She's got a big, bad record on the heartbreak radio.

  I really have nothing tonight. The day drained me some. Otis had a visit to the vet, partly because it's time for his yearly check-up. A lot of it, though, was questions about his change in behavior and how much we should be worried by his colored, liquid shits whenever he gets into the cat poop. The good news is he's got nothing seriously wrong with his insides, he just needs to stop eating cat poop.

 The bad news is on top of being deaf and losing his eyesight, the vet said he more than likely had the dog version of Alzheimer's. That's partly why he frets so much in the evening. I'll be getting medication for it in a couple of days, but it does make me feel sad. He's pushing 13 if he isn't already and he's definitely lost a step in the last couple of years. The very real possibility exists that I'll see 50 without him and, even worse, his decline will be marked by more and more things he can't do.

 I don't worry too much about my own mortality, but getting old is a serious drag. Even worse, it seems like I have to work harder just to do what I do to get through the day. It's also a drag to see everyone I love getting older and to know that I'll probably lose some of them before the next decade rolls around. That's how it goes, though. As my friend Branch told me years ago, "Life is people you love dying."

 A little maudlin, kids, I know, but I'm sick to my eyes of the whole Dr. Seuss debate. I can't believe we're, what, seven days into it? There is just no reason for this. I don't really understand what the Seuss people are supposed to do. They made this decision, figuring it best for not only Theodore Geisel's but also their own profits. The argument seems to be that due to "wokeness" and "cancel culture," they had no other prematurely option to bend to the will of the SJW's even though no one had complained about it, but that's just stupid. I don't see how anyone with the merest inkling of how the publishing business works thinks that could be so.

 The other issue they seem to miss is the same one people who gripe about mixed-race couples in cereal commercials or movies with female heroines miss. If these big conglomerates are seeing the writing on the wall, maybe your the one in the wrong. Do they really think Disney would take such a stance if it hurt the bottom line at all? No, it wouldn't, you bloody fools, calm down.

 Ah, well. So much for all of that. If I thought any of it was genuine or being argued in good faith, I'd spend more time down in the ditches fighting the good fight. But I really don't see the people - conservative or not - worthy of the time and energy, especially when journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on Black Lives Matter in this country.

 So that's enough for today. I don't know what else. I'll probably spend the rest of the evening blowing my harp and fighting alien invaders. There are worse ways of spending one's time.

I know that you know that I'm wrong.

  Much like this weekend, I'm writing this around 11 p.m. because I really don't have much going on in my head. I stayed up too late writing and reading last night, so I wound up sleeping most of the day. Maybe I should count what I wrote last night because technically I wrote it today.

 I didn't wind up saving it, though, and it was less coherent than the fiction sketches I've been doing. Granted, I haven't been messing with them much lately. Waiting for another spurt of creativity, I guess. No, last night was basically jumped up Twitter posts but ones not even worth posting so there's that there then.

 But it is writing and it is the mechanical process and I guess that's what is really important, right? Write even though it doesn't make sense or it isn't going anywhere? Of course, now Otis is acting like a little shit and I have to watch he doesn't destroy something having his little fit for whatever the reason he has his those fits. I wonder if he wants treats. Let's try that.

 Well, that seems to have calmed him down some. He's at least stopped trying to climb the bookshelf, though he's still shivering and whining. The down mood I was in this weekend is still around, with a touch of irritation. I wish for the life of me I could figure out what his hang-up is. He doesn't want to play or eat or go outside, the only constant is I have to be around. For the longest time, he was mad at me for leaving him while on the Big Trip, but that seems to be gone. He seems to have adjusted well enough to our new life and, for the most part, it seems he prefers it over life in New Orleans.

 Anyhow. Hey, I finally caught some decent movies on Tubi. One was called Demon Squad. A very low-budget affair with some dodgy action, it was sort of a supernatural noirish take with demons and magic relics. Sort of like Cast A Deadly Spell or a better version of the Alone In The Dark adaptation, perhaps the tv adaptation of the Jim Butcher books. There was some good make-up work and lead Khristin Fulmer did a solid job in the role of swaggering, smart-ass private dick Nick Moon. It was low budget but they made the most of what they had. Recommendation.

