just words

dropping out of reality

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 03:24:04 GMT

Eighteen was a weird time for me. I was a great pretender, pretending like I didn’t give a shit about anything other than video games and sci-fi novels and drugs. I read Neuromancer like five times in a row that year, had an unhealthy obsession with Syd Barrett, and, for at least one day, I was the oldest sophomore in my entire high school class.

The first time I was held back was in sixth grade, when my stepfather moved my mom and me to this giant house on a private island resort right on the edge of the Atlantic. I never appreciated this privilege, and in fact actively resented it. I would try to hide the fact that I was loaded from other kids. But it was a beautiful place, with giant palms and water oaks towering high above the ocean. You could walk out onto one of the various balconies and hear waves crashing on the sand, a pleasant sort of white noise that played at all hours of the day. It was here that my stepfather enrolled me at a Catholic private school, which, in hindsight, served his own obsession with appearances more so than anything else. The administration claimed their curriculum was “more advanced” than my previous public school’s. They said I had no chance of succeeding in “their version” of seventh grade, so they strongly suggested that I repeat sixth grade, and my parents agreed. I’m sure my abysmal test scores from my previous school also didn’t help matters. This made me quite a bit more acne-ridden and awkward than my peers, many of whom gave me a wide berth because I was very tall and always scowling. Early on, however, I made friends with some self-proclaimed misfits, who were rebels in appearance only, dressing in the emo, pop-punk fashion of the time, that being skinny girl jeans and Hot Topic tees bought by their rich island parents. Taste in music was about the only thing I shared with this group of faux misfits, so we formed a band, but they kicked me out after realizing that I didn’t know how to play a single instrument. At some point I met a pudgy boy named Aaron who wore thick-rimmed glasses and pocket protectors. I remember during one miserable school camping trip, this kid Aaron and I serendipitously bunked together, at which time we struck up a conversation about SimCity 3000, and from there it was a weak kind of kinship. We were quite different personality-wise. He took his grades very seriously and was very much a brownnoser, while I did not take my grades very seriously and was very much not a brownnoser, although I didn’t really make any trouble, because I was subtle about my rebellion, a quiet storm. I preferred not to make waves. Waves were too much of a hassle for me. My rebellion manifested in not doing schoolwork and sleeping in class and staying up real late playing video games and listening to old ’80s music and abusing my prescription Adderall. I was big into PC gaming back then, Counter-Strike Source, Team Fortress 2, Final Fantasy XI, Warcraft, that sort of stuff, and my music of choice was almost exclusively old stuff that was recorded way before I was born. I was big into The Beatles for a while, then eventually got into The Smiths. “Half a Person” was basically my teenage anthem. “Sixteen, clumsy, and shy, the story of my life.” Back then, my sole goal in life was basically to drop out of reality, to do my own thing whenever possible. Everything was a big joke to me, a parody. This, of course, was a defense mechanism, to guard myself from the harsh, intimidating expectations of modern reality. I think this air of faux-cool detachment was what drew Aaron to me, he was drawn in like some sort of awe-struck magnet. He looked up to me in a sort of misguided way. I liked the same nerdy things he liked but was also somehow a sardonic fuckup who didn’t take anything seriously. “If only I could be like him, if only I could not care,” that sort of thing. I did care though, I just pretended otherwise. I remember one time, when we were taking an algebra test, I noticed him looking at his water bottle a lot, and then I noticed he had taped the test answers to the backside of the wrapper so that he could slyly read the answers through the water itself. I whispered to him, “You? Doing that? I can’t believe it.” And he just looked at me with this look of absolute shame and embarrassment on his face. In hindsight, maybe I was a bad influence on him. Maybe I rubbed off on him in the wrong ways. I spent most of my time at school either with my head on the desk or drawing comics. I used to draw these little comics with this crude bald stick figure dude who wore big black sunglasses. He would make social commentary and tell offensive jokes. One of the comics got me into some trouble, actually, because it had the n-word in it, and one of the teachers found it in the wastebasket, at which point they gave it to the principal, and the next thing I knew, I was being called up to the front office for a little chat. Like an idiot, I guess I had written my name somewhere on the paper, or maybe all the teachers were just aware of my comics, because some of my comics were passed around from kid to kid. Thinking back, I was actually pretty popular, but not in any sort of positive way, more in an infamous kind of way. Some kids looked up to me the same way Aaron looked up to me, but most just saw me as a cautionary tale. I remember one kid, Austin, was very into my comics and would always tell me stuff like, “You should work for Adult Swim, dude.” Needless to say, I never ended up working for Adult Swim. None of my comics exist anymore, but I can draw the stick figure guy from memory, which isn’t actually a big feat because he’s very simple to draw. Anyway, the headmaster sat me down and said something like, “I appreciate this kind of humor, I really do, but this just isn’t appropriate for school, and you should really know that.” And I did know that, of course, but who fucking cares? And then he said, “So, I can either expel you, or you can write an essay on a topic of your choosing, within reason, of course.” I was happy to take the expulsion, but my mom wasn’t, so she made me pick the essay. The topic we landed on was “The Recording of Revolver,” which was my favorite Beatles record at the time, and the principal’s favorite band was The Beatles, he had Beatles stuff all over his office. I remember I put a lot of effort into that essay, probably because the topic interested me so much. I even went to the library a couple times for research. I remember the principal, after reading it, said, “Did your dad write this?” And no, my dad did not write this. My dad lived five hours away.

The second time I was held back was more of a subtle process. I wasn’t at the same private school anymore, because I had told my old counselor, “Look, I hate school, and this place is really expensive, so I kind of feel bad for wasting my mom’s money,” and I guess I made a good argument because the counselor reluctantly agreed with me. Maybe he thought I was a hopeless case or something. “I don't get paid enough to fix kids like this,” is something he might have been thinking at the time. He talked to my mom, and after some convincing on my part, she put me back in public school, where I proceeded to do absolutely nothing with my life. Everything was a big joke to me, a parody. I spent most days walking off campus, wandering around seedy downtown, meeting all sorts of crazy, borderline dangerous people, one of whom was a homeless dude who pulled porn out of his pocket, showed it to me, and said something like, “Printed it from the library. Pretty nice, huh?” No, not nice. Gross. Get away from me. Anyway, because of my truancy and general lack of giving a shit, I failed almost all my classes and was required to “make them up” during the school year, so while on paper I was a junior and eventually a senior, I was still taking all freshman and sophomore classes during those years. It was around this time that I met my best friend. We met through a girl, her name was Alison. I knew Alison had a boyfriend named Robert, but I would talk to her on the phone every night anyway, flirting and whatnot, without any real intention of winning her over. I was just an incorrigible flirty, and still am. At school one day, Alison introduced me to Robert, and from that moment, I was Robert’s boyfriend and Alison was basically out of the picture. Robert and I were not sexually involved or anything like that, it was all platonic, but we shared a sort of soul and were basically inseparable. We’d spend every waking hour of the day with each other, which Alison hated to the point that she eventually spread rumors that Robert and I were gay together and “that’s why we broke up,” which was not true at all but was funny as hell, so Robert and I would lean into the lie a little bit when people brought it up. We both loved music, Final Fantasy, and smoking cigarettes. Marlboros, Lights. He would stay over at my house every weekend, and we would take Adderall and play video games and smoke cigarettes on my private bedroom balcony, just talking about random stuff until the sun came up, all of which felt super deep and meaningful at the time. One weekend we just lay in my giant bed together watching Dragon Ball Z DVDs all day and night. We made it through the Saiyan Saga and about halfway through the Namek Saga. His dog would join in on these hangout sessions. His name was Hannibal. And despite the name, he was the sweetest black lab you’d ever meet. I remember I used to wear this oversized multicolor bohemian sweater, and one time I put this sweater on Hannibal and he wore it for like a full hour. It was the goofiest shit we’d ever seen. We took a picture of him wearing the sweater with my digital camera. This picture has somehow survived all the MySpace and Photobucket wipes that came years and years later. It’s the only surviving picture of my bedroom from that era, so it’s like a window into another world, another time and place that I can now only remember through myth and legend.

