Let me just say, I never meant to hurt nobody, though I guess there's some I couldn't look in the eye.

 I don't think I'm going to get this one under the gun, but what the hell. What is time? Something I really don't pay attention to all that much anymore.

 And why should I? It's rare that I have to interact with the outside world at a specific time, and I like drifting around wherever and for however long I want. So, it's a waste of time, for me anyway.

 I'm not going to lie, this might not get done until tomorrow morning. It's past midnight already and we got word from the good people at Tombigbee Electric that the ol' internet would be done for some terribly good reason that I can't remember. I was playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker all evening, working on a "serious run" and I'll probably go back to that. Beyond that, I don't know.

 August 31 came and went, and best I can tell, the U.S. didn't leave anyone in service in Afghanistan they didn't mean to - apparently there's going to be an armed presence for a little bit - and they, along with the EU, cut a deal with the Taliban to get Afghans out of there if they want to go. Money talks and bullshit walks on that, so we'll see.

 There is much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over this, by both conservatives who don't want to give Joe Biden a win and the big-time press because war sells newspapers. Plus, a lot of them were big cheerleaders for this back in the day and they've all been proven to be dumb bloodthirsty bourgeoisie shit asses.

 One wonders what the next thing that will be used to wind up the gibbering masses. The yacht-left Substackers are still banging on that being disagreed with or, worse, mocked is akin to brutal, Orwellian censorship. But I don't think they really pay attention to anything else, which makes sense if you think about it. These people have convinced themselves their words and thoughts are golden.

 They might circle back around to "wokeness" and Critical Race Theory, but I imagine it'll be another round of refugee panic as they forget the whole "bring our partners and helpers out of Taliban tyranny" by the middle of the month. They haven't had a good reason to build up a serious hate-on for Arabic folks, that's always a favorite.

 Moving on, at least four wingnut talk show goons have caught COVID and died over the last couple of weeks, and all except one were fanatically anti-mask and anti-vaccine and pro-"this is all a hoax to make Trump look bad and, anyway, it's just a light cold only old people and fat people die from and we don't really care about them." The other might be, too, but I'm too lazy to look.

 We've also seen a passel of just regular jackasses who scoffed at the vaccines and the masks, only to wind up with a tube down their throat begging everyone else to get the shot. I should be more empathic with them, but I'm not. They need to do more work on their own because we've still got ding-a-lings showing up at school board meetings accusing vaccination efforts to be Satanically inspired.

 Two of my cousin's kids tested positive. They're both under 10. Another cousin tested positive and I've been directly exposed. We're averaging 5,000 new cases a day in Mississippi. More kids died from it last month than the entire 17 months beforehand. The hospitals are past strained further than they need to be, and more people will die.

 And it's all their fault. I don't celebrate an anti-vaxxer going down like I don't cheer when a drunk driver wraps their car around a live oak tree. It's the damage they cause to others that piss me off. Because of them, we're going to have to let COVID burn through us like the 1918 influenza plague, and not all of us will survive it.

Yeah, just post the damn thing.

  This is the fourth day, hand running, that I've stayed in bed until well into the afternoon. I'm not staying up too late nor am I sleeping the whole time. Indeed, I'm getting a good bit of reading done. I just don't want to get out of bed and face another day. It's fucking tedious, man.

 Every time I talk to the Psych Doc or Therapist, they ask me if I have suicidal thoughts, and I don't, not really. I just don't want to be here and I'm not sure that's the same thing. I'm in a dark place right now, though, and I don't see a way out of it. I avoid Twitter because there will come a point where I tell someone they should've been drowned at birth. This is why I don't argue with people there or anywhere else. It's rarely worth it.

 Simone Bailes bowed out of the team gymnastics event during the Olympics and conservative white dudes (and wanna-be conservative white dudes) are losing their shit over it. We're told she's doing it for her mental health and they're all pissed off that she's "not tough enough," but I'm convinced they're all pissed off they're losing the opportunity to gloat if she doesn't get gold. In any event, if anyone should be ignored about anything, it's conservative white dudes.

 I really haven't been paying attention to the Olympics this time around. Partly because they're in Japan and there's a 10-hour time difference, but mostly because I don't have cable nor do I have a girlfriend who wants to watch it. That's how it worked out the last time I paid attention, which I guess was the 2012 Olympics. We watched a good bit of it and, pretty much like every sport, it's not my thing but I can appreciate excellence wherever it's found. I've seen Bailes do her thing and if she feels she needs to step aside for her own health and the good of her team, who am I to judge. Not a white dude conservative critic, that's for damn sure.

