I've got nothing. Just listen to more Cannonball Adderley, is all.

  I've been putting this off all day, but it's 11 p.m. Country Standard Time and I don't want to break my streak. I'm just really not in the mood. Nothing particular is wrong, really. Stress, I guess, but it's not stress affecting me directly. I am stressed out about the fact Trump isn't conceding and more stressed about his cult being less inclined to accept reality. I really don't think he's doing anything but fundraising, but the Base is taking on a more fanatical air.

 I guess it's second-hand stress. My brother's stressed mainly because his wife is stressed. A cousin's stressed. A cousin of Momma's who's always been a favorite is terribly stressed. There's nothing I can do about any of it, and that always drives me up the wall. A friend passed away earlier in the week and I find myself dealing with that weird feeling of not-quite-guilt I sometimes feel about my monk-like lifestyle. Just a weird week.

 Anyhow, that's a good enough segue into links for this week's News. A good week, if everything was a bit short. I just made wordcount Monday and Friday, but Wednesday had a little more meat to it. To be fair, there really wasn't much news this week beyond Trump's ongoing nonsense and his worshiper's increased fervor. Sure, there was an assassination of an Iranian scientist that's worrisome, COVID-19 continues to gallop out of control, and general shit-assery Trump's trying to pull on his way out, but that's still all connected to this total goofiness. It's been a tedious week, man.

 I don't know what else, really. Been sleeping a lot because I'm tired of the world and I don't have access to good weed. I don't see much reason to stay awake. I'm still working on Brain Greene's A Hidden Reality and enjoying it, and I've been playing a good bit of Phantom Reality and Pillars of Eternity II over the week. But I have nothing new to say about any of that.

 I've been watching a number of absolute stinkers on Tubi.com. I'll pick one and just let the algorithm pick whatever comes next. None of them actually stand out for any reason. They're just bad, bad, bad. I really don't care to watch "bad movies" to laugh at them, a la MST3K. It's fun enough with someone else but not really by yourself. I can't even remember any of the titles apart from Evil Bong, and that's just because they nailed some stoner stereotypes. They were very broad stereotypes to be sure, but they were funny enough in a "fart joke" level of humor.

 I've got 10 minutes and a little over 440 words. I don't know if I'm going to make it, but I'm not too bummed about it one way or another. I did take out 10 minutes to fill out a job application for a resume writer. Probably what I'll do is post this and come back to do the minimum amount of editing I do. But, hey, that's 500 so I believe I'll shut it down. Maybe if something comes to me I'll come back, but I think this is the way things are going to be for a couple of days.

 It is what it is, I guess.

We'll hold up our glasses against evil forces.

  Okay. I have some Actual Paying Work to do tonight, plus Momma's got supper almost done. And I think Tuesday's entry was so fine and slick it deserves another read. But this is now and we are here, so let's get something down.

 First off, if Thanksgiving is your bag, happy Thanksgiving. If it's not, happy Thursday. I also think we should take a moment to recognize that this day is not necessarily one of celebration for our Native friends and neighbors. And we must understand that not everyone has a blood family they can spend time with though they might have a group of friends. When I lived in Athens, I'd get together with some of the other musicians, townies, barflies, and the rest of the citizens of that particular island of misfit toys for a Thanksgiving throw-down at one of the clubs. Or it's like that story about the lady and youngster who started a tradition due to a missent text. That's just damn sweet.

 Anyhow, enough of all that. Have a good time whatever you do and try to be good to each other. That's all ye know and all ye need to know. It's really not any more complicated than that. We've just chosen to make life more difficult than it really needs to be all for the benefit of a relative few. "You're just jealous of rich people's wealth, Matt." No, I'm jealous because they can do anything they want and not have to work a soul-destroying job just to eat. The main reason they can do that is because we the people work those jobs and they get the profit. It's a helluva thing.

 Whoops. Getting a little dark there, and no one really wants more melancholy gloom and doom on the holidays. Regardless of the truth therein because the truth is not always pleasant. But that's life and we must muddle through. I'm not particularly interested in the news today, though the antics of Sidney Powell continue to entertain. Apparently, donations to the cause mean writing a check directly to her. Yeah, buddy. Beats working, I suppose.

