Good day, dear reader…well, decidedly that.  Great day, dear reader!  This is probably my favorite time of my favorite time of year: post-Thanksgiving and pre-Christmas.  It’s nice and cold, but it’s only going to get colder.  The nights are nice and long, but they’re only going to get longer.  And for that I am thankful.

I’m thankful for a great many things this year, and all of those things were exuberantly cheersed-to during last night’s annual Gallaway Thanksgiving Bacchanalia of Gratitude.  Gratitude was shared, plans were hatched, and drinks were drunk.  It was a fine time, and one that I’m looking very forward to repeating at Christmas when we have the Annual Gallaway Christmas Croquet and Eggnog Orgy.   That one makes the T-Day Bacchanalia seem sedate.

N.P.: “Rebel Yell Type O Negative Style” – Denis Pauna

One of the reasons I’m so excited about 2025 is that I can finally tell you about specific things going on as opposed to the boring vagaries we’ve been forced to deal in for the last decade.  I’ll be getting much more personal in the future.

A theme that will no doubt be annoyingly recurring will be that of Revenge.  My dear reader has no idea how significant Revenge is in my life.  In anybody else, it would be a problem.  Or at least an issue one should probably discuss with a mental health professional.  Fortunately for all concerned, I am not anybody else.  I work in revenge the way the Inuit work in scrimshaw.  Much more on this later.  For now, for today’s Word(s) of the Day, let us compare and contrast two words used for revenge, that are often used interchangeably, but actually have significantly different meanings and embody distinct concepts shaped by their underlying motivations and societal roles: Vengeance and Retribution.

Vengeance is deeply personal, rooted in emotion and often fueled by anger or a need for personal revenge.  It is characterized by a desire to make the perpetrator suffer as a form of personal satisfaction.  A classic example of vengeance is found in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” where the protagonist is consumed by the need to avenge his father’s murder, which consumption is quite familiar to me.  This quest for personal revenge drives Hamlet to take drastic and often irrational actions, highlighting the emotional turmoil and chaos vengeance can unleash.  Fuck yes!  Love it!

In contrast, retribution is more calculated and objective, often emerging from a sense of justice.  It seeks to restore balance by ensuring that punishment is proportionate to the offense.  This concept is foundational to legal systems around the world, where retribution is achieved through structured penalties designed to deter future wrongdoing and maintain social order.  An example of retribution is the character of Javert in “Les Miserable.”  Javert is fixated on upholding the law and delivering justice, relentlessly pursuing Jean Valjean to ensure he pays for his past crimes.  His unwavering commitment to retribution underscores the Disneyesque principle of justice over personal vendetta.

These concepts not only populate literature but also permeate societal frameworks, where they influence how justice is perceived and administered.  Vengeance often leads to cycles of retaliation, lacking the fairness and balance that retribution seeks to uphold, and most societies regard this as a bad thing.  Retribution, while striving for justice, almost always becomes rigid and unyielding, as seen in Javert’s strict adherence to the law, which ultimately blinds him to the nuances of human morality.

I understand both sides.  However, as usual, in practice, I find the entire dichotomy between vengeance and retribution unnecessary: there is no need to choose either/or.  I’ve found that usually both are needed for true justice to be done.  At least that’s how I do it.  This was never a conscious decision by me…I just noticed a couple of years ago that this is how I handle people fucking with me.  I go for retribution first, for two reasons: 1) retribution usually involves time limits (things like statutes of limitation, time between an incident occurring and your reporting of said incident, et cetera, whereas vengeance has no such constraints), and 2) it will look better later if your vengeance lands you in hot water.  Retribution in most cases typically means calling the police or involving whatever civic authorities are appropriate, then allowing them to respond and mete out justice as society sees fit.  Because the society in which I live is run by incompetent cowards, the results of this will always be pathetically weak and lacking.  In my experience, this has been the case 100% of the time.  At best, you can expect half-assed, pusillanimous, and insouciant gestures rather than any actual justice.   So then one must turn to good ol’ meat-eating, whiskey-drinking, I-will-wear-your-fucking-skin-and-dance-around-my-house vengeance.  Vengeance has no statute of limitations, no real limitations of any kind, really.  The only guidance I take regarding vengeance comes from Sun Tzu: Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

N.P.: “The Devil You Know” – Blues Saraceno

In these stupid and ludicrous times when the dumbest amongst us are far too comfortable making up words to describe obscure and obscene sexual preferences, I’d like to mention a big one of mine, today’s Word of the Day: sapiosexual.

