You have to understand something about politics: Every single person involved in a political discussion or an effort to draft a bill, at any one given point in time, believes the points or issues they’re arguing are “right,” and everything else is wrong—infallibly, into perpetuity and written on the wall inside one of God’s own, … Continue reading The Masked Ball of Politics
It was the end of the year this week, for those of us who choose to follow a Gregorian calendar. To our graves. I mean, as opposed to a Chinese calendar. Which will lead you to a grave, eventually, sure. It’ll just take it a couple more months. Or something like that. It’s been personally … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – December 30, 2022
What is the news, if it’s not broadcast with some form of ulterior motive? Has this ever been the case? Ever? Don't know. Don’t think so. For the organism in question is forever holistically tied to what fuels it and maintains its growth. Mass media is a publicly traded business. And all such businesses fundamentally … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – December 9, 2022
So, this week it’ll be back to news on Trump. Like he were the g--damn president again. Which you can better believe he won’t be. Not ever again. My money's on his not even getting the nomination in 2024. Plenty of Republican candidates are already pointing out how bad he was for the country, and … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – November 18, 2022
What’s wrong with the world today? That’s me, asking a rhetorical question in response to an actual question that no one actually posed to me, which goes something like, ‘Hey, a--hole, what do you think is wrong with the world today?’ I mean, in those specific words I’ve never been asked it. In so many … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – November 4, 2022
It’s election season now in America. Or has been for the last month, maybe. That’s about when the candidate flyers started to asphyxiate my mailbox—people who didn’t engage in any political activity the past two years looking to unseat someone in the state legislature or Congress, because hundreds of thousands in outside dollars wants them … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – October 21, 2022
I read an article yesterday in Deadline by Carl Kurlander, the co-writer of the 1985 Joel Schumacher film St. Elmo’s Fire, in which Kurlander reflects on his time before, during and after the film's writing and production, and the affects it maybe had, good and bad, upon the culture of young, urban, professional America. And I got super nostalgic. I was 9 when it came out. The movie was a social phenomenon to my age group. At least in my little part of the world...
Let’s talk about the fascist state. By which I mean, let me talk about the fascist state. Not of yesteryear, not of days long gone, but of today. Fascist state meaning fascist government, nation, ruling party—fascism out in the open, trying to hide itself as, what? Nationalism? Populism? Nativism? Freedom from oppression and tyranny? Self-rule? … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – September 30, 2022
I haven’t seriously looked at the news in over a week and a half. Is it true that burnout is directly correlated to intent? I don’t know. It’s probably correlated more to duration, which involves prolonged intent. At any rate, I know I didn’t view the general, erstwhile-worthwhile news as anathema before I began to … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – September 16, 2022
So, I’ve got a question. Has there ever been a president in modern history who continued to generate so many bumbling political headlines after he left office—and his administration generate such negative press, still—than Donald Trump? Just think back to the last fifty, seventy years or more. How much did you hear about the continued … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – August 26, 2022
So, you want to be a writer, do you, kid? Well, the first thing you have to realize is that no one cares about your meritless blog, the fictionalized, slice-of-life vignettes you’ve written based on your unremarkable existence, your ghetto zombie apocalypse, your girlie shojo manga, your period piece sci-fi romance set on the high … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – August 19, 2022
Such hypocrisy in the world today. *smh* No no—by me. Sure, I’ll be the first to admit it. Everyone does it, everyone engages in it, but I‘ll be the first to admit it: Yes, I do that thing that everyone else does that we all publicly say shouldn’t be done by anyone. I’m a hypocrite. … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – August 12, 2022
These primaries, I swear to God. What the hell is the point of anyone who, say, lives in Oregon having to care about what goes on in a Texas primary? I mean, from a news standpoint, it’s news, so it gets reported, and the news hopes to continually profit from people tuning into it. But … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – August 5, 2022
“Oh, the tyranny of kings and of despots! Oh, fear ye, thou plodding huddled masses, thy masters’ mandate—the divine, minority opulence of the moneyed incorporation, the gentried landowner and the martial dictate of fascist rule—shall forestall thy happiness and render thy inalienable liberty and prosperity but the illusory whims of an unjust world!” Or something like that...
