I was quite rudely awakened this morning by the guttural clucks and sonic honks of an obnoxious flock of Canadian geese.  I could tell they were Canadian by their stupid accents.  My initial inclination was to grab the shotgun, kick the door open, and blast those clucking Canuck fuckers right out of the sky.  But I knew that would not only wake up the entire household, but would also likely shake the neighbors awake and set them off on another wasted day of half-assed Jayson protests and limp-wristed bitching.

This all started a couple of years ago, when I de facto adopted a squirrel that I subsequently named Bath Salts for his rather maniacal and often seemingly drug-induced behavior.  Our relationship began a few years back when he began showing up at the door of my writing office, seemingly wondering what I was up to inside.  I thought this was a rather ballsy approach, and I rewarded him with nuts.  We quickly fell into a routine when he would show up at the door each morning, check on my progress, get some nuts, and go deal with squirrel business the rest of the day.  But I quickly noticed that my new friend was being rather brutally harassed almost constantly by a flock of blackbirds that had, unbeknownst to me and certainly without my permission, occupied the Italian Ficus trees in the back field.  I don’t know the depth of my dear reader’s ornithological knowledge, but it is certainly deeper than mine.  I had previously that “blackbirds” referred to crows and ravens, and for all I know, it does.  But upon witnessing these malignant black bastards with their beady yellow eyes aggressively pecking and divebombing my beloved squirrel, I knew these were the “blackbirds” from nursery rhymes that one would want to bake in a pie.  It was around that time that I started engaging the blackbirds with my .22 while they were molesting Mr. Salts (Salts was a bit freaked out when the bullets first started whizzing by, but he soon realized that I am downright surgical with that thing).  After a few days of this, the scourge of the blackbirds was ended, and the whole obnoxious flock fucked off for more hospitable conditions.

They’ve sent scouts in the spring during the last couple of years, but these are quickly dispatched, and any plans they have had about reoccupying my Italian Ficusses (what the hell is the plural of Ficus?  Ficii?) disappear with a soft, dull “thud” and an explosion of black feathers floating slowly to the ground, where a very grateful Bath Salts gathers them up to upholster and reinsulate his nest for the winter.  All of which I find rather poetic.

The neighbors have no appreciation for poetry.  I actually doubt they know how to read.  So to hell with those illiterate gypsies, and to hell with Canadian geese.  And may God help them if either one dare disturb my slumber again, especially on a Sunday morning.  Heathens.

Had a rather intense meeting with Mgmt yesterday, the result of which was me being put on a somewhat impossible schedule that will control my existence for the next few months.  They’ve decided which book I need to complete, and that if I don’t complete it, Bad Things will happen.  They sort of hyperventilated about exactly what the Bad Things would be, but none of them moved my needle at all.  Still, I know they are right.  This is the book that needs to come out, and this is absolutely the year it should happen.  So I agreed to their ridiculous timeline.  What the hell else was I going to do?  It’s not like there are people lined up to try to manage this chaos.  Besides, it’s high time I started writing on deadline again.  Of course, I had some conditions before I agreed to this arrangement.  The first, which was a daily delivery of one large Triple Mocha Frozen Coffee to the Safe House, was agreed to quickly.  The second was met with a bit more resistance.   Part of the book involved Tijuana, and what’s written is 100% accurate, but in my opinion could use an update.  It’s been ages since I danced on the dark and bloody ground of TJ with the girls in the red dresses, ever since President Houseplant opened the border and created a massive and depressing humanitarian crisis in what was my favorite vacation spot on the planet.  Before that, I was making a Run for the Border two or three times a year.  I was on a first name basis with the owners of most of the bars and restaurants on Revolucion Ave, as well as the staff of my favorite farmacia, who used to call me “Jugo” since my hair reminded them of some big-deal soccer player or something.  I was just another gringo writer down from the States to take in a bullfight or two, lose some money at the dog track, maybe do some light weapons- and/or drug smuggling, and everybody was fine with that.  Sure there was the occasional “arrest” by the TJPD, and one unfortunate episode of kidnapping by the cartel (which was surprisingly easily resolved), but in my business, those are just occupational hazards.  The price of doing business, as it were.  But then everything went to hell.  The entire Zona Norte was inundated with all manner of drug-addled cannibals from weird countries so far south of Mexico that very few Yankees had even heard of them, the names of which even fewer could pronounce.

