late?” I ask.
Jak looks to Pak, who converses with Mak and Tak. They know they’re outgunned.
The driver shifts the bus into reverse and we
back down the luckily deserted highway over a mile to the outcrop in question.
We had to admit, it was a mother beautiful normal fault. In perfect, textbook cross-section.
Morse and Joon were on it like white on rice; given the mineralization along the fault plane. All sorts of implications for the thermal and geological history of the area. But with just one exposure like this, more or less just a real interesting geo-oddity.
We spent precisely 30 minutes at the exposure, and when our handlers requested we re-board and head to the motel, we complied like nice, normal sort of folks.
I believe the appropriate maxim here is: “Lull them into a false sense of security…”
Once more down the road we travel. Beers popped, bottles uncorked; you know, the usual.
Forty-five minutes later, we pull into, I kid you not, a replica US of A 1950s
Motor-Inn.
“Mr. Myung”, I ask, “What the hell is this?”
To be continued… submitted by Dear Reader (especially those of you who stayed with me in the wilderness lo, these last five months),
This is the last G-File [pause for dramatic effect]…of this era of professional limbo I’ve been in. By this time next week, this “news”letter will be a product of [Name Redacted]. Before I continue, let me just say thank you to the tens of thousands of you who signed up for this thing when I left National Review to start this endeavor with Steve Hayes and Toby Stock (Toby’s the suit, so it’s okay if you haven’t heard of him).
They’re both super guys, but they’re Midwesterners, and I find some of that stuff rubbing off on me. For example, prior to spending so much time with Hayes, I don’t think I used “super” as an adjective—outside of conversations about comic books or physics or quoting Fargo (“you’re a super lady”)—more than a couple times a year since I was a kid. Now I find myself using it to describe good meals, smart people, nice days, etc. There are other signs as well. I feel more shame about cursing, and I feel a strange, salmon-like urge to find a good Kroger when shopping for food. They’re super, don’t you know? And so is ranch dressing, which I’ve discovered is good on everything.
The Audacity of Ope Speaking of Midwestern stuff, I’ve always had a soft spot for Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. A Tea Party guy back before the grifters and scammers got into it like so many ants in the Jell-O salad at a Wauwatosa fish fry, he came to Washington to bring the commonsense Midwestern values of a churchgoing businessman to Washington. He sincerely believed we need to live within our means, defend the Constitution and—apparently—hector and cajole the Chinese Communist Party to
target the president’s domestic political opponents.
That was an
ope moment for me.
Some Turds Will Never Sparkle So let’s just say it: What Trump did yesterday was, simply, indefensible. It is indefensible from any angle and any distance. As Steve Hayes might say at a Racine’s Best Kringle Contest, “Where to begin?”
China doesn’t have due process, the rule of law, or human rights as we understand them. People are executed, put in prison, put in camps, and put in prison camps for political infractions or simply practicing the wrong faith. It would be outrageous if Trump publicly called for the United Kingdom or Holland to investigate one of his political opponents without going through proper channels, but at least those countries have legal systems where we can have some faith in the justice of the outcome. But China? China!?
Moreover, the United States and China are in the middle of intense trade negotiations, and the president cavalierly throws out the fact that there’s something else he wants from the Chinese. He doesn’t have to say quid pro quo. The whole context is shot through with quid-pro-quo-y-ness (quid-pro-quosity?).
It is particularly gobsmacking in the context of the relentless push from the MAGA nationalists who’ve been determined to make China our new existential foe for the 21st century. This conflicts with their core mission of perpetual turd-polishing. So, the new nationalists cry: “The Chinese are evil!” “The Chinese are our enemy!” “The Chinese are a corrupt technocratic kakocracy!” But also: “Thank you president Trump for asking the Chinese to get the truth about Joe Biden!”
This is not nationalism. This is Trumpism, where the needs of the nation and the state are subsumed into the president’s personal desires. Nationalists don’t wear T-shirts that read “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat” and they don’t exhort foreign tyrants to do their dirty work against domestic political opponents.
I wonder if when you get your America First membership card, buried deep in the user agreement is the language that specifies
Except when the President’s political foes can best be taken out by the ChiComs. It’s also politically indefensible. First of all, all of the people who tried valiantly—and unpersuasively—to defend Trump’s “Russia, if you’re listening” line as merely a joke are left standing three feet off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote before he starts to plummet. He certainly wasn’t joking yesterday. He wasn’t joking when he told George Stephanopoulos that he saw no problem taking foreign opposition research. He wasn’t joking when he asked for that “favor” from Zelensky.
