California Suckin’

It’s been embarrassing to be a Californian for decades now, but our idiot Governor Newsom has really overachieved in the Trashing of the State in more recent years.  Oh sure, we’ve all endured the jokes about avocado toast and kale colonics for years, but at least we could point to gorgeous weather or the innovation of Silicon Valley to save face.  Now?  Now we’re lucky if we can keep the lights on long enough to hear about Newsom’s latest colossal blunder.  Honestly, I think at this point I’m convinced this dolt was sent to us as some sick kind of cosmic prank, or a cruel social experiment to see how much one state can endure before collectively packing up and heading to Texas.

From Surplus to Scandalous Deficit – Economic Whiplash
Two years.  That’s all it took.  Governor Hair Gel inherited a wallet so bloated with cash, it could’ve gone on a diet.  A $97.5 billion surplus!  A number so gaudy it makes Elon’s bank account look like spare change under the couch cushions.  And what did Newsom do with this unprecedented financial windfall?  Did he invest it wisely in infrastructure, education, or programs to improve the lives of Californias?  No, he managed to turn that surplus into a jaw-dropping $44.9 billion deficit faster than you can say, “How the hell does that even happen?”  It’s like giving your teenager your credit card for a quick run to Food Casket and finding out they “accidently” bought a fleet of purple Lamborghinis and a yacht named Ho Magnet or some such.  How do you blow through $142 billion in the span of two years?  With Newsom signing the checks, apparently, quite easily.
What’s worse is that Californians barely saw the benefit of the surplus while it lasted.  Oh sure, he sent out those highly publicized stimulus checks so people could briefly afford to fight inflation at the gas pump – where prices soared significantly more than the rest of the country largely thanks to his policies.  Meanwhile, homelessness rampaged unchecked, businesses fled the state like it was haunted, and Newsom continued to fuck up.

COVID-19 or an Episode of Black Mirror?
There’s mishandling a pandemic, and then there’s Governor Dipshit doing an epileptic interpretive dance of authoritarian overreach.  The guy didn’t just lock down the state, he locked down logic, common sense, and dissent while he was at it.  California became a dystopian punchline, enforcing some of the nation’s strictest COVID measures, trampling on individual rights, and decimating small businesses in one swell foop [sic].  If you were here for it, you saw children not allowed to attend school, while Newsom’s own kids were enrolled in private, in-person learning.  Livelihoods were crushed as mom-and-pop diners shuttered forever, but French Laundry?  That remained open just long enough for His Royal Lie-ness to attend his little dinner party with lobbyists sans mask.  Apparently, the virus doesn’t spread if you’re eating foie gras with people who can cut six-figure campaign checks.  And while hardworking Californians grappled with unemployment, mental health crises, and the hopelessness of indefinite lockdowns, Newsome strutted through press conferences like a man expecting applause for burning down the house while holding the matches.  It wasn’t leadership – it was self-promotion in a tight suit, and Californians are still suffering the consequences.

Corruption, Much?
Speaking of consequences, have you seen the governor’s track record for ethics?  Spoiler alert – there isn’t one.  Personal corruption is Gavin Newsom’s side hustle, except instead of starting a discreet Etsy shop for knitted scarves, he’s busy funneling state cash into pet projects and deals that seem to “coincidently” benefit his donors.  It’s a fine line between leadership and self-interest, and Newsom’s been pole-vaulting over it with wild abandon.  My dear California reader will recall the $1 billion mask deal with a Chinese company just after implementing a mask mandate.  And what about his persistent failure to manage the state’s EDD fraud scam?  An estimated $20 billion in taxpayer cash lost to fraudsters while actual Californians waited in unemployment purgatory.  Rockstar governance, truly.
But nothing screams audacity like the governor cozying up to special interest groups while spouting lofty lefty platitudes about equity and justice.  You know who’s not feeling very “just” right now?  Californians trying to make a living while getting fleeced at every turn.

Parent?  Dissenter?  Congratulations, You’re a Criminal
And then there’s the piece de resistance of Newsom’s leadership – California’s foray into Orwellian parenting laws.  Under laws Newsom heartily supports, refusing to “affirm” your child’s gender can now get you charged with child abuse and your kids removed from your custody.  This is not satire; this is actual California legislation.  Forget t-ball signups or PTA meetings – the real question California parents ask today is, “How do we survive this Orwellian nightmare without losing our kids to the goddamn Gender Police.”
Newsom calls it progressive; the rest of us call it a terrifying and perverse shitting upon parental rights, which, in California, were already completely beshitted.  Combine that with his love of virtue-signaling and his unapologetic, full-throated sprint toward wokeness, and you’ve got a recipe for societal decay nearly to the point of collapse masquerading poorly as progress.

