“Don’t Buy Her a Gun”

I had a “prescription-refill” appointment with my doc the other day, and we talked about how things were going with my depression. I told her the same thing I tell her every year, that I’m more unhappy than depressed. She chuckled when I told her I shower every day, so I must not be all that depressed. Well, one thing I’m guilty of is “grading” my depression versus those whose depression is so debilitating that they can’t even get out of bed. Being a part of my kid’s life helps. My twisted sense of humor, a couple of work friends, music, books, some tv or movies, and the occasional impairment all play a role in keeping me sane. Of course, if the unthinkable (knock on wood) ever happened to my kid, or perhaps if I were to ever do something awful like not see a jaywalker and run them over, then all bets would be off and I’d be hard-pressed to get out of bed and shower or do anything at all.

Long story short, I also told her about the stupidity of me obsessing over political forums on Facebook and such, and she advised me to quit Facebook. (I’m trying to compromise, as in check the thing once or twice on weekends, stay off it during the week, and get back into hobbies more.) She quit FB a year ago and it’s the best thing she’s ever done. So I’m telling everyone that my doctor prescribed that I quit Facebook.

So this tidbit, about the classic rock group Mountain, being a short tidbit about something funny Leslie West (otherwise known as “The Great Fatsby,” the guitarist/co-lead vocalist for Mountain) said, might normally just be a thing I’d throw on FB, and maybe not get much interest because, after all, we’re sort of a “simple lot” here in South Dakota, where most of my few FB friends are, not hip to finding quotations all that thrilling, etc. Since I’m off FB mostly, “you lot” (as the Brits would say, I guess), are the “lucky recipients.”

I still use CDs for my primary music source, some vinyl records and, of course, YouTube. I bought a used CD recently of Mountain’s greatest hits. They were around in the late 60s/early 70s, and not known for much other than “Mississippi Queen,” a classic-rock staple. I vaguely remembered liking “Theme for an Imaginary Western” from the old Woodstock soundtracks. Anyway, “Nantucket Sleighride” is this song with a very odd-sounding vocal from bassist Felix Pappalardi. The song grows on you like a fungus. It’s loosely based on the fact that, when a whaling boat would harpoon a whale, the dying whale would take them on a wild ride (known as a Nantucket Sleighride), which sometimes resulted in the sinking of the whaleboat. Sometimes the whaling trip would result in no whales. In the case of the ill-fated expedition of the Essex, a whale actually rammed and sank the Essex, a ship which held the whaleboats, then the men took to whaleboats as lifeboats, then when they ran out of food, they resorted to cannibalism, which happened to young sailor Owen Coffin, who the song is dedicated to.

In my research about who actually sang the song (Felix, obviously, cuz Leslie West had the gruffer, deeper voice), I ran across the fact that Felix was shot dead in the 80s by his nutty, druggy wife, Gail Collins, who sounds  like she was the Yoko Ono of Mountain. The article about the murder ends with this pithy quote from Leslie West:

Leslie West: You want my advice? Buy your wife a diamond ring, some flowers, a push-up bra. Don’t buy her a gun.

(Again, I’m going with the theory that live performances have a better chance of not being rejected by YT as copyright infringement or whatever whininess of theirs.):

P.S. Did you know that, when you’ve had a kind of plugged ear for months if not years, so that you actually got used to it, and then had a cold/sinus infection thing, then your doc says “You know, we could clear that up with a week of Prednisone,” and then 3 days later your snotter and ear finally start clearing up on the right side of your melon, well, that cleared-out feeling is better than any high anyone’s come up with. Here’s to hoping that you go the winter without too many colds.

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Too Soon?

So, this is my “Friday-night-I-don’t-have-a-date-and-it’s-ass-freezing-cold-out-and-I-still-have-the-dregs-of-a-cold-and-i’m-too-old-to-go-to-the-kiddy-bars-and-there’s-nothing-to-do-in-this-one-horse-town-anyway” terrible attempt at a joke, which will likely result in me losing the 1 and a half average readers I now have:

A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walked into a bar.

