Wednesday, February 26, 2020

 Gonna knock out a quick one today because last's nights piece wore me slap out. Putting that much effort and research into a piece raises my blood pressure and gives a mess of a headache. I thought it was just hardcore political writing that was whipping me like a mean dog, but no, it's just that much work wears me down, whether it's intensely political or not. Don't know quite how to take that.

 And since someone finally poked the Blind Idiot God this morning, Trump gave a speech this evening after spending the morning blaming the Democrats and the media for stirring everyone else in order to "get him" somehow. Undoubtedly, he got this from Medal Of Freedom winner Rush Limbaugh, who spent all day yesterday railing on this and all day today claiming that Trump proved him right. You'd think instead of staying a professional butthole he'd be trying to stay healthy himself - most of the deaths from CORVID-19 have occurred in people with weakened immune systems and he has lung cancer, mind - and spend his more time with his loved ones while he can, but there you go.

 Of course, this has trickled down to the lesser wingnut goons, blaming the Democrats while simultaneously moaning that everyone was blaming Lord Trump. Congress got in on the fun, too, with Marco Rubio, The Man With The Liquid Spine And Cushioned Kneecaps, bemoaning China's influence on our medical supply, despite that being the result of conservative policies and Rubio's dumb as a stump. Health And Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, in answering questions, couldn't guarantee that when discovered, affordable vaccine would be available because free market and fuck you. Hey, if nothing else, the masks are being ripped off in the Trump era.

 Perhaps the single dumbest thing being taken as gospel by the drooling millions in the Trump cult is that the Center For Disease Control can't be trusted because the doctor in charge of figuring this all out is related to someone who made the fanbase mad. No, really. Dr. Nancy Messonnier is the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases is very well respected in her field, award winning with an impressive bio.

 She's also Rod Rosenstein's sister. Remember him? He was the Deputy Attorney General who was a faith assistant lackey of Trump's consigliere Bill "The Pope" Barr until Fox News decided he was responsible for the Mueller Report and the mean ol' Democrats not taking Barr's Cliff Notes version as enough. So, of course, all this is "Deep State" trying to bring down the Chosen One because the world actually works like a third-rate political thriller. Apparently this developed from one of those Q weirdos fever-dream threads and metastasized by Limbaugh and Fox's pet racist pee-paw Lou Dobbs, among others. If Trump isn't tweeting this out by Friday, I for one will be shocked.

 In any event, budget hearings to tackle CORVID-19 are being planned by Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, and Trump's mulling appointing a "coronavirus czar". I seem to remember czars being a bad thing when Obama was in office, but what the hell, nothing matters anymore. In the meantime, he's put Vice-President Mike "Remember Me? Anyone?" Pence "in charge" of the CORVID-19 response, though you're guess is as good as mine what that means or what that weird bastard will do with that mandate.

 So, there's that there, then. If you're less than confident and that the dippy bastard in the White House and his coterie of criminal, thugs and outright morons will handle this potentially hellacious event with anything coming close to competency, intelligence or compassion, take heart the rest of the world is on the case. Sometime this morning, more new cases of CORVID-19 were reported outside China than there were in country. Something like 10 cases in China but 2,790 in the rest of the world. Interestingly, the vast majority of cases were reported in South Korea with 1,261.

 That fills me with a little more confidence, I don't know about you. South Korea doesn't screw around when it comes to technological advancement. If nothing else, the future of the human race isn't as shaky as all that. Some comfort, I suppose.

EDIT: After I finished this and while I was eating supper, the CDC confirmed the first case of CORVID-19 in the United States that has a "community spread" unknown origin. That is, the first case where the infected hadn't traveled to China recently. Buckle up, it's going to get bumpier.

 Lastly, there was another mass shooting today, this time in Milwaukee. Six people just trying to make a living were killed at the Molson Coors plant. So far, not much is known about who or why except the gunman died of a self-inflicted head shot. This was the 51st mass shooting this year.

 I have nothing at all flip or clever to say about that.

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

 Well, what we all knew would happen happened. I mean, no one's really all that shocked, right? Going into it, any other outcome would've been an uphill climb even without the stumbling blocks that kept getting tossed in the path.

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.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

 Had a dream where I was doing something like this, except I was writing it out by hand and it was always about musicians. I don't know why either, I didn't explain it to myself in the dream. In particular I was writing about Neil Young and my handwriting - which anyone who knows me will tell you is perfectly wretched at best - was getting worse the more I wrote. Plus, I was trying to finish up so I could go back to Brazil for some reason. Dreams are weird, man. Anyhow.

