I just finished Pride and Prejudice. For it being about 225 pages long. I expected to be done with it by Tuesday, but it took me a bit longer to finish it. I was fine with Jane Austen’s subtle rattling of the cage deftly woven within an insipid tale about husband chasing filled with some annoying characters. I’m looking at you Mrs. Bennet, Lydia, Lady Catherine.

But man, her prose is tough to read. It reminds me of what John Daly would do as host of the classic game show What’s My Line. If the panel asked a question that would be tricky to answer, he would give an obfuscating response. Take the 3:46 mark of the video below:

I had no trouble with Dostoevsky, with Flaubert, with Lawrence or such. But Austen was quite troublesome. Perhaps as each day goes by I’m just getting stupider and stupider.

Also, I agree with Mrs. Sheridan. The most awful things do happen when you marry a Yankee.

On the second page of the Times today is a story about the warring factions among the media at the Syria peace talks in Geneva. It made me giggle that even in a “respectable” journalistic endeavor as war and peace the media can act like babies just as the sports media does.

My only journalistic experience comes in sports, and usually it’s very calm and sedate. On a team’s beat, you see the same people and develop relationships with them. You quickly get a sense of what certain people want. For instance, the tv people want the easy soundbite so we usually let them go first and get out of the way. If certain folks like TJ Simers comes along, then you want to get your question in as quickly as possible before he goes off on one of his cross-examinations (although they can be highly amusing at times.)

But then there are the abnormal days, such as when a scandal erupts or the team is in the playoffs. While fun, those days can be spent trying to jockey for position, talk over people to get your question in, having to use elbows and quite possibly having your cuss-out being aired on live television.

I hated the two times the Vancouver Canucks played the Kings in the playoffs. I really got a sense as to why Canadians hate Vancouverites — they’re whiny, think the whole world is conspiring against them and are just plain cunts. In the hallway outside of the dressing rooms at Staples Center, the CBC crew broadcasting the series in 2010 blocked the middle of the hallway so they can do their on-air postgame interviews. Meanwhile the dressing rooms were opening to the media, and we could not get past the tv crew in order to get to the Kings’ room.

The whole lot of us were grumbling about it to which I just shouted blindly, “Can you guys fucking move?” To be honest, I don’t know if that was aired on CBC, but I didn’t care. Soon thereafter the seas parted, and we were able to get into the Kings’ room albeit tardily and resigned at the back of these scrums.

I’ve been lucky to not have been hit in the noggin by a camera or elbowed away (though I have had to throw some elbows with the Vancouver media.) Other people weren’t quite so fortunate, especially my media sisters. For some unknown reason, they take the brunt of the abuse in these scrums. I just don’t know why. I can’t imagine it!

I guess hearing about the shenanigans at the UN gives me a sense of comfort that it isn’t only sports that is chaotic.

By the way, the above is probably one of the few photos of a media scrum I have taken in my years doing this. Most of the time I was busy doing my job. Also I hated when the Boston Red Sox media came to town. What a bunch of sniveling sanctimonious shitheads.

On Monday I ventured out to Ocean Trails. Since I hadn’t really done much of any opining yet of this upcoming presidential election, I felt the day of the Iowa caucus was a good day to start. So since Trump National is right up against Ocean Trails, I put a curse on him. I would have done it a la Happy Noodle Boy thusly:

But given that this was a selfie taken on my phone and part of the composition required to see a hint of Trump’s golf course, I thought it best to do it this way.

Apparently I was very successful. Trump came in second to Ted Cruz in the caucus, started whining about it today, and that’s probably as much as I know.

The only candidate out of the whole lot whom I can barely stand is Bernie Sanders, but I really loathe and despise his fanboys. I’m halfway rooting for Hillary just to see those cunts start crying.

I don’t mean to say in that title that religion is stupid, although that is certainly what I do believe. I mean to say a religion about fucking. Or perhaps not even an entire religion, but a sect of an already existing religion. Like Sexy Christianity or Lacy Islam or Foxy Buddhism. Where, all apologies to Tori Amos, where if you can make me cum maybe that does make you Jesus.

In today’s LA Times front page, Jonathan Kaiman took a look at the rise of ultra-conservative Salafism in China and how it’s dividing the Muslims in that country. About Salafism:

Salafism is an ultra- conservative school of thought within Sunni Islam, espousing a way of life and prayer that harks back to the 6th century, when Muhammad was alive. Islamic State militants are Salafi, many Saudi Arabian clerics are Salafi, and so are many Chinese Muslims living in Linxia.

Okay. I know those two sentences are trying to infer that Salafism = Terrorism, but I’m all but certain that it is way too simplistic to think about it that way. But the fact that people want to live like a bunch of nomads in 500 AD immediately makes me wary.

What really got me thinking is written several paragraphs later:

“I’ve been studying Muslims in China for the past 30 years, and it’s only over the past four or five that we see young Han men converting to a radical, conservative Islamic ideology,” said Dru Gladney, an expert on Chinese Muslims at Pomona College. “Not politically radical, but radically conservative, radically orthodox.”

