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.

I've got nothing here.

  We're on the 18th day of the 2020 Presidential Election and I am tired. Tired of that nonsense, tired of all the pain in the world, tired of the world in general, just basically flat-out tired. I had one of those days where after letting Otis out for his morning ablutions and then both of us called it a day. We really didn't stir until about 3 p.m. and to be quite honest, I may go right back to bed once I hit word count. First, though, the News.

 I'm going to start with Friday. One of the reasons I'm disinclined to deal with the world is I heard yesterday that one of my oldest friends, someone I've known for almost as long as I've been alive, passed away earlier this week due to congestive heart failure. I wrote what I thought and felt about it there and I'm really not inclined to rehash any of it. All I will say, friends and neighbors, tell the people who are important to you they are every chance they get.

 The rest of the week was fairly normal, concentrating on the never-ending stomping of Trump's attempts to use the courts to overturn the election. Over and over again, whether it's Monday's revelation of Lindsay Graham's attempt to influence the Georgia election or Wednesday's revelation that the people trying to get ground in Michigan got it confused with Minnesota, it's been fairly laughable.

 It keeps going, too. The attempt to stir up stuff in Pennsylvania has been dismissed with prejudice, which means in legal turns don't bring this shit up anymore. He's still trying shit in Michigan but he dodged the G-20 teleconference on COVID-19 vaccine preparation to golf and bitch about getting beat. And while this is going on, El Paso has the National Guard coming in to help because their morgues are too full of people who died from the virus.

 But I'm not in the mood to talk about that no more than I'm in the mood to talk about the election. My friend's passing depresses me, sure, but it also reminds me that I haven't made a single attempt to reach out to anyone I knew before I left home for college over 25 years ago. I still don't want to, for whatever that's worth, but I sometimes wonder if I should. I don't really know if I have anything to say to them since our lives have been so different. Most of them got married (a couple of times) and had kids, plus the normal dopey shit adults deal with. I've spent the last 25 years either being suicidally depressed or having a good time blowing my mind however possible.

 It's as likely as not I'm just feeling guilty and sad for my friend's family. He's got a Momma and a brother. They're good people, too. I don't know if he ever married. Anyhow.

 I don't have really anything else, I guess. I dipped back into Pillars of Eternity 2, spending some time on the DLC's. I'm almost to the end of the game. There are three DLC's and three choices to follow at the end, so I think that's what I'll do to finish it.

 And that's word count, buddy. Let's hope we get some good news, in re the election. We could all use a break.

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.

Saturday, January 25, 2020

 You know, it almost never fails but I get more hits when I eschew the News and concentrate on the Gibberish. I mean, it's not giant or even notable numbers, but it's the only time I hit double digits. I wonder what it says.

Thursday, January 23, 2020

 Momma bought her a Jamey Johnson CD, The Dollar, from Amazon, so she gets the MP3's along with the physical CD. I have Amazon Prime Music Unlimited so she's playing her new album as well as discovering the 300-plus Gigs worth of music I have on there. That should keep her occupied for a few days.

 She's also in a really good mood with lots of energy. See, Momma's 70, has had torn ACL in both knees, had one kneecap replaced and is overweight. In the last couple of days she's been going to the gym at ICC, and after a long, long time of trying to find one that's right for her - particularly here in Northeast Mississippi - she's hit pay dirt with this one. She says she's got so much energy she's worried what's going to happen, because that's how her mind works.

 I tell her enjoy it because I feel like someone sucked the life right out of me. I don't know if it's the front that's moved - it's rained like pouring piss out of a boot all day - or because I've been out of lithium since Monday. It's been refilled, so hopefully that'll whack me out of this mood. Granted, this is just another fluctuation in the sour frame of mind I've been in since the first of the year. Might just be the Brand New Year Blues, I don't know.

 Part of it is frustration with this. I've been pounding away at this gibberish for six months plus, now, and it's still pretty much the same gibberish it was when I started. I am still enjoying myself but one thing that's bugged me for years is a lack of purpose, a lack of direction for my existence, and frankly, I'm not finding one here. Fun is fun, sure, but maybe I've spent too much time having fun. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly fine with leaving no footprint on the sands of time, and a hard look around makes me glad I'm not leaving anything behind when I leave.

 Ah, well. Dark thoughts and foul moods. My cynicism is getting the best of me and I'm finding myself with less patience with the rest of the world. Twitter gives too many people with too little to say too much of a platform, and our only recourse is to be that much more vapid and unoriginal. It's all performative and glamour without actual substance, it feels like. Which is, of course, arrogant as hell of me. Where do I get off passing judgement on everyone else's plasticity when I've got nothing going on inside.

 Anyhow. The third day of Impeachment is in swing, and it seems the GOP strategy is to not pay any attention through the actual trial while expressing outrage that anyone would dare question that Prince of Men, Donald Trump. The Democrats are providing a good case and there's still something like six Republican Senators on the bubble, but when the rubber hits the road, they're doing what they're told.

 Again, the GOP spent the past 30 years getting the base in the mood to attach themselves to a charismatic authoritarian who'd threaten "enemies", be they foreign countries or the U.S. press or even just people who didn't vote for him. What they didn't expect, though, is Trump's ascendancy, someone who'd take that spot with none of the subtlety or skill that American politics requires. Reagan, Nixon, either Bushes would've gotten away with something similar if all they cared about was pleasing The Base. That's all Trump cares about, though, because The Base feeds his ego and they would be perfectly happy if the last thing all of his "enemies" saw the barrel of a gun.

 I don't know. I'm just in a mood. Here's another link to the Willie Nash petition and another example of how half-ass Mississippi runs its prisons. Again, though, the average Mississippian is fine with this, because the cruelty is the point. We're a very Puritan/Hobbsian nation and especially state sometimes. I am about a third of the way through Pillars of Eternity II and spent most of my waking moments today reading Jorge Luis Borges short stories while listening to Johann Sebastian Bach while it rained all day.

 Let's be honest, if nothing else, that's not a bad way to spend the day.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

 I've been staring at an empty screen long enough to just say "the hell with it" and start putting down whatever comes out. This is becoming a habit, this sort of lead-in paragraph, whenever I don't have anything specific to write about. However, since no one is paying me, I don't see a problem.

Sunday, January 12, 2020

 The rain's moved on and today was clear and sunny. A rather damp and sodden "clear and sunny," but there you go. It's turned off cool, as well, resetting the winter weather wheel of fate. We're supposed to get more rain next weekend, maybe even some snow. Anyhow.

Sunday, January 5, 2019

 Dag-nabbit, the Saints lost. In overtime, too, just because that's how they do. Ah, well. It was a good season and it's nice to know there's a good kid on deck when Drew Brees decides to retire. Speaking of quarterback who probably should look at retiring, it's worth still paying attention to the playoffs since Tom Brady and the Patriots are out. It might even be interesting.

Sunday, December 22, 2019

 Today's the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the official beginning of winter, it's been pouring down rain all day, and for the fourth day hand running I don't really have anything in particular to write about. Because it's raining, Otis can't go outside and has already spent all day napping, so he's pouting, too.