Now all of that is finished, America’s long nightmare is over, and I am more than ready to return, if for no other reason than to update my story.  But Mgmt and their attorneys don’t seem to be having it.  They seem to be under the impression that since Big Don recently listed the 12 largest cartels as terrorist organizations and presently has fully armed Reaper drones circling directly over the heads of the leaders of each organization, that should he use said drones and cut all the heads off the Cartel Hydra simultaneously, something worse than civil war would instantly break out across Mexico.  Which is likely completely true.  But Mgmt seems to think this would be a problem for me and is using it as a reason not to let me go.  Which I contend is pusillanimous bullshit.

Shit…they just called.  They want to see today’s pages in the next hour.  One day into this new schedule and I’m already questioning everything.  I gotta get to work.

N.P.: “Blue Lights On” – Texas Hippie Coalition

A very happy birthday to Quetin Tarantino, who was born on this day in 1963.  Sure, he’s a filmmaker, but his scripts—like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs—are literary as hell. They’re dialogue-driven gut punches, drenched in pop culture and violence, with a rhythm that’s more poetic than most novels. While typical script writers write scenes, Tarantino crafts chaos you can’t look away from. His work’s influenced a generation of writers to ditch the polite and get messy, and strive for badassery.

For the English majors, on March 27, 1964, Arthur Miller’s After the Fall opened in New York. This play’s a brutal, semi-autobiographical gut-spill—Miller wrestling with his marriage to Marilyn Monroe and the fallout of McCarthyism. It’s not subtle; it’s a man staring down his own flaws and society’s hypocrisy, no punches pulled. Critics were split, but Miller didn’t give a shit—he kept digging into the human mess, cementing his rep as a playwright with steel in his spine.

N.P.: “Waffen Waffen Waffen” – Eisbrecher

March 24, 2025

KQED Fundraising Department
2601 Mariposa Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

To the Smug, Sniveling, Commie Alms-Takers at KQED,

Here’s your pitiful, puling “urgent” screed back, you sanctimonious jackals—rammed into your own pre-franked envelope because I wouldn’t deign to squander even a penny’s postage on your groveling, guilt-tripping hustle. Month after month, you blitz my mailbox with these mendicant missives, a relentless paper parade of desperation, as if I’m some mark to be fleeced by your cloying, faux-noble bleating. Enough!  Strap in, you pious fucks, because I’m not tossing you a nickel—not now, not ever. I’d sooner torch my wallet in a gasoline-soaked Ethiopian tire pyre than let one cent trickle into the festering maw of your woke-addled, tax-sucking empire.

You and your PBS/NPR ilk have metastasized into a rotten, ghastly, self-parodying abomination—a once-noble experiment in public edification now reduced to a slobbering, liberal-propaganda-spewing she-beast, its tendrils coiled tight around the throats of the unsuspecting. And nowhere is your perfidy more galling, more viscerally enraging, than in the way you’ve hijacked kids’ programming—Sesame Street, that sacred sandbox of innocence, now a Trojan horse for your relentless LGBTQ catechism. You’re not enlightening tender minds; you’re mainlining ideology into their pliable little skulls, a cultural roofie slipped into the Kool-Aid while you preen and prattle about “inclusion.” It’s a betrayal so rank, so predatory, it demands not just defunding but a full-on exorcism—cast you lot into the void and salt the earth behind you.

And the money—oh, sweet Jesus, the money! You guzzle $535 million a year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a grotesque tithe pried from taxpayers’ pockets, while your execs—those overstuffed, overcredentialed mandarins—pocket half-mil salaries to sit atop this rotting edifice. For what? To churn out tendentious tripe and flout FCC regs with underwriting spots so brazenly commercial they’d make a used-car salesman blush? Elon Musk’s DOGE brigade, those feral efficiency hounds, are circling your fetid trough—they’ve got the scent of waste, the paper trail of your grift, and the FCC’s own damning audits in their teeth. Word on the street is they’re slicing through the federal budget like a chainsaw through a butter sculpture, and your little sinecure’s next on the block. I can hear the squealing already, and it’s music—pure, discordant, glorious music.

You’re not a public good; you’re a public malignancy, a leech gorged on coerced largesse and sanctimonious cant. If you can’t stand on your own without this ceaseless panhandling and federal handouts, then collapse already—let the weight of your own hypocrisy crush you into dust. I’ll be there, front row, popping champagne when DOGE’s axe falls and your signal goes dark. Consider this my RSVP to the funeral: I’ll bring the matches.