This set my wheels in motion. Why are these sects of religion always ultra-conservative and austere? Look at the Pilgrims, the wacko Mormons, the people who actually like Ted Cruz, ISIS, the keep-the-women-away-from-the-prayer-wall Jews. All of them seem afraid of sexuality, afraid of the electrical impulses of the brain to carry on cognitive activity. Yet people flock to them as if denial of pleasure will somehow bring them closer to their god.

I would think that you would want to head into the afterlife full of experiences from this life, fully satisfied that you did everything in this incarnation and that you won’t be a miserable bitter fucking cunt in the next life. Besides, with all the ills that life hurls at you, isn’t fucking a good way to get through the pain?

By the way, that picture above is from a real Romanian Orthodox calendar.

I finally figured out what disturbs me most about the Matthew McConaughey Lincoln commercials. It seems he’s done too much ketamine! Please, help little Matthew out of his k-hole. Some coke, some meth perhaps?

The LA Public Library offers many daily newspapers across the world for free thanks to PressReader. So because of that I’ve been reading the print edition of the LA Times every morning. Most of the links won’t be from the Times because they have a weird paywall thing that they use — you only get to view a certain number of articles free per month — so I’ll be linking from other sites most of the time.

Here’s what I learned today:

– Scientists discover the schizophrenia gene. It’s a nice first step into unraveling the disease and ways to treat it without those nasty side effects the current batch of drugs have.

When I read this, I instinctively put on Sonic Youth’s Sister on just to hear “Schizophrenia.” It’s a great little send-up to Philip K. Dick. “I can feel it in my bones. Schizophrenia is taking me home.”

– Dudamel and Youth Orchestra LA to play the Super Bowl halftime show. Deep in this article it mentions how none of the presidential candidates talk about art, music and culture in school. I haven’t been paying attention to the campaigns, so I don’t know if that is true or not. But I wouldn’t be surprised by it.

I have a cousin who loves playing the guitar and says that he loves the classic rock guitarists. His favorite was Eric Clapton to which I rolled my eyes, talked about his cocaine addictions and said that no one cared about him until he threw his son off the balcony or whatever. I told him about Jimi Hendrix. He had no idea who that is. I told him about Jimmy Page. Who?

– Why are middle-aged white Americans dying at a higher rate? Here’s the study that the Times referenced. The story highlighted the states that had the highest mortality rates of this group: West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

The states showing the worst trends have high rates of poverty as well as some of the highest rates of smoking and obesity in the country.
They also historically have had among the weakest healthcare systems, with high rates of people lacking insurance and poor access to medical care.

Some of these shortcomings may be addressed in some states by the Affordable Care Act. Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia have expanded their Medicaid safety nets through the law, a step that other research suggests should have health effects over the longer term.

The remaining states with the biggest health gaps continue to resist the law and do not guarantee health coverage.

Yes, I gave in to the nostalgia and hoopla and watched the two episodes of The X-Files. When you think about what a let down other reboots have been, there was much to be fearful. I guess it’s a relief that the two episodes were actually good, pretty decent really. It did achieve one rare thing: it got me to watch them live on television as they aired rather than wait until they came VOD and all that good stuff.

It also made me go back and watch the original pilot episode of the show. I only started watching the show midway through the first season, and in days of yore usually if you missed it you were shit out of luck until it came up on syndication. How I never watched these early episodes yet, I don’t know.

As eerie as these stories may be, one thing I do know: Siouxsie will keep me safe.

I would like to very much go to this music festival in June in Barcelona. If a benefactor (or benefactors) would pay for my flight, my lodging, my tickets, my meals, I would be very appreciative. I give good head, have an insatiable asshole and am pretty fucking dirty.

PJ Harvey, Air, Suede, Explosions in the Sky, Drive Like Jehu, Dinosaur, Cabaret Voltaire, Tortoise, Mudhoney, Boredoms, Current 93, Shellac, Psychic TV, Autolux, Neil Hagerty.

I’m a bit confused as to why all the oldies yet goodies are in the lineup. Is it because they heard how dull and boring the new music the kids are listening to nowadays and realize they can blow those cunts right out of the water? Either way, I’m happy that these folks are still making music.

Here is Björk’s video for “Pagan Poetry,” one of my faves from her. Just to show you how good this video is, I still really love it despite a Matthew Barney cumshot at the beginning. The song is great, but can we talk about that Alexander McQueen wedding gown? I might have to let go of my objections to marriage just to wear that down the aisle.

My Siouxsie and New Order tees came in on Tuesday, and I washed them yesterday, and here is the Siouxsie tee. Yes it’s a public bathroom selfie, a first for me. And for some reason it looks like I need some makeup. My face looks so plain! But I like my hair, so there is that. And the shirt.

I took this picture while The Grandmother was in the stall doing her business. Of course, I make her use the men’s room since it’s more seemly for her to be in it than me in a lady’s room. This makes me wonder why there aren’t more unisex bathroom options for those of us who care for a parent or grandparent with needs. Although The Grandmother prefers men’s rooms since she says they’re cleaner than ladies’ rooms.