Transitions

 At this time of year we start getting transition scenarios as weak fronts move through. Even though last week treated us to cool mornings and cool late evenings, days were rather warm, too warm for my taste, but a weak system has brought clouds and lower temperatures. I like the transitions that take place as we approach October, the best of months. Late October is usually when we start getting a hint of the winter to come. My wife and I liked to participate in Trunk or Treat at our church, so close to us, and we enjoyed that greatly. Even though I am still a member of that church, memories of my late wife are so thick and strong there, that I can't go there anymore. It triggers a wave of grief, even after all these years. That grief will never go away. And I do not want it to go away. I do not think in terms of a "new beginning" and rejected all thoughts of such a thing very early in my "grief process". I didn't marry her so that someday I could have yet another new beginning. The only new beginning I want in my life is the one that began to take place when I met her, and one that evolved and grew during our married years. No more of that. You might argue that I have a sort of new beginning by default but it is minimalistic and it preserves as much of the past as I can. Probably I've become a bit bitter. So be it. Better to be a bitter and alienated surviving spouse than to assume the impossible burden of a new life with someone else. No thanks. Not now, not ever. If I rave from time to time, mark it down to Grief Derangement Syndrome. If there isn't such a thing I have just now invented it. It is real enough for me. 

Those of us with GDS are inclined to say such things as: "Fuck life." It sums up how we feel. 

Cool Morning

 Very pleasant morning and a warm day. I had my usual Sunday drive and it was very nice. Construction on 19th seems to be winding down at last! Probably most of the small businesses along that four mile stretch are toast but the state doesn't care. Collateral damage. The all-powerful state. Seizing whatever it pleases to further its aims. Destroying lives to further its ends. The all-powerful state. Red state, blue state-- all alike. All power hungry, all greedy, all willing to crush anyone who dares to stand against the all-powerful state. 

I could say the same thing about every nation in the world. All of them foul. All of them evil. But some are far worse than others. 

Are They Stupid, Or Merely Crazy??

 The poor, hopelessly clueless, addle-brained boobs who fell for the rapture nonsense might want to consult a psychiatrist and see about getting some meds-- that ought to work better than an exorcism. There is really nothing to exorcise. But meds might help, and intensive counseling. Of course, if there really is no cure for stupid...

Our weather pattern is so stable lately, with cool mornings and cool evenings and warm days and fairly dry air and only slight rain chances into the early part of October. I would hope for some cooler temps in October. 

Someday I'll do some fiction again. Some DAY. SOME day. Or maybe not. There are books I'd like to re-read but they will be hard to find. Unless I go the eBay or Amazon route and I really hate to do that. There are a few used book sellers in town. I ought to browse. Someday. SOME day. Some DAY. And maybe not. 

Has this ALWAYS been the United States of Stupid?? I think so. It's just that now social media makes it really, really, obvious. I regard my fellow Americans with contempt. I assume they are half-wits and/or psychos until they prove otherwise. A brief conversation is usually enough to make the diagnosis. 

But in most cases I keep everything very shallow and perfunctory because I don't want to know. It is too depressing when one must say, "Oh, CRAP! Another one!"

Nice Weather!

 I kind of think the MAGA rapture "Christian" crowd should have themselves checked out by a good exorcist. 

If they think they are getting messages from something supernatural, they should consider the possibility that those messages have a malevolent source. 

Great Weather

 Couldn't be much better. I can understand why lots of people might want to escape this world. But a rapture doesn't sound very plausible or much like a good experience at all. More like a stupid poorly thought out fantasy. I think some are now expecting to be raptured today. And if not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow and if not the day after tomorrow, then the day after that, if not that day then the day after that, and if not that day then the day after that, and if not that day then the day after that, and if not that day, then the day after that, and if not that day, then the day after that, if not that day then the day after that, and if not that day then the day after that, and if not that day then the day after that, and if not that day, then the day after that, and if not that day...

...then the day after that, and so on, ad infinitum. Or until they die. Whatever comes first. 

Rapture?

 No signs of such an event so far. I'm thinking that this was a cruel hoax engineered by party or parties unknown, to make the xtian social media crowd look very stupid. And if that's what it was, it succeeded brilliantly. Social media attracts stupid people, people who are very credulous. people with no critical thinking skills at all, and social media also MAKES people stupid, because if you interact with others on social media you are interacting with idiots, and that isn't healthy. I guess there will be some hold-outs, who will wait and wait and wait. I do feel sorry for those who may have done some foolish things, like quitting jobs, pulling children out of school, reducing their bank balances to zero. That's why such hoaxes are cruel. It's like mistreating dumb animals. And many human beings qualify as a "dumb animal". That's so sad. As far as who might have perpetrated such a hoax why, it must have been THE JEWS! No no no no and a thousand times no, but the same people who fell for this particular hoax could easily fall for other hoaxes, anti-Semitic hoaxes, racist hoaxes-- the list is long. Low information, low IQ for the most part-- these unfortunates stagger mindlessly from one falsehood to another. And all they want, I think, is to be happy. Who doesn't want to be happy? Maybe if they got this stuff from a pastor, or a "friend" maybe they should lose faith in their pastor, and find better friends? Maybe they should toss their "smartphones" and swear off the internet, or at the very least abandon social media?