But let’s say you just don’t care about any of the high-minded stuff or the hypocrisy. You just want Trump to keep “winning.” But will his agenda—whatever that is—be advanced? Infrastructure week, long the “Free Beer Tomorrow” of American politics, is now the political equivalent pie in the sky. Does this expand Trump’s coalition? Does it make it more or less likely he’s impeached?
“Aha! Right!” you might respond. That’s his genius. He’s making the Democrats impeach him and the constant whining and moral outrage against impeachment is a ruse. After all, if you’ve been watching, reading, or listening to the usual suspects, impeachment will be good for Trump and the GOP and a “disaster” for the Democrats.
“Trolling” has evolved—or, rather, devolved—as an internet term over the last few years. But not long ago, there was a common phrase called “concern-trolling.” It means to pretend to be very worried about the well-being of your political opponents. It was once a staple of the Washington Post op-ed page. “I want two vibrant and healthy parties,” some liberal columnist might write, “and that’s why I am worried that the GOP’s pro-life position will cripple it in the long run.”
These days, it is amazing how many of my friends on the right are suddenly very, very, concerned about what the Democrats are doing to themselves. It’s almost like they’re reassuring the audience that this storyline will end well.
That doesn’t mean they’re wrong. This could blow up in the Democrats’ faces. But most of right-wing media these days seems really eager to talk about pretty much anything other than what Trump has said or done.
The Whistleblower Doesn’t Matter Anymore And there’s perhaps no one they want to talk about more than the Whistleblower, except for Adam Schiff, who, let the record show, is a dishonest and partisan hack whose only impressive quality is his ability to mask his hackery in the dulcet and somber tones of concern-trollery.
I keep seeing clips of right-wingers from shows I don’t watch ranting about the Whistleblower as if the case against Trump still hinges on that person’s motivations and credibility.
The really unhinged folks call him or her a deep state operative, spy, saboteur, etc. The calmer folks say the Whistleblower is a “leaker.” All of these terms are wrong, if the facts as reported are true (admittedly a potentially big if). Even if she/he approached Schiff’s staff to ask for guidance, that doesn’t make him/her a liar—it does make Schiff a liar, but we knew that.
At some point, we need to hear directly from the whistleblower. But the inconvenient fact is that most of the allegations in the report have already been corroborated. Trump says, "This is an exact word-for-word transcript of the conversation, taken by very talented stenographers.” His insistence on this point would make me suspect it’s not an exact transcript—even if it didn’t say in the document that this “is not a verbatim transcript of a discussion.”
But if you take Trump at his word, that it is a verbatim transcript, then the need to confront the whistleblower—never mind roll out the electric chair for the traitor—unravels considerably.
The transcript supports three out of four of the whistleblowers allegations: Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Biden, Trump asked for Zelensky’s help to investigate the fantastical—and Putin helpful—tale of the missing server in Ukraine, and Trump wanted Zelensky to work with Giuliani, as the whistleblower alleged. And this leaves out all of the things Rudy Giuliani, Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump have confessed to by now.
The reason they want the whistleblower exposed is pretty obvious: Trump and his defenders are weakest when they have to defend Trump’s behavior or some principle (see
my column today). They are most effective when they can destroy someone else. That’s what Trump enjoys and that’s what more and more of his fans enjoy too. The cruelty is the sauce.
The New Reformers! Oh, and spare me the “We need to know what happened in 2016” stuff. I have no problem with the Durham investigation. And before I jump on the anti-Bill Barr bandwagon, I want to know more about what he actually did, rather than the spin that’s being put on it. But this is not the way you launch a proper investigation. This is not the way you talk about a proper investigation. This is the way you float a trial balloon to a fairly hostile foreign government that sees everything through a transactional prism: “Please ratf*ck my opponent, I’ll make it worth your while.”
Seriously, all I ask is that people stop working from the assumption that we’re all idiots. You’ve got clowns going on cable news nightly pretending that Trump was constitutionally and legally obligated to raise the Biden case with the Ukrainian president. Seriously, I heard one guy suggest that if he hadn’t importuned Zelensky to investigate Biden, that would be impeachable. For God’s sake, just shhh.
