How could I ever forget Ellison's birthday? For shame, Jude.

Happy belated birthday you old codger, you would've been 92 two days ago. Somehow, it stills seems far too soon.

Z"L...

Monday, I cracked open a new vintage Ingenue Magazine from 1967 and found a perverse ad by Bare Facts Waltham starring a nude toddler. No genitalia was shown as it was just the child from a side view. In fact, I thought I was looking at a doll at first until I rolled a mental four on my mental Call Of Cthulhu sanity check and understood the full brunt of what I was staring at. I know Nirvana did the whole thing with that one album cover with the baby and his weewee out, so this kind of thing is technically "art". It's still beyond disgusting. Let me try to understand, you decided to disrobe a child who looks to be about five years removed from the status of BABY, have a robe or towel pooled almost suggestively at their feet, on a magazine marketed towards tween and teenage girls....

It was the first time I had to deface an item in my collection.

My Lazarus Naturals Turmeric gummies arrived on tuesday, and promptly took five. It was my first time with CBD gummies, and my first encounter with any CBD was with Rabbit CBD—didn't really do anything for me. Weak sauce. So under the assumption that the gummies would be the same, I shoved five down the gullet. Two hours later, I was slumped. I could barely move from the bed for hours. My body was like lead. I think I managed to slither off the bed at some point and make it to my couch where I stared at a wall for a bit.

It wasn't relaxing, I was trying to actually be productive that day. I ended up buying two Alani energy drinks to try and perk me up. Then I ate eight chicken on a stick's from Panda Express. Got sick. Got even sicker the following morning. I truly am too old for all these adventures i've been taking my body on.

Thursday, today, was the first big rain shower of the summer and I decided I'd play around the rain a bit after I got off work. Splashed around barefoot in puddles. Jumped on trampoline. Sat on trampoline. Laid on trampoline. Cupped water in my hands to throw at the window where my cat watched me. It amused him. Ate two more of those gummies. Good day.

Carl Jung once said, "The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man." He could not have been more correct. We have only to look around us, at the fissures in the rock-wall of our times, to know that we have created for ourselves a madhouse of irrationality and despair. The lunacies of our world erupt daily like boils on the diseased body of civilization. Is it, hopefully, the reawakening of conscience, or, more likely, the refracted pain of denying our souls?

Alienation.

The keyword so easily bandied by sociologists and inept novelists alike. The explanation for racial strife, random violence, mass madness, the rape of our planet. Man feels cut off. He feels denied. He feels alone. He is alienated.

If one more quotation might be permitted, the words of Oscar Wilde—himself a classic study of alienation—serve to describe alienation: "To reject one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the Soul."

Alone against his world, the man of today finds his gods have deserted him, his brother has grown fangs, the machine clatters ever nearer on his heels, fear is the only lover demanding his clasp, and without answers he turns and turns, and finds only darkness.

The creative intellect struggles against this sorry reality. Pressing with unflagging intensity against the shuddering membrane of alienation, against the interface between himself and freedom of the soul, the artist tries to gain an exit with the magics of words and movements and colors. Yet all around him the inexorable inertia of the alienated society finds the strength to keep rolling, grinding, crushing. it would seem only the mind of the madman is free.

And even so, the artist persists. He speaks of man, alone in the night, alone against the stars, alone against tomorrow—more starless and darker than even today. He speaks of worlds beyond our world, days beyond our days, places crosswhen and never-will-be, in hopes that cautions may be flung on the wind and somehow still be heard.

These are stories I have written over the past ten years and more. Stories in which the theme of alienation dominates. They are by no means stories of hopelessness; for in examples of the damned and lost, we find hope within ourselves. Alienated, perhaps; yet never alone.

"Introduction: The Song of the Soul", for the Alone Against Tomorrow Anthology

Harlan Ellison, Los Angeles, January 1970

...Not on paper, no. I can't exactly change when I escaped my mother's vag, nor can I realign those stars and quirky animals in the sky that'll tell me if I'll die to a DUI driver or be a social reject my entire life, BUT——I can choose a different date to celebrate it on! Something more interesting than a dull birthday in the dead of a February winter.

Just a few days ago I decided that my new "birthday", was going to be on the Fourth of July. Odd? Well, picture it.

A birthday celebration on a sandy beach in the late afternoon of an American summer where there's already this bit of magic in the air, the electric energy amplified because the whole nation is having a party. The sea water lapping at your feet while fireworks explode in the sky and the air whips your hair about. And alongside the salty smell of the coast, the smell of something meaty cooking on a fire pit wafts past your nose. The laughter and merry-making of your loved ones hanging about or splashing in the water. Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties music playing not too far away, not too close to disrupt the ambience of the sea. And then there's more colorful pops in the sky. Maybe your young cousin almost loses some fingers because he held on too long to the firecrackers that he just lit.

I don't live near the sea currently. But hopefully soon. I may make a tradition where every "birthday" of mine, I set off for a beach on some coast around the country with a friend.

I think I might actually enjoy my birthday for once this year.

Who here digs Type O Negative

So. The Devils didn't make the playoffs. that's alright, that's alright...I'm still happy...

...Happy because the PANTHERS DIDN'T GET IN EITHER!! AHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAGET FUCKED !!!!

....If they win the draft lottery i'm going to become a domestic terrorist.

[Art by Ketubahring on Instagram (*˘︶˘*).｡.:*♡]

I won't be able to properly celebrate this year thus, most of my evenings will be spent cradling a bottle of wine and eating Matzo Ball Soup with no Matzo Balls. Which is to say, a regular chicken soup.

Still have a bit to work on in navigation. It won't take months, I swear :)

Some photographs from the night I got to see Mr. McCartney in person! A blessing it was to be seated so close to the stage on the first floor :)

Some guys outside the venue gave me an AI jesus beatles dollar.