Author Archives: Jayson Gallaway

Dream #4776

Last night I accidentally doubled up on the Ny-Quil and also the desk whiskey,  Ended up falling asleep fully clothed.  I dreamed I was the lead singer and keytar player for a satanic funk band called Beelzabooty.  We were on stage in the lobby of the Hotel Nelson in Tijuana, thumping our way through our latest single, Booty Juice.  The bass player, an African Canadian dude named Bro, was struggling to operate his “Beelzabong” (patent pending) that was actually built into his bass.  There was no one else in the lobby except for the desk clerk, a lugubrious middle-aged Mexican man named Jose (natch) who had seen so much human horror from that front desk during the last 20 years that he is completely unfazed by literally anything, especially some satanic funk band that’s playing in the hotel lobby for absolutely no reason except that some weird writer in California was having a self-inflicted fever dream.

That’s when I was awoken by the sound of a pair of fornicating cats outside of my open window finishing up.  The female of the pair yelled out that ghastly shriek that female cats let out whenever the male cat withdraws his feline peen.  I did not appreciate being awakened midst dream.

Did you know, dear reader, that cat penises are barbed?  Yep, they are…hence that ghastly shriek.  If you believe in God, you have to admit that making things like painfully barbed penises kind of make Him an asshole.  That, or He just really doesn’t like cats.  Cuz that’s just mean.

N.P.: “Green River” – M. Ward

Feeling pretty sub-great today, intellectually attractive reader.  Frustrated.  Stagnant.  Kinda down, kinda defeated.

I am working on this really funny thing, but because of its subject matter, it could be that no one will ever read it.  But it’s that sort of shit that has me frustrated.  Ugh.  What’s the bright side?

I did get just over 4 hours of restful sleep last night.

See…things are getting better all the time.

Speaking of things that may never be read.  I could probably use some species of manager.  The Vault is getting completely unwieldy.  There are 350+ free-floating undeveloped ideas, about 50 more developed essays in various stages of completion, and then 4 book-length projects, also in various states of completion.  The problem is that each day I’m just adding new things to these piles, rather than going back and working on things that are already in there.  I do try, on occasion.  I’ll dedicate a day to sort of curating the vault, but it’s fairly impossible for me to figure out where to start.  Even if I have an idea of what I want to work on, I’ll see something I’d forgotten about and get distracted with that.  Then while rereading that, I’ll get some other idea for something totally different, open a new file, and start typing.  It’s madness.  Madness with no perceptible forward motion.  Hence, frustration.

N.P.: “Planetary Space Child” – Ruby the Hatchet

I’m pretty sure the time I got up “this morning” was still technically last night.  The Watch says I got 1 hour and 8 minutes of restful sleep.  That’s not enough for a growing American Literary Menace.  This calls for Ny-Quil, desk whiskey,  and Andy Warhol’s Diary.

N.P.: “Man on the Silver Mountain” – Rainbow

Spotify subscribers recently received an addition to their subscriptions in the form of a free Hulu subscription (with ads) now included in their monthly rate.  Great.  So now I have…four…four subscription services piping in really great new movies and TV shows at a rate far greater than any one person (or at least this any one person) could possibly watch.  (By the way, Hulu…I would never pay for a subscription that included ads.  That’s simply not how the internet works.)
And but so anyway, I was poking around my new Hulu account and found their Fyre Festival documentary, Fyre Fraud.  So I gave it a watch.  Good God.
I’ve expressed to you in recent weeks my frustration with the apparent complete fucking dearth of critical thinking skills amongst the American Herd, so I don’t mean to single out millennials for special criticism…they are no more gullible than any of the other dolts walking around claiming to be “informed, educated” Americans.  The Fyre documentary, however, does call special attention to a particularly egregious surrendering of critical thinking skills by millennials which is embodied by the presence of social media “influencers.”   As in that is a valid job title.  Which is absurd.  My initial response was to call them “manipulators,” but that would be giving them far more credit than they deserve: they aren’t actually doing any manipulating.  Manipulating, to me, is controlling another person to act in a way that you want them too, sure, but it is understood that the person would not act in that way had they not been manipulated, otherwise, why bother?  But that’s not the case here: the people being “influenced” are doing so not just willingly, but eagerly,
It’s depressing.  Maybe I should start a cult and take over the world for a while.
N.P.: “If Looks Could Kill” – Transvision Vamp

The Welcomed New Irrelevance of the Media.

