I don't know what to tell you.

  The last day of July. Two of my cousins and a passel of their collected young'uns came by today to visit. They were mightily impressed with Momma's basement set-up and it's always fun to see them. I don't see them as much as I should and they're all so grown up. Even the ones that are still teenagers are huge. I don't know what makes me feel older, seeing these kids get old enough to go off to college or knowing that my baby cousin is pushing 40.

  Let's get the News in. Spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C., this week, but it does scan. Between Trump's ongoing legal problems, the Great American Temper Tantrum hearings, and the Infrastructure Bill, it's been a pretty heavy weekend on the Potomac. I've been avoiding too much COVID-19 news because I figure that's going to dominate the Fall. I hope I'm wrong on that one.

 I'm going to get this out of my system. I don't care if you don't get the vaccine. I think you should and you're a moron if you don't, but I care about as much as I care about you demanding to exercise your right to lie down on a busy highway. I don't care about you, but it's a shame about the people you're going to hurt out of your arrogance. And for that matter, I don't give a damn about your kids you're subjecting to possible infection. If you cared more about them than yourself, it wouldn't be an issue.

 My man Ashton Pittman wrote a sharp piece on some of the shenanigans going on at Ole Miss that definitely should be read. I wrote about Arbee Stidham and the joy of finding old music in your preferred genre you didn't know existed over at the Tumblr site. I wouldn't call it a must-read, but it was fun to write, and it's a pretty good tune.

 For those interested, Steam is hosting a free weekend for Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers game. It's a big-ass download and will put your computer through the paces, so be forewarned. I played some of it and... it's okay. It's very pretty and plays well, you're definitely getting a good MCU Avengers vibe. It does deviate some, best I can tell, from cannon but people who get bent out of shape about different platforms telling different stories especially when it comes to comic books are gigantic losers. Look, y'all, multiple universes are built into it.

 I'm not sure how much more time I'll put into it and I doubt I'll worry about purchasing it anytime soon. It's got a good discount that lasts until August 11, if that does anything for you. It's definitely a Triple-A game with all the bloat that entails. It's been somewhat contemptuously compared to Destiny, which I don't think I ever played. They may work for some, but it's all too much for me. Skyrim, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Assassin's Creed IV are about too much for me. I may go back and mess with the Hawkeye bit some, though.

 Something else I want to get off my chest. My four favorite Marvel heroes have all been represented by the MCU. I should say five, but I've never seen the Iron Fist show. Anyhow, I'm shooting 50%. I like how they've handled Spider-Man and Ant-Man (both Scott Lang and Hank Pym, and that whole mess). Unfortunately, they're using the Ultimate versions of Hawkeye and Falcon rather than the original 616 versions.

 I must confess, I don't like super-spy Hawkeye and special forces Falcon. I like Hawkeye who's just a circus kid who worked his ass off to run with mythological beings and a Falcon who's more interested in helping his Harlem neighborhood - impressing the shit out of the Sentinel of Liberty along the way - rather than a soldier who had access to neat toys. I mean, I understand that it actually makes more sense, but I'm old school, I guess. Guys who give a shit top soldiers any day of the week.

 Is there anything else? I can't think of anything. My damn knee is killing me and I don't think I can put off going to the doctor about it much longer. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Same old blues

  I don't want to write about anything. I don't know what's wrong or why, but I've got a bad case of the blues. It's so bad, apparently, that I can't really hide it. Momma's called me out on it, but thankfully she's just letting me be blue. Nothing's worse than Momma trying to help, bless her old heart.

 So, no rundown of the available Hohner harmonicas today, then. I know everyone's broken up. I'm tempted to say "the Blues Harp might be the best, but the Big River is pretty good for a cheaper harp," washing my hands of the whole thing. In any event, it's a possibility if I ever feel like writing for fun again.

 That's sort of what this has boiled down to in the last couple of weeks. Writing out of a sense of obligation rather than any sort of enjoyment. Only difference between now and when I quit way back when is I'm doing this for free. Amusingly, I'm not having the same problem with the News. I can generally come across some that, if not particularly interesting to me, is at least noteworthy enough that I feel it deserves an explanation as to why it's noteworthy.

 Another future potential is I've started getting into the groove with the Divinity: Original Sins games. I got them a while ago but could never get into them. Honestly, I was having difficulty in understand just why they're so popular among the CRPG crowd. I've played a decent way into the first one and I might give the second a try tonight if I don't go back to sleep.

