Far too much turbulence on today’s flight.  And I never even left the ground.
Perhaps this evening will be smoother.

N.P.: “Sundown” – Gordon Lightfoot

Just an odd day today.  Probably best forgotten.  Still feeling sub-wonderful.  Things should normalize tomorrow.

N.P.: “Hive Mind” – Circle of Dust

I started reading Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations” yesterday in my fevered haze.  It scratches a very annoying itch that I’ve had for so long, I forgot I had it.  You know you were overdue to be kicked in the mind when it happens and it feels really good.

One of Uncle Marcus’s tenants would serve so many of the professionally offended members of our society (which seems to be the majority of The Herd on most days) extremely well: “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed.  Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.”  The power over your own mind cannot be stolen.  If you know Who You Are and believe in What You Do, then external feedback will not affect you at all.  I’ve been saying this shit for years, as you know, dear reader, but I’m hoping that by pointing out that Marcus Aurelius concurs, perhaps some of the more noisy irritants in our society might shuteth the fuck up.  Here is the ultimately question that Uncle Marcus and I get to very quickly in our similar rationales when dealing with others: if someone says something that may be considered by other, lesser people to be “insulting” (or “offensive” or “insensitive” or “hurtful,” but you are not insulted by it, can it be considered an insult in the first place?  Of course not.  The only power anyone has over you to insult you, offend you, hurt your feelings, or make you cry is the power that you willingly give them.

N.P.: “In Two” – Nine Inch Nails

Jayson Gallaway

June 29, 2019

This heat needs to fuck off.

Summers are disgusting.

N.P.: “Pumped Up Kicks” – 3TEETH

Jayson Gallaway

June 29, 2019

I was awakened by a lawn mower’s gasoline-powered combustion engine.  On a Saturday morning/afternoon/whatever, a time when it should be understood that all decent people with The Plague are trying desperately to convalesce.  I would quite seriously consider “self defense” if not a legitimate justification at least a significantly mitigating circumstance for the homicidal throttling I am at this moment considering giving this shitbag and at least one of his ugly kids who’s out there helping him, an unnamed conspirator in the plot against my silken repose and recuperation from infirmity.  I called him an “miserable sack of inbred shit” and announced dark intentions for his teenage daughters and perhaps some of the family pets as I slammed my bedroom window shut to block out his insipid din, but none of this was heard over the boring snore of his lawnmower’s engine.
N.P.: “Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress)” – The Hollies

Goddammit.  Day Two of The Sickness.  I hardly ever get sick.  And of the times I do, there’s almost never a Day Two.  I hope it’s not Ebola.  Or the Black Plague.  Or African Sleeping Sickness.  It could be that.  Those goddamn tsetse flies are everywhere, man.  And they’re vicious this year.

Anyway, I’ve quarantined myself in Room #5 here in Hotel California, with plenty of supplies for dealing with infirmity and writing books.  I’m just going to write until I have to lay down, then lay down until I have to write, and see how things go.

N.P.: “Anarchy” – KMFDM

A tad under the weather today, dear reader.  Some weird summer cold, I’m guessing.  I took some meds, now I’m goings to beds (sorry, been watching Letterkenny).

N.P.: “Nothingness – Acoustic Version” – Living Colour

Got some decent things written today.  I was writing this scathing thing that I was going to post here, but it’s going to need another day or two to scathe before it’s ready.

Also, did you know a group of squirrels is called a scurry?  How perfect is that, dear reader?  I looked it up because there is presently a scurry of squirrels that gets together for some kind of squirrel meeting and late lunch in the back yard area of Hotel California, and I was describing it as a herd of squirrels, which I knew was wrong, but it was accurately describing what was going on, so I let it go until I had a chance to look it up.  A scurry.  Heh.

N.P.: “DEUTSCHLAND” – Rammstein