How about this weather we’re having, huh? I’m going to be that guy this week. Your unconscionably annoying neighbor. That guy who just perpetuates awkward anywhere, any time of day, and has absolutely no shame about it. Who’s actually a horrible influence on your kids, too, for the ten seconds he talks to them, shirtless … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – July 22, 2022
President Joe Biden visited the Middle East for the first time on Saturday. It only took him 544 days since becoming president to get around to it. He’d been sending a message by abstaining—or trying to—in regard to Saudi and Israeli domestic policy, which, on occasion, can lead to the equivalent of a human rights … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – July 15, 2022
Some of the biggest news this week was the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. You’ve likely heard about it. It happened on Monday, during a Fourth of July parade. On Friday, someone walked up behind former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and shot him dead with a homemade shotgun, while he was speaking in … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – July 8, 2022
I just have to say, what a great time it's been to start a column summarizing the most important news of the week. And by ‘great’, I mean ‘Jesus f---ing Christ, what the hell is happening to the legal fabric of this country’?
Well, they did it. Roe v. Wade was finally overturned on Friday. After a months-long ballyhoo, incontinence control, outrage and roid rage on the part of both the left and right (and the Court, itself), the decision was handed down by, you guessed it, a 6 to 3 majority. So, that’s done. There are other … Continue reading Steam Whistle News Feed – June 24, 2022
Up early on a Monday, before her eyes could even adjust to the vague light of the world, she would reach for her phone and check her Facebook. It had her weather forecast for the day, and it was normally the first thing she would absorb of her surroundings, not long after the anxiety of … Continue reading Just A Facebook Girl in a Facebook World
People react to things. It’s a crucial part of how our central nervous systems (CNS) function as living organisms. Burns, freezes, pain, possible further pain, possible death—humans are going to yank away their body parts or duck underneath something if suspect any harm will come to them, and possibly live longer as a result. We … Continue reading Why Do You Let That Nonsense Get to You?
Any relationship is an investment. You put in energy, time, emotion, stress, effort and finances, you may give up parts of your dreams and life plans for it, but, in return, it can come to satisfy you in ways you have pre-determined you want to be satisfied, and also in ways you couldn’t have imagined. … Continue reading The New Age Paradox, Part 4: The Relationship Stock Market, and Further Reflections on My Time with a New Age Girl
Two months before the coronavirus pandemic blew up in the U.S., I got transferred to the graveyard shift at my job. Which meant that, for starters, unlike the coronavirus itself, the curve for my dating life was seriously about to flatten. My casual sex life, however, like the number of idiots watching FOX News who didn’t believe COVID-19 was a real thing, was about to go through the roof.
Fallacy of the hive mind – 1.) Inferring that someone who makes a comment which aligns with a consensus political opinion or movement on social media possesses the same deep, ingrained, singular, core principles or characteristics as that group or movement. 2.) Erroneously clumping people into a spuriously-named, demographically or sociologically unofficial group because they agree with, voice their opinion regarding or argue in favor of a consensus opinion which is temporarily influential, on social media or elsewhere.
It didn't take long to see the gold crucifix around his neck. And once I did, it seemed ready to pounce on me like a leopard in the black, tall prairie grass that was his chest hairs, framed by his considerably buttoned-down, purple polyester shirt. I was on a bus back in New Orleans, around 12-years old, on my way home from detention (again)...
In case you didn’t catch part 1 of the New Age Paradox, here’s a recap: The New Age Girl, this is what she would say: “I need you to talk about what you’re feeling. But I don’t want the whole story, about what you’re feeling. Don’t talk too much. It’s overwhelming. Tell it to me … Continue reading The New Age Paradox, Part 3: That One Guy Friend
Episodes make this list for being able to stand on their own, first and foremost. Secondly, they need to be really, really good. Sometimes, almost inescapably, contextual holes pervade each one each time, and no one can fix that, no matter how flowery or nad-pumpingly ejaculatory the praise I or anyone else lauds upon them. … Continue reading The 10 Best Stand-Alone Episodes in All of Anime
Take a person. Make it you. Take you. Now, imagine you’ve made enough money to never work again in your life. Billion dollars, say. But say you don’t. That is, don’t never work again in your life. Because this is real life; because, practically, if you stop working, you won’t have your billion dollars anymore. … Continue reading Into the Mind of a Billionaire
We had an election a little while ago in America. Did you hear about it? Maybe you did, and just didn’t give a shit. Only 62% of voting-age Americans actually came out to vote. Which was remarkable. For how good it was. How could that be good, you may chuckle? Well, this is America. And … Continue reading The Coming Electoral Contest in the Roman Empire, 395 A.D.
