This should come as no surprise to you, loyal and attentive reader: people annoy the shit out of me.  And that’s never been more true than right now.  This present batch of brats is the absolute worst.  And, as usual, the problem stems from linguistics.  Okay, maybe it doesn’t actually stem from linguistics, but people’s linguistics are alarmingly accurate barometers of the bullshit that ails them.  Among Gen Z, there is a grotesque tendency, not necessarily toward simple hyperbole, but to a rather overdramatic framing of their completely ordinary and mundane existences to try to…I don’t know…make themselves sound significantly more interesting than the reality of their mundane existences warrants.

Perfect.  The first thing that comes to mind is the one I most frequently have to endure, happening virtually anytime I leave the Safehouse and interact with someone (usually female), or when I pick up the phone.  For the last several years, anytime I’ve been asked to something totally banal (like sign a form, press a button, or write my address), once I’ve done it, I’m told it was “perfect.”  But they usually say it like, “Puuuur-fict!”  But it wasn’t perfect.  I simply signed something.  And my signature (especially if it was on some sort of tablet or phone) was anything but “perfect.”  It was likely a mess.  They usually come out looking like a fucked cardiograph.  Doesn’t matter: I’ll be told it was “perfect.”  I was a doctor’s office recently, and I had to sign several forms, and then make a next appointment.  After each signature (there were 4 or 5), the chick that was telling me to sign said, “perfect.”  After the first couple, I start really fucking things up, I was drawing little middle fingers, and signing my name as Turd Ferguson and stuff.  Didn’t matter: still “perfect.”  Mindlessly attributing superlatives of perfection to imperfect things pissed me off.  I blame the last two generations of Americans who grew up with participation awards and not keeping score in baseball games and all that horseshit.  “Perfect” is not the worst offender, but certainly the most frequently deployed.

Rescue.  This one’s been bugging me for a couple of decades, now.  When I first heard it, a friend told me he and his lady had rescued a dog.  That’s fucking awesome, I thought to myself, having no one else to think to.  It was so awesome, I decided to share the thought with my friend: “That’s fucking awesome,” I told him.  “Tell me what happened.” Life, at the time, had become unsustainably mundane, and I remember a thought that kept picking at my mind during this period: “I am no longer impressed by anything.”  So to hear a story of valor and courage in a first-hand account of how my friend had committed an act (or acts, perhaps) of heroism to rescue a puppy from certain death was  potentially enough to jar me out of my malaise.  I braced myself excitedly for the tale.

“Oh nothing…we saw him on the shelter’s website the night before, and went and picked him up the next morning.”

Um…what?  You “went and picked him up?”

My disappointment grew so quickly it  turned into disgust.

Kick in the front door of a burning building, a fully engulfed house, and selflessly run headlong into the flames while trying to listen to the dog’s cries for help, finding the dog, picking it up, and running back through the flames and outside to safety…that is a rescue.

Drive down to Mexico, fight the police, engage in a gun battle with cartel sicarios, grab the cartel’s pet chihuahua, escape back up to the States…that is a rescue.

Join a tactical team on a midnight raid on a supermax prison cellblock that’s been taken over by gangs to find and retrieve the golden retriever puppy that was taken from the prison’s Puppy Program by the most vicious gang that’s threatening to decapitate and eat the puppy if their demand for 147 pepperoni pizzas isn’t met…that is a rescue.

Even if you wanted to call adopting a dog from a shelter a “rescue,” it had damn well better involve rushing into the kill room and snatching away the dog in 5-point restraint, strapped to an execution table with some sadistic, dog-hating shelter worker hovering menacingly over the thing, ready to bring a raised death-hammer down on the shivering dog’s head.  And if that wasn’t the case, you didn’t “rescue” shit!  You ran a pleasant errand…that’s it.

