June 23, 2025

Behold, dearest reader, another Monday is upon us.  But this isn’t “just another Monday.”  No.  June 23, 2025 is a day of ink-soaked rebellion and typewriter fury.  Around this time in 1971 (try as I might, I couldn’t pin down an exact date), Charles Bukowski’s raw, booze-soaked novel Post Office was published.  It’s a throbbing middle-finger to The Grind, chronicling his years as a postal worker with unfiltered grit – drinking, screwing, and surviving the soul-crushing monotony.  Bukowski’s voice is pure badass: no polish, just truth.  This book cemented his rep as the poet of the down-and-out, and its release was a liver-lick to the literary establishment.  If you’re looking for something that screams defiance, this isit.  The prose hits like a shot of Jack – rough, unapologetic, and leaving you reeling.  Bukowski showed writers like yrs. truly How Its Done, turning a dead-end job into a manifesto of survival.  Pick it up, crack it open, and let the pages drag you into the chaos of a man who refused to bow to the suits.  This book was a grenade tossed into the ivory tower.

June 23 is also National Typewriter Day, marking the 1868 patent of the typewriter by Christopher Latham Sholes.  This machine was the weapon of choice for literary rebels like Hemingway, Kerouac, and other wild scribes who hammered out their works with mechanical fury.  The typewriter’s clack is the sound of creation under pressure.  It’s a nod to the tools that let writers fight their own apocalypses on the page.  Back in the day, this beast of a device was the heartbeat of the craft, a clattering symphony of keys that turned thoughts into tangible rebellion.  Sholes’ invention birthed a revolution, giving voice to the outcasts and dreamers who pounded out epics on its iron frame.  Today, it’s a relic, sure, but its legacy lives up to every keystroke – a reminder that the fight for words is as old as the machine itself.

I have a truly old, totally analog typewriter…no electricity needed.  If the world goes up, or the electrical grid collapses, dissemination will certainly be affected, but I’ll still be here, banging on the keys.  Due to my father’s ludditic obstinance when it came to technology, I was forced to use a typewriter until I had already started college.  It was a real pain in the ass, especially since literally everyone I knew had been rocking word processors for years at that point.  But there is a certain satisfaction the comes from typewriting.  I think it’s the combination of several different elements: the various noises from the contraption itself…the aforementioned clanking of the keys, the end-of-the-line ding, the subsequent smacking of the carriage-return lever.  It also has something to do with the fact that you are dealing with a physical page, which pages stacking up next to the machine is far more gratifying to those of us who like tangible, visible results of our efforts than any screen could ever be.

N.P.: “Bauhaus Staircase” – Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

June 22, 2025

 

You know, dear reader, I do my best to extoll the virtues and pleasantries of living in Fecal Creek, CA.  And I know I’ve spilled a lot of virtual and analog ink over the years bemoaning the literary uninhabitable heat that happens here from Cinco de Mayo through Halloween.  But as I’ve recently discussed here, I may finally be getting acclimated to this unreasonable heat.  Maybe I’m just getting old.  You know how old people are always cold, and they always talk about going to warmer climates for their health or bones or whatever?  Maybe that’s going on.  I hope not.  Regardless, I am trying to lean into the heat this year.  Not just to accept it, but to embrace it for some reason I have yet to figure out.  Surviving multiple summers here does suggest a durability, a hardiness, even a ruggedness you possess that other humans and species do not possess.  But there’s a darker side to that arrangement: you’re stuck living here with those hardy, rugged creatures, and the warmer the temperatures get, the more some of these little monsters thrive and breed.  Which is what brings me to the topic of today’s sermon.

Behold, dear readers, the unmitigated chaos that descends upon our beleaguered hamlet of Fecal Creek each summer, a season wherein the very basic fabric of our domestic tranquility is besieged by an army of cockroaches so multitudinous, so audaciously omnipresent, that one might be forgiven for imagining a dystopian epic penned by a madman with a typewriter and a vendetta.  These six-legged marauders, glistening with the unholy sheen of resilience, emerge from the dank crevices of our collective subconscious – or, more likely, the sewer grates – transforming our sunlit days into a grotesque ballet of evasion and existential dread.

