Dave's Fiction Warehouse

O nce again , I’m watching bald eagles with their young. The nest is 145 feet up a pine tree in California’s Big Bear Valley. It’s snowing. You can hear the wind, see the tree moving with the stronger gusts. Occasionally, an eagle will cry out; another might swoop into view with fresh killed food.  For those of us peering at our various screens, it looks bitterly cold. But eagles are creatures of air and altitude. Pretty sure they can handle most any weather. An eagle tending a winter nest is the picture of stoicism. You can almost envy them. They have no better place to be, no better thing to be doing. No concerns beyond this job at hand: keeping their young alive long enough for them to be eagles too. It’s fascinating to watch. More than you’d think. I don’t know how long the average viewing session is for these particular nest-cams, but based on my own experience, I’d say about as long as most TV episodes.  True, nothing much happens. But the same could be said of “Severan...

I s it wrong to find joy in the misfortune of others? Absolutely. Unless one of the others happens to be Leon Musk. Then it’s fine.  The precipitous slide in Tesla’s stock price , the recurring outages on X, the images of flaming and vandalized Cybertrucks: These are a few of my favorite things. Hey, sue me. Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the roses.  The only thing that keeps me from breaking into actual song is knowing that even when Leon loses $100 billion, he remains the richest man in the world. And he still has the ear of the most powerful stupid man in the world, which grants him full access to the treasury of the most wealthy nation in the world. So no matter the vagaries of the market and public opinion, Leon needn’t cut back expenses any time soon.  Also, Trump says he’s buying a Tesla as a show of support for this strange South African immigrant he’s put in charge. That should turn things around! But since it’s Trump, Leon should maybe get it in writ...

E very couple of years, I decide to join the wife in giving up something for Lent, which apparently started today. I’m not particularly religious, but I figure it doesn’t hurt to occasionally practice some self-discipline.  So, what to give up? The most obvious thing would be wine, just because I rarely go a day without a glass or two. But it says here that Lent lasts 40 days, so … no.  It’s a fine line.  You want to give up something that matters, but not something that life would be altogether meaningless without. So I think this year it will be Amazon. Makes sense because I’ve already gone six weeks without ordering anything from Amazon. That’s 42 days, right? Duration of Lent and then some!  Easy peasy. Just kidding. I’m boycotting Amazon for the next 40 days too, and I hope for a long time after that. I expect a few small benefits: a significant reduction in shoddy merchandise around the house; a lot fewer boxes piling up in the garage; the satisfaction that der...

O scar thoughts. Well, only one.  My wife first pointed this out but I tend to agree: celebrity breasts seemed much less enhanced this year. Smaller, more natural. We’ve grown used to seeing the splendid gowns draped over a couple of child-size bowling balls and there was less of that last night. What can it mean? Is it a trend? I was thinking it might be related to the rampant use of Ozempic/Wegovy among the Hollywood set. But Tess pointed out that in the past there have always been really thin women with impossibly large golden globes (my term, not hers). So I don’t know. We’ll be tracking this here at the Warehouse. Can’t comment on the various winners and losers, since (a) I saw only one of the nominated films (“Conclave”), and (b) Hulu decided late in the show that we had witnessed enough and abruptly shut down. I think it had something to do with that endless soliloquy by Adrien Brodie, which added an hour or so to the run time. Still, I hate Hulu and you should too.

K ind of feels like we should be boycotting everything these days. But it’s daunting when you look at the lengthening list of Stuff to Avoid: Anything controlled by Jeff Bezos : Amazon, the Washington Post, Blue Origin, Whole Foods, Audible, Zappos. Anything controlled by Mark Zuckerberg : Meta, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads. Anything controlled by Leon Musk : Tesla, Starlink, X, SpaceX, PayPal, OpenAI, the United States of America. That’s just the beginning. All three men control dozens of other companies I’m too lazy to list. Then you have all these other conglomerates that happily sucked up to Trump on the whole DEI question: Target, Google, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s – to name but a few.  You see the problem: Fighting back is no longer as easy as shunning Hobby Lobby or Mike Lindell’s shitty pillows. This might involve some hardship. It’s our own fault, really. We’ve been taking low-cost convenience for granted; now the oligarchs have grown so fat they can take us for gra...