Yeah, they didn’t make it out alive either.

“Gone Girl” (the book) sucks ass

Sorry about the unclear title, haha. Anyway, I feel it is our duty to take down rich, pretentious, ass-suckingly untalented “artists.” And I’ve been wanting to take down this dreadful book for years. I couldn’t finish it; I could barely start it. The writing is so insufferably “cutesy” that it makes me want to scream. Before telling you what I hated about it, I want to share some quotes from some 1-star Amazon reviews for it:

I believe this book is the worst I have ever read; the ending really was the sprinkles on top of stupidity.

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(apparently Amazon wants reviewers to use at least 20 words):

This book sucks. Zero stars. Don’t waste your time. I need eleven more words. This book sucks. This book sucks.

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Junk food for the spirit.

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If you overwhelmingly want to read this book, read the first half, then throw the book into a fireplace. 

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Twilight, 50 Shades and now Gone Girl. It’s a great time to be a talentless hack. Every now and again you come across a book so badly written, with characters so terrible, so unsympathetic, so stupid, that you wonder who the author slept with to get this book published. And when that book gets turned into a movie, you know they’ve sold their soul and body to Satan. The plot, predictable, ending predictable and moronic. The characters are all too easy to hate. To be a good book you need characters people can love and relate to. Not characters you want to beat with a spike-covered bat, chop into pieces and feed to a pig, then kill the pig and burn the body, then take the ashes and ship them to the center of the sun. Don’t read this book. I could feed my dog alphabet soup and she could poop out something better.

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If this book were a person I’d slap it.

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Writing insufferably cute.

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A lot of the one-star reviews liked the writing style (heaven forbid) but hated the ending and the unlikeable characters and the profanity. I will give Ms. Flynn the fact that she has more imagination than I do (almost every writer does), but that’s it. I was not in the least surprised to hear that she had written for Entertainment Weekly magazine. I found some of her writing for it online (seems to be mostly TV program reviews) and most of it was just straightforward opinions, nothing too painful. Then we find this “gem” of a beginning sentence for a 2007 review of NCIS:

TV so easy, it’s like a diligent mama bird chews each episode for me and places it gently in my drooling mouth, right next to those Cheezits I forgot to swallow. 

That hurts my brain. It also sort of makes me want to never write any sentences that I think are funny and clever, ever again, lest they seem “cutesy” to someone else. Oh well, you have to be who you are, I guess, and, though I’ll never reach her level of fame and income, I couldn’t suck that much. What strikes me as being great or horrible about most writing is not the whole plot, the entire book, the “character development,” the foreshadowing, the “voice” and all that other Freshman Comp crap, it’s whether or not I enjoy individual sentences or paragraphs or descriptions. And this here “Gone Girl,” great title notwithstanding, is full of awful crap like this:

He has a great smile, a cat’s smile. He should cough out yellow Tweety bird feathers, the way he smiles at me.

or

I even swoon over his socks, which he manages to shed in adorably tangled poses, as if a puppy carried them in from another room.

or

They were the Pet Rock of parenting.

or (Holy Mother of God, please kill me)

lazy-condomed sex

or this final horror:

Our dignified elephant of a chesterfield with its matching baby ottoman sits in the living room looking stunned, as if it got sleep-darted in its natural environment and woke up in this strange new captivity, surrounded by faux-posh carpet and synthetic wood and unveined walls. I do miss our old place, all the bumps and ridges and hairline fractures left by the decades. (Pause for attitude adjustment.)

Now, the sentence right before the parenthesis isn’t so awful, not great, but not unbearable, and a normal comment an author might make, but then it’s as if she doubted herself for slipping in a sentence that wasn’t ridiculously sophomoric and moronic, and decided she needed the “aside” about adjusting her attitude.