In the past, when I would point out that Donald J. Trump (First of His Name, Chancellor of Trump University, Regent of the Taj Mahal Casino, Ponzi Czar of the Trump Network, Admitted Lord of the Swamp, Heroic Victor of the Eminent Domain Wars, Overseer of the Trump Foundation [discontinued], Master of the Strategic Bankruptcy and Defender of the Money-Laundering Oligarchs, Servant of the Saudis and Exposer of JFK’s True Murderer) was a shady guy, his defenders would say that’s what they liked about him; he knew how the swamp worked and he would use that knowledge to Make America Great Again. And now the same people are appalled at the suggestion that he isn’t a passionate enemy of corruption everywhere?
*
About The Other Side * My friend Tim Alberta tweeted:
Barack Obama stands in front of the White House. With the entire world watching, he declares, “China should start an investigation into the Romneys.” Republicans wouldn’t just call for impeachment. They would call for charges of treason.”
To which a fellow who goes by the name “Orange Muppet Energy” replied:
And the blue checkmark flying journo squad would be explaining how it's actually entirely reasonable while two months later insisting that the tan suit was his only scandal. Just as they did with every other scandal. Everyone involved is sh*t.
I largely agree with both tweets, even if I think the second is too exonerating of Trump. The scenario with Obama is a hypothetical, while Trump’s behavior actually happened. The probably accurate suspicion that the media and the Democrats would behave as badly—or just almost as badly—as many Republicans and media conservatives are behaving now isn’t an excuse. But it is part of an explanation. It took a long time to get us here, and pretty much everyone deserves some portion of blame (including me).
I’ll write more about that another time, but suffice it to say, I’m dedicating a big chunk of the rest of my life to trying to do something about it.
Stay tuned.
Various & Sundry Canine Update: The girls are doing great. They were very happy to see us when we got home last Sunday, but truth be told they were happier to see the Fair Jessica. This confuses some people because they see so many of my videos walking the beasts, scritching the beasts, giving the beasts treats, etc. But this is a nice case study in how media can distort things by giving less than the whole picture. My wife works mostly from home, and so she spends a lot more time with the doggers. She takes them on the truly epic adventures on the weekends. She also feeds them most of their meals—though I do my share. The problem is that she doesn’t record them. I’m open to the idea this is a failing on her part, but one of the reasons the dog videos are so much fun is that dogs don’t care about celebrity. They do care about lost balls, though. Stick-ups are a concern as well.
Anyway, Zoë and Pippa seem to be enjoy each other’s company more than ever. There was a time when this schnozzle-tush smash-up could have resulted in a fight. Zoë continues to let Pip chase her in ways she never did before. Some people were concerned that Zoë started to play too rough in this video, and it’s true, she did. Zoë’s a bit like the Hulk. In Bruce Banner mode, she can have lots of fun. But if she gets too excited, she starts to turn metaphorically green and goes into “smash”—or, in this case, “chomp”—mode. Pippa seems to understand that the best way to respond to this is to basically play dead on her back.
Oh, one last thing. Someone insulted Pippa on Twitter and I responded with a fairly juvenile retort. That’s not important. What I really liked was the way folks rallied to her defense. Some of the replies are awesome.
First and foremost, I’m extremely happy with the activity we had in the sub over the past month. Not only am I happy with the amount of new posts every day but how some of you find the time to discuss other’s 12in12 lists and their progress posts. I hope we can all keep the activity going and make this an even greater sub to talk about our favorite hobby.
For the first time in about half a year, I had a ton of time in my hands. This might change over the coming months but for at least for one month I had 2+ hours available almost every day to spend on whatever I wanted to. In January, that was mostly games, so I have made a lot of progress and played a few great games to report on. Here it goes.
----------
Games I've Added -
3 - The Division
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Yakuza 0
What Remains of Edith Finch was free on the Epic Store for two weeks, hope you didn’t miss it. Well, unless you don’t care for the Epic Store of course. Or maybe you haven’t heard the news at all that Epic is challenging Steam for the #1 PC gaming storefront. What’s the difference? The Epic Store allow devs to keep 88 % of the income, while Steam only allows for 70 % (just like Sony with the PS Store for example). Also, Steam is full of shitty games, the Epic Store is not (
yet).
