“Remember, remember the 5th of November,
the gunpowder, treason, and plot.
I can see no reason why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.”
~ John Milton
“It’s only treason if you don’t win.”
~ George Washington
Happy Liberation Day.
N.P.: “Nessun Dorma” – Jeff Beck
Good day, dearest and most intelligent reader. On this Liberation Day Eve, the Word of the Day, technically, is “petard.” However, this word in nearly always used in the context of the phrase, “Hoisted on his own petard.” I’ve always found both the word and the phrase sonorously repugnant: mainly just the word. “Petard.” That’s just a terrible sounding word. Be that as it may, I can’t think of a more relevant word/term of the day for today. For this phrase comes with a sprinkle of irony and a dash of poetic justice.
The phrase “Hoisted on his own petard” finds its origins in the world of Shakespeare. It appears in “Hamlet,” where the term “petard” refers to an explosive device used in warfare. To be hoisted by it means to be blown up by one’s own bomb – a delicious metaphor for being caught in one’s own trap.
The world is watching and waiting for the results of tomorrow’s election. While no one knows the outcome as of this writing, one thing is beyond doubt: neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris would be on the ballot if the democrats hadn’t put them both there. The whole ignoring Biden’s 15 million votes in the primary and swapping him out for the DEI candidate who got exactly 0 votes was done so blatantly and egregiously, and my democrat friends seem completely sanguine about it, so there’s no real need to deal with it here.
But my democrat friends seem shocked, shocked to their foundations when I suggest that the only reason Donald Trump even on the ticket is because the Biden/Harris administration and democrat machine worked hand-in-glove to put him there.
Before I continue, I feel the need to share a quick anecdote: Early in this election cycle, a friend found himself in a democrat focus group, answering female “researchers'” questions about masculinity and “guyness.” Apparently it was a horrid and depressing three minutes. Their whole angle, he said figured out in retrospect, was that to get their message across to “us simple, toxically masculine males was to figure out what we talked about with each other when we went to the bathroom together.” That, they thought, was the key to unlock the all-too-illusive male vote. My friend said that it was clear from the start that none of these women had even met an actually straight male. Their first question was just straight out: “What do you guys talk about when you go to the bathroom?” “Thankfully this was a stupid Zoom thing,” he said, “so I was just able to click out of the meeting…I’m sure packing up and walking out of an in-person would have been interpreted as “aggressive” and thus, likely, toxic. “Fuck ’em,” I thought at the time, “these idiots deserve exactly what they get.”
Flashback with me to the mid-term elections of 2022. Republicans were still pissed about losing in 2020. At the forefront of the Republican mind at the time was Trump’s many totally unforced errors in that election. They blamed Trump for not only losing the executive branch, but also the Senate. So when he started showing up at the beginning of the 2022 election cycle, making endorsements with papal ex cathedra, Republicans were skeptical. But willing to hear him out. Promises of a “Red Wave” were made. But that amounted to nothing more than a pink puddle of piddle. The consensus came quickly: Trump’s magic was gone. He had no more juice. Not only could he not win elections, he couldn’t even successfully influence things when he wasn’t on the ticket. He was, for all practical purposes, at least in the minds of most republicans, Done. And had That Been That, he would have indeed been done. Even if he did try to run in 2024, the safe money was on DeSantis winning the nomination. And he may or may not have won against Biden.
But That Wasn’t That because the same Democratic machine just couldn’t let it be. In fairness, they probably didn’t know how far Trump’s star had fallen, since these were the same out-of-touch folks that were asking what men talk to each other about when they go to the bathroom that were now in charge of destroying Trump’s possible election run in 2024. Every single thing they would do for the next 12 months would be a catastrophic tactical and strategic error. To wit:
There were then multiple attempts by democrat-run states to take Trump off the ballot. The Supreme Court told them to fuck off. At this point, it all just noise. The two assassination attempts were enough to bring even traditional democrats like Elon Musk and JFK Jr. to publicly and rather fervently support Trump.
If there is a Trump victory, we will, in perhaps the most ironic way possible, have the democrats to thank for it. But since this was the exact opposite outcome from what they were going for, they can fairly be said to have been hoisted on their own petard.