It was on the day of my eighteenth birthday that I sauntered into the counselor’s office and told him I was dropping out of both high school and reality. I told him, “Look, I’m done with school and there’s no legal way you can make me stay,” and, well, that was it. In that moment, I’m sure this counselor was thinking the same thing my old private school counselor had been thinking all those years before. I hated school, and I wasn’t going to come around. It was all a big joke to me, a parody. There was nothing my mom could do either, she was never very assertive or parental to begin with, so she begrudgingly supported my dropout as long as I promised to get my GED, which I did, and I passed that thing with basically perfect scores, which wasn’t hard to do considering one of the questions was literally, “Who is the current president of the United States of America?”

And it was Obama, because it was 2009.

It was around this time that I became obsessed with Syd Barrett. I thought he was shadowy and mysterious and handsome, and he had this reputation in the late ’60s as some sort of mad wizard recluse genius, which was an aesthetic that very much appealed to me at the time. I also wanted to be seen as a sort of mad wizard recluse genius. I was very much about appearances. I didn’t actually like Syd’s music very much, so the whole thing was kind of superficial, but I did like that one song, “Dark Globe,” which, back then, sounded like the crazy wisdom of a man who had dropped out of reality through some secret door accessible only through the imbibing of some seriously psychedelic shit. I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to drop out of reality.

Oh, where are you now

Pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?

When I was alone

You promised the stone from your heart

My head kissed the ground

I was half the way down

Little did I know back then that Syd Barrett was basically just fucking batshit insane, due to serious mental problems mixed with one too many tabs of acid, but even if I had known that, it probably wouldn’t have changed my trajectory in the slightest. When I got an idea in my head, it was impossible to deter me, and I had gotten it in my head that I wanted to experiment with a lot of drugs and officially drop out of reality, just like Syd Barrett had done. Nothing was going to stop me. I wanted people to observe me from afar and think, “that dude has done some wild shit and knows some wild things and I’m afraid to even talk to him because he's on a totally different plane than I am.” That was how my brain worked back then, and that’s still kind of how it works even today, unfortunately.

Anyway. Robert and I knew this other guy who was also named Robert, whom I’ll call Bob from now on for the sake of differentiation, and Bob was a big hippie type with his own apartment, paid for by his rich mom. He was a little older than us, if I remember correctly, and his hair was already thinning. He was very short and had a beer belly, and he had the puffy, red face of a drunken Irishman, and he often wore a cap, probably to hide his bald spots. At first glance, Bob seemed like a typical Southern boy, but when you started talking to him, you quickly realized he was batshit. He spoke almost exclusively in nonsense and riddles and old ’60s music, with long, drawn-out syllables, like his brain was totally fried or something. Sometimes Robert and I would go over to Bob’s apartment and smoke weed while he and his strange hippie buddies would experiment with harder drugs, like cocaine and mushrooms, none of which I was interested in until I got it in my head that I wanted to drop out of reality for real.

And when that happened, I immediately thought of Bob, who was the obvious choice for getting my hands on some harder stuff. My preferred choice was LSD, but LSD was impossible to find on the island, so I settled for mushrooms. I called Bob up, and I remember him saying something like, “Yeah, dude, I can get caps whenever, mail ‘em right to my house, come over next Friday, you and Robert can get shroomin’, I’ll be your guys’ chaperone. It’ll be fucking dope.”

So, next Friday night, Robert, Hannibal, and I went over to Bob’s house to drop out of reality. He lived on the second floor of an apartment complex behind the only McDonald’s on the island. His apartment was a pretty standard one-bedroom affair, but with a spacious living room and a big kitchen area, and a screened-in porch off the living room. You had to walk up two flights of stairs and through a brick hallway lined with generic doors to get to his peephole. His living room was basically barren. I don’t remember there being anything on the walls, no paintings, decorations, nothing like that. He lived very much like a frat boy who had just been kicked out of his parents’ house or something, just the bare necessities to keep him alive and entertained. Near the front door, there was a black CRT television pushed up against the wall, with a dark blue couch that could sit three or four people on the opposite wall. His bedroom door was always closed, but I snuck a peek once. There was a mattress on the floor, a shade-less lamp next to it, and an electric guitar and amp. I don’t think he actually played guitar, or if he did, I had never seen him play it.

While Bob fiddled with stuff in the kitchen, Robert and I sat on the couch while Hannibal sat by the porch door. Bob eventually stumbled into the living room with a mason jar full of brown, shriveled things. He said, “We can either bake them into a brownie or you can just eat them.” So, of course, Robert and I took the easy path and just ate them, having one each. They tasted like ass and made me gag, but I got them down with huge gulps of water. Bob didn’t have any, though he did smoke copious amounts of weed before and after our ingestion of the magic mushrooms. Thinking back now, Bob was probably not the best chaperone for our first trip into the land of magic mushrooms.

The effects were not immediate. I remember sitting around on the floor near the couch for about an hour, talking about video games and music with Robert, who was uncharacteristically quiet for most of the conversation. In between topics, I would say things like, “When’s it going to kick in? I don’t feel anything. Did I really eat shrooms? Nothing’s happening. When’s something going to happen?” At some point, Robert leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes, still awake but evidently somewhere else. Bob went up to him and said, “Robert, how’s it going? Feeling alright?” I don’t remember what Robert said, but he certainly didn’t say the words of a sober person, which prompted Bob to get up real close to Robert’s face and shout, “DON’T WORRY. YOU ARE TRIPPING. EVERYTHING IS FINE. YOU ARE JUST TRIPPING. YOU’RE SAFE,” which prompted Robert to roll over on his side and hide his face in the cushions while mumbling something pretty much incoherent.

