Category: personal

sledgehammer

Posted on by admin

I don’t know why, but every time Sledgehammer comes on, I want to get angry. It’s not that the song inspires that in me, it’s that, no matter what I do on my shuffle, it somehow manages to come up.

Like, every time.

I’m not that big of a Peter Gabriel fan; in fact, I think that’s the only song in my repertoire, and I think it came as part of a new wave playlist or something.

But the sledgehammer keeps returning, and it’s not cool, like the 80s TV show.

It’s just a bludgeon, one more little way for the universe to throw tomatoes at my face.

I am a Shakespearian actor playing poorly on an off-off-Globe stage.

And I’m not even in one of the good ones, or playing the juicy part.

I am the walk-on; the Sir Andrew Aguecheek of middle-class Canada.

Forever pursuing; forever the joke.

Target: 800 words
Written: 262 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Regiment, Farley Mowat
Comics: Postal: Deliverance 5-8
Music: Underground 6, Linkin Park

dumb ass moves

Posted on by admin

Well, we’re fucked. Biden dropped out, which means lawsuits by Republicans against whoever replaces him, endlessly lost and appealed until it gets to the incredibly corrupt Supreme Court, where they’ll rule against the Democrats and hand the election to Trump.

I know guys like Marc Elias and Seth Abramson seem to think there’s no legal basis for the challenges and it won’t be an issue, but when has that stopped them before? Hello? Immunity? Aileen Cannon throwing out the documents case?

These guys still think this system isn’t wholly corrupt, which they, of all people, being lawyers watching this shit happen in real time, they’d fucking KNOW. But, hey, as good a president as Harris would probably be, and I would love to be wrong about this, these lawsuits alone are going to fuck us all.

Big mistake, in my opinion.

Unless they’ve got a plan to remove Thomas and Scalia (and the other corrupt Supreme Court Justices like Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett), then they’ve got nothing, and they’ve just completely fucked themselves (and the rest of us) into a worldwide nightmare.

So, good one, guys. Good choices, idiots.

Target: 800 words
Written: 232 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Regiment, Farley Mowat
Comics: Think Tank: Animal 3, Romulus 4, Samaritan: Veritas 2, Postal 21
Music: Under The Bridge, Red Hot Chili Peppers

impromptu grandkid

Posted on by admin

So, we’ve been invited up to the see the grandbaby, which is always a riot. Unfortunately, she cracked her head on a dresser and had to get a couple of stitches, so things may be more subdued than usual.

Poor baby. She’s such a sweetheart. There’s a purity in children that’s enviable, a pure connection to joy and other big feelings, a present ability to immerse oneself completely, that contrasts so nicely with those of us who have had all the joy so scraped from us that we’re little more than hollowed-out shells.

I pray for that kind of easy innocence, that easy joy.

I will never feel it again.

Target: 800 words
Written: 303 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Regiment, Farley Mowat
Comics: Postal 19-20, Think Tank: Animal 2, Samaritan: Veritas 1
Music: Order In Decline, Sum 41

exhaustion hunting

Posted on by admin

I made a note while thinking about the next revision this morning that referred to the book (and ultimately, life) as exhaustion hunting.

It runs us ragged, from one crisis to the next, shortcircuiting our brains with constant fight-or-flight responses, until we’re too weary to fight back.

Our entire system seems designed for that. Corporatism, the constant pushing of the incomplete narrative (in itself a truth, that we are all works in progress, for entirely different reasons, none of which can be solved with externals), the fear that you aren’t enough, and you need to push harder, harder, harder…

Is there any question that our current setup is more akin to exhaustion hunting than the acts of creation and production, with corporations and billionaires as the ones feeding off our carcasses when we finally drop dead?

We are grist for the mill. Worse, we’re effluent.

This world. With climate change and/or fascism about to kill us all, I think the notion of legacy is rapidly running down the drain. What impact when the world is gone? How can a body heal itself, when it’s already got stage 4 cancer, and thinks chemo and surgery are conspiracies?

How do we survive this?

I don’t think we do.

Target: 800 words
Written: 370 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Romulus 3, Postal 17-18, Think Tank: Animal 1
Music: King James Version, Harvey Danger (I was all "a Harvey Danger album I've never heard?  What?  Then I listened to it and knew every lyrics, and started having flashbacks of listening to it after the bar, in headphones, full blast.  The words were the same, but the music was not what I remember.  It's amazing what the mind edits and what it retains.)

sublime lyrics

Posted on by admin

I just want to write Sublime lyrics, as I listen to Saw Red while I try and figure out what I want to say today.

Unfortunately, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have nothing to say.

Sometimes, that’s enough.

