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 […]
Coyote Tales
I’m not romantic about coyotes, at least not in the way that absolves them of their predatory nature, and so becomes blind to that nature and ends up doing them a disservice. I see a lot of people do that wolves, and the more they try to sell the warm and fuzzy routine the less credibility they have.
American Cheese
We live in strange times, which I realize is something of an understatement. But given the rarity of understatements in the current climate I am now a full-bore and unapologetic campaigner for understatements wherever, and whenever, I can find them.
Frank Lives in the Basement
Occasionally we get lucky and stumble across interesting works of art buried deep in the cultural mud—where they would probably stay—if folk like us weren’t out there dirt-fishing for hidden gems.
The Degenerate Art Show
But even teaching, which allowed the greatest latitude for my manias, often provoked my inner Younger Bear, and so I found myself frequently on maneuvers against the robotic administration, or dropping a lecture on Wendell Berry to teach my students how to build field-expedient claymores–mostly as a kind of anti-academic protest and also as an instructional aid on building narrative structures.
The Resolutions Will Be Televised
Things aren’t as complicated as we’ve made them. If you don’t want to get fat stop eating so much and go for a walk. If you don’t want to destroy your liver and wreck your personal relationships stop drinking. That’s not a message Americans want to hear. They’d rather believe that big pharma is going to produce a pill that can do all of that while they sit around on throw rugs in a cloud of incense, banging on gongs and worshipping photos of Noam Chomsky while being angry at big pharma.
The Law Of Suspects & Civil Death
At the febrile height of the French Revolution — the political event that created the modern world — the General Council of the Paris Commune issued a kind of passport for citizens who could demonstrate that they were politically reliable — the certificat de civisme. Proof of civic virtue and political reliability was absolutely vital. Without […]
Blackout
Blackouts are good when you don’t want to get bombed, but I’m in the trenches like everybody else and if I want to light a cigarette I’m going to light it. That’s late stage trench-madness and severely pisses off the Company Commander, but he spends most days in his dugout with the rats and a broken whistle writing bad poems to his ugly wife. If I’m going over the top I’m going to fire up a hand-rolled smoke before being turned into hamburger at the bottom of a crater by Jeff Bezos, Fox News, or the Omicron Variant.
Breeding Robots In The Slo-Mo Apocalypse
It’s fine, I’m sure. Nothing to worry about. (CNN)—The US scientists who created the first living robots say the life forms, known as xenobots, can now reproduce — and in a way not seen in plants and animals. Formed from the stem cells of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which it takes its name, xenobots are […]