I was sitting on the floor the whole time, watching this unfold, still thinking to myself that nothing was happening, that the shrooms weren't working, when Bob turned to me and said, “What about you? You OK?” And I told him, “Yeah, I’m fine. Nothing’s happening.” And he said, “Then why haven’t you moved in like an hour? You’re like a plank of wood.” And I said, “Am I? Am I a plank of wood? Is that all I am?” And then he started going, “YOU ARE TRIPPING RIGHT NOW. DON’T WORRY. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE. YOU ARE SAFE. YOU’RE JUST TRIPPING.” I was just sitting there, blinking at him, thinking to myself, what the hell is he talking about? Nothing’s happening. Of course I’m fine. But evidently Bob didn’t think so, so he kept shouting, “YOU ARE TRIPPING. JUST GO WITH THE FLOW. EVERYTHING IS FINE. YOU ARE STILL YOU, JUST DIFFERENT.” Which started to freak me out because I was convinced that I was not, in fact, tripping, and that I was actually totally fine, and, like, please stop yelling at me please. But then Bob’s eyes started bulging out and his lips grew into big flaps and he looked like a straight-up monster. I couldn’t stand to look at him anymore, so I crab-walked over to the porch door and opened it with my foot, then sat down on the hard cement out there. Hannibal followed and curled up next to me. I remember the porch light was very dim and everything was real dark out there. I looked down at the cement and saw what I can only describe as twinkles, like little stars going out. I was fascinated by these stars, which, in hindsight, were likely just visual artifacts we all have all the time, but I didn’t realize that in the moment, so I started thinking about that one sci-fi novel I had read months earlier, the one in which these monks are trying to build a supercomputer to record all the names of God. Apparently there were nine billion names, and if they were all recorded, then the universe would end, so the monks enlisted the help of some super smart tech guys to build this supercomputer, to start naming names. The tech guys didn’t believe what the monks were saying, of course, but they helped program the computer anyway because it was a paying job. Once the computer was built and turned on, it started naming names, and the tech guys left the monks’ temple and then went back to their cars in the parking lot or whatever. When they got outside, it was night, and when they looked up, the stars were going out, one by one. The whole world became like a dark globe. Reality dropped out. And it was around this time that reality dropped out for me too, because I must have been looking at those stars going out for over an hour, until Bob came out with some water, which he basically forced me to drink, then he started with the whole YOU ARE TRIPPING routine again.

Trying to get away from him, I crab-walked back inside, where I found Robert in the same spot on the couch. He hadn’t moved at all. Hannibal jumped up and curled up next to him, at which point Robert shot up and started patting down the crotch of his pants, repeating, “I think I peed. I have urinated myself. I have soiled my pants. Please, please check, please, is it wet? Do you feel wetness? I think I peed myself. I have urinated. I am wet.” So I did what he said. I crab-walked over to the couch and started patting down his crotch. But his crotch was totally dry, so I told him, “Your pants are totally dry.” But he didn’t believe me. “Are you sure? They’re wet. I can feel it. I can feel it dripping down my leg. My pants are soaked. I am moist. I have peed. I am soiled. I have urinated myself.” I kept trying to convince him otherwise, but Robert just kept going on and on. Bob was there too, going, YOU ARE TRIPPING RIGHT NOW ROBERT, THERE IS NO PEE, but Robert still didn’t believe it. He got up off the couch, nearly fell over, then swayed into the bathroom, where he remained for some time.

The next thing I remember was Bob coming out of his bedroom enveloped in thick dope clouds. He had a huge grin on his face and was holding a large machete high above his head, which for some reason felt totally normal. He said, “I’m going into the backyard to cut down some trees,” which also seemed totally normal, so I said, “OK, I’m going to watch some TV,” and that’s what I did. I crab-walked to the television set, pushed the power button with my big toe, then crab-walked back to the couch and propped my back up against it, still sitting on the floor.

Then I thought, wait, there’s no backyard, this is a fucking apartment complex, and that’s when I realized that even in this state of epic highness, somehow I was still the most sober person in the room, which started to freak me out a little bit. But reruns of Saturday Night Live were playing on the TV and that quickly eased my mind, got me laughing, because it was some of the most hilarious shit I had ever seen or heard in my life. They were doing some fake news broadcast, and the fake news anchors were on my same wavelength, turning everything into a big joke, a parody of real life.

Good evening. We begin tonight with breaking developments out of Iran, where tensions remain high following the disputed presidential election.

This one had me chuckling.

Turning to North Korea, where the government continues to draw international concern following recent missile launches and nuclear activity.

This one had me basically holding my sides, crippling myself with laughter.

On the domestic front, the administration is pushing implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a major stimulus package passed earlier this year.

This one had me totally rapt, no longer laughing but now leaning close into the TV, like I was studying the comedic genius of the parodies at work, trying to figure out what they truly meant.

Apple has just released the iPhone 3GS, the latest version of its revolutionary smartphone, which is already drawing significant attention just as it hits the market.

At this point I was completely quiet, just staring into the television. Robert was still in the bathroom, and I had no sense of how much time had passed.

While I was watching the broadcast, Bob walked back into the apartment with a plastic bag full of snacks. Instead of cutting down trees, I guess he had gone to the gas station or something. He tossed a bag of Lay’s into my lap, and it landed without me reacting at all. Then he said, “What are you watching?”

“Saturday Night Live,” I said matter-of-factly, still staring into the glow.

He was quiet for a moment as he opened a bag of chips, then he slid a few into his mouth, started munching, and said, with a full mouth, “Dude, that’s just Fox News.”

And when he said that, I don’t know why, but I started to cry, watching what was apparently just Fox News.

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dear daria

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 20:16:48 GMT

Dear Daria,

I've been watching your show since I was at least nine years old. Back then, you used to come on around 10 or 11 o’clock, and I could only watch you in my sister’s bedroom. She had one of two TVs in the whole house that got cable, and she would stay up extra late on school nights drinking SoBe fruit beverages, the ones in the tall glass bottles, while talking with her friends on her laptop using AOL while MTV played in the background. My bedtime was a lot earlier than hers, but after my dad would put me to bed, if I wasn’t sneaking Game Boy time underneath the covers with my worm light, I would tiptoe out of my room, creep through the dark hallway, and slip into my sister’s room to watch you. My sister would always tell me to GET THE HELL OUT but, after a few minutes, she’d always calm down and accept the fact that I wasn’t going to leave. “Whatever, as long as you don’t talk to me. And don’t touch my SoBe.” So I wouldn’t talk to her, and I wouldn't touch her SoBe. I’d just lay on the foot of her bed, stomach down with my elbows on the mattress and my head in my hands, and stare into the glow of the big CRT, watching you. And I could usually get away with this for about an hour before I’d hear my dad coming down the hall to tell my sister to TURN THE DAMN LIGHTS OFF AND GET SOME SLEEP, at which point I’d sneak into the closet, wait for him to leave, then creep back to my room as if nothing had ever happened. I tell you all this to illustrate that I have some fond memories of watching your show back in the late 90s and early 2000s, but also, back then, I didn’t really understand any of it. I just liked the art style and the music and how you and your friends seemed to make fun of everything. Compared to the stuff I was watching, like Johnny Bravo and CatDog and Pokemon, your show was like stepping into a whole other world, one I didn’t understand but desperately wanted to be a part of for some reason.

By the time my acne came around, which was real bad let me tell you, I was watching your show pretty much religiously as it came on Noggin’s “The N” block around 9 or 10 PM. Back then, I had a crush on you, to tell you the truth. I thought we were soulmates. I thought we understood each other. I felt like an outsider, and you were an outsider too. Your parents, your schoolmates, and even your friends didn’t really understand you, and they didn’t understand me either. But you understood me. And I understood you. At least, I thought I did. I thought your detached cynicism for everyone and everything was intoxicating, because that’s how I saw the world too. You seemed to take nothing seriously. In my view, you were above it all. And you were so intelligent too. You had a sardonic quip for literally every situation, like that one time when you were at a job faire and someone asked you about your life goals and you said, “My goal is not to wake up at 40 with the bitter realization that I've wasted my life on a job I hate because I was forced to decide on a career in my teens.” I laughed my ass off when you said that. It was so true. I loved that. I remember thinking, damn, I wish I could come up with stuff like that. I wanted to be just like you. You were my dark star. You had the mind and soul of a subversive writer born in the wrong era, and I loved that about you. I wanted to be just like you. And I wanted to be with you as well. I remember getting seriously jealous when you would get all shy and blushy around Trent. What did he have that I didn't have? I started dressing like Trent, acting like him, thinking this would appeal to the simulacrum of you I had created in my mind. And when Tom came around, well, I could barely even watch as you hooked up with Tom. Fuck that guy. He was a pretentious asshole. You deserved better than that. He didn't understand you like I did. You were an outsider, and I was too. We were both born in the wrong time and place, we naturally gravitated toward things, like art and music, that were created way before we were even born, and we thought everything from our generation onwards was insipid, stupid bullshit. We both felt like the suburbs were some sort of karmic hell we were reborn into because we had been bad in our previous lives or something. We both saw the middle-class suburbanite losers around us as zombies, puppets, just walking around performing their stupid little roles, roles they didn’t have the intelligence to question or the willpower to resist. We both knew that everything was shit. Life sucks then you die, that's what you'd say. That's what I'd say too. We were above it all. We looked down on everyone and everything and we liked it that way. We would never give in. We would never conform. Tom didn't know this about you, he just pretended to. He wasn't your soulmate. I was. I understood you. I loved you.

