Author Archives: Jayson Gallaway

February 10, 2025

Good morning, dear reader.  It’s presently 04:55 in Fecal Creek, which is where I’m sitting as I type this.  I woke up at 02:00…suddenly wide awake, eyes open…for no evident reason. This usually doesn’t happen.  Usually once I get to sleep, I stay that way until the alarm goes off or the sun comes up, whichever comes first.  It’s been that way for several years now.  The only exceptions have been when I’ve over-indulged in whiskey earlier the previous day…that causes weird things to happen with my blood sugar which causes me to suddenly be wide awake usually around 3 in that morning.  But I’ve been so busy with the book and other projects, I haven’t had the time to drink.  Not a drop in at least 2 weeks.  So that’s not it.

A couple of years ago I went through a period of extreme stress, and during that time, I was waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning.  That went on for weeks.  Until I figured out how to deal with it.

The sun won’t rise for another 2 hours, and since I have some “extra” time this morning, I thought I share my secret to dealing with insomnia: Don’t Fight It.  That’s it.  Embrace it as an opportunity.  If you wake up and know that you are not going to be able to get back to sleep, say Fuck It and get up.  Rather than staying in bed and either stressing yourself to go back to sleep for another few hours when it’s clear that’s not going to happen, or stressing about whatever stressful thing it was that woke you up in the first place, get up and get to work, whatever “work” means for you in that moment.  If you’re able to start your actual job a couple of hours early, do it.  Doubtful your boss will get upset with you for that.  I typically start writing.  You might work out.  I know a guy who started building these big-ass planter boxes in his backyard.  He had no idea what he was doing when he started…just did it…figured it out as he went along.  Watched YouTube videos.  Of course, dude lives out in the county, so there aren’t any neighbors around to bitch about hammering and sawing at dawn [author’s note: I am extremely jealous of his “county” life.  I live within city limits and am thus subject to the most ridiculous restrictions.  My next house will most definitely not be in any city limits.  I want to not have to see any neighbors, be able to wear a sidearm, and burn the trash in a huge oil barrel.  Anyway, I digress].  He’s been working on the planter project for a year now.  He built 5 huge planters and is now growing his own vegetables and potatoes. It’s pretty cool.

An hour left until the sun rises once again over Fecal Creek, but I’ve already been at it for two hours.  Of course, I’ll be dragging ass by lunch, and a lesser person my submit to a nap.  But not me.  I have access to caffeine, and cause is both just and righteous, and I am actually just able to will my way through it.  And then comes the best part: sleep tonight.  The sleep one gets the night after one gets three hours of sleep or less is glorious.

Alright…gotta get back to the book.

N.P.: “Love Will Tear Us Apart” – Apoptygma Berzerk, Emil Nikolaisen

Word of the Day: suppurate

suppurate
verb
1.  undergo the formation of pus; fester
Here’s why you should know and love this word: most obviously, it has to do with festering pus.  Which would be plenty enough reason to deploy the word liberally in your daily business communication.  But wait…there’s more.  Though officially the word is pronounced “supp-yer-ate,” people in the Midwest (and yrs. truly) pronounce it “super ate.”  Yes…just like the franchise of cheap and sleazy motels.  So the next time you’re driving along and hear a commercial inviting you to spend a night at the Super 8 Motel, you should, like me, cackle adolescently.
N.P.: “Peek-a-Boo” – Leæther Strip

Word of the Day: doxy

Word of the Day: doxy
noun
archaic
1. a lover or mistress
2. a prostitute
“He was pretty surprised when he thought her stage name was Doxy, but once he found out that that was her birth name, he knew her tornado-bait parents had doomed her to this life: she never had a chance.”

N.P.: “Holy Touch” – Foxy Shazam

January 25, 2025 – Burns Night

Hot diggity damn, dear reader…tonight is Burns Night!  Since you are not already drinking whisky and jumping off the furniture, I can only assume you are unfamiliar with Burns Night. Fair enough…it is my depressing belief that very few Americans read much anymore.  I’m not confident that many of them can read. But that’s another topic for another day.  Today is Burns Night, dammit.

Today we celebrate the birthday of the OG wordsmith of Scotland, Robert Burns!  Born January 25, 1759, this literary legend penned verses that Rolling Stone said, “flowed as smoothly as a fine Scotch whisky and as sharply as the Highland wind.”  Fact check: true.  This founding member of the D.P.S. was not only a rebel with a quill…he was the man who made haggis a legitimate subject of lyrical devotion.