 I finally got around to watching Oblivion last night. It's cheeseball as hell and goes maybe just a bit too far with it - they made a Man-Thing joke, but I won't lie it made me laugh - it's nevertheless a nice way to blow 90 minutes or so. It's getting basically a five out of ten from most review amalgamations and that's about right. I'd go higher because I dig westerns, sci-fi, and general silliness, but that's just me. One's mileage may vary, naturally. I'll get around to the sequel the next day or so.

 What else is there? I don't know. I've been playing Phantom Doctrine but I've said enough about that already. I doubt have anything interesting to add. Momma's in there talking to my brother and I saw my cousin's oldest boy at the gas station. My big extended country family usually gets a couple times a year, usually Thanksgiving. Of course, we're not this year and that's a drag. In any event, I just heard the dinner bell and this is word count. Be well, friends and neighbors, and take care of each other. It does no good to make life any harder than it needs to be.

I ain't good lookin', baby, but I'm some woman's sweet angel child.

  Three more days. It's 6:30 p.m. Country Standard Time here at Enon Holler World Headquarters, and in less than 75 hours all the mess will be over. More likely than not, though, a whole new mess will kick into gear. Before we get started with anything, though, let's bring y'all up to date with this week's News.

  It was a pretty good week overall, three short entries that get the job done, and don't waste your time. We touch on Amy Coney-Barrett's appointment to the Supreme Court Monday and the preparation for Hurricane Zeta Wednesday. Friday looked at the result of said hurricane and some other odds and ends.

 We also saw the slow crumbling of the Hunter Biden laptop story through the week, from a weak piece of bullshit to begin the week to Tucker Carlson himself saying it's not worth the effort for the end. It was interesting to watch it in real-time. Never really holding up for anyone except for those who really wanted it to, it nevertheless failed to catch on with a political media that not only loves bullshit scandals but was thirsty for an election horse race. Nobody wanted to touch it, and once The Wall Street Journal and Fox News turned it down, it was pretty much done. It didn't help that apparently the source for the claims, Rudy Giuliani, actively worked against giving out more info or access to the laptops he claims were slam dunks.

 I hate to play into the delusions of the Trump Base, but I do think The Powers That Be has had it with Trump shitting the bed so thoroughly and aren't inclined to put their thumb on the scale for him. That doesn't mean they're rooting for Joe Biden - doesn't mean they aren't either, I just don't know - and at the risk of going full looney conspiracy theory, I do think there are enough people with enough swing to nudge it one way or another. If that makes sense, and it probably doesn't. I'll get it into some other time. It isn't quite the "five men in the back room with the big cigars" but it's close. Anyhow.

 Hey, it's Halloween. We've probably got all the trick-or-treaters we'll see this year, meaning my cousin's kids and their neighbor. That's fine. I've never been crazy about Halloween as an adult and even less so since I quit drinking. Oddly enough, the last two towns I lived in - Athens, GA, and New Orleans - were big Halloween towns. Even so, the entertainment I got from walking around and seeing people in their costumes wore thin as I got older.

 I've been reading Edward M. Erdelac's Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter this week and thoroughly enjoying it. Long story short, it's a collection of novels about a drifter in the West dealing with supernatural horrors but with the gimmick of Judaic mysticism. It's the first in a series of four collections telling an overall story, and I'll probably pick up the other books. I've written a little more in my own Weird Westerns. Another set of character sketches instead of an actual story. I have a plot forming but it's pretty thin.

 I've always had a fascination with religious mysticism. Though I'm no expert, it's always been interesting that Judaism is more accepting of its more esoteric aspects than the other Abrahamic religion. I have no idea why. Christianity has actively tried to suppress its mystic side, though I think Islam is cooler with Sufism. Eastern religions are a whole different kettle of fish, particularly Taoism. Granted, most of what I know about Taoist mysticism comes from the Mr. Vampire movies, but there you go.