Let us consider, with a trembling yet irreverent chuckle, the sheer audacity of their numbers.  By mid-June, as the thermometer breaches the infernal threshold of ninety degrees, the cockroach population swells to a figure so staggering – let’s hazard a wildly speculative estimate of eleventy-billion – that one cannot so much as open a cupboard without encountering a symposium of antennae and skittering legs, debating philosophy or plotting their next assault on the sanctity of my artisanal sourdough stash.  The kitchen counter, once a bastion of culinary ambition, becomes a roach-filled agora, where these critters hold court with the insouciant swagger of uninvited guests at a black-tie gala.

And oh, the indignities they inflict!  Last Tuesday, as I endeavored to brew a pot of coffee – black as my mood and twice as bitter – one such brazen interloper executed a kamikaze dive into the carafe, necessitating a ritualistic exorcism involving scalding water and a string of expletives that would make a sailor blush.  The sheer affrontery!  To infiltrate the sacred rite of caffeine consumption is to declare war on the very soul of Fecal Creek, and yet, these pests persist with a tenacity that borders on the absurdly heroic.

What recourse, then, for the beleaguered citizenry?  Traps abound – sticky, insidious contraptions that promise salvation but deliver only a tableau of wriggling captives, a macabre art installation titled the Agony of the Arthropod.  Pesticides, those chemical knights in shining aerosol cans, offer a fleeting reprieve, only to be met with the roaches’ evolutionary middle finger: resistance so robust it could withstand a nuclear winter.  We are left, dear reader, to wage this battle with brooms, bravado, and a grim determination to reclaim our dominion, one squashed invader at a time.

So here we stand, on the precipice of July, in Fecal Creek’s cockroach apocalypse, armed with humor as our shield and a reckless disregard for the conventional.  Let us laugh in the face of this scuttling tyranny, for to do otherwise would be to cede victory to the six-legged horde.  Until the autumn chill restores order, I bid your fortify your pantries, steel your nerves, and join me in this absurd, ongoing crusade – because if we can’t beat them, we’ll at least mock them with the ferocity of a thousand suns.  Onward, brave souls, to the Roachpocalypse 2025!

N.P.: “Bug Powder Dust” – Bomb The Bass, Justin Warfield

Word (Term) of the Day: rara avis in terris

Rara avis in terris (noun phrase): Latin for “a rare bird in the land,” used metaphorically to describe an extraordinary or unusual person or thing, the kind of phenomenon that doesn’t just defy expectation but detonates it.  Someone or something so unique that they’re effectively a cosmic statistical error, like seeing a double rainbow while getting hit by lightning and winning the lottery all at once.

As mentioned supra, this phrase comes straight from Latin, baby, because antiquity had a flair for the dramatic.  The phrase hearkens back to Juvenal’s Satires (6.165, for you grad students who actually like footnotes), where it was used to lament the improbability of finding a woman simultaneously beautiful, rich, faithful, and talented.  Essentially, “rara avis in terris” became shorthand for spotting a unicorn in rush-hour-traffic.  Over time, it expanded to mean any anomaly that made you stop, gawk, and question your place in the universe for a hot second.  Yes, it’s pretentious.  Yes, it’s amazing.

On of the more white trash denizens of Fecal Creek was Paulie “Numbers” Karpinski, who was known for punching above his weight in all areas of his life.  Legend had it that he had won $150K in the lottery a dozen years ago, and had, since the moment he won, considered himself a professional gambler, and also “well-to-do,” even though his lottery winnings had been completely burned through years ago.  It was all he could do to scrape a couple bucks together to buy half-a-dozen scratchers every Friday night.  And this Friday night, just like the 50 previous Friday nights, Paulie didn’t win shit. 

Nevertheless, Paulie still considered himself a professional gambler, and professional gamblers have an appreciation for odds.  Which is why, when he stumbled into Le Seraphin, a new French bistro incongruously tethered to the edge of a Wal-Mart parking lot, he figured his luck could only go up. 