There are books which just leave a sick feeling in my gut, that are just sort of inept in a “background” kind of way, but if I were to dissect the book line by line, paragraph by paragraph, I couldn’t come up with individual segments like I was able to here, to back up my claims, that (as I’ve bored some readers with before), a bear pissing on a tree would be a better use of that tree than turning it into paper for this abomination.

One good thing about “Gone Girl,” though–now I have the search phrase “what the fuck is lazy-condomed sex, you talentless twit gillian flynn” burned into my computer’s memory. And, of course, of course, when I tried to search for “lazy-condomed sex,” Google tried to tell me I meant “lazy condom sex.” Only when I put quotes around it did Google finally admit that that stupid phrase actually existed somewhere and that my memory wasn’t completely batty.

What would lazy-condomed sex be anyway? The “wearer” is too lazy to “bottom it out” on Little Waldo, so it flop-flops bizarrely around inside the woman, kinda destroying the vibe? Is that a thing?

I borrowed the book from the library, thank goodness, and returned it without finishing it. Oh, and thanks, PBS, for mystifyingly including this crap book in your 100 books in the “Great Read” thing, so that you actually made this now-old book a current topic, thereby ruining the “joke” I was going to end this dumb post with, which was: “Now that I’ve reviewed this hot new bestseller, I’m going to follow it with discussions about that new stalker song “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morrissette, about whether Nixon should resign, and what that crazy Adolf guy thinks he’s doing by annexing Czechoslovakia.”

Oh well, I can’t have nice things, I guess.

Man, if this is my “big comeback” after a 9-month hiatus, well, you deserve better, but what the hell. Thanks for reading.

Holy Fucking Jesus!

I just read that Dolores O’Riordan died. I can’t fucking believe it. She was only 46. It’s no secret that my favorite song of the ’90s is “Zombie” by her and the Cranberries (sorry, fans of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Baby Got Back,” and “You Oughta Know”). Other songs are great, and you’re welcome to love them, but my fave is the one with the odd video where she’s gold-plated, surrounded by children, I believe, and which has the somewhat simplistic lyrics and the orgasmic “Zombie, zombie, zombie, eh, eh, eh, oh, oh, oh, oh,………” at the end.

If any “screaming Irish banshee” were to die young, I would’ve of course thought of the batshit-crazy Sinead (Magda Davitt? is that it now?), whose body of music I STILL think is a world treasure, but whose brain I disavow any more. Yes, it was fine at the beginning that she stood up for those who were abused by religious figures, but every comment from her in the last few years sounds like trashier-trailer-thinking than even I am capable of. I feel bad that she’s had mental issues, but I think there’s a lot of stupidity there. But I think her rendition of the traditional Irish ballads of “Paddy’s Lament” (or perhaps “Moorlough Shore”) from her album of Irish ballads, “Sean Nos Nua” should have been a huge hit, but of course pop radio is mostly crap so no chance for that shit.

Back to Dolores: she had cancelled some shows in the past year due to “back problems,” I believe. Well, it’s her right to hide it if she had some sort of cancer or something that manifested itself as back pain. Donna Summer got sick and died quietly a few years back. If I remember correctly, Leonard Cohen said he was ready for death but didn’t announce any terminal disease. Either way, it’s shocking as all hell and I really want to think that 2018 will NOT be a repeat of 2016 for music-world early demises. I unfriended an ex-coworker at that time (she in her 20s or early 30s herself, I believe) who had posted (something like) “Why is everyone so upset that some old people died?” (Some other things about her had pissed me off also.) I was thinking, and still do, that, even if you think that David Bowie in his early 70s was old or Cohen in his early 80s, certainly Glenn Frey at 67, Prince at 57 and George Michael at (51?) were not that damn old. I’m 62, which ain’t all that young for living, but I’d like to think it’s damn young for dying. Plus these were huge names in music. I don’t have the desire to do the research, but I’m damn sure the number of record sales that the 2016 die-ers were involved in was higher than any typical year’s music world death toll’s people were involved in. (Man, that’s a hard sentence to dissect, but I’ll just let it stand, haha.)

