Lord, if you won't take care of us, won't you please, please let us be.

  Y'all, Hurricane Ida hits land tomorrow and by all accounts will be a booger. If you're in the Gulf Coast area, take the proper precautions and split if you're told to. If you're in the rest of the South, get ready for some bad rain and possible flooding. And that's on top of everything else kicking us in the collective teeth. 

 Okay, it's 3:25 a.m. and I slept on this. We took Little Brother back to the airport today, and driving to-and-from Memphis wore both me and Momma out. I remember thinking I need to get something down but it was a losing battle.

 In any event, it was a good visit from the LB, who I haven't seen in almost two years due to COVID. Granted, now is not the best time to come to Mississippi, in re: COVID, but he'd already bought the tickets and couldn't refund them. That tells you, if nothing else, just how quickly this Delta variant slipped up on us.

 He brought me some good smoke, which is great, but I think he really enjoyed spending time with Momma. I won't go into details, but Momma grates on him and he usually spends his visit avoiding her as much as possible. This time, though, they'd spend hours talking, even when that meant listening to Momma spin her conversation roulette wheel and hope to keep up.

 So it was a good visit and I'm looking forward to him and the Sister-In-law visiting this winter. Visit with your people, y'all, it recharges your batteries. Okay, then, onto the News. Good week. Big week, too. Between the FDA's approval of the Pfizer vaccine and the ongoing Afghanistan withdrawal, it has been interesting times. Add a Category 4, potentially devastating hurricane into the mix, and you can't help but wonder why the Washington Press spent so much time on Biden's dog. Good god.

 I'm not sure what else. I have noticed that even a couple of sessions has reset my brain somewhat. Now and then, I'll do this thing where I'm sure I've been thinking about something but I forget it. I can't for the life of me remember what it was or even if I was actually thinking about it. May not sound too deep but it always serves to shake me some. Man, I've missed this.

 Well, it's been at least a half-hour since I wrote the above paragraph. I don't really have anything to roll with, nothing particularly noteworthy I'm reading or watching or playing. My PowerBender harp came in the mail yesterday, but so far I really can't tell much difference. I find bending notes sort of easy, which has to mean maybe I'm doing it wrong.

 This last little bit is like pulling teeth, man. I think I'm going to go back to bed. I've been scrolling through Tubi but I don't think I'll mess with crap cinema. Just wrap this up, finish my drink, and call it a whatever-it-is. Seriously, though, y'all. Hurricane Ida looks to be no joke. Be safe.

Charlie is my darling.

  We have to drive to Memphis this evening. Little Brother's coming for a visit and we have to get him at the airport. His plane lands at 10:30 p.m. local time, so this is as good an excuse as any to get this done.

 I haven't seen him since the Thanksgiving before this whole COVID thing started. He and his wife live out in Oregon and they don't get out here much. I don't blame them. He's had this trip planned and booked since before the whole Delta surge started in on us, and by the time things go out of hand, it was too late to get a refund.

 He's had the shot and Oregon has put more effort into not letting the jackasses run things. Hell, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, the head of the State Department of Health, is getting threats and people are claiming his getting kickback from the World Bank. So I'm more worried that he might pick up something here, even being on the airplane is safe than just walking around Mississippi.

 So there's that there then. It'll at least give Momma someone else to fuss over for a couple of days. He's got me a hook-up in the works, too, so that's nice. I'll say it again, I don't understand how or, more importantly, why people do this on purpose.

 Anyhow. I'll probably save it for tomorrow's News but according to the White House, over 70,000 people have been airlifted from Afghanistan. The goal is to be over and done with by the end of the month and they say that looks to be doable. It's still unknown just how many people, Afghans and Americans, are in-country, but for the most part, it seems to be going fairly smoothly. The Taliban isn't making too much of a fuss about things but they seem to have noticed a "brain drain" going on, and I don't know what they expected. It's not like they're known for fostering freedom of thought.

From all I can tell, the evacuation is going as the White House claims. This is from both national and foreign news sources, but everyone agrees that folks are getting out if they want. It's pissing off the GOP and Trumpists, but fuck them, they're scum anyway. I still find it laughable that all this is dropped on Biden's lap after 20 years and that anyone truly thought it would go off in some fashioned other than harried. I also find it laughable that either the press or the average American wants people to believe they've given Afghanistan a second thought in 15 years, particularly conservatives.

 Charlie Watts died today. He was 80. Tom T. Hall died this past Friday. He was 85. Venerable years, especially in the music business. I haven't heard what the Stones are going to do but I really can't see how they go on as the Rolling Stones without him. Bill Wyman quitting took a chunk out of them and there's no shame in calling it a day after spending nearly 60 years as The World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band.

 That's good enough for now, I think. Nothing earth-shaking but it's nice to be able to put something down without having to pull teeth. If something interesting happens between here and Memphis, perhaps I'll come back.

Yeah, baby, everything's gonna be all right.

  While I haven't been putting this off all day, not really, it just occurred to me that I've not been at my best lately. Might as well get something down before the storm moves in and we lose power. Let's just ignore that I really don't have anything worth putting down in print to offer.