 I've played the earlier Divinity games but only Divinity II grabbed me. I'm giving them another chance and I will admit, as far as Diablo clones go, Divine Divinity has something going for it other than an extremely silly name. Again, my biggest issue is that I have difficulty committing to a game long enough to beat it within a reasonable amount of time. How game reviewers do it, I'll never know.

 I'm also giving the Yakuza games another shot, specifically Yakuza Kiwami. I'm torn. When the gameplay actually happens, it's loads of fun. That block-and-punch mechanic a la the Arkham games never fails to delight. But it takes so long between punch ups, usually broken up by very serious people glaring at each other while the main character emotes like a sulky teenager. I'm told it gears up in the second half but, goddamn, I don't know if I can hang in that long.

 Okay. I've hit a wall and spent the last twenty minutes looking around the room hoping something sparks. I'm in a Hunter Thompson mood and, apropos of nothing, someone on Twitter said he was "as right-wing as anyone" when he wasn't on the drugs. How the hell does someone read anything by the guy and figure he was only on the left when he was high? Is it the guns? I bet it's the guns.

 I want to get this out of my system because it's been sitting on my guts all day. Go ahead and buy at least one gun. Doesn't have to be an AR-15 or whatever the pistol equivalent is, but if that's what gets you hard, go for it. I'd recommend a shotgun, for what that's worth. Buy one, learn how to use it properly, learn how to store it properly, and learn how to take care of it properly. Classes are available just about anywhere. The right has gone stone goddamn crazy, the cops are all fascists, and you can't depend on the military for nothing beyond nuking it from orbit.

 Just, for god's sake, learn how to properly use it. I'm pretty sure most shooting ranges offer classes, even though you might have to give money to the NRA. But desperate times call for desperate measures, friends and neighbors, and we are in desperate times. Granted, it may just be the depression talking but the recent madness concerning Critical Race Theory by the Fox humanoids has unnerved me. Depend on yourself and your own. Don't be stupid and start taking it to the grocery store, though.

All my friends are wearing worried smiles, living out a dream of what they was.

 Man, it's been a weird week. Don't deny it, this is just not right and keeps getting dumber. Not only did the President of the United States of America in front of God and everybody asked one of his advisors if injecting disinfectants into COVID-19 cases would cure them, but he, his office and the general wingnut collective tried to shove it off three or four different ways. That might be scariest of all.

 But before we get too deep into it, let's serve up this week's News.

Monday

Wednesday

Friday

 I think Friday's offering is particularly worth a look, as I go into one of my deep dives on just what he said, why he said it, why it's worrisome and why, no matter how they try, is it going to change a mind one way or another. The Base is unshakable.

 This is a milestone week, though. I got zero hits for the News. I mean, not a sausage, and I usually get at least three or four. I did pick up a new follower, so I don't know how that works but there you go. Got a lot of activity at the Tumblr site, though it was all for older stuff. Check out that Otis Spann tune, though, it's pretty good.

 Ah, the damn internet is dropping in and out again. Apart from lack of access to good smoke, that's about the only downside to living out here in the boonies. Dodgy internet and even when it's running, it's sometimes slow as Christmas.

 I just got back from a two-mile walk with my buddy Otis, the Jack Russell, and he thinks he wants to go out again. He's sitting under my chair sighing loudly. Every day he does this. We go for a walk for a mile or two, just long enough for him to get wore out, and after a short rest he's ready to go back out. And he'll keep doing it until past dinner, sleep for a while, and then spend another hour being a pain in the ass before calling it a night. It's getting on my nerves.

 Okay, enough of all that. No one wants to hear me gripe and I don't particularly want to, anyway. As weird a week as it's been, it's also been an okay one for me. The Actual Paying Work is going well and keeping me busy. The Bossman is happy with what I'm doing and it's nice to have something "serious" to show potential clients apart from this gig. It's boring as hell, but what are you going to do. I do get to write up a COVID-19 update and can have a little fun with that.

 But, like I tell the Bossman, it's good to have to occasionally write to someone else's rules. One of the biggest problems with today's media world is far, far too many writers are allowed to run loose with too little editing. And, no, I never thought I'd say that 20 years ago.

 It's keeping me busy and since it's Actually Work it's wearing me out. I'm kicking around the idea of dropping a day of News or Gibberish, and both of this week's offers of the latter reflect that. Goddammit, there goes the inter... hellfire, it's back. Anyhow, I thought about dropping a day, so what'd I do? Started another blog, of course.

