March 17, 2024

Dear Mgmt,
How dare you darken the doorway of my inbox with your ignorant bullshit on a) the Lord’s day, and b) St. Goddamn Patrick’s Day!  How dare you.  And at 7:30 in the morning.  This is outrageous!  Egregious.  Not to mention completely uncalled for.  When was the last time I missed one of your deadlines?
Don’t answer that.  You have your schedule, and I have mine, and on most days, never the twain shall meet.  But that is neither my problem nor yours…it is clearly simply due to both of us being part of the same Big Weird Machine.  And that is no more your fault than mine.  Still, you will be punished with bad jokes before this letter ends.
Speaking of bad jokes, I think your vodcast/YouTube idea could actually work.  I have the exact people in mind, and will approach them if you want to firm up the entire idea.  I’ve started making some notes on ideas and possibilities.  I have no idea if it will have any kind of audience or not, but it will be fun as hell to do, so I’m in.  If it does see the light of day, and we do actually find an audience, I’m guessing we’ll immediately be sued eight ways to Sunday.  So if you agree to provide legal cover, I can easily handle all the creative.  You people are aware of my unsustainable and unrealistic schedule for the rest of ’24, but perhaps we can get a “pilot” and the first couple of episodes recorded and edited by next fall.
Conversely, your ideas for the travel stuff, while generally good, are all a no-go, at least for the rest of ’24.  We can revisit on approach to the new year, but I’ve cancelled all travel for the remainder of this year, so unless you want a series of articles about life in Fecal Creek, CA, you might as well forget this for the time being.
Okay…time for the punishment.  You’ve earned this…I know for a fact you don’t have a drop of Irish blood in you, and for you to interrupt a card-carrying Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day with your nonsense is just short of a declaration of war.  So here we go:

What’s the difference between Wuhan and Vegas?  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
What’s the difference between a hormone and a vitamis?  You can’t here a vitamin.
What do you call a Chinese guy with a camera?  Phil Ming.
Why do I cry during sex?  The pepper spray.
What do you call a gay dinosaur?  Mega-Sore-Ass.
Why do astronomers put meat in their shower?  So they can have a meatier shower.
Did you hear about the dead guy who had his ashes put in the salsa?  He wanted to tear his wife’s ass up one more time.
What type of doctor treats transgender men?  A guy-now-cologist.

Okay…that should do it.  Email me tomorrow before noon, you can expect more of the same.
Leave me alone,
Jayson

N.P.: “Ready or Not” – Lou Gramm

Word of the Day: dotard

A dotard is someone, usually of advanced age, who has begun to show a decline in mental faculties such as memory, attention, and decision-making, often leading to moments of confusion or forgetfulness. It’s a term that paints a picture of an adorable yet slightly befuddled grandparent, wandering into a room with purpose only to forget why they’re there.

The term “dotard” comes from the Middle English word “doten,” which means to dote. Doting originally had meanings related to being silly or feeble-minded due to age. Over time, it evolved into “dotard,” specifically referring to an elderly individual showing signs of senility. It’s a word that Shakespeare and Chaucer threw around like confetti at a wedding, adding a touch of historical class to what essentially amounts to calling someone a lovable old goofball.

Once upon a recent Thursday, in a quiet town just outside of Maryland, there lived a notorious dotard named Joseph. Joseph was known far and wide for his whimsical forgetfulness, which often led to amusing situations.
One sunny afternoon, Joseph set out from his house with a determined look on his face, wearing a bathrobe and slippers. His mission? To buy milk. The only problem was, by the time he reached the end of his driveway, he had forgotten why he’d left the house in the first place.
After standing there for a solid five minutes, scratching his head, he shrugged and decided he must have wanted to go for a walk. So, off Joseph went, wandering around the neighborhood in his bathrobe, waving cheerfully at confused neighbors, unaware that several Secret Service agents were following him.
Eventually, he found himself in front of the local supermarket. An idea struck him – a brilliant, undeniable urge. Joseph marched into the supermarket, went straight to the pet aisle, and bought the largest bag of birdseed they had.  Joe still failed to notice the Secret Service detail following his every motion.
Upon returning home, his wife asked him, bewildered, “Joseph, why on Earth did you buy a year’s supply of birdseed? We don’t even have a bird!”
Joseph, looking equally puzzled, glanced down at the birdseed, then back at his wife, and said, “Well, I’ll be. I knew I went out for something important. But don’t you worry, Jill. I’ve got it figured out. We’ll just have to get a bird now, won’t we?”

These sorts of goings-on were daily occurrences and basically fine until an aide made her daily reminder to Joseph that he was, in fact, the sitting President of the United States.