N.P.: “Hoist The Colours – Bass Singers Version” – The Wellermen, Bobby Bass, Ebucs, Eric Hollaway, Big Brev, Luke G, Taylor, Jesse Elkins, Davide Delmonte
Got a massive flashing greenlight on the proposal I’m putting together this week, which greenlight was more sorely needed than I had originally thought. Let’s just say my thinking about this whole project over the summer was about 50/50: it had equal chances of being massive and falling absolutely flat. As of today, I’m thinking more 75/25. It will all come down to the writing, of course. Everything always does.
This means a full-court press for the rest of ’24…total focus.
N.P.: “Feel Like Making Love” – The Hunger
Happy Halloween, dear reader! That’s it…I just decided…Halloween is now the official start of the New Year on the Gallaway calendar. Now I must come up with an official traditional celebration of this holiday. The reasons for this are myriad but make total sense to me.
And by making my New Year on the last day of the month, we can dedicate an entire day and night to celebrating with reckless abandon, then wake up on the first of the new month, ready to get to work on This Year’s Project(s). Brilliant.
Our traditional celebration will have nothing to do with trick-or-treating. Sure, I was into it as a kid, but now trick-or-treaters just annoy me. I could do without that particular tradition. But I’m into costumes one day/night a year, so costumes will likely be part of it. And liquor, of course. I don’t know…I’m going to have to flesh this out. I’ll get back to you as developments warrant.
Did you ever decide what you’re going as? I might have mentioned mine was a toss-up between Art the Clown and The Mad Hatter. Yesterday I decided I’d just be Garbage. It was just the easiest option. I thought I was being original, but everybody that’s come to the door so far has also been Garbage. Weird.
Anyway, something for you better than candy: 10 of my favorite books/stories to read around this time of year (in no particular order):
N.P.: “Grim, Grinning Ghosts” – Ghosts
It’s Halloween Eve, dear reader! Which fills my heart with joy. Had to kick on the heater last night, there’s rain in the forecast, and the nights are getting significantly longer than the days. Tomorrow we get to get juiced and dress like dicks and menace the gentry for candy. Then Sunday night we again abandon the foolish absurdity of Daylight Saving Time and return to Actual Time. And I’ll have plenty to say about that when it happens. I’m just glad it’s happening. All of this to say that for a Halloween Eve, today was a fine day.
But it was a tad dull. It lacked excitement. It was certainly no 1938.
On Halloween Eve (October 30), 1938, Orson Welles scared the living shit out of the American public with his infamous radio broadcast. Picture the scene: a nation teetering on the brink of war and uncertainty, suddenly pummeled into hysteria by Welles as he unleashed Martians upon the unsuspecting masses.
This was no ordinary Halloween prank, dear reader. This was a full-scale assault on the fragile psyche of the American public, plunging them into the delicious pit of paranoia. Broadcasting from the Mercury Theater on the Air, Welles and his band of mischief-makers adapted H. G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” into a radio play that would transcend entertainment and catapult itself into the realm of mass psychological experiment.
Seriously, picture it: families gathered around their radios, the dim glow of the tubes casting eerie shadows on the walls, when suddenly: news bulletins of Martian invasions! Alien machines! Death rays incinerating helpless New Jersey residents! The more gullible folk sprinted for the hills, convinced that the apocalypse was happening. Listeners fled their homes, the highways clogged with panic-stricken masses, and the telephone lines blew up with people calling each other, trying to figure out what was happening.
This was the birth of modern-media sensationalism, a flashpoint where fiction blurred into perceived reality. Welles, ever the anarchist, shattered the comfortable cocoon of pre-war America, and it was amazing.
So tonight we drink to Orson Welles, the man who turned a lazy Sunday afternoon into a nightmarish ride through the cosmos. His broadcast remains a testament to the power of storytelling, and a cautionary tale of the media’s impact on a gullible and uncritical public. Perhaps the latter lesson is the one that contemporary Americans would do well to heed.
N.P.: “Thunder Cash ’69” – Cody Parks and the Dirty South
Travel day. On the go since 06:00. Didn’t write shit.
Eight days until Halloween.