But now, looking back almost two decades later, I realize that I didn’t really understand you at all. And that’s because I didn’t understand myself.

Maybe you can relate to what I’m about to tell you, Daria. Maybe you’ve got it all figured out already. You’ve got more years under your belt now, after all. But I’m going to tell you this stuff anyway, because maybe it will help you, who knows. I'm going to tell you that I have spent my entire life trying to figure out how to deal with the frustration of simply being here, on this earth, in this skin, with this mind. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for it. Why me? Why this body? Why this planet? Why this city, state, country? Why do I think the way I do? Why do I even do the things I do? What is my purpose? And I spent so much time dealing with this frustration simply by rebelling. Back when I had six different face creams for my terrible acne, I refused to participate in school, never did my homework, got held back several grades, and eventually flunked out of high school. Teachers thought I was stupid, they put me in special classes. Of course, they didn’t know that this was just my way of saying FUCK THE SYSTEM, but that didn’t matter to them, the end result was the same. I looked down on everyone and everything. I was cynical, sarcastic, sardonic, ironic, all that stuff, and I thought it was cool.

But really, I was just fucking miserable. And, on a certain level, I was making myself even more miserable, by solely relying on negativity to cope with being miserable. I was a feedback loop of misery.

I saw life as a big meaningless joke and pretended that I didn’t care, just like you did. But the truth is, I cared a whole helluva lot. I cared, arguably, more than anyone else around me. My detached irony belied a terrible secret, which was that I was a self-conscious, egotistical brat who cared way too much about what others thought about me. And since I felt like I had nothing to offer, I would pretend like the world was below me, because this made me feel better. I would criticize everyone with short little sardonic quips, social-media-friendly one-liners, while offering nothing constructive in return. I reveled in this destruction. I told myself that deconstructing things with negativity was meaningful in some way, but I was just a confused, angry little demon. A melancholic phantom nightmare boy. I pretended I was above the stereotypes but all I was doing was reinforcing the very stereotypes I pretended to be above. I didn’t see people as people, I saw them as characters in a TV show, characters who only existed to be subjects of my scorn and ridicule. I would reduce people to tropes and caricatures and I would revel in it. I would see an athletic kid playing soccer as nothing more than a dumbass jock with nothing going on up there in his head, and I would make fun of him and I would laugh at him and then I would go home and sit on my bed stewing in psychic garbage for hours while watching your show, and there you were, just like me, and this made me feel better, made me feel understood, so I leaned into you and wanted to be just like you, because you were my ideal, you seemed to have it all figured out, you seemed to truly be above it all, and I wanted to be just like that.

But I didn’t truly understand you. I didn’t understand that you were going through it too. I didn’t understand that you were just coping with the frustration of simply being here, on this earth, in this skin, with this mind. I didn’t understand that you were just as miserable as I was.

But I think I’m getting better. I’ve adopted a sort of mind-over-matter attitude. I’m trying to be less ironic, less detached, less negative all the time. I’m trying to be more sincere. And I find that, by reminding myself that everyone is just going through it, trying to cope, trying to figure out how to deal with the frustration of simply being here, that we’re all alike in some way, that we all have something in common, this fosters a sort of feeling of togetherness within me, a certain positivity that gives me hope. We are all in this together. No one is better or worse. No one is a trope. No one is a character in a TV show, Daria. I’m trying to see people less as stereotypes and more as real, living, breathing people with interesting hobbies and unique outlooks and deep personal lives, and this outlook is helping me, it really is, it’s helping me be less miserable.

And that’s why I’m writing this to you today, Daria, because I want you to be less miserable too.

Love always,

Forrest

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the other side of the shoji screen

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 19:18:02 GMT

“I am not who I appear to be,” was what I told a co-worker on a Zoom call a few days ago. “I am so much more than this.”

Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, my daytime routine is basically the same. My alarm goes off at 8 AM, I snooze it, it goes off again, I snooze it again, and so on, eventually waking up around 9:30 AM or so, at which point I brush my teeth, take some vitamins, say good morning to my family, hugs and kisses and whatnot, then I leave the house through the sliding glass door, walk down a cement path in my backyard, and enter my own little world, my office, which is a 10x12 tiny home. The inside of my office is segmented off with a shoji, one of those Japanese paper screens with panels, mine is tan-colored and made of paper emblazoned with the budding branches of a cherry blossom tree, framed in fake black wood, purchased from eBay years ago. This shoji functions as a divider, cutting my world into halves, the vocational-nightmare half and the truly-myself half.

In the vocational-nightmare half, there’s a company-issued ThinkPad hooked up to two big monitors, with a wireless keyboard and mouse on the desk. The desk is actually a cheap black plastic folding table I bought from Walmart years ago, upon which sit all sorts of little knickknacks, like a cat bobblehead, a model shishi-odoshi fountain with the bamboo and the rocks, some Nintendo-themed coasters, a glass TARDIS mug I got for Christmas one year that serves as a holder for my pens, and a paper unicorn my son made at the library one day. If you’re sitting facing the desk, there’s a black headset hanging within arm’s reach from the left wall, and the chair is an ergonomic black office chair I got on clearance a couple years back. Above all that, hanging on the wall, is a corkboard from the late 2000s with all sorts of stuff tacked to it, some of that stuff tracing back to my teenage years, like Pokemon cards and cutouts from The Cure’s Galore booklet and some printed anime stuff, all buried underneath pictures of my kids and various work things that just keep building up. Perhaps the corkboard is some sort of symbol, a symbol for the passing of time, or for how adulthood can quickly yet subtly smother adolescence, or perhaps it’s some sort of symbol of hope, for how, despite all this adult shit piling up, my adolescence is still there, shining through the cracks.

They say everything’s a metaphor or, like, a simile of some kind, or something.

