Got to be to tough.

  I've got some Actual Paying Work to do tonight and I'm still in whatever weird mood I was in Tuesday. So we're just going to gonzo this out to fill the white space. Bear with me, perhaps one day I'll have an interesting thought again.

 Blogger's apparently changed the labeling system. That's good because whatever they had going was a mess. I'm still not sure why they changed what worked perfectly well, but then again, I'm not sure if anyone still uses Blogger.

 I wish I could put my thumb on what's causing this weird mood. Maybe then I could do something about it. All that comes to mind is that it's been six months since I talked to anyone by my family, and maybe just four of them, and it might be making me wiggy. I haven't reconnected with anyone since I've moved home nor have I made new connections, and I don't want to. Still, one underestimates the importance of talking to someone from the outside once in a while, even if it is the Therapist or the Psych Doctor. Or, for that matter, the guy behind the counter at Bill's Quick Mart.

 A source close to him has said Trump's refusal to visit a cemetery of American World War I dead wasn't because of the poor weather preventing the helicopter from flying there and the Secret Service's refusal to drive him. Instead, it was because he thought the rain would mess up his hair, which we already knew about.

 What we didn't know is it was mainly because he doesn't feel war dead should be honored. He calls them "losers" and "suckers," and considers the whole process a waste of time. Furthermore, former Chief of Staff John Kelly has said Trump took a similar stance at the funeral of Kelly's son, a combat casualty in Afghanistan, saying he "couldn't understand what was in it for him."

 Now, I'm on record as having little use for the military and while I see no need in dissing the dead for no good reason, I'm not going to pretend that I am shocked and disgusted at these revelations. It's tacky, sure, but anyone who didn't know Donald Trump bled gaucherie hasn't been paying attention to him the past forty years. He's dissed Gold Star parents and widows and showed little concern about military deaths during his administration. Far as I know, he hasn't even acknowledged the Russian bounty accusations, and that's been going on for four months.

 No, I'm not surprised nor am I going to pretend this is the straw that breaks the camel's back with me. The best way I can see to honor war dead is to stop war of any kind, but that's neither here nor there. As usual, what's going to be interesting is watching how the Base reacts to this. As of right now, they're still firmly in the "Fake News" mode, pretending it's all made up, but that's to be expected.

 When it becomes something they can't deny, though, what will they do? Will they ignore it like they've ignored all his explicitly anti-veteran stances or will they agree with him? I imagine it'll be the former, but it's only a matter of time before they do the same. It took them no time, remember, to shit on John Kerry back in 2004 and that was before they'd found their Savior.

 Anyhow. I just learned that a Valley girl's sixteen-year-old daughter has been hospitalized with COVID-19. The mom I've known all my life. She grew up down the road for me, maybe 10 years older. We never were what you'd call close, but there is a bond between people who grew up here in Peaceful Valley, particularly back in those days. Furthermore, her mom is one of Momma's closest friends.

 Both the girl's parents are in high-risk groups. My homegirl, matter of fact, has dealt with Lyme disease for the past 20 years. The father's diabetic. This didn't need to happen. It didn't need to be this way. We could've acted like something other than spoiled children for the first couple of months and maybe we might've been able to get a better handle on it. But, no, we can't be seen as "weak" for being concerned with our health and the health of others. It also doesn't help we have a president enthusiastically embracing the dumbest conspiracy theories concerning the epidemic, but that's the kind of country we are now.

 To end, let's all send good vibes to Toots Hibbert. The 77-year-old reggae godfather had to be put into a medically induced coma after having trouble breathing. He was tested for COVID-19 last week but the particulars aren't known yet. However, as of this morning, his family says he is doing better.

 I am a great admirer of Toots & The Maytals and Toots In Memphis is one of my favorite records. He just put out a new album, Got To Be Tough, and it's one of his better latter-day efforts. So check it out from your favorite indie record store, and send those good vibes his way.

 And if you've got enough good vibes, spread them around. Do something nice for your neighbor or postal carrier, just something small. It's a mean ol' world and getting worse. And believe you me, it's a bummer to go through without the help of marijuana. For my own sanity, I hope we pass the medical marijuana initiative come November. I'm not sanguine because Mississippi must get off on being miserable for Jesus.

Before I commit a crime.

  It's 8:15 p.m. and I haven't written anything. I should write something, I suppose, but I've got nothing going on upstairs. I reckon we'll gonzo it out until we hit the word count, then.

 I did write a little something at the Tumblr site about the Marx Brothers. Specifically about Animal Crackers and more specifically about the scene where Groucho is screwing with Margaret Irving and Margaret Dumont. It was a little bit of fun, so check it out or at least watch the movie clip.