Anyway, enough of the Epic Store. I’ve purchased
Yakuza 0 and
The Division as the early unlocks for January’s Monthly Humble Bundle. By the way, The Division 2 will be available on the Epic Store but
not on Steam. OK, now it’s enough.
After playing Yakuza Kiwami, I had to get the next game in the series, which is actually the prequel to the original, which Kiwami is the remaster of. If you haven’t played any game in this series yet, give Yakuza 0 a try. It costs a measly $12 (I got it for 10 on a discount) and you get 5+ more games, including The Division.
Also, the
Jackbox Party Pack is currently free on the Epic Store. God bless the Epic Store. Or something.
DISCLAIMER: This is not an endorsement for Epic. Please don't get offended by miniscule things like this, I was trying to make a joke. :) ------------
Games I’ve Quit/Abandoned –
2 The 12in12 “veterans” know about this section already but for anyone reading my style of progress update for the first time:
These are the games I do not count towards my total completion. Maybe I got bored of them, maybe there were too many technical issues, sometimes I will realize that I don’t even own the games that I thought I did and sometimes a thing like the “Koch Media-gate” will happen like in last January (maybe someone still remembers that :D).
This was free on IndieGala in late December. I’ve had this on my wishlist since it was released actually, it looked interesting enough. You play a man whose children were kidnapped and who, since then, made it his task to rescue other kidnapped children. It’s an indie stealth game and does have a few interesting ideas but at the end I was left unimpressed and too uninterested to continue.
I wanted to like this game. I did like the art style a lot. The enemy design a lot. The soundtrack a lot. That’s about it though. The enemy AI is just horrible. Run past a guy? He sees you, of course. Walk past a guy? He sees you again. Fine. Sneak past an enemy? You still get caught. I’m guessing this is by design and maybe they can just smell you or whatever but retrying 10 times with a sub par checkpoint system got very annoying, even for a game of this length. Though I gotta admit, this game had one of the more memorable moments in recent games I’ve played between the main character and a rat. If you’ve played this, you might know what I’m talking about.
----------------------
Games I've Beaten -
6
Platform:
PC Playtime:
9.5 hours I’m one of the guys who never played a Devil May Cry game before. Now you might think “That’s horrible!” but let me be the one to tell you that the only way you won’t have a grudge against DmC: Devil May Cry is, if you’ve never played a prior version of the game. So it all worked out in my advantage in the end. Most of us know Dante. Red jacket, gray hair, fights demons with a sword. I first saw him in SMT: Nocturne actually.
Because I didn’t play a DmC game before and didn’t have any prior opinion on Dante, I didn’t mind the switch to black hair in the reboot, DmC: Devil May Cry. So I didn’t focus on the game in the big picture of how it fits in with the rest of the series or what it had changed. I focused on the game itself and I had a great time.
Almost every hack and slash game I’ve played recently has been great. I’d put Metal Gear Rising in my Top 10 all time. DmC: Devil May Cry is no different. Slashing your way through dozens of demons is tons of fun and with the metal soundtrack blasting through your ear you feel hyped to destroy anything that dares to stand in your way. You get a ranking after each mission, the best you can get is SSS I believe. To do this, you need to use different moves to get the maximum amount of points. This forces you to switch things up, if you want a good grade, which is pretty good game design in my opinion.
The story revolves around Mundus, a demon prince, who rules over “Limbo City” by brainwashing its’ inhabitants. How? Through an energy drink. Yep, read that right. Dante is not affected by this because he is a Nephilim (half-demon, half-angel) and not a filthy casual human. Dante’s goal is to kill Mundus with the help of his brother Vergil, who Mundus doesn’t know about and Kat, a girl who joined Vergil in his mission.
Dante’s mother was actually killed by Mundus, so that’s why Dante is very keen on getting revenge. It’s a solid story with a bunch of cool moments. In one scene near the end of the game,
Mundus kidnapped Kat. In turn, Dante kidnapped Lilith, the carrier of Mundus’ son. During the exchange of the two, Vergil actually shoots Lilith in the stomach and kills the baby. Crazy and epic moment.
I started the game in German and just hate the voice acting. In movies and series, German voice actors are pretty good but it’s rare to find good voice actors in video games. The switch to English made such a huge difference 1/3 of the way through.