Le Seraphim was absurd on principle.  It had chandeliers decked out like Liberace’s fever dream.  Waiters in suits that probably cost more than Paulie’s car flitted from table to table like tuxedoed dragonflies.  The menu was one of those single-sheet masterpieces where the fonts did more heavy lifting than the food descriptions, except for the prices written in what might as well have been micro-aggressive hieroglyphics. 

Paulie, being Paulie, didn’t care.  He dumped his ass into the nearest chair and ordered the first thing he saw, a $175 steak tartare described as having been “massaged” to perfection. 

But the highlight of the evening wasn’t the raw meat appetizer masquerading as culinary enlightenment.  It was the woman three tables over, who Paulie swore – even while drunk and prone to hotboxing his own imagination – was some kind of divine mistake.  Her hair was the color of every bad decision he’d made at sunset, and her body was what Botticelli would’ve dreamed up if he weren’t so distracted by goddamn seashells.  She laughed like she’d invented oxygen.  Her dress looked like something sewn directly onto her skin by a team of sacrilegious angels.  She was, without question, a rara avis in terris, the rarest of rare birds in the landfill of mediocrity that was Paulie’s life. 

Unfortunately, Paulie being Paulie meant his idea of “charming” involved a lot of slurred metaphors and overly familiar hand gestures.  He sauntered toward her table with the grace of a hedgehog juggling chainsaws. 

“Hey there,” he said, leaning in as if conspiratorial proximity would make him seem suave rather than mildly rabid.  “Are you Google? ‘Cause you’ve got everything I’m searching for.”

Her smile froze, the way someone’s smile does when they’re mentally flipping coins between fight or flight.  Without missing a beat, she turned to the towering French waiter by her side and said, in clipped, elegant syllables, “Jean-Luc, I believe this gentleman is lost.  Would you kindly…redirect him?”

Paulie didn’t hear the rest because Jean-Luc had grabbed his elbow with the precision of someone who hadn’t just earned a tip tonight but had earned all the tips, forever.  Paulie found himself rehomed curbside faster than you could say hors d’oeuvres.

He watched her through the window as she tossed back a glass of wine so red it looked like arterial punctuation.  Paulie muttered something half-hearted about “class warfare” and called an Uber, deciding then and there that rare birds weren’t for him. 

“Back to the bar on 7th,” he told the driver.  And as he leaned back into the ripped leather seat, he decided that steak tartare tasted like chalk dipped in regret anyway. 

N.P.: “Head Spin – Signals Mix” – Collide

June 19, 2025

 

Behold, dear reader: June 19, 1947, the birthday of a true literary badass, Salman Rushdie, whose audacious prose – most electrifyingly The Satanic Verses – ignites global tempests and even a fatwa with its unapologetic defiance and razor-sharp storytelling.  Today we raise a glass to a titan who dances on the edge of controversy, weaving narratives that slash through the mundane with fearless brilliance.

Let’s take a minute to dive into the firestorm: that 1989 fatwa (I remember it well), a death sentence from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, branded Rushdie a heretic for daring to blend sacred myth with profane imagination.  This was not long after the Pope had forbidden Catholics from seeing “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and as a fledgling writer, the notion that one could potentially write something so potent that it would be labeled verboten, even worthy of a death sentence by heads of state and religious leaders made the whole thing that much more appealing.  The fatwa was a global hunt, a shadow over his every step, yet this badass refused to cower.  Decades of exile, guarded existence, and relentless threats couldn’t muzzle him – he kept writing, kept provoking, kept living loud.

They almost got him on August 12, 2022: a knife attack in New York that stole his right eye, a brutal scar on his unyielding spirit.  Doctors fought to save him, and though the blade took his sight, it didn’t touch his badass soul.  With one eye and infinite grit, he rose again, pen in hand, declaring in his memoir Knife that silence is the enemy’s victory.  Fuck yes.  This man, now 78, stands unbroken, a testament to resilience.  Cheers to you, Salman, the unbreakable.

