No matter how I struggle and strive, I'll never get out of this world alive.

  The problem with being a politics geek, that is paying attention to the whole scene as a form of enjoyment, is that sometimes I can't get away from it. I'd rather not write about that scene but I'm probably going to. It's just too heavy on my soul and I can't wait until tomorrow's news.

  I finished that Hank Williams biography and I'd rather write about that. That was depressing as hell. That poor bastard came into this world with all the cards stacked against him but with an amazing talent, one I don't know if anyone's been able to reproduce, yet he managed to make his life even more miserable and maybe even not worth living. Everyone he knew, even his momma, was trying to make a buck off him regardless of what it did to him. To be fair, though, he made life miserable for everyone in his circle and pretty much fucked over every last one, one way or another.

 And the really sad thing is it was probably all necessary for his music to be as powerful as it is. You feel the misery in a song like "Your Cheatin' Heart" or the resigned despair-cum-black humor in "I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive." Nothing he did felt fake or put on, except maybe those goofy Fred Rose-written songs like "Sittin' The Woods On Fire." Even the stuff he didn't write. It still blows my mind "Lovesick Blues" had the impact it did. It wasn't a new song. Hell, even his arrangement was borrowed from another singer. But that tune was like an atomic bomb in country music and blew everyone's mind. And no one since has even come close. Not Elvis, not Garth, not George Jones or Merle Haggard. 

 Even guys like Lefty Frizzell and Ray Price show their clay feet, musically speaking. Dying young is sometimes the best thing an artist can do for their legacy and no one did it better than Hank Williams. Maybe James Dean, I don't know. John Coltrane? I don't know, I've never been keen on him or the modal-type music he brought to jazz. I'm not educated in jazz enough to say. Robert Johnson? Maybe, but that just brings in the question of just how much myth and legend pays into the musical impact. It's a necessary part, sure, but it doesn't need to overpower it.

 So, instead of that - which is pretty much what I wanted to say anyway - a quick look at the goofy shit going on in these United States. Seems the pro stock market gamblers got all pissy and banded together to stop the Reddit bunch from their shenanigans. And, like what the rascals were doing, the conclusion between the various investment firms is perfectly legal. It's just shitty.

 So, yep, a sure sign that the entire basis for our economic health is solid as a rock and not at all a bunch of vacuous bullshit designed mainly to let the filthy rich get richer. It's pretty wild, actually. Like so much else the past few years - and since COVID sat on our head -it's showing how much in our society is held together by spit and inertia. So much of it collapses the first hard breeze comes along and things are set up that the shit falls on the poor so the rich don't feel a lick of worry.

 And if you try to change that, people who're just up against the wall as you are will slit your throat with glee. Go figure. So what are my favorite Hank Williams songs? "Honky Tonk Blues," "My Sweet Love Ain't Around," "Honky Tonkin'," "Long Gone Daddy," Jambalaya," and "I Don't Care (If Tomorrow Never Comes)."

 And, of course, "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive." Ain't that the damn truth.