I had something for this, I swear.

  Well, I'll be damned. Here it is, 5:15 a.m. Friday morning, and I have nothing down for Thursday's Gibberish. I meant to do something. Even had a topic mapped out in my head, or at least something to ramble on about. But damn me if I didn't forget. I decided to go to sleep after supper and, whiff, that was it.

 I must've done this week before last. I usually try to get the News done by no later than 8 p.m. Central and usually shoot for around 5 p.m. Unless I have a topic, though, I generally let the Gibberish brew and bubble until close to midnight, and even then it's just to get something down on paper.

 And of course, whatever the hell I had bubbling is gone now. I have no idea what I was going to write about. I guess I'll just wing until I hit word count, if just for continuity's sake. I'm still on track thanks to last week's Actual Paying Work, so c'est la vie.

 Okay, so I'm going to dip my toe in one of the topics I try to avoid, and that's the Israeli-Palestinian business that's flared up in the past week. I avoid it because, as an American, that's got ethnic roots in neither group, I feel we - as a country - have said way too much about what's going on over there that nothing we can say now is of any help whatsoever. Indeed, I think our country's continual bickering does more harm than good.

 My basic stance is "quit being dicks and figure it out," it really shouldn't be that hard. That goes for whoever it applies to. Otherwise, this is something I stay out of. The question of why the U.S. pumps so much money into Israel is another third rail I'd rather not deal with, except to say we're pulling a lot of goofy bullshit in the Middle East and Israel is another pawn in that game. Far as I can tell, anyway.

 That being said, a lot of people engage in racism and antisemitism by picking sides in the conflict when they really don't give a shit about the day-to-day life of someone living in modern-day Israel, be they Palestinian or Jew. Antisemitism is, of course, an age-old sack of shit that we can't seem to shake loose no matter how resilient the Jewish people prove themselves to be. And we think all Arabs are shit even though Palestinians aren't Arabs, but no one ever said racism had to make sense.

 Okay. So much for all that. Again, my stance is "stop being dicks and figure it out," and if you want to pick at that until it turns raw, that's on you, bubba. Moving on, I got some feedback on my lost PowerDraw harp. The nice man is sending me a new one and hopefully, the screwed with postal service won't lose this one. Either way, I'm looking forward to playing with it.

 I've made a couple of strides in my re-learning process. Trying to build from the ground up, I think, was the right idea. I'm slowly shedding some bad habits and learning more about music theory. Same thing with relearning the guitar. It seems like I do better with feel than the technical side of things. When I played bass, I never went for fancy picking but always slipped right into that pocket. Same thing with guitar; I guess I've listened to so much slide guitar I can fake it, but don't ask me to play a scale.

 Okay, that's word count. If there's anything else, I'll save it for the weekend. Been playing a lot of Star Control, both the original games and the recent reboot. Lots of fun and all four are recommended. And that's that.