“Woman Laughing with Salad 2” by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2023

It kills the very brave and the very good and the very gentle indiscriminately.  If you are none of these, it will kill you too.  But there will be no special hurry. ~ Ernest Hemmingway

Hey, dearest reader…I’m back.  Where I’ve been I can’t say, as per our usual arrangement, but suffice it to say I’m glad to be back.  Wandering endlessly in the Darkness…felt like I was gone for ages.  Sorry about the lack of notice.  You know how it is, dear reader: when it’s time to Go Dark, it’s actually kind of rare that you get any notice.  Occupational hazard, I suppose.
Anyway, things have been Weird and I need a nap.  We’ll catch up soon.

N.P.: “Sho Been Worse” – Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown

Remembering the life and love of Mary Wallace and her family.  “Always and forever.”

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2023

To the other people in the waiting room…yes, I am looking at you.  Though you’ll never know.  I’d even admit to what I’m doing technically as watching you.  Not in a creepy way…not really.  And I’m told I have a subconscious tendency to stare.  I’d apologize, but even if I am unintentionally staring, you still will never know.  I’m just watching you not watch me.  Or anyone else.  I’m watching you and everyone else in this room stare at their screens.  Oblivious to everything else.  Obsessed not with observing life, but observing other people’s observations of life.  Free thinking is gone.  Critical thinking is gone.  No more active thought…just one-directional, unquestioning intake.  What the hell happened to you people?  I don’t want to know any of you.  I wouldn’t drink with you even if you were paying.  You actually volunteered for slavery.
I want to help you…I really do.  But first, you need to look up.  To make any change at all, you’re going to need to put away your phone, and just look up.

N.P.: “Until It Sleeps” – Metallica

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2023

For the last several weeks, California has been under both a drought emergency and a flood emergency.  Simultaneously.  In the same exact place.  Weird as tits on a bishop.  When asked about this ludicrous incongruity on the steps of the Capitol this morning, the governor grabbed a spokesperson from Water Resources and thrust her in front of the camera.  The chick from Water Resources blathered on about global warming for a bit…just long enough for the governor to climb into his motorcade and escape.  What the chick from Water meant to say was, “If this looks like egregious incompetence from the state’s executive branch, then that’s likely what it is: this state is run by absolute morons.”

N.P.: “It Serves You Right To Suffer – The Avener Rework” – John Lee Hooker

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Happy New Years Eve, dear reader.  I hope the last one was good, and the next is even better.

I do a lot of bitching about how mercilessly hot the summers are here in Fecal Creek, and they are, in fact, brutal.  The sky seems completely empty during the summer, offering no protection, no barrier against the nuclear fire of that no-so-far star around which we endlessly orbit.  And it just drags on for ages, the summer does.  It’s hard not to take it personally, day after day after week after month.  It’s punitive.  For six months out of every year, I’m miserable.  I absolutely hate it.
But from the first of November until the end of April, The Creek is a fine place to be.  The air is cold and crisp, the skies are dark and chaotic, and the trees are angry and menacing, like they want to fight.  It’s beautiful; a reminder of why I stay here. It helps me forget about the hellish summer for a few months, and makes enduring them worthwhile.
I’m focused on the weather today because we’re in the middle of an atmospheric river, and it’s just been The Great Deluge here the last few days.  I’ve enjoyed every minute.
2022 was a great year at The Safehouse.  Of course, because life here requires total devotion to coolness and secrecy, I regrettably can’t give you any details, but it will all be told eventually.  This year was also exceptionally challenging…monumentally challenging, even.  But every challenge was risen to.  And I learned a lot.
I am grateful and truly appreciative of so much this year.  I don’t take any of it for granted.
Thank you, dear reader, for another weird, wonderful year.  I think this next one’s gonna be even weirder.  And I promise not to bitch about the weather as much.

N.P.: “Wail of Sumer/And There Will Your Heart Be Also” – Fields of the Nephilim

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Merry Christmas, dear reader…sorry about the belatedness.  So more appropriately, happy Boxing Day.

N.P.: “Christmas Is The Time to Say, ‘I Love You'” – Billy Squier

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

TO: The Honorable Kevin Skutchinson
Mayor of Fecal Creek, CA
November 15, 2022
RE: These Stupid Goddamn Traffic Circles

Dear Skutch,

First, allow me to apologize for that weirdness on Thanksgiving night. I didn’t know that was your motorcade…I assumed it was the Governor, again…you know how he gets around the holidays. I’ve asked him to stop. Anyway, I’m just sorry as hell that that happened. You are always welcome at The Safehouse.

But never mind that…we’ve got more important cats to skin, namely, what is starting, to my jaded eyes at least, to look like a proliferation of traffic circles in this idyllic town of ours.

I doubt I need to remind you of the last time I attempted to bring this problem to your attention, back when you put that first despicable roundabout in right in front of City Hall. My months of letters of desperate invective went unanswered, and ultimately I was forced to drive endless laps around that ridiculous traffic circle whilst laying on the horn just to get you to acknowledge my concerns. But after all that, you did exactly nothing. Even now, what…two years later…I still have to deal with that monstrosity at least once a week, when I have to come downtown to re-up on groceries and ammunition. And at least once a week, I’m doing multiple laps around that thing, blaring the horn and flying my favorite finger directly at your office. And still, nothing.

And let’s be honest here, Kevin…if it was just you and me driving around this town, the traffic circles would be a non-issue…we would cruise around with complete insouciance to the traffic circle or any other artificial impediment to our progress: we would handle them masterfully. But then there are all these other motherfuckers on the road with us that mess everything up for everybody. You and I both know, as wonderful as this little town of ours is, the citizenry is completely inept behind the wheel. I don’t know what it is with the landed gentry of Fecal Creek, but they cannot fucking drive. They can’t even handle to the right-turn/merge lanes at every major intersection in The Creek: no need to stop, even on a red, but at least half the time, some old bat just decides it’s time to stop and then stays stopped despite the banshee screams of a dozen horns directly behind her. Goddammit, Skutch! How can you possibly expect a mind like that to artfully cope at all with the unnecessary complexities of a traffic circle?

And now I see you’re putting in another traffic circle, but this one much closer to The Safehouse, at the intersection of Bedlam and Squalor. This is completely unacceptable. Any roundabout in the United States is a waste of both time and money. Any roundabout in Fecal Creek, I can’t help but take personally, but placing one so close to my home is just egregious.

This may mean war. I’d hope not, man…you know I’m a pacifist at heart, but you may have pushed me too far this time.

We must draw the line at this, Mayor Skutchinson. I demand that you remove these traffic circles immediately and return Fecal Creek to its previous state of blissful ignorance with regards to the traffic circle menace.

I know I can count on you, Kevin. Make it happen.

Sincerely,
Your pissed constituent,
Jayson Gallaway

N.P.: “Head Over Heels” – JD McPherson