It is a word, intelligent reader, that quite simply dances on the tongue like a fine wine, matured in the oak barrels of intellectual allure.  In a world obsessed with appearances, a sapiosexual finds more tantalizing thrills in the cerebral gymnastics of minds at play.  Behold:

A sapiosexual is someone who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature in others.  The term is a blend of the Latin root “sapio,” meaning “to be wise” or “to taste,” and “sexual,” because, frankly, what’s more seductive than the occasional Latin flex?

Stanley chuckled into his drink.  “Listen, Lou…you’re preaching to the choir here.  I’ve been a hard-core sapiosexual my entire life…well, except for that few decades in the like the 80s and 90s when I was just really into tits.  But other than that, I’ve always been a big brains guy.

N.P.: “All I Want Is You – Bonus Track” – The Mission

And today we shift our focus to verse, as today’s birthday boy is T.S. Eliot.  Born on September 26, 1888, Eliot wasn’t just a poet; he was the maestro of modernism with his work always tapdancing right on the that thin line between comprehension and chaos.

Eliot was the unlikely rock star of the poetry world, something that we’ve not seen in this country for an unfortunately long time, mostly because modern Americans don’t read.  He was a Harvard-educated intellectual who had a “knack for turning the mundane into the magnificent.”  But be was no stuffy academic…his interests ran toward the peculiar, and his wit was a sharp as one of my throwing knives.

I’ve always found it strange that the mastermind behind “The Waste Land” was the same guy who wrote “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” which inspired the frankly overrated Broadway hit “Cats.”  I prefer when Eliot sticks to brooding existentialism instead of whimsical cats, but whatever.

Of course, Eliot’s eccentricities didn’t end with his love for cats.  He insisted on sartorially elegance for himself, which set him apart rather dramatically from his bohemian peers.  It was like me not having any tattoos: rebellion wrapped in a three-piece suit.

T.S. Eliot left the U.S. for London in 1914 primarily to study philosophy at Oxford.  However, he was also eager to immerse himself in the more vibrant literary scene of Europe, which was more aligned with his modernist aspirations.  He wanted to hang out with influential writers like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Ezra Pound, who became Eliot’s mentor.  In true rebel form, he eventually became a British citizen (actually, the British don’t have citizens…they have subjects, so I don’t know how actually rebellious this was).

Eliot had a day job working at a bank, which seems rather surreal…that mind forced to focus on banking all day.

Cheers, Tom!

N.P.: “Bohemian Rhapsody – OG Mix” – Puscifer

What do we know about 18 to 24-year-olds? They are really stupid. They make really bad decisions.  ~ Kamala Harris

It may be time for a new treadmill, dear reader.  The old one has served me well as I’ve put…let’s see…7305 miles on it.  Not bad.  I went through two (2) pairs of Under Armor running shoes racking up enough miles to run from Canada to Mexico and back multiple times.  So I can’t complain too much about its performance.
Until this week.
This week, the goddamn thing attacked me.
This week, due to what I assume is a faulty fuse, the treadmill just suddenly quits at some seemingly random point in my five-mile run.  If the treadmill behaved normally (and civilly), it would do the slow and gentle slowing from 10mph to zero over the course of several seconds, as it does when you press the “Stop” button.  But that’s not what happens.  This thing just instantly comes to a dead stop.  Which sudden stop sends me careening into the control panel  of the treadmill and sometimes into the wall just beyond, at exactly 10 mph.  Neither the control panel nor the wall, are particularly made to be crashed into at 10mph, and the result of the impacts thus far have been unusual bruising and an almost broken nose.
I’m going to change the fuse tonight and see if that takes care of it.  If not, I may start a GoFundMe to cover medical bills and the cost of a new, perhaps more padded treadmill.

N.P.: “Raise the Red Flag” – Marilyn Manson

We must together, work together, to see where we are, where we are headed, but also see it as a moment, yes, to together, address the challenges and to work on the opportunities.
~ Kamala Harris

Does anybody else feel gross and vaguely queasy about the amount of gaslighting going on in the United States these days?  It’s probably just me.

N.P.: “Whole Lotta Sabbath (Wax Audio Lance Herbstrong Edit)” – Lance Herbstrong

The democrats aren’t even pretending anymore.  Saviors of democracy my ass.  Over the weekend, in what can only be described as a palace coup, the party elites (3-4 people) decided to literally depose the democratic nominee (according to the primary vote), nullify 15 million democratic votes, and just give his nomination and campaign funds to someone else “who can win.”

While this is egregious and outrageous enough, what is truly unbelievable has been the democrats reaction to this: they don’t give a shit.  Which is just bizarre.  Apparently they’re fine with this blatant revelation that their political party is run by a small group of “elites” who are apparently totally comfortable overwriting the will of their own people, and why shouldn’t they be…their own people won’t say a word.