I recently technically “rescued” a puppy.  From a shelter.  No gun battles, no burning buildings, no supermax prisons…there wasn’t a bit of rescue involved: I had to drive to a tacky strip-mall, meet up with the Croc™-wearing teenager who had been fostering this weird creature, pay the shelter a couple hundred bucks, and that was that.

Survivor.  I might piss a few people off with this one, but I don’t care…I’m sure you’ll survive.  The problem is then you won’t shut up about it.  First, though, a caveat: this has absolutely nothing to do with people who have actually survived acutely life-threatening events, e.g., Hamas attack on a kibbutz, a plane crash, a night in December on Donner Pass without shelter, a pogrom, a deadly volcanic eruption on the Pacific island where you’re vacationing, your parachute failing to open, etc.  A few years ago I would have included “Pandemic” in the list, but, like most of the English language, the meaning of that term has been changed and watered down for reasons too dark to contemplate while sober: while Covid may have been technically a  pandemic, it was a big pink titty compared to actual species-threatening pandemics, like the Plague, the original strains of Ebola, etc.  Call me old-fashioned, but you can’t say you “survived” a pandemic unless there are actual corpses in the street.  But never mind all that.  Here’s my point, if there is one: there are a hell of a lot of people running around these days claiming to be survivors of things that could never kill them, or claiming to have survived something catastrophe that 9 out of 10 people will experience during their lifetimes.  The first level of this issue, to me, is simple: people claiming to have done something special by “surviving” something that, sure, could have killed you, but it could have killed everybody else just the same.  And they’re not calling themselves survivors.  Then you have this group of people who have all, say, had cancer and “survived,” but these people over here want credit and recognition, while the majority of people in the group don’t feel the need to talk about their cancer survival and would rather just get on with their lives.  The second level of this issue is what happens to the credit seekers: they become completely identified as a victim.  A victim who survived, sure, but a victim nonetheless.  I’m thinking of a particular cancer survivor I know.  She was diagnosed with cancer, got chemo, and survived.  And how proud and happy we all were of her.  But that was ten years ago, and not only has she not yet shut up about it, but she has done nothing else with her life.  She still, after all this time, is running around “sharing her story” of cancer survival to anyone who will sit still long enough to listen.    Though she didn’t have a hell of lot to talk about before the cancer, her entire identity has been completely wrapped up in talking about cancer.  At this point, at least in my head, she has become cancer.  She has become the walking, talking, pissing and moaning, annoying incarnation of cancer.  There were a few years after she had survived the cancer that many of her family and friends took to referring to her with unkind nicknames, each of which seemed to utilize “cancer” as a first name, e.g., Cancer Squirrel (for her tendency to stash food throughout the house), Cancer Witch (because she did weird shit with altars and candles and shit throughout her treatment, et cetera, until the modifier became the name, and people just started referring to her as The Cancer, i.e., ‘Aw shit…here comes The Cancer.”  Which, I believe, was the exact opposite of what her carcinogenic ass was shooting for.

Anyway, the point is that I know at least half a dozen cancer survivors…only one of them is worried about getting credit for it.  And she looks like an ass.  I have “survived” similarly dire medical threats, and I didn’t say shit about it.  And the people I see how have “survived” the same thing who won’t shut about it are not held in very good esteem in my head.  In fact, I frequently mentally label them as “pussies.”  You survived: congratulations.  Now get busy living.

Journey and Brand.  Life is not a journey.  But even if you insist on considering it as such, you must accept, then, that everyone’s on a journey.  Your journey, though I’m sure unique, is likely not any more special than anyone else’s.  Sure, the variables and details will be very different, but overall, all journeys are quite similar…rather like the story arcs of screenplays: all different characters and plots, but all basically the same three-act story.  Sure, your journey might be more difficult or interesting than some people’s, but chances are your “journey” is a big pink titty compared to what other people have gone/are going through.   Your weight loss is not a journey.  Incidentally, you probably don’t have a brand.  If you’re Stephen King and you write best-selling horror books, you have a brand.  If you’re Ronald McDonald and you sell billions and billions of delicious hamburgers to the entire planet, you have a brand.  If you’re a barista or cosmetologist or working at the Vans Outlet, and you have an Insta, you probably don’t really have a brand.  As with all of the terms mentioned supra, I submit they are all used purely for self-aggrandizement.  To try to pretend one’s existence is far more important or significant than it really is.