 Finally, two excellent CreativeForge Games titles, Hard West and Phantom Doctrine are on sale at Steam this weekend. The former for $1.99 and the latter for $7.99. Both are XCOM-style turn-based strategies, but Hard West has a Weird Western shtick while Phantom Doctrine takes an approach that resembles Len Deighton-style '80s spy thrillers. The TBS aspect of the latter takes a back seat to the spy stuff, so you'll spend more time gathering evidence and making connections, but it's still a blast. I really dig both of them, though the XCOM games are still superior. However, you can't go wrong at those prices, so dig 'em.

 Support indie gaming, enjoy your Halloween and relax this weekend. Monday and Tuesday are going to be a mess.

Take your pleasure where you find it.

 Before we get too deep into it, I have some Actual Paying Work this week. One piece is due Thursday and another is due Friday. How this will affect everything, we don't know. Either way, we'll persevere. Anyhow.

 It appears the President's attempts to make us all forget 80,000 people have died from COVID-19 under his watch and in large thanks to his utter incompetence hasn't really taken hold. Nobody is really buying this whole "Obamagate" business besides his faithful, and they think he's the Second Coming of Christ. They are, to put it as nice as possible, untroubled by reality outside of what they're told to believe by the White House. It's getting a bit of play from the ding dongs on Fox News, but they do what they're told. Ironically, the best shutdown of that whole business was on Fox News from National Security lawyer Brad Moss on anchor Shannon Bream's watch. Still, I'm sure we'll hear more and more of it in weeks to come. No one's ever accused Trump or his followers of knowing when to quit while they're ahead.

 Been sleeping too much lately. Granted, I've been staying up too late playing Invisible Inc., Phantom Doctrine and Satellite Reign. That last one is a booger. I'm not sure how to get ahead because every time I try to do one of the side quests, I get stomped in the dirt by the cops. I'm sure there's something key I'm just missing. I do like the aesthetic, though. Both it and Invisible Inc. take place in the future, one where corporations rule the world and you control a team of corporate saboteurs. Invisible Inc. is a turn-based thing like XCOM while Satellite Reign is real-time strategy like the Desperado games.

 I say I like the aesthetic, but I've never been able to completely warm to the cyberpunk thing. I think I've said it before, but I don't know where my world would be in that setting. Small-town or rural South, maybe New Orleans or one of the college towns, what does that look like when corporations rule the world, governments are paper tigers if they exist at all, and people can physically "jack" into cyberspace. I fully believe that's where American culture is going, socially and politically, but it's always set in grimy, rainy mega-cities with a slight Japanese flavor. Where do Merle Haggard fans fit in that world, is my question.

 I suppose if I want to know, I should write that story. I forget who said that as writing advice, "write the story you want to read if no one else has". It's like Neuromancer. Neat concept, interesting themes, but not my world so I have trouble connecting. I don't know why it's so for cyberpunk, though it could be that it just doesn't feel that "far out" as opposed to a fantasy setting or space-faring setting. Maybe I just don't dig on William Gibson's writing, which is true. Transmetropolitan works a little better for me, but that's probably more because Spider Jerusalem is so shamelessly based on Hunter Thompson.

 Okay, what else. I'll leave any news for tomorrow. I'm not going to want to do a bunch of research since one of the APW's is going to involve a fair bit of that. Nothing I've read or watched lately has been anything of note. I think I've finally worked the whole "re-stocking iTunes" thing out of my system. Momma went and got a brand-new modem from the phone company, so it seems our internet woes are taken care of. For the time being, anyway. I guess I'm not really in the mood to write tonight, so I'll tie this off here and maybe come back to it if something pops up later.

 Selah

The meek, they ain't inherited nothing. Their leaders are falling behind.

 Before we get too deep in the big muddy, as always, some links from this week's News.

Monday

Wednesday - This actually turned out to be a big mouthful, so I broke it up into two parts.

• Part One: The Shooting of Ahmaud Arbery
• Part Two: Defrauding Mississippi's Welfare Service

Friday

 I'm pretty proud of Wednesday's big monster, as well as the two shorter pieces from it. I'm also glad both topics are getting the national press. Even The New York Times has written about the mess going on in Mississippi, so that's something. And the Arbery killing and resulting cover-up by the local law is just too egregious to pretend it's business as usual.

