Beware the Ides of March, dear reader!  Today is March 15, also known as the Ides of March, a time to remember that your best friends, your closest confidantes, even your immediate family can and in all likelihood will betray you just when you need them the most.  Thus, it is a darkly significant day on the Gallaway calendar, and it should be on yours as well.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, and/or you weren’t an English major, allow me to elucidate while once again including you in my nightly prayers. Let’s set the scene: March 15, 44 BC, and Rome’s power-hungry Senate is a pressure cooker ready to explode. Julius Caesar—conqueror, dictator, and all-around larger-than-life legend—strides in, blissfully unaware of the betrayal brewing. A pack of senators, led by his so-called friend Brutus, decide it’s time for a regime change. In a flash, they turn the Senate floor into a crime scene, stabbing Caesar 23 times in a frenzy of blood, treachery, and ambition. Shakespeare immortalized this savage betrayal in Julius Caesar (1599), giving us the haunting line, “Et tu, Brute?” (“And (even) you, Brutus?”)—a gut-punch that echoes through time. The Ides of March became the ultimate symbol of backstabbing doom, inspiring literary giants from Dante to Robert Graves. Caesar’s epic rise and brutal fall lit a fire under centuries of writers, proving that the rawest dramas aren’t fiction, but the messy, bloody stuff of history.

If you have ever been betrayed by your entire personal cohort, you (should) know well the lessons of the Ides of March.  If you have not yet been devastated by betrayal by those closest to you…you need to pay special attention to this, because no matter how immune you think you and your life are from this sort of treachery, you are overdue, greatly increasing the likelihood that It Is Coming: someone close to you is plotting behind your back.

With that in mind, here are my 5 Tips to Avoid Betrayal This Ides of March:

1. Trust Sparingly If At All: Keep your inner circle tighter than a duck’s pucker and your trust even tighter than that. Caesar trusted Brutus, and look where that got him—23 stab wounds! Vet your allies like a Roman general sizing up a legion.
2. Limit Your Circle: The fewer associates, the fewer knives at your back. Logically, your circle will be more of a stick: a single person, if you must have that.  But as Kobayashi reminds us in The Usual Suspects: “One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.”  An absolute minimalist, fiercely loyal crew beats the hell out of a big, fickle crowd every time.
3. Stay Ruthless When Needed (And Ruthlessness Is Always Needed): Don’t hesitate to cut ties with anyone showing shifty eyes. Caesar’s leniency with his enemies was his downfall—show strength, not mercy, when the stakes are high.
4. Watch for Signs: Keep an ear to the ground. Whispers, odd alliances, or sudden flattery? Those are red flags. Caesar ignored the soothsayer’s warning—don’t make the same mistake!
5. Control the Narrative: Stay one step ahead by shaping what others know about you. If they can’t predict your moves, they can’t plot against them.

The key behind this seemingly paranoid strategy is surviving the betrayal because you were expecting it, as opposed to Ceasar, who only realized the extent of his betrayal as his best friend was sliding a knife fatally into his back, when it was far too late.

The Ides of March whisper a blood-soaked truth: “When you come for the king, you best not miss.”  Emerson said that in “Self-Reliance.”  The more popular, punchy version – “When you strike at a king, you must kill him” – comes from a 20th-century paraphrase of Emerson by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.  Hesitate, flinch, or falter, and the crown doesn’t just endure – it crushes.  I’m sure Ceasar’s ghost would agree.  When the conspirators draw steel, but their trembling hands spare their empire’s tyrant a moment too long, what follows isn’t mercy – it is the king’s justice, a vengeful tide of retribution that will drown them all.

N.P.: “Auf die Zunge (feat. Schattenmann)” – Eisbrecher

Herr Direktor wants one of the projects I’m working on to go in a more “splatterpunk” direction.  Until maybe two weeks ago, I had no idea what that actually meant, but I thought it sounded pretty cool, so I just went along with it.   Since then, I’ve been on a strict diet of splatterpunk movies and books.  Turns out I knew what it was, I just didn’t know what it was called.  For those dear readers who may have been as in the dark as I was about this subgenre, if you’re a Tarantino fan, in Kill Bill Pt1, when Beatrix goes to Japan and Samurai-sword-fights 99 Kato-masked Yakuza guys, and the entire interior of the massive club they’re in is literally drenched and dripping with blood from the firehose-like arterial spray from the myriad dismemberments occurring during the fight, and the entire floor is covered with bodies and limbs…that is what I’m talking about.