Speaking of haggis, have you read his “Address to a Haggis?”  Only Burns could turn a sheep’s stomach stuffed with oats into an ode of unparalleled grandeur.  Any Burns Night celebration worth its salt (certainly any I’ve ever attended) features a massive haggis, held aloft by a group of dudes in kilts, making a lap around the entire room so all in attendance can get a close-up look at what they’re about to eat.  There are whoops and cheers (especially by those of us who’ve been drinking Snakebites for the previous few hours).  When the haggis has finished its tour around the room, it is eventually placed on a table in the center of the room, and someone then reads the “Address to a Haggis,” as significant amounts of whisky is poured over the haggis, and then it is cut with a sword and plates of the rotten stuff is passed around to whomever is daring enough to eat it.  At least that’s what how I remember it going down…I was always completely shit-housed by the time the haggis showed up.  As it should be.  As it must be.  Haggis is food for drunk people who are hungry, freezing, and out of options.  Sober people cannot eat haggis.  I mean it’s physically impossible.  The sober mind will not let its physical self willingly consume something so fetid and foul.  I have personally verified this theory many times: cold nights in San Francisco when the fridge was a little barren at home, a warm, whisky covered haggis is goddamn delicious.  Sober with a full stomach, and that same haggis is repugnant.

And let’s not forget Burns’ saucier side.  He also gifted us with “The Fornicator,” a tribute to all of us unapologetic fornicators, including himself.

And fornicate he did!  Burns fathered 12 children, nine of them out of wedlock.  He was prolific in many ways.  He worked as a farmer, a customs officer, and was allegedly the smoothest talker north of the border.  Burns was into the Enlightenment philosophers and could talk about Rousseau and Voltaire while slamming shots.

Like so many greats, Burns’ spark was snuffed out too soon.  He died on July 21, 1796, at the age of 37, likely due to rheumatic fever exacerbated by his hard-living ways.  Remarkably, the day he was laid to rest, his son Maxwell was born.

Today I recommend you crack your Burns anthology and check out “Tam o’ Shanter” or “A Red, Red Rose.”  Or, better yet, you could gut a pig, make some haggis, and recite the “Address” as you wash it down with whisky.

Slàinte, Robby!

N.P.: “Model Society” – Deaf Radio

January 21, 2025

Sorry, dear reader…we’re still celebrating over here.  Tried to stop, but then started reading some of the Executive Orders and Actions and had to start all over again.  Our long and stupid national nightmare is finally over.

N.P.: “Daddy’s Home” – Tom MacDonald, Roseanne Barr

January 18, 2025

Just a quick check-in, dear reader.  I can’t really tell you what I’ve been up to, but suffice it to say (as a great man once said): We live in fast, strange times and we work in fast, strange ways.  Things should settle down very soon…or maybe not: things are still moving pretty quickly.  The fact that it hasn’t rained in weeks and there’s not a drop in the forecast isn’t helping anything.  Anyway, we’ll talk soon.

N.P.: “Totentanz” – Oberer Totpunkt

January 7, 2025

The only thing more humiliating than having to preside over the certification of your own complete electoral shittiness is having to stand in front of a failed nation and deliver a “you can’t fire me because I quit” speech.  The only thing more humiliating than that would be to deliver that speech in French.  The global socio-political schadenfreude that has been occurring lately is almost guilt-inducing.  But not quite, so keep it coming.

N.P.: “Wouldst Thou Like to Live Deliciously?” – Mickey 9s, POPO COPS

January 3, 2025

January 3 marks the birthday of an absolute legend, a storyteller so iconic that he essentially built the blueprint for modern fantasy, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

Tolkien was truly on another level from most “ordinary” writers: he conjured entire universes, which included designing detailed languages, cultures, and histories…enough to rival the mythologies of ancient civilizations.

His masterpieces, The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (published between 1954 and 1955 – because yes, genius takes time), set the standard for epic fantasy.  The Hobbit was the first work of Tolkien’s that I read.  It was certainly the longest book I had read at that point, which made it the first book I ever “got lost in.”

Happy birthday, Professor!

I spent a bit of time driving in the rain at speed.  Music blaring at unholy levels, of course.  And it was great…simultaneously clearing the mind of nightmare sewage and focusing very sharply on the next big turn and that “here we go” feeling when you feel the tires start to slip on the wet pavement and you start wishing you’d entered the turn going maybe 5mph slower….
I was reminded of how long it had been since I had done this…just gone for a drive.  I used to do it all the time…70mph through Golden Gate Park in the middle of the night.  I think I should reinstate the practice: unscheduled, random tearings-of-ass through the rain-soaked city streets.

N.P.: “Machine!” – Frigid, Plastic Bertrand