Anyway, damn sorry to see you go Dolores.

You know the song. I’ll try to post it here in a live version. You can’t share any official vids on wordpress, because someone somewhere is afraid they’ll miss out on some of the one-and-a-half American pennies I will ever make off of blogging in my entire “blogging career.”

No, Actually Fuck You, Bryan Cranston

“Listen, then, I am a woman, I. I know nothing of philosophical philanthropy. But I know what I have seen, and what I have looked in the face in this world here, where I find myself. And I tell you this, my friend, that there are people (men and women both, unfortunately) who have no good in them–none. That there are people whom it is necessary to detest without compromise. That there are people who must be dealt with as enemies of the human race. That there are people who have no human heart, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of the way. They are but few, I hope; but I have seen (in this world here where I find myself, and even at the little Break of Day) that there are such people. And I do not doubt that this man–whatever they call him, I forget his name–is one of them.

(The landlady of the Break of Day, from Charles Dickens’ “Little Dorrit”–I’m not sure how Dickens knew of the future existence of Donald Trump)

Oh, actor Bryan Cranston, you raging fucking moron. In the internet news story from a couple weeks ago entitled: “Bryan Cranston tells people who want Trump to fail: Fuck You,” you stated, “If he fails the country is in jeopardy,” and “It would be egotistical for anyone to say, ‘I hope he fails.’ To that person, I would say, fuck you. Why would you want that? So you can be right?”

Oh, my motherfucking God, that is perhaps, no that’s not fair, it’s far and away the stupidest fucking thing that I’ve ever heard about the Trump “presidency” from anyone other than a long-term true-believer in Trump. You claimed in 2016 that you would move to Canada if Trump won. I can only assume that you have been so busy, counting your money and acting, that you have been unable to follow anything that this blithering idiot, this raging shithead, this embarrassment to the U.S., to the world, to life itself, that calls itself Donald Trump has said since Inauguration Day. Every day I am continually in awe of how stupid and evil and thin-skinned this little boy, this crybaby snowflake, this middle school bully in a suit, is. His entire motherfucking existence is based upon hatred, hatred of the poor, the ethnic, any thinking woman, anyone who opposes him in any way. His entire life is spent in congratulating himself for his supposed greatness, and tearing down in the vilest, basest, most childish way, anyone who expresses any criticism of him.

What makes your “Why would you want that? So you can be right?” idiocy so maddening is the fact that that is Trump’s entire fucking life. His entire fucking Presidential campaign was predicated on his unfathomable, insane hatred for Obama, and his entire goal-set as “President” is to get rid of anything that has the Obama stamp on it. Donald Shitfucker Trump is nothing if not the King of “So he can be right.” He, you dumb fuck, NOT his opponents, is the one who simply wants a win, any win. He is a petulant little toddler-tyrant because he can’t get his way. Anyone who criticizes him is ugly or stupid or “Pocahantas” or, Jesus-motherfuck-to-hell, “fake news.” Oh my fucking God, I even have read idiots on a political forum on my company’s internal website who call it “fake news.” If a person doesn’t agree with a news story, that doesn’t, by itself make it “fake news.” What makes something fake news is when it is raging idiocy such as the conspiracy theory that “Killary” had a child sex ring in the basement of a pizza parlor that didn’t even have a fucking basement! Fake news is what the Dumbfuck-in-chief tweeted this week about Muslims killing people, videos which have been proven to have not one goddamn fucking thing to do with Muslims killing people.

And Trump’s “dream team,” oh my fucking Jesus, what a bunch of creeps, buffoons, and robber barons. His entire Cabinet’s goal is to be a shill for the crookedest, most environmentally and economically damaging corporations in our country and in the world today. The actual goal of Trump and these other idiots appears to be to use Trump’s time in power to rob the government and economy as much as possible, as quickly as possible. If I weren’t worried about possible nuclear war from this idiot and the goonball in North Korea, if I weren’t a few years from retirement and worried that this God. DAMN. Piece. Of. Shit. Paul. Fucking. Ryan and Mitch McConnell and my South Dakota loser Senator John Thune are in a headlong race to douche Medicare and Social Security, I would be sitting back and laughing my ass off at the phenomenal crookedness and ineptitude of these Republican morons. They remind me of a cadre of generals who take over an African country, raid the Treasury for their own gain, and leave the country in famine, in chaos, in ruins.

