Maybe she just has to sing for the sake of the song.

 I swear, I'm not buying another damn thing from eBay. I finally got the Paul Butterfield book I ordered over a month ago, but at least two harmonicas seem to be lost to the aether. It's irritating because, frankly, you can get better prices on eBay for a lot of stuff but the damn mail is no longer trustworthy.

 There are a lot of pieces on the internet about how the U.S. Postal Service is crumbling, mostly written by conservatives ignoring the ongoing effort by conservatives in Washington to make it do just that. It's more than the 2006 pension law passed by Congress, it's that Congress has crippled its ability to be self-sustaining on a number of levels. Why I don't know, but it really has nothing to do with Amazon, and current Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, by his own admission, is trying to make it worse.

 I honestly don't know if there's a solution or a way to save it, really. It has gotten exponentially worse in recent years, partly due to Trump's spat with Jeff Bezos. Ironically, Amazon's deal with the post office means stuff ordered from them is about the only thing to not get lost or take forever to get to you. Cynical Matt says the post office will be a thing of the past within, say, fifty years. FedEx and UPS - both of which have their own problems apart from price - will probably be your only options unless it's owned by Amazon. Thomas Pynchon had no idea how close he was.

 Anyhow, the News. I've been bad lazy this week, and that reflects in the News. For the most part, I rarely posted anything before 8 p.m. No real excuse, apart from I've been staying up too late playing video games and sleeping through the evening. I still put out some good stuff, though, or at least I think so. Monday and Wednesday were focused on Mississippi, with local elections across the state highlighting the former and the massive amount of rain we got all week for the latter.

 We did some more weather Friday but most of it was focused on the revelation the Trump Administration's Department of Justice was acquiring phone metadata on Democrats looking into Russia's possible intervention in the 2016 election. Of particular note were Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both of whom are Public Enemies for conservatives in general. Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions are implicated in it, though they're denying everything, and Apple pretty much rolled over when the DOJ asked for the data, including stuff on the Congress critters' families.

 For what it's worth, if Trump ever sees any sort of legal repercussions to anything he's done, I figure it'll come from the Attorney Generals of New York State and City. Merrick Garland is blocking the investigation into some of his rape allegations and the whole Russia-Ukraine business got him impeached, but I doubt much will come out of it. People seem to forget the federal government's more interested in covering its own ass than anything else.

 But that all needs to marinate so it's for a later date. GOG.com is having its summer sale, so I decided to pick up a couple of indie games as well as some history. Being a fan of fantasy RPGs since the Ultima days, I've had my eye on Spellforce so I decided to give it a shot. Interesting game, sort of a mix between a classic RPG and community builder. I may go ahead and pick up the sequels since their on sale.

 The other two are the indies. I'd played and enjoyed Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulator when it was part of EA's subscription service. However, I'm letting that go and, in any event, it was fairly quickly pulled. It's an after-the-end apocalypse survival simulator where you have to keep a community of survivors alive and thriving. Sort of like Frostpunk, which is highly recommended. The twist is, however, is the apocalypse was caused by or just involves demons. I don't know if it's the Biblical Apocalypse, which I've always considered a great source for fiction. And no, the Left Behind books don't count, mainly because they're crap. More like, say the Dominionist Christian apocalypse happens as they say and the main character is a Buddhist or a Janist or just some poor bastard.

 The other game I bought was Stellar Tactics. It's sort of a Shadowrun-type game based in a galaxy-spanning human society. I don't think there are aliens, but there are augmented humans and mutants. There's also a 2D space simulator that reminds me of Rebel Galaxy in play if not designed. I've only got through the prologue/tutorial, but I'm digging it so far. It's a better-looking Galaxy Squad.

 However, it is still in Early Release and has been so since 2016. It's regularly updated - the last one in March - but I've had bad luck with Early Release games. I'm still put out that Objects In Space was abandoned just after I jumped on board. Let's cross our fingers.

 Finally, I've been watching some late '90s/early Aughts remakes of '50s horror movies, specifically 13 Ghosts and The House On Haunted Hill. They're not as wretched as their reputations would have one believe, but they are a bit of fun. Especially thanks to the gonzo nutball portrayals by Matthew Lillard and Chris Kattan in the two films, respectively. They're good enough to have on in the background while playing video games. I'll probably watch The Haunting Of Hill House remake tonight. That might be a bit trickier, as I love the Shirley Jackson book.

Anyhow. Have a nice weekend.

I'm going to the city. Gonna breathe that city air.

  I mentioned the other day that I finished that Hank Williams biography and it thoroughly bummed me out. For whatever reason, it's put me in a melancholy mood as we move through this last weekend of January 2021. Being depressed these days is a drag, partly because I know it's just my own brain wiring messing with me but mostly because I can't get stoned. Anyhow, here's this week's News.

 It was a pretty good week, more or less. Plenty to write about and something to explain, which is always fun. Monday was another slice of Today in the Biden Administration, but Wednesday and Friday were the fun ones. I tried to explain the whole GameStop-short stock business even though, as I note, I've never been able to wrap my head around how it actually works. Sort of like matrices in algebra or baking, it just plumb evades me.

