Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Salutations, dear reader, from the last sigma in California.  This state sucks.  I wanna get down to TJ, but that’s not happening until someone with some sack can unfuck the border.  Which will be quite a thing, because the border is, at present. well and proper fucked.    I can’t go anyway…the gas alone for that trip would cost somewhere around $5K, leaving barely enough in the Mexico budget to get through even one floor at Adelita’s Four Floors of Whores™.
No…the smart money is staying home and laying low this summer.  Too many smart people saying too many dire things about the near future to be able to relax anywhere right now, anyway.

N.P.: “Fuck That Guy” – Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Decided that maybe I should grow a beard this morning.  Then,  10 minutes later, I decided that was a stupid idea and shaved as usual.  Fuck beards.
Decided to go to the grocery store this afternoon.  Hated everybody I saw there.  Bought liquor and came home.
Decided to drink liquor and NyQuil and take a nap.  Had vivid dreams about strangling someone.  Woke to realize it was just a dream and was soul-crushingly disappointed.  Couldn’t get back to sleep now knowing that this person still needed strangling.  Said, “fuck!” out loud.  Woke people up.
Decided that maybe I should cut back on the drinking and NyQuil this evening.  Then, 10 minutes later, I decided that was a stupid idea, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad absurdum.
And but so anyway, the books are going simply swimmingly, thanksferaskin’.

N.P.: “Tainted Love” – Broken Peach

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Wrote rather a lot today.  I rather liked it.  Made it rather difficult to sleep last night.  The gears started turning around midnight.  It was not really a night I wanted to spend fascinatedly watching mental gears turn rather than sleeping, so I tranqed myself around 01:00, which was entirely pleasant, but then woke up at exactly 07:00, took a quick shower, poured a daunting glass of diabetically over-sweetened iced tea, sat at the desk and started to type.  And I typed.  And I kept typing , stopping only every 90 minutes or so, when my watch would not-so-subtly suggest that I stand up and move about briefly so as to avoid pulmonary embolism.  Which I did.
It was a good day.

N.P.: “Bomba” – Kontrust

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Greetings, patient and long-suffering reader…
Needless to say, I’ve been away.
Where I’ve been I can’t say.
But I’ve been busy as fuck.

N.P.: “Stripped” – Rammstein

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

A very happy birthday to Angelina Jolie.

N.P.: “Bonecracker” – Shocore

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

A splendidly rainy day here in The Creek.  The rain has been steady on the roof of The Shed since sunrise, adding a nice counterpoint to today’s soundtrack, which soundtrack has been blaring at ludicrous levels, making the neighbors apoplectic.  But the neighbors are old and stupid.  One of them is a hunchback and eats goats.  I wish them ill.

N.P.: “So Sorry I Could Die” – The Hellacopters

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

“Be regular and bourgeois in your life so you can be violent and original in your work.”
~ Flaunert

I’ve been thinking a lot about that one lately, dear reader.  It is, one hopes, relevant to what is going on here these days.

N.P.: “Zick Zack” – Rammstein

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Well, that’s welcome news…perhaps I’ll restore my Twitter™ account.

Me: …then get the motherfucker on the phone.
She:  I bet Jesus never said, “Get the motherfucker on the phone.”
Me:  Who cares?  I don’t have time for that.  Why are people always bringing Jesus up?  Of course Jesus never said that…Jesus didn’t have a phone.  Jesus didn’t have electric light.  He just told people to be nice to each other and they nailed him to a tree.  Two thousand years later and the poor bastard just hangs there, listening to people moan and beg for the winning lottery numbers.
She: You’re going to hell.
Me:  I find your use of the future tense interesting…have you looked outside lately?
She: I’m going to lunch.
Me: After.
She: After what?
Me After you get the motherfucker on the phone.
She: Jesus!
Me: Like clockwork.

N.P.: “Funeral Bell” – Black Label Society

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Today’s moment of Zen:  The first step to not letting something bother you is to not let something bother you.  Sounds stupidly simple, but it took me several decades to figure that out.  I’ve been moving through the day like fucking Buddha…with complete nonchalance and totally unscathed.

N.P.: “Beasto Blanco” – Beasto Blanco

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Whats crackin’, dear reader.  I’ve been away, doing my part for the war effort and all that.

Rewatched Hearts of Darkness today, Eleanor Coppola’s brilliant documentary of her husband Francis’s making of Apocalypse Now.”  I needed that.    It’s comforting to hear Francis rambling manically and desperately about what a colossal failure the movie was as he was making it.  That the whole thing is a complete waste of inordinate amounts of time and money. It’s comforting because I’ve been spending a whole lot of time in that same head space, and it’s nice to know that he, like many other artists, were fraught with doubt and fear of failure right up until the night before their creation changed everything.

Anyway, all apologies for the absence…I’ll try not to let it happen again.

N.P.: “Watcher in The Sky” – Ghost