Target: 700 words
Written: 339 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Symmetry 8, Postal 16, Eden's Fall 3, Romulus 2
Music: John Coltrane Essentials, John Coltrane (I still don't really get jazz, but man, Equinox and Wise Man sucked me in.  You have to appreciate the man's skill.)

heartburn keeps me wide awake

Posted on by admin

I mean that literally. It’s possible for someone to just die from lack of sleep, right?

Like, too many half-nights, no naps, no drowsing in the recliner while watching Frasier or the latest Yellowstone, right?

(By the way, how great is Kelly Reilly? Whatever one might think about her character’s behaviour, one must recognize what a terrific character it is, and what a great job she’s doing with it. The show can meander a little bit and doesn’t always seem to have an organic forward purpose, but capturing the endless anger of the tragically damaged, and how that can simultaneously mix with little bits of good, and absolutely vindictive evil, she does a great job.)

Anyway, dying from lack of sleep and heartburn. That’s me.

Over here.

Dying.

Target: 700 words
Written: 916 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Symmetry 7, Postal 15, Eden's Fall 2, Romulus 1
Music: Under Attack (B-Sides), Linkin Park

sometimes you gotta listen to your gut

Posted on by admin

Or your colon. Or your horoscope.

Things are going bad to worse. I’ve been awake since three in the morning; a casualty of our rat terrier’s deathly fear of storms.

She’s from Texas, originally, which means she likes heat, spicy food and hates fucking storms, because I’m guessing she’s been through a few.

We don’t know the details of her background prior to our rescue; there’s been hints that it was a total hoarder situation, followed by a neglectful situation involving assholes kids.

My gut told me we needed her. Her gut tells me she can’t live without me.

She is my shadow. I am her helicopter parent.

We are in love.

My gut tells me, this one is going to hurt, when it finally comes, almost as much as the Pyrenees.

Or worse.

Target: 700 words
Written: 734 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Postal 13-14, Symmetry 6, Eden's Fall 1
Music: Uncle Anesthesia, Screaming Trees

kingsville

Posted on by admin

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Saturday was my birthday, spent touring the local wine country with my family, and thoroughly enjoying it. It was a very nice day, and I would have no problem spending every weekend like that.

I’m not even particularly worried about my age.

I just look back at the length of my life and think… what have I done?

What have I contributed?

All the shitty things I did because I wanted to be somewhere, something else? The courageless bluster?

It all means nothing if I haven’t actually backed up what I said I wanted with action.

That’s the thing these days; it’s so easy to fucking talk. To be outraged, to troll, to assert your betterness.

I don’t want to assert I’m anything better; I know I’m not.

The older I get, the more I find myself drawn to realness, to the radical acceptance of the situation, of not wanting to have anything to with the pretense of others, the falsity of their projections, and most certainly, the epic spewing stream of diarrhea that is my own current state.

All talk, no action. No action, and barely even talk at times.

Wanting everything; doing nothing to get it.

Waiting for the dragon inside to finally take over and take flight, and praying it’s not actually a fucking dung beetle.

Anyway, there is desire to change; it hasn’t yet reached the tipping point to actual change. It doesn’t, as Amanda Palmer would say, hurt enough.

Still, it hurts pretty bad and a change is coming; there is an ultimate collapse, an upheaval, I can sense it.

A bottoming out, and endless fall, an impact, waited for and dreaded.

A final end – is it all worth it? Does it turn out all right in the end?

Or is all just shit, to be forgotten only a few steps into the future?

Target: 700 words
Written: 595 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Think Tank: Creative Destruction 2-4, Symmetry 5
Music: Unchained, Johnny Cash

wine and assassination attempts

Posted on by admin

On my sister-in-law’s birthday, Trump supporters stormed the capitol, nearly completing their insidious coup.

Now, on my birthday, some idiot takes a potshot at the asshole, leaving us all to wonder, just how bad is this going to get?

Staged or not (and I am in the camp that fully believes there’s a very good chance this shit was staged – I mean, the guy has followed by Nazi playbook step for step and is surrounded by Infowars believers – don’t tell me he doesn’t know the Reichstag fire and what a false flag operation is), it doesn’t bode well for freedom and democracy in this world.

So, happy birthday to me? We don’t know where this is going, but I’ll guarantee nowhere good.

Target: 700 words
Written: 551 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Symmetry 4, Postal 11-12, Think Tank: Creative Destruction 1
Music: Unbridled Funk And Roll 4 Your Soul!  Red Hot Chili Peppers!

forty-seven

Posted on by admin

Man, what a fucking waste.

Target: 700 words
Written: 336 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Symmetry 2-3, The Tithe 8, Postal 10
Music: Ultramega OK, Soundgarden (that's me.  Ultra-Mega-OK.)