I had high hopes for the writing today, dear reader, but bidness got in the way. Just bidness, all day. Feeling more hopeful about tomorrow.

N.P.: “Erotic City (Make Love Not War Erotic City Come Alive) [Extended Version]” – Prince

Me:  I’m sick of these fucking hipster dives you keep taking me to.
She: Okay, grandpa, settle down.
Me: Oh fuck you.  I’m not old enough to be…look, I’m only a couple years older than your dad.  And you said it was hot.
She: It is hot.  But you need to quit complaining about everyplace we go.  
Me:  Then you need to start picking less shitty places for us to go.  That last place, your friend’s bar, with the fucking jungle of herbs and shit he insisted on draping over the sides of every cocktail?  And his insipid vest and old-timey mustache.
She: Relax.  Just eat your…what did you get?  Spaghetti and meatballs?
Me:  Nooooooo.  I would have ordered spaghetti and meatballs if they had spaghetti and meatballs on the menu.  But they couldn’t do that.  Because they’re fucking hipsters.  So the only option was “deconstructed spag bol.”  Which, by the way, what the fuck?
She:  I think it’s supposed to be spaghetti bolognese.
Me:  They just stuck the ingredients in jars and here they are? What the hell? Am I supposed to assemble this myself, or will that ruin the whole thing?  Will they throw me out here for constructing my dinner?  I hate this place so much.  Look at this…this is absurd.  $23 for this bullshit. 

How’s your $18 deconstructed avocado toast? 
She:  Okay, okay…this is pretty stupid.  Do you just want to go?
Me:  Maybe…But I’m really hungry…I kind of want desert.  Do we want to risk it?
She: Sure.  How badly can they fuck up desert?”
Me:  Well, come on…you have to really go out of your way to fuck up spaghetti, but ta-da! [clinks jars of deconstructed spaghetti with butter knife].
She: Touché.  Touché
Me: [looking at the menu]  Jesus.  
She: Is it bad?
Me: It’s worse.  “Bone marrow apple turnover.”  Yeah.  No shit.  Get this: “Bone marrow ice cream, bourbon smoked apples, spiced pork rinds…”
She:  No!
Me:  Yes!  “Spiced pork rinds, and cider gastric,” whatever the fuck that is.
She: How about this…”Ice Cream Experience.”  
Me:  Goddammit.  Why does it have to be an experience?  What can’t they just serve ice cream.  Ice cream is perfect.  It doesn’t need “an experience.”  And who the hell would pay $32 for an ice cream experience?
She: You’re about to.  I’m gonna order it. 
Me:  Oh hell.  Okay.  Shit.  Is it deconstructed?  
She:  Likely.  
Me:  This place blows.  I’m going to the bathroom.  

She:  How was the bathroom?  They mess that up too?
Me:  Of course they did.  No sink.  In lieu of a sink, there was a bucket.  
She: A bucket?
Me:  A motherfucking bucket.  Look:

She:  They’re taking the whole urban organic farm aesthetic a little far.  
Me:  I hate this place so much.  
KevintheServer:  Okay, we have the Ice Cream Experience…[places bowl with two scoops of vanilla ice cream on the table, then what looks like a flight of beers, but it’s not beers.]
Me:  What the hell is all this?
KtS:  This is the Ice Cream Experience…you’re going to love it.  
Me:  I’m sure.  Why is it an experience?   Why isn’t just ice cream?  Is this a deconstructed sundae?
KtS:  No, of course not.  So this [gesturing toward the bowl of ice cream] is a bowl of ice cream.  And this [gesturing to the flight of not-beer] is the accouterments.  So we have vanilla beans, coffee beans, a fine rum….
Me: [grabbing the rum] Rum!  [shoots the rum].
She:  Baby!  I don’t think…
KtS:  Um, yeah, so you’re not supposed to just drink it.
Me: Any ‘experience’ that involves booze being brought to the table that I’m not supposed to drink is not something I’m paying…how much am I paying for this, baby?
She: Thirty two dollars.
Me: That I’m paying thirty two dollars for.  In fact, for $32, I’m expecting a couple more shots of rum.
KtS: I’ll have more rum brought over, but please don’t drink it…it’s an important part of the experience.
Me:  I appreciate that, Kevin, but fair warning…I’m gonna drink it.
She:  [to KtS] That’s true.  He absolutely will drink it.  How about it we order you a shot of rum.  
Me:  I don’t want a shot of rum.
She:  But you just said you were going to drink the shot of rum he’s bringing over.  To replace the shot of rum you already drank!
Me: That’s just what he brought over and put on the table.  If he’d brought over a finger of gin, I would have dispatched that as well.  And I fucking hate gin.  I’m just trying to be cooperative here…working with what I’m being given.  
She:  What do you want a shot of so that you don’t drink the Ice Cream Experience rum?
Me: Whiskey.  
She: Can we get a shot of Jamie’s, please, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t drink the rum.  
KtS:  That will work. 
Me:  Fine.  So now that we have that figured out, what the hell is the rest of this nonsense?
KtS: Okay, so here’s what you do.  First, you inhale from one element of the bouquet….
Me:  The bouquet?  Is that all this shit here?  
KtS:  Yes, that’s the bouquet.  So here, just try a bit of the ice cream as is.  
Me:  Okay…vanilla ice cream.  It’s lovely.  
KtS:  Now take a big whiff of these vanilla beans and then take another bite.  
She:  Oooooooo.
Me:  Son of a bitch.  
KtS:  Amazing, right?  Here, now try the coffee beans.  
Me:  Jesus.
She:  Oh wow…that’s nice. 
KtS: And here is the rum and a shot of Jameson’s.  
Me: Wonderful, Kevin, thank you.  
She: No…don’t drink the rum!  Let me sniff it first.  
Me:  Oh lord.
She:  That’s amazing…here, try it.  
Me: [shoots the rum]
She: You suck.  
Me: I know.  
She: Just the worst.  Thanks for dinner.  
Me:  Mm. 