You almost have to feel bad for Old Joe.  He was so insistent…he was going to do a string of comeback appearances last week, including a multi-date trip to Las Vegas.  Every night, after Matlock but before bed, Joe and his comms team we putting out fiery and defiant messages declaring with papal ex cathedra that by Christ  Joe was the nominee and that he was staying in the race.  Then suddenly, in the middle of his Vegas stint, Joe Biden, who has been vaxed and boosted 113 times, got COVID.  For the third time.  The public got a glimpse of him trudging up his big boy stairs to Air Force One and that was it…he was off to deepest, darkest Delaware to “recover” from COVID.

Then Joe woke up last Sunday to find someone had forged a letter on his personal stationary and posted it to his X account saying that he was dropping out of the race.  Then whomever posted the first X published another, more hastily written X saying, “Oh yeah…we also endorse Scamala as replacement candidate.”  And democrat voters just fell in line immediately.

Well, most of them did.  Even the shameless, race-baiting grifters over at BLM know this whole thing stinks to high hell of corruption and shady shit. To wit:

It’s a start.  Wait ’til they find out the Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War because of it, opposed Reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against the civil rights acts of the ’50s and ’60s.  But “a party of hypocrites” is a start.  Baby steps.

N.P.: “Black Betty – Fuzzy” – Spiderbait

Presage (verb): To predict or foretell a future event. Presage (noun): An omen, portent, or indication of a future event.

The term “presage” originates from the Latin word “praesagium,” combining “prae-” meaning “before” and “sagire” meaning “to perceive keenly.” It entered the English language in the late 14th century, retaining its meaning related to foretelling events.

Fuck, he thought for the seventh time in the last minute.  He had never been this blocked.  He’d had days, even the occasional week that he couldn’t write.  But never like this…never months.  It wasn’t that he didn’t have anything to say…quite the opposite, actually.  He had so much to say he didn’t know where even to begin.  For months now, significant events had unfolded far more rapidly that society could process them, and far too fast for him to keep up with, commentary-wise.  And thus, things had spun out of control months ago. 

The previous year, in  a series of meticulously crafted blog entries, he began to presage the downfall of the American Republic. His warnings were not borne out of paranoia but from a deep analysis of the incumbent president’s actions. The president’s clear contempt for democratic norms, relentless assaults on the free press, and almost comically divisive rhetoric had people concerned, especially in light of the alarming increase in public pants-shitting episodes. Each post was a call to arms, urging his fellow citizens to recognize the signs before it was too late.

One entry, titled “The Twilight of Democracy,” stood out. “We stand on the precipice of a new era,” he wrote. “An era where the very foundations of our Republic are under siege. The signs are clear—our freedom teeters on the edge as authoritarian shadows loom large.”

Despite his compelling arguments and data-backed insights, he faced a barrage of skepticism, vitriol, and bullshit. Many dismissed his predictions as alarmist or paranoid, while others accused him of partisan bias. Undeterred, he continued his crusade, hoping that his words would reach those who could still make a difference.

Months turned into years, and the political landscape grew increasingly volatile. Scandals erupted, institutions crumbled, and civil liberties were eroded. As the country’s stability waned, his presages seemed to transform from speculation into grim reality. Those who once jeered at his predictions now revisited his blog with a newfound respect.

In the end, his voice echoed through the annals of history as a presage unheeded.  His story serves as a poignant reminder: sometimes, the most critical warnings come not from official channels, but from the perceptive minds that dare to foresee the future.

N.P.: “Cast No Shadow” – Tales of Sound and Silence

In honor of Memorial Day, our Word of the Day is “remembrance.” Judging by the number of people I’ve heard who’ve very inappropriately wish me or anyone else, “Happy Memorial Day,” a reminder is necessary.  This word encapsulates the essence of this important holiday, which serves as a time to honor and remember those who have sacrificed their lives in military service.

Remembrance (noun): The action of remembering something or someone, often a person who has died; a memory or commemoration.

The word “remembrance” originates from the Middle English “remembraunce,” which in turn comes from the Old French “remembrance.” Its roots lie in the Latin verb “rememorari,” meaning “to remember,” composed of “re-” (again) and “memor” (mindful).

On this Memorial Day, let us all take a moment of remembrance for the brave souls who have served and sacrificed.  Their legacy lives on through our memories and our commitment to never forget.

Word of the Day: pestiferous

adjective

literary

1. harboring infection or disease.

2. humorous – constituting a pest or nuisance; annoying.

The janitor had clearly grown tired of the conversation and had begun thinking more about his lunch than the outcome of this colloquy: “No…what you’re going to do is take your pestiferous ass back to that rotting hovel and leave us alone to make babies and drink deeply of the green chartreuse.”  It was, it occurred to him at that moment, one of the stranger Wednesdays he’d had in a while.

N.P.: “Scarface (Push It To The Limit)” – Paul Engemann