Friday, January 17, 2020

 I've been putting this off, I admit. Not in the mood, really, sort of generally indolent. Still, a man has to do what a man has to do, and I am wired & inspired.



 The last couple of nights have been kind of on the late side because the topic required a lot of work or I just got off on a tear to help unwind after the previous night's heavy topic. Tonight is just me putting it off and putting most of my energy into not going back to bed and staying there. The general depression. Not angry. Not sad. Not guilty. Just tired and uninterested. If I could get someone to make the decision about what to listen to, watch, read, or play, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

 If there is a why, I don't know why it is. The chemicals in my brain aren't playing along but I'm taking all my pills, so it's got to be my sleep, but I've been using the light and the machine regularly. So it has to be something else. I will admit it is disheartening to get almost no feedback on this. Just once in a while and the odd like. It's one thing to yell into the Void. It's quite another when the Void has something better to do.

 So I'm not going to push it. There's a bit of News I do want to get to, and my mind's wandering so much there's no telling what will catch my interest before the night is done. Hell, I might spend the entire time explaining why liking George Thorogood is a good canary in a coal mine. May not, but we'll see how it goes. The News will just go where it goes.

 Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not begging for anything, not even asking. I'd rather have nothing than have something that wasn't genuine. That goes across the board. I'm not the type to rag on a meal because the cook wasn't fancy. A little sincerity, a little soul takes even the most humble plate full of beans and cornbread on flights of fancy.

Still it'd nice to get something to let me know it at least passed someone's time. Someone I used to fool around with used to always get irritated with me because that's my approach to life. I enjoy what I get. Life is random, there is no physical law that controls one's Dasein and you've no one to blame but yourself if you cannot deal with the chaos. Things change, have a good time regardless.

 The whole Angry Nerd thing bothers me in the same way I never liked being negative when I reviewed albums. I was as forgiving as I could be, and given how much, shall we say, unpolished material I got, it did indeed ask for a lot of forgiveness. I never enjoyed being negative, even about bands I loathed or were just not as worshipful. I mean, I'm really lukewarm on R.E.M., and I spent nearly a decade in a town where you shopped at the same Kroger as Michael Stipe.

 For the longest time, my attraction to pop culture stayed fairly clinical, or as clinical as Wikipedia and All Music Guide could be. I think even gamer gate had run the bulk of its course by the time I started paying close attention to it. I don't understand people who seem to enjoy talking about how much they hate or hold in contempt whatever entertainment they voluntarily subject themselves to. No body is making you watch bad movies or play bad games. No one.

 Unless it's your job, of course, but then even if you are a bit of a pissbaby like Yahtzee, you better be entertaining about it. Anyone who pays attention to him as a precise critic is fooling themselves. He's like H.L. Menken or Friedrich Nietzsche, enjoy the skill but know he's just for entertainment purposes. I think Lester Bangs is supposed to be that for music critics, but I always found him tiresome. Probably because I read his fiction before I read his criticism. I count my blessings that the first Hunter Thompson book I read was Fear & Loathing On The Campaign Trail, '72. Some poor bastard started on The Rum Diary, you just know it.

 Man, I have wondered off. Give me a second. Okay, got it. I don't really blame them, but Mystery Science Theater 3000 and, to a lesser extent, "Weird" Al Yankovic - who has a net worth of $16 million, good for him - have a lot to answer for. They fooled every sarcastic suburban spawn who hasn't been slapped enough and theater school third-stringer they could do the same thing. MST3K style especially doesn't work if you're just doing it 'cause you want to. They're being held hostage on a satellite by incompetent mad scientists. It's why RiffTrax doesn't work as well. You take away a butthole's defenselessness and vulnerability and give them a little power, all that's left is just a butthole. It's why comic book Spider-Man doesn't work in the Avengers but movie Spider-Man does.

 And these people act pissed off and put upon. Go watch something you enjoy and tell me about it, don't worry about being funny, you're probably not good at it. Be good at something else. I realize I'm more or less doing what I am in the process of condemning. I am vast, I contain multitudes.

 The one's I really don't get are the ones who get pissed off if the creators or even just the people selling you a three-hour waste of time, a lunch of cotton candy and popcorn, have fun decide to add girls. Or LGBT. Or people who aren't white. The reasons never hold up. You're supposed to enjoy or make your own. You do get a voice, but guess what? Your voice is being drowned out because the rest of us can fucking deal with what you can't.

 I would have been over the moon to know girls liked comic books and video games when I was a teenager. You dumb bastards have no idea what your fouling for absolutely no reason besides your own dull wit. More friends. More connection. Feeling alone sucks, y'all, even if it's something you can't help. Settle down, it's not real or, at the very least, it's not something to hang your hat on. If you ain't having fun, why are you doing it? Relax. Enjoy yourself. Time's short.

 Oh, George, but I have rambled on. I better get to the News if I'm going to do it. Okay. Remember Willie Nash? Well, people are trying to get a hold of Tate Reeves, the newly sworn in Governor or the Fine State of Mississippi, to do something about his sentence. To condense, Reeves was being held in the Newton County Jail - about three hours south of here, east of Jackson on misdemeanor charges. Of what, I haven't been able to find, but he asked the jailer to charge his cell phone. The jailer handed it to a deputy, and long story short, a judge slapped him with a 12-year sentence and he better be grateful it's just that.

 Last week, Reeves lost a case in front of the Mississippi Supreme Court, claiming the sentence violated his Eighth Amendment rights. Although he lost the vote, it was pretty close and it's garnered a lot of attention on Twitter as yet another example of the unnecessary harshness the justice system uses on African Americans, particularly in Mississippi, and you're a fool and a bore to think otherwise.

 Now, I'd post a link from the state's governmental site but it has yet to be updated. Someone should get on that. His Twitter call sign is @tatereeves but that's libel to change soon. I don't know sanguine personally I am about him doing anything but it will nevertheless be a test of just what direction his governorship will go. Here's a petition site anyway.

One reason I'm not sanguine comes from a slightly bittersweet victory. The U.S. Federal Appeals court denied the state's attempt to overturn a lower court's ban on a recently passed forced birth measure. Long story short, the state's sole clinic stays open and the 15-week limit won't stick. Now, the state's Attorney General Lynn Fitch has pledged to use her resources to take the argument to the U.S. Supreme Court. Apparently being first in the nation in infant mortality and first in child poverty is okay. Live children aren't as important, is the only thing I can glean from this.

 Anyhow. That's plenty. Thanks for indulging me. Have a good weekend.