Ugh, dear reader.  The world is too much with me, as Uncle Bill used to say.  Far too much time spent on the road lately.  Very uninspiring.  That and I’ve got The Angst, big time.  Angst with a side of fantods.  And it sucks.

In addition to that, there’s this: you know how I don’t really get involved in politics at all?  Maybe you don’t.  The transient politics of humans hold little interest to me (so you can imagine how unceasingly bored I’ve been with pretty much everything for the last two years).  But I suddenly started hearing about a proposition allegedly on the mid-term ballot that would repeal Daylight Savings Time.  The significance of this may require a bit of additional explanation.  It is difficult for me to find words that truly express the utter contempt I have for Daylight Saving Time.  It is a bit of an embarrassment to me to be part of a society that engages in such a silly and pointless practice.  Try keeping a straight face while attempting to explain it to someone from another country.  I don’t think it can be done.  And if you do manage to pull it off, I can guarantee that the person you’re telling will be at least smirking unkindly.  Hell, our own Native Americans have described Daylight Saving Time as being “like cutting a foot off the bottom of a blanket, then sewing it back on to the top of the same blanket, and then claiming that you have a longer blanket.  Which sums it up pretty damn accurately, I think.  I have long said that after The Revolution, once I assume power, the first order of business will be not just to repeal but to in fact ban Daylight Saving Time forever as one of the few truly foolish and stupid ideas to ever come out of this country.  Fuck Daylight Saving Time.
So I’m hearing all this stuff about Proposition 7 , and I’ve been responding with caution: if this thing actually repeals DST, then vote for it as many times as you can.
Dear Reader, that is not what California’s Proposition 7 does at all.  It actually does the exact opposite: basically, it gives the legislature the power to enact PERMANENT DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME.  This would be a nightmare.
I doubt you remember 1974, when Nixon declared emergency year-round DST for 16 months in response to the rather dire energy crisis we were having.  It lasted 10 months, and then the riots began.  People went nuts.  They started lighting each other on fire in broad daylight, and eating the neighborhood children.  It was a terrifying time, and I was lucky to make it out alive myself, and I’m not no hurry to return to those dark days.
Jesus, speaking of darkness, let me quickly put to rest any flat-earthers who also think that DST is a good or even necessary idea: it isn’t.  The notion that farmers, ranchers, or any other agrarian sort needs DST to function is absurd.  They get up whenever the hell they need to get up, which is usually about 2 hours before the sun comes up, regardless of what time you want to call it.
The notion that non-agrarian folks need DST for any reason whatsoever is ludicrous: electric light has been standard in American homes and businesses for about 70 years now, and the energy-efficient and mega-effective bulbs readily available to all consumers and businesses, the amount of sunlight in our sky has no real effect on what we are able to do or how we conduct ourselves.  Rather than cause societal trauma twice a year, with an exponential increase in heart attacks and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity, I offer this simple and perfectly reasonable solution: if the gets dark outside but you are not quite ready to go to bed, turn on the lights.  If the sun is not yet up when you get to work in the morning, turn on the lights.  If you need more daylight in your day, wake up earlier.  But don’t throw the rest of us into temporal turmoil twice a year because turning on the lights or setting an alarm clock are just too much for you to handle.
The two idiots behind this turd of a proposition are Kansen Chu and Lorera Gonzalez.  I feel a strongly worded letter coming on.

Damn, that reminds me…I already have a strongly-worded letter I need to write to Mr. P.F. Chang regarding the sudden absence of tempura green beans from the menus of their Bay Area locations (I haven’t checked the rest of the country yet, but I’m almost afraid to).

Also, the second thing I’m going to do when I assume power after The Revolution is to void all Oregon state issued driver’s licenses and ban Oregonians from all public roads.  Look…we given it a fair chance, but those people are just not meant to drive.

N.P.: “Tainted Love” – Marilyn Manson

It’s been a strange few days, dear reader.

Did you hear what Yoko Ono did to “Imagine”?  That is what I woke up to this morning.  No surprise I couldn’t get back to sleep.  Her voice has always been one of the most wrist-slittingly shitty and annoying things ever to be recorded.  #Whenwillyoufinallyshutthefuckup,younotalenthack

N.P.: “Contagion” –  Circle of Dust

Contemptus minivani.

Also, fuck Facebook, Google+, and John Mayer.

And as long as we’re here, I was just watching the season finale of ” Better Call Saul” when some goddamn credit card company’s commercial came on featuring Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” in the soundtrack.  I’d heard about this but was sort of refusing to believe it was real.  But I just saw the damn thing, and oh God, does it suck.  I think this is the first significant misstep by the Prince Estate…certainly the most egregious.  Prince never licensed any of his music to any television commercial during his lifetime, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted the practice started with some goddamn credit card company.  The Estate has done some pretty brilliant things: the website, finally making the entire catalog of official releases through 2015 available to stream online, and recently they launched the official merchandise line which is not too shabby,  I understand that the Estate’s primary directive is to make money and maximize the profitability of the Estate, but this is a significant blunder.