 Anyhow. I don't know I really have anything else. I've been reading a couple short story collections that are based on Lovecraftian themes. One collection's stories are new-ish while the other collection pulls in some classics by folks like Robert Howard and Robert Bloch. They're both about equal, so far, and I'm switching between the two. Most of the time I can't tell the difference, but they're both fun.

 It's tying in with the fascination with pre-historical societies or the possibility thereof. The Appalachian Mountains are almost 500 million years old and pre-date the formation of the Atlantic Ocean. That's pretty stunning to think about, but it sort of puts a new spin on some of the "ancient evils" in Lovecraft's New England and could totally bypass any weird connotation with Native Americans. I never have been that into Conan or Middle-Earth stuff, so I wish I could come across some fiction that uses this. I could write my own, of course, but that doesn't seem to work and I don't know how to make it so.

 I am tired of being depressed and miserable. I don't see a good way out, life is just going to get tougher and more painful. Oh, well. Maybe tomorrow will be different. It won't, but what other choice is there?

Tears wickedness and self-conceit that is the deign of man.

  Dad-blame it. I let it slip by again. It's now 1:20 a.m. Friday morning. I did have something I was going to muddle around with but I'm not as irritated about it now.

 I probably got close to Word Count last night at the Tumblr site. I wrote about blues harmonica players Big Walter Thorton and Good Rockin' Charles Edwards and how they cross paths concerning Jimmy Rogers's "Walking By Myself." I've been writing a little more about music lately, for whatever reason. Here's something on Kid Thomas Watts. Anyway, it's obviously got something to do with my obsession with harmonica music. I've always liked the instrument, but as I've said, I get wild about a genre or musician from time to time and just wallow it. I think this might be the first instrument.

 Anyhow, I was going to write about how silly and potentially dangerous the panic about Critical Race Theory has become. It really has become, well, stupid and hard to take seriously. People are actually claiming it's based on Nazi thought. These are the same people who think Dr. Martin Luther King starts and stops with the "I Have A Dream" speech, so, it's not really surprising they're not putting all that much effort into it.

 And while it hasn't filtered up to the actual government, some wingnuts are pounding the table to put cameras in classrooms so teachers can't sneak in CRT into their little darlings' multiplication tables. Actual politicians who actually make actual laws have compared vaccination efforts to Nazi doings, though. It's getting harder and harder to take these people seriously and harder and harder to do anything but tell "godspeed, you mad fuckers."

 I'm sure I've stated my feeling that debating with conservatives online is a waste of time, but if not, let me say it again. Debating with conservatives online is a waste of time. They're either misunderstanding what they're so mad about or they're lying about it, and it generally depends on how high up on the pecking order they are. Either way, they take the absolute worst position on whatever the "problem" is. 

 Reckon how long this current outrage lasts? I'm not sure what the endgame is beyond stirring up the rubes, like banning trans kids from high school sports or previous efforts to ban gay marriage. I have no doubt that, for the most part, most politicians and media figures know exactly what they're doing and why. Probably not, say, Louie Gohmert and Tomi Lahren, but Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz? Sure, they're hip. I mean, you really don't hear those guys raising hell about gay marriage anymore, do you?

 It's just me, but it's becoming more difficult to even engage these jackasses. You don't want to get vaccinated even though COVID-19 has apparently mutated into two nastier strains? That's on you, hoss, just keep your nasty ass away from Momma. You want to put cameras into your kid's classroom because you're worried the fragile little dears might learn that white people have been awful in the past? Okay by me. There'll be enough non-idiots to keep the lights on until after I shuffle off this mortal coil.

 That's the wrong way to approach things, of course, but it's almost keeping me sane since I can't get stoned. Just drop out, man, since I can't turn on. Y'all want to let the planet become unlivable? Be my guest, I've just to be here maybe another thirty years. I'm leaving nothing behind when I go, so why should I care?

 Yeah, that's not the best way to approach things, I know, but it's getting me down, man. In any event, there's enough in Mississippi that's screwed up to keep me occupied for the duration

Just another pain. Really, it hurts so bad.

  Welcome to the first of June. I don't know what to tell you.

 This is going to be one of those off-the-top-of-my-head things because I really don't have anything to run with. I talked with my Therapist today but all we really talked about was how bad the medical marijuana thing pissed me off. I've got that off my chest, I think.