“I am?  Me?  Well…son of a bitch.”  An rather moronic but somehow menacing grin took over his face.  “So, I can do whatever I want?  I want my ice cream before dinner.  I want my ice cream now!  And Matlock!  Now!”  Joe just loved Matlock.
Joseph’s advisors conferred briefly, and called a press lid on the rest of Joseph’s month.  Joe was asleep before the opening credits of Matlock finished rolling, his ice cream cone resting stupidly on his chest, beginning to melt.

N.P.: “Love Bomb Baby” – Tigertailz

It’s About Time

After the revolution, on my first day in office as President, or Sexy and Benevolent Leader, or Illustrious Potentate, or whatever of the United States, I will outlaw the observance of Daylight Saving Time.
A recent poll of random adults at the bar waiting for a table at Red Lobster in northern California revealed that 90% of all Americans think daylight saving time is an outdated and pointless exercise in arbitrary adherence to tradition.  The other 10% are idiotic twats.
I have never understood how so many allegedly intelligent, free-thinking people could be so-easily convinced to do something so fundamentally silly.  For four decades now, I’ve been listening to people embarrass themselves trying to explain their adherence to this absurdity, patiently enduring their assaults on logic and reason as they slowly reveal that they themselves don’t really understand this nonsense either.
There seem to be three basic arguments these pedants of chronology employ.  to wit:
  1. Benjamin Goddamit Franklin, may God rest his sweet, patriotic soul, invented daylight saving time just like he invented electricity and he was obviously a genius and how dare you or any other non-genius fuck with Uncle Ben’s ideas.   They didn’t put your ugly ass on the hundred dollar bill now, did they?  Alright, look…you need to remember a couple of things.  Absolutely, Ben Franklin was a genius.  A great many of his inventions propelled America and mankind into the future that we enjoy today.  However, Ben Franklin lived in a world without electric light and climate control.  His nights were lit solely by candles and oil lamps, and even though his idea of shifting the clock around was pretty clearly meant as a joke, and he had likely been into his cups when he wrote this letter, it did make some bit of sense then to suggest that opening business an hour earlier during certain months of the year would reduce candle usage. American businesses haven’t relied on candlelight or oil lamps in more than a century.  Even candle shops now use electric light and computers.  The position of the sun no longer has anything to do with when we can and cannot work, play, cook, read, et cetera.   If B.F. were alive today, I suspect he would want to pimp-slap all those who have mindlessly remained allegiant to daylight saving time.  He invented his stove to more efficiently heat houses: he would certainly acknowledge that central heating and air is a vastly more safe and effective method of climate control, and would likely insist on having it in his house.
  2. It will save energy and money.  Poppycock.  Patently untrue.  In fact, the exact opposite holds true: hundreds of millions of dollars are lost every year due to employees arriving late for work, conference calls and meeting missed, and overall productivity lost.  Doctors tell us that dicking around with the clock and one’s sleep schedule increases the chances of heart attack significantly, leading to hundreds of millions of more dollars lost in medical expenses.  Sleep loss, the disruption of the Circadian rhythm, greater susceptibility to illness…all of things lead to lost productivity, lost money, and ultimately increased energy resources. And having citizens in the work force arrive home at the hottest part of the day ends up using significantly more energy than would be used otherwise.  Just ask Arizona.  They ignore DST (as does Hawaii) and they do just fine.  In fact, neither of those states have nearly the same number of rolling blackouts during the summer as California does.  We have them regularly throughout the summer, during DSL.  There has never been a rolling blackout during Standard Time.
  3. The farmers need daylight saving time to order to harvest their crops and get all their work done during the summer.  I can’t even begin to understand this one.  And I think that’s because this one falls in to the very strange category of many of the other lines of rationale I’ve heard to justify the menace of DST: people seem to actually think that DST adds an hour of time to the day.  Like we ACTUALLY get an extra hour of daylight or the days are ACTUALLY an hour longer than they would be during Standard Time.  To these poor souls I can say only that I will include you in my nightly prayers and hope that you aren’t a registered voter.  Farmers go to work when the sun comes up, and they don’t spend the day watching the clock, waiting for 5 o’clock so they can knock off.  Hell no.  They quit work when it’s so dark they can’t see what they’re doing.  They don’t give the slightest of damns if you insist it’s 5:00pm or midnight: just stay out of their way.
The practice of hourly timekeeping only began in the United States once train travel began: people needed to know when the hell they needed to be at the station to catch their train.  Fair enough.  And today’s world is governed by the clock.  Fine.  But let’s just settle on what time it is and then leave it that way.
Uncle Ben's Wild Ride
N.P.: “I Know What I Am” – Band of Skulls

March 9, 2024 – It’s About Time (Again)

Goddammit, dear reader…goddammit so much.  You know what happens tonight?

