Call it what you want to. I call it quits.

  Seven more days. One more week. Things are heating up. The laptop story seems to have evaporated like a fart in the breeze and now Trump is threatening to withhold COVID-19 aid to states that don't for him. Brett "Kegger" Kavanaugh wrote on a ruling basically saying if, given the chance, he's giving the election to Trump. Amy Coney-Barrett... just Amy Coney-Barrett. Interesting times, they say.

 But you know what? I am not inclined to write about politics or the election here today. I figure the next seven days of News is going to be a booger, so let's have some fun.

 I do want to mention that the Gulf Coast is looking at yet another hurricane, this one called Zeta. Once this makes landfall, we'll tie 2005 for most hurricanes hitting dirt in a year. And the season still has another month to go. The entire New Orleans metro area is under watch, but this one seems to be heading towards the Mississippi coast. It's projected to hit some Wednesday afternoon or evening, so if you're in the path batten down the hatches and don't screw around.

 And as much as I hate to bring it up, I need to mention two more police-related killings that really didn't seem necessary. One was of Wallace Walter Jr. in Philadelphia yesterday. From all reports, Walter had "mental issues" according to his father and his mother was trying to defuse the situation. He did have a knife and police shot him full of at least 10 holes. It was not necessary.

 Another shooting in Waukegan, Illinois, last Tuesday left one dead and one survivor accusing the police of actively letting someone bleed out on the street. This one is a bit more confusing. Police rolled up on Marcellis Stinette and Tafara Williams. A chase and shooting followed though it isn't clear why, and the police unloaded on the couple. Williams claims she heard Stinette still breathing when the cops put a blanket over him and they wanted both to bleed out in the street. The cops are saying she fled from a traffic cop and her people are saying that isn't so. The cop who did the killing did so because he feared for his safety and was later fired. No gun was found.

 Just putting it out there. Neither seems to be as cut-and-dried as Botham Jean or Breonna Taylor but both seem like they could've been resolved without anyone being shot. I'll say it again, white folks who are fine with this going down are basically saying their fine with living in a country where authority can do this to anyone with impunity. And it's true, they're really fine with it, even if they or their loved ones are caught in the crossfire. Authoritarian regimes don't exist without at least a portion of the population willing to have a society that keeps its thumb on its citizens.

 Whoops! Is this fun? Hell, I don't know, it's just what's coming out. What else can we do? Nothing really spectacular has grabbed me lately. I think I've about got Momma sold on Initiative 65, which would legalize medical marijuana in Mississippi. At the very least, she won't vote for the GOP legislature's clumsy attempt to crater it, Initiative 65A. So, baby steps. We've already discussed how we're going to handle me smoking it, so I think that's a good sign.

 That's pretty much word count and I don't know if I have anything else. Perhaps I'll come back to it later in the evening. Otherwise, watch the winds, kids.