The game made me a fan for sure. I own Devil May Cry HD and will definitely play it this year. Pretty excited for DMC V now, even though I probably won’t buy it until at least 2020.
Rating:
9/10
Platform:
PC Playtime:
3 hours On my wishlist for a few years. I bought it in December after realizing that some Steam functions were blocked because I hadn’t bought a game on Steam in over 12 months. I got it for a few euros on sale.
You’re working for an espionage agency and are given a bunch of weird infiltration missions. The game plays in multiple, short levels with a bunch of extra random things and side quests to do. For example talking to a wrestling champion on top of a random roof triggers a scene where you are in a wrestling cage. You just throw the guy on the tables nearby and win. There also was a robot prostitute in a different level. If you give her a coin that you can steal off a street musician, the game triggers one of the weirdest scenes ever. There’s an overarching story connected to all of this as well.
The game is full of movie and internet meme references and to be honest, they were just so unfunny most of the time. This made the game get tedious pretty fast, even if it only took 3 hours to beat. Apart from a few fun mini games like the wrestling match and the overall somewhat charming effect of this game, I wasn’t too fascinated by it.
Rating:
5/10
Platform:
Xbox One S Playtime:
About 10 hours (+- 2 hours) The playtime divides itself into the story mode and a few fights against my brother + a few "tower" playthroughs. The tower is basically a mode in which you fight against 10 fighters in order with a fighter that you can select.
The story of Mortal Kombat X is what you'd expect out of a fighting game, I guess? I'm not very experienced in fighting game stories but this is what I expected going in.
This being a basic hero's story and just a bunch of fights in between. This is my first Mortal Kombat game, so I don't know anything about each character's back story. But tell me, is it good storytelling to have all the characters talk like they've just read each other's Wikipedia page? "You are Raiden, the guy who stands for XYZ. How could you do the horrible thing you di?" - "Well, that's because of the one thing that happened 4 Mortal Kombat games ago. That's why I had to do what I had to do!" Of course, the dialogue didn't go exactly like that but that's the gist of it. :D Overexplaining everything.
The writers thought about all the newcomers coming in and that's not a good thing to do, if you want realistic dialogue. I'd have been totally fine with being kept in the dark somewhat because at some point, I'd know enough about the characters and their intentions to give a damn anyway. Especially since the pace of the plot started picking up after all the introductory Wikipedia bull crap ended and shit started happening.
Let me tell you though, Johnny Cage is such a horrible character. Like laughably bad. He easily has the worst one liners of any video game character ever and that's basically all that is coming out of his mouth. This guy makes fun of any situation, while everyone is busy fighting for their lives.>! In one scene, Johnny is bleeding and as his daughter comes to help him, he says "Blood...is supposed to be inside the body" or whatever, I played with german dubbing, so the translation might be a bit off.!< At some point I just started laughing every time he said something because I knew it would be stupid and that's what it always was. I gotta tell you though, I had to use him against my friends just to see how stupid his pre-fight interactions with the other characters would be. Didn't disappoint.
The fighting is extremely enjoyable, with a ton of combos to master and a bunch of fatalities and "X-Ray" moves to enjoy. X-Ray moves build up as you get hit more and more often to give you the chance to get back into the fight and show bones breaking. Pretty brutal. Fatalities are just 10 times more brutal and looking at a new one has always been fun. I'll definitely get back to this game at some point. Also, I don't know how I haven't mentioned this yet but this game has QTEs done so poorly. I've purposefully messed up many times. There is no penalty for failing. The ensuing scenes just don't make any sense anymore because even though your character gets hit all the time, the next scene shows you standing over your enemy victorious. This was really bad.
Rating:
6/10
- What Remains of Edith Finch
Platform:
PC Playtime:
2 hours What remains of her indeed. A terrible curse has befallen the Finch family. Everyone dies in terrible circumstances. A lot of them at a pretty young age even. When you go into the pause menu, you’ll see a family tree that shows a lot of the members in the Finch family die at a pretty young age. Only great grandma Edie has done a great job avoiding her fate.
You play as, surprise, Edith Finch, who revisits her childhood home. By going through each room, you read about the deaths of your relatives. These are always presented in such a clever, unique and engaging way,
in a comic book style for example. I also got one of my favorite quotes of the year out of this game.