Suck on that, you preening parasites,

JG

N.P.: “Tri Tra Trullala (Herbergsvater 2024)” – Joachim Witt, Timo Maas, King Brain

During yesterday’s Hangover celebration, I did have my eye on the news, and there are a couple of items I would be remiss and lazy in not addressing.

Let’s talk about real men doing real shit before I even get to the pathetic little crybaby known as Tim Walz. While this whiny fuck is out here bitching about his “masculinity” being questioned, actual badasses like Elon Musk and the SpaceX crew are out there making history and showing the world what real grit looks like. I mean, let’s fucking celebrate for a second: a massive shoutout to Elon, SpaceX, and the crew of the ISS for pulling off a jaw-dropping mission that the Biden administration abandoned in space like a bunch of gutless cowards. The SpaceX Dragon capsule splash-landed like a goddamn champ in the Gulf of America, and you know who greeted them? An adorable pod of dolphins, probably more impressed than any of us at the sheer balls it takes to pull that off. That’s masculinity—building rockets, saving astronauts, and making the universe your bitch when the democratic government sat on its ass and DEI NASA fumbled the bag. Elon’s out here showing what a real man does: he steps up, takes charge, and gets shit done, no excuses, no whining.

Meanwhile, what’s Tim Walz doing? Oh, right, he’s crying to Gavin Newsom on a podcast about how Fox News doesn’t think he’s “man enough” because he sips milkshakes through a straw. Are you fucking kidding me? While Elon’s bringing people back from space, Walz is out here throwing a tantrum because someone called him a pussy. Boo-fucking-hoo, you sorry-ass fraction of a man. You wanna talk about masculinity, Timmy? How about you take a page out of Elon’s book and actually do something worth a damn instead of running your mouth about how you’re some tough guy who can “kick most of our asses”? Yeah, we all heard that.  You fat fuck.

So prove it, asshole. First off: nobody gives a flying fuck about your straw-sipping, milkshake-drinking, “I’m not masculine enough for Fox News” bullshit. You’re out here crying about how the big bad conservatives are picking on you for not being “man enough”? Maybe if you weren’t such a spineless, vaginal politician who can’t even handle a little criticism without whining to your buddy Gavin, people wouldn’t think you’re a pussy. You’re a fucking governor, not a goddamn toddler—act like it.

And then you have the audacity to say you could “kick most of our asses”? Cool. Then you should know you don’t get to talk that kind of shit and then hide behind your little podcast microphone like a bitch. Anytime you feel like actually backing your words up, I’m right here. I’m a red-blooded, combustion-engine-driving, gun-toting, whiskey-chugging American who doesn’t take kindly to some useless chubby-fuck bureaucrat talking smack.  You wouldn’t last two seconds in a real fight, you soft-ass piece of shit. I’d have you on the ground begging for mercy faster than you can say “#MeToo.”

You wanna talk about masculinity? Real masculinity isn’t crying about how people don’t think you’re tough enough while you sip lattes with Newsom. Real masculinity is stepping up to the fucking plate when someone calls you out. You said you can fix a truck? Great, I’ll break your right arm and you can fix that too. You’re out here saying conservatives are “scared” of you because you’re not “bullshitting” about who you are? You fat fuck… we’re not scared—we’re just laughing our asses off at what a pathetic joke you are. A beard and a truck don’t make you a man, you limp-wristed poseur. Actions do. So fucking act.

Here’s my challenge, Timothy: let’s do it. I’m inviting you: anytime, anywhere…Atlantic City, I don’t care.  No need for cameras, no podcast, no bullshit. Just you and me, one-on-one, in a ring, on a field, hell, I’ll even come to Minnesota and whoop your ass in your own backyard. You pick the spot, pussy, and I’ll be there. You think you can kick my ass? I’ll fucking bury you. Bring your little straw and your milkshake—I’ll shove ‘em both down your goddamn throat.

And don’t give me any of that “I’m a governor, I’m above this” crap. You started this, fat ass. You wanted to talk shit about how you can take us? Well, I’m right here, ready to make you eat those words, anytime. When you don’t show up, everyone’s gonna know what we already do: you’re a gutless, fake, soft, womanly fraud who can’t back up a single fucking thing you say.