From about 9:30 AM to 5 PM, I do work stuff behind this shoji screen. In this corner of the room, I am somebody else. I literally go by a different name, my legal first name (“Forrest” is my middle name), and I work for a software company that I do not give even two shits about. We sell software for call centers. I’m not in sales, per se, but I am dangerously close to sales. I spend most of my day on Zoom calls, talking to employees whom I manage, and sometimes to our clients, vice presidents and C-suite executives, trying to keep them happy. The company says our team exists to make sure clients are adopting our software and getting the full value out of it, but we mostly just handle fire drills all day, every day, because the software, frankly, sucks ass. It’s not a scam or anything like that, it does what it’s supposed to do, but there are so many little nuances and bespoke quirks from client to client that, ultimately, something always goes wrong, and there are so many bureaucratic layers to selling and buying enterprise software that, often, the buyers don’t even know what the hell they’re truly buying, which leads to all sorts of billing disputes, all of which my team manages. And, like every corporate tech company these days, we have added AI stuff into the software being sold. On a basic level, this AI stuff is designed to automate workflows that were once handled by humans, which means that, if it’s working properly, a client can offload large amounts of work to a single non-human worker that they pay around $100,000 a year for, which means that, when you get right down to it, I work for a company that packages and sells joblessness. We are destroyers of livelihood.

They say society will adapt, that it’s no different than the industrial revolution, that’s what they say.

On the other side of the shoji screen is where all the stuff I actually care about is located. There’s a low-to-the-floor bookcase with about fifty books slotted into it, and a glass desk upon which stand two flat-panel monitors for my PC, and a CRT from the early 2000s that I use to play old games on, one of those prison TVs made from clear plastic so inmates couldn’t hide drugs in it or whatever, it even has a cell number and block number scratched into the side, so you know it’s the genuine article. Opposite the glass desk is another desk, a wooden one, where my Xbox 360 and Switch 2 consoles sit near a large 1080p flat-screen propped up on a tall stand. The TV is surrounded by DVD cases and games for both the 360 and Switch. Behind all that is a large blue blanket tacked to the wall, depicting an astrological wheel with all sorts of esoteric symbols woven into it. There are little plastic figurines all around, characters from video games, mostly. The lights are always kept to a dim orange glow, because I like it that way. There’s a second office chair in this area, one that I can swivel back and forth from the glass desk to the wooden desk without having to scoot around much. I got this chair from the side of the road, someone was throwing it away, so the arms are all beat up with foam coming out, but it’s a La-Z-Boy or whatever they’re called, so it’s quite comfortable, despite looking ratty as hell. By the wooden desk, there’s another corkboard on the wall, tacked with Polaroids that capture fond memories. Nearby, there’s a tall, narrow cabinet with about thirty Nintendo DS games slotted into it. Opposite that, there’s another cabinet full of strategy guides from ancient times and PS1 games I’ve had since I was a kid. There’s even an old-timey boombox atop the bookcase, it sits on a vintage cassette case filled to the max with tapes ranging from Sting to OutKast to Unwound. The boombox also picks up AM/FM bands, so sometimes I’ll listen to NPR or classical music while writing or browsing the internet or playing video games. As of writing this, I’ve been on a Zelda kick, so I’ve been playing the Master Quest version of Ocarina of Time on my CRT, trying to beat the game with only three hearts. While I’m playing, I take notes on my MacBook, notes I’ll use for a future essay. This half of the room is where I do all my thinking and playing, where I feel totally and utterly myself, sometimes entering a kind of flow state where nothing else seems to matter. And sometimes, when the mood strikes me, I even dance and sing in here. This place is my sanctuary. After my son goes to bed around 9 PM, I spend most every night here, writing or reading or listening to music or playing video games, which is the same shit I’ve been doing every night since I was like ten years old.

They say people never change, that their essence is locked-in forever. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what they say.

What has changed, however, is that back then, when I was ten or fourteen or seventeen or whatever, my world was not separated by a shoji screen, but now it is. Back then, my room was a sanctuary without taint. The same cannot be said for my current sanctuary. I have started to view this shoji screen as a symbol, a symbol representing not only the physical divide between the two worlds I inhabit, but also the spiritual divide between me and some other version of me that, frankly, I don’t like very much. The cherry blossoms face outward, to the world I love, and the tan backside faces the vocational nightmare. I like to think that, in front of the cherry blossoms, I am my true self, the writer, the real me, the person who has values and standards, the person who bemoans capitalistic greed and incorporates Zen practices into his daily life and writes like his life depends on it. But behind the screen, “I am not who I appear to be.” I am an imposter. A shadow. I throw away my morals, my values, and I become someone else, someone who, through a series of accidents, has landed in the corporate tech world, just doing what needs to be done to survive, to put bread on the table, so to speak. Behind the shoji screen, I am participating in the grind, not because I want to, but because I feel like I have to. This other version of me has all sorts of justifications, like, “I may be supporting software that gets people fired, but it’s OK, people always bounce back.” I have built all sorts of mental bulwarks to defend myself from the existential dissonance of being, perhaps, two different people. I tell myself, behind the screen, I am not who I appear to be. I tell myself that fate has had a hand in this, that due to how things have played out, my dumb youthful choices, the apathetic outlook I had on life for such a long time, that here I am now, in the tech world, because I have to be, to pay the bills, to support my family.

But these bulwarks, these justifications, are starting to crumble. I know, deep down, that I have some kind of choice here. I could quit my job, for example, perhaps find another that isn’t so morally questionable. This is certainly something I could do. But then I tell myself, well, that would make my life, and perhaps my family’s lives, harder. We would have to tough it out for a little bit. We would have to cut back, buy off-brand shit, stop throwing money at new electronics and fancy toys. And there’s certainly the possibility that I wouldn’t find another job, or maybe I’d find another job but the pay would be shit, so I wouldn’t be able to pay my mortgage, so maybe we’d have to move to some shitty apartment or something. None of this seems very appealing. But I ask myself, are these valid reasons, or are they just poor justifications, excuses? The fact of the matter is, right now, I’m straddling two worlds, living two different lives.

So who am I, really? Am I not spending over 8 hours a day doing this whole capitalistic routine? Is this not more time than I spend actually doing the stuff I enjoy? I want to believe in the cherry blossoms. I want to believe that’s the real version of me, the one that counts. But they say actions speak louder than words, and so many of my actions are work-oriented, so who am I, really? Am I the capitalist crony behind the shoji screen, or am I the idealistic writer on the other side?

I don’t know how to reconcile this.

How do you reconcile it?

The other day, on a Zoom call, I told a co-worker, “I am not who I appear to be. I am so much more than this.” And he just nodded his head and said, “Yeah, I get it,” then he adjusted himself in the camera so that his T-shirt was showing in full. It was a concert T-shirt, depicting Sting on stage with some date over his head. My co-worker gripped the fabric and pulled it to straighten the image out and said, “I don’t really care about all this work stuff. I mean, I do the job, and I try to do it well, but I’m basically only doing this to fund my lifestyle. My wife and I are big fans of Sting. We’ve been to over thirty of his concerts. I mean, I bet half of my paycheck goes to Sting stuff.” So we ended up talking about Sting for about thirty minutes. I showed him the Sting cassette I have, Ten Summoner’s Tales, and talked about how, as a kid, my mom loved Sting, and how her love of Sting rubbed off on me, and so now I listen to Sting all the time, because his music is nostalgic for me, transports me to another time and place. I told him my favorite Sting song is “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You,” and how the synthy swells and harmonica flourishes at the beginning of the song feel like stepping into another time and place. We talked about what we thought was his best era, which albums we enjoyed most, and how Sting is supposedly a huge asshole, but how that’s OK because his music is just so damn good. At the end of the call, the guy said, “Hey, this was a cool conversation. I feel like we’re closer now, like, I trust you a whole lot more. You seem like a real person.” And that’s when I realized that I am not unique. This guy is also behind a shoji screen. He has his own loves, his own interests, his own life outside of work. He does not want to be here, in front of this camera, fiddling with PowerPoints and playing with Excel sheets, but here he is, doing it, because of the series of accidents that made up his life to this point.

