Monthly Archives: January 2019

Another lively Friday night in Hotel California, dear reader.  That rotten charwoman has adopted a particularly moronic dog.  As moronic as the dog may be, however, I think it’s ultimately smarter than her.  She is asking the dog questions and apparently expecting an actual verbal response from the dog, in either English or Spanish.  When the dog doesn’t respond appropriate, or you know, at all, she asks the question again, as if perhaps the dog simply didn’t hear her the first time.  When there is no response the second time, she gets increasingly angry and asks the question again.  It’s weird and awful to have to listen to.  I guess the weirdest part is that they are not yes-or-no-questions, but rather questions that solicit explanations or an expression of preferences, or whatever.  It’s just bizarre.
When she is not attempting to engage it in active conversation, this thing runs around humping everything.  At this point I’m stuck in this smoky room for the time being because I don’t feel like being sexually assaulted by an overly dim canid.  I told her she needs to get the thing fixed as soon as, but she says she can’t afford it.  I told her I’d do it for $20.  Her response was not positive, so I offered to do it for free.  That was two days ago.  She hasn’t spoken to me since.  But she sure can’t stop speaking to this fucking dog.
How am I supposed to write the most important book in the world with this idiotic and oddly nasal cacophony going on in the hallway just outside the door?
Ugh.
I’m pretty sure she stole this dog.

N.P.: “Psycho Killer” – One Bad Son

Okay, dear reader…back to the discussion we were having earlier this week, before the bacchanalian rumpus of last night.  And regrettably, this may have to be on the brief side, as I am still rather exhausted from last night.   First, the briefest recap of my assumptions:
There is no god.
Humans are animals  Remarkably advanced animals, but animals nonetheless.
It is impossible for (and therefore completely unrealistic to expect) an animal to go against its nature.
I should probably attempt to tie this weirdness together before we progress.  So here goes.
Humans, in general, have a psychological need for belief in some kind of higher power.  Such belief keeps one from having to do any real heavy lifting when it comes to the existential questions that any thinking and intelligent person is faced with pretty much every day of their lives.  Why are we here?  What is the meaning of life?  Why do I have the life I have, and why am I on the path that I’m on?  Or why does there seem to be no path or order or direction to my life?  And give me one good reason why I should ever get out of bed again.  You can either spend your entire life wrestling tormentedly with each of these and very probably never coming close to any truly satisfying answer, or, you can believe in a god and have instant answers to all of these questions.  Most people are not psychologically equipped to truly grasp an essentially meaningless existence in a universe that is governed only by chaos and chance if it can be said to be governed at all.  When faced with the cold harshness of the pure loneliness and existential dread that rushes in and fills one;s psyche when one begins to even consider such a reality, the vast majority of humans will (and do) panic and run to whatever church/belief system they are most familiar with and take deep and immediate comfort in the warm blanket that is faith and trust in a higher power.
I’ve noticed that even atheists or people who do not file any kind of organized belief system “believe” in conspiracy theories or secret societies and other secular entities that are godlike in their power and mystery (i.e., “worshiping” the Illuminati instead of Yahweh…it’s exactly the same thing).
I think that the tendency to believe there is any kind of dichotomy between Nature and Humans typically occurs comorbidly with a belief (perhaps even subconscious one) in some sort of omnipotent god that created humans.  The common thread between virtually all religions with a creator god is the belief that that god thinks humans are special or sacred or blessed and are superior to animals.  Before science, it was considered common sense that the earth was the center of not only our solar system but indeed all of creation.  When Copernicus came along, and Galileo after him, proving the theory of a heliocentric universe, society had a bit of a collective nervous breakdown, which is understandable: proving that people’s reality as well as the most basic precepts and tenets of whatever religion they had chosen to govern their lives  is essentially wrong and based on nonsense really pisses people off and they tend to find it easier to silence the voices who are discrediting their cherished beliefs than it is to attempt to successfully incorporate an entirely new belief system and admit they’ve been philosophically wrong about everything their entire uneducated lives.