From Golden State to Gluttonous Disaster
I’ve been here a long time.  I was born here and have lived here a depressingly long time.  It used to be amazing.  California used to symbolize opportunity and innovation.  Now it’s a cautionary tale, thanks in no small part to the human wrecking ball occupying the governor’s mansion (actually, scratch that…that venal douchebag just moved into an $8 mil mansion in goddamn Marin.  Because he wanted his kids to go to better schools.  Seriously, fuck this guy so much).  Under Gavin Newsom, being from California has gone from being a pretty cool thing to embarrassing and infuriating.  We’re paying for rent and health care for illegals, and this jackass is talking about fighting the coming mass deportation.  So many businesses and long-time residents are leaving, Newsom’s now floating the idea of an exit tax…a massive fee to move out of the state, in order to pay for the lost tax revenue.  This isn’t governance.  It’s a Shakespearean farce, only without the redeeming quality of ending quickly.

Here’s wishing Newsom ill.  I hope he has a lousy Christmas.

N.P.: “Everyday is Halloween” – Stabbing Westward

Two things I like this week:

1) D.O.G.E. targeting DST

I cannot recall a time in the last three weeks when I’ve been this excited about the news: one of the first items on Elon’s and Vivek’s Dumb Ass Shit That Needs To Go List: Daylight Fucking Saving Time!  It should come as no surprise to my dearly beloved reader that if I was a single-issue voter, which I’m not, but if I was, my issue would be the permanent banning of Daylight Saving Time.  It is completely counterintuitive and stupid and I am sincerely embarrassed to be part of a society that still practices it.  Whatever President has the testicular fortitude to Lock the Clock will have my permanent endorsement.

Before you go clutching your pearls or piling into my DMs armed with Farmers Almanacs and the ghost of Benjamin Franklin, here me out if you haven’t heard me on this before: Daylight Saving Time is not just inconvenient – it’s a flaming, spinning wheel of lunacy that ricochets off the walls of our collective sanity twice a year.  It’s the sort of thing I use as evidence that society not-so-secretly hates itself.  Rather than my standard rant on the subject, here are three undeniable reasons why this clock-changing monstrosity needs to be sent directly to hell:

1. It’s the Efficiency Equivalent of Starting a Fire in a Submarine

Daylight Saving Time was implemented with the idea of conserving energy and squeezing a bit more usefulness out of daylight.  Cute, right?  Except, like so much of what people who never had electric light came up with, it doesn’t actually work in today’s world.  Maybe this made sense when people were stockpiling whale oil to light their homes, but now, we live in an age where everything runs on screens.  Everything.  We scroll, swipe, and binge-watch long after the sun has said goodbye.  Studies have shown the supposed energy savings are negligible – like, so small, your puppy’s nighttime zoomies use far more energy.  The whole plan is like a boomer using Internet Explorer – it’s outdated, unnecessary, and always leaves you asking, “What the hell?”

2. It’s a Crime Against Human Bodies (and Possibly Puppies)

Every single time we “spring forward” or “fall back,” millions of people (including and especially yrs. truly) find themselves stumbling around like extras in a zombie apocalypse movie.  Why?  Because that one-hour time shift screws with our circadian rhythms in ways that are downright cruel.  Heart attacks spike.  Car accidents spike.  Productivity?  That plunges faster than my blood pressure after hoovering an Oxy.  It’s like an annual public health crisis that we all just willingly sign up for because, I don’t know, an embarrassingly stupid adherence to tradition by a completely and frighteningly unquestioning society.  To make it worse, research shows pets suffer too.  Imagine trying to explain to your dog why their dinner is suddenly “late” because humans decided to play God with the clocks.  You can’t…I’ve tried.  Daylight Saving Time is literally bad for everyone – creatures and humans alike.

3. It’s as Relevant Today as a Facebook Poke

Can we just address how utterly useless and outdated this entire concept is?  Daylight Saving Time was cooked up back when agriculture dominated the economy, and people needed extra sunlight for things like farming, war efforts, and staring at calligraphy or whatever.  But now?  Most of us work inside, bathed in the radioactive glow of fluorescent lights, where we don’t give a crap about the position of the sun.  Not to mention, a chunk of countries (and some of the apparently more intelligent U.S. states) have already ditched this nonsense because they have finally figured out what we all should admit: it serves absolutely no purpose in modern life.  The rest of us?  We still suffer this bi-annual time warp because apparently breaking up with bad ideas is impossibly difficult for the modern politician.  But with New Mgmt I am optimistic that such pusillanimous lack of backbone is a thing of the Democratic past.