 I'm going to avoid politics if for no other reason than to have something to write about tomorrow. I will say that interview Trump gave last night with Laura Ingraham and his resulting speech today in Kenosha are full-blown, bull-goose looney. Once again, how anyone thinks this guy is fit to run a crap game much less a country is beyond me.

 Some are trying to use it as proof he's slipping and there's been a weird thing of him claiming that he did not have a series of mini-strokes earlier in the year when no one else brought it up. I don't buy that. My main objection to Trump becoming president in 2016 is that for over 30 years I've thought he was a cheap, two-bit dirty landlord and a complete buffoon who's only rich because he was born rich. I based that assumption of his first book and television interviews of the time, and nothing in the past three years has altered that perception.

 Just because I haven't had a chance to say this elsewhere, but I think I'll skip Bill & Ted Face The Music. Don't get me wrong. I love the previous two movies. In fact, I think Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is one of my all-time favorites. That being said, I don't know if I'm up for seeing a movie of two guys who showed so much promise as young men finding themselves spinning their wheels as middle age sits on their heads and farts. I'm sure there's a message for me in there somewhere, but I don't think I care to hear it.

 I really haven't read anything of note nor have I been playing any video games the last couple of days. I have been re-reading Jorge Luis Borges short stories, but I don't think that really counts as I've read them quite a few times. If you've never read any Broges, I highly recommend his collection of short stories, Ficciones. Words fail me when I try to explain them, which is probably why I never made a literary critic, but they're fun, mind-bending reads. Sort of like Philip K. Dick but classier, Borges' world flows and changes, and you never quite know where they're going to go. I recommend "Death and the Compass" or "The Garden of Forking Paths" to start. If you dig on Umberto Eco, as you should, you'll dig on Borges' stuff.

 I've been listening to a good bit of blues lately. Nothing special or unique, just standard the Muddy Waters-Howlin' Wolf-Little Walter axis. I will recommend Hard Again, one of Muddy's last albums. He made it with Johnny Winter and it's just some powerhouse stuff, especially considering the crap Chess was trying to throw together in their dying days. Muddy made out better with stuff like The Woodstock Album but Wolf's last few are just sad. That being said, The Back Door Wolf and Message To The Young really isn't all that bad. Little Walter was, of course, dead before all this happened.

 Okay, then, that's word count. Maybe I'll come back to this but I probably won't We'll see how it goes, but I imagine it'll be tomorrow before I fool around with anything else.

I'm hard to hold and too damn mean to die.

 I stayed up too late last night playing Pillars of Eternity II and slept most of the day. I'm in a foul mood for some reason. Not blue, more pissed off or what Momma calls "the red ass". Hey ho.

 We've had a pretty good week, News wise. We talked about Trump's "executive orders" he signed last weekend, what they mean, and whether or not they were worth a damn Monday. On Wednesday we discussed the impact of Sen. Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's pick for Vice-President and just how much good it will do him once November rolls around. Finally, we did a wrap-up on Friday, touching on the post office shenanigans, COVID-19 in Mississippi, and the whole return of the birtherism bullshit that you just know conservatives have been thirsting for.

 There's lots of good stuff there. As I said, a good week for the News and a pretty good week for this here Gibbersh, frankly. Plus, my Actual Paying Work went over well, so it's BDE all around. For all that's worth. Like I keep saying, no matter how much I write, no matter how much I tell myself and other people that I am, I really don't feel like a writer. I don't even know how to feel like a writer, and that's what's pissing me off the most.

 I've been a bit obsessed with my "middle-aged bachelor" status lately. Don't get it twisted. I am glad I am alone, don't wish anyone was in my life, and however bad someone broke my heart, I'm glad she's doing what she wants elsewhere with another dude. Still and all, it bothers me sometimes just why that is and why I'm not one of those twisted, miserable assholes who're single because they're shitasses about women and how they treat them.

 I figured out long ago that being in a relationship was not for me. Only twice I wanted to try, and both times were absolute disasters. My best relationship was with my last ex, and that started as a "friends with benefits" deal. Unfortunately, she fell and wanted something more when I was happy hanging out for a couple days, screwing each others' brains out, and then me going home for a week to be by myself. That's probably on me, I should've split sooner, but she's still one of my closest friends and her current dude is a friend as well. Plus, he does what I didn't want to do, so bonus all the way around.

 Hmm. I'm close to five hundred words, and you know what? I really don't feel like digging into this particular topic anymore. Nor do I feel like expanding on Pillars of Eternity II, which is a great game and a worthy successor to the original. I had considered writing about the dust-up I had with a Sanders dead-ender on Twitter earlier in the week, making for one of the few times I've been antagonist with someone on social media for going on five years. It eventually turned into "you really care about what I think" from him despite me telling him over and over I did not, nor was his lack of enthusiasm for Biden the source of my irritation with his ilk.

