I know one thing. Nobody can sing those blues like Hound Dog Taylor.

  It's Saturday night's Gibberish, and I'm not going to put the shuck on you, friends and neighbors. I got nothing. We're going to fill up the white space, but I'm really not in the mood and my brain feels like it's hung up on a stump. So anyhow, here's this week's News.

Monday

Wednesday

Friday

 Not my best week, admittedly. Monday and Friday were all right for what they were. The former a start-of-the-week glance and the latter a decent wrap-up. Wednesday sort of went off the rails, though. For whatever reason, I spent most of the day hiding under the bed trying to ignore the universe. And while it wasn't much for News, it did turn out to be some half-decent Gibberish. It linked the Democrats "virtual convention" - particularly them going live to different states to let them show off a bit - and my cross-country Big Trip from last year. It is a beautiful country full of lovely people, and it's only a shithole because we want it to be.

 I really need to come up with a better name for this, whatever it is, than "Gibberish". It lacks a certain gravitas, of course, but I also think it's limiting me as a writer. I've noted again and again (and again and again) that while I enjoy writing and truly believe I have a certain flair for it, there really has to be something more I can bring to the table than this, whatever it is. If for no other reason, I need to come up with something unique because what the world really doesn't need is another middle-aged white man stroking his chin at the issues of the day.

 I've been listening to a lot of Hound Dog Taylor lately. Nothing too deep in that, I just want to give him his ups. I'm particularly fond of that Elmore James-inspired "slashing" slide guitar like from him, J.B. Hutto, and Homesick James. Plus, the HouseRockers might be the hottest backing band in juke-joint blues.

 What else? I've been getting knee-deep into Pillars of Eternity II lately. It's pretty much all I've played the last week. I'm almost to the endgame with one character (a rouge-ranger hybrid), so of course, I've spent the last week experimenting with different classes, different play styles, and different ways to approach the story. One thing I appreciate about games like this is how they have an overall narrative and plot the game requires you to follow, but along the way, you can make up your own reasons why your character acts as it does. Same thing with the XCOM games; the What and Where are there, but the How and Why is mine. We sort of share the Who.

 I wonder if that's why my brain's felt like molasses the last couple of days. All of my creative energy, such as it is, goes into that game. And this is coming off a week where all I could do is watch documentaries on YouTube and read. I managed to finish The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, enjoying it much more than previously. I also read Philip K. Dick's Eye In The Sky. Fun book, but someone said he has better ideas but not the sufficient skill to put them down into a story, and that book is a prime example of that.

 Or it may be the values dissonance messing with me. For all his weird ideas, Dick was a pretty old-fashioned due, particularly when it came to male and female relationships. Most of your male science fiction writers from back in the day - say, before the '80s, definitely - were pretty stodgy and old-fashioned. And unimaginative, too, like they couldn't comprehend a world where women were anything more than secretaries who either wanted to fuck you or had something wrong with them.

 Dick's a little better than most when it comes to portraying African Americans, and this book had a good Black character, even if the point-of-view character was a Dick avatar, like everything he wrote. Off the top of my head, I can't think how he's dealt with LGBT characters, but I do remember Harlan Ellison being extremely shitty about in "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream." However, Ellison's a butthole, great writer or no, and he's got a history of being shitty to women in the real world.

 Okay, then. That's word count and supper's almost ready. I might come back, but I probably won't.

Must be the season of the witch.

 Well, y'all, I don't know what to tell you. It was just one of those days, I guess. I just wasn't feeling it.

 Woke up, had breakfast, glimpsed at the news, shut off the news in disgust and dispirit, read for a while, and then took a nap. Apart from breakfast rinse, lather, and repeat for the rest of the day. Read some of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman and a little of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. Of course, there was a bit of Hunter Thompson, because it's not only that time of year, we find ourselves in the midst of the same societal insanity where the Good Doctor always shined the brightest.

 Yes, indeed. I simply could not deal with the harsh and ugly realities of Life in America in this, the 2020th Foul Year of Our Lord. We're being ravaged by an epidemic the likes the world has never seen, we have miles to go before it gets even close to "better," over 120,000 in this country alone have died (and we make up one-fifths of the world's number, and there are still far too many of us, some with two much unearned authority, who're running under the flag that it's all overblown if not an outright hoax.

 And the hoax is to save a toad of a man who, if nothing else, has brought back being an absolutely shitty human being back to the American Game. Not just to opponents, but to the people they're supposed to be representing. That loopy gun-toting lady in Colorado who won a U.S. Representative nomination for (of course) the Republican Party first crossed my radar by calling people who disagreed with her "sheeple" and "triggered snowflakes". 

 I've said it before, but I don't know if here: if you use the word "triggered" as a pejorative, you are an awful human being and God's mercy on your soul, you rotten swine. I've seen people "triggered" and it's horrifying. You dick.