You’re around my age; you must remember Phil Hartman from SNL. He could make me laugh with just a facial expression. He did a great job of being Frankenstein’s monster whose only line seemed to be: “Fire–Bad!!!” Well, these halfwit inbred Republican dipshits?–their entire line of thinking seems to be: “Obamacare–Bad!!!” There’s no actual thought processes involved, just the idea that it MUST be bad because it’s “Obamacare.” I laugh to myself at times, because a clan of otherwise good people that I know, people I have hung out with for years (but not so much lately), have shown themselves to be Trumpians, or more accurately, Hillary-despisers, some of who are my age, have been retired since age 55, and only are able to afford health insurance because of subsidies they’ve been receiving from–you guessed it–Obamacare. So, like all rubes who voted for Trump and aren’t rich bastards or raging racists, they were and are, by supporting this piece of shit and his cronies, racing headlong toward their own economic self-destruction. They remind me of the Southern poor whites, who think they’re so much better than the “goddamn (rhymes with triggers),” but are actually no more welcome at a 4th of July picnic at a fancy house than a black person, a Muslim person, a Democrat,etc.

Like Bob Dylan croaked out, “The poor man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool.”

The knee-jerk rage and stupidity of Trump-lovers astounds me. The whole NFL players kneeling thing, for instance. I’m not talking about someone being upset way back a season ago when Kaepernick and a handful of others kneeled during the National Anthem. As a long-gloating, now long-suffering 49er fan since the moment I woke from a drunken-stupor-nap in ’82 just in time to see “The Catch,” I have my opinion of the guy some call Colin “Sack-or-pick.” I think he’s an extremely gifted athlete who has a gun for an arm and who runs like a drunken-ostrich-on-steroids, but who was too lazy to study film, too dumb to learn a playbook, too antsy and slow to find his second possible pass receiver, let alone his 3rd, and who is too dumb to know that his protests would enrage not only racist dickhead assholes, but also a lot of good people who believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Anthem and the Stars and Stripes represent mainly those who died in wars to protect our freedom. I still believe he would have been better served by writing “Black Lives Matter” on a headband and all over his game shoes. The monopolistic NFL would have fined him for being out of uniform, he would have stated why he was doing it, he could have started that trend among other players, he could have matched his weekly fine by giving the same amount to charities (from what I hear, he does give a lot to good causes already). But, and this is a big but, he had a legal right to do what he did. I also don’t have a problem with people who stopped watching football when he and a handful of other players were the only ones kneeling. People have a right to their opinions. What I do have a LOT of problems with are morons who came unglued after a whole bunch of players kneeled after President Dumbfuck stuck his ugly ass into the fray and, during a speech, had to call the kneeling players sons-of-bitches who should be fired. If someone was mad at the kneelers before, that’s an honest point of view. Anyone is missing the point, however, if they don’t realize that the new kneelers, a large bunch of them who kneeled that first weekend after the “sons-of-bitches” speech, were doing it in protest of Donald Moron Trump telling them what to do. They didn’t randomly, suddenly, all decide to piss off every veteran and everyone who loves veterans; they were, except for the typical handful who had already protested, protesting Trump. Anyone who can’t see that shouldn’t be trusted with driving a car or even with working a roll of toilet paper for that matter. So those who went on YouTube to show themselves burning their fan gear after that weekend, yup, they’re knee-jerk morons, which is typical for Trump-lovers.