 Once they turned into just another Twitter troll, it was no longer worth the effort. However, it was nice to blow my top on someone and let lose a little tension, especially since I don't have access to good weed these days. Okay, that's word count and supper's about done. Maybe I'll come back, but I'm more inclined to sleep some more and then play some more PoE2. So there you go.

I ain't walkin'. Naw, I'm travelin' in style.

 You know, I've had a fairly pleasant Saturday. Nice breakfast, got some work done, nice nap - not too long, not too short - some fair-to-middling ribs from that place in Peppertown, and a short constitutional with my buddy Otis, the Jack Russell. I really don't have much in me.

 We'll go ahead and get this week's News all linked out before I forget, though. Beyond that, I don't know. We'll kick the ball around and see. Anyhow.

Monday

Wednesday

Friday

 To be honest, I took on a big slab of Actual Paying Work this past week, and that ate up not only most of my time but also most of my energy. You write 4,000 words on New York labor laws and see how sharp you are. In any event, we took another look at the fascist invasion of Portland Monday while Wednesday centered around the ongoing failure of the Trump Administration when it comes to deal with the COVID-19 problem. Friday we drew out focus in and took a look at how screwed dear ol' Mississippi is about said pandemic. The answer: extremely screwed.

 I usually don't do this, but I'm going to include the News' "Weekend" feature. For the record, it's usually just five hundred words of ramble tamble - much like every day here - and little more than a reason to fill space and write. However, occasionally, I'll write something there worth reading. This time around I wrote about Rep. John Lewis and Bro. C.T. Vivian, two Civil Rights warriors we lost to the ravages of time a week ago Friday. Lives well-lived, stomping the terra.

 Wednesday got a good bit of attention, actually. I imagine it's because I touched on the business with Trump wishing Ghislaine Maxwell "well" and Twitter booting a bunch of Q users for being assholes, slightly loony, and outright threatening. I generally don't get as many hits on the News as I do here. Maybe that's telling me something, but I'll be dipped if I know what it is.

 Speaking of hits, I got a mess here this week. Up to 136 so far, though how many of those are the same ones trying to spam porn in the comments, I don't know. I was inspired Friday, pure gonzo gibberish that it was. Right now, though, I just feel like listening to The Faces and reading Go Down, Moses again. It's too damn hot to be this melancholy.

 I'm definitely not interested in the current zeitgeist on Twitter. Apparently, Andrew Sullivan said something stupid and the only reaction I have to that is why in the blue hell is anyone still taking Andrew Sullivan seriously? The Harper's Letter is still having way more impact than it should. I still can't too worked up that mediocre writers and thinkers who've coasted for the past couple of decades answering to no one but each other are getting made fun of on Twitter.

 And I really have no sympathy for the folks under 40 whose main complaint seems to be that they came on the field too late to not have to listen to the public criticize their nonsense. They know who they are, there's no need to name names. I find as I get older, I give less of a shit about what individuals think, especially individuals who get paid to tell me what they think. I realize that's a little screwy given what I'm doing here, but read your Walt Whitman and leave me be.

 Tedious hypocrite David Brooks bemoaned that besotted contrarian boor Christopher Hitchens couldn't get published today when that is obviously horseshit of the finest kind. Hitchens would be fighting off podcasters with an empty beer stein. As long as you have connections, there is no need for merit. Yeah, I know that sounds bitter because I'm 45 and have probably seen all the success in writing I'll ever see, but it doesn't mean it's wrong.

 It's like when I argue with Momma about taxing the living shit out of Jeff Bezos. "But is it fair?" I honestly don't care if it is or isn't. Life isn't fair. Children are born into poor families with illnesses that will not only promise a short, painful existence but will also manage to bankrupt their parents as if a shattered heart isn't enough.

 Getting a little dark there. Perhaps I should tie this off. I want a candy bar. I'm enjoying myself, but I know I'm running out of stuff to rant about and really don't feel like raving about how awesome The Faces were and how you should totally buy as much stuff as there is out there, but you should. Hell, two-fifths of the band has passed on and two of the remaining three have more money than God. I doubt Kenny Jones is hurting, so buy used copies or if you're feeling it illegal downloads.

 Are those still a thing? I ain't going to lie but when Napster and Kazaa were all the rage, I downloaded a buttload of MP3s of dubious legality. I even sailed around the Pirate Bay for a bit. I usually wound up buying from the bands if they were still an ongoing thing but I have no qualms about taking from record companies and music publishers. Was it thievery? Sure. Do I give a shit? Nope, not one bit.

 Hoo, giving myself away there, I better be careful. You'll never prove it, though, because I've moved on. Apple and Tim Cook get my $10 a month, so I trust them to disseminate that down to the musicians, although I know it really isn't much better. Regardless, The Bottle Rockets, Todd Snider, and The Mavericks still get my money. Come and get me, coppers.