Later that day, I went to the gas station to grab a pack of cigarettes (don’t even start), and the woman behind the counter was trying to get me to sign up for their rewards program, and she was being low-key kind of aggressive about it, which was starting to get on my nerves. I asked myself, who the hell would want to spend their time forcing people into signing up for a rewards program? But then I thought back to the Sting guy, about how he’s just funding his Sting habit. And then I thought about myself, and my shoji screen. That’s when I realized that, wait, actually, no one would want to spend their time forcing people to sign up for a rewards program. This woman is only doing it because of the series of accidents that led to this point in her life. The world has conspired against her, in a way, forced her into a job she wants nothing to do with, yet she does it anyway, simply because she has to, to stay alive. In that gas station, I suddenly remembered this one study I had read months ago, which claimed that over 70% of people in America experience some form of “imposter syndrome,” and this suddenly made sense to me: everyone feels like an imposter because they are, in fact, imposters. The world has forced them into impostor syndrome. The system makes imposters out of us all. This woman has found herself working at a gas station with some sort of “rewards program” quota she has to hit, and she has to hit this quota to keep her job, to pay the rent, to support her family, or whatever. She doesn’t want to do it, but she does it anyway, because she has to. She’s an imposter, and that’s OK, because I’m an imposter, too. We’re all imposters. In that gas station, a sort of universal empathy bubbled up within me, and so, when she was going through her whole spiel, instead of narrowing my eyes and getting all short with her like I would normally do, I said, “Hey, you know what, sign me up.” I gave her my name, my phone number, my email address, then she handed me the cheap plastic card and said, “Thank you so much. Have a nice day, sir.” And she had a huge smile on her face.

As I left that gas station, I remember thinking to myself: I wonder what she’s like, on the other side of the shoji screen?

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i am once again an elephant

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:01:31 GMT

I feel like I’m fucking up right now, so I feel the need to explain myself, maybe not so much to you, but perhaps to myself.

You see, recently I did something I consider to be a very bad thing. I did something I stopped doing over a year ago, something I told myself I would never do again, something I believed to be performative and soul-sucking and possibly the death of humanity as we know it. And that something is, well, I made a new account on the social media platform Mastodon. I rejoined the herd, so to speak.

I am, once again, an elephant.

This may not seem like a very big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me. When I tell myself I’m going to do something, or not do something in this case, I like to keep my word. This is especially true when it comes to my vices, of which I have many, and social media, like any bad habit, is most definitely one of those vices. My vices continuously make a hypocrite out of me, causing me no end of psychic dissonance, because when it comes to vice, well, I have a self-control problem. I have a problem keeping my word.

And to prove that I haven’t kept my word, the following are verbatim quotes from yrstruly, pulled from a number of essays and reader email responses.

“Social media does something to our fragile, validation-craving psyches. We cannot get enough of social media, and once we get a taste of the validation it provides, we bend and morph ourselves into whatever form is necessary to continue receiving that validation.”

“... these places are indeed echo chambers brought about by the human need for validation.”

“In short, on social media, we become fake versions of ourselves, all while comparing ourselves to fake versions of other people… It’s a feedback loop of fakeness.”

“Humans need community, real community, and social media is a false community. Our mental health declines because… we continue to believe that social media can replace actual fleshy people, when it obviously can't.”

“We have turned to the miasma (social media) for the very community that the miasma has destroyed, as if the poison is the cure.”

“... if we remove social media, we will become less polarized, because, at present, it’s far too easy to call for violence when we view those we’re targeting as fake, dehumanized avatar people instead of fleshy, real-life people that actually bleed.”

“People were not meant to communicate this way (i.e., social media).”

I could keep going, but I don't want to bore you with all the little details, and the more details I provide, the more figurative egg ends up on my face. The bottom line is, I was very much against social media for a long time. And I still kind of am. Yet here I am, an elephant, back in the herd, in the echo chamber, doing the whole performative song and dance, posting photos of my hip, retro CRT, passages I’ve underlined in paperbacks, and quirky one-liners in all lowercase because, one, I think it looks cool, like I don’t take anything seriously and that’s cool somehow, and two, I’ve convinced myself that social media doesn’t deserve proper grammar. Yet here I am, liking the posts, boosting the posts, compulsively checking the posts, getting those little shots of dopamine with every tap and click.

To quote Trent Reznor of the 7x-platinum industrial goth-rock band Nine Inch Nails, “I was up above it, now I'm down in it.”

So, if I dislike social media so much, why did I return? That’s a great question. First, let's examine those quotes up there, the ones I made a few years ago. Was I full of shit, or was I on to something, or maybe both?

I think this is true to some extent. I don’t think I was entirely off the mark. I think social media is a great source of validation, especially when you get none from the people around you. Perhaps the less validation one receives from those around them, the more one will end up retreating into online spaces. I don’t know. But if you’re anything like me, you probably feel like you don’t belong in the physical space you inhabit, you probably feel like a fucking weirdo. Perhaps, because your values and interests don’t align with those around you, you feel disconnected, alone, different in a bad way, so you’re withdrawn and maybe a little jaded and angry. Maybe you blend in with the crowd, maybe you don’t, but either way you feel like a stranger in a strange land, and you desire to escape, to a world filled with people who understand you.

Social media provides us a way to escape to this world, a way to join a herd of like-minded elephants. On the one hand, this is great, it makes us feel good and perhaps, by fostering a sense that we’re not alone, it can stave off despair, even save a life or two. On the other hand, we become performative, exaggerated versions of ourselves, sometimes flat-out fake versions of ourselves. Because when we receive validation, we lean into the behavior that provides us with that validation, and sometimes that behavior might not be so good, physically or mentally, or both. In the essay that the above quote comes from, I talk about right-wing echo chambers a good bit. I talk about how a withdrawn young man might receive validation from the wrong sort of people, maybe racists or sexists or whatever, and so then that young man might adopt the group’s hateful, extremist views, or at least pretend to, to continue receiving validation from said group. I think this is a common thing that happens. In fact, I’ve watched it happen to people in real time, several times. Like the quote says, I think we often bend and morph ourselves to fit in with the crowd. Maybe this isn’t always a bad thing. But the problem is, some crowds are not worth fitting into, but that’s hard to identify when that not-worth-fitting-into crowd makes you feel good. Another problem, however, and this is where I think I might have been a bit off the mark originally, is that this problem is not unique to social media, this happens in physical spaces as well, all the fucking time. So, perhaps, instead of deriding social media specifically, I should have been critiquing human behavior in general, or providing more guidance on how to think more critically about our shared human need for validation and where it might lead us.

All that being said, it does seem much, much easier to fall into the wrong crowd on social media than in the physical world. Social media disconnects us from reality, making it easy for us to flippantly adopt or espouse extreme views, whereas, in the physical realm, you run the risk of ostracization or literally getting punched in the face. I think this is self-evident just by browsing any online space for more than five minutes. People all over the world are calling for violence, based on political views, religious views, or whatever. There is barely any empathy anymore. Violent rhetoric seems far more common now than it did, say, 20 or 30 years ago. I don’t think it was like this back in the late ‘90s or early 2000s, when I was growing up. I’ve had the privilege of growing up in two different worlds, one before the internet, and one after the internet, and the after-internet world seems far more intolerant than the before-internet one, at least in my experience, which is ironic because, today, even though we’re obsessed with enforcing inclusive language and whatnot, we are more insular, echo-chambered, and hesitant to engage with those we don’t agree with than ever before. Perhaps, in our herd quest for online community, we have lost the ability to think critically?

