No invective tonight, dear reader. Best of intentions, et cetera, et cetera, but a bunch of Life happened, so I didn’t have appropriate time for invective composition. So tomorrow, dear reader. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.
N.P.: “Lifehunger” – Vreid
Author Archives: Jayson Gallaway
It was a good enough day. Nighttime trips to the bathroom have turned into “time to go kill whatever’s in the bathroom, then pee,” but if done with the proper perspective, the execution of inordinately sized arachnids can be a rather calming exercise.
Anyway, time got away from me today, so I have to be short here today. But you can expect invective tomorrow.
N.P.: “In A Gadda Da Vida” – Slayer
A relatively lazy Sunday, dear reader. ‘Twas called for. Did a bunch of non-writing stuff.
I hope you’re doing well.
N.P.: “Guitars SUCK” – Bumblefoot
Just got to attend a virtual viewing of a rough cut of a friend’s feature film. Most impressive.
N.P.: “Look To Your Orb For The Warning” – Monster Magnet
I had to meet in person with a couple of people today…couldn’t be avoided. So I went. Wore a mask. One guy had a mask, the other guy didn’t. I know the guy that didn’t. He’s a good guy. But he refuses to wear a mask. For him it’s political. Which I don’t understand.
I probably don’t have any room to talk…the reason I wear my mask has nothing to do with COVID. I’ve spent a significant amount of my adult life trying to figure out what line of work I could enter that would allow me to wear a mask in public. I’ll I was ever able to come up with were Superhero and Terrorist, but both of those are really a lot of work. And in their cases, you’re going to be too worried about super villains or murder drones to ever be able to relax in public in their masks. I had just about given up trying to figure something out when BAM: pandemic. Perfect!
Dearest reader, I wear this shit all the time. I wear my mask when driving alone in my car. I wear it around the house, even when there’s nobody around. Wear it to sleep. Wore it in the shower the other morning…that didn’t work out well at all. But that’s not the point. I don’t even know what the point is, if there even is one. I do know that long after The Virus has ebbed, I’ll still be rocking a mask. Even the most mundane interaction suddenly turns into the opening scene of something from the Mortal Kombat franchise when both parties are wearing masks.
N.P.: “Here” – Vast
An interesting day, dear reader, in a good way. Nothing dramatic…just a slight shift in perspective. Got a lot done….writing, music, a couple of other projects I’m working on. Hoping for a similar day tomorrow.
N.P.: “Seven Souls” – William S. Burroughs/Bill Laswell
Summers in Anhedonia are so goddamn hot, dear reader…it’s ridiculous. And people just walk around acting like nothing’s wrong. It’s perfectly obvious nothing is supposed to actually live here. Maybe the spiders and scorpions and buzzards and shit, but intelligent life? Fuck no. Yet here we are.
I got a lot of words down, in spite of the atmospheric fires outside. It’s funny…other writers and artists I know who live in other parts of the world where there are actually seasons, they all disappear into their studios at the beginning of November and sometime near the end of April they emerge with a new book or album or whatever. Exact opposite here. I’m not going outside again until Halloween. It would be nice to be waving a new book around when that happens.
N.P.: “The Sea King” – Żywiołak
I’ve heard quite a bit about my recent posts labeling the Black Lives Matter organization as dangerously hypocritical and egregiously fraudulent and serving only to assuage the self-loathing of Guilty White Liberals while not only doing nothing to actually preserve or improve black lives, but actually doing the community a shameful disservice, in some cases actually costing black lives. Most of the feedback has been supportive, sometimes asking for further development or clarification, which I’ve been happy to provide. There were some negative voices and those were completely emotionally driven, devoid of any coherent rationale, rhetorically childish, and composed entirely of ad hominem attacks demanding apologies and threatening nebulous, often patently imaginary reprisals. It was all rather amusing.
Anyway, I think I came up with the best way to effectively address everyone involved. I propose a simple exercise. I’ll include gaudy screenshots to “show my work” and so literally anybody will be able to follow along. Ready? Okay.
First, head over to blacklivesmatter.com, the official website of the BLM organization.