 Other than that, I've been ignoring a white screen for the past 45 minutes. Let's just start typing and see if we can't knock the word count out sooner than later. This sentence is just to satisfy the "a paragraph must have three sentences" rule that I quite possibly made up.

 The internet's been less spotty today. Matter of fact, it's run pretty good all day. Far as I know, anyway, I spent most of the day napping. Just one of those days I didn't feel like engaging with the rest of the world. The whole COVID-19 business continues to get stupider as more and more people have decided, "Fuck it, YOLO" and since they've never needed a helmet riding a motorcycle or a seat belt when they were driving, this "killer pandemic" is all a bunch of hoo-hah. Probably the entire world secretly plotting together solely to make Father Trump look like a pea-brained jackass.

 I live in the boonies, work from home and am self-employed. I rarely leave the house for any reason besides going to the gym, seeing doctors I have to see, or the odd bit of shopping for stuff I can't buy online. The only time I'm around large groups of people is when we have family gatherings four or five times a year, and I only stay as long as I can handle it after getting a plate.

 So, knock yourself out. Maybe it'll be a big bunch of nothing. Maybe it'll thin the herd. Maybe it will be what finally shows the irreparable cracks and flaws in the American capitalistic system. I don't have to worry about it, you're not interested in what I have to say, so I'm not bothering. I will keep writing about it, sure. Partly because that's how I earn my salt and partly because I enjoy writing the News as much as I enjoy this gibberish.

 But as I get older I find myself less inclined to be a part of society and this is just another excuse/example of why I shouldn't bother. I don't want to insinuate that I suggest this as a proper lifestyle for anybody else. But with nothing invested in the future and just waiting around to die, I don't see any reason to fight to save people who don't want to be saved. Same thing with getting leftists to understand that they don't have to vote for Joe Biden, but they really ought to vote against Donald Trump. People all across the political spectrum have a fantastic, naive perception of what politics is, how it's designed to work and just what all can be done. Stop waiting on people to come save you, neighbors.

 One of today's Twitter ruffles is a column tradcath fenderhead Elizabeth Bruening - the interesting one of the couple; that husband of hers is as dull as dry white toast - wrote a column saying there's no such thing as a "Religious left". She was rightfully dragged, which isn't anything special. Every time she puts pen to paper, she says something dumb enough to deserve a dragging. She claims to be socialist but once Republicans managed to get someone who isn't a moral sinkhole in the White House, I'm sure she'll say the Democratic Party/Democratic Socialist changed, not her.

 Anyhow, while she's catching hell from liberal Jews, Liberation Theory Latino Catholics, the Black Protestant churches where the Civil Rights battled gestated, Unitarians, Sikhs, and just all the groups apart from White Protestants or Catholics, which was all she was going to count anyway, I had a thought. Now, I am neither religious nor spiritual. I've been agnostic since my teen years and pretty much since my twenties, I've considered myself a hardcore philosophical materialism.

 There's no difference in the inanimate atoms that make up my body, the chair I'm sitting in, the air that I breathe or whatever makes up Böotes Void. Consciousness is a result of a quirk of biology that arises from how the brain is structured and, at best, nothing more than an illusion. Morality is all made up and has always been made up by human beings, and generally reflects more the zeitgeist of the times rather than anything axiomatic.

 I'm fine with all that. The universe is amazing enough that I can nevertheless manage to find wonder in it, fairly easily to, without having to have some unseen, unquantifiable force behind it. Math, initiative, imagination, and elbow grease can achieve some amazing things. In other words, when it comes to how religion or spirituality should inform one's politics, I really don't have a dog in this hunt. Momma goes to church because it provides her with a sense of community and comfort. Belief in redemption and heaven help my grandmother and father pass on easier. Some people find comfort and strength in their faith. All fine. Anyone who uses religion as a weapon would be a rotten bastard as an atheist anyway, and we've seen plenty of examples of that.