 That's enough, I think. I don't know what else to say and don't feel like raging against anyone anymore. Anyway, I really want that candy bar. Salute.

Chopping cotton in The Garden of Forking Paths

 There's something called "the Mandela Effect". In short, it's the idea that there's something wonky about reality because people's memories are faulty. Some popular examples are the idea that the universe flip-flops between "Froot Loops" and "Fruit Loops," than the comedian Sinbad played a genie in a movie called Shazaam, and the concept's namesake, the idea that Nelson Mandela died sometime in the '80s while in prison.

 Now. I want to go on record here and say I think the Mandela Effect has less to do with the rubbery nature of reality and more to do with the idea that people's memories are faulty. Similar to how people's perceptions are questionable, even at the best, makes me question concepts like ghosts, physic phenomenons, and so forth. I've done peyote and read Kant. Everything you see is a couple thousandth of a second late, and that's just how it is.

 Your senses don't tell you the Truth, they tell you what humans have evolved to understand so they can make it through reality. We've yet to catch up with moving faster than roughly 30 miles an hour, evolutionarily speaking, so when you're driving down the road, your brain can't process everything so it just "fills in empty spaces". Isn't that a fun thought?

 Anyhow, I said all that to say all this. In the last 48 hours, I've discovered the music of a guy named Roger Tillison. He was a singer-songwriter from Tulsa who came up during the '60s and '70s. He was friends with that whole Tulsa crew, like Leon Russell and Jesse Ed Davis, and spent time in Woodstock when Bob Dylan, The Band, and Bobby Charles were doing their thing. He filled in for Eric Clapton when the latter was too strung out on heroin to play for George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh.

 He put out a record on Atlantic's Atco subsidiary in 1971 called Roger Tillison's Album. He does a Dylan song ("Down In The Flood"), a Band number ("Get Up Jake"), and a Woody Guthrie deep cut ("The Old Cracked Looking Glass") among other covers and originals. I'd heard the Dylan and Band song, on the same album, actually, but I'd never heard the Guthrie song. It's pretty good. Guy's a solid singer and there's some neat raw, rockin' country-influenced playing, the sort of stuff I really dig. Imagine a grittier Flying Burrito Brothers.

 He didn't put out another record until 2003, Mamble Jamble, and that was initially released only in Japan. He spent most of his time playing in and around Tulsa, occasionally recording with old friends and picking up the odd gig touring. He died in 2013 at 72, and apparently really enjoyed his life the whole time. Good for him, far too many of us don't get to do that.

 Every now and then, I come across a musician or an author I should know about. It happened with Swamp Dogg. Didn't know him from Adam's housecat, regardless of my love for Southern soul, and now I'm a fanatic. Country singer Little David Wilkins cut an album back in the '70s with a classic honky tonker "Who Ever Turned You On, Forgot To Turn You Off". I mean, that just screams Urban Cowboy.

 All that Harper's Letter trying to save well-off op-ed writers from being criticized? There's some dude, name escaped me, but he's such incredibly insufferable bourgeoisie douchebag - like David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan double-teamed Maureen Dowd - that I have no idea how I managed to keep him off my radar for so long. The older I get, the more this happens, and it never fails to blow my mind.

 There's an explanation of the weirdness of quantum mechanics called the Many-Worlds Interpretation. Essentially, since we can't tell a subatomic particle's attributes until it's observed, the who subatomic realm is really weird compared to how the macro-world works. One interpretation, the Copenhagen, is the most popular and says everything is just mathematically a probability until it's observed, wherein it collapses into reality. It's just math, though, the best we can observe because we physically don't have the tools to be more precise.

 The MWI is similar, except that every conservative splits off a different reality. It goes back to Schrodinger's Cat; once the box is open, two universes form. One where the cat is alive and one where it's dead. Again, it's just the math they do to make the science works. Quantum mechanics is an actual thing and one of the best theories in science. It's just weird as shit and makes no sense because the reality we can see and touch doesn't act this way.

 The thing about quantum mechanics is that it's so weird and so hard to wrap your head around, a lot of folks just go nuts with it. From the Tao of Physics to What The Bleep Do We Know, quantum woo has been a lucrative stroke for a lot of folks. In the same neighborhood is the idea that reality and consciousness are tied into the quantum level. There's some legit science going on working on the idea that there's something tying them together.

 I'm not going to pretend that I understand it, because I don't, but the general gist is since the brain uses electrical impulses, it ties into the quantum world. Since it affects that and that affects the macro world, consciousness can affect reality. Now, modern neurobiology doesn't really swing with this and considers whatever computational aspect there is in the quantum world, it doesn't have anything to do with how the brain works or how reality is.