 I did get around to beating Dragon Age: Origins, though. I've had it for about five years but it definitely needs dedication. I'm not the type of guy to put that much into a game that isn't called Ultima. I still haven't finished XCOM 2 or Pathfinder: Kingmaker, even though they have just as much replayability as Dragon Age. I've started on Dragon Age II, though I probably need to get back to Mass Effect and knock that out.

 Thrilling stuff, I know. I've hit a brick wall because, beyond the Dragon Age news, nothing's really changed all that much. Still working on The Network of Time and that's about it for now. I got me a cooling pad for my laptop, and the hits just keep coming.

I'm tired of talking about how badly the Babbitts are using the concept of Critical Race Theory. It's just so tedious, the dishonesty and proud ignorance. I saw someone saying it's all a scheme by white supremacists. What group of white supremacists they don't define, but I imagine they mean either Antifa, BLM, or the Democratic National Convention.

 It does strike me as funny that conservatives are convinced that if the whining brats at the Great American Temper Tantrum should be an albatross around the GOP's neck, the same should go for the Democrats and Antifa and/or BLM. They also keep making a big deal about how Democrats on the national level want to "defund the police." Frankly, it's like how they see socialism as the end-all and be-all of liberal thought in America.

 That's why I say conservatives aren't worth paying attention more than is necessary nor are they worthy of debate. Their ideas aren't just wrong, they're malformed and based on nonsense. It's like when they insist places like Portland or Kenosha are burnt-out, desolate holes ruled by people dressed like they're in a poorly made Italian post-apocalypse movie. Probably one starring Michael Sopkiw.

 Man, this is like pulling teeth and I know I've already used this but it remains. I don't have the blues like I did the last couple of weeks but I still don't have much to say about anything. The News is going pretty good, which is nice. The shit the Texas GOP is trying to pull is just amazing. Greg Abbott is threatening to call a special session, which is just goddamn hilarious. He wouldn't call one to deal with school shootings or the state losing power back in February, but making it harder to vote lights a fire under his ass.

 Anyhow, I just need to get a few more words in to reach word count. Listen to Little Walter and Michael Nesmith, enjoy June, and don't forget the sunscreen.

You know, I'm tired of being lonesome, on'ry, and mean.

 It's the first weekend in April, it was a beautiful day, I'm buying too many harmonicas, and I have a back tooth that's working its way loose. Periodontal disease is a drag, kids, don't skimp on those dental cleanings. But, hey, life goes on and I've got dental insurance.

 Anyhow, let's get down to business. I really don't have much to ramble about tonight so we'll try to run out the clock and see what pops out. First off, let's do the News. It was a lot of daily wraps up because it was that kind of week. We looked at our weird Spring weather Monday while touching on the beginning of the Derek Chauvin case and the union fight with Amazon in Alabama.

 Much as I hated to do it, I had to touch on the Matt Gaetz unpleasantness Wednesday and Friday. We also looked at some of the brilliance that comes from the Mississippi Legislature as well as Joe Biden's upcoming $2 trillion infrastructure plan. There was also some good news on the COVID-19 front and yet another mass shooting. And we touched on the MLB's decision to move the All-Star Game in response to Georgia's contentious voting bill.

 There's something to that. Conservatives are outraged that a corporate entity is doing something they don't like and reacting like they always do. That is, threats to never watch baseball again unless MLB does what the government wants. Yeah, that's never a surprise, nor is their glee at Georgia's smacking Delta's wrist for daring to question the state government's motives behind the radical and apparently unnecessary bill.

 This comes as no surprise to anyone. Indeed, it was predictable and will probably have as much an effect as the NFL boycott over the whole kneeling business. It wasn't a whole lot, actually, and last year's pandemic had more of an effect on the ratings than any boycott. I'm sure some folks will actually go through with it, but sports fans are more interested in their preferred sport than the political whatnot that goes on around it.

 It's all so tedious. Honestly, if it weren't for the News, I probably would drop completely out because it has become so boring and predictable. There's news that the Trump people really rooked the rubes that donated to them and the only thing less predictable than that is how little effect it's having on their support of the crooked fucker.

 What else? Well, as I said, I've been buying different brands of harmonicas all week. I've got a Marine Band today to join my Blues Harp, with a Fender Blues, a PowerDraw, and an Easttop on the way. Once my birthday comes - less than 10 days away from being closer to 50 than 40 - I'm going to get me a Lucky 13 Bass harp and perhaps a Lee Oskar of some sort. I figure I'll stick with G's, D's, and C's though the Blues Harp is already an A. I've also made a breakthrough on learning tabs, something I've always had trouble with, regardless of the instrument.

