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.

If you cannot bring good news, then don't bring any

 Well, it's Saturday again and college football has begun in earnest. Mississippi State beat national champs LSU fairly handily, so everyone around here's happy As Paul Harvey used to say, though, "first, the news."

 Monday was a fair-to-midddlin' round-up, touching on Hurricane Beta, Mike Espy's growing success in his senate run, and the on-going attempt by the GOP to make protesting illegal. Wednesday we looked at the slap on the wrists Breonna Taylor's murders got and how the outcome isn't going to be pretty.

 And while it wasn't a deep dive, Friday saw us looking a bit into Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's pick to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. She's still got plenty to go through to actually get the seat, like a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, investigations by the FBI and American Bar Association, and public hearings, so nothing is written in stone.

 Trump's wanting to get this done before the election, but that's going to be a trick since there are only 38 days left. It usually takes around 70 days, though Ginsburg herself went through it in 45. It can be done, but what also can be done is the Democrats could drag their feet on the process and slow things down. Time will tell if they've got the stone to do that, though.

 We'll have plenty to look at with Barrett over the coming weeks. She's a hardcore traditional Catholic of the wacky "submit to your husband" thing and apparently, she's got some connection to some screwball Christian online learning to do that may or may not be a fraud. I'm not even going to pretend to be impartial in all this. Her resume is a bit thin for a Supreme Court justice, spending most of her professional career as a professor at Harvard, which isn't the colored egg it used to be. Anyhow, we'll see what we'll see.

 In other news, I got me a new laptop and, in fact, writing on it as we speak. I got this, and while I haven't had much time to monkey with it, I'm pleased so far. The only problem I have is the screen resolution is so small I have difficulty reading the words on it's recommended setting. This, for example, is magnified by 175. Wearing my glasses doesn't really help. Of all the bummers middle age brings, I think finding it more difficult to read is the worst one of all.

 Learning to type on a laptop is a bit of a chore, too. I never have learned to type properly and over the years developed my own style. It's hard to translate to different keyboards, particularly small keyboards that are geared to pick up quick movements. I probably didn't really need it, but what the hell. It's the end of the world as we know it, maybe. Might as well have a little fun.

 I don't know what else. Been in a Weird Western mood and I think I might have a way to start an actual story. It's still floating around and my head's not in the right place, but I may try to squeeze something out in the next day or so. And that is word count. I'm going to edit this on my tower, but overall, I'd say this is a success. Have a nice weekend.