 Still, it's an interesting stroke. One of the more far-out theories - and I think it has something to do with Robert Anton Wilson's "reality tunnels" but I can't recall - is that reality isn't so much defined by consciousness, but consciousness experiences different reality. It's somehow connected to the MWI, but the little splits in the universe are very localized. It also ties into Douglas Adams' who stroke with Probability and the Whole Sort Of General Mish-Mash.

 So maybe I drift through a constantly changing universe, where things pop into and out of existence. I thought for the longest time that country singer Terri Gibbs was so freaked out by her song "Somebody's Knockin'," which talks about being seduced by "the Devil," that she went back to singing purely gospel music. I also thought for the longest time that Michael Martin Murphy used to be part of a family gospel group until drugs and the high-life of the gospel music world wrecked his marriage and drove him to country music. All boosh-whah made up in my own imagination, and I have no idea where it comes from.

 Here's something else to think about. I haven't smoked any pot in over six months. Imagine what I'm like when I'm stoned, and I used to stay stoned all the time.

I was made to play the part. I was born with a broken heart.

 I don't really have a good excuse. I didn't feel like doing this before my nap, and once I started my nap, I wasn't really in a mood to stop. Again, no real reason why. That's just the way it goes some days.

 Unfortunately, one of the corporate entities that pays me for Actual Paying Work changed the format for the copy I provide, so now I've got to go back and rework what I did that day before yesterday so it fits. And I'm just coming off a big supper so all I want to do is sleep. First-world problems, I know.

 Anyhow. I'll be doing both as the evening wears on and at least try to finish this by midnight. I don't know what the hell I'm going to roll with, though. I had a few ideas bouncing around my head this morning but nothing stuck, obviously. So, we'll see. Right now, I'm going to get back to the APW.

 Okay, I'm done. This new format is less fun - and this gig wasn't the source of much fun to begin with - but it does seem easy to knock out for the bread. And, really, isn't that what really matters in this world? So we'll just fill this out to the word count and get 'er done. It's twenty till eleven, so let's get cracking.

 I have decided in recent years my motivation in life has been and continues to be Have As Much Fun As Possible. The dark times of misery and depression come from when I tried to work against this. Having a straight job - in journalism or writing or anything - has never worked out for me. Having a Steady Someone has worked out even worse. In that, I'm only in it for the Fun and when she inevitably decides to check it out it's always because I'm not in this for the long haul. It's probably a good thing for everyone involved that I'm not particularly good looking or charismatic.

 Every woman I've been involved with, it's ended because she either got bored with playing around or she realized she needed to look elsewhere for something more. This usually takes about six weeks to six months. My last ex hung it out for nearly three years, but we both came to decide after the end it would've been best if we'd had gone the "just friends (maybe with benefits)" route from the get-go.

 In my defense, that's all I ever tried to do. Another former pelvic affiliation said I had sociopath tendencies because I can't conclusively say I'd ever been in love. However, she was a virologist, so I took that with a grain of salt. The last ex was a therapist and she said I was good. I might be on the autistic spectrum but not a sociopath. That's a good thing.

 It does bother me a bit that I've never been able to make the Love thing work. I'm not one of those ones who says it can't happen. I've seen it happen, more than once, with my own eyes. I mean in real time, people falling in love, pledging their lives to each other, and remaining stuck to each others' hips for at least the next 10 years. Kids or no kids, I've seen it both ways. 

 For me, even thinking of such makes me want to run screaming for the hills. I figured out a long time ago, mind, that "friends with benefits" is as far as I care to go. Somewhere about five years ago I lost all interest in sex physically, regressing back to when I was 12 and touching girls was icky. So here I am at 45 and will probably spend the rest of my life on my own, unless something like what happened to Epictetus comes into play. I am nothing but cool with it, but I won't deny it bothers me that I can't figure out why it is.

 Okay, that's the word count. It's been a weird day and this is probably more information than you need. There's plenty of stuff for News tomorrow, so we'll leave it there and worry about that tomorrow. Take it easy.

Don't give me no plastic saddle.

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Some got to win, some got to lose.

 Going to do something a little different today. It's about 9:40 in the morning as I open this page to write, and I'm just going to fool around as the day goes on with the Gibberish. I'll post it sometime this afternoon and unless something interesting happens with the News, I'm not going to worry about it. Long story short on that, CORVID-19 shows no signs of the slowing down and the U.S. government shows no signs of improving their response.

  'Course the problem with that is, I'm almost convinced, we really don't want it to. Yesterday, Trump threw one of his temper tantrums over a relatively softball question from NBC's Peter Alexander. Everyone who was already tired of him was, of course, outraged and discouraged. And, of course, his Base came in their drawers over him sticking it to the MSM, man, but the average dipstick who started paying attention to politics in the past five or six years got pretty hard about this, as well.