It was still Thursday night here when Brenton Tarrant walked up to a mosque on New Zealand’s Friday afternoon and opened fire on several dozen unarmed civilians in prayer.  Soon after Tarrant was captured at a second mosque, various new services began sending out breaking news alerts around the world.  Simultaneously, messages from darker presences deeper in the web started sending out messages as well: “He lived streamed it,” and “There’s a manifesto.”
A couple of clicks later and I had the manifesto and was watching what appeared to be helmet-cam footage of the entire shooting recorded live. And it was right around that point that the media lost their collective shit.  In a fairly fine flash the media, which had morphed rather desperately and pathetically from decent journalism into a commentary/interpretation/dissemination service, saw that it had been rendered superfluous and pointless.  Almost immediately, the media coverage focused intently and rather angrily at Facebook and YouTube for 1) allowing people to stream anything live, and 2) seeming to be unable to remove the postings of the videos at the same rate they were being propagated.  These articles seemed to outnumber and outpace updates on the actual shooting.  At that point, I went to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning, the articles seemed to have evolved quickly as the media struggled to grasp what had happened and exactly what to do about it.  The headlines were all slight variations on this theme: If You Downloaded the Video, Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Watch It.  A couple of these articles were allegedly by mental health professionals attempting to protect the psychological welfare of the unwashed masses, but most seemed to be by “journalists” who seemed to be primarily interested in protecting their jobs, and a huge reason the media exists these days is their access to “the wire” – raw footage of events that would historically not be released to the public because it is on some level too extreme.  So the media served as a sort of filter/censor.  If you wanted to see the available footage from any news incident, you tuned in to the news outlet of your choice and watched.  But this dude had done an end run completely around the middleman of the media and streamed his content live directly to everyone on Facebook and YouTube.  In the first 24 hours after the shooting, Facebook reported that it had removed 1.5 million videos from its pages, but that even that was not enough to come close to stopping or even containing the dissemination of the video.
And very quickly after that, by the following morning, the media seemed to totally back away from stories about the footage and began running stories about what was going on with New Zealand and its government in the aftermath of the shooting, which is probably what they should have been reporting on.  The following day the two big articles about the shooting were 1) about how the Prime Minister of New Zealand was doing what she could to prohibit the use of Tarrant’s name so as not to give him the infamy he craved (a decision which, while I understand and appreciate why it was made nonetheless disagree with), and 2) a vividly detailed scene-by-scene description of the video (which seemed an embarrassing last-ditch attempt by the media to analyze (they used to determine what footage was seen, and they would of course provide commentary and analysis, so even though viewers of the video clearly didn’t need commentary or analysis, they did it anyway, almost like a reflex)) what had happened.  Both of these efforts seemed like rather futile and pathetic attempts the either put the genie back in the bottle, or just pretend it never got out in the first place.  The world had already seen the video, the world already knew his name and had already read his words.
I am reminded of the Church’s desperation when literacy began spreading rampantly and the Holy Roman and Apostolic began having difficulty controlling the flock that was rapidly becoming educated.  I’m also reminded of the music industry when mp3s and Napster showed up.  Their actual message for years was “Here is why you should not download music for free but instead pay us for a lesser quality product: because that’s the way it’s always been and thus that is the way it’s supposed to be. We’ve been ripping you off for decades because, well, we could because we controlled the supply, and it is somehow your moral duty to let us keep ripping you off.”
I can’t help but remember how the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, and the Zodiac Killer had to basically beg/extort news outlets to publish their manifestos.  No more.  Suddenly the media is relegated to the sidelines, unable to even play catch up with the news stories being live streamed directly from the source.  “Oh, you already have the video?”  Yep.  “I see.  Well, do you need me to explain it to you?”  Nope.  “Hmmm.  Okay,  Would you like to hear my opinions and what I thought of the video?”  Nope.
So several million people downloaded the video, me among them…what about that?  Where they deviants?  Sadistic, hateful perverts who would find such a video entertaining or in any way enjoyable to watch?  Did they endorse Tarrant’s murder spree, or support his ideology?  I’m sure there were instances of that…the web reaches some unbelievably dark places where even innocent and innocuous YouTube videos of children’s birthday parties are viewed by malicious eyes with dark intent.  I suspect the majority of people who accessed the video did so with the exact same intent as they had in the past when they tuned into a news network to find out the latest on a story.  Only here they were offered The Story in pure, unadulterated form without having sit through advertisements, patronizing commentary, and interviews with “experts” wringing their hands and trying to assign academic or sociological meaning to the whole thing.
N.P.: “Better As One” – The Heavy