“And suddenly, I was a shark.” That part is probably the only time where I thought “Are you kidding me, game?”, especially with what ensued after that sentence. Other than that, I had a great afternoon spent on something I haven’t experienced in this way before.
I’m not an advocate for walking simulators, far from it actually but I can easily recommend this to anyone. I still don’t like the walking around parts in these games all that much but it was actually not that big of an issue here. The story was engaging enough to keep me motivated throughout but I still like more fleshed out gameplay mechanics in the games I play.
Rating:
7/10
Platform:
PlayStation 4 Playtime:
25 hours Depending on which subreddits you’re subbed to, you’ll have heard a few things here and there about the Yakuza series. If you’re subbed here, which I’m guessing you are, you’ll have heard of this a goddamn billion times. This game is definitely sharing the #1 spot with The Witcher 3 for “Game with most appearance in 12in12 lists". Everyone and their mother plans to play this game this year… and I love it. All the praise you’ve heard about the series this year is warranted in my opinion.
Kiryu Kazuma is the main character of the series. He is a member of the Yakuza and is on his way to a promotion to lead his own small family within the Yakuza when the game begins. He grew up in an orphanage, having lost his parents at a young age. His best childhood friend, Nishikiyama, grew up in the same orphanage as well.
The story really picks up a couple hours in, as
Nishikiyama kills a family patriarch. Kiryu sacrifices himself for his friend and goes into prison for 10 years, while Nishikiyama gets promoted in Kiryu's place. So at this point, I'm already completely engaged in the story already. The characters are all very interestingly presented, Kiryu is already likeable due to his calm, composed personality and THE DRAMA, oh THE DRAMA. Everything you'd like is packed into the first few hours, leaving you confused but fascinated. Through the duration of the story, there are so many well executed twists and turns to the plot. Each character's motivations are well explained and have a point in the grand scheme of the story. This leaves a ton of option for how the story could unfold and leaves you guessing as a player. Really checks all the boxes for me, though the "japanese trademark cringiness" is present here as well from time to time.
What I particularly love about this game is its' setting. Kamurocho is not the most beautiful and special place I've seen a game play in (it's not even the best setting in the games I've played this month :D) but I love how small it is. In a world where gaming marketing boils down to "this games map is 10x larger than XY's map" sometimes, this is a nice change to that. Kamurocho becomes recognizable fast and each little shop is part of at least a few missions. Every corner of the map has something for you to do.
You can either play through the story, do a total of 78 substories or play some mini games. The substories are hit and miss, some of them are hilarious but some just very basic "go here, do this" style missions. Each substory is supposed to act as a life lesson, like "don't fall for phone scams" or "don't fall for F cup breasts scams" (yes really). The mini games can range from basic casino games to a rock-paper-scissiors styled wrestling game (in which two women dressed in insect costumes fight each other) called "MesuKing". There is also Karaoke, Bowling and Darts for example.
The game manages to switch between serious and funny sections very well, which is something I was particularly impressed by. Going in, I expected this game to be something I'd like but it definietly exceeded my expectations. Such a fun game. Oh yeah, brawling and kicking ass was also a lot of fun.
Rating:
10/10 LAST MINUTE COMPLETION:
Red Dead Redemption 2 Platform:
PlayStation 4 Playtime:
About 70 hours (
Just beaten this game. Not even updated my backloggery page, so this is a very special surprising completion I guess.)
I don't think anything that I'll write could do this game justice. This was such an emotional rollercoaster. A story as epic as any other in gaming. As someone who was disappointed when beating the original 2 years ago, I was completely blown away by Red Dead Redemption 2.
The character of John Marston didn't click with me that much in the original but I've found myself connecting with Arthur Morgan pretty quickly. The story of this game is about the Dutch van der Linde and his gang of outlaws after a failed robbery on a train in Blackwater. John Marston and Arthur Morgan are part of the gang, so this is basically taking place a few years before the original.
I don't really want to touch on the story too much, so that you can go into it as blind as possible but it really was amazing. Every single character is unique and so well written. You learn more and more about them as the story progresses and build up relationships with each of them. Some you will like, some you will hate. You all live in camps together. Whenever you return to the camp, you'll be able to listen to conversations between the characters. Characters will approach you and talk to you, reacting to recent events. Sometimes you'll have parties together. You can talk while playing poker together. You can have little talk sessions with the women, where Arthur just lets out what is bothering him. There is hours and hours and hours of this side content where you can just learn more about Arthur and the other gang members.
