Self Distraction

Here is a picture of a cute kitty to distract us all from the end of civilization and the unchecked rise of evil in the largest nuclear power on Earth. Yippee for cute kitties!

I am completely on edge. I’ve actually caught myself a couple of times today sitting at my desk working while my hands are balled up in fists, white knuckles and all. Nothing’s going badly at work. All is a-ok. It’s just the rest of the world that has me so tensed up.

On the drive in today there were a bunch of times when I saw someone driving like an asshole (this is Massachusetts after all) and I thought to myself, I bet he voted for that nazi fuck and is driving like that because he knows he can get away with anything (including treason) so long as he wears that stupid fucking red hat. As I said this is Massachusetts so the chances of randomly running into a maga cult asshole are much less than 50/50. Still, I am so mad at the state of things right now that even here in the happy Blue State I am seeing fascists everywhere.

I hate him. I hate what he stands for. I hate those who figuratively suck his dick in exchange for being able to openly express their bigotry and hatred and racism and misogyny and antisemitism and anti-everyone who isn’t a straight white male. Fuck, I hate all of this nazi bullshit.

Breath. Count to 10. Look at the cute kitty*. Deal with it. It’s only been two days, but that’s two days closer to being able to kick these fuckers to the curb.


*Fans of The Walking Dead will note that I did not say look at the flowers. No… that would mean something entirely different and much, much darker. Look at the flowers, Lizzie. BLAM.

Trying to Stay Cool

You need to keep your cool, Robert. If you lose your shit every time the first felon does something insane and evil then you are going to spend every waking moment with your shit lost for at least the next four years. That’s not what one would call healthy.

Keep it together, red head. You can do it. You did it the last time. Sure, it’s going to be 100 times worse this time around, especially with the fascist in chief dealing not only with his own personal brand of evil, but with dementia stirring his tiny little pot… yeah, it’s going to be awful. You can do it though. You can hold it together. You can get through this.

There are people who rely on you for stuff. There are people who need you to not come unglued multiple times a day. Just keep your head. Don’t lose your shit.

Rest in Peace

Today is the day. The day the American Experiment comes to a pathetic, self inflicted, fascist end.

I’m not going to watch the “inauguration”. Beyond the previous sentence, I plan to ignore it entirely and just try to pretend that it doesn’t happen even though that is just an old jerk being silly and deluding himself. There is an afternoon Bruins game today. It is Martin Luther King day and the B’s always play a day game. You would think that would make me feel a tiny bit better but the Bruins suck right now and MLK’s memory is being spit on by the other events.

Rest in peace, American democracy. 248 years was a good run, I guess. To the rest of the civilized world, I am so sorry.

Random Wednesday Evening Thoughts

Here are a few of the random things going through my pea brain on this Wednesday evening.

  • I haven’t shaved in nine days. If I don’t shave tomorrow you will hear me screaming from hundreds if not thousands of miles away as I tear the flesh from my face because I can’t stand the itch anymore.
  • What is it about that cats that makes them go from sitting calmly on the chair with each other one second to savagely trying to maul each other the next second? Is it me? Did I do something to cause the armageddon? The cat-mageddon if you will?
  • I really hope that Washington, DC gets hit with a massive, catastrophic blizzard on Monday (January 20th). Not the whole city, just the national mall. Really, just one end of the national mall. The end with the capital building. Like, a strategically placed blizzard. Yeah, that would be nice.
  • March 14th is going to be a big musical day for me. There’s a new album by Envy of None coming out that day. There’s only one member of Rush releasing music these days, Alex Lifeson, and Envy of None is his new band. Rush, of course, being one of two bands that, musically speaking, drastically turned my musical world upside down. The other band that, musically speaking, drastically turned my musical world upside down? Throwing Muses. Guess what? Throwing Muses is also releasing a new album on March 14th. Holy Shit Snacks!

Nothing

I have nothing to write about. Nothing.

It’s Tuesday morning. I did my exercise but I haven’t done anything else on the morning schedule. I took the trash to the street, but that’s it. I’m sitting at my desk in the cellar watching some film photography youtube posts and getting jealous of people who live in places where the weather in January isn’t ass and they can go outside and take pictures of stuff. I should be setting up my desk for the work day, but no. I’m sitting here typing this even though I have nothing to write about. Dumbass.

How am I supposed to feel about the near future? We’re going on vacation. Me and my wife and my mother in law and my step daughter. It’s going to be awesome. About a week before we leave though, the usa swears in a fascist as president even though he’s a convicted criminal who publicly stated he wanted to be a dictator. What the fuck? I say again, I don’t live in the united states anymore. I live in Massachusetts. Starting Monday there is a clear difference. I am trying very hard to focus on the upcoming trip and not the upcoming end of our society but the closer we get to January 20th the harder it gets to do that.

In news related to the upcoming end of the world as we know it, I am done with meta. Zuckerberg has dropped to his knees and taken the tiny little donald’s tiny little donald into his mouth and I am done with him and everything he touches. I was just starting to feel okay about using facebook again, and I have been using instagram pretty regularly for a while, and of late I was using the shit out of threads, but now? Now that zuckerberg has shown his true colors (which we all knew about already, let’s be honest with ourselves) I am done with everything he touches. Fuck him and fuck his company. Done. I am done with all of them. Unfortunately, I use a couple of his messenger functions to communicate with some of my friends and with my band and if I stop using them 100% I lose those connections. Fuck. Fuck meta. Fuck zuckerberg. Fuck trump. Fuck musk. Fuck fascism.

This is so depressing.

