You didn't see graphite
I left work a couple of hours early yesterday because one of my tires started freaking me out on my morning commute. I've had this tire that consistently seems to lose air faster than my other 3. I check the tire pressure every time I go to the carwash (which I do at least a couple times a month), and it almost always needs air. But on the way to work yesterday I started to get a bumpy/wobbly feeling; not quite the THUMPTHUMPTHUMP of a fully flat tire, but very worrying.
So I went to the discount tire center in Abbeville and they looked at all the tires. Turns out it was actually a different tire, the tread was all worn away but on the inside, so it didn't show when you just looked at the tires standing outside the car. They turned the wheel sharply so I could see, and it was definitely visible.
I got that tire totally replaced, and the one that seems to always be low repaired. I'm going to go back in a couple of weeks and have them check the alignment, to make sure that didn't cause the tire to wear like that. But I should be okay for a while, and anyway it's probably that the tire wore down that way just because it's old.
I was super stressed for most of the day--didn't help it was 97°--and not thrilled about an unexpected $200 expense, but it had to get done because I'm driving to New Orleans tomorrow. That's a 2 1/2 hour drive, a lot of it through very rural areas. I'd rather not get a blowout going 70 mph through BFE, then have to wait for a tow in triple-digit heat... assuming I could even call for one, with the non-existent cell service you can have in some parts of this state.
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David's been re-watching the HBO series Chernobyl for like the 5th time. Which made me think, Gen X has lived long enough to see the Soviet Union get some kind of valorization in media. Or at least the workers--scientists, doctors, miners, firefighters, and especially the "liquidators" who were the first line of the cleanup crew--are mostly shown as heroic. Most of the military and bureaucrats are portrayed as pretty worthless, and I don't have an argument with that. But this series would never have been made in 1986, when Chernobyl actually happened, or at any time while the USSR still existed, or for at least a couple of decades after it ceased to.
Along kind of the same line of thought, I was thinking about the new Indiana Jones movie and had the realization that we are now further away in time from the first movie's release than the movie was from the events portrayed. But a quick goog showed that to be not quite correct; the movie was released 42 years ago, and 1981 was 45 years after 1936. For some reason I remembered it taking place closer to WWII, maybe even once it had started in Europe and Asia but before the USA's involvement. So we've still got a few years to go.
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In other news, Leslie Van Houten has been paroled. I always said that while Manson would definitely die in prison, the "girls" would probably eventually get paroled if they lived to their 70s or 80s. (With the exception maybe of Susan Atkins, who always just seemed more bloodthirsty and crazy than the other two, but she died in 2009 so we'll never know.)
I don't believe in people spending decades in prison for any reason--if they're so mentally damaged that they'll forever be a threat to society, then they should be in a mental institution, provided we have any left. So I don't really feel any kind of way about the news. I do find the claims by victim's relatives that she'll likely kill again to be, pardon me, fucking stupid.
I get that these are grieving family members. Some of them, anyway; some of them seem like they're too young to have had any real relationship with the victims. I don't expect them to cheer for the parole or feel the same way I do. But just be honest about it. Say you want them to die in prison for your own sense of satisfaction or justice or whatever you think that will bring. Stop pretending this 73-year-old woman is going to hook up with another madman drifter and start slaughtering celebrities and bougie grocery store chain owners, for fuck's sake.
The "victim's rights" movement grew directly out of the Manson case, and it's one of the reasons this country now incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world.