It’s a confused and fucked up world today. Snow came down like dandruff in the afternoon.  A minority of the fraction of American voters chose a orange wigged, unfortunate shaped, sad man to be ruler of the empire.  Many teary reactions to that decision have probably dried by now, but the echoes of their displeasure continue on.

    I’m mixing coffee and amber ale late in the day.  One stokes the fire, the other twirls a flaming baton dangerously close to the drapes.  It will likely end in a pile, snoring, dreaming only parts of dreams, waking momentary to stumble into corners, blind and disorientated by partial consciousness.

    I’ve decided on writing letters as a form of productivity.  Letters for you to decipher on your own time.  Other writing, lately, has come out too tart.  The thoughts are stiff and undercooked.  My brain flapping in all directions like a pack of sea gulls into the face of oncoming traffic.

    What has the world disclosed to you lately?  Have you seen messages in your alphabet soup, signs from the netherworld in the clouds?  Is there a chance that the current presidential fumble results in a favorable renovation to the corroding system?  It looks bleak.  It looks like a hundred million of the most vocal cry-babies running face first into one another, with no objective other than inflicting sharp pain on their adversaries.

     Did you vote?  Did you get a sticker?  Did you put your stickers over you eyes and you ears and pretend that everything was going to be okay?  I didn’t vote.  I filled out my ballot, shot a snot rocket into the space for write ins, crumbled it, and shot it like a basketball into the wastebasket.  Although I missed the shot, I was satisfied.  Chose the lesser of two demonstrably   repulsive candidates — or don’t.  If it was a recreational league softball team, I would have picked Hillary.  Charades — Don. 

    Have you read any good books lately?  I’m poking my way through Ralph Steadman’s “The Joke’s Over” at the moment.  Snacking on bits and pieces during my lunch break.  I could complain about not having enough time indulge on literature.  I could also quit everything and spend the rest of my days collecting social welfare, reading, and proclaiming inaccurate philosophical theories to strangers.  There are many options.  I’ll take responsibility for some of mine.

    Do you find it hard to sleep at night?  I sleep the way one sleeps after war, or triathlons, or babysitting.  Once in a great while, I’ll contemplate all of the known universe from the pillow, but most nights I disappear when my head hits the pillow.  Conveniently timed narcolepsy I call it.

    Getting up in the mornings with purpose takes a little more effort.  There’s something in the fabric softener of my comforter that inspires morning rage I think.  Typically, I can coax myself out of it by breakfast.  Other days, I allow it some freedom to grow funky and ugly throughout the day.  This only ends in minor disaster.  It’s good to feed the monster occasionally, as long as you can suffocate it before bed.  I try my best.

    When’s the last time you wrote a letter?  It doesn’t have to be written with a feather and goats blood, the way Snakespeare did it (evil twin of Shakespeare).  Any kind of letter.  A note on a pretty woman’s car…explaining the gash that runs the length of her fender…an aesthetic wound, caused by misjudgments of distance, time, space, and rising sea levels.  A letter can be anything.  It hardly has to have purpose.  I once wrote a letter to the devil on behalf of Jesus Christ and OJ Simpson.  I put it in an envelope, licked it, added postage, and dropped it into a sewage grate in a bad part of town.  I didn’t expect a response and I never saw one.

    I’ll end this letter with a tip.  Don’t get in the habit of playing out arguments with people in your own head.  Especially not in the shower.  You’ll always get out feeling dirty.  

-grunt words