 The other was perhaps better with a higher budget. It was called I Had A Bloody Good Time At House Harker. I'm wary of indie-made horror comedies with long titles, but this was pretty good. Long story short, the descendants of Jonathan and Mina Harker deal with scorn, poverty, and the return of vampires. Again, they did pretty good work with their budget and there were parts that were actually funny. There's nothing worse, I mean nothing worse than a comedy that is not funny. This gets a Recommendation, too, so check both out if you have a couple hours to kill.

 Hey, that's word count. Nothing was said, of course, but it's the journey not the arrival, right? I hope so.

You know how people are. They can't stand to see you be exactly who you are.

 Six more days. Less than a week. Is it getting dumber? Yes, yes it is.

 I think it's time I do a little more explaining on how I approach the News. For what it's worth, for the Gibberish - this here - I do whatever I damn well please. Anyhow, when picking sources for links, my only rule is if it's a local story, try to use a local link. Otherwise, go nuts. There are a couple of far-right sources I won't mess with because anything useful they might provide will come from someone not skirting libel laws. But as far as it goes, Fox News or The Wall Street Journal is just as good as MSNBC or The Washington Post to make my point, and there's little intrinsic difference in The Daily Beast or Politico.

 I trust you to wade through whatever bias there is because as I've said a number of times before, every news source has a bias and anyone that claims not to is lying. Impartiality is a goal to strive for, sure, but in the real world, it's almost impossible out of stock quotes or box scores. That's just how it is. Even at the very bottom, every news source is a business trying to make rent, so there'll be bias there. And hell, that's probably the strongest bias there is.

 The same goes for partisanship. Back in the day when your average city had half-a-dozen daily publications, most of them wore their partisanship on their sleeves. The election of a particularly controversial official might spawn three or four new rags all by itself. So long as they acknowledge the partisanship - or at least wear it close enough to their sleeve that it makes no difference - I have no problem with it. Again, I trust my readers to be able to see past the partisanship. News doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not like the speed of light.

 By that same token, I don't put much stock in names. When I was a baby journalist, sure, there were reporters I took far too seriously. And, sure, there are folks I like to read because they're good writers. But most of the journalists I follow because of the beat they're on, like David Neiwert on white nationalism or Greg Palast on voting rights. The rest? Well, your heroes will always, always let you down usually through no fault of their own, just because they're human. I mean, I admit to my admiration of Hunter Thompson's skill as a wordsmith and the way he approached the job, but I know enough to not take him too seriously.

 Now, I said all that to say all this. The big kerfuffle on Twitter today - or one of them anyway - was the split between Glenn Greenwald and the publication he helped to found, The Intercept. Apparently, it's over the mag's disinclination to take the Hunter Biden laptop pseudo-story as given while like the overall narrative that sometimes the big-time media's selectiveness in what it chooses to cover is to the detriment of the public. Here's The Intercept's take and since I can't find Greenwald's take, here's one from fellow traveler Matt Taibbi.

 Before we get too deep in the weeds here, I have to say I really don't give much of a shit about Glenn Greenwald. He's won a Pulitzer, good for him. I read his blog back during the Iraq War days on a fairly regular basis and he was good on that beat. I cooled towards him as the decade wore on, mainly because he had such a hard-on for Ron Paul, a man I've considered a pseudo-fascist con man and just another political dirtbag for going on 20 years. If that upsets you, tough titty, it's not up for debate.

 I dropped out of things halfway through the Obama administration, so by the time I got back to politics in general and Twitter in specific, around 2016 or so, Greenwald for all intents and purposes seems to have morphed completely into a tweet-feud champion. I think the first time he drifted back across my radar was his first appearance on Tucker Carlson's show. Carlson is not only a complete joke and a rotten human being, he's a white supremacist in the "lapdog for billionaires" mode. It was said Greenwald only went on his show because no one else would take him, but that doesn't speak highly. Again, this is not up for debate, and you're welcome to cry more about it.