 I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm going to do about it. Spread across three blogs on three different sites at vastly different times, what I have going now is sort of sloppy. As of right now, it's going to be a place to dump links of articles or pieces of writing I find interesting but aren't inclined to read when I first come across them. Might do it with YouTube vlogs and whatnot, I don't know. I have a fairly dark take on the COVID-19 virus that I've gone back and forth on where to post it. It occurred to me today that the new site could be the "professional" site; that is, the one where I don't cuss like a sailor and call the president a moronic dirtbag who leads a horde of complete dirtbags. I don't know yet. Anyhow, it's here if anyone's curious.

 Dammit, there goes the... shit, it's back. You know, between this and Otis's constant whining, I'm developing a headache. Bah. Sometimes he gives in and goes in his box, but he is particularly petulant tonight.

 I broke down and bought XCOM: Chimera Squad yesterday, and though I've only given it an hour, I'm pretty pleased with it. It's a fun little game with a neat premise. If the first game is Independence Day and the second is Battlefield: Earth (for lack of a better reference), this one is Alien Nation, if anyone remembers that little gem. Five years after XCOM 2, the big bads are defeated, and the Earth is full of either alien POW's or formerly enslaved soldiers now dealing with freedom.

 You run a sort of military-slash-police group that's part of the XCOM organization. At least one of the characters from the second game, Jane Kelly, works as sort of a liaison between the Chimera Squad and the larger organization. The crew tries to keep peace in a specialized city populated by humans, various aliens, hybrids, and what all where someone is trying to disrupt the fragile peace.

 Most of the game mechanics are the same, though the turn-based part of it is less like the original games and more like something found in Divinity: Original Sin. You do a little door kicking, a la a SWAT team, called "Breaching" that's a fun little new addition to the game. Rather than trying to keep countries or continents from panicking, you're trying to keep neighborhoods from falling into anarchy. It's less than ten bucks until May 1 and well worth that price. It bumps up to $20 after that, and is still worth a buy.

 Because Fanatical was having a sale, I also picked up Breach & Clear, an XCOM-esque game that uses real world military groups, and The Long Journey Home, a space sim rougelike that has sort of the same backstory as Star Trek: Voyager. The player controls a spaceship made up of four crew members with different skills trying to get back to Earth from the other side of the galaxy. I'm not really familiar with either game, but since I'm a complete sucker for turn-based strategy games and off-the-wall outer space science fiction that aren't military based. I can add that to the backlog of games I haven't finished or need to give another shot. Good thing I've got nothing better to do.

Well, good evening. Don't that sun look good going down?

 I really don't understand why Sunday's Gibberish got more hits than Monday's News. I thought the News piece was good and the Gibberish was just okay. Granted, no one's telling me that either are good or bad and I'm just going off clicks, but still. I wonder what it is that's pulling in the eyes. At least with the WordPress site, it tells me where some come from and that's always interesting.

 Ah well. Today's the second day of the Project and, if nothing else, I appreciate not having to scour the news websites looking for something to spark my imagination. I can just ramble on and talk about video games, which is what I'm going to do. I think the practice of sticking mostly to News benefited the piece, but we'll see how it all works out when I do tomorrow's News.

 I guess before I get too deep into things, I should link up yesterday's gobbledygook. This was the latest update on COVID-19, since that's dominating the news and public's attention. Beyond everything else, we've moved into the "we must be willing to sacrifice for capitalism" stage of things, as a swath of talking heads, bloggers and people with podcasts said, hypothetically, it was okay if people got unnecessarily sick, perhaps even died because they went to work. The "strongest economy in history" is apparently so fragile that it can't just chill for a couple weeks until we figure out what's going on and what to do about it.

 Skeptical then about the urgency of this claim, I did a little Googling and found out some interesting things concerning just how much wealth the very wealthy have. I know it won't matter to the Renfields of the world, but I truly do not really begrudge someone with millions or billions of dollars they'll never, ever spend. I don't have anything but contempt for them, but hey, don't hate the player, they say. It is what it is.

 That all being said, their wealth - a little over 160 trillion dollars all told, and this is actual on-hand wealth - comes from other people doing most of the work. "But they take the risks," I hear you bleat. Yeah, and every time someone drives to work, they take the risk of being t-boned by a drunk driver where the very rich have bailouts and bankruptcy protections. Furthermore, most of these uber-wealthy make more in a day than most of the rest of us see in a lifetime. Some do it in an hour. Kylie Jenner makes the American median salary in two-and-a-half hours. That's a staggering stroke to wrap one's head around.

 Anyway, read the Tumblr post and decide for yourself. I don't know if they get a blast fax or subliminal messages from Fox News, but the wingnut Twitter population is down to the ground with the idea of restaurant workers, retail workers and others they feel don't deserve a living wage for a 40-hour work week need to get back to it before some hedge fund loses less than 2% of its worth. I, for one, am not surprised and neither should anyone else. Americans - this may be worldwide, but us especially - have a certain reverence for the wealthy. We like the idea that just because a guy's got a shit-ton of money it not only makes him a super-genius in every other field beyond what he made bank in, but also makes him just a more worthy person. Some even think it means they deserve to be president when the only thing that really made them rich was being born to the right parents.