We got a stronger norther at last and temps today are really great, very refreshing, and it was cool this morning, and all that felt very good. The rest of September looks good, and early October and maybe even late October might turn out to be vintage, and very fine. 

No channeling today because reality is so grim. 

Grim, and very sad. 

Channeling

 What does a writer do, but CHANNEL a fictional person, who, for all we know, might be a dead person searching for a voice? Yes, who knows, but what a fictional character might be a channeled dead or even unborn person, a person who might have been, or who was, finding a voice via a creative imagination? Eh? Eh? It was a productive morning, after a blazing hot day yesterday, that probably set a record high for the date. Some relief but rain chances have all but vanished from the forecast. And now I will do some channeling: "Hahaha soon we get to laugh at dumb evangelicals again. They are so hopelessly stupid it's funny. They or at least some of them, are expecting to be raptured again, sometime around the 26th of this month. Are these pathetic ninnies capable of learning even one damn thing? It won't happen! No rapture! They are more likely to experience a rupture. And when the rapture, for the millionth time fails to take place, will they perhaps get the idea that they are on the wrong track? NO! They never do. They double down and move the damn goalposts. Make silly excuses. I despise those kinds of people, seriously. I don't respect them, their faith, their ideas-- nothing about them is in any way worthy of respect. And it's easy enough to imagine the kinds of people those seriously defective creatures are inclined to follow, to idolize, to worship, to vote for. Well, it'll be fun to laugh at them yet again. Another evangelical pratfall. One loses count of all the failed prophecies over the years. So say I, Lahrunce P. Tyconderack"

Sometimes after channeling I have a headache but not this time. Channeling can be quite fun, in fact. I plan to do more of that. God rest your soul, Mr. Tyconderack, wherever you may be!

There are a great many peculiar creatures running around, that's for sure. On that score I can agree with Mr. Tyconderack!

Fiction!

 But I wrote it last night, mentally, and now I'm not interested in writing it down. My best bet might be to have nothing planned or plotted at all. I'd like to deal with fairly ordinary people in a fairly ordinary town set sometime in the fifties, and have amazing and disturbing things happen to them. And in other cases, in the same sort of setting, I'd like to deal with such people except that they would have a lively imagination and huge ambitions, and in yet other cases I would like to deal with very alienated and withdrawn characters who would be mad as hatters by any definition. And grotesque distortions of the world we live in are not out of the question. I wonder how blogger would deal with that sort of thing. I doubt that blogger would allow me to be as explicit as I would like. That could be a problem. I thought the place where all of my characters live ought to be referenced as: "Onlyville-- a DAMNED good place to raise your kids up in!" But that would not be very original and I don't want to rip off Frank Zappa's "Two Hundred Motels". But each story would be centered on one individual in this specific community. And if all these stories turn out to be tasteless and over the top, well, why not? Meanwhile it will be a hot day here but the front hits sometime late today or early tomorrow and the rest of this month might not be bad at all. 

There is nothing at all tidy, neat, delicate, or moral, or tasteful, or refined about life, is there? It's pretty much a brutal and nasty business, isn't it?

Lubbock Power Outages

 The city just loves to tax and spend but they don't want to put a dime into existing infrastructure or city services, which are pretty abysmal. We have far too many power outages. Had one this morning that only lasted a second or two but that was enough to knock my computer down and force me to do a lot of resetting. This is a middle class neighborhood, though, so I don't think they give a damn. In rich parts of town, these things don't happen. Well, the typical church around here will preach that if you aren't very wealthy, it's only because God doesn't love you , and you're going to hell, so why worry when ordinary folks get screwed over? It's just God's will. Chosen vs not chosen. Cut and dried. Calvinism in action. Another way of saying: Fuck you. I've got mine, Jack. In fact, the only message that modern Christianity really has to offer, is a hearty fuck you to 99% of the human race. If there's a way to say FUCK YOU in Aramaic, then I imagine that Jesus said FUCK YOU to almost everyone. Oh well. See, the above is what I would put into a fictional character's mouth. Sort of. That fictional character would be deeply into prosperity gospel, would get off on the idea of killing the homeless, killing the sick and weak, killing people of color, and then go off to a big rich church to congratulate himself or herself on being one of the chosen few, the elect. "Thank you Lard, for making me better than everyone else. Thank you for making me rich and freeing me from the burdens of conscience and compassion, and empathy-- all those un-American and demonic things." And then in my fictional world such people would suffer amazing misfortunes and end up maimed and mutilated and disfigured, buried alive, but not before screaming in agony, eaten by vermin, by worms, by dogs, and only then pushed into mass graves, ALIVE, to be covered up under piles of excrement, and forgotten. Of course, it would HAVE to be fiction because things like that don't happen in real life. 

Nice Sunday morning. Lots of vigils and special services and homage being paid to Mr. Kirk. I did not attend. The throngs of people were just too enormous. I have a thing about crowds.