Sat, Jun
27, 1:32 AM
SUBJECT:
Our most important deadline yet
Dear Tj:
I need you
now more than ever.
Our
End-of-Quarter Deadline is coming up and I want to make sure we absolutely
destroy the Democrats. I’ve set a MASSIVE goal of raising another $18 MILLION
DOLLARS - our biggest End-of-Quarter Goal EVER - but I can’t do it without you.
I asked my
team to pull your donor file, and I'll be honest, I was disappointed to see
that you haven’t contributed recently. I thought it was a mistake, but take a
look for yourself:
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I donated
blood on Monday, which I am normally not able to do, since they don’t let you
donate blood if you’ve travelled to the US in the past month. Silver linings, etc. Executing the pre-donation interview in
French also gave a bit of a boost to my ego.
Of course the fact that, after having lived here for more than a decade,
I would consider successfully navigating a 5-minute conversation in French,
which mainly required “oui” or “non” responses, an “ego boost”
says something about my confidence in French, and tends to offset the ego
boost.
But I’m
really good at donating blood. I have
good veins and I don’t mind needles terribly and I don’t get too lightheaded
afterwards.
Early nubs
of tomatoes have appeared on a couple of plants on the balcony, and the bean
bush continues its frantic growth.
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Sun, Jun
28, 6:20 PM
President
Trump asked me to personally reach out to you about a very important deadline
coming up.
Our
CRITICAL End-of-Quarter Deadline is just 2 days away and we need every Patriot
to IMMEDIATELY step up and contribute if we’re going to reach our MASSIVE
$18,000,000 goal.
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We’re in
that middle period in which the novelty of the situation has worn off, yet the
end is nowhere in sight.
Topographically, one would call this a “depression,” which sounds just
about right.
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Mon, Jun
29, 3:41 AM
FROM:
Donald Trump Jr. (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)
Where have
you been?
Each day my
father sees an updated donor list and EACH DAY he notices that you STILL
haven’t contributed.
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Reading
Brad Gilbert’s Winning Ugly. I
don’t read “sports books” very often, and a lot of it consists of Brad Gilbert
telling you how much money he’s made, but I do find it useful as tournaments
are starting up again. Some take-aways:
- Never choose to serve first. Because your serve almost certainly isn’t the weapon you think it is; because a serve is a complicated motion and you’re not fully warmed up yet; because allowing the opponent to serve is a bit of a psych-out move that might make him try to serve harder and thus make errors; because even if you lose that first game you’re still “on serve,” without having hit a single serve; because if you break you’re up a break.
- During the warm-up, hit balls down the middle and take note of which side your opponent favors
- Play the first two games of the match at around 70%. Get into a rhythm before going for winners. (I’m not sure about this one, as I think it might miss an opportunity to grab an early lead. However, considering I went down 5-0 in the first set of my last tournament match, perhaps I should listen here).
-
There’s
also detailed advice about how to play against certain players (e.g., against a
pusher, try to get to the net, or better yet bring them to the net; against
someone who runs all over the court, hit right at them, etc.)
The numbers
for the Geneva canton still look relatively good. Still, any travel seems a long way off.
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Tue, Jun
30, 9:03 PM
FROM:
Donald J. Trump (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)
Did I make
a mistake in trusting you?
Our
End-of-Quarter Deadline is TOMORROW, and I set a MASSIVE goal of raising
another $18 MILLION. This is our BIGGEST goal yet, so why haven’t you stepped
up?
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I realized
the other day that I hadn’t prayed in a long time, maybe even since all this
started. I’ve never been a
prayers-at-bedtime guy, but when I was traveling and spending a lot of time by
myself, I had motive and opportunity. My
go-to prayer was in a three-part framework of giving thanks, asking for
forgiveness, and asking for strength, then an Our Father thrown in for good
measure. I usually do okay in living up
to the first part. On the second I
usually ask forgiveness for thinking too much about myself, which I typically start
doing again almost immediately after I finish praying.
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Thu, Jul 2,
8:46 PM
FROM: Donald
Trump Jr. (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)
SUBJECT:
Chicken or Steak?
Is there
something I’m missing?
The Vice
President invited you to have dinner with him on July 9th, but I noticed you
haven’t entered to win yet. There’s not
much time left, and I know the Vice President will be disappointed if you miss
out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
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I’m not sure what possessed me to sign up to receive emails from Donald
Trump. Probably something in the spirit of
keeping one’s enemies closer, etc. Usually I ignore them, but the frequency and
level of desperation seems to have been dialed up recently. The unique mélange of cheap hucksterism, appeals
to celebrity-worship, bullying, and alt-right nonsense would make for a good
undergrad psychology thesis.
My friend Tris McCall postulates that this could all be part of a
grotesque strategy – that the more disenchanted we decent, rational citizens
become with this entire scene, the more likely we will be to simply stop
caring, and thus to cede (still more) authority to the Power Elite. I doubt that Trump and co. have the
wherewithal to conceive and execute such a strategy. Nonetheless, one makes fun of these people at
one’s own risk.
