February 29, 2026
Mercurial Men
Dead ANZAC Department: I’ve finished going through the files of Frederick Prentice, an ANZAC veteran of the Great War, and I’m now going through the files of his NCO, Frederick Charles Williams. It’s fascinating stuff. I’ll make my report soon.
That’s not an oops. I know perfectly well it’s actually March 1, 2026. I just love the idea of February 29 and take every opportunity to write it. I wish I had been born on February 29. That way you can celebrate your birthday once every four years. I’d be 16 then, hahah.
So, we’re decapitating Iran in the vague hope that “the people” will rise up and take back what’s rightfully theirs.
Let me be polite and say that you need to read a little history if you believe that.
The only time in history “the people” have ever risen up and done that was the French Revolution - and look how that worked out. Terror (most of which killed peasants, not aristocrats) and then a Big Man stepped in to restore order.
It’s not gonna happen in Iran anyway. The country is run by the IRCG. The mullahs are important and getting rid of them would be great, but they don’t run the communications, the military, the guts of the system.
Trump gave the story away here, I think:
Read the whole thing carefully. “Hopefully, the IRGC and the Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots….”
He’s offering carrots and sticks right there.
The IRCG and the police will peacefully merge with the Iranian patriots (“the people”)…. I hope so too. That would be the best outcome.
Not so some loudmouths who want to see, what? Blood in the streets? A revolutionary reign of terror? Mullahs hanging from trees? For every mullah who gets lynched, a thousand more Iranians will die, and their society will be in chaos for years, and the end game will be worse than what they have now.
Anyway, Trump, why? Why, now? Here’s my guess.
Because in the Geneva negotiations the Iranians were dicking him around — and in public, and he will not put up with that. Back room backstabbing is one thing. He’s accustomed to that. There’s taarof1 in every culture. That’s the way of the world. But he has zero tolerance for open defiance. This is very Trump and very “boroughs.”
Trump is said to be mercurial — but his outbursts follow a pattern, a very New York, borough pattern. Don’t throw it in his face. Maduro discovered that.
I hope this works out for the best. Hopefully Persian nationalism will prevail and they’ll respond to Trump’s overture. If the Iranians can be a little bit freer, that’s great. But don’t look for the Constitutional Convention in Tehran.
Bob Dylan, another mercurial Gemini, runs an awesome Instagram account. He’s actually the only reason I have an IG account - so that I can access his IG account fully (you can’t if you don’t).
It consists entirely of bits and pieces of Americana - music clips, movie clips, and videos. He is truly the custodian of the “old, weird, America” and it’s a fascinating insight into his mind. He loves music (not surprising), boxing, and colorful characters. He’s a history fanatic and the best entries are of uniquely American characters with a first person narration. He’s done Al Capone, Edgar Allan Poe, Aaron Burr, Stephen Foster, Andrew Jackson, and many others. It worth it to get an IG account just to dig into Dylan’s quicksilver mind.
I have a nice story to tell about Dylan’s former company, Special Rider Music, when I was trying to secure the lyrics to use in my book series.
Writers: if you want to use lyrics from a song, you have to pay. Strangely, you do not have to pay to use a song title, but you do have to pay to use lyrics. I’ve often wondered if you need to pay to use a stray word in dialogue, like, “Imagine there’s no countries,” she said cryptically.
Anyway, using, “cast your dancing spell my way” is not in that gray area, so somehow, I do not know how, I found out that Dylan had his own company and I wrote to them asking for permission. The guy who ran the shop couldn’t have been nicer and more professional and kind to a nobody.2
I paid, get this, $50 for the rights. To pay $50 for the rights to use lyrics from “Mr. Tambourine Man” in two (or three? I can’t remember) sections of a book was an honor. It made me feel connected to the cold, wintry period of February to April 1964 in which he wrote the song.3
Anyway, in one part of the book, a cynical character says this, which I think has some relevance to today’s firework. The characters are discussing “The Bandit Queen,” a heroine of the oppressed:
“OK, whatever,” said Max blandly. He checked the fuel gauge. The tank was three quarters full, and they had three jerrycans in the safe storage. Fuel wasn’t the problem. The rear axle was. A tiny but worrying rattle came from the axle, more felt than heard. Now he missed the checkpoints. They stood for civilization, not interference.
“When something annoying turns into its opposite in a flash, what do you call that?” he asked Jed.
“Expediency,” Jed answered, “or, perhaps, opportunism.” He turned to Hannah and asked, “What does the Bandit Queen mean to you?”
Max recognized Jed’s special interrogation tone of voice: pleasant, resolutely neutral, and persistent. The voice Jed took on when he wanted to Know Something About You, and it might be entertaining to see Jed go to work on a settler brat. On the other hand, he wasn’t in the mood.
“Oh please. Don’t start. Use your imagination, you can answer yourself. These pathetic idiots think she’s a real threat to us.” Max pointedly glanced at Hannah in the rear-view mirror. “If she exists, or ever existed, and that’s dubious, she knocked over one checkpoint or a crappy little outpost manned by one of those black stripe rejects, and the settlement people turned her into a big deal because repression and poverty and identity and alienation from the mainstream and all that trite, crowd-pleasing nonsense. She’s the mythical savior, the daughter of her people. She symbolizes the eternal dream of naïve fools everywhere to bring off a pure peasant rebellion, rising from the grass roots.”
He snorted, stuck an arm out the window and motioned towards the gold grass, voice rising sonorously in a Berke impersonation, “Like a prairie fire, to sweep away the putrefying mass of heaving corruption—”4
And finally, just because:
It takes a very big 5’11” man to do this when he doesn’t have to.
Gonna post this every day until I get tired of it.
Any Canadian moaning about 3 on 3 hockey and ignoring this is screwed in the head.
Etiquette, bullshit, lying, manipulation, deceit.
Getting Beatles’ lyrics is a nightmare and it has nothing to do with greed on Sir Paul’s part. He still doesn’t own the rights to some of his old songs. So I used the title (“Thank You, Girl”) for a chapter heading and described action in the narrative rather than using lyrics. I’m glad I didn’t know enough to do that with the lyrics to “Tambourine Man.” It all worked out.
He and Suze had broken up but he was still living at 161 W. 4th.