 I don't know what's going on, but this week's been a bummer, man. I thought the extra dose of Prozac the Psych Doc ordered was working finally but now I wonder. I'm not down, per se, just listless. Some of it has to do with the redness in my right eye that came from nowhere and won't go away no matter how much Visine I use. It's uncomfortable and makes reading a serious drag. And writing for that matter.

 Anyhow, let's get the News out of the way. The pullout of American forces from Afghanistan and the rampant spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19, that's your news for the week. I said it on Twitter, but maybe the most depressing thing about the Afghanistan pull-out is it's the most attention that country's gotten from the American press and populace in the past 15 years. Blame Biden or Trump, but that is a glaring example of why the United States needs to cut that sort of shit out.

 You can't tell me that we spent 20 years and two trillion bucks there, just for it to go tits up in a week, that was time and money and lives well-spent. Whatever the reasons why it was an absolute failure of American foreign policy from start to finish. It would've been this bad five years ago or five months from now. There was no good outcome, especially not twenty years into it.

 Okay for that. And I'm not going to get myself worked up over COVID again. I imagine I'll be raging about that for the next couple of months. I've already put the kibosh on my New Orleans trip and now it's looking like Athens is probably out. Dammit. Little Brother is coming down to visit next week. He said he might be able to get something together, but I doubt it'll come across. I could desperately use it, though.

 This eye business is making me miserable, man. I'm trying to use my glasses but they don't seem to be helping. Too bad I don't have access to an eyepatch. This is killing me, I think I'm going to have to lay down for a bit. I haven't reached word count but it will have to do.

UPDATE: It's one a.m. and the nap seems to have done my eye some good. At least it's giving me a reason to sleep all the damn time. I still don't have anything interesting to say, unfortunately.

 Just looking back, it has been a dismal week for this pitiful nonsense. The News has been solid this week, nothing spectacular or mindblowing but good work. And I've spent the last 20 minutes reading about Thin Lizzy and Huey Lewis. I think this is good enough, word-wise anyway.

Not worth a clever title, trust me.

I screwed around last night and not only did I let the hour creep up on me, but I also didn't plan on an all-night internet outage. Well, I guess you can't plan for such things. In any event, it's Friday morning and I'm writing Thursday's Gibberish, and of course, I really don't have anything to work with.

 It's true, I really don't have anything. My brother's supposed to come out next week, and I'm not going to lie, I'm worried about it. He's coming from Oregon and they've been much more on the ball than Mississippi has, in re: the whole COVID thing. He's flying into Memphis and I'm more worried about him flying out. Every day Momma announces another dozen or so folks she knows or people related to people she knows who have it. Most just have a light case but there's always a couple who are in bad shape.

 I can't believe there are still people bucking this thing. Look, the government doesn't care enough about you to track you and you're pretty easily controlled right off the boat, going through all this with a vaccine they're giving away seems to be a waste of time. But, hey, we all think we're the Hero of the Story and no one can convince us otherwise.

 Moving on, it's fun watching the big-time Washington press bend themselves into pretzels trying to find something wrong with Joe Biden's pull out of Afghanistan. Granted, Biden himself said some things could've been done differently and the future for women under Taliban rule is worrisome. That being said, it's hilarious to me watching all the people give a shit about Afghanistan for the first time in 15 years, especially the dirtbags who actually cheered on the American aggression in Afghanistan.

 And it's just darling that so many people are shocked and dismayed that Afghanistan fell so quickly to the Taliban despite 20 years of America showing them how to do freedom. The only "wins" there came for military suppliers and I don't know of an occupation situation run by the U.S. that hasn't been completely corrupt and incompetent. Maybe we should stop doing this shit, or is that too much to ask?

 Okay, what else. I'm really not sure where to go with this. I could give it a miss since my Actual Paying Work clocked in around 1,700 words all totaled. But nah, that's cheating. Granted, I'm not getting anything accomplished with this, but what the hell.

 It's been kind of a useless week, I guess. Nothing really interesting. Blowing the harp, listening to the blues, reading professional Carnacki fanfiction, and playing mainly Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I did play a little of Lovecraft's Untold Tales. So far, so good. It's an action RPG running with the pixel retro-look. Hard as a bastard, even on easy level.

 The weather's been kind of a drag. Lots of rain from the tropical storms and hurricanes messing around in the Gulf. Not as hot but fiercely humid. Hey, aren't we all glad I put any effort into this whatsoever? Totally a good idea and worth doing.

Saturday, December 14, 2016

 For whatever reason, I wrote a thing about the Royal Guardsmen's hit "Snoopy vs. Red Barron," rock & roll's Missing Years, and just the general recognition that we're answering the wrong question, as is my wont. It's all on the Tumblr site and it's a pretty good sized chunk of gibberish, so if that's you thing, go dig.

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

 It's a new day. The sun is shining, the temperature's warmer and what snow we did get has melted off the roof. We've got some stuff to get into today, so let's get to it.