In the last ten or fifteen years, I can’t even tell you the number of times some jackass of cultish renown has stepped onto a broadcast soapbox to tell everyone the end of the world was right around the corner...
There were a bunch of things the New Age Girl still “needed” me to do before our relationship was put on the chopping block. I started regularly going to yoga with her, which I sucked at. I started hiking the butte with her after work (at which I’d spent all day on my feet, hiking an actual mountain range, doing actual work). I’d already gone to see the therapist, like she asked...
Coming into my first listening of Van Morrison’s vengeful, untitled studio bird-flip of 1968 (referred to, since its official release in 2017, as The Contractual Obligation Session), there was only one thing of which I was knowledgeable: Morrison wrote all thirty-one of these songs solely to get out of a contract with his record label at the time, Bang Records...
My Uncle Saulie is like 47. Recently divorced. One day he decides to (because a bunch of his female co-workers told him he had to) put up a dating profile on dateherding.com. I remember sitting with him the day he first went online to check it out. He was beside himself, to say the least.
The problem with politically aligning with either term, ‘right’ (conservative) or ‘left’ (liberal), is that, once aligned, no one has to actually come out and say what it is they really believe. All they do is check a box, push a button, and the organization takes care off the rest.
My grandfather used to be a high-level CIA operative. From 1953 up to 1982, when he retired, he had been in many of the meeting rooms at Langley when some of the biggest coups against Third World leaders had been hatched. In command tents and nondescript living rooms around the world—and in the Pentagon, itself—he … Continue reading How to Create a Dictatorship: A Guide to Overthrowing Your Democratically-Elected, Grade School Adversaries, Part 1
The world is full of almost 8,000,000,000 people. Breeders, mostly.
And it's going to progress. That is, the overall coherence of free societies is going to manifest further and further and, from this, the collective savvy of pockets and larger groups is going to increase, leading to more awareness about the systemic nature of things...
Welcome—saccadists, finger-flutterers, the deficient of attention and children and disciples of Burn Culture, alike—to the contemporary Age of Immodesty.
You can maybe get where I’m going to go with this. Depending on how good your King James English is. Mine’s terrible. I grew up in the inner city of Philadelphia, where they forced every kid in the 2nd and 3rd grade to take Latin. So, of course, back then I was like, “Bitchin’! Not only will I be able to decipher the Bible, but one day I’m gonna get a job as Secretary of the C.H.U.D. for the Philly branch of the Latin Kings...
When I was a kid, the highest future standard anyone my age could be held to by our parents, grandparents, teachers or the mumbling Filipino guy in my neighborhood who handed out cigarettes to ten year olds and only didn’t have to register as a sex offender because they didn’t do that back then was that of doctor, lawyer or President of the United States...
One inescapable aspect of modern life I think many people don’t want to think about—and, therefore, don’t—is how often they put their lives in the hands of others when they step into a car, train, plane or any vehicle of considerable mass and velocity, as a driver or passenger...
I’ll be operating here not on the principle of 100 Things in the Affirmative Prove A Point, but more on the principle of Just 1 Thing to the Contrary Proves It Wrong. It’s that old Nazi Scientists vs. Albert Einstein argument. 100 Anti-Semites walked into a bar and were asked how many Jews it took … Continue reading Aspects of Human Anatomy & Physiology That Prove That Intelligent Design Really Wasn’t
I want to address some points here brought up by my 22-year old niece, about dating. Before recently dumping her, her boyfriend made some interesting accusations about her behavior that she couldn’t quite understand. And I, as an older and wiser, objective adult, upon hearing them, couldn’t allay her confusion or fears with some platitudinous … Continue reading Dating and the Application of the Scientific Method to Dating: How to Scientifically Determine If Your Partner Is a Skeaze
What would happen to a vastly intertwined global economy, hypothetically speaking, if some imaginary figure sitting in the driver’s seat (a novel disease, in this case) suddenly, with the hall pass of a natural disaster or other act of God, began to gently and without wavering apply a braking force to it? ...