I hope it’s not particularly difficult for my dear reader to imagine a world where the smartest people in the room decide this madness ends.  We’d finally get to live our lives without riding the emotional rollercoaster of changing clocks twice a year.  No more existential dread about time, no more elevated health risks, no more awkward kitchen debates over whether the microwave says AM or PM.  Just, finally, a Return To Sanity™, sweet and simple, like the way it should’ve always been.

It’s up to us.  Write, X, hurl metaphorical rotten tomatoes – do whatever you need to do to support this initiative.  Because this is our chance to join the right side of history and say loudly and proudly, “Lock the Clocks – we want permanent time!”  Honestly, if not for yourself, do it for the fuckin’ puppies.

2)  McRib™ is back!

N.P.: “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” – Abney Park

December 7, 1941.  A day that came in masquerading as just another sleepy Sunday morning but ended up sucker-punching the hell out of the United States in a most chickenshit and cowardly manner.  Pearl Harbor wasn’t just an attack – it was a masterclass in treachery and bad form, courtesy of Imperial Japan.  The cowardly audacity…they were shaking hands with us in “peace talks” while sharpening their knives behind their backs.  It’s like inviting someone over for dinner and then robbing their house while they’re asking if the roast needs more salt.  But here’s the thing about America – you punch us in the gut, we will fucking kill you.

Imperial Japan thought they were clever, I’m sure – a surprise air raid at the crack of dawn, bombs raining down like hellfire on unsuspecting sailors and soldiers at Pearl Harbor – all in the hopes of demoralizing us and crippling our Navy.  Spoiler alert, though – it didn’t work.  Sure, the attack was devastating, and the loss of life was heartbreaking, as well as the damage to our Pacific Fleet.  But Japan made a colossal tactical error: they vastly underestimated the ferocity, resilience, and sheer scrappiness of the United States.  If they thought the sleeping giant was just going to roll over and play dead after this brazen act of deceit, they were in for the rudest awakening since Hercules cleaned out the Augean stables.

It didn’t take long for the United States to rally, fueled by anger, heartbreak, and then unshakable need for vengeance and justice, not just on behalf of our fallen but for the glaring insult to our sovereignty.  Five words sealed their fate and defined our response for the ages: “A date which will live in infamy.”  Roosevelt’s rallying cry was the spark that ignited the American war machine.  Factories roared to life, producing tanks, planes, and battleships like we were running out of time.  Men (including my own underaged-at-the-time father) enlisted by the millions, women stepped into factories and war effort roles, and communities united in ways Japan could never have predicted.  We didn’t just rebuild, we fired up an industrial symphony that would ultimately dwarf every axis power combined.

Then came the Pacific Theater of World War II, where America delivered its own masterclass in turning rage into results (don’t pick a fight with a nation that considers John Wick aspirational cinema).  Battles like Midway and Guadalcanal flipped the script – Japan starting getting its ass handed to it.  For every sneak attack they tried to pull, we hit back with overwhelming force (which is really the only way to hit back, dear reader).  Every island we took was an inch closer to Tokyo.  And when it can to D-Day and the European victory in 1945, don’t think for a minute that our war in the Pacific was a forgotten sideshow.  By the time we got to the Battle of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it was clear that the days of Japan’s outrageous overreach were numbered.

And then, the ultimate American flex.  One in a long series of glorious Fuck Around and Find Out moments handed out generously to the rest of the world from their American Friends.   The final two seismic punctuation marks on the war to end all wars: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  No one talks about these bombings lightly, least of all here, but the fact remains – they broke the back of the evil regime that had brazenly kicked off this entire mess.  Japan’s unconditional surrender on September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri, signaled the ultimate triumph of Allied forces, led by a United States that simply wouldn’t quit – or forgive the betrayal of Pearl Harbor.

And now, every year on December 7th, we pause to remember.  To hear the stories of those who lived, fought, and died.  To salute those who stepped up when America needed heroes more than anything.  Pearl Harbor serves as a reminder of Japanese treachery and that while cowards strike in the shadows, giants rise into the light, resilient and unyielding.  Goddamn right.

They thought they’d catch us off guard and break us.  They caught us, all right, but break us?  Never.  The moral is this motherfucker is do not mess with the U.S.  Japan’s deceit cost them dearly, and the united fury it awakened in this great nation crushed their ambitions into nuclear glass.