 But I can't help but wonder why non-religious leftist/liberals/what have you should worry too much about the religious leftists/liberals/what have you. My question is why isn't incumbent on the religious left to put a little effort into mending any bridges to the rest of the left-wing amorphous beast. The hard right co-opted much of American Christianity and it was an established goal since at least the '60s. Again, read The Family or watch the Netflix documentary. This is just anecdotal, but left-wing religious people rarely take any responsibility for it.

 It's like "reasonable gun owners" who don't seem to think they have a responsibility to maybe worry about the dingbats bringing bazookas to Subway instead of complaining that everyone thinks they're just as nutty as the average ammosexual. It's part of the reason I'm so unforgiving when it comes to racism in the South and neo-Confederate ding dongs. I see that as partly my responsibility. Anyhow, it's not my problem, either of it. I reserve the right to treat everyone who has a gun on their hip one mockery of their dick away from unloading on a school bus. Plus, I continue to reserve the right to not really give a damn about your faith unless it breaks my leg nor picks my pocket.

 Okay. Enough of that. I've been playing a lot of Phantom Doctrine. It's pretty decent, sort of like Sid Meier's Covert Action, an old favorite, in that it takes the Len Deighton take on spies and that world. Most intelligence work, like most private investigation work or, for that matter, investigative journalism, is pretty damn dull. It requires a lot of patience and a lot of digging through bland documents and seemingly unrelated bits of information to find that nugget of gold. Phantom Doctrine does a good job replicating that without making it too boring. Plus the turn-based strategy part of the gameplay is a lot of fun. It's made by the same people who made Hard West, and that is definitely a favorite. Looks like they've got an XCOM game based on 1930s bank heists coming, so we'll keep an eye on that.

 Take it easy.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Tambourine.

 Weird. This is a new layout for the posting page. We'll see if it's just cosmetic, but I will say I don't like the left-hand side all the way up against the edge of the screen.

 Goddamn internet's still acting up. Had a guy come out and look at it, and while I hate to be mean, he was as useless as tits on a rooster. The replacement modem he gave me didn't work. Furthermore, I learned the local telephone company that provides the DSL - which, at its fastest clocks in around 12 Mbps at best - has to reuse and repair equipment. They only cover Itawamba County and only provide DSL to my area because someone with ties to the owner wanted it. They're putting in fiber-optic cable, but they're going to stop a good five miles from here. On the upside, Tombigbee Power is coming from the other direction with fiber optic, so hopefully by the end of the year, this will be a thing of the past.

 Okay. So much for that. I'd usually wait until the weekend to shine on the News at the WordPress site, but I think yesterday's monster is particularly noteworthy. Because it wound up being so long before all was said and done, I broke it up into two chunks each concentrating on one topic. First is a rundown of the frankly risible welfare scam currently afflicting Mississippi and further weakening Gov. Tate Reeves' stroke in Jackson. While poor folks in the poorest state in the union getting shafted once again by conservative politicians and crooked rich people isn't something to laugh at, this involved Christian wrestling organizers and that just cracks me up. Don't know why. Plus, it goes over all the other dirty deeds by Republicans currently befouling my fair home state.

 The second isn't much funny at all. It's concerning the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, by two white men in a predominantly white neighborhood in Georgia. I think I did a particularly good bit of journalism, so please do read for the lowdown. In a nutshell, Arbery was running down a street in this neighborhood, and Gregory McMichael and his son Travis chased him down, tried to get him to stop and "talk" to them, got involved in a physical altercation with Arbery involving Travis McMichael and a shotgun when he didn't, three shots were fired and two hit Arbery in the chest to leave him dead in the street. The McMichaels claimed he fit the profile of someone they thought had been robbing different houses in the neighborhood and claimed to have seen him look into the window, alternately using "stand you ground" and "citizen's arrest" as justification. Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper, said her son was jogging and indeed had jogged through that neighborhood before.