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

 Hey, it's New Year's Day. We've made another arbitrarily measured trip around the Sun, marking time on a calendar we really didn't start paying attention until 1582 or so, and that was only because Easter was screwing with folks. There is no substantial difference between today and yesterday or today and tomorrow on any scale much less cosmic, but what the hell. You have to laugh sometimes.

 I've spent the last part of the afternoon trying to explain modern television streaming to my mother even though, and I ain't going to lie about, I haven't given a shit about it apart from having a Netflix and Amazon Prime account. See, we live way, way out in the boonies and, thus, don't get cable. When I was a teenager, we got a satellite dish but nobody uses that anymore. After I left home, my parents had various iterations of Direct TV or Dish TV or whatever the hell else.

 After my father died and I moved back home, Momma decided she was tired of paying $250 a month (or year, hell, I can't remember) for Major League Baseball, football (college and pro), and the occasional college basketball game. So we "cut the chord" as the kids call it, using the digital antenna for what we could pick up locally - network affiliates, what they offer, and a helluva lot of religious and shopping programming - while using my elderly Apple TV to streak the aforementioned video services and, this past summer, access to the MLB app on the doo-dad.

 You can catch most football on network television, and Momma isn't as squirrelly about football as she is about baseball. But she got it in her head to get a subscription to ESPN to watch via the Apple TV and, indeed, went out and bought an up-to-date little box. The MLB people told her the generation we had already would be out of date come the 2020 season. Turns out, even though we paid a year's subscription to ESPN, we also have to have a television provider. We do not have one, but we'll probably go with Sling TV or YouTube TV if that's what we have to do.

 As it is, we're not worrying about it until tomorrow. Recall, I don't give a good goddamn one way or another. I don't watch television on a regular basis. I barely watch movies because I really don't have the concentration to watch movies, which I haven't given a shit about in years. As often as not, I'll binge something I've already binged if I watch any TV, which is rare because, once again, I don't give a shit about it. If I watch anything on a regular basis, it's documentaries playing in the background, either from the streaming services mentioned above, whenever I get tired of listening to music or whatever game I'm playing or just plain silence. Silence is nice, I've found.

 Now, my mother is an intelligent woman and I like to think I'm a fairly sharp customer. Nevertheless, she's 70 and never has had a head for gizmos. For that matter, I'll be 45 in a few months and I think I'm learning why people get so befuddled over new technology. It's because they stop paying attention. Now, I've kept up with all the variations on streaming music and radio, and I've got that down to the ground. But not streaming television services, and I feel like I'm trying to set the clock on a VCR. Of course, no one under 25 has any idea what I'm talking about anyway, so there's that there then.

 Which leads me into another stroke. A lot of the fanaticism around the Trump Presidency comes partly from the hard-right turn a lot of online communities. Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and GamerGate has been blamed for the full turn to Trump worship, but it was fairly widespread and leaning in that direction anyway, even before Obama's election. Back during the Bush Junior administration when I was a more patient man, I spent a good deal of time keeping up with the "conspiracy theorist" world. These were the days when 9/11 Truthers roamed the lands but anyone who spent any amount of time online, much less the obsessive screwhead that make up the average conspiracy theorist, was the exception and not the rule. Before Facebook, in other words, when people found other, more personal ways to make each other miserable.

 I used to frequent a website called Above Top Secret. I'm not going to link to it, because they've gone full bull-goose loony over there and I don't want to draw that kind of stink into my life. Anyhow, while I was then, as now, a pretty hardcore skeptic about most every thing, I also knew the world was different from what we're being told, that governments lie full stop, and that the Powers That Be have a vested interest in a docile, ignorant population kept fat, saucy and quiet. The site flirted with 4chan, but I had already dismissed that bunch as a pack of scurvy panty-sniffing pigfuckers who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near grade schools for all sorts of reasons.

 But I kept a toe in with anti-government conspiracies, religious fruitcakery (the whole business about The Family is way older than you think, even if you do know about), and just general tinfoil hat territory. Art Bell and all that nonsense. Part of it was keeping an ear to the ground for the yay-hoos, always a useful exercise, and part of it was just because it was fun. There's a certain amount of arrogance in being Hip while still sneering at the tinfoil hat crowd that makes one's willy swell with pride.

 I don't remember when it was I gave up on paying attention to crackpots in love with the smell of their own farts in general and ATS in particular. For Art Bell, it was when he had some clown on that said people crossing the Texas border - if you thought the fear and loathing for Latino immigrants crossing the border to survive was all Trump's baby, you are wrong as wrong could be - who claimed Mexican boarder crossers were purposefully bringing communicable diseases like anthrax and smallpox with them to infect White America for some nefarious reason that involved George Soros and/or "international bankers," wink wink nudge nudge.

