Perhaps other writers suffer from the same malady as I do. If so, we need to create a support group or form a drum circle, or…something.
Starting a blog from zero is a tough slog. I wasn’t an assistant editor at a major magazine, or a Hollywood gem when I started P4B. I wasn’t a politician with nice hair, of whom the electorate had sickened. I’m not a shapely, perky hottie. I’m an old Gunner’s Mate with bit of a belly. Well, a beer belly. Okay! Okay, I look pregnant! Okay?
I have zero name recognition. To build my platform I started writing and posting like a mad man. I started a Substack and pulled previous work over.
I have a face for radio and a voice for newsprint, but I learned how to produce podcasts anyway. I have plans to expand to video. Yes, my ugly mug will soon grace your screens.
I spend my days reading, researching, writing and publishing. But I don’t work in a healthy way. I work obsessively. At the end of the day, it is difficult to turn my brain off.
Recently, however, I did find a kind of therapy. Battlebots and Yellowstone.
Battlebots is the rip-roaringist form of excusable violence ever invented. It’s geek heaven! The audience, mostly comprised of teams and their parents, scream for blood..or hydraulic fluid, I suppose.
The 250 pound monsters zoom all over the floor of the “battlebox” (two bots enter, one bot leave) and by remote control, the operators try to smash the other guy’s bot to pieces. A feat rarely accomplished, but when it happens the euphoria nears sexual ecstacy.
Did I say that out loud?
It really is amazing watching them launch each other, sometimes so violently, that ceiling tiles in the giant box fall to the floor. Wheels and metal body parts are routinely blasted into the lexan walls.
As a stellar example, check out the underdog, Cobalt taking on Ghost Raptor. All Ghost Raptor had to do was get a hold of the little bastard, but…
Unfortuneatley, Battlebots episodes are released in huge dumps. I’ve long since been left with only reruns and an occasional show I haven’t seen. I rarely watch the reruns unless there’s like actual fire or something extreme involved.
And then there was Yellowstone. YEEEE HAH! What a concept! A weekly soap opera, featuring high-fashion cowboys and cowgirls, Ranchers and evil investors, and even an Indian chief in $2000 suits. Many of them are brimming with teenage angst. But the presentation is just soapy enough for women to like it and testosterony enough for guys to watch and not feel like poofs.
The formula is basically SUCCESSION or THE LION IN WINTER on horseback. We stacked it up on DVR and unlike Battlebots, I don’t mind watching an occasional rerun from past seasons.
So for a while I was able to finish a long day at the computer, pick up a few news stories, make a few notes for future posts and then - STOP - to dose up on some distraction.
I watched Rip (uber-male) make the tough, embattled Beth moist with a look or a Cheshire grin. I watched Jimmy grow from a semi-retarded crack head into a fine cowboy. We all spent time trying to decipher Teeter’s linguistic code.
Tom Rainwater keeps aligning with the wrong side and getting screwed.
John Dutton has been dispatching enemies faster then General Patton. Yay, John!
And then, BOOM! With no warning, my guilty pleasure cuts off, midseason. It may pickup in midsummer, they say. There’s some lame excuse about Kevin Costner having a “contractual conflict”.
I scoured the interwebs looking for information like a junkie driving around West Philly, eyeballing street corners and darkened store fronts. I came across this beauty on the Matt and Jess TV Commentary: “Yellowstone season 5 episode 9 return date: Why the uncertainty?
Yellowstone January 8, 2023
“Let’s start things off here with a reminder that the folks at the network have no real reason to hurry things along here! There is an INCREDIBLE amount of viewer loyalty with this show and because of that, there is no real need to hurry anything along here at all.”
Well. Aren’t they just full of themselves?!
SUBSCRIBE to Matt & Jess on YouTube now for new Yellowstone videos!
Meanwhile, my thoughts are popping like a strobe light inside my head. At 2 in the morning I’m bumping into walls and licking the windows. Sleep comes around 4 AM.
Costner, get back to work! I have a nation to save, while entertaining said nation with my rapier-like wit. But I need my sleep! I need my distractions! I must set right this wayward nation, but I can’t do it if I can’t sleep!
Let the fate of America be on your head!
In my next segment, I will swing away from this high-minded nut-baggery and back to some of my more traditional stuff. We have more Reich Commentaries (lots of fun), a few quick hits on election security, and why the Donald will never see the inside of a courtroom. And there is still the BIG series; the surprise you won’t want to miss. There will be a paid subscriber option by that time and the BIG series will be a part of that.
[ADHD kicks in]
And the mention of election security just fired one of the few synaps(es?) in my small but energy-efficient brain cavity. This morning I was thinking about elections and the voter experience. What are modern election officials thinking?
If you’ve never seen a photo from an old-timee polling station, you may wonder at the term “voting booth”. Back in prehistoric times (that’s before liberal “boomers” reached puberty, nothing ever happened before that) voting truly was a private affair. When you voted, you actually stepped into a BOOTH and pulled the curtain closed. When I was a kid seeing those photos, it looked to me like people were about to take a shower with their cloths on.
Nowadays, of course, the voting booth is folding card table with a touch screen, sparsely surrounded by a bit of cardboard. You can argue that…yeah, it’s supposed to be private, but who’s looking at you when you vote? This is valid - to a point.
We now live lives that are increasingly monitored by our states and Uncle Stinky. Cameras are everywhere. I would contend that they are already in most polling places… er…um…for security. Cell phones are everywhere. Lunatic elitists like Klaus Schwab and John Kerry PROUDLY BOAST of their plans to monitor and change your behavior. And their Left-leaning fans in this country can’t wait for it all. Hell, it’s already happening HERE!
For a preview of you future under these lunatics, look at Sri Lanka. They were forced to cut back on fertilizer and follow the Holy Writ of ESG. Only a few short years ago, they were touted as the prime example of how to move an economy from obscurity into the top tier. That once-BOOMING economy no longer exists. In it’s place is a miserable, broken dystopia. And the World Economic Forum lunacy that caused that carnage has already taken root here!
For all the privacy afforded you in the modern polling station you might as well be taking a dump on the corner of Broad and Market. Granted, homeless people probably do so routinely. But YOU DON’T. In a time where big Brother and the WEF aren’t even hiding plans to control every aspect of your life, right down to the stove you use, maybe municipalities might want to bring back the shower stalls.
…And states should drive out any businesses that engage in ESG practices.