Ask your ugly-ass wife and Kamala nicely if you can please have your testicles back from their respective purses, and if they give you permission, I’m here, waiting.

N.P.: “Stitch” – More Machine Than Man

Good day, dear reader.  Apologies for my absence from our ongoing colloquy yesterday, but as you should know by now, yesterday was the day my people and I celebrate Hangover.  What follows is some background for the uninitiated:

March 18th isn’t just the day you regret wearing those shamrock suspenders. It’s Hangover, the Irish American holiday where the only parade is the shuffle to the fridge, and the only green you’re chasing is the Pepto-Bismol bottle. Born in the blurry aftermath of St. Patrick’s Day, Hangover is the chaotic lovechild of too much stout and not enough sense. Grab your sunglasses and a fistful of bacon—here’s how we celebrate this glorious disaster.

Hangover isn’t just a state of being—it’s a cultural institution. Legend has it that Irish immigrants in America, after a long night of toasting their heritage on St. Patrick’s Day, declared the next day a sacred time to nurse their aching heads and share tales of the night before.  I imagine a bunch of Irish American great-granddads, circa 1880-something, waking up after St. Paddy’s with heads pounding like a bodhrán drum. “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph,” one groans, “we can’t let this misery go to waste!” And so, Hangover was born—a day to turn last night’s shenanigans into a badge of honor. It’s less a holiday, more a group apology to your liver, wrapped in a shamrock and a smirk.

Hangover doesn’t mess with fancy floats or fiddles. It’s less about parades and more about perseverance. It’s a gritty, greasy, glorious mess of traditions that prove we’re too stubborn to let a hangover win.

1. The Greasy Brunch Bonanza
   At the crack of noon—because who’s waking up earlier?—we stagger to the table for the Greasy Brunch Bonanza. Think piles of rashers, eggs fried in last night’s bacon fat, and soda bread so buttered it could lube a tractor. The motto? “If it doesn’t clog your arteries, it won’t cure your head.” Bonus points if you accidentally pour ketchup on your coffee and drink it anyway.
2. The Wearing of the Shades
   Sunglasses are the unofficial uniform of Hangover, worn indoors and out, regardless of the weather. It’s a badge of honor, signaling that you survived St. Patrick’s Day in true Irish American style.  Sunglasses are non-negotiable—indoors, outdoors, upside-down, whatever. They’re not just for the blinding light; they’re a shield against Aunt Maureen asking, “Did ya really need that fifth pint?” Rock those shamrock shades or the scratched aviators you found under the couch. You’re not hiding; you’re heroic.
3. The Tale-Spinning Circle
   By afternoon, we collapse into the Tale-Spinning Shenanigans, where bleary-eyed survivors compete to tell the dumbest St. Paddy’s story. “I swore the barstool was flirting with me!” “I did a jig with a traffic cone!” The winner—decided by who gets the loudest “Oh, Jaysus, no!”—scores a tepid coffee or the couch cushion that doesn’t smell like spilled whiskey.
4. The Hydration Station
   Every Hangover home has a Hydration Station: a wobbly card table with water, Gatorade, and a half-empty stout for the lunatics who think “hair of the dog” isn’t a cruel joke. It’s littered with crumpled shamrock crowns and a lone sock nobody claims. The pickle juice chug is the dare of the day—finish it without gagging, and you’re the King or Queen of Poor Life Choices.  Some families swear by the “pickle juice chug” and its restorative powers.
5. The Quiet Oath (That Nobody Keeps)
   As the sun sets and your skull stops auditioning for Riverdance, it’s time for the Quiet Oath. Over a cup of tea—or a sad bowl of cereal you dropped on the floor and scooped back up—we swear, “Never again, so help me St. Patrick.” Everyone nods, knowing full well we’ll be back at it next year, because Irish stubbornness beats common sense every time.

Hangover isn’t some polished Hallmark holiday—it’s a sloppy, hilarious middle finger to dignity. It’s the day we laugh at our own stupidity, bond over bacon grease, and prove that Irish Americans can turn even a splitting headache into a party. So, next March 18th, when you’re cursing that last jig and the leprechaun who dared you to chug green beer, embrace Hangover. It’s the holiday that says, “Yeah, we’re idiots, but we’re our idiots.”

Sláinte—or at least a shaky cheers with a water bottle!

N.P.: “Credo” – Fish