Thursday, January 23, 2020

 Momma bought her a Jamey Johnson CD, The Dollar, from Amazon, so she gets the MP3's along with the physical CD. I have Amazon Prime Music Unlimited so she's playing her new album as well as discovering the 300-plus Gigs worth of music I have on there. That should keep her occupied for a few days.

 She's also in a really good mood with lots of energy. See, Momma's 70, has had torn ACL in both knees, had one kneecap replaced and is overweight. In the last couple of days she's been going to the gym at ICC, and after a long, long time of trying to find one that's right for her - particularly here in Northeast Mississippi - she's hit pay dirt with this one. She says she's got so much energy she's worried what's going to happen, because that's how her mind works.

 I tell her enjoy it because I feel like someone sucked the life right out of me. I don't know if it's the front that's moved - it's rained like pouring piss out of a boot all day - or because I've been out of lithium since Monday. It's been refilled, so hopefully that'll whack me out of this mood. Granted, this is just another fluctuation in the sour frame of mind I've been in since the first of the year. Might just be the Brand New Year Blues, I don't know.

 Part of it is frustration with this. I've been pounding away at this gibberish for six months plus, now, and it's still pretty much the same gibberish it was when I started. I am still enjoying myself but one thing that's bugged me for years is a lack of purpose, a lack of direction for my existence, and frankly, I'm not finding one here. Fun is fun, sure, but maybe I've spent too much time having fun. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly fine with leaving no footprint on the sands of time, and a hard look around makes me glad I'm not leaving anything behind when I leave.

 Ah, well. Dark thoughts and foul moods. My cynicism is getting the best of me and I'm finding myself with less patience with the rest of the world. Twitter gives too many people with too little to say too much of a platform, and our only recourse is to be that much more vapid and unoriginal. It's all performative and glamour without actual substance, it feels like. Which is, of course, arrogant as hell of me. Where do I get off passing judgement on everyone else's plasticity when I've got nothing going on inside.

 Anyhow. The third day of Impeachment is in swing, and it seems the GOP strategy is to not pay any attention through the actual trial while expressing outrage that anyone would dare question that Prince of Men, Donald Trump. The Democrats are providing a good case and there's still something like six Republican Senators on the bubble, but when the rubber hits the road, they're doing what they're told.

 Again, the GOP spent the past 30 years getting the base in the mood to attach themselves to a charismatic authoritarian who'd threaten "enemies", be they foreign countries or the U.S. press or even just people who didn't vote for him. What they didn't expect, though, is Trump's ascendancy, someone who'd take that spot with none of the subtlety or skill that American politics requires. Reagan, Nixon, either Bushes would've gotten away with something similar if all they cared about was pleasing The Base. That's all Trump cares about, though, because The Base feeds his ego and they would be perfectly happy if the last thing all of his "enemies" saw the barrel of a gun.

 I don't know. I'm just in a mood. Here's another link to the Willie Nash petition and another example of how half-ass Mississippi runs its prisons. Again, though, the average Mississippian is fine with this, because the cruelty is the point. We're a very Puritan/Hobbsian nation and especially state sometimes. I am about a third of the way through Pillars of Eternity II and spent most of my waking moments today reading Jorge Luis Borges short stories while listening to Johann Sebastian Bach while it rained all day.

 Let's be honest, if nothing else, that's not a bad way to spend the day.