 People - especially liberals and leftists - really need to stop waiting for a Savior or a Great Man. People either kvetch that Joe Biden isn't doing enough or claim Bernie Sanders will save us all. That partly explains Trump's popularity. He isn't a Great Man but he checks all the various boxes that Americans consider a "Great Man" should. He's a rich celebrity and has had sex with a lot of what Middle America considers "hot" women. He's not a physical threat apart from his size and tendency to screw with peoples' personal spaces, but we're pretty easily fooled about that. We think, culturally, actually think actors - actors who've never been anything but actors - like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood are inarugably bad-ass dudes. So what do we know.

 "Why isn't Joe Biden (or Obama) saving us?" "Bernie (or Ron Paul) is the only one who can save us."

 That's actually what people are saying. It's one thing for the liberal side of Middle America to trumpet this. That makes sense, as this whole country's history is a string of Great Men. It boggles my mind to see soi-disant "leftists" do the exact same thing, though, especially for the types of guys they're doing it for. I mean, sure, admire or rally around a charismatic figure who actually gets shit done (good or bad, we're not dwelling on that). That totally makes sense even if it's not something that sits well with me. I just don't understand this idea that seems to have permeated the Left - from self-declared socialists to equally claimed anarchists - whinging that a Savior isn't riding in on a white horse or that the stupid normies aren't throwing in with whoever they decide is this week's Savior.

 As a side note, I'm watching a lot of YouTube videos on "cursed books" and every single one of them acts like The Necronomicon didn't stem fully from H.P. Lovecraft's imagination. Even things like the Simon Necronomicon wouldn't exist without Lovecraft. Cut that out, man. There's plenty of weird books out there in the world.

 Okay. I wonder if anyone is going to put forth the idea that the reason Bernie Sanders is getting trashed in the primaries is because he ran a rotten campaign. Or is that just me? Now, I'm not saying Biden ran a great one, but he didn't have to. Sanders has a lot of passionate ground-level support, especially online, but to get the nomination he needed to attract not only people who weren't on board (and might've been leery of the whole "socialist" thing) but also hardcore Democrats and the party in general. That just makes sense to me; if you're running for the Democratic Party nomination, you have to get the Democratic Party leadership on your side.

 But he really hasn't done that. Indeed he - and particularly his surrogates and followers - has been telling the Democratic mainstream and centrist liberals in general to suck his dick for the past five years. And from what I'm seeing on Twitter, the reaction from at least the surrogates to the drubbing Sanders is getting in the primaries is anger at people who aren't voting for him with the concept that people are voting for Biden just to screw with them. They're not voting for Bernie, goes the argument, just because "boomers" want everyone to die.

 This isn't scientific, of course, just observation. I voted for Sanders but I've never been lit on fire about him. Great ideas, sure, but if great ideas were all that were needed in America politics, we wouldn't be in this shape. Asked this time last year the worst primary combo, I would've told you Biden and Sanders. Partly because Sanders probably wouldn't try to bring in a coalition and partly because Biden's the walking, talking, breathing example of The Swamp, for lack of a better phrase. He wasn't going to light anyone's pubes on fire, and probably the only reason he has any pull at all is most people who vote Democrat aren't really inclined to cut up too much until Trump gets booted out.

 I've said it elsewhere, but nothing Sanders champions is all that radical, even for American politics. More progressive taxation, cheaper education, minimum wage that's actually enough to live on, even the idea of Medicare For All, none of that is new. Some of it already existed and some were things that past presidents tried but couldn't pull off. Hell, Nixon pushed a better medical insurance scheme over 40 years ago and he was Nixon.

 Okay. Enough of that. I'm in a bad mood today. I had another dream last night, and most of my dreams these days are things I've done - from working in kitchens to riding with football teams to cover the games - but no one wants me around. Indeed, people are actively hostile to my presence and contemptuous of my contributions.

 I've always prided myself on being useful and likable. I'm not the best cook or reporter than stomped the Terra nor have I ever been Good Time Charlie, but people have always found me easy to like and before to long have been glad I'm around. I'm stable and dependable and don't cause anyone too much strife, mainly because I don't like it. I do my job and get along.

 In these dreams, I do not. I don't understand where all this comes from, and these dreams didn't start happening until I came to accept that I'm pretty much never leaving this hill for any extended time. On the surface, I'm fine with that, or at least I think I am. Momma, the Ex and my Therapist have all asked me, acknowledging that while I prefer my solitude, if this "social distancing" isn't getting up my nose. It's not, not really. Not on the surface, at least.