 So I am obviously not "unbiased" about this and I'm not claiming to be. But I'm not expressing the outright glee a lot of folks on Twitter are at this news. Again, I really don't think the particulars are important much less interesting, the whos and the whats. What I do think is worth discussing is Greenwald's claim he's being censored, and that is incredibly stupid.

 What he's being is "edited" and that's part of the gig. It's being said he had a clause that no one could edit his stuff and that is, well, fucking stupid and disastrous for a writer. Really, for any creative endeavor, not having someone in the process with the swing to say "hey, let's think about this first" runs the danger of choking to death on the smell of your own farts. Doug Sahm's best music was made when Jerry Wexler was at the helm, for example.

 I won't lie, when I was a baby journalist I hated being edited for content. Especially when I wasn't involved in the process, it used to drive me nuts. But the older and wiser Matt understands that having an editor helps make things better and more focused. God knows, this stuff tends to ramble on and would probably be better with someone reading behind me.

 If that's true, though, it's pretty sad as Greenwald is 53. Furthermore, any claims of him being "censored" when by all appearances he quit on his own does little more than damage actual claims of real censorship, like when a state government prohibits its staff from talking about climate change or the federal government makes demands on Voice of America to pump up the Trump Administration.

 Best I can gather, Glenn wasn't forced out. He quit and the folks at The Intercept told him not to let the door hit him in the ass. Sort of like when Bari Weiss quit The New York Times op-ed staff in a huff, no one was all that bothered she wouldn't be in the office Monday morning. There's undoubtedly a lot of office politics going on here that's finally bubbling up, but I don't think it's really important and I really don't care.

 What this all boils down to is whatever censorship is, it is emphatically not "people disagreeing with you." Because you decide to quit a gig that won't let you do whatever the hell you want without any criticism, it doesn't mean you were "forced out." And people who disagree with aren't necessarily doing it because they're "neoliberal shills," they may simply think you've shat the bed once too often to be taken seriously anymore. Just how it goes, buckaroo.

 That's all of that, I think. Billy Joe Shaver died this week and that's a bummer. Johnny Bush died last week and that's a bummer. Otis is going through his nightly freak out and it's making my blood pressure spike. Where it goes from there, nobody knows.

If I come up with something clever or get inspired, maybe. Don't bet the farm on it, though.

 I haven't filed anything today if you're waiting. Someone's reading this, apparently, even if it's just the webcrawlers. Anyhow, straight talk is my mind's been on idle all day and I've been too lazy to knock it into gear. I'll get something before the day's out. Mahalo.

 It's an hour-and-a-half later. Me and my buddy Otis, the Jack Russell, took a brief constitutional. It didn't really help spark anything, though. We didn't get far, either. These hot, humid days aren't pleasant in the first place and he is getting older. I do think the "hot, humid" here is worse than the "hot, humid" in New Orleans. You weren't ever far from some serious body of water down there, between the Big River and the Old Pontchartrain. Some days felt like there was a breeze coming in off the Gulf, as well.

 Here it's just green and woods and swamp. Everything's closer together and it seems like the only breeze you get is cars passing. Or it's a lead up to a tornado, one or the other.

 Well, I've gone to staring off into space again. Looks like it's going to be one of those nights. I won't have any Actual Paying Work until next week sometime, either. So I'll keep this page open and blither on it until I reach word count.

 I really can't even get worked up about anything today. There's another round of conservative think-piece writers having a big conference so they can tell each other that they're being censored, but that's just tedious. It's the same whine over and over again, usually in publications and on platforms that the average person couldn't even think of having. And they usually get paid stupid amounts of money for their banal opinions and lack of insight. Every time David Brooks trends, I want to tell The New York Times that I can write 6,000 words of gibberish a week - and indeed, I do - and I wouldn't ask for the six-figure salary that lump of moldy bread brings down for some reason.

