I'm Tired

     I'm tired of a lot of things.  I'm tired of idiots.  I'm tired of BS.  I'm tired of doctors who can't be arsed to write up and fax a simple referral so my Mom can get the care she needs when she needs it, instead of when her surgeon has to cancel because she's got problems obvious to even his diagnostic skills.

     I'm tired of numb-nuts and riders of the drama llama; I'm tired of shallow morons and ponderous, amateur intellectuals; I'm even tired of real intellectuals.  I'm tired of culture wars, culture warriors, and I'm tired of "happy warriors" who leap into the fray yelling at me to follow when I wasn't even in the battle. I'm damned tired of the yahoos that dance along the sidelines, yelling variations on "Let's you and him fight!  Fight!  FIGHT!" with blood in their eye and the foresight of a mayfly.  You people are sucking all the beauty, joy and fun out of life and you're not even drinking the juice.  A pox on all of yez, a murrain upon your cattle, bit-rot on your hard drives and premature switch failure on your keyboards.  I'll read what I like, I'll judge it by any criteria that damn well appeal to me -- literary merit, authorial politics, personality, entertainment value, cover art and/or sheer whim -- and bedamned to anyone who demands I do otherwise, a damnation now threatening, from sheer frustration and annoyance, to spill over onto those who merely request or suggest criteria for evaluating SF to me.

     I'm tired of working in a business that is circling the drain, all the while shrieking, "Things are better than ever!" as profits shrink, paychecks shrink in terms of real-world buying power for everyone outside of top management, staffs shrink and they tell you you're such a valuable team member but never replace equally-valued staffers who die, retire or manage to quit.  They're replacing us all with robots and ever-sloppier standards and what worries me -- of all things -- is that they probably can't do it quickly enough to stay afloat long enough for me to reach retirement age, even if my job manages to dodge elimination or outsourcing until the bitter end.

     I'm tired of headaches, of gnawing pain inside the bones of my face that no reputable kind of doctoring can diagnose and the quacks* can't cure.  I'm sick of bad knees and fading hearing, of tinnitus and tiredness and slowing reactions.

     I'm tired of two-faced politicians.  I'm tired of empty-headed politicians.  I'm tired of self-appointed pundits who can't distinguish between incompetence, idiocy and evil and I'm tired that they appear to be our only choices at the ballot box. I'm tired of religious people and I'm tired of atheists, neither of which have, in the aggregate, very good STFU skills. I'm tired of tone-deaf partisan shills.  I'm tired of being embarrassed by Ted Nugent, who can't keep his feet out of his mouth or find graphic artists who can properly spell "Ammendment" on posters touting his speech at the NRA AM.  I'm plenty tired of professional PR shill Shannon Watts and her phoney-baloney claim to speak for "Mothers."  (Does she even have kids?).  I'm tired of legislators and of legislative alerts.  Stop inventing new crimes, dammit! I'm tired of overpriced .22 ammo and I'm tired of being too tired to go bust caps on my days off.

     And I am damn tired of bad weather.  Spring has hardly crept from its den, bringing cold rain and nights so chill I've had to turn the furnace back on.

     Need some better stuff.  Soon.

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* See "NICO," who was also -- and with nearly equal levels of controversy -- a singer who performed lead vocals on the Velvet Underground's first album.  Hunh.