(The Socotra House Legal Section made an appearance! Intern Kit is out with her supervisors).

We were hoping to launch the new book with a formal announcement this morning and a brief flashy presentation by Meat from the Marketing section. He did not come, and asked Legal to send a small team to make a summary presentation on the newer stuff happening in their world. They are an impressive team, including the newest intern on the left. Meat is apparently dealing with the outfit in Bangalore that claims to be handling an expanded distribution scheme. They wrote back and said they needed something called a “PSD format file,” which neither the Marketing nor Writers sections had heard of.

By the time we figured that out this morning here on the East Coast, the Bangalore team had already gone to bed, so the Big Release may happen tomorrow, if their morning arrives before our Happy Hour. We have not see it yet. We looked on Amazon and Barnes & Nobel and could only find the venerable backlist titles.

That would normally be where Splash would rise, put down his short glass filled with amber liquid and launch into an impassioned plea to take a look at the new book, which is somewhere between here and Bangalore. He says he will come back tomorrow morning if anything emerges from the Land of the Golden Sparrow. Or Marketing.

So, with a blank spot in the morning pitch, we asked the Legal team to have one of their newly-credentialed Interns to fill us in on the latest LawFare developments. Kit cannot yet carry her own briefcase, but her handlers managed her phone, backpack and tablet and she was ready to roll. She cleared her throat and began a brief sonorous summary of yesterday’s formerly new events.

“Up in New York, the Defense rested in the Hush Money trial against the Orange Man Bad. That proceeding has been unusual, but is part of a new partisan Judicial system that has everyone a little unsettled. The latest unusual thing is that the Judge sent everyone home for a week before the Prosecution tries to wrap the thing up. He told the jurors not to look at their phones, watch the television, listen to the radio or talk to friends or family. About the trial, anyway. But that is the new legal standard in which alleged crimes are not specified, and even verdicts certain to be successfully appealed are actually just campaign events for the messaging stream.” She seemed as pleased to have made it through the presentation as we were.

She paused and looked down at her tablet. “An entity called the International Criminal Court in Europe someplace has indicted they are onboard with the new frame of legal reference. Their Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity. That is sort of the same thing going on in New York, since Hamas killed or kidnapped 1,300 Israeli citizens to start the ‘humanitarian crisis’ we are all camping out about back here.”

She looked up and smiled. We smiled back. There didn’t seem to be a rational alternative, so we nodded quietly. Having been directed by her Section not to think about it too hard, we decided that was a good idea.

Until something new comes along anyway. Kit was about to get started on an analysis of Prosecutor Fani Willis’s victory in the Democratic primary down in Atlanta, but her chapter in the various trials against the Orange Man won’t happen until the election is settled and the legal stuff has become irrelevant. Or maybe they will just try the Orange People, the Israelis, several Congressmen and the President’s family for one unspecified criminal act and get it over with.

But that is a potential future issue we have agreed not to think about either. We hope to get back to some exciting new news in the publishing world tomorrow. Maybe accompanied by some jaunty traveling music, you know?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com