N.P.: “Wait for You” – Bonham

So I did like I said I was gonna do, and started wandering through The Vault this morning. Worked on 2 – 3 things throughout the day. Got a lot done. Some book stuff, but mostly just individual, unattached things. I could really use more time. But I suppose everyone can say that.

N.P.: “Are Friends Electric” – Groove Armada

If coming up with ideas for things that need writing was the job, I would be the best in the business. I need to work on the follow-through…the fleshing out, completion, and editing. Think I’ll spend the next few days just going through the vault and finishing a few things. It’s a bit overwhelming at this point.

N.P.: “The Angel Wars” – Gary Numan

Even when I still believed that Santa Claus was an actual dude with an actual mailing address inside the Arctic Circle, with an actual toy shop at the same address staffed mostly by elves, blah blah blah, I felt, deep down in that dark and vacant space where my soul should have been, that Things Weren’t Right.   Even as toddlers, children understand that there are scary monsters [see The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim and that study where children were given rewritten versions of fairy tales with the scary monsters taken out, and the kids got all pissed off and attacked their teachers’ kneecaps].  Rugrats know that evil lurks, and they resent the hell out of patronizing adults who tell them otherwise.  I certainly did.  Which is why the unipolar morality of the Santa story never really sat well with me: goodness is ostensibly rewarded, but evil goes completely unpunished.  All year long, the promise of every materialistic dream a child may have coming true on Christmas morning is dangled in front of the child’s beady eyes on the condition of “good” behavior during the rest of the year.   I always assumed there was some kind of sliding scale of goodness vs. toys spectrum: if your behavior was superlative and Christ-like all year long, then you get absolutely everything on your list, and perhaps even a few bonus toys.  If you were a minimally decent person for, say, 8 months out of the year, but a bit of a prick the rest of the time, then you might only get a third of the things on your list.  But what of little Adolf and Osama?  What about the little kid who is an absolute bastard every goddamn day of the year?  What of him?  According to the Santa story, nothing.  Not a damn thing. Hell, Santa will even still come by your house: he’ll just leave a piece of coal.  So what?  Who cares? This means that some little fucker can run around terrorizing the neighborhood, lowering property values and ruining everybody’s lives all year long, and the only thing he has to worry about is maybe not getting as many toys as the Goody Two-Shoes next door?  All little Adolf has to do is stroll over to Goody’s on the 26th, when the little angel is playing with all of his benevolently hard-earned toys, whack him over the head with a board, take whatever toys he wants, and swagger back home.   No.  That’s just ludicrous.  It is unjust. And it is existentially unsound. There can be no light without darkness.  And there can be no goodness without evil.  That knowledge is innate in human children.  But in the Disneyfied, politically correct culture that is modern day America, apparently parents are afraid of damaging their little snowflakes’ eggshell psyches, We ask our teachers not to use red pen when grading papers, because red is the color of blood and there is an implied threat there.  We’re not going to keep score in little league games because the idea of someone winning necessitates that some lost, and the concept of losing at anything, even a baseball game, is far more than a human being should have to endure.  And oh God, the results are tragic.  Entire generations who cannot conjugate the verbs “to lose” or “to fail.”   I say Enough. Ya basta!  I say that people in general, but children especially, are far heartier and more resilient than they are ever given credit for.  And it is with that in mind that I suggest that we hit reset and start celebrating Christmas properly.  Let us look back toward Europe, to where the Santa Claus story originated, to get the full story: the story of the Santa’s dark counterpart, Krampus.   If Santa Claus is a right jolly old elf, then Krampus is a pissed off libidinous Christmas demon.  If old Saint Nick is benevolent generosity and reward, Krampus is divine retribution and vengeance.  Krampus is a very satanic-looking demon (I suppose all demons worth their horns are rather satanic-looking): a satyr (in the Roman tradition (as opposed to the Greek)), with massive horns and a bifurcated tail, who is draped in noisy chains and cow bells, and wields a collection of pointy sticks with which (get this) he beats all hell out of children who have been assholes during the previous year.  If children have committed more than the typically venial offenses associated with childhood, Krampus will not simply beat them with his sticks and chains, but will either dismember them, or simply drag them to hell, never to be seen again.  Sometimes Krampus just eats the goddamn kids right there in front of God and everybody.  And don’t think you can go running to Santa to save you from Krampus…no.  Krampus and Santa are good buddies.  Existential friends who enjoy happy hour at der biergarten together.   Krampus does not just molest and abuse vagrant children.  No.  When not dispensing yuletide justice to miscreants, Krampus enjoys goosing attractive women and licking their faces, a la Rick James on a good, crackful night.  Oh yes…Krampus is a straight up poon hound.  Unlike that grandfatherly twat Santa Claus, ever the family man, the Christmas demon crushes mad ass on the reg.  There is no Mrs. Krampus.  No need.  Krampus has game and he wants to fist your mother.  After he eats your soul.   Speaking of eating, don’t bother trying to placate Krampus with cookies and milk.  He cannot be plied with baked goods, and Krampus is notoriously lactose-intolerant.  You would be better off leaving whiskey and steak, but those will not likely work either.  To avoid the wrath of Krampus this night, there is only one path: The path of righteousness, and the avoidance of jackassery throughout the rest of the year.
Glücklicher Krampusnact, lieber Leser. Krampus über alles.

N.P.: “Lecher Bitch” – Genitorturers

Did a little writing today, but not enough. Never enough.

N.P.: “Carnivorous” – Band of Skulls

Gotta add a couple of names to the People I Want to Fight list. First up is Greta whatsherass…seriously, what’s her name. Hold on. Googling annoying Swedish climate whiner…Thurnberg. This hypocritical little shit. Comes over here lecturing the U.N. and anyone else into being told off by some impudent little viking about how your use of toilet paper is destroying her bullshitty utopian dreams. Then she makes this huge deal about not flying, and has a photo op on the yacht that is taking her back to the North Pole. What wasn’t mentioned was that the skipper of the yacht flew from England to the U.S., thus negating whatever carbon emissions Gretyl claiming to be saving by taking a boat instead of a commercial flight. Also, this fucking boat was not some all-wood thing hewn by the climate-loving Vikings. No…this 40-foot behemoth is priced at $18 million and the only wood on it is the fully stocked wet bars on each floor. That thing used so many fossil fuels and environmentally harmful processes and chemicals to be built. How environmentally friendly is a 40-foot fiberglass hull? It is also equipped with a pretty massive and fully fueled back-up diesel engine. ICE should have arrested her for truancy and thrown her back in the goddamn ocean. Idiot.

The second idiot on the list is Colin Kaepernick. This ungrateful fuck can’t shut up about how terrible the country and economic system which has allowed him to achieve success far greater than he could ever have anywhere else in the world is. Dude…the reason you can’t get anyone to hire you is not because of any racist system…it’s because you suck. You’re a shit quarterback, but you’re also an asshole and nobody wants to work with you. So this idiot celebrated “Unthanksgiving” with some Native Americans, just talkin’ waffle about history and how terrible the United States is and how we Americans took everything from the Indians. Which, fine. But that’s where he stops, and that’s the problem I have with him and all the other virtue signalers making so much noise these dark days: they spend their days bitching at us about what a rotten society this is and lecturing US about needing to do something, all the while doing exactly jack shit themselves. He’s got a couple of massive properties, yet he hasn’t given a single square inch of his land to our indigenous brethren. If you wanna give it back, fine…you go first. And why isn’t he hounding all his (former) NFL millionaire coworkers who also own massive amounts of property to give their shit back? Nope. That will never happen.

I’ve had to listen to a pretty unbearable amount of bullshit from guilty white liberals about how terrible the country and capitalism and white people are. Everyone of them has a university degree (construction workers and tow truck drivers are working way too hard to worry about their fictitious privilege). They will talk your ear off right up until you start asking questions: you got your degree from _______ University? “Yes.” Did you offer your spot in your class to someone who was less privileged than you? “Well, no…” Did you offer to pay the tuition and buy the books of a minority instead of paying your own way? Even once? Did you ever even consider it? “Well, that’s not…” No, that is exactly the point. The people who lecture the loudest have typically done the absolute least in terms of actual help or even actual action.

The only people I’ll listen to lectures about fossil fuels and the environment from is the Amish, and according to them, the climate is fine. Everyone else is full of shit.

N.P.: “Up Jumped the Devil” – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Happy as a pig in shit about The Rain, dear reader, but everything else can kiss my ass. Not that everything else is going to terribly…I’m just in a bit of a mood tonight.

It’s finally December, which is probably my favorite month of the year. November was a wash, but by design. I’d written the entire month off before it even started to deal with a bunch of non-me stuff. And mission accomplished. But now it’s December…time to catch up. Or at least attempt to catch up. Okay…catching up is impossible…I’m decades behind. But get back on a more regular and productive schedule. That’s what’s happening this month.

N.P.: “One Slip – Remix 2019” – Pink Floyd