I know one thing. Nobody can sing those blues like Hound Dog Taylor.

  It's Saturday night's Gibberish, and I'm not going to put the shuck on you, friends and neighbors. I got nothing. We're going to fill up the white space, but I'm really not in the mood and my brain feels like it's hung up on a stump. So anyhow, here's this week's News.

Monday

Wednesday

Friday

 Not my best week, admittedly. Monday and Friday were all right for what they were. The former a start-of-the-week glance and the latter a decent wrap-up. Wednesday sort of went off the rails, though. For whatever reason, I spent most of the day hiding under the bed trying to ignore the universe. And while it wasn't much for News, it did turn out to be some half-decent Gibberish. It linked the Democrats "virtual convention" - particularly them going live to different states to let them show off a bit - and my cross-country Big Trip from last year. It is a beautiful country full of lovely people, and it's only a shithole because we want it to be.

 I really need to come up with a better name for this, whatever it is, than "Gibberish". It lacks a certain gravitas, of course, but I also think it's limiting me as a writer. I've noted again and again (and again and again) that while I enjoy writing and truly believe I have a certain flair for it, there really has to be something more I can bring to the table than this, whatever it is. If for no other reason, I need to come up with something unique because what the world really doesn't need is another middle-aged white man stroking his chin at the issues of the day.

 I've been listening to a lot of Hound Dog Taylor lately. Nothing too deep in that, I just want to give him his ups. I'm particularly fond of that Elmore James-inspired "slashing" slide guitar like from him, J.B. Hutto, and Homesick James. Plus, the HouseRockers might be the hottest backing band in juke-joint blues.

 What else? I've been getting knee-deep into Pillars of Eternity II lately. It's pretty much all I've played the last week. I'm almost to the endgame with one character (a rouge-ranger hybrid), so of course, I've spent the last week experimenting with different classes, different play styles, and different ways to approach the story. One thing I appreciate about games like this is how they have an overall narrative and plot the game requires you to follow, but along the way, you can make up your own reasons why your character acts as it does. Same thing with the XCOM games; the What and Where are there, but the How and Why is mine. We sort of share the Who.

 I wonder if that's why my brain's felt like molasses the last couple of days. All of my creative energy, such as it is, goes into that game. And this is coming off a week where all I could do is watch documentaries on YouTube and read. I managed to finish The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, enjoying it much more than previously. I also read Philip K. Dick's Eye In The Sky. Fun book, but someone said he has better ideas but not the sufficient skill to put them down into a story, and that book is a prime example of that.

 Or it may be the values dissonance messing with me. For all his weird ideas, Dick was a pretty old-fashioned due, particularly when it came to male and female relationships. Most of your male science fiction writers from back in the day - say, before the '80s, definitely - were pretty stodgy and old-fashioned. And unimaginative, too, like they couldn't comprehend a world where women were anything more than secretaries who either wanted to fuck you or had something wrong with them.

 Dick's a little better than most when it comes to portraying African Americans, and this book had a good Black character, even if the point-of-view character was a Dick avatar, like everything he wrote. Off the top of my head, I can't think how he's dealt with LGBT characters, but I do remember Harlan Ellison being extremely shitty about in "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream." However, Ellison's a butthole, great writer or no, and he's got a history of being shitty to women in the real world.

 Okay, then. That's word count and supper's almost ready. I might come back, but I probably won't.