N.P.: “Lunatic Fringe” – Red Rider

Still very frustrated.  But if dreams are indication (which I don’t actually believe they are, but it would be good if they were (in this case, at least)), things are looking up.  Sunday night I dreamed I was the President.  Of the United States.  I got used to it very quickly, and spent the rest of waking Monday not fully recovered from being the POTUS, and generally feeling rather indignant about the whole deal.
Then in Monday night’s dream, I was just In Charge.  Of Everything.  The World.  There wasn’t a title associated with the job…I was just the leader of the world.  For the most part, everybody seemed pretty happy, so that was cool.

Whatever.  I can be silly sometimes.  Hope you’re doing well.

N.P.: “Keep It In The Family” – Hybrid

The writing is going like shit.  Recording is going like shit.  Tech is pissing me off.  All is frustration and misery.  Also, fuck Sundays.

N.P.: “Double Talkin’ Jive” – Guns N’ Roses

Laying low this weekend (unlike most other weekends when I go on headline-grabbing crime sprees (?)).  Writing, catching up with some reading, and trying to learn Notion and integrate it into my workflow.

The book isn’t going as well as I’d like it to.  Or maybe it is.  Hell, I can’t tell anymore.  I think I’m just going to get to certain point and hand the whole weird thing to someone trusted and hope for a no-bullshit assessment of the State of Things.

Yeah, right.  We both know that’s not going to happen.  I’m just going to keep working away in secrecy until I know damn good and well that the thing is done.

Back to it.

N.P.: “Power Struggle” – Sunna

I was passing a car on a 2-lane freeway a couple days ago.  The driver I was passing had demonstrated very quickly in our brief time together that it was either idiotic or perhaps simply clueless.  Which is really not a big deal: pitifully few drivers on American roads are anything approaching what I would call “competent” behind the wheel.   So, no biggie…I just don’t want to be stuck behind such a person for the next 20 miles when there is no one else visible in front of us on the road ahead.   IAmyway, in the not-too-distant distance I saw a rather massive semi truck barreling in my direction at a pretty decent pace.  I had plenty of distance and time to pass the car in front of me.

So I did.  At least I started to.  The idiot that I was passing suddenly started accelerating.  It was as if it had, upon seeing me suddenly passing her on the left, realized that it had been dragging ass with its right-turn indicator erroneously left blinking, and stomped on the gas to correct its previously unacceptable performance, giving no thought that I was trying to pass it and had made the decision to do so based on calculations that did not it including accelerating at the same rate as me.  Dammit.

I think it should go without saying that there was an exactly zero chance of me aborting this operation at this point.  The truck was close enough now that I could tell that is was a massive Peterbilt with a grill that is built such that the driver can simply rinse things like me off of it and be none the worse for wear.  I glanced quickly at the speedometer: 105 mph.

And in that moment, my only thought was. “I should be feeling fear.”  I felt nothing except a pretty significant annoyance at the idiot in the car next to me and a mild curiosity about what was about to happen with regard to my imminent vaporization.  I mean, I knew what was going to happen did not include an accident or anybody being vaporized, but at that moment I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out that way.  Still, there was no actual fear.  Since I was alone in the car, there was no one around to pretend to be afraid for, so I didn’t.  Which choice was suddenly infinitely more interesting that the outcome of the oncoming traffic situation:  I don’t actually feel fear very much.   If at all.  Not that kind of fear, anyway.  I admittedly spend a lot of time wrestling with a simply vicious, creeping, generalized, existential dread.  But when it comes to street fights or prison riots or those sorts of goings-on…nothing.  I get incredibly focused and hyper-vigilant, but no actual fear.  It’s been pointed out to me many rather awkward times that I have no real startle reflex either: gunshots and explosions don’t really move my needle.  But in those moments that I’m not feeling something i know I’m supposed to feel, I am aware that I’m not feeling something I know I’m supposed to feel and it’s as if there is an “Insert Emotion Here” sign in my psyche, and my mind has becoming unbelievably adept at instantaneously synthesizing something approximating what it thinks is the appropriate emotional response and implements it.  But I don’t actually feel the emotion itself.

It is not only with fear that this happens.

This is what the book is about.

N.P.: “Spoiler” – Hyper

Another rather crap day.  There were, however, significantly more machine guns involved than usual, which made things slightly more spicy, but they ultimately prevented both lunch and writing,  Alas.

N.P,: “Lovesong” – Snake River Conspiracy

People disappoint.

N.P.: “Wish” – Kosheen

What’s crackin’, knowledgeable reader?
I’ll be honest, I was going to write about something here…kind of thought about it all day, but then now that I’m here, I started to write it, I just decided against it.  Not time yet, I guess.  Maybe I’m just not in the right mood.

Anyway, since I’m here, I Just wanted to say hello….hopefully there will be more to say tomorrow.

N.P.: “He Is” – Ghost