 This all happened Feb. 23. The original prosecutor had to recuse herself because Gregory McMichael used to work as an investigator for her office. The second prosecutor had to recuse himself because his son worked in the first prosecutor's office. The second prosecutor was ready to drop the charges, citing Arbery's high school arrests for shoplifting and having a gun on school campus and claiming he had "mental issues," though without any proof. The case only really got due attention after a video of the shooting - filmed apparently by a friend of the McMichaels - surfaced on a Georgia radio station's website and became viral on social media earlier in the week. The case is now in the hands of a third prosecutor from a county 70 miles away and he's announced he intends to fully investigate the shooting and, if necessary, bring charges against the McMichaels.

 Now.

 As with every time this sort of thing happens, legal geniuses on Twitter and Facebook who claim they're either "waiting for all the facts" or that for some reason, shooting a man dead because you think he might be someone who might be a robber is okay because he reacted poorly to two white men with guns chasing him down is perfectly reasonable. Either way, they're infuriated if you call either the shooter or them racist, and bemoan how liberals have tarnished the word because blahdy-blah-blah. Seriously, you sort of wish they'd get a new tune.

 To refresh everyone, I am a white man who was raised and currently lives in the South. Mississippi, in fact. Furthermore, I've not only lived in Georgia but I've never lived anywhere other than the South, either in a rural area, a college town or New Orleans. What I'm saying is, I feel very confident on making a judgment as to whether anti-black racism played a part in this, as well as the overall white supremacist leanings of both Georgia and the United States in general. For the "all the facts" crowd, I think there are enough for me to render judgement without fear of being unfair.

 This is nothing but racism. Aside from the judges' bullshit - and the first judge made the news last year for aggressively prosecuting a black woman who voted in the wrong district because she was given wrong info - the shooting itself was racist. The McMichaels are racist. Now, they may not be cross-burning, fully paid up Klansman. They may have black friends. They still thought a black man running down their street was not only probably the guy who they think had been robbing the area, though even that said robber's black is an assumption, he was worth going after armed and intending to shoot, if necessary, to make a citizen's arrest. Even then, a citizen's arrest is only valid if one sees someone committing a crime or has personal knowledge of a crime committed. Records show 911 was called, but all the McMichaels did was say "There's a black guy running down the street" as justification. Indeed, even the claim that Arbery looked through the window is supposition on their part.

 Furthermore, if you're trying to find why the McMichaels were justified in chasing down and shooting a man for no discernible reason, you yourself are racist as hell, white robe in your closet or not. That's a lot of the problem with American racism. We've relegated it to toothless hillbillies and made it almost comical, when it's a real thing most People of Color deal with almost constantly. Particularly black people who, if you read your history with an honest eye, know we as a nation have royally fucked them other from the days of slavery until the days of James Byrd, and did so with vim and gusto. No, you don't have to drop n-bombs left and right and, no, you don't have to have a Rebel Flag hanging on your wall.

 But if you think it's okay that two random yo-yos shoot someone because they think he's a burglar because he's black and running, then yes, you are as racist the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe even worse, because he's at least honest about it. We pretend anti-black racism ended with the Civil War or, if we're generous, Martin Luther King's work or, if we're stupid, Barack Obama's election to president. But that just ain't so. Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, John Crawfod III, Philandro Castile, and now Aumaud Arbery and Sean Reed are all dead because we're a racist culture that doesn't care if black people get killed and white people get away with it.

 Doesn't matter if they have a gun permit. Doesn't matter if they were minding their own business. Doesn't matter if they needed medical care. Doesn't matter if they were in their own home. We as a culture are fine with white people shooting black people and suffering no consequences for it. And if you try to justify the shootings, either as a natural part of police work or people who're defending themselves, you're saying you're fine with it, too. You can try to deny it and claim all the black friends/relatives/sex partners you want, it's still so.

 Some say racism, particularly anti-black racism, is America's Original Sin. That may be so, but a large part of it is the different rules we hold for white people and everyone else. Last week saw armed and masked "protesters," many kitted out in ill-fitting combat gear, demanding to be allowed in the Michigan capitol to scream in cops' faces about how unfair it was they couldn't get a haircut. The same sort of people regularly parade around with their high-powered weaponry, going to shopping centers or even gun control rallies. These same people protested a recent vote on a gun law in Virginia and were so unhinged they ran a pro-gun Libertarian state senator into protective custody because they didn't understand the bill being voted on.