 I've told them all, look, apart from my Trips and Visits, the only reason I've left the house in the past two years have been doctor visits, hitting the gym, or family gatherings. Furthermore, every last one of them - again, apart from the Trips and Visits - I've tired to get through and done with as quickly as humanly possible. I like my solitude. I like being alone and fairly sedentary. I like reading and writing and playing games and going for walks with Otis, and frankly, that's about all I like to do.

 I loved my Big Trip out to see the brother and sister-in-law in Oregon. Not so much seeing them - they come to visit here twice a year, and that's plenty - but because of all I saw on the drive out there and back. I'll say it again, more of us should wander across the country and see it for ourselves. Maybe we wouldn't be so contemptuous of each other. I loved bouncing back to Athens to see the people who I haven't seen in a decade but still love me. I loved going back to New Orleans to remind myself why I loved the town. Same thing when I spent a couple days up in Memphis. Once I get in the mood and people settle down, I'll do some more Traveling and Visiting.

 On the surface, however, I am fine with my world being this Hill, Momma, my varmints and my time killers. But what if I'm not. What if these dreams are telling me that I'm discontent and unsettled with my life, despite what I tell myself. I'm not sure what to do if that's the case. I spent the last 20 years trying to be "normal" and failing miserably. Short trips into what everyone else does on purpose 24/7 are enough for me and can get too much pretty quickly. But still I have these dreams and wake up miserable.

 I'm not going to lie. As much as I miss getting high, maybe the main reason I wish I was in a position to smoke copious amounts of weed again is if one stays stoned constantly, one doesn't remember one's dreams. Whatever I'm being told, frankly, I don't think I'm interested in hearing. It's certainly not going to help the cause a'tall.

 Okay. I've been writing for two hours. I'm going to go ahead and post this on Blogger, and link it elsewhere staggered throughout the day. Maybe I'll write more, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll play some games or maybe I'll sleep until this afternoon, then take Otis for a walk. We'll see.

ADDENDUM: I had a dream during my nap, but it was actually a good one. I dreamed Otis was being sociable to my cats instead of trying to kill 'em like he usually does. Plus, I was in a situation where everyone was leaving me alone. I swear, this is better than therapy.

Thursday, February 20, 2020

"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."

 On the third morning of my Big Trip, I was in Lamar, CO, a little town on the state line, after visiting Dodge City, KS. Nice little town, I thought, sort of reminded me of some of the small towns I'd seen already, from Mississippi to Oklahoma. Familiar, in other words. Plan was to swing through Pueblo and check out one of these dispensaries, and then go on to Denver for the night.

 As I was sitting in the car figuring out the route with my Hitchhiker's Guide, it occurred to me that I was in the position to go visit Woody Creek. And though I hadn't even thought of it until just that moment - or was even cognizant of the possibility - I realized that if I passed up that chance, I'd never forgive myself. Though not the type to be that into visiting "holy ground", I just knew I'd always kick myself if I didn't go look at it.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

 Hoo, I'm really not in the right frame of mind for this, nor am I inclined to try to stir anything up with the News. I'm more wired & tired than anything, and the grays are slumping down on me. I'll just leave it open until I hit the mark. Your fair warning: all gonzo after this, and gloomy gonzo at that.

Saturday, December 14, 2016

 For whatever reason, I wrote a thing about the Royal Guardsmen's hit "Snoopy vs. Red Barron," rock & roll's Missing Years, and just the general recognition that we're answering the wrong question, as is my wont. It's all on the Tumblr site and it's a pretty good sized chunk of gibberish, so if that's you thing, go dig.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

 Okay, let's do this. Let's get started.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

 It is Mose Allison weather today. Rainy and grey, but not too hard nor too threatening. Cool but with no bite. Just the right amount of humidity. Melancholy. Maybe light some off to the west. Play Mose Allison's Backwoods Suite and tell me I'm wrong.

Monday, October 14, 2019

 I'm wired & inspired, so let's get this started. Gonzo ahead, so forewarned is forearmed.

A boy and his dog

  I don't have anything particularly interesting thoughts buzzing around my head, so this isn't going to be particularly interesting. That's just how it is.

 A lazy, muggy Friday morning is on us as the NFL season opens this weekend, and work is probably going to suck. Of course, work always sucks, but that's neither here nor there. Otis and I got up around 8:30 a.m. and had us a nice walk. As I wasn't particularly hungry, he and I had a very pleasant nap, one he's still engaging in.

 He did very well on his own last night. He was pretty wound up and happy to see me, running to grab his rope so we could play. I left him in the kitchen, and he didn't tear anything up. I'll do that for a couple more days to let him get used to occasionally being alone, and then I'll let him have the rest of the place. I'll try to get him out to the vet next week for a check up.