Which brings me to my next point–the raging hypocrisy of Trump-lovers. They respond with “Who cares” or “Fake news” when each new instance of Trump being an idiot comes out. If Obama or Hillary did ANY of these things, they would come down on them as if, oh, I don’t know, as if a bunch of kids were being raped in a pizza parlor by gleefully slobbering Democrats. I’m not a huge Hillary fan, but she was the only one with a chance of keeping Trump out of office, of keeping this National Nightmare, this alternate universe we now live in, from happening. Her “deplorables” comment was deplorable and stupid. Some Trump-supporters, hell, most “hardcore” Trump-lovers, are deplorable. But he was elected with the help of a lot of good-but-misguided people. No Trump-lovers would admit something like I just admitted; instead Trump can do no wrong, the unforgivable sight of him ridiculing a physically-challenged reporter is no big deal, grabbing ’em by the pussy is no big deal, and on and on and on.

“If he fails, the country is in jeopardy.” Are you fucking kidding me? Every second that Trump is in office, the entire world is in jeopardy. Not only from the threat of nuclear war, but even more so, from the threat of freedoms being taken away. He wants nothing more than to control the press and television and internet. Every decent man who has been President has welcomed the press, dealt with criticism like an adult, not like a little whinebaby. Since all 3 branches of government are in the hands of idiot conservatives, the press and the court of public opinion are all we have to save us from this kleptocracy.

Let me bring up healthcare again. I, like a lot of hopefully-soon-to-retire workers, MAY make it during retirement for a while, but IF and only if Medicare and Social Security are still there. I would prefer Universal Healthcare for all, but that’s the subject for another too-long blogpost. You, Mr. Cranston (who, ironically enough, played a man who had to manufacture drugs to afford healthcare), have enough money to ensure that the healthcare of your grandchildren’s grandchildren will be paid for. I and the other Average Joes and Average Janes don’t have that luxury. It may actually BE life and death for us if these cocksuckers pass their tax bill which would ultimately and inevitably result in a higher deficit and the destruction of our Social Safety Nets. A tax bill which they want, in part to please the lobbying organizations who are actually in charge of this country, but also, and probably mainly, just to get a win, a win that they have failed so spectacularly, comically, ineptly to get, along with any Obamacare repeals they’ve tried to pass. Again, “so they can be right,” not “so we (Trump-loathers) can be right.”

When I looked up Bryan Cranston quotes, I saw that you seemed to be a somewhat caring person. And I hate to alienate any of my half-dozen (give or take 6) readers, in case any of them absolutely love “Breaking Bad.” I’d call it a “soap opera with meth,” as opposed to “The Walking Dead” (soap opera with zombies), or “Mad Men” (soap opera with ad agency people), but some good people I know are huge fans. I tried to watch the first little bit of Breaking Bad, and maybe I will again someday, but I was put off by some things about it, not the least of which was seeing your ass in some droopy whitey-titeys. No self-respecting middle-aged man wears whitey-titeys; colored titeys or boxers or boxer briefs cover a lot of sins, and that’s enough said about that part. I don’t even really care to see attractive women in dumpy underwear on tv, but I certainly don’t want to see some guy in his underwear, especially dumpy white underwear. Unless you’re 12 or in a gay porno, get some better duds. There’s nothing wrong with being 12 or being in a gay porno, by the way.

I’m somewhat of a liberal redneck (redneck liberal). As an example, I don’t think we need to call ourselves “cisgender” because transgender people want us to. I think they and we need to call each other (get this for a wild idea) “people.” And treat each other like people. If that makes me an uncaring redneck because I refuse to be politically correct, then fuck it. But I do think everyone (except perhaps rich people who are also uncaring pricks) should be treated well, and our leaders shouldn’t be in a headlong race to destroy the planet and ruin the lives of people they don’t like.