If you’ve read my story about Uncle Huggy’s Magical World, you’d be at least subliminally aware that I’d been dating a New Age Girl for a while. And that we’d been having some problems.
I once went to apply for a job as a custodian at a porno booth house on a Friday and was told they’d already had 1,000 applicants since the job opened, which was Wednesday.
Jizz mopper. Porno booth house. 1,000 applicants in 2 days. They got like 150,000 people in this town...
There seem to be four types of Star Wars movie-goers these days. 1.) Those who, by virtue of being too old or too young, have no emotional investment in the films. 2.) Those who saw the films as kids, desperately wanted the new trilogy to satisfy their thirty-year-dormant Star Wars jones, and found that it did...
1.) Community - People like you who think like you and act like you and look like you and believe what you believe, otherwise we don’t know how to interact with you so therefore you must be our enemy.
2.) Connection - What’s supposed to happen every single time you have sex with your partner. Without exception. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
I’ve recently reached that age where I catch myself starting to say shit like, “When I was a kid, nobody did things like that! Kids these days! Idiots, the lot of them! Get away from my Mercer Raceabout, you fecal-faced gong farmers!” ...
I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed Thursday night when the phone suddenly rings and, in between bong rips, I can hear my girlfriend answer it and begin to field questions in that very polite, earnestly slow-speak she uses exclusively for what I can only guess are old people who’ve accidentally misdialed my home...
I was walking down Blair Boulevard, amazed at how much the strip has changed in the last ten years—primarily from pretentious urban commodities like whiskey-fusion bars, coffee-fusion kiosks, designer beer, farm-to-table restaurants, Mexic-Ital-Yemeni fusion cuisine, Califor-Nigeri-Armenian fusion cuisine, electric tricycle showrooms, designer tacos, sushi restaurants that seat six and have no windows...
My friend Bethany and I met up for drinks on Friday. She needed to talk to someone because she’d just been ghosted by the latest guy she’d met on Bumble, and my brain was identified as one that could be non-invasively picked to try and help find an answer as to why things like this keep happening to her...
Saturday morning, early at the Birchwood, I’m startled out of sleep by the window-muted shouting outside my apartment of a female voice: “Ron! Where you at, Ron! I know you in there! If somebody don’t go and get Ron for me, I am gonna fuh-reeeak!” ...
First of all, I need to say that there is no such thing as ‘Psychophysics’. It’s technically not a real thing. There have been psychophysical experiments that have been conducted over the course of the last 100 years or so under the category, mainly, of neuroscientific research, or just ‘neuroscience’, which, itself, is actually a general term that encompasses a number of sciences, both natural and social...
I made it to Cambodia. I was pretty sure I was never even going to see the runway, it seemed so ridiculous when I first went online to look at tickets, but then another fight with my girlfriend, similar to the one that had me pressing the ‘purchase’ button in the first place, got me packing, just the night before my first plane was scheduled to take off...
My friend Vicki and I walked out to the mall on Friday, each got a little bit of food to eat, and then headed back home.
And we’re walking by the river, and I was like, “Oh, hey, this looks like The River House. Vicki, I wanna go in here. Come on. I’ve never been in here, I’ve lived in this town for 34 years, I wanna see what’s in here.” ...
**Note: This has to do exclusively with the visual art that is inherently found in and can be created around the viewing of an abandoned vehicle, not with the actual process of abandoning a vehicle. That's not the message being spread here...
I was over at my friend’s house the other day. He’s got a little 6 year old boy, no cuter than any kid you’ve seen 10,000 times before on Facebook, or circulating on the random smartphone at any given point in time. Just ask those dicks at the NSA...
I’d taken the bus downtown that morning, and had a couple errands to run before heading back to another episode of The-Jerry-Springer-Show-waiting-to-be-booked that was my life at home these days...
Honestly, it is baffling sometimes to see the abandon with which so many humans cross roads and jockey street gutters in and around Eugene, Oregon...
the BRIMBORION 
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