 Not a one of 'em gets shot or even asked to maybe not go to Starbucks loaded for bear. Indeed, we're told to be thankful that these "protests" don't turn into violent blood baths, the implication that maybe we shouldn't push them too far. But gun control is another issue, and really doesn't concern the police nor the law enforcement system. Both are not only riddled with racists, active and passive, but both were in large part designed in such a way to keep black people "in their place". One of the largest gun bans ever passed was by Gov. Ronald Reagan in the '60s once Black Panthers started walking around strapped and loaded. Morons claim Jim Crow wouldn't have happened if black people had access to guns, conveniently ignoring the fact the reason they didn't is because the racist white power structure set the law up that way. Black people who couldn't find work were charged with vagrancy, making finding a good job to keep them occupied that much harder.

 This isn't just a conservative issue, either. Mainstream liberals regularly ignore the black female voting block that often decides elections and as often as not, soi-disant leftists dismiss the concerns of the black community as "identity politics" not as important as universal health care or American foreign policy. We say "pimp" and "ghetto" and "ratchet" and "sleep" and don't care how a black person might feel hearing us throw those words around to describe nothing important.

 When it comes to racism, especially against black people, we are all guilty, we are all culpable and we are all responsible for fixing it. Stop asking black folks to "meet you halfway" or to "understand where you're coming from". They don't owe you the benefit of the doubt. We done pissed that away, neighbors. Stop saying you don't see color or that you judge people by their merits. You do and you don't, and neither does anyone any good whatsoever.

 All right. I believe I've made my point and, no, I don't care if you disagree. You'll have to either learn to live with being wrong or maybe reassess your behavior and ideas. As for now, I think I'll take a nap and then play some Phantom Doctrine. Cold-war era spy in an XCOM-like set up. It's pretty decent and Steam is offering it for a killer price, 80% off. Otherwise, wash your hands, cover your face and stop being shitty to service industry workers who ask you to not cough on them.

Saturday, Jan 4, 2020

 Man, I really don't want to do this. I am drained and tired. Yesterday was too much. I don't want to do anything but sit outside, and it's too cold for that. Let's ride with the King nevertheless.

Monday, December 9, 2019

 Three days, hand-running, the Dark Cloud has settled on me. It's a weird feeling, I recognize that the wheel has rolled around to emphasize the blues. However, I'm not the complete mess I usually when this comes around. Progress, I guess.

Saturday, December 7, 2018

 It's been a good day. Had some free time, so I communed with the front yard to come back inside and to write something. About two hours later, I communed with the front yard again to come back inside and write something else. It's been lots of fun. I will put a jump with links to both, however you choose. In any event, this is going to be extremely short and sweet.

 Actually, I think that's it. This is an example of what I'm going to do when I change the new way of doing things. Not sure what to call it yet. Something catchy or something straightforward? For now, let's take a nod from Umberto Eco and call it The Project. Hopefully I won't attract anyone who thinks I should sacrificed or hounded to death or whatever gets done to the protagonists of Foucault's Pendulum.

 Anyhow, I'm crashing and it's early yet. I wonder if I will play something. I was getting back into Neverwinter Nights 2, but I've come upon a part where I keep getting stomped in the dirt. I must be doing something wrong. Maybe I'll get into one of those games I bought on the last Steam sale, Rebel Cops or American Fugitive. I returned Phantom Doctrine since it's in next month's Humble Bundle. I'd bought it on sale, but ten bucks is ten bucks. I've been getting a Pathfinder jones, and I see a big plot point dead ahead. Might as well sack up and see what happens.

 I've been reading Punktown. It's good but a slower lead that I prefer. The plot needs to be thick but it's slowing the story down. A future detective noir space colonies thing with maybe a hint of Lovecraft coming. Finding terrifying things that don't belong because of poking around the universe in a space ship that probably couldn't exist anyway is a concept not played to as much in my liking in modern literature. Still and all, a fun book, but maybe too much a chaw right now.

 I guess I'll take a nap. Click below if you really need to. Otherwise, there ya go.