So the movies from the last week:
Tokyo Gore Police
Ichi the Killer
Battle Royale
The Machine Girl
Audition
Meatball Machine
Meatball Machine Kodoku

Up next will be:
Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades
Tetsuo: The Iron Man

As may be obvious from this list, I’m leaning into the Japanese take on SP because I think that approach will work better for this project.  The Japanese style is so wildly over the top as to be cartoonish, thus, absurd and thus, funny.  American splatterpunk movies would likely be things like The Terrifier movies Damien Leone or the Human Centipede sequence from Tom Six.  While I am a huge fan of Art the Clown, the SP aesthetic of the Terrifier movies is almost completely different than the Japanese version: there’s nothing funny about it.  I mean, I get it…the joke is an the absurdity of the lengths Art goes to inflict pain on his victims (e.g., leaving the room of a vicious multi-limb mutilation to retrieve a massive sack of salt from the other room so that he can shove it into wounds by the fistful…I admit I actually chuckled at that when I first watched it.  But that humor is waaaaaaay darker.  Put it this way: your 10-year-old kid walks into Kill Bill Pt I, they will likely laugh and be untraumatized because it is so obviously not real.  That same 10-y.o. walks into Terrifier 2, and you’ll probably be shelling out a bunch of cash for therapy after a bunch of dark behavioral reports from school.

Anyway, this new approach has breathed new energy into this project, and I’m pretty excited about it.

[Tangentially related note: it occurs to me that I haven’t done a proper movie review here for a bit.  For no valid reason whatsoever, I’m suddenly thinking about doing a marathon triple review of The Human Centipede (First Sequence), The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence), and The Human Centipede (Final Sequence).  Just get hammered drunk and sit through all three of those horrendous creations taking breaks only to pee or get a refill.  Just a thought for now, but if that changes, you’ll be the first to know.]

N.P.: “Man of Constant Sorrow” – Jonathan Young

Well, hell, dear reader.  I can’t believe it’s already time to talk about the sheer, unadulterated lunacy of Daylight Saving Time (DST). This biannual ritual of clock-twisting isn’t just a minor annoyance; it’s a relic of idiocy that kills, maims, and maddens us, all while clinging to justifications so outdated they belong in a museum next to Edison’s first light bulb.  I’m here, once again, to rip this farce apart. Spoiler alert: the only sane fix is locking the clocks on Standard Time—permanently—and telling DST to take a long walk off a short pier.

The Body Count of Clock-Changing
Let’s start with the grim stats, because we might as well face the ugly truth head-on. Every spring, when we “spring forward” and lose an hour of sleep (i.e. tonight), the world doesn’t just groan—it bleeds. Studies—like a 2014 Michigan hospital analysis—show heart attacks spike 24% the Monday after the switch. Strokes? Up 8% in Finland, per a 2016 study. Traffic accidents? A 2020 University of Colorado-Boulder report pegs a 6% jump in fatal crashes, adding about 30 extra deaths a year. Why? Our circadian rhythms get sucker-punched. We’re groggy, irritable, and stumbling into the day like drunks after last call. Sleep deprivation isn’t a quirky plot twist—it’s a killer, and DST is the trigger.
Then there’s the “fall back” in November. You’d think gaining an hour would be a reprieve, but nope—it’s just a different flavor of chaos. Darkness creeps in earlier, and suddenly deer collisions and pedestrian pile-ups spike as drivers fumble through the gloom. Workplace injuries climb too, because tired hands and dim light don’t mix. This is a public health crisis dressed up as tradition. We’re not saving daylight—we’re sacrificing lives.

The Dumbass Origins of DST
So why the hell did we start this madness? Rewind to World War I, when Germany flipped the clocks in 1916 to stretch daylight and save coal. The U.S. jumped on the bandwagon in 1918, sold on the idea that more evening light would cut energy costs and boost wartime efficiency. Farmers, they said, would love it (spoiler: they universally hated it—cows don’t read clocks). Then, in World War II, it came back as a patriotic duty. Fine, you say—war’s desperate times called for desperate measures. But here’s the deal: those reasons don’t hold water in 2025.
Coal? We’ve got electricity humming through every socket—our society’s been electrified since Truman was in diapers. Energy savings? A 2008 Department of Energy study found DST shaves a measly 0.03% off electricity use—peanuts in a world of LED bulbs and 24/7 grids. Farming? Modern agribusiness runs on tractors and tech, not sunrise prayers. The original pitch—conserve fuel, align daylight with work—was flimsy even then, and now it’s laughable and embarrassing. We’re not rationing for the Kaiser anymore; we’re just screwing ourselves for no reason.