Tonight begins what is arguably the most insipid and blatantly stupid practice of our rotten society: daylight saving time.  I’ll post my usual screed on the subject tomorrow which heaps invective upon the folks who drunkenly thought up the idea and implemented it, but today, I want to bitch about the majority of Americans who for reasons unbeknownst to me just accept this horseshit unquestioningly.  The execrable Gen Z has an excuse (they always do):  they were taught neither history nor critical thinking.  Their entire historical perspective begins with the year they were born, and they seem to be dangerously committed to the idea that nothing of any significance happened before social media was invented.  They are like the pathetic slaves chained up in Plato’s cave: defiantly insisting “their” truth is actually The Truth, and becoming outraged at those who have actually been outside the cave, who are trying to open their eyes to the Really Real World and free them forever.  People get rather sensitive to anything that threatens their reality, even when (especially when) those threats are in the form of facts, data, and statistics.

Wait…I’m supposed to be bitching about stupid daylight saving time.

Fuck it, I need to get this Gen Z thing out of my system.  You see, dear reader, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and writing about this subject lately…too much, really.  So I won’t belabor anything here, I’ll just cut to the chase and give you a sneak preview of the conclusion.  To wit:

I’ve approached the problem of Gen Z from everything conceivable angle, and the only solutions to the Gen Z problem are these:

  1. Massive re-education camps where the ludicrous lies they’ve been fed about systemic racism, transgender ideology, the history of the United States, and the nature of life in general can be properly and permanently ablated.  Or
  2. Round them all up and drive them into the sea.

The few people I’ve shared these ideas with have reacted somewhat negatively, suggesting that either of these propositions could be viewed as “extreme.”  I reminded them that we live in extreme times, which, definitionally, can only be dealt with in extreme measures.  Broad strokes, I told them.  Still, they seemed dubious.  So I made my argument to an AI chatbot, and asked if there were any other solutions that maybe, somehow, against all probability, that I had not thought of.  It answered with two ideas.  The first involved time travel (which, goddammit, AI…I’m trying to be realistic, here), and the second was an absurd game show that ultimately resulted in terminating Gen Zers who lost the game (and they would all lose the game).  Which seemed silly to me.  That would take forever compared to my idea of simply driving them en masse into the sea.  The game show seems like something like ISIS would come up with.

Okay…that’s it…I’m good.  Back to the fucking “time change.”  Where were we?  Oh yeah….

It’s as if people believe that without the sacred biannual ritual of changing our clocks, crops will suddenly refuse to grow, cows will forget how to produce milk, and chickens will enter into some weird  existential crisis, questioning the very meaning of “laying eggs.” Newsflash: plants and animals do not give a flying fuck about what time it is. They operate on nature’s schedule, not Benjamin Franklin’s drunken musings or the whims of a society that can’t seem to remember whether they’re supposed to spring forward or fall back without consulting a dozen memes.

And let’s talk about the sheer lunacy of the adjustment period, shall we? For a week or so after the time change, society collectively walks around like zombies, chugging coffee like it’s the elixir of life, snapping at each other over trivialities because everyone is just too darn tired. A couple hundred of us will die from heart attacks or traffic accidents.

The fact that we still cling to this antiquated practice is a testament to human beings’ remarkable ability to complicate their lives for no good reason at all. Honestly, if daylight saving time were proposed today, it would be laughed out of Congress faster than you can say “sleep-deprived hallucination featuring a tap-dancing Benjamin Franklin.”  Which says a lot given the over-arching stupidity of our congress.
So, on my first day in office, after I’ve had my inaugural coffee and sworn to protect and serve this great nation of ours, I will sign an executive order abolishing daylight saving time. No more springing forward, no more falling back. Bullshit!  We will live in a perpetual state of temporal bliss, where the only thing we have to remember is whether we want our coffee black or with cream.

I can see it now: a nation united, free from the tyranny of the clock change. Productivity will soar, medical expenses will plummet, and no one will ever again have to endure the horror of realizing they’re an hour late to something because they forgot to change their moronic clocks. Or worse, an hour early, awkwardly waiting around, cursing Ben Franklin and his infernal time-tinkering ways.
Anyway, my fellow Americans, it’s high time (pun intended, but I could do better) we put an end to this daylight saving madness. Let us march boldly into a future where our biggest worry in November isn’t how to change the clock on the microwave, but rather, what we should do about the pumpkin spice addiction. Together, we can make this dream a reality. Vote for me, and let’s make America sane again.

