When the poet John Berryman leapt off a bridge in Minneapolis he was sober. He’d been largely drunk up until that morning but he was scarred forever by his own father’s suicide and probably every tall building looked something like a hell-hole.
La Plaza
I won’t bore you with details of 18 hours in delayed flights, an unexpected stay in Denver, or any of the weird third-world adventures accompanying domestic travel that are now routine in modern, robust, and according to President Joe Biden, the excellent economy and upward trajectory of the United States. This is the same man that tries to shake hands with thin air, but I can tell you that if you want to be treated like a human being, or expect appropriate customer service, do not fly United Airlines. If you decide to fly United Airlines then what happens to you next can only be your own fault.
Shaved By A Drunken Barber’s Hand
I don’t need to read the papers To know the heart of man This world’s been shaved By a drunken barber’s hand — Slaid Cleaves/Rod Picott, Drunken Barber’s Hand Last weekend, Slaid Cleaves returned to Sisters to play The Belfry. The Austin, Texas based singer-songwriter works in a tradition of folk songwriting and storytelling that celebrates the courage and resilience of ordinary folk […]
Instructor Pelayo
It is axiomatic that all tactical training that is any good must involve rubber boats and cold water. If your training does not include rubber boats and cold water you cannot possibly be training for anything more rigorous than seizing a bicycle from a child. My own training involved far more cold water and rubber boats than I care to remember, but there is something in that combination that very quickly separates the wheat from the chaff, and over time builds incredible teams.
Maximum Zuckage
“I know it’s preposterous — but is it preposterous?” — CNN host Don Lemon I pretty much gave up on CNN back in 2014, when I read an interview with then-new honcho Jeff Zucker, in which he explained that CNN’s news/business model, built to compete with ratings juggernaut FOX News, was going to be picking a single story […]
The Philosopher’s Stone
One thing I’m trying to avoid is the indignity of being wheeled into the day-room for group exercises at “Autumnal Leaves”, which is a raisin farm in Ricky Gervais’ excellent series After Life where his father—suffering from dementia—mostly doesn’t recognize him and makes increasingly inappropriate sexual commentary to the nurses.
My Kingdom for a Durable Tarp
They are apparently incensed that Joe Rogan has bucked the system, hunts his own meat, has eaten Ivermectin and beaten Covid, has a wildly popular podcast, and discussed all of these things out loud. And also because he smoked weed with Elon Musk on the air. Or something. It’s hard to know, except that the battle against irrelevance is on-going, and as a figure in The Madness of King George once pointed out: Character is required to endure the rigors of indolence.
Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World
Oh, this country sure looks good to me But these fences are comin’ apart at every nail. — Neil Young I love me some Neil Young. Saw him live a bunch of times in some truly epic concerts— rocking with Crazy Horse, solo acoustic; the whole wild, erratic, eccentric range from the deep Americana of Harvest Moon to a bone-crunching Sedan Delivery. […]
Primo Somno
Doesn’t it just seem, some days, that we are being outplayed and outmaneuvered at every turn? One wonders if the underwater cables have been tapped, the cyphers compromised, if there is a mole in every briefing room, or if we are just as inept and delusional as appearance suggests.
Canned Goods
Back home, of course, we have other problems, not least of which is testing the winds, sticking to the shadows, and leaning into the whispers to avoid becoming Canned Goods ourselves. There is more truth in that than many would like to believe, our obsession with “safety” having now trumped any real concerns with fundamental liberty.
Shooting the Sky
It was a meal to celebrate a series of victories–over the madding world that overburdens modern humans with regulation and minutia, crushes us under the weight of absurdity, and tries like hell to prevent us from escaping the reservation to simply get out, get on a boat, and go fishing. To get from our homes and meet in Reno took 14 hours of combined driving, of dodging the world of yahoos who consistently overestimate their driving abilities, and any number of logistical hurdles between work, family, and the freight of modern obligations.
It’s Just Indifference
A friend of mine recently told me that he can’t handle a Joe Biden speech — it’s literally painful to watch. They’re all like that for me. I thought about it for a minute and realized that the last presidential speech I can remember watching was President George W. Bush’s post 9/11 State of the Union Address. That’s more […]
