No kidding, I'm ready to fight.

 I'm not going to go into detail about this week's News. I'm just going to link to them. It was a decent week's worth of work, though. I'm feeling very squirrelly, so I want to lash something together, take a shower, and hell, I don't know.

 I'm so stressed out I can feel my blood pressure be high. That tooth that was working itself loose over the past month popped free yesterday. One of the back molars on my left side, it didn't look like what I figured. I guess this is the start of that bit of fun, but it upset Momma something off. "You're too young," she said. I don't know. My sciatic nerve has yet to cool down and I'm tired of being in pain. And I swear, I think my eyesight is getting worse. I'm wearing my glasses as I'm writing this.

 Not a happy bunny, nope. I've figured out why I've been so stressed and generally miserable lately. Everyone around me is stressed. The brother is stressed because of the new house and his wife is stressed because of her mom, which makes him more stressed. Momma's stressed because my uncle's heart is giving out on him and it's driving his wife, Momma's sister, even squirrelly than she is normal. My cousins are stressed, so talking to them is a landmine field.

 I shouldn't have any stress, but for whatever reason, this is making me a little nuts or, at the very least, exacerbating the already gloomy funk I've been in all summer. And pointing out I don't have anything to take the edge off is boring even me. Seriously, I would beat your momma's ass for a joint. Even some reggie, your grandmama would get a beating.

 It's getting weirder out there, y'all. The wingnut outrage machine has cranked up over claims that the COVID vaccination represents some sort of government control, like the entire world is in on this, all to make Trump look bad. I really don't get the endgame. We have actual U.S. Representatives arguing that getting a shot is equal to giving in to the communist hordes. The most-watched television talking head is claiming the shots are losing effectiveness. And the hoi polloi is more than willing to slit your throat if you disagree with them.

 I'll say it again, beloved, but I don't think it's a bad idea to learn how to defend yourself. It's getting to the point where they'll feel whatever they do is justified to "save the country" or "save the children" or "save religion." Nothing penetrates their field or shakes them from their faith. The goofy shit in Arizona is coming up snake eyes and they're convinced Trump will be put in the White House come August.

 The next two election cycles are going to be off the chain. Again, if you decide to buy a firearm, make sure you learn how to properly use and care for it, and the proper way to store it when not in use. Guns are toys. They're tools and their only purpose is to kill people. That may be how you have to defend yourself. You shoot to kill, shooting to wound only happens in movies. Keep that in mind and never fool yourself otherwise.

 Okay. On that cheery note, before we wrap things up, something that's been running through my mind the last day or so. This is a fiction conceit, so don't flip. Specifically, pre-historical civilizations, like in Robert Howard's Conan stores or Tolkien's Middle-Earth. Human beings as we recognize them have been around for 200,000 years but our recorded history only goes back at the most 10,000 years. That's a big whack of time unaccounted for, especially when you consider how much humanity has changed just in the past 1,000 years.

 We still have hunter-gatherer groups, what we've considered "primitive" societies for so long. There are islands in Asia and tribes in the Amazon that are protected from modern contact. We also know societies have changed from those types of societies to something we'd recognize as cities just to go back to the old ways because of this, that, or the other. Like the Mayans, they just... dispersed. Hell, even most of Europe changed greatly between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of nation-states.

 For all we know, for all we can say with any degree of certainty, what we recognize as "civilization" didn't happen until 6,000-10,000 years ago in Egypt, Sumer, and Crete, along with a handful of other places. Far as we know, for all we can say, that 290,000 years was spent with us being hunter-gatherers that really didn't move around a lot. We know the climate went through massive changes more than once and we know we almost died off as a species, willowed down to a little over 10,000 people. Or so some folks think.

 But I've been finding it diverting to think of pre-historical civilizations lately. People overestimate the durability of mankind's efforts. The pyramids survived because they're fucking huge. A large, vibrant civilization existed in North America well before 1619 but fell to European-born diseases caught by brief contact with Viking explorers, leaving almost nothing behind. Of course, by the time we got around to looking, we'd decided that only the white man could do "civilization" and were prepared to be a dick about it.

 So, what if there was a thriving civilization we'd recognize as such that's disappeared. What if there was more than one. It's not a new thought, of course. It's used a great deal in Lovecraftian fiction as well as Marvel Comics. Hell, half of Marvel's background is based on Conan stories.

 And those civilizations don't have to stop at a sword-&-sorcery level. I mean, it only took us at most 10,000 years to make it to the Moon. I've never come across any, but I'm sure there's fiction out there that touches on advanced civilizations that rise and fall before Gilgamesh. All sorts of stuff we haven't even thought of could've been developed. Hell, we could've achieved faster-than-light travel and left the planet, perhaps under the threat of devastating climate change.

 Just throwing it out there. My ideas are always great but my execution is crap. I've tried to sell them but never had any takers. I guess that tells me all I need to know.