I’m not bitching about this just to bitch, dear reader.  Our generation was responsible for grotesque abuse of “awesome.”  Which was all fine and fun until the day I saw something that was quite literally awesome and I had no words to describe it.  I couldn’t use “awesome” because that word had been so inappropriately used to describe things as mundane as getting high score on a video game.  Such exaggerations lead to a desensitization to truly significant events or conditions, ultimately devaluing the meaning and impact of our words.

N.P.: “Beautiful Dangerous” – Slash, Fergie

Yesterday started off well enough, but things  devolved quickly in the afternoon when I tried to something that should not have been complicated yet seemed to be beyond my abilities.  I started around noon, and by 1:30, I had made a hard turn toward whiskey for fortitude as my battle with tech quickly escalated into war.  There was a lot of cussing, dear reader…a lot of fuck words…and in the end, I lost.  At least I lost yesterday.
Today might be different.  Presently ingesting prophylactic whiskey.  We’ll see.  Fingers crossed, etc.
Also, absolutely fuck technology that doesn’t work as it should.

Quote of the Week (by someone other than me): “I hope someone else shows up, otherwise one of us is going to have to cut up a kid.”

I find that recorded or form-lettered apologies for inconvenience do exactly nothing to change the fact that I have been, and even now, still, remain inconvenienced.

N.P.: “Hey There Cowgirl” – Palm Springsteen

Dear Mgmt,

What is your deal with waking people up on Sunday morning?  Pestering and hectoring decent folk on the Lord’s Day is unbecoming and smacks of a blatant desperation.  I know you people are desperate, but must you be blatantly so?

And never mind the fact that it’s Sunday, but you people have no idea what kind of day I’m having.  But I’ll get to that momentarily.  First, you’re demanding something funny.  I’ll give you something funny.  But it’s going to be brief and inappropriate, because today is shaping up to suck, and I don’t think any kind of significant mirth is called for.  So here:

What does a burnt pizza, a pregnant woman, and a frozen beer have in common?  Someone forgot to pull it out in time.

Here’s one for Easter, just in case one or both of us is no longer existing next Sunday (and in the hopes you’ll leave me alone):  Why does the Easter Bunny hide his Easter eggs?  He doesn’t want anyone knowing he fucks chickens.

And that’s it.  There shall be no more frivolity today.  Today has been oddly ugly, and I’m afraid my mood is unsalvageable.  I had two things on my to-do list.  One of them is none of your business, but the second one was to file my taxes.  To that end, I’d scheduled a meeting with my tax preparer, Manolo, relatively early this morning.

Manolo has only been in the country for four days, and has only been my tax preparer for two (I am (was) very proud to be one of his (maybe the) first clients.  I know nothing about him (not even his last name), but he seems like a trustworthy guy.  And since Gov. Newsom signed legislation that allows any illegal immigrant to be automatically instantly licensed in whatever field they choose, I assumed I could  trust him, at least from a legal standpoint.

Well, so much for that.

I prepared a fine continental breakfast and bottomless mimosa bar for Manolo…after all, it’s Sunday morning, and we are both decent people.  Perhaps the only thing I know for certain about Manolo is that he likes to drink.  He’s been completely plowed on blue-agave tequila during every interaction I’ve had with him.  I’ve excused this as a very understandable coping mechanism for what must be an unbelievable amount of stress: sneaking into a country, learning a new language and a massive tax code in one day, and starting a new business as a licensed tax preparer the next day…that’s a lot, to be sure.