So yes, I do think social media is dangerous, but only if you’re not able to think critically about yourself and the world around you. And this is where I may have erred in my previous writing. Perhaps I was not thinking critically myself. Instead of low-key shaming people for using social media, I should have been encouraging more critical thinking. The good news is that my writing, at least over the past year, does that in spades, at least I think it does. And perhaps, now that I’m back on Mastodon, I can share my views with more people. Maybe that will help the world in some way. Or maybe I’m just being a narcissist. Who knows.

Anyway. I think that last point, about returning to Mastodon to share my views with more people, is a nice segue into the “why” behind why I returned to Mastodon, so let's examine that a bit.

Spoiler alert, the following might reveal that I am, in fact, just a huge narcissist. This is something I’ve always suspected about myself. The silver lining here, however, is that at least I’m aware of it, at least on some level.

The idea to return to Mastodon came when my friend and I restarted our old gaming blog. Back when we were actively publishing, we would post our work on Mastodon, and it would get some traction there. In fact, I imagine most of our incredibly small reader base came from Mastodon. And some of the people I’ve met through Mastodon are some of the coolest people I’ve ever met in my life, honestly. So, when we decided to start publishing together again, I thought, “Hey, maybe we should post our stuff on Mastodon, like we used to, you know, so people will actually read it?”

Now, just to be clear, I don't need an audience to write. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be writing anymore, because I barely have an audience now. I mean, I’m lucky if one or two people read my long-form stuff. In fact, most of it goes entirely unread. I have the backend data to prove it. But again, I don’t need an audience to write. I’m not just saying that, either. I enjoy writing for a number of reasons that, if you've been following my writing or even this journal, which you probably haven’t, you already know. So, to repeat, I don’t necessarily need an audience to write. But, like most things when it comes to human psychology and life in general, things are never so black and white, everything is always complicated. Because, if I’m being honest, there is certainly a part of me that does like having an audience. There is a part of me that likes it when people read and praise my stuff. From a young age, I have had a desire to become a celebrity. I’ve written about this desire many times. In high school, I wanted to be a David Bowie-like pop star. Maybe my parents didn't give me enough attention when I was younger or something, who knows. But I’m willing to admit that this desire for celebrity is certainly an aspect of my personality, one that I don't particularly care for, but it’s an aspect for sure. And I don’t care for this desire because I know, if I were a Zen master or something, these desires for audience and praise would be purged entirely, or at least not indulged, because, like any desire, they come from a place of ego, insecurity, and longing. Every moment I seek praise, I am thinking of myself without praise. I am happier, in general, when I am not seeking praise from others. I know this to be true because, rarely, in those brief moments of Now Now clarity, when I’m momentarily enlightened, I don’t care about praise, because I know all the praise I would ever need is right here, inside of me. Plus, I know from experience that if you base self-worth solely on praise from others, you are bound for disappointment, envy, and resentment. Peace comes from within, not from compliments and five-star reviews. But nevertheless, these desires for audience and praise are part of me. They are like a Devil Gene. I recognize them, and I treat them as a vice. And, like we already covered, when it comes to vice, I have a problem with self-control, with keeping my word.

So that’s one reason I’m an elephant now, I’m indulging in a vice. And this vice, when indulged, manifests as me advertising my work and trying to appear like a cool and interesting person to people I barely even know online. In a sense, I am marketing, treating myself as a sort of product, a product being given away for free, but a product nonetheless. This makes me feel gross on some level. Human beings ought not be products. Yet here I am, treating myself as if I’m some sort of product, even though I know better. Go figure.

However, and this could very well just be the vice talking, I imagine other writers and artists have a similar desire for audience and praise. I imagine this is a very human thing. We are social creatures, after all. We like being surrounded by people who like us and make us feel good. So, when I was going through the whole dissonant “I know I probably shouldn’t return to Mastodon just to post my stuff and get praise, but I kind of want to?” routine, the last clause of the first sentence of this paragraph kept running through my head on repeat, being used as a counterpoint. “It's OK, you're only human, everyone else does it, why not you?” And eventually, I broke my word. I caved. I became an elephant, once again.

But, if you want to know the truth, that’s not the only reason I caved. It’s really not. In fact, if that were the only reason, I probably wouldn’t have returned to Mastodon. Like most things in life, things are not so black and white, everything is complicated. There was another reason, something deeper, something that, when compounded with my desire for audience, prompted me to return.

And that was, well, I missed you.

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on changing shapes

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 04:11:46 GMT

Why would anyone choose to be a serial killer?

I mean, consider how stressful that would be: sneaking around, killing people, hiding bodies, evading police, pretending you're just a normal, everyday dude in social situations. Even if we assume the serial killer doesn't feel anxiety about any of these things, think of all the mental effort involved in just doing them to begin with. It just doesn't seem worth it, especially when considering that, if you get caught, you’re socially ostracized, kept in a cell your whole life, or just flat-out killed by the state. So then why do it?

One can only assume that, for whatever reason, the serial killer enjoys doing what he does. This is a chilling thought. But again, why?

You and I both know that, for quote-unquote “normal people,” even the very thought of killing another living person makes our stomachs churn and our skin crawl. Killing people just feels wrong. Yet, there are some people out there who kill their own children. What the hell is wrong with those people? Doesn't that fly in the face of almost everything we know about human behavior and biology, killing your kids? If, by some evolutionary urge, we are driven to reproduce, to make new little versions of ourselves, to propagate the species or whatever, then why would anyone ever, on purpose, kill their own children? It just doesn’t make any sense. So why? Why would anyone choose to be a serial killer? Why would anyone choose to kill their own children? Why would anyone choose to do something that so flies in the face of both evolutionary biology and societal norms?

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer, but I have a few guesses, and my main guess is that, well, these people are just fucked up. I know this isn’t a very scientific answer, so please forgive me, but this seems to be the most logical conclusion. For the serial killer, the child murderer, the pedophile, and so forth, something has just gone horribly wrong in these people’s brains. I might even go as far as to say that these people just can’t help themselves. That’s the only explanation. They are driven by some insatiable Mephistophelian urge to kill.

Of course, this begs many questions, all of which fall squarely within the realm of philosophy. Meaning, today I’m going to talk about free will and determinism.

Determinism is this philosophical idea that everything, including human action, is determined by prior causes, or “antecedents,” and because of this, literally everything is predetermined, meaning “free will” is an illusion, i.e. it does not exist. Think of a ball rolling down a hill. Once the ball starts rolling, we know what’s going to happen next, it’s going to keep rolling until it loses momentum, as per the laws of physics, which should be noted are also outside of the ball’s control.

So now you may be thinking, “OK, but I’m not a ball,” and my response would be, “Well, are you sure?”, and then you’d look at me like I’m a crazy person before trying to find some way to leave the room as quickly as possible. Because, yes, a human being is not a ball, that’s true. Fair. But consider this, maybe we are, though? We may not physically be balls, but perhaps our actions are not so different from balls rolling down hills? This is certainly something to consider.