Another thing Trump represents is the “might is right” or “wealthy is right” mentality that brought us pieces of shit like Harvey Weinstein, a powerful wealthy man who is nearly as attractive as my work boot, who was married to a beautiful woman (she left him, right?) only because his wallet looked good, I’d have to imagine. Thanks to a brave woman who may or may not be a big drug-user, actress Rose McGowan, who bravely stepped forward to tell her story, other women are now stepping forward to tell of their abuse at the hands of powerful brutish men. Trump, a prime example of a boy-who-has-never-grown-up, who has used his power, money, and fame to harass and intimidate vulnerable women, wants to be Time’s Person of the Year. If there is justice in the world, Ms. McGowan, for all her possible faults (there’s a hard edge to her appearance which makes me think she may be a big druggie, but who gives a fuck), should be Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. I really hope she is.

To sum up, I’m trying to refrain from telling you to “go fuck a running goat,” Mr. Cranston, but you need to not be so fucking stupid as to think we “just want to be right.”We want Trump gone, not to “have a win”, but to save our country, to save the economy, to save the Earth, to bring back a bit of civility to the White House. Yes, Pence is an odd creep, but I bet he won’t be in such a headlong race to make himself sound so goddamn stupid and divisive, and to make this country continue to be the laughingstock of the free world. So, yeah, fuck YOU, Bryan Cranston, and, for that matter, go get after that goat. Do you read books? Unlike Trump, I bet you do. I’d like to read all the “classic” literature before I die. Some, I of course have read already, but many are still on my list, and one I’m reading now is called “The Betrothed” by some Italian dude from the 16th century or so called Manzoni. A bit too religious for me, but still a good read. There is a section I just read this week which speaks to all of us who are lovers of life and haters of Trump, who wish to save the country from ruin. Many people are too timid to speak, are afraid of looking like lunatics (obviously I don’t care about that), or afraid of internet trolls, or of Trump’s ilk. The book speaks of a couple who couldn’t get married because a bad dude wanted the girl’s hot young ass, and his “bravoes (thugs)” warned the priest not to marry them. The priest did as they told him, which started a whole series of events, of course. About 500 pages in, the bishop comes along and berates the priest for being such a coward:

But you will be asked, one day, whether you have at all times used the resources that were in your hand to perform the duties that were prescribed to you–even when men of power had the temerity to forbid you to do so.

So, Mr. C, I’m speaking up, people everywhere are speaking up against Trump. Women in droves, also, are getting up the courage to not care that they will be blamed (quite as much any more) for the foul things some men have done to them. We shall overcome this wart upon the ass of humanity, this mistake, this thing that has been foisted upon the world with its horrible insecurities and hatred because of his upbringing, this foul thing, this Trump. The rest of the world shouldn’t have to pay because Fred Fucking Trump didn’t know how to praise his horrid little offspring. Live a great life, Mr. Cranston, but think before you talk about Trump-haters again.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Siberian Horror

(The following is a work of fiction, except for the last line, which is true.)

In the deepest darkest reaches of Siberia, there are areas where humans rarely if ever go. Not only because of the horrible winters, the summer mosquitoes big as your thumb, the quicksand made even more deadly due to thawing permafrost, the lack of fast-food franchises or wi-fi connections, but also due to legends of evil surrounding the areas, and forests so thick, deep, and full of trees so gnarled that a human would have to crawl on all fours for miles to find an open area. Legend has it that there are sulfurous bogs within these forbidden areas that belch hot gas eruptions, made more foul by the stench of decomposition of animals unlucky enought to stumble into them and die by the dozens. The dying screams of these animals can be heard by caribou-herders miles away, if the wind is right. They don’t sound like any creatures known to any locals. On nights like these, the locals shut the doors to their homely cabins even tighter; their dogs hide their ears under their paws and whimper.