N.P.: “The God That Failed” – Imelda May

June 18, 2025

Partial Transcript of Emergency Strategy Meeting, Tuesday, 17 June 2025, In The Law Office of Finger & Diddle, Fecal Creek, CA.  Participants: Jayson Gallaway, Author and Presumptive Gubernatorial Candidate, Boochie Collins, Drug Dealer and Political Analyst/Advisor, James “Jimmy” Finger, Attorney At Law, and Shazam, Paralegal of Rather Dubious Visa Status.

Jayson: …the hell it ain’t a step down, Finger…this is a trailer!  You live here?  What happened to the loft?
Finger: Fuckin’ divorce.
Jayson: Ouch.  Weren’t you a divorce attorney?
Finger: Best in town.
Jayson: Did you represent yourself?
Finger:  What, in the divorce?  Hell no.  Diddle did it.
Jayson:  Diddle didn’t do a very good job, did he, if you lost the loft.
Finger: Lost the ‘Vette, too.
Jayson: Son of a bitch.
Finger: Indeed.  But never mind all that.  You want to run for mayor?
Jayson: Nope.  I wanna run for governor.
Finger: Governor of what?
Jayson: California, dumbass.
Finger:  Well, you can never be too sure with you.  Cool.  California.  Governor.  Love it.  Let’s do it.
Jayson:  Great.  I went over qualifications last night with Boochie…ah…Boochie Collins, meet Jimmy Finger.  Finger…Boochie.
Finger:  Nice fronts, Boochie.
Boochie: Nice trailer, douchebag.  What’s that smell?
Finger: What smell?
Jayson: Yeah…that is pretty loud, isn’t it?
Finger:  What smell?
Boochie: Smells like a bouncer in a Persian nightclub.
Finger:  Ah…that’s Shazam.
Jayson: ..the fuck is Shazam, your new cologne?  It’s rancid.
Finger: Shazam’s my paralegal.  Shazam!  Come say hello to our new clients!
Shazam: ….
Jayson: You’re making shit up.
Finger:  Goddammit…Shazam!
Shazam [coming in from other room, taking earbuds out of his ears]: Sorry, boss…had my earbuds in.
Finger: Shazam this is Jayson Gallaway, the next governor of California, and his, what, sidekick?  Gucci.
Boochie: Boochie.
Shazam: Salam.
Jayson: What it is.
Finger: Okay, let’s get down to business.
Jayson: Let’s.
Finger: Okay…hold on.
Jayson: …
Boochie: …
Finger: …just give me a minute.  Google’s been slow all day.  Shazam, can you please reboot the router!
Shazam: …
Finger: Ah!  Here we go.  Okay.  First thing you’re gonna wanna do is, it says, is, “to officially become a candidate, you must complete the following steps with the California Secretary of State and county elections offices…”
Jayson: Give it to me.
Finger: Jesus.
Jayson: What’s up?
Finger: This is a lot of steps.   This is going to be…yeah.  Okay.  Today we need to submit a Statement of Intention with the Secretary of State.
Jayson: So far, so good.  Boochie, write up a Statement of Intention.
Boochie:  What…right here?  Now?
Jayson:   Why not.  Here, use this.
Boochie: A cocktail napkin?
Jayson:  Yeah, it’ll be fine.  Keep it simple: Dear Secretary of State…shit…who’s the Secretary of State?
Finger: No idea.
Boochie:  Who cares.
Shazam: What’s the question?
Finger: Who’s the Secretary of State?
Shazam:  How the fuck would I know?
Finger: Dammit…you asked.  Never mind.  I Google it.
Jayson: Am I just paying you to do Google searches?  I could have done that.
Finger: Thus far, you haven’t paid me shit, and no, you could not have done that.  You could have, you would have, but evidently you didn’t, so shut up and let me type.
Jayson:  Ass.
Finger:  …
Finger: Fucking internet!  Shazam!  Reboot!
Jayson: Fuck it.  Just put “Dear Secretary of State.”  They know who they are.  Then, “I, Jayson Gallaway, hereby state my intention to run for Governor of this massive pile of shit by the Pacific.”
Finger:  No.  Don’t do that.  And don’t write it on a goddamn cocktail napkin.  I’ll write the thing.  Come back tomorrow and will get ‘er signed and sealed.
Boochie: Dude…this just feels right.  You’re going to win this thing.
Jayson:  That’s the spirit, Booch.  Damn right.  We are going to Kick Ass!  Finger, be ready…we’ll be back tomorrow.