N.P.: “Down to the Bottom” – Dorothy
Well, shit, dear reader…9 days until Halloween and I haven’t done a damn thing to prepare. Not sure what I need to prepare for…I don’t do anything on Halloween anymore. I just like Halloween. I’ve never thrown a party, but if I was going to, I kind of assume it would be a Halloween party. With my almost perverse affinity to the cold and the dark, Halloween is more like my New Years.
My schedule for the rest of this fetid year has no room for parties. Alas. But I do love Halloween.
N.P.: “Double Lucifer” – TVAM
Tonight, dear reader, we pour some out for Kerouac. October 21 marks the anniversary of the passing of one Jack Kerouac, a literary rebel whose words still almost pulsate with the restless energy of the Beat generation. I spent a lot of the early 90s reading Kerouac while drinking port. I think I was trying to channel him. He struck me more as a force of nature than a writer, which was what I was looking to become. The port did nothing to advance that cause. It killed Kerouac, and did me no favors. I even tried to get into jazz. I took pride that Jack Kerouac and I were both alive on the same planet for a few months. It was a weird time.
Kerouac’s journey began with what would become his manifesto: “On the Road.” For those of you in the “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the chaotic, poetic journey, this is your jam. On the road was (as far as I know) the first American road trip novel, and was the third such novel that I encountered, and the one that cemented the genre as one of my favorites.
Kerouac wrote the draft of “On the Road” on one continuous long scroll of teletype paper so as not to disturb his flow. The other day I was imagining Jack being alive now and having literally endless digital paper at his disposal, leaving no reason (except for a power outage) to ever stop typing.
He once said, “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved…” This was Kerouac’s ethos – a torrid love affair wild, the untamed, and the beautifully chaotic.
I’m not sure if the new generation is even capable of appreciating Kerouac. They seem completely detached from The Past and seem remarkably inept at perspective taking. And so much for them.
Here’s to Kerouac, a true literary badass.
N.P.: “Desolation Angels” – Jack Kerouac
This time of year is always weird and somewhat confusing for the landed gentry of Fecal Creek: the nights are appropriately Fall-like…with a bit of a chill in the air, but the days are still cruelly summer-like, with highs in the 80s and 90s. People don’t know what the hell to do: it’s clearly too hot during the day to have the heater on or bust out fall clothes, but then they freeze their balls at night. These people haven’t yet figured out California’s climate confusion: while the entire rest of the country enjoys four distinct seasons, California sports only two: Summer, and Not Summer. Which is more like one season with a privation. But never mind that. Summer here is preposterous: this last July, the temperature soared to well over 110F every day, with the nighttime lows only dropping to maybe 85. It’s so brutally hot, people die. Usually the old and infirm, but you never know. Most species of insects have died from the heat and lack of water by August 1. Birds explode mid-flight, making a light “poof” sound, and leaving nothing but a chaotic spray of feathers gently floating down. It’s awful. The only things that seem to thrive in this climate are the lizards and snakes. Fortunately we don’t have scorpions or tarantulas this far north, but give it time: they will be here soon enough.
From Cinco de Mayo until Halloween, yrs. truly generally doesn’t leave the house, preferring instead to spend my waking hours sitting naked on the cool tile floor in front of my open deep-freezer, sipping whiskey and loudly cursing whomever’s stupid idea it was to originally settle in this egregiously inhospitable place. I’ve always assumed that everybody that lives here pretty much operated the same way. But I’m starting to think I’m alone in my suffering.
Fecal Creek, CA is a banal suburbia where the grass is always green on the other side of the septic tank. Sundays here are like Groundhog Day on acid, but instead of a lovable rodent predicting the end of winter, we have gangs of vicious turkeys that roam the neighborhoods like terrorists, menacing anything that isn’t part of their flock. Until, of course, they start high-tailing it for their lives from the local animal control officer who seems perpetually tanked on Sterno.
I’ve never been a big fan of Sundays. But Sundays in Fecal Creek defy logic and sanity, when time seems to dilate, and the absurd becomes the norm. The sun rises reluctantly, casting a jaundiced glow over the town as if even it is too hungover to shine properly. It’s the kind of place where the turkeys’ godawful gobbling is replaced by the tubercular cough and mucous-spitting of Mr. Shitbag (I know that that’s not his real name…but that’s what I call him), the street’s unofficial alarm clock, bellowing from his porch as he sips a questionable brew from a thermos labeled “NOT COFFEE.”