N.P.: “Do Your Worst” – Rival Sons

Even when I still believed that Santa Claus was an actual dude with an actual mailing address inside the Arctic Circle, with an actual toy shop at the same address staffed mostly by elves, blah blah blah, I felt, deep down in that dark and vacant space where my soul should have been, that Things Weren’t Right.
Even as toddlers, children understand that there are scary monsters [see The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim and that study where children were given rewritten versions of fairy tales with the scary monsters taken out, and the kids got all pissed off and attacked their teachers’ kneecaps].  Rugrats know that evil lurks, and they resent the hell out of patronizing adults who tell them otherwise.  I certainly did.  Which is why the unipolar morality of the Santa story never really sat well with me: goodness is ostensibly rewarded, but evil goes completely unpunished.  All year long, the promise of every materialistic dream a child may have coming true on Christmas morning is dangled in front of the child’s beady eyes on the condition of “good” behavior during the rest of the year.
I always assumed there was some kind of sliding scale of goodness vs. toys spectrum: if your behavior was superlative and Christ-like all year long, then you get absolutely everything on your list, and perhaps even a few bonus toys.  If you were a minimally decent person for, say, 8 months out of the year, but a bit of a prick the rest of the time, then you might only get a third of the things on your list.  But what of little Adolf and Osama?  What about the little kid who is an absolute bastard every goddamn day of the year?  What of him?  According to the Santa story, nothing.  Not a damn thing. Hell, Santa will even still come by your house: he’ll just leave a piece of coal.  So what?  Who cares? This means that some little fucker can run around terrorizing the neighborhood, lowering property values and ruining everybody’s lives all year long, and the only thing he has to worry about is maybe not getting as many toys as the Goody Two-Shoes next door?  All little Adolf has to do is stroll over to Goody’s on the 26th, when the little angel is playing with all of his benevolently hard-earned toys, whack him over the head with a board, take whatever toys he wants, and swagger back home.
No.  That’s just ludicrous.  It is unjust. And it is existentially unsound. There can be no light without darkness.  And there can be no goodness without evil.  That knowledge is innate in human children.  But in the Disneyfied, politically correct culture that is modern day America, apparently parents are afraid of damaging their little snowflakes’ eggshell psyches, We ask our teachers not to use red pen when grading papers, because red is the color of blood and there is an implied threat there.  We’re not going to keep score in little league games because the idea of someone winning necessitates that some lost, and the concept of losing at anything, even a baseball game, is far more than a human being should have to endure.  And oh God, the results are tragic.  Entire generations who cannot conjugate the verbs “to lose” or “to fail.”
I say Enough.  Ya basta!  I say that people in general, but children especially, are far heartier and more resilient than they are ever given credit for.  And it is with that in mind that I suggest that we hit reset and start celebrating Christmas properly.  Let us look back toward Europe, to where the Santa Claus story originated, to get the full story: the story of the Santa’s dark counterpart, Krampus.
If Santa Claus is a right jolly old elf, then Krampus is a bad-ass Christmas demon.  If old Saint Nick is benevolent generosity and reward, Krampus is divine retribution and vengeance.  Krampus is a very satanic-looking demon (I suppose all demons worth their horns are rather satanic-looking): a satyr (in the Roman tradition (as opposed to the Greek)), with massive horns and a bifurcated tail, who is draped in noisy chains and cow bells, and wields a collection of pointy sticks with which (get this) he beats all hell out of children who have been assholes during the previous year.  If children have committed more than the typically venial offenses associated with childhood, Krampus will not simply beat them with his sticks and chains, but will either dismember them, or simply drag them to hell, never to be seen again.  Sometimes Krampus just eats the goddamn kids right there in front of God and everybody.  And don’t think you can go running to Santa to save you from Krampus…no.  Krampus and Santa are good buddies.  Existential friends who enjoy happy hour at der biergarten together.
Krampus does not just molest and abuse vagrant children.  No.  When not dispensing yuletide justice to miscreants, Krampus enjoys goosing attractive women and licking their faces, a la Rick James on a good, crackful night.  Oh yes…Krampus is a straight up poon hound.  Unlike that grandfatherly twat Santa Claus, ever the family man, the Christmas demon crushes mad ass on the reg.  There is no Mrs. Krampus.  No need.  Krampus has game and he wants to fist your mother.  After he eats your soul.
Speaking of eating, don’t bother trying to placate Krampus with cookies and milk.  He cannot be plied with baked goods, and Krampus is notoriously lactose-intolerant.  You would be better off leaving whiskey and steak, but those will not likely work either.  To avoid the wrath of Krampus this night, there is only one path: The path of righteousness, and the avoidance of assholishness throughout the rest of the year.