 Speaking of Twitter, none of the trending topics are really anything I can hang my hat on. The head of FedEx is encouraging Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder to change the team's name to something less egregiously racist, but that's nothing new. That being said, we are in the midst of a Thing and if you'd have told me the Mississippi flag would be lamped for a change and it'd happen as quick as it happened, I probably wouldn't have believed you.

I'll save any COVID-19 stuff for the News, but it's looking grim out there, folks. Numbers continue to rise, the federal government continues to sit on its thumbs, and far too many of Our Fellow Americans think they have the God-given Constitutional right to spit in your coffee if you ask them to wear a mask. I honestly do hate to be this way, but being a hermit that's walled himself off from human contact turned out to be a mighty shrewd move on my part.

Well, that's word count. I think I'll tie it off here, maybe come back to it later. Be honest, I've been giving Fallout: New Vegas another swing and would like to get back to it. I'd be hell on wheels if I could stick to one game long enough to finish it. In any event, there you go.

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.

Back at the funny farm.

 Just a quick bit of housekeeping before Otis and I take our afternoon constitutional. I have some Actual Paying Work due tomorrow, so this may be it. As always, I'm putting this down just for continuity's sake so I don't forget.

 I might come back after I finish the APW. All depends. I'm still a bit drained and thick brained from the last couple days, and I'm not sure it's just residual exhaustion from The Dispossessed. I stayed up late last night playing the original XCOM after finishing the APW due today. I'm sure that didn't help.

 Speaking of books, I started Leviathan Wakes, the first novel of James S.A. Corey's "Expanse" series. I forget who recommended it to me, but thanks whoever you are. I've just really started but I'm digging what I'm reading so far. Hard science fiction, a space opera that hasn't left the Solar System, and a gang of slightly roguish, blue-collar types as protagonists. Plus, there's a space cop operating from corporate-owned Ceres. All very nice, and definitely kicks Something From Darkside to the curb for a bit.

 Well, I guess I'd better look into taking that walk. I was hoping to wait a little while longer so it'd cool off some. However, Otis has started his "poor, pitiful me" whining and I am a weak man. So, maybe we'll swing back around before the night's over. It's just shy of 5  p.m., signing off.

UPDATE: It's 8:40 p.m. and I'm done with writing and the first read-through edit of the APW. I'm not quite ready to jump into playing any games. Probably one of the XCOM games tonight, though I might give Sid Meier's Civilization VI, this week's free game from Epic, a spin. I got it yonks ago via Humble Bundle, I think, but I think I just played the tutorial. We'll see. I do want to get back to Leviathan Wakes, as well, and I can't think of anything I want to watch.

 I'm finally digging into the last couple AC/DC and Motörhead records. They're pretty good if you like AC/DC and Motörhead, and I do. There's more of the latter than the former, though, as Lemmy and the boys churned out a slab of rock & roll every couple of years while Angus and Malcolm and the lads take a little more time. I imagine it has something to do with the size of the crowds they play. I know Motörhead play bigger venues outside of the states, but I've never seen them in anything but a large-ish music club or, to be more specific, the Tabernacle in Atlanta. I don't think AC/DC has played anything smaller than a stadium since Back In Black.

 And let's be honest, the new stuff from AC/DC's 2008 Black Ice could've come from any album from the last almost 40 years. It's the original Brian Johnson line-up with Phil Rudd and Cliff Williams, and Brendan O'Brian's production is sharp and meaty as always. I haven't gotten into Rock Or Bust, the first AC/DC album ever without the late Malcolm Young, because that just depresses me.

 The Motörhead stuff is much the same. Since settling down with Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee in the mid '90s, the band's stomped out generally satisfying, fun records that may not surprise, but they never disappoint. With a couple missteps here and there - like Snake Bite Love or maybe, maybe Sacrifice - it's been a solid run of kick-ass, well, Motörhead. You know what you're getting.