Today happens to be the Fecal Creek Pancake Derby, a chaotic spectacle of culinary and vehicular misadventure. Picture this: a gaggle of local eccentrics armed with spatulas and a suicidal lack of fear, racing on modified lawnmowers while flipping pancakes into the mouths of unsuspecting spectators. The rules are simple—there are none. It’s a syrupy, flour-dusted free-for-all that ends when the last pancake hits the pavement or when someone finally breaks a hip.
By noon, the town shifts gears. The Fecal Creek Farmers’ Market opens its gates, offering an array of goods no sane person would ever need or want. Some hippy chick seems to be selling artisanal mud pies. She sits proudly next to some dude’s collection of slightly sinister garden gnomes. The air is thick with the aroma of deep-fried everything and the faint whiff of existential dread as cash exchanges hands for items destined to clutter garages and provoke marital disputes. I generally try to avoid the Farmers’ Market.
As do most of the folks on my street: Sunday’s are evidently for lawn care.
I awakened this fine (or not so fine, as it were) Sunday morning to the cacophony of church bells and lawnmowers, my head throbbing in time with the frequencies of a thousand dying angels. I stumble to my window, naked as Diogenes but with less philosophical intent, and witness the terrifying tableau below: the air is thick with the aroma of overcooked potatoes and regret as families emerge from their cookie-cutter homes, still dressed in their Walmart-bought pajamas.
I gag and retreat indoors, desperate for solace from this Dantean landscape.
Inside, my sanctuary is no better. The television offers nothing but golf, football re-runs, and “inspirational” biopics starring those Hallmark channel actors who sleep with the light on to avoid their own mediocrity. My so-called “smart” phone, which I might add has a Ph.D. in Failure Studies, only offers me “fun day” suggestions: brunches with saccharine mimosas, hiking trails to nowhere, and worse, fucking arts and crafts!
I try to escape this madness by venturing out into the world, hoping to find safety in numbers. Alas, the streets are littered with the slack-jawed zombies I feared most: families ambling along sidewalks four abreast, oblivious to the anguished honking of cars behind them. Dogs in humiliating costumes trotting obediently behind their mindless masters, their eyes begging for a swift end to this likely feline-conspired nightmare. And the children—oh, the fucking children! Hordes of them, stained with the remnants of their Easy Mac Last Supper, wailing for attention like some horrific game of “Pin the Screaming Brat on the Impatient Uncle.”
As the day already seems to be dragging on like a sloth with a broken metronome, I return to my lair, defeated and demoralized. Trudging back, I see driveways filled with the lifeless husks of automobiles, their owners hypnotized by the alien hum of their infernal lawn implements. The air is thick with the acrid stench of burnt gasoline and freshly mown grass clippings. Back in the house, I check on some marijuana I left in the garage, then go to my window again.
Lunch! The men don their “World’s Greatest Dad” aprons, which last saw use on Father’s Day ’98, and fire up their charcoal grills to prove their manhood to an audience of one: the neighbor’s cat, Dildo. I doubt that that’s the cats actual assigned moniker, but that’s what I call it. Because it fits. That’s a story for another time. Burgers sizzle and beer cans hiss, and soon enough, the smell of charred meat and sweat permeates the air. They desperately cling to the dying vestiges of Summer, before Not Summer starts.
The ladies of the street gather ’round someone’s plastic kiddie pool, discussing the latest gossip about nonsense. Their kids run amok, their shrill laughter competing with the sounds of Blink-182 from one of their idiot kids’ bedroom. As their neighbors peek through their weed-covered blinds, sipping on their cheap Chardonnay and adjusting their polyester drawers, Fecal Creek braces itself for another week of the same old shit – literally, figuratively, and metaphorically.
I have concluded simply that Sundays suck. And like an ageless vampire, they will rise again next week to feast upon our sanity and grace us with their idiotic influence.
Until then, I leave you with this bittersweet advice: stock up on booze and ammo, barricade your doors, and pray for the End Times. For while the sun may rise on another Sunday, at least there’s a 50/50 shot it’s the end of the world as we know it. And I, for one, won’t be mowing my goddamn lawn.
N.P.: “Skin City” – Robert Rodriguez, Rebecca Rodriguez, Rick Del Castillo, Steven Tyler