N.P.: “Hail to the New King” – Roberto Gigante, Alessandro Gigante, Robert Irving

¡Mentiroso, mentiroso, pantalones en fuego!  The worst, most blatantly corrupt, anti-American president in American history.  The entire Biden family should be viciously stomped and driven into the sea.  #FJB

N.P.: “The End” – The Raveonettes

Hot damn, dearest reader: it is December!  December is always a busy month on the Gallaway Calendar, but this year especially so.  There are, of course, the Holidays:

12/5 – Krampus Nacht!

12/7 – Pearl Harbor Day

12/21 – Winter Solstice/Longest Night of the Year

12/25 – Christmas

But this year, in addition to the festivities mentioned supra, the entire month of December is a full-court press on the current book proposal.  Unfortunately, I lost the last week of November due to a fight injury that had me laid up for days.  But I’m about healed up from that, and the schedule is as reasonably clear as an adult can make it, so the proverbial sailing should be smooth.

N.P.: “Obsession” – Terminatryx

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

Watched the Starship and its accoutrements launch into space and then “land” in the sea.  Literally awesome.  Inspirational.  America is back.

But the whole beautiful thing left me feeling like an underachiever.  Not wanting to be outdone on the boldly-going-where-no-man-has-gone-before front, I busted out my absinthe equipment and experimented with that rotten stuff for a while.

A quick update on the absinthe: experiments continue.  We shall procure our absinthe from a very reputable traditional Czech distiller whose process uses wormwood, anise, and fennel, extracting the essential oils from each resulting in a distinct taste and alcohol content that is off the charts.  Great.  Now, how the hell are we going to make it purple?  My first thought was food coloring, but artificial food dyes are about to become official uncool, that idea was quickly axed.  Since I know about as much about how colors work as I do about making booze, I asked by booze tutor what color need to be added to green to make purple, and he answered immediately, “Deep red.”
“How the hell did you know that so fast?”
“Basically, green is make up of yellow and blue,” he said like a smart-ass.  “Adding deep red will help neutralize the yellow component and blend with the blue to create purple.”  I accused him of sorcery and general assholishness.

So fine…red.  What’s a red liquid we can add to this weird Slavic concoction?  My instant answer was maraschino cherry juice.  Because that shit is delicious.  And red.  But it didn’t work.  My experiment involved two drinks.  I prepared the absinthe properly, but adding maraschino cherry juice only turned the cocktail brownish and muddy.  It tasted pretty good: sweet as hell, but it looked like sewer water.  Still, I drank the whole thing and called The Sorcerer and let him know of my failure.  He was still in smart-ass mode:
“Isn’t that stuff bright red? Yeah, that won’t work.  I said deep red.  More like blood than cherries.  Also, it’s not cherry juice at all…that’s formaldehyde.”
Well, I’ve got news for you, smart ass: formaldehyde tastes great!  And don’t cocktails called “Death in the Afternoon” demand the presence of some sort of embalming agent?  Just to keep it real?  Shit yes.  At this point, that first formaldehyde and absinthe drink was really starting to hit me, so I decided to prove everybody wrong.  So I made another drink, and this time, I just kept adding maraschino cherry juice, determined that I could simply overrun the color wheel with brutal and overwhelming force.  The whole ratio of cherry juice to absinthe was so far off kilter when I finally ran out of cherry juice, it was more of a weird syrup than any kind of recognizable libation.  In fact, the whole thing went down in one slug.  It was like drinking snot.

I called the Sorcerer and drunkenly told him of my failed second attempt.

“Dude, you gotta lose the cherry juice.  Forget about it.  It’s too fucking red!  We want deep red.  Like blood.”

“Could we just use actual blood, then?”

After a beat: “Whose blood would you use?”

“I dunno.  Not a person, obviously.  Could we just use cows’ blood?”

After another beat: “Are you really asking me if cows’ blood will work to turn absinthe purple?”

“Well, yeah…I openly admit I don’t know anything about cows’ blood, other than it’s deep red.  That’s what I’m asking…would cows’ blood be ‘deep’ enough?”

I guess the call got disconnected at that point.  He was probably getting in an elevator or something.  Anyway, he texted me a couple of minutes later: “You are to use ONLY pomegranate or cranberry juice.”  Which is a huge problem.  In fact, it’s a non-starter.

You see, I hate cranberry juice.  Pomegranate juice is even worse.  I refuse to drink either one.  And I’ll be damned if I’m going to put my name on or otherwise promote any drink with either of those nasty liquids involved.

At that point in the afternoon, I decided to finish off any open bottles of absinthe and then somnatically reconsider this weird whole deal.

N.P.: “Send In The Drugs” – Andy Prieboy