 Other thoughts:

Time Warp #2 - Back To Normal, Things Always Change

For what it's worth, as I write this, Monday, Sept. 3, I am still without internet access. I called the cable people and they said they had no idea when my area would be getting access again. Honestly, apart from the fact that it's easier to look stuff up on my computer than on my phone when I really want to know something - and posting this gibberish, of course - I'm not sure I miss it all that much. Same for the cable. Oh, sure, it's nice having a little background noise without having to think to hard, but I suppose I could always turn on NPR. I do sort of miss the connection to the big political show, but I must admit the increased focus on local news has been illuminating.

Anyhow.

This is a dog that appreciates his naps, and I'm a man that appreciates that.

 I have a dog. Best the cognoscenti can tell, he's around two years old and seems to be a wire-haired terrier. He's a lovable little dude, big into cuddling. He's a very tactile dog, I've noticed that. He seems to like sleeping on my foot, for example. He's very laid back and seems to be seriously into napping.

 He's a friendly, personable dog, but at the same time, he's very independent and stand-offish. I'm of the opinion he's a gutter-punk kid's dog. He's got that sort easy-but-guarded bonhomie that let's those kids move through that world. They take life as they come and do the very least they have to. I'm saying that because I also don't think he's had a whole lot of one-to-one love and affection, though I don't think he's ever been abused.

Time Warp # 1 - The Day After

Outside the Algiers Point Grocery. Landed right on that poor bastard's truck.

A blast from the past. Somewhat. As I write this, it is 11:31 a.m. on Saturday, September 1, 2012 in this foul year of our Lord. As I will detail below, whenever this is posted, it won't be whenever I get tired of writing as usual.

 Anyhow. Hurricane Isaac has blown through and, last I heard he's on up into Arkansas making them folks wet and miserable. All in all, it was not as bad as it could've been but worse than most of us expected. It never got higher than Cateogry 1, but even so it was a nasty booger before all was said and done. It had the distressing tendency to sit and stay in one spot, and managed to do so twice. Both times resulted in little areas around New Orleans getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of them.

Storm Update #3

 Well, Isaac is dumping on us in earnest. Apparently, it's sitting still off the coast, so we're in for a whole lot more wind and rain. The girlfriend's pretty freaked, and is not enjoying the Katrina flashbacks. Me, I'm not all that wound up. Sure, there's still plenty of opportunity for things to get really shitty really quickly, and naturally since I've been smoking pot pretty much all day I'm liable to be a bit nonchalant over a little rain.

 Still and all, it's been pretty awe-inspiring. I sat through a couple rowdy hurricanes when I lived in Gainesville, but those came and went much like tornadoes did when I was a kid. This is definitely a different kettle of fish flying wildly at high speeds. So far, I haven't seen much damage. Part of a neighbor's fence fell over and a couple limbs have fallen off the old pecan tree in the girlfriend's front yard. From what I can gather from the news folks, something like 300,000 people in the area are without power. As for right now, we've still got power, cable and internet, and best I can tell, I'd have power in the Point, too.

 Frankly, I'm having a blast. Way everyone who knows better than me, girlfriend included, has said this is a pretty fierce storm even for a Category One, and all the folks who survived Katrina and are going through their first nasty storm since that one are freaking out. I don't blame 'em, no, but I simply cannot make the connection. At this point, we've done all there is to do, all that can be done to prepare, so we just might as well ride the bastard out.

 And I suppose, that in itself is a little unsettling. We like to tell ourselves that we're the masters of this world, but, boy, is it not so. Stay safe.

Storm Update #2

 Well, it's noon and we officially are dealing with a Category 1 hurricane in young Isaac. We're still in the Bywater with plans to ride out the storm. It's rained off and on during the night, raining now as a matter of fact, and the wind's been gusting since yesterday evening. A short walk around the neighborhood an hour ago showed folks pensive and a little tense, but for the most part prepared for the ride and properly hunkered down. I even saw a few random acts of kindness, neighbors hollering across the street "Call if you need anything" or a dollar loaned for a gallon of milk, that sort of thing.

 The girlfriend says that pre-Katrina there was a bit more festivity in the air in the tense hours leading up to landfall but that all changed when the levees broke. It's really never came back. People are polite, helpful and friendly - after all, this is our city - but this is all business. I doubt hurricanes will be any fun for New Orleans for a long, long time. That scar's a thick one.

I would look up a synonym for "apathy", but why bother?

 More serious navel-gazing nonsense. Warned.

  When I try to study on the whole question of what's "wrong" with me, the problem is it isn't just one single, significant source.  That would be easier to tackle than a lot of little stumbles and sharp objects, which is what I'm dealing with now. For instance. I'm still getting over the realization I made a few years back that no matter how cunningly I craft my arguments, how airtight my logic, and how well-researched my facts, there are just some folks who are never going to listen.