N.P.: “Magic Carpet Ride (Steir’s Mix)” – Steppenwolf

June 16, 2025

Happy Monday, dear reader.  Today is June 16th.  A day like any other for most, but for a certain breed of literary masochist, this isn’t just another ripple in the mundane tide of the Gregorian calendar.  Nope.  For them, today is Bloomsday, that annual carnival of intellectual flexing, literary cosplay, and public displays of knowing exactly what “ineluctable modality of the visible” means (spoiler alert: most of them don’t).

If you’re unfamiliar, Bloomsday is the hallowed celebration of James Joyce’s Ulysses.  This 700-something-page modernist behemoth, set entirely on June 16th, 1904, captures a single day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a humble Dublin ad salesman with a thing for kidneys and an uncanny knack for making his deeply weird interior monologue your deeply weird interior monologue.  Why June 16th?  Well, legend has it that Joyce picked the date in honor of his first outing with Nora Barnacle, the woman who’d eventually become his wife and soulmate in stubborn eccentricity.

Since 1954, when a pack of particularly ambitious Joyce fans retraced the steps of Bloom and his moody sidekick Stephen Dedalus through the cobblestone streets of Dublin, Bloomsday ha spiraled into a global phenomenon.  Dublin itself is ground zero, morphing into a labyrinth of tweed-clad academics, aspiring novelists, and tourists pretending to understand what “Molly’s soliloquy” really means.  The day’s menu features marathon readings, theatrical performances, and pub crawls where Guinness and existential dread flow in equal measure.  But Bloomsday isn’t confined to the Irish capital…it’s gone international.  New York has its own event.  Budapest, too.  Chances are, there’s someone in your city right now butchering a Joyce passage in public.

Here’s the thing about Ulysses, though: it’s an entire ecosystem of narrative rebellion.  At its most basic level, this is a novel about a guy, kind of a schlubby everyman, wandering Dublin for a day while mulling over infidelity, bodily functions, and the cosmic messiness of existence.  Describing Ulysses as “just a book” is like calling the Grand Canyon a “neat hole” or fireworks “nice little explosions.”  Joyce scrapped the blueprint for what novels could be, melted it in acid, and reconstructed it as a linguistic rollercoaster built for causing epileptic fits in English majors.

It’s a book where style isn’t just substance; it’s spectacle.  Stream-of-consciousness prose drenched in linguistic gymnastics?  Check.  Entire chapters mimicking everything from 19th-century romance novels to overwrought legal rhetoric?  Yep.  A narrative that stops being linear the minute Joyce decides he’s bored?  Oh yeah.  And through all of it, you’re left marveling at its audacity, its wit, and its refusal to make itself easy for you.

Which is exactly why Ulysses has earned its badass reputation.  It doesn’t care if you understand it.  Hell, it seems to actively hope you won’t.  It’s confrontational, unrelenting, and defiantly weird.  And yet, buried under its dense wordplay and chaotic structure is a keenly human portrait of love, loneliness, sex, guilt, and spiritual yearning.  It’s about what it means to be alive, absurd and messy as it is.

And maybe that’s what makes Bloomsday so resonant.  Beyond the cosplay, the debates over whether Leopold Bloom or Stephen Dedalus is the superior antihero (Bloom, obviously), and the whispered apologies to unread copies of Finnegans Wake, Bloomsday is a celebration of literature that refuses to be ignored.  It’s a collective act of tribute to the kind of art that challenges, confuses, and maybe even pisses you off, but changes you in the process.