Standard Time: The Only Sane Rebellion
Here’s the truth: locking the clocks on Standard Time is the only fix that doesn’t make us look like fools. Why? It’s the closest thing to “real” time—aligned with the sun’s arc, not some arbitrary shift. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine backs this hard, saying permanent Standard Time syncs with our body’s natural clock, cutting the health risks of DST’s jolts. No more heart attacks from sleep loss, no more kids dodging cars in pre-dawn dark because sunrise is at 9 a.m. under permanent DST. It’s simple, it’s logical, and it’s got science in its corner.
Permanent DST?  Don’t even start.  That’s just DST’s smug cousin, pretending to be progress.  Sure, you get later sunsets – great for barbecues – but winter mornings turn into a gothic nightmare.  Sunrise at 8:45 a.m.?  Kids trudging to school in pitch black?  That’s not efficient; that’s dystopian.  We tried it in 1974 – Nixon’s energy crisis stunt – and people revolted after a few months of predawn misery.  Standard Time isn’t sexy, but it’s steady.  It’s the temporal equivalent of a no-nonsense narrator – reliable, grounded, and done with bullshit.

Musk, Trump, and the Poll That Missed the Plot
Enter Elon Musk and the Republican Party, riding in like modern-day Don Quixotes tilting at DST’s windmill. Trump’s been barking about it on Truth Social since December 2024: “Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.” Musk, co-leading Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency), has been hyping it too. On March 5, 2025, he dropped an X poll: “If daylight savings time change is canceled, do you prefer an hour earlier or an hour later?” Over 1.2 million voted, with 58% picking “an hour later.” Cue the applause from the uninformed.
Here’s the rub: that question’s a literary trainwreck. “An hour later” means permanent DST—shifting clocks forward year-round—which is exactly what no serious person should want. It’s not ending DST; it’s enshrining it, trading one stupidity for another. “An hour earlier” at least gets us to Standard Time, but Musk’s framing muddies the waters like a bad metaphor. The real choice isn’t “more or less”; it’s Standard vs. DST, and Standard wins every time if you’ve got a pulse and a brain. Musk’s poll isn’t a solution—it’s a distraction.

The Final Word
Daylight Saving Time is a farce—a killer cloaked in nostalgia, propped up by reasons that crumbled decades ago. It’s not efficient to cling to it; it’s lazy. Permanent Standard Time isn’t just the smart play—it’s the only play. Let’s lock the clocks, ditch the chaos, and tell the ghosts of 1918 to shove it. Musk and the GOP might fumble the execution, but if they actually kill DST, I’ll raise a glass—provided they don’t botch it with some half-assed “hour more” nonsense. Time’s too precious for this crap. Let’s live like we mean it.

N.P.: “All Shook Up” – Ry Cooder

Here we go again, dear reader—California’s lawmakers have plunged headfirst into yet another abyss of absurdity, dragging the rest of us along for the ride. Assembly Bill 133, the so-called “Duty to Retreat” bill, is the latest steaming pile of horseshit to emerge from Sacramento’s ivory tower, and it’s a slap in the face to every law-abiding citizen who dares to believe they have the right to protect themselves. This isn’t just moronic policy—it’s a betrayal of common sense, a coward’s charter dressed up as compassion, and it’s going to get people killed.

Let’s break this down for anyone who hasn’t yet had their morning coffee ruined by the details. AB 133, spearheaded by Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (because of course it’s a Democrat from Los Angeles), wants to obliterate California’s “no duty to retreat” stance. Instead of standing your ground when some shitbag threatens your life, this bill demands you turn tail and run—assuming, of course, you can magically teleport out of harm’s way. If you’re outside your home and some asshole comes at you with a knife, a gun, or even their fists, AB 133 says your first legal obligation is to flee. Forget defending yourself, forget protecting your family—your job is to scamper off like a scared rabbit, hoping the bad guy doesn’t catch you. And if you don’t? Well, good luck explaining that to a prosecutor who’d rather see you in cuffs than the criminal in a cell.

Are you kidding me? This is the kind of lunacy that only makes sense if you’ve spent your entire life in a cushy office, sipping lattes and pontificating about “de-escalation” while the rest of us live in the real world. Newsflash, Sacramento: as I would have thought you would have learned by now, violent criminals don’t send RSVP invitations to their attacks. They don’t give you a heads-up so you can plot your escape route. When danger strikes, it’s sudden, it’s chaotic, and for most people,  it’s terrifying. Expecting someone to calmly assess whether they can “retreat with complete safety” in the heat of the moment is so detached from reality it’s almost laughable—if it weren’t so infuriatingly dangerous.

And it gets worse. This bill doesn’t just stop at forcing you to run—it strips away your right to defend your property or stop a felony in progress. Imagine some lowlife breaking into your car, stealing your livelihood, or worse, assaulting someone you love. Under current law, you can intervene. Under AB 133? Nope. You’re supposed to stand there, twiddling your thumbs, while the criminal waltzes off with your stuff—or your life. The bill even muddies the waters inside your own home, tightening the screws on how you can respond to threats. This isn’t just a “duty to retreat”—it’s a duty to surrender.