Within one of these “forbidden” areas, there is a legendary creature, said to look like a sort of cross between a wolf and a bear, but with a hideous bald head like a vulture. No one has ever actually seen it, except, it is claimed, for one old woman, a woman who is legendary herself, of an unknown age, who claims to have been a little child who remembers the distant Tunguska explosion of 1908. The locals hate and fear her, as they say she has “the evil eye,” and can cause infertility or fatal disease with one glare. She is said to be able to communicate with dead ancestors of people and animals alike. Though they fear her and loathe her, people from miles around will come to her as a healer of last resort, especially for their sick children. Though she shoos children away from her anemic little garden and her sickly animals, she is said to have a secret soft spot for them, and is claimed to have cured many deathly ill little ones, though she will not lift a finger to help an adult. She has no fear of bears or wolves or any other standard taiga creatures, but even she bolts her door when the screams of dying creatures are carried on the winds. It is said that she feels sorry for the wolf/bear, because it is the last of its foul kind. Get up a little liquid courage of your own, ply her with enough vodka, and she may tell you what she knows about the foul beast. She will tell you that it was the last of once-proud but dying species, so hidden in the taiga forests that no one but her family, all who are gone but her, had ever seen them. When the big explosion came, they were all wiped out but the one, and its head, which had been, if not handsome, at least appropriate for its body, had morphed into its vulture-like hideousness.

The wolf/bear cannot really be felt sorry for, though. It has nothing but malice in its heart, though it feels horrible self-pity for its lonely fate, a fate that appears to include an inability to die a decent death that would put it out of its constant misery. It has several broken limbs that it lumbers/slithers around on. It periodically gets stuck in the muck for days, due to its almost infinite stupidity and inability to learn basic lessons about where to walk and where not to. With its great and horrible strength, it finally is able to pull itself out of the muck after hours and even days of straining. It eats carrion so foul that even eagles, vultures and the sickest and oldest wolves won’t touch it. If children get lost in the forest, it is said that they were devoured by the wolf/bear.

The creature is forever plagued by mosquitoes, mange, and ticks that are the size of a small cupcake. It is home to generations of blood-sucking, evil, monstrous ticks with bites so sharp and painful that, though the creatures dull wits have been dulled even more by its foul surroundings and foul existence, its base maliciousness toward earth and sky and plants and animals, and especially toward the few humans it has ever seen, dulled by time to just a low disgust for itself and everything else, it can still feel the sharp pain of each moment of each tick’s time on its body. The foulest, most malicious of these ticks lives right at the entrance to the diseased asshole of the creature. It relishes the foul stench coming out of the creature and seems to thrive on the horrible material coming out of the creature in a hateful stream, washing over the ticks body. It pulls its head out of the creature’s orifice at irregular intervals, though it doesn’t need to, simply because it thrives on the evil joy of inflicting a new and ever more painful bite on the wolf/bear. The most foul tick on the most foul spot of the most foul creature stuck in the most foul bog of the most foul area of Siberia has a name. Its name is Donald Trump.

Thanks for reading.

 

Test 35–Village Ghetto Land

Really liked the album this song came from back in the day. This song is so pretty and so sad.  I’m much too busy growing grass to write, even if I wanted to. Not that kind of grass, Snoop, the Kentucky Bluegrass type is what I’m trying to raise; part of a new walkway/patio revamp project I started in late March. Takes 3 weeks to germinate, which means a lot of water and even more impatience. Some is finally coming up. What Stevie Wonder does with his voice here may or may not be epic or awesome or any other overworked word, but it is definitely “wonderful.”  “Politicians laugh and drink, drunk to all demands:” Why does that ring a bell, I wonder? These Republican Congressional shitfuckers have no concept of how to govern. I’m embarrassed that they represent anyone in the U.S. And yes, Libertarians, everyone is owed healthcare. It’s the very definition of insurance–shared risk, and no one asked to be brought into this world, but, now that any one person is in the world, that person shouldn’t have to go bankrupt to have their life spared or saved. We don’t deserve free anything, but we do all deserve to share the risk, like decent caring people. Or, like my type of people, who can be raging “dicks,” but believe in the Golden Rule. Yeah, this post is long enough now. (Oh, except for the obvious disclaimer that “Test” in this sadly-neglected blog means: “Will YT let me play this on my blog, or say ‘Screw you’ and claim copyright?” Some live performances seem to fare better than videos.)

Stevie’s voice has been a gift to the world, since anyone first heard him sing, I imagine: