My plan was to keep an eye on the absurd trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, but after yesterday, I was intrigued.  After today, I was riveted.
The trial shouldn’t even be happening at all…there simply is no case.  Never was.  As there typically is not when it comes to woke mob outrage.  The problem with the woke (one of myriad) is that they trade in outrage…it’s like their currency.  Which is why rather than simply having an opinion, simply agreeing or disagreeing with someone and voting, they are required to throw a tantrum when they don’t get their way.  In 2020, they started accusing everyone who disagreed with them as being racist.  Or homophobic.  Or homophobic racists.  Whatever…doesn’t matter.  Then they’d throw a very public tantrum and inexplicably, to my complete disgust, much of America lacked the balls to simply say no, and so they’d get what they wanted.
Thank the maker enough American’s still have enough sense (and balls) to say no.  Netflix put the aggrieved LGBTQRSP community on notice that no, in fact you don’t get to behave however ridiculously you want and then claim that any action taken by your employer is de facto a hate crime.  At some point, bullshit woke beliefs crash into brutal reality, and it’s always hilarious.
The Rittenhouse trial has been exactly that: a brutal crash into ever-sharpened meathooks of non-woke, free-thinking justice.  The prosecutors seemed to honestly think they had a case when this farce opened, but their whole plan collapsed almost immediately.  When their “star witness” got on the stand and testified that he chased Kyle Rittenhouse down, knocked him down, and pointed a gun at him, and so Kyle blew his arm off, the prosecutor, apparently having just finished law school earlier this week, slumped in his chair and wept visibly.  Today, the judge yelled at him for several minutes about “grave constitutional violations,” and the defense made a motion for a mistrial with prejudice, and the judge said he would take the moment under advisement.
The term “grave constitutional violations” was also used by the Fifth Circuit days ago as it stayed Biden’s insipid vax mandate.
Gosh darn that pesky constitution.

N.P.: “Coast to Coast” – The Jesus and Mary Chain

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2021

A dark and stormy night, sexy reader…just how we like it.  These are good days and nights at The Haunt.  There’s a lot going on.  Still haven’t found a workflow and schedule that I’m really happy with, but I’m getting there.  Trying this thing now where I write one short story a week.  A handwritten free-write Monday morning concluding with a complete, digitally publishable short story at the end of the week.  If it’s obvious on Monday that this idea is something bigger than a short story, I’ll make as many notes as I can and then it goes in whatever to-do pile is appropriate: novel, full-length essay, screenplay, whatever.  So I’ve been at this for two weeks, and both weeks, by the end of Monday morning, I had written essentially synopses for what will likely be a screenplay and a chapter of a book, respectively, and no short stories.
A lot of times what I do feels like being each member and the manager of a five-member band.  And I am forever running out of time.

N.P.: “The Passenger” – Emily Autumn

“Never underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” ~ Barack Obama

I’ve never been a smoker of cigarettes, but in the late 90s, when California was pushing to ban smoking in bars and nightclubs, I was vociferous in my protests.  There I was, a non-smoker, who worked as a manager/dancer in a nightclub in San Francisco, hurling invective at any government official I interacted with during the time about people’s god given goddamn right to smoke.  My thinking was (and remains) that while the weak and infirm, children and elderly might need such protection from the government, there needed to be a place where informed, consenting  adults could gather to intentionally engage in unhealthy behavior and the government could kiss our consenting adult asses.

So, it is from a similar perspective that I address the present, far more dire tyranny being imposed on American citizens: the ludicrous, completely unscientific, unconstitutional, illegal vax mandate by the Brandon administration.  I am by no means “anti-vax.”  But my decision to get the vaccine, along with the myriad other decisions that I’ve made over the last year and a half about COVID was made by me, after discussion with family, based on information I’d synthesized from all available sources.  And those decisions, it turns out, were the correct ones: my decisions have worked out favorably, across the board.  No doubt luck had something to do with it, but still…. And I continue to recommend people get the vaccine.  That is not the issue.

The issue is liberty and freedom of choice.   The government has no place mandating anything regarding receiving vaccinations are putting any other chemical or substance into their bodies.  Neither Joe Biden nor any branch of the federal government has any legal authority to compel American citizens to take injections, even through insidious methods like deputizing OSHA and making taking the shot a condition of employment.  That’s absurd.  Particularly while not attaching any such mandate to receiving benefits from any federally funded benefits program.

I am not anti-vax…I am vehemently anti-mandate.

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2021

Today I had a McRib™ delivered to me, and I ate it while watching a brand new episode of Cops. This is living! AND, tonight, agreeable reader, the clocks change back to Standard Fucking Time and the sun starts setting when it should.  Today is a good day.

N.P.: “Swucca Chust” – Gramatik

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2021

Fuck the woke.

N.P.: “Long Haired Doney” – North Mississippi Allstars

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2021

Weird day, dear reader.  Started at 04:00.  Productive on all fronts.  Almost alarmingly so.  But I’ll take it.  Tomorrow should be a good day.

N.P.: “Let’s Go Brandon” – Bryson Gray, Chandler Crump, Tyson James