 That's the best thing about learning or relearning something. When you're able to break through some barrier or leap some hurdle that's been hanging you up, and you can do it like it comes naturally. It's like having a superpower. Anyhow, that's good enough for now. Maybe later I'll write some more after I eat something. I will say we finally got fiber optic here and it's nice to join the 21st century in one way, at least.

I'm going to the city. Gonna breathe that city air.

  I mentioned the other day that I finished that Hank Williams biography and it thoroughly bummed me out. For whatever reason, it's put me in a melancholy mood as we move through this last weekend of January 2021. Being depressed these days is a drag, partly because I know it's just my own brain wiring messing with me but mostly because I can't get stoned. Anyhow, here's this week's News.

 It was a pretty good week, more or less. Plenty to write about and something to explain, which is always fun. Monday was another slice of Today in the Biden Administration, but Wednesday and Friday were the fun ones. I tried to explain the whole GameStop-short stock business even though, as I note, I've never been able to wrap my head around how it actually works. Sort of like matrices in algebra or baking, it just plumb evades me.

 As far as that goes, it is entertaining as hell to see regular stock gambler types lose their shit because the hoi polloi is forgetting its place. Frankly, they should be thankful that we don't live in a just universe which would mean they'd be strung up by their own intestines, kept alive by medical science, and pelted repeatedly with pecans. That being said, people whose opinion on these matters I trust are saying the joke's starting to a bit long in the tooth and it's possible it might start causing some real danger.

 Of course, that just casts into sharp relief how flat dumb our economic infrastructure is. But that's beyond me and I won't pretend that it isn't. It'll be interesting to see where all this goes from here but I'm not going to act like I'm qualified to give a proper prediction nor give thoughts on what should be done.

 The other bit of crazy that's taken up this week's news is newly elected Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene showing the entire world that, yes, she is loony as a coot and probably shouldn't be allowed around sharp scissors, much less high-powered weaponry or the laws of the nation. She's a 9/11 truther, and I'm amazed there is still a healthy group of those dickholes. She's also a believer that the Parkland and Sandy Hook were "false flags," and that just shows a rotten, black soul. The one that got me, though, was the suggestion that the wildfires regularly bedeviling the West are caused by space lasers operated by International Jewry so as to clear land for high-speed train projects.

 That's just dangerous goofy. That Boebet woman's a thick-skulled crook who'll probably get busted for using campaign money to keep her restaurant afloat. That weird Nazi fanboy from North Carolina is going to lie himself right off the planet. But Greene's a danger to her fellow Representatives. I don't trust gun enthusiasts I don't know well enough to know that they know what they're doing. This woman is a prime example of gun nuts you don't trust. I'm not kidding. If she gets through her 15 minutes without shooting one of her colleagues, I'll be shocked.

  Anyhow, I'm tired and all I got to talk about still is that I've been playing The Shadowrun Trilogy with some of the player-mad scenarios modded in. One of these days I'm going to write about what it's like coming back into gaming before the days of open and encouraged modding, but today's not the day.

I've had all that I've wanted of a lot of things I've had, and a lot more than I need of some things that turned out bad.

 It's been an interesting week. But before we get too deep into things, let's lay out some links. Of course, most of it is about the coronavirus galloping through the world and particularly here in the U.S. of Good Ol' A. But that's the news, and it's so commanding that it overtakes just about everything else, especially the nasty shit the Trump Administration is trying to get across. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Monday

Wednesday

Friday

 I'm particularly proud of Wednesday's entry. It deals with Bernie Sanders dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States of America and how it changed the landscape. It goes well with Thursday's Gibberish, which deals with how badly the loudest section of his loyal followers have been dealing with it. It's a good one-two punch, I think, and does a good job of laying out the whole stroke. But that's just me, check it out on your own.

 There's also a good bit at the Tumblr site about singer-songwriter John Prine who died Tuesday due to complications from COVID-19. I was a fan and I'm not going to lie, this one gives me the blues more so than an average famous person's death. He wrote some great songs, always put on a charming performance, and everyone I've talked to who'd know says he was a phenomenal human being. So it goes.