Jayson for President: He’ll Get Things Done©.

N.P.: “Come Together” – Gary Clark, Jr., Junkie XL

Jayson Gallaway

March 5, 2024

Meetings.  Endless meetings.  Meetings that lead to more meetings.

I am officially sick of meetings.

N.P.: “Kiss (feat. Tom Jones)” – The Art of Noise

Word of the Day: kakistocracy

Kakistocracy (noun): A system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.  It’s a real word for when the village idiots become the town council.

Origin: The word is a delightful blend of Greek components:
Kakistos (κάκιστος): Meaning “worst”—because why settle for mediocrity when you can aim for the abyss?
Kratos (κράτος): Meaning “rule”—because even chaos needs a manager, apparently.

The President of the United States gazed vacantly at the tens of people who had gathered to hear his speech.  Once again, he had forgotten not only what he was saying, but where he was.  Where he was was widely known for certain: he was presently in the House of Representatives delivering the State of the Union Address. 

This sort of thing had been happening a lot lately, but really, things had never been good, mental-acuity-wise for this president.  His inauguration was the most memorable for many reasons: the first inauguration to be sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party, the first inauguration to have a president to take the oath pantsless (but he was wearing mismatched socks and a blissfully ignorant grin).  It was a horrible day.  When the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court appeared on the dais, he was dressed as female clown and, as one writer put it, “engaged in cheap Socratic banter and low-rent sleight-of-hand with the handful of people who had shown up to witness this farce.”  The majority leader of the Senate came out and tried (and completely failed) to juggle several rubber chickens.  The traditional oath of office was replaced on this occasion by a rather bawdy nursery rhyme, and the president’s acceptance speech seemed to center around a promise replace all traffic lights in the US with interpretive dance troupes. 

“It’s better for the environment!  Climate change is the biggest threat our country faces.”  White supremacy was number two, followed closely by transphobia. 

The crowd of nearly 10 people erupted in panicked gasps.  A secret service agent was so taken aback that he accidently knocked over the podium.  The president tripped on the Chief Justice’s clown shoes and fell into a truly massive cake shaped like the national debt. 

Manolo, a janitor at the event who, unbeknownst to anyone, had the highest actual IQ of anyone in DC, ran onto the stage and grabbed the microphone.  “You know what climate change, white supremacy, and transphobia have in common?”

Confused silence from the crowd.

“They’re not threats to our country.  In fact, they don’t really exist at all.” 

And with that, the crowd as well as the entire kakistocracy they had voted for simply disappeared in a fetid puff of idiocy and lies.

N.P.: “The Man” – The Killers

February 13, 2024

Mgmt: Dude…it’s Tuesday.  You need to post something.
Me: I’m working on stuff.
Mgmt: Be that as it may, you need to post something.
Me: I got jokes.
Mgmt: Not jokes.
Me: Well, which is it: do I need to post something or not.
Mgmt: Something not jokes.
Me: Fuck yourself.  How do you stop a toddler from drowning in the summer.
Mgmt: We’re not doing this.
Me: You drown him in the spring.  When my best friend dies, he wants his ashes pressed into a record.
Mgmt:  ….
Me: That is his vinyl request.  What do you call getting gonorrhea from a handicapped person?
Mgmt: ….
Me: Slow clap.  Hello?
Mgmt:  I’m here.
Me:  What did Bruce Willis say when he got a vasectomy?
Mgmt:  Goddammit.
Me:  Snippy-kai-yay, motherfucker.
Mgmt:  That’s not even funny.
Me:  No argument there.  What do you call a pedophile pirate?
Mgmt:  Oh no.
Me:  Arrrrrr Kelly.
Mgmt:  [barely stifles a snicker]
Me:   Did you know you can’t laugh loudly in Hawaii?
Mgmt:  You are the worst client we’ve ever had.
Me:  It has to be “a low ha.”
Mgmt:  By far, the worst.
Me:  What’s the difference between a slice of pizza and a dead man?
Mgmt:  This qualifies as actual abuse.  You’ve put yourself in a very actionable position.
Me:  A slice of pizza can’t feed a whole family.
Mgmt:  Jesus.
Me:  What do you call a virgin from Oregon?
Mgmt:  I love Oregon.
Me:  An orphan.  Hashtag fuck Oregon.  What do you call a horny square?
Mgmt:  Okay, I’m going to go.  Post something.
Me:  An erect-angle.
Mgmt:  Promise me you’ll post something.
Me:  I promise.

N.P.: “Some People Call Me” – Jason Bieler and the Baron Von Bielski Orchestra