 For ATS, it was when someone asked if the Big Bang really happened, just where is the hole. No, seriously, that's how badly the original poster fully misunderstood anything and everything we know about what's colloquially "the Big Bang theory". Even worse, the discussion went on for six or seven pages and not once - not once - did anyone write, "Hey, you assholes, you've got that so mixed up, you're not even dealing with decent science fiction". They were more than willing to fight it out on that hill even if it took all summer, as well, you know no one can ever be wrong on the internet.

 And those people voted for Donald Trump. Plus, he has a network television show that said he was a slick billionaire financial wheeler-dealer, and it wouldn't be allowed on TV if it wasn't true. Add to that a massive public dislike of Hillary Clinton, deserved or not, and whatever shenanigans Putin's boys pulled, plus a healthy dose of racism and xenophobia like mom used to make, and that dumb son of a bitch becomes President of the United States of America.

 Speaking of rich assholes who have no business being president and dumb, evil-minded shit Trump pulled, someone asked Mike Bloomberg about his support of the prosecution of the Central Park 5, claiming (basically) all the racism mixed in there was okay, really, because a lot of people thought they were guilty. And by "a lot of people," we mean him, the NYPD, Donald Trump (who took out an ad calling for the five's execution) and racist buttholes everywhere despite all the exculpatory evidence, including the actual victim of the attack saying no.

 Soledad O'Brien, a journalist I respect immensely, said on Twitter that this was the surest way to loose the African American vote. However, that presumes Bloomberg is running for president for any reason beyond keeping either Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders from getting the nomination. The rest are either centrist enough to leave well enough alone or billionaires with enormous (and undeserved) egos themselves running their own vanity campaigns. Tom Steyer buys his own bullshit, but do you think Andrew Yang is going to tax the stinking rich using any sort of sense of public good? Hell, no, he ain't.

 Okay, supper's done. Maybe more later, maybe not. Happy New Year anyway.

UPDATE: Oh, I ate too much. Carry on.

Saturday, December 28, 2019

 I've been in a bit of a quarrelsome mood the last couple days. It's a good thing no one's paid me any attention, because a couple of days of that is all I can stand. I just don't have the energy or will the be that professionally salty anymore. That's a young man's game.

Thursday, December 26, 2019

 Man, I don't get it. Day before yesterday, the Gibberish at the Blogger site (WordPress stuck with straight News) got beaucoup hits. Yesterday, the flat-out Gibberish at WordPress topped my previous record for "Likes". It was just seven all told, but still. I'm sure there's a lesson in all that, but I'll be dipped if I know what it is.

 By the by, Kwanzaa starts today, so "Habari gani?" and I do hope I'm doing that right.

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.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

 I've been pretty out of the loop today. Slept far too late then spent the remainder of the day playing video games, napping and reading, purposefully ignoring the outside world. I only logged into Twitter about an hour ago.

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

UPDATE: At 7:30 p.m. Hillbilly Standard Time, the House voted to impeach Trump on two articles, abuse of power and obstruction of justice, and fairly handily at that, sending it on the Senate for trial. Trump's rally tonight in Michigan is going to be off the goddamn chain, son.

 Well, it's going down. The United States House Of Representatives are holding the vote to decided whether or not President of the United States of America Donald Trump should be charged for two charges of impeachment for trying to entice a foreign company to dig up dirt on a political rival and for obstruction of Congress. As of right now, it's looking like the vote is going against Trump and since everyone has to give a speech, the vote takes all goddamn day.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

 Okay, we're riding with the King. Let's knock this out, because I ain't going to lie to you. I had a breakthrough in Pathfinder: Kingmaker and have been able to get myself past the next chapter. I'd rather be doing that.

Thursday, December 12, 2019

 I've been pretty much out of pocket today, so we'll keep this short and sweet. Of course, every time I say that I wind up rambling on for a couple thousand words. I wrote a thing on LaBelle over at the Tumblr site, and it was a lot of fun if you're more interested in that. In any event, let's quit fooling around.

Friday, December 6, 2019

It's a Mose Allison day again. Cool and rainy and grey. With most of the trees without their leaves, it gives the world a stark and weary look. Tired and blue. Like I said, perfect Mose Allison weather.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

 Well, that is that. We've heard all the testimony concerning the impeachment of the President of the United States of America, the third time it's happened in the nation's history and only the fourth time proceedings have gotten this far. Now it's all over but the crying.

Friday, November 8, 2019

 Well, I've been siting here staring at a screen for the better part of an hour trying to come up with a clever opening. There comes a time when you just have to admit it ain't happening and move on with your existence. For what it's worth, that little bit of wisdom works in oh, so many scenarios.