Whether you’re in Dublin following Bloom’s hypothetical footsteps, or just cracking open Ulysses for the twentieth time only to quit two pages into “Oxen of the Sun,” Bloomsday isn’t about mastery.  It’s about grappling with brilliance on its own terms, about raising a pint to impossibly large ideas compressed into impossibly difficult prose.

And it that’s not worth celebrating, then neither is art itself.

N.P.: “Looking for a Fight” – The Cold Stares

June 14, 2025

 

Partial Transcript of Emergency Strategy Meeting, Saturday, 14 June 2025, In The War Room Of The Safehouse.  Participants: Jayson Gallaway, Author and Speculative Gubernatorial Candidate and Boochie Collins, Drug Dealer and Political Analyst/Advisor.

Boochie: Helluvan idea, chief…I think it’s got teeth.  Audacious as shit, though.  But audacious is good.  Fuck yes.  Let’s do this.
Jayson: Excellent!  I’m so glad we’re on the same page.  What have you got for me?  Where do we start?
Boochie: We start with making sure you’re qualified.
Jayson: Of course I’m qualified.  Probably over-qualified, all things considered.  I should probably be looking into running for President in ’28.  Yeah.  Why am I messing around with this itty-bitty-shitty state.
Boochie: California is neither itty nor bitty.  Third largest state, isn’t it?
Jayson: See…that’s what I’m talking about.  Third.  Third.  Rhymes with turd.  Why aren’t we first?
Boochie: Square milage.
Jayson: Balls!  We will be first!  Day One, we invade Oregon.  Annex that miserable state.  Drive all those hippies into the sea.
Boochie: Well, if you’re going to annex the state, you should probably keep the people…they’ll be part of your constituency.
Jayson:  Oooooo!  “Constituency.”  Fancy words from the Booch, all of a sudden.
Boochie: I use fancy words all the time.
Jayson: Horseshit.  Can you even spell constituency?
Boochie [caught off guard]: Shut up.  You can’t drive the people of Oregon into the sea; they are potential voters.
Jayson: No, they’re not.  They are not people, they are hippies.  And not one of those hippies will ever vote for me, potentially or otherwise.  They are not My People.  Buncha vegans who can’t pump their own gas.  Damnedest thing.  Fuck ’em…they shall be driven into the sea.
Boochie: We’d still be smaller than Alaska.
Jayson: Shit. Really?
Boochie: Even still, we are not itty or bitty.
Jayson: Fine.  But we are shitty, though.  You have to admit that.
Boochie: Shittiest state in the union.
Jayson: But not for much longer.  We’re gonna make history, Booch!  Come on…what do I have to do to govern this bitch?
Boochie: Qualifications.
Jayson: Still?  I thought we just covered that.
Boochie [rifles through papers and pulls one aside]:  Okay…”To run for Governor of California in 2026, you must meet the following criteria…”
Jayson: Bring it.
Boochie: Citizenship.  Are you a U.S. citizen?
Jayson: Damn skippy.  What’s next?
Boochie: Check.  Next is Residency.  Are you a registered voter in California?
Jayson: You know it.  Killing this, so far.  What’s next?
Boochie: Lessee…No Other Office…
Jayson: I’ve got one office, and you’re sitting in it.
Boochie: No, not “office” as a place.  “You cannot hold any other public office, engage in lobbying, or accept honoraria during your term as governor.”
Jayson: Cool.  I find those terms acceptable.
Boochie: Then that’s it…you qualify to run for governor.
Jayson: That’s it?  Shit, this is easy.  Feels like fate.
Boochie: I always thought you’d be a great governor.
Jayson: Thanks, Booch.  I’ll be better than what we’ve been stuck with for the last several idiotic years. So what’s next?
Boochie: Not exactly sure…this is my first gubernatorial campaign.  You still have that attorney on retainer?  With the weird name?
Jayson: Which one?  Finger?  Yeah, I’ve got his number.
Boochie: We should probably consult with him about next steps.
Jayson: I’ll call him.
[Jayson pulls out cell phone, scrolls, taps the screen, then puts phone on speaker.  The sound of repetitive rings heard over speaker].
Jayson: Fucker never answers his phone.  He’s probably over there in his loft, smoking drugs or whatever he does, ignoring the goddamn phone.
[Ringing stops, a recorded message plays over the speaker]
Finger [recorded, over speaker]: You have reached the voicemail of Jimmy Finger, Finger & Diddle, Attorneys at Law.  Leave a message.
Jayson [under his breath to Boochie]: Asshole.  [Then, after the beep into the phone]: Jimmy Finger!  It’s been a minute.  This is Jayson, I’m over here with Boochie…listen, I’m going to run for Governor in ’26, and could use some guidance to navigate this process.  Call me back at this number.
Jayson [hanging up]: Asshole.  I bet he starts picking up the phone once I’m goddamn Governor of this dump.