I’m being quiet tonight, dear reader.  Another Good One has passed and the world is a lesser place for it.  Rest in peace, Marge.

Holy shit, dearest reader…today was dire.  Fraught.  Bad news everywhere.  Ominous horizons.  The Fear is upon me.  The only thing to do at a time like this is go to bed and pull the covers way up and stare out at everything not in the bed with beady, untrusting eyes.  Which I shall now do.

N.P.: “Handyman” – AWOLNATION

This was the headline I woke up to this morning, and it gave me pause.  I knew that the ISIS guys sent their wives back to their respective home countries a few months ago when the going got untenable and food was getting scarce (which wives are being less than warmly welcomed back into the societies they have pledged to destroy, which wives from the United States should be escorted off the plane and shot at dawn on the White House lawn).  But that was months ago, and the fighters must have started getting a little frisky while they were all hanging around in the tunnels, waiting for the wrath of the righteous world to lay its vengeance upon them.
Yousef:  Ahmad…by the Prophet’s lush and well manicured beard I swear to you if we do not find something to entertain ourselves and pass the time, I am going to go mad.  Even if we had electricity, which we have never had, we can’t listen to music or watch any movies.  We burned all the books and blew up all the museums, so there’s that.  And we sent our wives away two months ago…and let’s be honest, she was an 8, I’m a solid 2…I will never find such a ji-hottie to love me again.  Before we die at the crusaders’ hands, can we please just blow each other?
Ahmad: Bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim I tell you, Yousef, to make mouth love to another man is the worst kind of sin, and the sinners shall be stoned to death.  With stones.  Big ones.  That hurt.
Yousef:  Shit.  Wait, what if we blew ourselves?
Ahmad [after thinking for a beat]:  That should be kosher.  But can you even do that?
Yousef:  No…but inshallah I shall learn before the crusaders arrive.
And so it went, and thus today’s headline was born.  Thus I took more Nyquil and went back to sleep.
N.P.: “3,2,1,Nein” – Wulfband

I’m pretty frustrated with myself today, dear reader.  Just trying to change a few behaviors that are proving to be rather tenacious.  Rather than ask for help, of course, I just get mad at myself and “try harder” and force things and that always works out [eye roll].

I saw an article recently that asserted that procrastination is not a time management issue but rather a problem of emotional dysregulation.  I think I actually pointed to the screen and said, “Ha!” or some such thing out loud even though I was alone.  In the ensuing days, I have seen other articles in other reputable places discussing the validity of this idea and expounding on it a bit.  I’ve found this rather heartening.

Tonight I’m going to work on the Tijuana stuff a bit.  I was discussing my misadventures in the lawless chaotic south, and that got me sort of re-inspired to dust it off and maybe finish it off.

N.P.: “The End Is Begun” – 3