Okay…that was a lot, and I’m worried I’m going to lose you in all this, particularly if I go on tonight whilst exhausted.   So I’ll leave it here for now.

N.P.: “Deus in Absentia” – Ghost

Today, beloved reader, I got victorious news about a war of attrition I’ve been engaged in for a year or so, which victory patently demanded a lewd goat dance and raucous celebration.   Which is, of course, what I did this evening.  I really had no choice.  Temporal laws being what they are, tonight’s rumpus has left me with minimal time to put words on pages, so I’m just going to do a quick bit on each project and get horizontal and dream sweet dreams of enemies’ heads on spikes.
Kidding, of course, cherished reader.  I’m rereading Dracula this week and it’s been causing my mind to wander darkly.  Don’t mind me.

N.P.: “Jailbreak” – AC/DC

Okay, so where were we in our little discussion of earlier in the week?  Oh yeah: No god.  We’re animals.
Our animal nature shapes everything we do.  We have aspired to evolve out of and outgrow some of our more base behaviors, but as noble as that effort may be, there is only so far it can possibly go.  There are limits to how physically large each species of animal can ever evolve to become.  Consider the cockroach.  I had the extreme displeasure of once holding a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach, perhaps the largest cockroach in the world.  I hated that thing so much.  I had the natural instinct to throw it to the ground and stomp it to death, but it was so big that there was a better-than-zero chance that it would not only fight back, but win.  So I didn’t stomp it to death.  But it’s the thought that counts.  Anyway, I bring this awfulness up because the only reason this bug isn’t significantly bigger than it is (after all, it’s had several million more years of evolution (and exponentially shorter generations) than humans have…had there been no restraints, these things would be the size of elephants.  But that will never happen (thank Christ) because this is as large as an insect can grow without needing to develop lungs.  And insects don’t have lungs…that’s the rules.  Put another way, the cockroach, just like every other animal, has evolved about as far as it can evolve without violating its nature.  And even if you could somehow force it to do so, the result would no longer be a cockroach, or even an insect.  The largest animal on earth, the blue whale, has evolved to be as large as it can ever get.  Perhaps bone structure and strength play a factor, but food supply is the main issue.  The larger an animal gets, the more food it needs to survive, and there simply isn’t enough zooplankton in the ocean to support animals any bigger than blue whales as they are now. To do so would require it to develop teeth and other digestive abilities so extremely different than what it has that, again, the result of such an evolution, even if possible, would yield something that was no longer a while, by definition.  Like the nasty ass roach mentioned supra, the blue whale has evolved as much as it can without violating its own nature.
Are you still with me?  I know this is getting pretty heady.  This isn’t where I wanted to leave it for tonight, dear reader, but leave it here for tonight I must.  I’ve got some work on the book to do before the night gets away from me.
N.P.: “A Tout Le Monde [Set Me Free] – Megadeth

