Just get it out there, son, just get it done.

  I still have some of that yuck, whether it's sinus or not, is hanging around with me and making life unpleasant. I don't really have anything interesting to say, either, and my brain just hasn't been working lately. I knew it wouldn't work out like this, but a part of me hoped that getting a regular lungful of the good smoke would make everything click, like the last piece of the puzzle.

 It hasn't, of course, because that's not how things work. I keep hoping there is something out there, something I'm just not getting, and when I do, my life's waveform will collapse into place like a row of dominoes. It continues to baffle me that there's so much of Normal Life that continues to elude me. My upbringing wasn't so odd nor have my experiences been all that special, but there you go.

 Nothing is really begging to get out. I'm not playing any games, in particular, and have gotten cold on Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and there's no music that needs me talking about it. The only reading I'm doing is trying to finish The Kolchak Chronicles, a book of short stories based on the Kolchak: The Night Stalker character. I don't know why I'm still trying because they are goddamn awful. It's like The Pink Panther reboot with Steve Martin; even if you don't compare it to the original, it's goddamn awful.

 Jumped-up fan fiction rarely works, for me, anyway. The pre-reboot Doctor Who books were tedious at best and all too often devolved into the writer getting weird about a specific character. Nyssa caught a lot of that weirdness; so did Dodo, bless their hearts. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy book by the guy who did the Artemis Fowl books is one of the worst things I've ever read, at least until these Kolchak stories.

 These are just dull. It's not so much they stray too far from the character or the general form of the established stories, they're just dull. And I swear, I don't need to learn about Carl Kolchak's dark past. That's why the television remake was such a turkey. Also, I don't understand why people have to update everything to modern times rather than the '70s - internet, digital cameras, cell phones, etc. - as it really doesn't add anything and just strikes me as lazy.

 I do like William Meikle's take on Carnacki, The Ghost Finder. Good stories, sharp writing, it doesn't monkey too much with the formula, and he makes it all work. Of course, it does help that William Hope Hodgson only got in a half-dozen Carnacki stories, so there's plenty of room to stretch out.  Meikle doesn't add a love interest or too much goofy shit, like people who want to make Irene Adler a recurring character or put any woman at all into Jekyll & Hyde. I have strong opinions about that.

 I don't know what else. The weather's turned cooler here lately and the days are getting shorter. College football season has started but I can't be bothered just yet. I reckon it's time to tie this off. Whatever the yuck that's messing with me wears me out, so I imagine I'll go to sleep after a little while.

 So there's that there then.

Not even going to bother.

  On a whim, I bought a collection of short stories based around the Carl Kolchak character from the old television movie and show. It's by a bunch of different science fiction/horror/fantasy/what have you authors, some I'm heard of and some I haven't. So far it's okay. Not terribly but definitely better than the other Kolchak-based fiction I read, C.J. Henderson's A Black And Evil Truth.

 Which in itself wasn't bad. It just didn't feel like a Kolchak story. Everybody liked Carl. Vincenzo was praising him. The local law wanted to work with him. Hell, he even got the hot babe who was also intelligent and charming. That's not Kolchak. One of the things that makes the character so intriguing is that he's on his own. His editors think he's more trouble than he's worth, the fuzz thinks he's a bug that should be stepped on, and he rarely has luck with the ladies.

 The other thing about modern takes on Kolchak is they have him in the 21st century with access to all the technology we have. Or at least the first decade, so maybe not smartphones with a television-grade camera. Still, it never sets well with me.

 Kolchak is a creature of the '70s and just doesn't work in any other time. For one, the media landscape today is totally different, and the new stories acknowledge things like multiple 24-hour news channels and web-based magazines. One thing that doesn't exist and hasn't for years is even big cities having multiple newspapers that can afford to send a reporter across the country.

 I watched some of the Kolchak revival from a couple of years ago. It was terrible. One of the reasons is it gave Kolchak motivation beyond getting a byline. It made him all dark and tortured by the past instead of wanting to get a better gig at a higher-rated newspaper. Everyone was too pretty in that early part of the 21st century way, too. Kolchak is a ruffled, middle-aged shlump with a stupid hat and one suit. He's also cowardly, just like all of us would be if faced with an Aztec demon or a vampire.

 What do you call this sort of fiction? It's not really fan fiction but it sort of is in spirit. It's as often as not a part of a brand. Back in the '90s, LucasFilm gave the world the Star Wars Expanded Universe that started out okay but lost me fairly quickly. The time between the end of the series and the TV movie gave the world a bunch of Doctor Who books, both with the Seventh Doctor and Past Doctor Adventures. Virgin Books had the license at first but after the movie, BBC got it back. It was... spotty. A lot of the early Seventh Doctor books were based on the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan" which saw a darker turn, more "sophisticated and mature," which meant more sex scenes.

 I liked the Big Finish Audios better, anyway. It's not quite the same thing as Scarlett or Poodle Springs or suchlike. There has been a metric ton of Sherlock Holmes fiction that's post-Conan Doyle and it's really not worth the effort. The Robert Downey movie was fun but it still made the mistake of making Irene Adler a love interest.

 Some of the post-Stoker Dracula fiction is woeful, especially the stuff written by his ancestor. Everyone assumes, one, Jonathan Harker was disgusted by Mina after she'd been attacked and, two, the focus of Dracula's desire was Mina. It was Jonathan, and he said if she turned to a vampire, let him be turned as well and then destroy both of them. I get worked up over this, I admit.

 To give credit where credit is due, I have thoroughly enjoyed William Meikle's revival of the Carnacki: The Ghost Finder. They're well-written and fairly true to the originals. William Hope Hodgson had only written nine of the short stories before his death in World War I, so there's a lot of room to expand. They do get a bit repetitive but Meike's managed to find different scenarios for the plots, so if you space them out, you're good.

 Well, I should wrap this up, I guess. If nothing else, I've spent most of the day watching Kolchak: The Night Stalker reruns on NBC's streaming service. It cuts out every now and then regardless of which browser I use. The wonders of modern technology at work, I reckon.

I can't call her "sugar", sugar never was so sweet.

 I'm just posting a quick round of links. I have some actual paying work I'm going to try to get done tonight and don't want to tap myself out. Long story short, all three WordPress links are about the United States' continuing struggle with the COVID-19 virus, how bad the federal government is handling things and how the states are having to pick up the slack, with varying results.

 Monday.

 Wednesday.

 Friday.

 I was fairly active over at the Tumblr site, as the Jukebox In My Mind did a lot of work. Here's something about Dallas band The Old 97's and here's something about John Prine. He's currently battling the COVID-19 and we wish him a lot of luck. I'm a fan. I haven't yet wrote about Bill Withers yet, but I'm a huge fan of his and want to remember his passing.

 A couple of times I got clever about the vocation and, if you will, art of journalism. It's super easy to hate on the "mainstream media" but most folks do it in a way that manages to blind them to not only the good and necessary journalism brings to the party but obscures the actual real flaws that mustard up the whole affair. So here's a riff on a Twitter thought and a pair of quotes, one from Kolchak: The Night Stalker by Jeff Rice and the other by Hunter Thompson's second book of letters Fear & Loathing In American: The Brutal Journey of an Outlaw Journalist. For the record, both books are recommended.

 Maybe more tomorrow, we'll see. Wish me luck.