 I interviewed Lemmy back when dinosaurs walked the Earth, and he was nothing but class. They played a show in Atlanta with The Supersuckers and Nashville Pussy, and after the show I went backstage to say howdy to some folks I knew. Lemmy walks past me, stops and says, "You're coming to the after party, right?" So I did. Talked with Phil and Mikkey for a bit, too, and they were some sweet cats. Again, it makes me a little sad that Lemmy's passed on, but I know he had a helluva run for someone who lived with let's say gusto he had and had a better time than most of humanity.

 I really ought to buy a new Motörhead t-shirt. The iconic one with Snaggletooth on it, nothing fancy. I wore the last one to pieces. Perhaps when I lose a little weight. They don't make t-shirts for Doug Sahm or Booker T. & The MG's, I reckon. Ah, well.

I can't do what ten people tell me.

 Okay, well. It seems we've got the internet fixed up. Guy came by today and did some rewiring. Of course, the dad-blame internet stayed connected all day today. Typical.

 Anyhow, we're back in business, such as it is. Took Otis and Fuzzy to the vet today so Fuzzy could get his haircut and Otis his check-up. The result is quite satisfying. Fuzzy's half the dog he was and is probably much more comfortable without all that hair. As for Otis, he's got hookworms but otherwise is still healthy as a horse, if a horse was a Jack Russell Terrier. He is getting older, bless his little heart, turns out his hearing and eyesight is going. He's changed a lot over the past year. I still can't wrap my head around him completely ignoring the cats rather than trying to tear them to shreds.

 All right, then, what else is there? Yesterday's News didn't get posted until this morning. I need to re-write one of last week's Actual Paying Work. Little things, just getting into the groove of how it's done. Hell, I don't know what else. I finished The Dispossessed, and I don't think I'd read it before. Regardless, I do like how it presented an anarchistic society as possible but still flawed. Way too many writers would and do take the easy way out and present their utopias as flawless and perfect. This one actually feels more real, and sort of rung true to me with my own problems with the overall "anarchism cultural," whatever the hell that is.

 Like the cyberpunk thing, I really don't feel like I belong there despite my affection for and interest in it. Granted, the nice thing, the appealing thing, about anarchist thought and theory is that there's no real set rules apart from a general dislike of unearned authority and rules for the sake of having rules. Working within the system to change it or even just be able survive without betraying your conscience. Working with what works and discarding what doesn't, with the dual purpose of surviving with your values intact while maybe making the world a slightly less shitty place.

 Man, that book took a lot out of me. That hasn't happened in quite a while, so consider The Dispossessed highly recommended. I admit to being a man of habit and any deviation from my routine gets up my nose. So not being able to use the internet like I prefer - to write, to blog, to research, to listen to music, to work - made me a bit distracted. So I haven't done much the last couple of days besides read that book.

 Beyond that, I don't know. It's been a pretty active day and I'm a bit worn out. I'm half tempted to tie this off here and come back to it after a nap. I'm hitting bottom and can't even come up with a clever folksy colloquialism to describe how slow my brain is right now. I will say I don't care for the new Blogger writing layout, if that means anything.

 Been on a big Otis Redding kick lately. I still think it's one of American Pop Music's biggest tragedies that he didn't get to record more or build on what he started with "(Sittin' On The) Dock of the Bay". I would've liked to think he stuck with Booker T. & The MG's as his band for recording. His touring band was solid enough, but nothing compares. Also, in case it's ever asked, I think he'd have done a killer bee cover of "Highway To Hell".

 Okay, that's word count and my head's killing me. I am tying it off right here. Might come back after a little lie down or if anything clever comes up. Otherwise, we're back to normal business tomorrow. I do have some Actual Paying Work due Thursday, but things are a bit squirrelly there because a client's being a pain. And let me take this opportunity to offer my services to anyone who needs something written or edited. Cheaper than you'll find elsewhere, if nothing else.

