In which we wonder if we're missing something

Between college graduation and my first job, I stayed with my parents in Florida in order to have three wisdom teeth extracted at the same time, after which I was in incredible pain. Pumped full of demerol, I spent three or four days on a couch reading the Foundation trilogy. (Back then, trilogies were defined as a set of three books; nowadays, a trilogy is the first three books of a series that can go on forever if it sells well enough.) My sense of reality and fiction, dreaming and waking, was severely put to the test. It was an experience I have never forgotten. For a while recently I was afraid to watch the "Foundation" series on TV for fear of experiencing a dental surgery flashback. 

After my single extraction yesterday, I took a few Advil, had a glass of wine, and woke up this morning feeling keachy peen. Who says there's no benefits to old age? 

NY Time Puzzles: 4/4/1 pangram. Boring.

Reading (paper division): I finished Psmith in the City quickly enough. I have mixed feelings, as I can't quite figure out the character of Psmith. More study is needed. Meanwhile, the saga of finding the next book was abbreviated yesterday morning when we were sorting some books that my daughter no longer wanted and I found a pre-publication copy of a China Mieville book, Embassytown. I haven't read CM for a while, but everything I have read I have enjoyed, especially The City & The City, which I highly recommend. In that one, two cities essentially occupy the same space, and their separate sovereignties are more a matter of psychology than geography. Embassytown got off to a great start in a most complex fictional reality, and I look forward to digging down into it. 

Speaking of sovereignty, back in my coaching days I always found this to be a fascinating subject. I knew of no great philosophical discussion of the idea; most of the writings I could find were realpolitik, which may help understanding how things are but no help in figuring how things should be. Sovereignty is in the news these days, of course, what with China waiting for the US to invade Greenland in order to provide them with enough cover to invade Taiwan. I always hesitate to use any version of the word "real" when thinking about our President these days, but he has really committed various naval war crimes, really threatened every city, state and country that he doesn't like, especially if they don't like him, and really lied about everything he can possibly lie about, even when he's standing next to the truth in a neon pantsuit. The thing about sovereignty is that it is indeed slippery, and depends as much on others recognizing it as anything else (although big guns don't hurt). That is, if enough sovereign states agree that you too are a sovereign state, then there you are, and if you can't see the problems with that argument, you don't have what I would call the Debate Mind. Oh, well. If we follow our government's guidance to focus our diets around beef tallow, it will all become moot soon enough. 

Listening (audit devision): I have tried now many times to get on board with Dennis Wilson's "Pacific Ocean Blue" but without any great success. I don't hate it, and I can listen to it easily enough, but not much of it sticks with me. I bought the 2-disc version when it came out in 2008, knowing little or nothing about it. I would put it on the box every now and then, stubbornly thinking that I must be missing something. Now I stream it every now and then. I still wonder if I must be missing something.