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L wasn’t feeling well Saturday morning, so I went to Pilates by myself,
where I did the reformer with Eva and was reminded that I favor my gouty left
big toe. Thinned out the radishes on the
balcony and made a small salad with the leftover greens. Made bread.
Made many grilled cheese sandwiches with said bread. Played Zoom technical director for our
Trinity Sunday service. Played tennis with
Yannick in the afternoon, who stated the obvious fact that I was missing 80% of
my service faults in the net. One must
hit up.
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Fri, Jul 3, 4:40 AM
TO: Thomas J Snow (sneaux@gmail.com)
FROM: Eric
Trump (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)
WE DID
IT: But, we could’ve used your help.
I convinced
my father to give you another chance, which is why he’s decided to EXTEND your
PERSONAL 500%-MATCH OFFER FOR 1 MORE HOUR.
We won’t
extend your match offer again, Tj. Don’t let the President down.
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A couple of
months(?) ago, I started doing the NYT crossword every morning, to try to
create a sort of buffer between getting out of bed and either a) traversing the
crepe-thin membrane that divides “home” and “work,” or b) the angst-inducing foray
into amateur epidemiology that comes with reading the morning news. For a while this was effective, and I ran my
“streak” (puzzles solved without help from the app) up to 35 days. But then the crossword-doing, and the stress
of keeping the streak going, started to become another part of the seemingly endless,
anxiety-spurring morning routine. Also, people
like to think that doing crossword puzzles is good for “brain health,” but I
think it’s mainly good for training you to think like someone who designs
crossword puzzles.
Sun, Jul 5, 11:39 PM
FROM: Eric Trump (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)
This is
your FINAL NOTICE, Tj.
So far,
we've emailed you 4 times inviting you to join the Trump Presidential Honor
Roll. Team Trump emailed you, my wife Lara emailed you, my brother Don Jr.
emailed you, AND President Trump emailed you.
We’ve done
everything we can to get you to join this prestigious group, and now I’m
reaching out to let you know that this is your LAST CHANCE.
I’m holding
your spot for the NEXT 3 hours. After that, your offer will permanently EXPIRE
and you will no longer be considered for a spot on the Honor Roll.
My father
is counting on YOU, Tj. Don’t let him down.
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Last week,
we spent a couple of days on Ile de Saint Pierre, which juts out like a polyp
into the lumen of Lac de Bienne.
We stayed
at the Klosterhotel, which as the name implies is a former (12th
century) monastery which has been turned into a nice but not overtly fancy
hotel. It sits at the far end of the
island, and walking with luggage isn’t really feasible, so a navette ferried us
from Erlach around the south edge of the island to the small dock in front. We walked up a short gravel path from the
dock to the hotel, enveloped by the scent of chamomile which grew wild on the
edges of the wheat fields.
Rousseau
evidently spent six weeks here in 1765, which partially inspired Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire. I
don’t know enough about Rousseau to say anything meaningful here, but Alasdair
Macintyre (from A Short History of Ethics) is worth pull-quoting:
“Rousseau was the worst kind of paranoid and hypochondriac, the type who does
in fact suffer persecution and is in fact constantly ill, and who therefore is
able to justify to himself the irrationalities with which he alienates his friends.”
The hotel abuts
a farm which raises Black Angus cattle and Boer goats. In the front pasture were around a dozen cows
with their calves, plus one bull. We
spent a lot of time watching them, learning a few things which are blindingly obvious
to anyone who has spent any amount of time on a farm, but which were novel to
us, such as:
- Cows can run extremely fast, or at least the young ones can. Around twilight one night, we watched two of the calves messing around adolescently, nuzzling and nudging each other. Suddenly, one of the calves decided to bolt to the other end of the pasture, building a serious head of speed in the process. An instant later, the other raced off after him.
- Bulls look a lot different than cows. Clearly checking out their undersides is the easiest means of identification, but their heads and necks are also distinctly shaped. Bulls look more pensive, with deep furrows between their eyes and on their foreheads. Their necks are also thicker, which evoked memories of my single season of Pop Warner football, where were given Xeroxed instructions on how to tackle properly, with the recommendation to “’bull’ your neck.” This advice was eagerly embraced both on and off the field by many of my football-playing schoolmates, who, come team photo time, strove to make their necks wider than their ears (an effect accentuated by the flat-top haircuts which were then à la mode).
- Cows breathe loudly while they eat. I speculated that this might serve a practical purpose, perhaps to avoid inhaling a mouthful of the ever-present flies along with the rich turf. In any case, listening to cows eat – the whoosh of exhale followed by the satisfying tug and crunchy release of grass – is a relaxing and enjoyable thing to do.
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Jul 7,
2020, 5:23 PM
Tj,
Why haven’t
you accepted my Father’s invitation to join the Official Trump VIP Club?
The Trump
VIP Club is a highly exclusive, invite-only group of my father’s most trusted
supporters. So, when he asked me who I thought we should invite to join, I
immediately thought of Tj.
This offer
is only valid until 11:59 PM TONIGHT. If you fail to join, you might not get
another chance.