Like a bird without a nest. Like a stranger in the night.

 EDIT: I completely forgot to add links to this week's News. I'm particularly fond of Monday's piece, since I got to write about UFO's instead of the epidemic. The Tumblr site was pretty quiet, so here we go.

Monday

Wednesday

Friday


Two days and two days into the coronavirus novel epidemic. A lot of states are "reopening", though Mississippi isn't, and we're all going to find out just how bad an idea that was or wasn't. Georgia and Texas have both seen spikes in cases, the very thing that caused our governor Tate Reeves to slow his roll.

 Well, life is an adventure, is it not? Maybe all those AstroTurf "protest" groups complaining they can't get haircuts or go to their favorite restaurants will take their gun nuttery and cheap Nazi cosplay somewhere else. People are wondering why gun-toting neckbeards screaming at cops don't get the same reaction as, say, Native tribes protesting unnecessary and dangerous oil pipelines across tribal lands. Simple. The "let us work" protesters aren't shaking any boats or upsetting the Natural Order.

 Ah, but I don't want to write about COVID-19. I've been writing about little else for the past six weeks. I'm making money writing about COVID-19 nowadays. We've become extremely stupid as a culture over this thing and refuse to act like adults. The same people who claim they're ready to take down a tyrannical government or the dissolution of society are losing their minds at having to be around their family for a couple of weeks.

 So stop writing about it, Matt, move on. After all, you'll have to come up with something interesting about all this hoo-hah all next week. I think I got too much sun on my afternoon constitutional with Otis and B.C. It's in the 80s and fairly warm. I've got me one of those "too much sun" headaches, I think. Probably need to look into getting some sunscreen if Otis intends to keep this up, and I've no doubt he will.

 Another problem is this isn't coming as easy this evening. I have been staying up too late playing XCOM the last couple of nights, as well as a couple other games. I picked up Robin Hood - The Legend of Sherwood on sale at Good Old Games for a sneeze yonks ago, and finally got around to playing it this week. It's pretty decent. Plays like Desperadoes or Shadow Tactics, strategy oriented but not turn based. Plus, I've always been keen on the Robin Hood legend. One of those days I should write about that, but today's not the day.

 Nothing is firing properly today. Maybe I should take a break, take a nap, and come back at it. Nah. Let's just get it done and if the Muse comes later, it's not like I'm getting paid for all this. I will say, just to get it down, that I've had an epiphany about my writing in the last couple of days. It's been driving my batty that I can't get any fiction going past world-building. I don't understand what other freelancers who don't do "straight journalism" are making their salt. I don't do Me Talk Pretty One Day-style gripping emotional journeys and neither do I want to. More power to 'em, but I'll probably never write that dark book of the soul about, say, my father.

 So instead of focusing on what I can't do, I decided to study on what I did do well. Two things came up. One, I'm good at making boring things that rarely change day after day interesting to read about. This is what saved my ass as a sports writer when I'm not really into sports, and the current iteration of Actual Paying Work is definitely that. The other thing I'm good at is explaining things to the common mind. That's where I was good as a music critic and when it works, that's what makes The News worth reading. I definitely need to find a better way to market the latter, because when I show it's out there, people do read it. They may not respond or react back, but what the hell.

 So, that's what I do and that's what I've always done. It's not that I need to embrace it, because I've never run from it and I do think there's a place for it. Whether there's a place for me to make money at it, well, we're still figuring that out. I'm not going to totally give up on my Weird Western or bank heist IN SPACE, but I won't sweat 'em anymore. Hopefully.

 Anyhow, that's the word count and then some, and I really am dragging. Maybe something will spring forth later or maybe I'll just take a nap and/or play more video games. Life in the fast line, indeed.

All caught up in a landslide.

 Man, what in the hell is going on in Michigan? Don't they know these "protests" were AstroTurf by not just conservative groups, but conservative groups tied to Erik Price and Betsy DeVos? Is it just an excuse to cosplay armed loonies or what?