Their clearly went a ton of time into animations, as each one is as detailed as possible. Filling a plate with food, pouring coffee into a cup or chopping wood. Thanks in part to small details like this, this is easily the most immersive game I've played. AI daily routines contribute to this as well. Each NPC has a realistic routine that they follow, which breathes so much life into each of the games towns.
What else is there in this game content wise? You can spend hours fishing, hunting, playing games, doing chores around camp, being a bounty hunter, robbing coaches, looking for treasure, beating all the 90 challenges, collecting cards and a lot of other random things. There are so called random events in the game, which pop up when you're riding around randomly. These can be as simple as helping out someone who got poisoned by a snake to giving an injured woman a ride home. Even in these simple moments, Arthur will engage in interesting dialogue with the NPCs and give these short sequences extra meaning. All of this just helped immensely with the development of Arthur's character and led to me loving everything about his story.
Can't forget about the stranger missions, which are side missions where you meet random people. These are almost as detailed as the main story, as they use cut scenes as well. You'll meet colorful personalities and will be asked to do a bunch of random tasks for them. As you progress through the main story, you'll find out that even these side missions carry a big weight in the progression of Arthur's character and story.
Of course, other things to do include reading through all of Arthur's diary entries after every mission, reading through the dozens of newspapers that are released as you play, reading notes that you randomly find or reading through the shop's catalogs. These contain detailed entries an all outfits, food and guns that you can purchase. These will be overlooked by 99 % of the players but probably took 100s of hours to fully create. Also there is a compendium with 500+ entries on animals, guns, plants and bandit gangs. It's just amazing.
So yeah, that's the world of Red Dead Redemption 2. I haven't even told you the half of it yet. You got a shit ton to experience here. Well worth the $60 entry price and can be purchased a bit cheaper these days. I will 100 % go back to this game and replay the story, take my time to do all the little things and really delve into the lore of this. Also. there is one point in the story that was just incredibly shocking to me.
When you ride into Saint Denis to do a Sadie Adler mission, Arthur just collapses all of a sudden without you having triggered the mission yet. So surprising and well done. There were a few parts where I got really emotional, especially thanks to an incredible soundtrack.
May I? Stand Unshaken is probably my favorite song of the year. Also, did you like the Mexico ride in the original? Well, there are at least 2 rides with a way bigger effect on you for sure. Such good use of the music. Such a good game.
Rating: 10/10
-----------------
What I'm Playing in February 6 games beaten. I'm extremely happy. as I managed to beat RDR 2 after three months, found two series that are right up my alley in Yakuza and Devil May Cry and have a bunch of great games lined up for February and beyond.
PC - Beyond Good and Evil - Next up on my 12in12 list. I got this back in 2016 I think, so it's time to play this finally. I'm worried about potential technical issues with this one. We'll see.
- Football Manager 2019 - Should maybe mention this, as I've spent 60 hours (!) with this in a month. I'm in my fourth season currently and not looking to stop. So much fun.
- Resident Evil 5 - Started this almost a year ago. On Chapter 4-2, so I'm guessing it'll take my brother and me another 6 months to finish this. :D
Playstation 4 - Persona 5 - Only game left to play on my Playstation 4 currently. Finally time to get back into this.
Xbox One S - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - Next game on console after beating RDR 2. Has potential to be great.
------------------
12in12 original list - Progress: (3/12) - Batman Arkham City
- Beyond Good & Evil
- Bioshock Infinite
- Deponia Doomsday
- DmC: Devil May Cry - DONE
- Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
- Persona 5
- Red Dead Redemption 2 - DONE
- Resident Evil 5
- SOMA
- The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine
- Yakuza Kiwami - DONE
------------------
My Yearly Stats: - Games Added: 3
- Total Price: 9 €
- Games Removed: 2
- Games Finished: 6
- Games Left in the Backlog: 55
So far at +5 for the year. The goal was to be done with the backlog at the end of the year but that doesn't seem very likely to be honest. What would we do without a backlog anyway, right?
Best of luck to all of you for February, keep them posts coming. And if you've read all of this, you're obviously mental.. but thank you!
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