 But I digress. I also got a wild hair and wrote a bit about the excellent and much under-appreciated '80s rock & roll group The Bus Boys. Inspired by the deep delve into the baffling wealth gap in our society, I was inspired to post some music that celebrated the working man. Mainly the Bus Boys and Merle Haggard, but I think that's good enough for anybody.

 Okay, video games. I played more of Dungeon Siege as well as its two sequels. Honestly, I may like the second game better than the first. This story's a bit more interesting and there's a graphical upgrade. However it's apparently tougher, as I keep getting wiped out every time the challenge steps up and I have to keep throwing my party at the challenge like battering my head against a wall until it breaks. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, I don't know.

 The third game, however, left me sort of cold. It looks nice and there seems to be a story worth telling, but I just didn't care. I usually get a taste of a game by either playing through the tutorial or getting past the game's first little bit, like after the Grey Wardens initially get wiped out in Dragon Age: Origins because that obviously evil looking guy did 'em dirty. If it gets me, I come back. This one, however, I was considering just dropping it before I got to that stopping place and deleted it off my hard drive once I did.

 Another issue I had with it is a player is given four pre-made characters to go through the story. They all have their own backgrounds and there's no customization or even ambivalence to what they're trying to accomplish. I like a little grey area. In the first game, you're a farmer. In the second, you're a possible repentant mercenary. However, both are open ended enough that a player can add a little nuance to the character. The one in Two Worlds II is defined by his search for his sister and the guy in Divinity II is a raw recruit dealing with everything going to shit even before he's fully inducted.

 I need to get back to Two Worlds II to finish it off, just like I need to do with Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pillars of Eternity 2. However, I'll probably put a little more work into Divinity II or maybe give the first games of the Risen and Gothic series another shot. I still have a passel of XCOM-influenced turn-based strategy games to mess around with, too. I don't know how in the hell people with actual lives find the time to play as much as they seem to do.

 What else is there. Snopes posted some job openings this morning. I applied to a couple but I doubt anything will come of it. I spent too much time out of the game and haven't done enough work since getting back into it for anyone seriously looking for labor to give a look. Or so in my mind, anyway, but I'm known for having laughably low self-esteem. I posted links to this and The News, since that's all I've got that's less than 15 years old. I think there are plenty of gems among the dross, but I do worry my flippant tone and potty mouth might turn some off. I can behave if I'm getting paid, is all I'm going to say about it.

 Otherwise, I'm listening to Waylon Jennings' 1974 album The Ramblin' Man. I've got two tracks to go and once they're done, I'm done. For what it's worth, I don't think we've seen anything close to the end of the whole COVID-19 business and, what's more, it's going to develop into a much bigger hassle whether we "go back to work" or not. Doesn't really affect me either way, but it's interesting to watch how all this plays out from an outsider's perspective. Like I said above, it sort of stuns me that we are that beholden to the idea that unless we work ourselves to death for someone else's benefit and not enough to live on, the entire superstructure will eat itself within a week. If that's the case, maybe we should let it. Maybe make something new and better from the ashes.

 Of course, that's an unhelpful thought, mainly because so many people whose backs are already against the wall would suffer the most for it while the very rich might have to give up one of their yachts. So, I don't have any answers or any good suggestions, even. Just questions, that's what I'm here for.

Sunday, November 17, 2019

 Spent another night trying to liberate the Earth from alien domination, and didn't notice the time until morning again. So, another day of being a zombie but I've already written all about XCOM I can think of. Ah, well, we'll do what we can.

Saturday, November 16, 2019

 You know, I was saying this weekend needed to be more relaxing and that the whole Impeachment business needed to give a poor boy a rest, but damnation, did I mustard that one up. It's my own fault, though. Like my friend and spiritual advisor, the Rev. Billy C. Wirtz, said, "what I used to do all night now takes me all night to do".

Friday, November 1, 2019

 A week ends and a month begins, so here we are. I ain't going to lie, this week's been a booger. So we're going to take it easy today and just have a little fun.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

 Okay, let's do this. Let's get started.

Monday, October 21, 2019

 The much-promised thunderstorms we were promised have moved and are slowly easing along. We've gotten plenty of rain but nothing like the nasty weather Dallas or even Shelby County saw. Otis is pouting at me because I won't let him go outside.