Sunday, November 17, 2019

 Spent another night trying to liberate the Earth from alien domination, and didn't notice the time until morning again. So, another day of being a zombie but I've already written all about XCOM I can think of. Ah, well, we'll do what we can.



 I am noticing something about that game. I'd played it several times in the last year-and-a-half I've owned it, but would always get stuck and, eventually, get frustrated and move on. Something must of clicked this time around, as I've gotten a solid chunk out of success out of it and only lost a couple soldiers.

 But that's how it is with video games and me. I get to a certain place where I get stuck or frustrated or just pain unable to make a decision that decides the course of the game, and get irritated. Didn't use to do that when I first was into video games. I used to be the type to spend all night pounding my way through a game, the same way I used to read books.

 These days, though, I take it easy and just have fun. At 44, life is much, much shorter than it used to be but I no longer feel the urge to indulge myself or experience as much as I can as often as possible. I know what I like and that's enough to keep me busy. Now, this doesn't mean there isn't new things to explore or discover at all, but I can wait for them to come to me. I don't know if this is wisdom or just exhaustion, but it's working well enough.

 Speaking of having fun, I must say that I'm really having a lot of fun doing this. And what's more, it's a type of "fun" I haven't had since before I started working at Flagpole. It's funny but I guess it's tru that I find more fulfillment on my own than as a part of a group of any size. When I was freelancing and living basically from story to story in a run-down trailer in Gainesville, I was having a blast. In fact, I had so much fun that I can barely remember most of it, just flashes and scenes.

 Maybe I should've kept the stuff I wrote back then, but that's water under the bridge. I had a dozen or more composition notebooks, the kind used in schools and classrooms, full of this sort of gibberish. Music/movie/book reviews, political and social ruminations, my first clumsy attempts at fiction and the "Death of the American Dream" book I was then trying to write, which had to do about Elvis than anything else.

 When I moved up to Athens, I rented a truck, and the box with my notebooks, plus a copy of the Koran, one of the Book of the SubGenius, an Emma Goldman reader, a Terrence McKenna collection, and the Tao Te Ching, among other things, fell out of said truck somewhere between Valdosta and Savannah. I like to think, if nothing else, some Georgia boy or girl in one of those weird little towns found it and it completely blew their minds.

 Anyhow. Enough reminiscing. Let's do the News. I guess the most interesting that happened yesterday in the Clean World was the re-election of John Bel Edwards to the governorship of Louisiana over Republican loony tune Eddie Rispone. This win, pretty much a squeaker, came after repeated visits to the state from Trump trying to rile up the swamp donkeys in favor of Rspone. In short, it didn't work.

 Unlike in Mississippi - maybe - Trump's endorsement had basically the same affect as it did in Kentucky week before last: it didn't help at all and might have hurt some. Even in Tate Reeves win in the Magnolia State wasn't as solid a win as conservatives usually get here. A lot has to do with Republicans basically abandoning the urban and suburban areas, it seems, along with a higher turnout by African-American voters. Same thing happened with Doug Jones in Alabama two years ago, when Trump backed the completely wretched Roy Moore, who still might've won if his taste for young blood hadn't been revealed to the world.

 Make no mistake, Louisiana is still a pretty conservative state - Edwards, though a Democrat, passed one of the most restrictive abortion bans of the past couple years - and will most likely go for Trump in 2020. This loss really doesn't say much about Trump's popularity with the base, as that's rock-solid and still enough of an issue that Republicans are willing to debase themselves in public to get his table scraps, all the while knowing Trump will drop them like a bad habit the very second they show disloyalty. Even if it doesn't make sense, like referring the as-we-mentioned conservative John Bel Edwards as a "socialist". He called Mike Pence's aide a "Never Trumper" because she questioned the necessity/legitimacy of the phone call with Ukraine.

 I'll say it again, though. He's not doing this imitation of an unpredictable, irrational toddler throwing a tantrum because he's sick or sundowning or anything like that. The guy's never been told "no" or had to deal with actual consequences for 70 years, and everyone who worked for him were forced to kiss his ass to make payday. He just doesn't know how to deal with the world outside his elitist bubble. That's just how it is, media narratives and MAGAt fantasies aside. Plus, he is extremely stupid, which is why the sooner he's away from the nuclear trigger, the better.

 Okay, that's enough for today. Tomorrow marks a new week and who the hell knows what will happened with the dawn. Adios.