N.P.: “Fuck Everything” – Hairy Soul Man

Word of the Day: triskaidekaphobia

Triskaidekaphobia (noun): The irrational fear of the number 13.  Though it may sound like something invented to spice up Scrabble night, this phobia is alarmingly real and has been blamed for everything from mysteriously absent 13th floors in hotels to the collective existential dread that surfaces whenever Friday the 13th looms on the calendar.

This Frankenstein’s monster of a word is stitched together from Greek origins.  Tris (three), kai (and), deka (ten), and phobos (fear) were patched together to create a term that is frankly way too long to be yelled in a panic.

N.P.: “J.B. Witchdance” – Masters of Reality

June 12, 2025

The skies over California are inappropriately sunny today.  Just after sunrise, when I was in the backyard looking for the carcass of whatever it was I shot last night that I heard rifling through the trash, I turned the sun, that hateful star of ours, with disgust and umbrage and told it to, “Read the room.”  These are dark days indeed, dear reader.  My beloved state is under attack from both ends: a mob of foreigners and paid anti-American sheep on one end, and a moronic, botoxic, sociopathic governor who seems to think that prioritizing foreigners’ fictitious right to wave Mexican and Palestinian flags while assaulting police and burning American flags and what’s left of L.A. down over the safety and rights of legal residents will somehow make him a viable candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Approval ratings, shmapproval ratings.

I’ve been doing what I can, but to no avail.  I’ve tried communicating with Gavin using every method available.  In much of that communication, I have been polite and civil, even friendly.  In others, I’ve lampooned him viciously, challenging him to MMA fights, public debates…I even invited him to participate in the pilot program of a new sport I’m developing tentatively called Whiskey Croquet (I’m still workshopping the name and most of the rules).  And what has his response been?  Nothing.  Nada.  Squat.  Even his office has been non-responsive: not even a courtesy form letter.

Not knowing what else to do, I sat down this morning to pen yet another letter of invective to this idiot, hoping maybe this will be the one to break through.

Dear Governor Newsom,
You fucking putz.  You festering clot of political hubris. You sanctimonious trainwreck. You’ve spent the last seven years gleefully torching California into a smoldering ash-heap of your own making, and I am here for the public excoriation you’re just starting to receive, that you so richly deserve.
I watched your dumbass “national address” the other night.  Jesus.  You couldn’t even figure out your audio.  Clown.
This state, once a glittering beacon of  innovation and freedom, now staggers under your pitiful reign of error – economy gutted by your hypocritical lockdowns, streets drowning in a fetid soup of homelessness you’ve ignored with the callous shrug of a dilettante dictator.  Taxes?  Skyrocketing like your ego, you preening weenie, while small businesses collapse under the weight of your ludicrous regulatory overreach.  Wildfires rage, water dries up, and you smirk through it all, posing with your artisanal French Laundry receipts as if governance were nothing more than a photo op.
You stupid douche.  Seven years of your blundering, self-aggrandizing misrule have turned the Golden State into a cautionary tale, a punchline spat out by a nation watching in disgusted awe.
I’m done.  I’m packing my bags, you insufferable charlatan, and heading for a state where competence isn’t a foreign concept – maybe Wyoming…fuck it, maybe even Idaho, ferchrissake!  Somewhere where sanity still draws breath.  This rotten cesspool you’ve sculpted with your incompetent, clammy hands isn’t worth the psychic toll anymore.
But wait – damn it to hell – logistics rear their ugly heads, and as my assistant just delicately pointed out, I can’t just up and move.  Not any time soon, anyway.  To which I said (and say) “balls!”  She makes a valid point.  So I’m shackled here, at least until 2028, trapped in your dystopian circus like a rat in a maze of your own inept and perverse design.
So, fine.  You win this round, you smug architect of ruin.  But mark my words, Newsom – I’m not slinking away.  No…if I can leave, then I’m turning this rage into a campaign.  In 2026, I’m throwing my hat into the ring, running for governor to wrest this state from your greasy paws.  I’ll campaign with the fire of a thousand suns, promising to undo your catastrophic legacy – restore jobs, clean the streets, and govern with a spine, not a fucking selfie stick.  Get ready, shitbag, because the reckoning’s coming, and you will finally be sent packing back to your Napa wine caves. 