Happy Sunday, most intelligent reader…
Guess what I didn’t do today.  Go to church.  And why didn’t I go to church, attractive reader?   For the same reason I didn’t go to the mall in December and plop down on some pedo Santa’s lap and read my Amazon wish list at him.  ‘Cause they’re ain’t no Santa and there ain’t no god and I’ve got better ways to spend my Sundays than acting delusional.
I mentioned yesterday that one of the benefits of this whilst navigating this world is that you don’t have to worry about any god’s plan, divine providence, none of that.  And if you come across someone who is doing ridiculous things or conducting their lives based on religious beliefs, it becomes effortlessly easy to dismiss them and their opinions.
Another benefit of realizing that there is no higher power controlling everything is never finding yourself wandering around the aftermath of a tornado or drowning in the tsunami that is presently where your town used to be, you don’t have to bother with the pointless question of “Why, oh lord, why me?”  Those questions are totally inappropriate and make you look like a dolt on CNN (speaking of which, if you’re going to believe in some omnipotent god, great…like I said yesterday, I envy you…but don’t go on goddamn CNN after your house and everything you own is obliterated and your baby loses a limb in a tornado and thank the almighty for keeping you both alive.  Who do you think sent the tornado?  If he wants the praise, he also gets the blame.
Okay…enough of this…you get it: no god.  Moving on.
Philosophic assumption (I don’t know what else to call them) #2: We are fundamentally and always animals.  This is where a lot of our society, most notably the politically correct, are going horribly wrong these days: they see humans and animals (a.k.a. Nature) as two totally separate things, with two totally different agendas.  They aren’t .  We humans are absolutely animals, in every way.  We’ve evolved successfully to become exceptionally good at being animals, but make no mistake: you are an animal surrounded by other animals.  All the mammal members of the animal kingdom are born in the same bloody, disgusting way,  They all spend their entire lives eating and drinking and pooping and peeing and sweating and stinking  until you contract disease or become infected or suffer any of the other weaknesses that compose the mammalia and then you die and decay and worms and maggots and stink and that’s that.  Just like the whales or the masturbating, shit-throwing simians.
Here’s the mistake most people make: we have evolved into an unbelievably advanced species (still firmly within the animal kingdom) that invented things like ethics and morality and justice, and while all of that is certainly one of the most amazing things to occur in the known universe, we are still, fundamentally, in every significant way, animals.  This matters because failure to understand this leads to a failure to understand (and thus predict) human behavior.  I’ll explicate this relevance tomorrow.  Right now I need to go play in the storm.
N.P.: “Wolf Totem” – The HU

What it is, dearest reader…
Much of your mail for the last couple of years has had to do with contemporary societal issues which, traditionally, in more civil and genteel times, I have generally tried to avoid wading too deeply into.  There are just usually much more interesting things to talk about.  But these days are different and your questions and issues keep coming  And I’m very limited in what sort of detail I can go into here about work on the books, outside of just general stuff like the going is slow or today was a good day or whatever.  So what the hell…we can look at some of these issues, if that’s what you want to do.
I have to deal with this nonsense every day whenever I’m teaching college, that unabashed bastion of political correctness.  Half the battle in composition classes is getting the students to boldly express their actual opinions rather than parroting the opinions of their instructors whom have been all too willing to share said opinions in lieu of actual subject-oriented instruction.  I could usually break the students out of their pernicious PC habits in a few weeks, though some were more more challenging than others.

Rather than address each issues as it comes along, it makes much more sense to first explain a few aspects of my thinking that may be different than yours.  The first characteristic that might be different is that I’m an atheist.  I’m not happy about it…I was much happier when I Still Believed.  And I really wish I could believe again.  I’m envious of people who have Faith.  But it’s like finding out about Santa: once you know, you can’t go back to not knowing, as much as you may want to.  But yeah…I looked into The Abyss, and nothing looked back.  There was nothing fucking there.  Nada.  Not only do I not believe in any god, but I believe in nothing supernatural.  No ghosts, no magic. no nothing.  So when I’m analyzing/discussing something, divine will, providence, or any kind of diving order do not enter into the thought process at all.  Just so you know.

Okay…more tomorrow.

N.P.: “Barra Barra” – Rachid Taha

Just angsty as hell today, dear reader.  A series of unrelated and very minor things went wrong today when they could have just as easily gone right.  Like people that you’re kind of counting on to say the exact right thing say the exact wrong one.  It’s my fault…expectations and such.  No biggie.  Nothing a reset from going to bed can’t fix.

The word count has been pretty respectable lately.  I’m hopeful for a productive day tomorrow.  There’s a storm coming.

N.P.: “Mr. Brownstone” – Guns N’ Roses

Another overly peopley day.  Peoply?  People-ly?  Whatever.  There were too many fucking people.  I got through it fine.  Exhausting, though.  In lieu of wisdom, here is a word I’m rather fond of:

Your Word of the Day is pluviophile – noun – a lover of rain;someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days.

N.P.: “Majesty” – Ghost

Too many people today, dear reader.  Too many voices.

Hell is indeed other people.  Props to Sartre, though he meant something else when he said it.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.  I hope so.  There will be even more people, even more voices.

This calls for desk whiskey.

N.P.: “Ring of Fire” – Social Distortion