I am trying to revive my last music re-recording project. Quarantine tunes volume eight. I don’t think I can finish it before the RPM Challenge starts in February, but maybe I can pick off a couple of songs and finish them up. I ordered a couple of small cables and a headstock tuner in order to finish putting together the pedal board i want to use for February. QTunes Vol 8 will be the test bed for that board. The verdict after one test so far is that it sounds really good but it’s noisy. I am choosing to blame the cheap daisy chain power supply for the noise, but who knows.

Note: The music talk is another attempt to distract myself from Monday’s upcoming doom.

So… back to a previous topic. If threads is on the no fly list thanks to zuckerberg being a fucking slime, then I guess Bluesky wins the twitter replacement race by default. Everything I post here cross posts there. That’s nice. Images that I add here do not display. What about links? Does this show? Let’s click publish and find out. Safe money is no.

Until later, my fellow depressed friends. For the moment though, let’s start thinking about what song Massachusetts should use as its national anthem, m’kay? Think about it. We’ll talk later.

Thanks, Gibson

Did you see that the fuhrer-elect was advertising a guitar brand? $10k for what I can only imagine is a $200 Chinese knock off of a Gibson Les Paul (that’s just a theory, of course. I don’t care to investigate whether it’s true or not so I am not saying it is or is not true, dig?). When I first heard of this it was a headline with an image of the fucking slime ball holding one of the guitars. My first thought was I hope it’s not an actual Gibson. My second thought was, if it is an actual Gibson I will never give them my money ever again.

Fortunately a related story hit the presses yesterday that soothed my company-loyalty fears:

Gibson Hits Trump Guitars With Cease and Desist

Just for clarity’s sake, I should mention that I have not read this article. Reading anything about that fucking nazi piece of shit makes me physically ill. I got the rundown via social media yesterday. I linked to this article because it came up first for me on a Google News search. There. Transparency.

Anyway, I just want to thank Gibson for not releasing a $10,000 nazi signature model and for going after the trademark infringing assholes who are trying to scam guitar playing fascist collaborators. Not that the guitar playing fascist collaborators haven’t earned a good scamming. Well… they voted for the nazi piece of filth so they’ve already been scammed once. Let’s say they’ve earned a second thorough scamming. Whatever.

Learning that Gibson has not aligned itself with evil kinda makes me actually want to buy a new guitar. How about a Les Paul Junior, or a Les Paul Deluxe, or a Firebird? You know, something to show my thanks.

Where Are You From

After the disaster that was the election last week I saw a handful of people on various social media sites posting things that looked a little like this:

Q: Are you from the United States of America?
A: No, I’m from Massachusetts.

Thinking back to the disaster that was the presidential election in 2016, I was thinking things like that all the time. I remember commenting that watching my country elect a fascist president instantly turned me into a states rights kinda guy who put my state, Massachusetts WAY ahead of my country.

The way it felt in 2016 though… it was nothing compared to the way it feels now. I am not going to say that I am now a secessionist, but if New England, New York, and New Jersey wanted to make a go of it on their own, I’d be down with giving it a shot. You wouldn’t have to twist my arm very hard to get me on board. I would have to check out a map of election returns to see if we could maybe add Deleware and Maryland to the team. I know Virginia went for Harris, but that feels a little like a false flag to me, though that state has been voting Democrat more and more in recent years. I worry about including any state that can be described as Southern.

Maybe this little Northeastern Alliance could work something out with the West coast, assuming the good folks in California, Oregon, and Washington State would want to join us in our brave new world.

Again, I don’t feel as though I am a secessionist. After the bullshit demonstrated in the election last week though, I also no longer feel like an American. Any allegiance I feel at this point is to Massachusetts, not to the United States. If the rest of the country wants to embrace fascism let them. Leave me and my home state out of it.

Hypocrite Day

Today is Hypocrite Day here in the USA. Veteran’s Day is the day we honor those who served in the military during times of war. It’s also the day where those faux patriotic mother fuckers who just voted to put the fascists into power at the Federal level go out of their way to show you how patriotic they are and how much they support the troops that the president elect called suckers for serving and who sacrificed everything to rid the world of fascists only to hand the country to fascists on a silver fucking platter.

Hence why today will now be known as Hypocrite Day.

Wave those flags and tell us how much you support the troops, you fucking hypocrites. Hooray for you, you fucking hypocrites.

Election Fears Continued

I want to say that there is no way the fascist piece of orange shit could ever win the election tomorrow because a vote for him is effectively an act of violence against women. The women of the United States will never let that stand, and they will vote for Harris en masse which will lead to a landslide victory and an epic, historic humiliation for that nazi fuck. No woman in her right mind would ever vote for this sexist, abusive, abuser slime, right?

Then I remember that I said exactly the same thing in 2016 and the scum bag won.

I am absolutely terrified for the future of my country right now. I can’t even put the existential dread into words. Please don’t vote for that nazi fucker. Harris/Walz 2024. Please. Do the right thing.

Election Paranoia

So tomorrow is election day in the USofA. We’ve been talking about it and stressing about it and being completely messed up about it for about two years now.

I’ve already voted. It doesn’t matter. I am totally paranoid about tomorrow. So much so that I think I am afraid to leave the house. I should work from the office, but I seriously do not want to go outside at all.

The last time the nazi running as a republican lost an election he tried to overthrow the government. Vice President Harris could win in an unprecedented landslide and that nazi fuck is still not going to accept defeat, and he will mobilize his cult again, and maybe they’ll pull it off this time.

Even worse, our country is so fucked up that there is an actual decent chance that the convicted felon could actually win. What the fuck is wrong with us?

Yeah… I am not leaving the house tomorrow… I don’t want to try my luck.