Yr. brother in Christ,
Jayson

Nice.  Subtle, but not too.  I felt better, but I knew it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.  It seems clear, now, after I’ve had a few shots of Jack to calm down, that I must run for Governor of California.  I have to make today’s wordcount on the book, so I can’t do anything today, but tomorrow!  Shit yes…tomorrow we begin.

N.P.: “Fighting Trousers” – Professor Elemental

Word of the Day: oomska

Oomska (noun): An undefined, usually intangible something that’s funky, messy, or generally in a state of chaotic absurdity.  Originating as a sort of nonsense placeholder word, it evokes the linguistic vibe of an odd, gooey clutter that defies categorization.

The word “oomska” seems to exist in the shadowy, anarchistic corner of the language reserved for pure whimsy.  With no traceable root in Indo-European traditions or otherwise, it’s suspected to be a syntactical UFO, possibly birthed in literary or comedic obscurity by minds too caffeinated for their own good.  Whoever coined it likely did so with the philosophical hand-waving of someone avoiding an actual explanation with flair.

If you’ve never tried explaining to a Border Patrol officer why you’re transporting a cooler full of what looks like radioactive gazpacho across state lines, I can tell you right now there is no winning version of this interaction.
“So you’re saying…it’s soup?” the officer asked, each syllable soaked in the kind of skepticism reserved for conspiracy theorists and people who pronounce “bagel” wrong.
“It’s more of a…prototype?” I ventured.  A shaky move at best.  I couldn’t tell him it was food-colored cocaine base, so I decided to take a hippy tack.  His eyes flicked to the cooler and narrowed like he was trying to Mission Impossible his way into its contents using pure suspicion.
“And this ‘prototype’ contains…?”
I figured telling him this toxic brew was homemade kombucha, but whether your describing kombucha or cocaine base straight from Mexico, there’s a point where your explanation tips from reasonable into the grammatical equivalent of jazz improv.  I could feel that moment approaching like a very fast tank.
“It’s part fermented culture, part nutrient blend.  Honestly?  It’s kind of an oomska situation.”
He blinked. “A what-now?”
My brain scrambled for a respectable synonym.  None came.
“Look, it’s organic, non-toxic, possibly probiotic.  You know, like quinoa but…wetter.”  I was praying he didn’t ask me to consume the stuff.
The officer stared, visibly weighing the costs of harassing me further versus enduring whatever hellish scent lived inside the cooler.  After an excruciating beat, he waved me through with the universal expression for, “I don’t get paid enough for this kind of weird.”
I have no idea what ultimately convinced him.  Maybe it was the aura of unhinged sincerity, maybe the word “oomska” had successfully short-circuited his skepticism, or maybe he just didn’t want to get “kombucha” dribbles on his boots.  Whatever the case, I drove away victorious, hauling my cargo of questionable liquids and hubris into the sunrise.
Which is why, to this day, I firmly believe some messes can only be described with freshly invented vocabulary.  Oomska.  It explains everything and nothing at once.

N.P.: “Blues and Cocaine (feat. Michale Graves)” – Me And That Man