Then scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the “Donate “button. Before clicking on it, you should know that once you do, you will no longer be on blacklivesmatter.com. You will be sent to a totally different website. Any ethical website knows to notify the user when sending them to another website and they do so via a box that requires your clicking consent. You will receive no such notification here.
So clicking on the “Donate” button appears to open the BLM donations page, but, as mentioned supra, if you take a look at the URL, you are no longer even on the BLM website, but now on something called actblue.com. But never mind that. That’s not important. What’s important is that you see that if you donate money, they pledge to “end state-sanctioned violence, liberate Black people [sic], and end white supremacy forever.” Noble goals all. Head to the bottom of the page.
At the bottom of the page, there are several suggestions for donation amounts, or, of course, you can enter your own amount. If you care to make a donation, by all means do so. I know several of you already have. Picking an amount and clicking the “Continue” button takes you to the transaction page where you enter your card number and all the details. But if you continue to the bottom of this page without donating, you get to a section called “Contribution rules.” This contains information that all PACs are legally required to display, namely how to access a copy of their latest financial report, which here you are given a phone number and email address to deal with. Most large charities choose to make their latest financial report (along with all previous financial reports) its own easily accessible page (because if someone who is considering making a donation wants to see exactly where their money will be going before donating (due diligence), it’s a good idea to make that information readily available)).
You can call or email to request that a copy be sent to you, but since this information is required to be public, there are several websites that publish various PACs’ financial information. I picked opensecrets.org. So if you look up actblue, you get a result offering you their financial information for the 2020 election cycle. Brilliant. So to find out how the money is spent, click on “Recipients.”
You may have to scroll down a bit, but you’ll get to Top Vendors/Recipients. This is how the money donated to actblue is currently being spent. Behold.
Well, shit. Black lives seem to be a bit underrepresented in the Top Ten. So who all’s here? There’s Bernie (not black) and Biden (not black)…Liz (not black) and Pete (not black) and Amy K.(not black). Andrew Yang (not black) got a little love. Even Amy McGrath’s senatorial campaign got paid. But this is BLM money. If it’s just going to finance various democratic presidential campaigns, fine, but where the hell is Cory? Where’s Kamala? Just about everybody else is there…they got a Taiwanese guy, and a Native American lady. It’s almost as if they intentionally left the black candidates out of the Top Ten. That’s just not subtle at all. They’re not even pretending. At what point on this list do black lives start to matter? Sure as hell not in the Top Ten. Maybe its after the first…how much money is that…hold on…sorry, I’m terrible at math…let’s see…carry the 7…okay, so black lives matter, just at some point after the first $698,721,410 has been spent.
So there are two possibilities. Either people who intend to donate to BLM have no idea this is what’s going on and are being misled and defrauded into donating to a lot of non-black candidates and entities, or people do know that this is where the money’s going, and rather than donating directly to the Biden campaign as they were going to do, they make the same donation through BLM, thus getting to virtue signal to all their GWL friends about how woke they are while knowing their money is still going to the same non-black cause or candidate they were going to give to anyway.
Again, this is blatant symbolism over substance. The Message: I gave money to Black Lives Matter. The Actual Really Real World Reality: You just donated to some white dude’s presidential campaign. This is harmful because this entire transaction has taken place with the donor walking away feeling as if he has actually made a difference, but now that money that could have been well used by any of the myriad legitimate charitable organizations that have long track records of direct help and measurable benefit to the black community will, once again, get nothing.
N.P.: “Dein Gott” – Stahlmann
The good news is I slept my ass off last night. And this morning. It was glorious. The bad news is the day got away from me and I’ve been behind schedule for most of it. And that condition has only gotten worse as the day has worn on and I’ve failed to catch up. Alas. Forsooth. Et cetera.
N.P.: “The Great Deceiver – Shitmix 2007” – Mortiis
I was up all night writing, dear reader. Literally…I watched the sun rise. I was reminded of how disgusting sunrises are when you’ve been up all night. Anyway, I’m beyond exhausted and must now collapse.
N.P.: “Indigo Eyes” – Peter Murphy