 But that's where we are. We are in Mean Times, y'all, when gun sales are through the roof. You can pretend it's one side or the other, but the rise in sales and accompanying education on how to end someone's life with said gun is fairly equally spread across the ideological spectrum. Dark Times are on the way, I feel. I hope I'm wrong, but I think we'll see blood in the streets before my days are done.

 The President, the slimy glob he is, has compared the "radical left" - i.e., anyone who disagrees with him - to the Nazis of World War II. He did this on Independence Day. "Celebrating America," apparently. This is the New Thing, I guess, along with his sudden obsession with statues honoring Confederate generals that we erected at least 50 years after the war specifically to tell Black people to suck it.

 Because that's what's important. Not the forty-plus million out of work and against the wall because the landlords aren't having the same problem. Not the companies that insist their labor come back and make them their capital without providing even the most basic healthcare protection or even a security net to help out the very people that make them rich, because fuck you, plebe, that's why. Daddy needs another winter home, so get back to work and, hell no, you're not getting a livable wage.

 And that right there? That's going to get worse before it gets better. We are an Angry Country right now. People are angry that cops keep killing Black people for just walking down the street. There are people furious that the first group of people dare criticize the Thin Blue Line, especially for killing Black people. People are angry because some people have high-powered weaponry and don't come off as stable enough to own such. Those people are angry at the people who doubt them and, unfortunately, are far too often doubted by people who also own high-powered weaponry while at the same time being stable and careful enough to handle them properly.

 Is it all going to pop like a zit or just ooze away like a... zit, I guess. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Joe Biden is right and once Trump gets the old heave-ho we'll return back to whatever "normal" is. At least until we put another unqualified dingbat into office and they start getting delusions of authority, and it'll happen because we won't do enough to address the inequities of life in this society.

 Happy Independence Day. I'm going to be honest. I live out in the boonies. I'm self-employed and can work from home. Unless something drastic happens, I'm financially stable for at least the next 30 years and I doubt I'll be around that whole time. I can hang in, keep my head down, and eventually grow some pot out in the backyard for personal consumption.

 It's you poor bastards I feel sorry for.

With the best behind us now, there's no way in and no way out.

 So, this "write it in the morning" stroke has kind of hit a snag the last couple days. I've got no good excuse, really. I haven't been feeling right and haven't been sleeping right the last couple of days. Plus, I've had some Actual Paying Work to get done and that always saps me. Matter of fact, I've got this month's last order to get done tonight.

 

 It's funny. Just Friday I talked to the Therapist on a matter completely unrelated to my head issues but, since we were talking, I told her about how basically pretty good the last couple of months have been to me, what with the actual paying gig and the boost that brings. And like clockwork, I've been gloomy, sullen and withdrawn. Which, of course, I am generally anyway, but more so than usual. She said to think of three things to be thankful for, and at least two are usually "I don't have to punch a clock today" and "I got money coming in from writing". That third one is usually a booger, but generally revolves around being well fed.

 Ah, me. It's been about 45 minutes since I wrote the above paragraph. There's a light but steady rain outside keeping me and my buddy Otis, the Jack Russell, from taking our evening constitutional. I think it's starting to sink into his thick little skull that it's not happening tonight. I really should make myself walk in the morning, too. Really should start going back to the gym while I'm at it.

 So, I don't know what else. As I've noted, I've been pretty shut down the last couple of days, just re-reading Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels, Jeff Sharlet's The Family and Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. There's no telling how many books I'd get through if I didn't spend so much time rereading stuff I've already read. Sometimes, like the HST book, I just like the way it flows. Sometimes, like Shallet's book, it's because it's pertinent to today's events. And sometimes, like the O'Brien book, I'm going back through to see what I missed the first time, 'cause I missed a lot. Plus, it's a fun read.

 It's been a good two hours since I last wrote. The rain cleared out, so me and Otis took our constitutional, a good two-mile round trip walk. Then I helped Momma load up her pickup truck. She's got it in her head to clear out the basement of near forty years of school notebooks, broken toys, broken canning jars, Christmas ornaments, worn-out shoes, and the other flotsam and jetsam of life that's accumulated down there. It's quite a bit and it's an odd feeling to go through your childhood to come out the other end with, "Yeah, go ahead and toss it." But that's how life goes.

 I'm just going to spin wheels until I hit 500, sorry. I had a bit in mind about why it's a good thing I never married - has to do with '80s country music and my own disinclination to bend when challenged - but I'm tired and I still have that APW to get done. Luckily, it's not on a really heavy topic that'll require a lot of work. Speaking of country music, I also had something about why since '80s country is my favorite, I don't have much use for the "save country music" hipsters. In any event, listen to Earl Thomas Conley and Keith Whitley. They're awesome.