But as soon as he got here this morning, I knew something was off.  I mean, other than the fact that he had clearly not learned English on Thursday like I was assured he would.  I don’t think he had even tried…he didn’t seem to have learned a single word this morning.  Which is why I had to resort to physical violence: when your tax guy is unable to understand your concerns and questions about your return, there’s really nothing else to do than throw hands.  Or feet, as was the case this morning.  Not speaking, he handed me a tax return that alleged that I owe the federal government of these Divided States of America just north of $140,000.  As soon as I saw that number, my right foot rose quite involuntarily and quickly, and I kicked Manolo hard in the huevos.  This, of course, caused him to double over in pain, and that’s when I brought a crushing elbow down on the back of his head.

It’s too early to be certain, but I think that finished him as a tax preparer.  I know enough Spanish to understand he was mumbling apologies as he exited, but somehow, that just made things worse, and I continued to beat him as he crawled out the door.

It was an entirely unpleasant scene, and almost completely ruined my Sunday.  But tax preparation is a dangerous and often bloody business – almost as much as writing – and you’d better be prepared when you step into that ring.

This also upsets my Monday, which was already rather intensely scheduled.  Now I have to add “Find a new tax preparer” to my list, which is something I had allocated neither time nor energy for.

I think it might be time to get out of California.  You should too, if you know what’s good for you.  I took a lot of shit from last week’s post suggesting we drive the entire rotten Gen Z into the sea, but in all honesty, I’m pretty sure the entire state of California will soon break off from the mainland and sink into the mighty Pacific.  There is a greater-than-zero chance that both Oregon and Washington State will be dragged into the murky depths as well.  This entire stupid coast would quickly sink into eternal darkness, and all residents will be quickly eaten by sharks and orcas.  The geography of these three states was never meant to support this amount of incompetence and stupidity.  It seems natural and necessary that the entire thing collapse in on itself and sink into a dark, watery death.

I think we’re at the moment in our history that Henry Miller was talking about when he said. “The enormous and elaborate machine  which is America will go haywire.  It will be the aurora borealis which will usher in the long night.”  Indeed.  The long night started the moment our befuddled and beclowned president mumbled and slurred the Oath, but the real darkness is only now starting to appear.  And the Really Scary Ugliness has yet to be even previewed.  But it is coming.

There are blinking red lights everywhere, and it remains a mystery to me how the Shit has yet to actually hit the Fan.  But the longer it takes, the worse it’s going to be.  Because we’re already three months into this most dangerous year, I’m feeling more comfortable making certain predictions.  There are five events I’m looking at that now have a far-better-than-average chance of happening this year.  Any two of these happen, the results could be catastrophic.  Three would be orders of magnitude worse.  The shitty thing is if one happens, the chances of another happening is doubled.  That would then triple the chances of a third thing happening.  At this moment, the two I think are most likely to happen are these:

• China moves on Taiwan by the end of the summer.  Most likely in the form of a naval blockade.  Regardless, this, combined with other conflagrations and world events, likely begins WWIII, which will be disastrous.
• Civil violence in the winter.  The entities that have been dividing the United States will achieve critical mass, and one side will break and go to guns.  The other side will respond in kind, and whatever happens then will be disastrous.

This is the shit that keeps me up at night.  I wake up each morning and instantly think: “Has it happened over night?  Is today the day?”  And while I’m very pleased that it didn’t happen overnight and today was apparently not the day, I’m not comforted.  As I mentioned supra, I think these are inevitabilities, and the longer they don’t happen, the worse it will be when they finally do.

Okay…enough of the apocalypse…I have to get to work on these goddamn books.  You know, it does take some of the proverbial wind out of the sails knowing that the end times will be arriving at the exact same time I’m hoping to get these books on the shelves.  It might behoove to wait a year, see if there’s still anyone around who can read.

Brace yourself, or get out while you can…
You Know Who

N.P.: “Free Bird – TOTEM Remix” – Lynyrd Skynyrd

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

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.