 COVID-19 has ramped up to the point where the United States leads the world in both confirmed cases at 532,000 and deaths with 20,000 plus. Unfortunately, we're fifth when it comes to recovery at just a little over 31,000 cases. It's taken off here in Mississippi, too, with 2,642 cases and 96 deaths. Right now, only Issaquena County has no reported cases, but that's probably more to do with it's sparse population, poverty and high percentage of African Americans. Indeed, it's the poorest county in the poorest state and the way we've addressed how COVID-19 is treated in the black community is just shameful.

 We're supposed to get some extremely foul weather here in Itawamba County tomorrow. They're calling for fierce winds, driving rains and a possibility of tornadoes. The family's planning on battening down for it, too, and they're not given to rash behavior. So I'm not sure how much I should put here, since there's no telling what sort of mess this place will be this time tomorrow night. There is a lot of news going on and I don't know how to squeeze it all in or do all the work for it.

 I need to look into how the Trump Administration is using the virus to fulfill the longtime conservative dream of dismantling the United States Postal Service, because that is happening. The reasoning we're hearing is that it's due to his "distaste" for mail-in votes and desire to tamp down the turnout for the November election. I'm sure there's something to that, but conservatives have had a hard-on for shutting down the mail for years, mainly just because they're dicks. "Use UPS or FedEx" they bleat, conveniently those two companies not only use the USPS but there's some places they won't go because it isn't profitable.

 Another particularly evil stroke from the Trump White House is a plan to allow the farming industry to use foreign labor as labor to keep down wages. You heard that right. The Administration that ran on the Brown Horde and spent the first two years screaming that "caravans" of dirty Central and South Americans were heading to the U.S. Border to take our jobs, corrupt our children and stare luridly at our women wants to bring in people not covered by U.S. laws so agri-business conglomerates can not pay anybody what they'd be due for picking the very food we eat. Amusingly - but not really - the reason we're given why this is "necessary" is because the industry is hurting due to the tariff fight with China, which has more to do with Trump waving his dick at Xi than anything sensible.

 But, again, this is why he was elected. You hear people say "Trumpism has taken over the Republican Party," but the truth is the GOP has always been full of bastards and a guy like Trump is the logical outcome of the past 40 years of development by them. They may have not planned on landing someone with such a pitiful need for worship or inability to take any amount of criticism as Trump, but that's a bug more than anything else. He's doing what they want, though, so he can tweet all he wants about how mean the press is to him and the daily nonsense in his televised briefings keep everyone occupied and depressed knowing what kind of lump we have with the nuclear codes.

 And so much for all that. I do have some good news. This has been brewing for a bit, but I haven't said anything because I'm a neurotic mess and worry about bragging on something that could easily blow up in myself. But all the i's have been dotted and t's have been crossed, so I feel confident in letting the cat out of the bag.

 I have a regular paying gig as a freelance writer. It's nothing special or fancy at all. I'm doing "content creation" for a buddy of mine who's based out of Atlanta. He started the company a little over a year-and-a-half ago and wanted to bring me on board when they got some solid ground under them. Back in Athens, he was a "fan" of my writing for Flagpole and we got to be friends because we share a mutual close friend. Good kid and I'm friends with his wife, as well.

 Well, I appreciated the offer but didn't push on it. However, the conversation was one of the little sparks that got me back to writing on a regular basis. So, anyhow, week before last, he touches base and says his company's getting a little more work than they can handle and was I still interested. I had to jump through a couple of hoops, understandably enough, but I got the gig.

 It's not exciting subject material, true, but having an editor to please again can't be anything but helpful to everything else. Furthermore, it's not going to pay too much but it's something "official" I can point to for other work. Most of my published work is over ten years old, and I doubt this blog would convince anyone I'm anything other than a borderline anarchist and hallucinogenic drug enthusiast. Which I am, sure, but that's not a way to get work.

 But more than anything else, this is just good for my mood and self-esteem. This is fun, but this new gig is work and that I'm wanted for this work is validation, which is something I do need. Since starting back writing, I've been plagued by doubts and recriminations. No one pays attention, is there any point to this, why do I bother, yadda yadda yadda. That's not helpful, believe you me.

 I don't know how this extra work is going to affect this or The News. It won't have much impact on the Tumblr stuff, as that's generally off-the-cuff fun. Way my buddy talks, he might throw me two to three things a week, and that'll be around 600-900 words. I may drop back to doing one regular blog that combines Gibberish and News, but I don't want to drop either because both are satisfying for their own reasons. We'll see how it all works out.

 Beyond that, buckle down for the weather and keep up the "social distancing" deal despite the fat cats screaming because they're not getting as disgustingly rich as they think they should. They don't give a shit about you.