 Before we get started, I want to emphasize one thing because ammosexuals are the most delicate little flowers on the planet and cannot handle anything uncomplimentary said about their precious shooty-bang penis extensions. You may not believe it, but I don't care enough about your opinion to argue it.

 I don't have a problem with gun ownership. I don't have a problem with any reasoning one uses for owning a gun. You hunt? Fine, that's where my guns came from. You want to protect yourself and/or your family in this mean old world? Fair enough, it is a booger out there. You're defending freedoms from a government that's always just far from going full tyranny? Sure, pal, whatever you have to tell yourself. You just like guns and the noises they make? There are worse obsessions.

 That being said, I don't give a shit why you have guns, how many you have or what you do with them. I'd say all I care about is you making sure you store them properly and operate them wisely, but as long as you stay away from me, I don't really care. If I'm so inclined, I will make fun of you because I don't have any special respect for you and you will just have to suck it up, buttercup.

 I don't particularly care for people who decide they can't go to the grocery store without being loaded for bear, open or closed carry, but that's the world we live in. It's like knowing industrial companies will poison the environment for profit or that powerful men will use their weight to coerce sex out of subordinates. It's part of society and all we can do is legislation. Why we don't, I don't know.

 Frankly, gun worshipers, you pissed away your benefit of the doubt. The El Paso shooter, the Vegas shooter, the Sandy Hook shooter, all of them were behaving legally until they first pulled the trigger. And your reaction every time has been "don't take away my guns". Fair enough, that's what you care about. I'm just not obliged to respect you or act like you're anything but a joke. Deal with it and cry more. As the man said, you make no like it but you have to learn to love it. Besides, you're the one who's heavily armed, what are you crying for?

 Now that we've established that, I don't care about gun owners owning guns. The Second Amendment as interpreted by D.C. v Heller, I may not agree with it but it is the law of the land. Should there be more stringent gun control legislation? Man, we are way past the point of that in this country. When 20 preschoolers were gunned down by a guy mad at his mom and we had "serious political commentators" arguing that it was a "false flag" operation, that argument was done, son.

 I just don't understand why y'all get so butthurt about people thinking you bringing a high-powered instrument capable of dealing death on a large scale is a bit unhinged. If you're protesting the state's lockdown policies during this epidemic, why do you need to be heavily armed and wearing combat gear? And why do you get so pissy when someone suggests you're trying to intimidate your political opponents when there's no other reason to be so heavily armed for this fake protest designed mainly so rich folks can make even more money?

 You have the guns. Nut up, man. Quit your crying and convince me you're not a flea-brained dingbat. Or just deal with the fact that I'm going to point and laugh at you. Okay, well, enough of that. There are times when living far out in the boonies and fairly well set up so that I don't have to deal with the rest of this sick, twisted, pitiful, depressing culture. Glad I don't have kids, glad I don't have to interact with people to make my bread and salt, glad I'm not tied to anyone that would cause me to give more of a shit than I do.

 Yeah, I'm in a bad mood today. Sorry. Tried a new CPAP mask but still didn't sleep for shit. The weather's gorgeous, though, so me and my buddy Otis, the Jack Russell, had a pleasant constitutional. I've hit my groove with the XCOM games and have been thoroughly enjoying stomping a mudhole in it. I also just finished an enjoyable Weird Western called Skin Medicine by Tim Curran, which combined mountain folk magic with Lovecraft that worked very well.

 Anyhow. That's the night. Let's see what tomorrow brings. Keep the faith.

Sunday, February 23, 2020

 Well, the rain's back. It moved in with some warmer temperatures and they say it'll come down through to Tuesday. On the upside, it's not supposed to add more to the flooding in the state. On the downside, Otis realizes we're not going to be able to take any constitutionals for a bit. You know how much a depressed Jack Russell can bring down a room? Plus, he thinks I make it happen on purpose.