Who does this protect? Certainly not the victims. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco nailed it when he said this is yet another move by Sacramento Democrats to “coddle criminals” while tying the hands of law-abiding residents. Assemblyman David Tangipa put it even more bluntly: “Where do you retreat if you can’t defend yourself in your own home?” These aren’t fringe voices—they’re the voices of reason screaming into a void of progressive delusion. Meanwhile, the gun-control cheerleaders at Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety are clapping like trained seals, claiming this will “reduce violence.” Reduce violence? Tell that to the single mom who can’t outrun a stalker, or the elderly shopkeeper who can’t dodge a robber’s bullet.

The supporters of AB 133 cloak their argument in sanctimonious drivel about preventing “escalation” and curbing “unwarranted violence.” Oh, please. Spare me the crocodile tears. Criminals don’t care about your bleeding-heart legislation—they’re not sitting around debating the finer points of self-defense law. They’re preying on the vulnerable, and this bill just handed them a free pass. By disarming victims—legally and morally—California is rolling out the red carpet for every thug, thief, and psychopath who knows you’re now a sitting duck.

And let’s not ignore the chilling effect this will have on anyone brave enough to fight back. Under AB 133, if you dare to stand your ground, you’re not just risking your life—you’re risking a courtroom nightmare. Prosecutors will have a field day second-guessing your every move: “Why didn’t you run faster? Why didn’t you hide? Why didn’t you let the guy stab you and hope for the best?” It’s a legal trap designed to punish the innocent and embolden the guilty. Self-defense isn’t a privilege—it’s a fundamental human right, and California’s lawmakers are stomping it into the dirt.

This bill isn’t about safety; it’s about control. It’s about a state government so obsessed with its utopian fantasies that it’s willing to sacrifice real people on the altar of ideology. AB 133 doesn’t make California safer—it makes it a playground for predators and a prison for the rest of us. If this passes, mark my words: the blood of every victim who couldn’t retreat fast enough will be on the hands of every legislator who voted for it.

Wake up, California. Fight back. This isn’t just a bad law—it’s a declaration of war on your right to survive. Call your representatives, flood their inboxes, and make it clear: We won’t retreat, and we won’t surrender. AB 133 must die on the vine, or we’ll all pay the price.

N.P.: “Ring of Fire” – Frayle

Listen up, dear readers, patriots, and anyone who’s ever cracked the spine on a book worth a damn: as of yesterday, English is finally the official language of the United States. Cue the fireworks, crack a beer, pour the whiskey, and let’s raise a middle finger to the woke vultures who’ve been pecking at the neglected carcass of our beloved language for too long. This isn’t just a win—it’s a goddamn triumph. One Language, One Flag, One Nation. And now, it’s time to protect this victory with something big, something bold: a Department of English Grammar and Usage. And, as you may have guessed, I’m the guy to run it.

For decades, English has been under siege. The DEI cult and their word-twisting acolytes have tried to warp it into a limp, apologetic shadow of itself—stripping away precision, clarity, and balls in favor of their anti-American fever dreams. They’ve turned pronouns into weapons, grammar into a suggestion, and meaning into mush. Enough. English isn’t just a language; it’s the backbone of this nation’s soul—Shakespeare’s fire, Twain’s grit, Hemingway’s steel. It’s time to stop the bleeding and start swinging back.

Enter the Department of English Grammar and Usage. Picture it: a federal fortress of syntax and style, tasked with setting ironclad norms for how we speak, write, and think. No more “they” for singulars unless it’s earned. No more “latinx” abominations. Just pure, unadulterated English—rules that stick, enforced by people who know the difference between a comma splice and a knockout punch. This isn’t about snobbery; it’s about unity. One tongue to bind us, from sea to shining sea.

So why me? Let’s cut the crap and lay out the receipts. I’ve got a Master’s Degree in English—earned, not handed out like participation trophies. Thirty-plus years tutoring every level from snot-nosed 2nd graders to PhD candidates, beating the rules of the language into their skulls until they could write a sentence that didn’t suck. Years teaching at the collegiate level, where I turned classrooms into battlegrounds for ideas, not safe spaces for whining. I’m an internationally published author—words of mine have crossed oceans, not just keyboards. And for the last two decades, I’ve been a pitbull for this language, snarling at every woke attempt to dilute it, every DEI edict to deform it. I’ve got the scars, the ink, and the fire to prove it.

To President Trump: You’ve made America great again—now let’s make its language unbreakable. To Elon Musk: You’re a man of vision—back this and watch it soar. To Speaker Johnson and the rest of the suits in DC: Get this on the floor and make it law. I’m ready to lead this charge, to build a department that’s half library, half war room—a beacon for every American who still believes words matter.

The woke crowd will scream. Let ‘em. They’ve had their turn, and they blew it—turning English into a punching bag for their identity obsession. Now it’s our move. We’re not just reclaiming a language; we’re reclaiming a culture. #OneLanguage,OneFlag,OneNation.

N.P.: “Body Burn” – Cubanate

Remembering Mary.

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