Is a bluebird blue? Has a cat got a tail?

  The number of people that are part of the Trump team who've found themselves testing positive for the COVID-19 virus continues to grow while he claims he's no longer showing symptoms. Probably the most significant new infectee is Staff Wormtounge Stephen Miller, which spawned a thousand "it can jump species" jokes.

 We're still dealing with the fallout of whatever happened this week with Trump and his hospitalization. He put out a completely brain-dead bit of propaganda about not letting the virus dominate our lives, forgetting that not all of us have instant access to Walter Reed-level medical service. It cut me as cold and heartless, and I can't count one of the near 210,000 victims of COVID-19 as one of my loved ones.

 But heartlessness is a feature, not a bug, of the Trump administration. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rodstein and other Justice Department officials, including then-AG Jeff "Dark Elf" Sessions, pushed hard for separating children from their parents at the border. Of course, this is one of those things the Base rubs itself over and fail to agree that it makes us the baddies. 

 I don't know who said it, but it bears repeating: I can't teach someone to have compassionate. Is there an issue at the border that needs to be addressed? Hell, yes, of course, there is. Are we doing it in a not-evil way? No, no we are not. I know wingnuts like to claim we have no responsibility for Central and South America, but the Monroe Doctrine says otherwise. You can't claim control over something just to drop it when it becomes inconvenient. We called for that tune and we ought to pay the fiddler. I'm not holding my breath, but there it is.

 But now that I've gotten started, let's leave the news for the News. I've made a few strikes at the Weird Western idea. It's just a couple of character sketches right now and I don't know where it's going, if anywhere. It's fun, though, and it feels good to get it out of my brain.

 I'm still in that foul, red-assed mood, and I think I've figured out why. Despite the Prozac and lithium and Wellbutrin, I'm doing all this with a clear head for the first time in 15 years. Not to put too fine a point on it, I used to smoke a lot of pot. I smoked so much pot, one of my dealers said maybe I should take a break. A constant burner is what I'm saying, and the only time I was straight was when I was at work or asleep.

 So regardless of those drugs that are doing a fairly good job of stabilizing my brain chemistry, I'm back to being pissed off all the time. That's how I grew up; pissed off and doing my damnedest to not let it show because no one cared and were probably more pissed off than I was. Knowing that it's due to some faulty wiring in my head doesn't make it much better, but there it is.

 Well, I've just finished supper and I've lost my train of thought. Really, all I want is a good connect if for no other reason than being pissed off all the time is a drag. But for now, I've hit word count and maybe I'll go back to my Western later. Probably not, though. This strikes me as a reading evening.

My brain is cloudy, my soul is upside down.

 I really don't have anything tonight. It's already past 8 p.m. and I've been staring at a blank screen for almost an hour in between reading dumb arguments on Quora. So we'll just gonzo it out tonight until we fill up space and then I'll probably go to sleep.

 I've been sleeping a lot lately. I'm just tired and disenchanted with the world, I guess. All that arguing over the Actual Paying Gig took a lot out of me. I'm hanging in, but I'm tempted to jump ship once I have enough saved up for a laptop. July might be enough to make the nut.

 There's a certain level of pride that comes with getting paid to write again, but I'm really not interested in the hassle. Part of the ongoing jibber-jabber over "cancel culture" is folks joking around about the poor, oppressed $20 thousand a month New York Times writers having to deal with editors, which is worse than the worst thing ever. Yes, even worse than that.

 I'm almost sympathetic to them and that stroke. I used to hate working with editors, going over what I got wrong and how it could be more readable. I recognize the utility in it, I just hated doing it. I wrote it, my job is done, trust me that everything worth knowing is in there. Editing is your job, you do it. I'm taking a nap.

 Now, having to deal with Google searches screwing with whatever it screws with, that's a whole new kettle of fish. I quit pro journalism at what was basically the beginning of the Online Age. It's sort of funny, I remember going to a conference in the '90s and one of the speakers telling us that within 10 years all newspapers would be online. Ten years later saw him wrong, but 20 years was closer.

 Still not there yet, of course, and most publications are going to primarily online because it's too damn expensive to keep up a print entity these days. It's a shame because there's a real opportunity now that everyone and their grandma has a smartphone and all you'd need is an app. However, real journalists got caught with their pants down and now the average schlub gets their news from Facebook. We are a dumb culture.

  Speaking of journalism, as much as I agree the Big Time Media has its issues, I've decided that too much ranting about the "mainstream media" will become one of the phrases I use to decide if someone is worth listening to or not. Like, for instance, "cancel culture." Anyone who claims "cancel culture" is a serious issue isn't worth paying attention to. Anyone who's criticism of the media starts and ends with "they all lie" or "they push agendas" isn't worth paying attention to.

 Your average media outlet - especially one like The Washington Post or CBS news - has little stake in ideological causes and are more concerned with ad revenue. They may be socially liberal, but they are tightly bound to the American Capitalist idea of Profit Über Alles. Any attempt at journalistic integrity is mainly so they don't get sued for what they print or broadcast. If you think otherwise, you're far too naive for me to help.

 That's just how it is. Maybe it can be changed, maybe it can't. I don't know. But the fact that it exists does not render the media as a whole useless. If you understand that bias and recognize how it affects everything about the process - from gathering info down to presentation - it's at least useful.

 But people want to complain. We all think we're the main protagonist of the Big Narrative, and every story has to have an antagonist. It's just easier to think some overwhelming force - capitalism, socialism, religion, atheism - is making people and life awful instead of it just being a case of people being buttholes because they can or know of no other way to be.

 The universe really doesn't care about us at all. Remember: it existed for over 14 billion years without mankind and doesn't really need us around. Calm down. Have a good time. Don't be assholes to each other. It'll be all right.