 As far as that goes, it is entertaining as hell to see regular stock gambler types lose their shit because the hoi polloi is forgetting its place. Frankly, they should be thankful that we don't live in a just universe which would mean they'd be strung up by their own intestines, kept alive by medical science, and pelted repeatedly with pecans. That being said, people whose opinion on these matters I trust are saying the joke's starting to a bit long in the tooth and it's possible it might start causing some real danger.

 Of course, that just casts into sharp relief how flat dumb our economic infrastructure is. But that's beyond me and I won't pretend that it isn't. It'll be interesting to see where all this goes from here but I'm not going to act like I'm qualified to give a proper prediction nor give thoughts on what should be done.

 The other bit of crazy that's taken up this week's news is newly elected Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene showing the entire world that, yes, she is loony as a coot and probably shouldn't be allowed around sharp scissors, much less high-powered weaponry or the laws of the nation. She's a 9/11 truther, and I'm amazed there is still a healthy group of those dickholes. She's also a believer that the Parkland and Sandy Hook were "false flags," and that just shows a rotten, black soul. The one that got me, though, was the suggestion that the wildfires regularly bedeviling the West are caused by space lasers operated by International Jewry so as to clear land for high-speed train projects.

 That's just dangerous goofy. That Boebet woman's a thick-skulled crook who'll probably get busted for using campaign money to keep her restaurant afloat. That weird Nazi fanboy from North Carolina is going to lie himself right off the planet. But Greene's a danger to her fellow Representatives. I don't trust gun enthusiasts I don't know well enough to know that they know what they're doing. This woman is a prime example of gun nuts you don't trust. I'm not kidding. If she gets through her 15 minutes without shooting one of her colleagues, I'll be shocked.

  Anyhow, I'm tired and all I got to talk about still is that I've been playing The Shadowrun Trilogy with some of the player-mad scenarios modded in. One of these days I'm going to write about what it's like coming back into gaming before the days of open and encouraged modding, but today's not the day.

We had to be drunk when we said we'd stop drinkin'.

 I'm near the end of that Hank Williams biography by Colin Escott. He's married to Billie Jean Jones, so about two months are left in his life. Pretty sure he's cut every song he's ever going to record and "Jambalaya" is his bullet right now. Legend goes "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" was Number One when he died, but that's not so.

 Swear before God, this may be the most depressing thing I've read in I don't know how long. I know a lot about Hank Williams. Indeed, I wrote a thesis on his impact on Southern culture and pop music way back when. Nevertheless, this book has plumbed some depths even I didn't know existed. That poor bastard was a mess by the time he left, and much of it had little to do with his alcoholism. His back problems, spina bifida occulta, can lead to incontinence, so Ol' Hank went out pissing and shitting himself. I knew that, but I thought it was due to being a drunk. Goddamn.

 Don't get it twisted, he was a full-on drunk and had been since around 14 or so. My father and grandfather both were alcoholics, so what I'm reading is awfully familiar. He'd do just fine for weeks at a time but inevitably fell off the wagon. And when he drank, he drank himself into a coma, not just occasionally, but every time. He wasn't a fun drunk, either, and would get mean as a rattlesnake when he got plastered. Fortunately, he couldn't handle his liquor so it didn't take long.

 His story is a pretty damn sad one. As a working musician, he only had maybe a half-dozen years and only just over four of those were recorded. He was a pain in the dick to work for and with, but if promoters or A&R men or whoever could take advantage of him, they did. Miss Audrey was a harridan and couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but goddamn, she put up with a lot of shit. More shit than she deserved, that's for damn sure.

 I didn't know he flirted with movies, either, but he did. He was signed to a contract with MGM but ducked the film, which was... well, I don't know. One of his undeniable strengths was his ability to hold an audience in the palm of his hand - when he was sober, anyway - so maybe it would've worked. Probably not, though.

 It's often wondered how things would've been had Ol' Hank not been such a nightmarish drunk, but I don't know if you can separate that from him and he'd still be Hank Williams. His appeal was partly based on the pure misery and heartsick in his voice. Buddha's First Noble Truth in human form. Hank Jr. was, as my doctor said of me, disgustingly healthy and is a big bear of a man. Apparently, he was a 10-pound baby, so he was big from the start. Hank III is a healthy lad, too, though his vocal semblance to his grandfather is superficial and mostly a put-on. He sounds more like Wayne Cochran, in any event.

 Anyhow. I don't know where to go from here except I'll be glad when I finish that damn book. I love me some Hank Williams and find his story fascinating, but it is depressing as hell. Video game-wise, I've been fooling with the Shadowrun computer games along with the Ultima series. For those who don't know, it's from a tabletop RPG where the sitting is a cyberpunk world after - and partly caused by - magic reentering the world, along with elves and dwarves and trolls and all that. A fun RPG in a rich world with turn-based combat and an isometric top-down view. Check it out.

 That's a good place to twist it off, I think. As always, if I come up with something interesting, I'll come back. And, as always, it probably won't happen.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

  I was telling both the Therapist and the Psych Doc that the most difficult part of all this was coming up with the opening paragraph. It's not exactly a lede for a newspaper story or an opening paragraph for an essay, because whatever this is, it isn't either of those. Anyway.