Most learned individuals in the field of psychology seem to agree that something has gone terribly wrong in the serial killer’s brain. But where and when did this “wrong” happen? When the serial killer popped out of the womb, was his brain already fucked up, or did it happen later? This is where some doctors or philosophers or whatever seem to disagree with each other. Some believe that, due to genetics or whatever, the serial killer’s brain is just fucked up right from the get-go, they’re just screwed right out of gate. Others believe that the serial killer’s psychology is molded through their environment and upbringing. And some believe that it’s a mixture of both of these things, that maybe certain people are born with certain brain chemistries that make them predisposed to becoming a serial killer, but also that their environment and upbringing sort of fosters this predisposition toward serial-killerdom, meaning, if you have a serial-killer-leaning brain, you may not end up being a serial killer after all, or maybe you will, based on a number of environmental factors.

If I had to pick, I’d probably land in the latter bucket, i.e. serial-killerdom is probably a mixture of both nature and nurture. Now one may assume that, if this is the case, a combination of both nature and nurture, then the serial killer is not predetermined from birth to be a serial killer, that there’s some level of outside control over them becoming a serial killer. Perhaps there is even some level of free will involved in choosing to become a serial killer, too.

But is there, really? Remember: ball, hill.

Let’s say you’re born with a predisposition toward becoming a serial killer. What that means is there’s already one strike against you having free will, or having a choice in the matter. The ball has already been pushed down the hill, so to speak. Now let’s say your father is an abusive asshole, and his abusive behavior rubs off on you in some way, and since you’re already predisposed to psychopathy or whatever, you start abusing people yourself, until eventually you do indeed become a serial killer. Or let’s flip it around, let’s say you’re born to a loving family, and they foster you in such a way that sort of “suppresses” the psychopathy, therefore you don’t become a serial killer. The problem is, in both of these scenarios, serial-killer disposition or not, you didn’t have the luxury of choosing your brain or your parents. None of us did. I mean, we didn’t even choose to be born, right? What this means is that, regardless of nature or nurture or both, whatever happens still seems to be predetermined, you don’t have much say in the matter. Your biology, your parents, the environment around you, these are all parts of “the hill,” so to speak, the hill that the ball is rolling down, “the ball” being “you” in this hypothetical.

So, basically, it’s looking really bad for “free will” here. It seems like everything is predetermined. It seems like we’re fucked.

But I think we’re doing one thing a disservice here, that thing being your choice in the matter.

You and I both know that, in the present moment, we are thinking about stuff and making choices about things. For example, you have chosen to read this journal entry, you have made it this far, and that seems like a conscious choice on your part, does it not? Yes, I may have influenced you to read this, maybe you saw the link posted somewhere, or maybe this entry popped up in your RSS feed, so perhaps your seeing this entry was not entirely your choice, but you did not skip over it, you chose to read it. That was your choice. It seems intuitively true that, at least in the present moment, we can make choices that determine our immediate outcomes. It does not seem like our choices in the present moment are controlled by our abusive fathers or whatever, for example. And if that’s true, that seems to suggest that “free will” is actually safe, that we can choose our own destinies, so to speak.

But if we examine this closer, perhaps this sensation of “choice,” or “free will,” or whatever you want to call it, is actually just an illusion. Let me explain.

I wrote a short story recently, and in that story, there’s this concept called “The Devil Gene.” It’s this plot device from this one game, Tekken 3, where the main character, Jin Kazama, is born with this “Devil Gene,” and it sometimes takes control of his mind and body. To quote the short story, “He had the Devil Gene. He was born with it. He couldn’t control it. When he’d get really mad, his eyes would go dark red, he’d sprout feathery black wings, and he’d shoot lasers out of a third eye on his forehead.” The reason the Devil Gene is important is because, well, I think we all have the Devil Gene inside of us, on some level. Obviously, we don’t sprout wings and shoot lasers, but we all experience unwanted bouts of rage, envy, despair, and so on. And when these emotions pop up, they often feel uncontrollable, as if we’re possessed by some ancient evil, as if we have the Devil Gene.

But it's not just the Devil Gene that feels spontaneous and uncontrollable: less-extreme emotions, minor annoyances, simple pleasures, random wants and desires, these all seem to flash in our minds without our express permission, which begs the question: are we really in control if we can’t fully control our own thoughts and feelings?

The immediate counter to this is, “Well, even if I do feel spontaneous emotions sometimes, I can still choose to respond to those emotions in different ways.” And yes, that seems true. For example, let’s say your friend makes you angry, so you choose to punch him in the face, or maybe, instead, you choose to leave the room, sit down in the lotus position, and practice your breathing, to calm down. It seems like we have a choice in the matter here. But the problem with this is that however we respond to the anger, we are still having to respond to that anger to begin with, meaning we are still being controlled by that anger. So whether you choose to punch your friend or sit in the lotus position, either choice would have been inspired by an emotion that popped up without your express permission. The emotion, which was outside of your control, was the antecedent to your behavior, and therefore your behavior, regardless of whatever that behavior actually was, was outside of your full control. So, even when we’re quote-unquote “controlling” our emotions, we’re still being controlled by them, otherwise we wouldn’t have to “control” them to begin with.

How this relates to you reading my journal entry is sort of tangential, but basically, you had a desire to read this entry, and then you chose to read the entry, but the initial desire was sparked by my posting of the entry to begin with, therefore your decision to read my journal entry was not entirely of your own choosing. I’m sorry to say this, but you were manipulated into reading this journal entry, at least on some level.

This reminds me of this one great lyric from one of my favorite songs, and it goes, “Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body? I don’t know.”

To answer Morrissey’s question with something better than “I don’t know,” perhaps the mind and the body are not separate things at all, perhaps they are one and the same? I realize I just answered a question with a question, which is probably bad form, but again, I don’t really know the answers here, and I don’t want to pretend like I do. This is just philosophy, after all, which is pretty much just semantics and metaphysics and language games, i.e. pretty much bullshit, so you, reader, are free to disagree. Perhaps that’s your choice. That’s fine.

However, if we choose to believe modern science, which claims that there’s gray matter up there in our skulls, then that gray matter is certainly part of the biological construct we call “the body.” So if our thoughts, and by extension our “minds,” are simply the result of synapses firing off in the ol’ gray matter up there, then “the mind” would indeed just be another part of “the body,” similar to our hands and feet. To deny this, we’d have to reject modern science and instead take a religious or spiritual approach, which would be fine, there’s no judgment here, but these alternative approaches come preloaded with their own deterministic quandaries, for example, look up “theological fatalism.” My point being, "free will" is beset by challengers from all sides, regardless of whatever ideology you might subscribe to.

When it comes to “free will,” most of us like to believe that the mind rules the body, that we are in full control of our actions, that we hold fate in our hands and can mold it like clay. This belief gives us purpose, meaning, and drive. If we were to hold the opposite belief, i.e. that we’re solely driven by uncontrollable thoughts and feelings, life would seem pretty meaningless. After all, if we have no control, if everything is just biologically driven, then what’s the point? If whatever is going to happen happens regardless of whatever we say or do, then why should we even care? This is a depressing thought, which is why the majority of us believe we have some choice in the matter, some sort of “free will.” This belief shields us from despair, sometimes even suicide. But the problem is, there’s a conflict here, because we have a vested biological interest in holding this belief. If this belief were not hardwired into us, we probably wouldn’t make it very far in life, we’d just waste away or kill ourselves or whatever. And according to modern science, “evolution” doesn’t like organisms just wasting away and killing themselves. Life must go on, I guess. So, considering this and also everything else we’ve discussed so far, it seems possible that this belief in what many of us call “free will” might just be a biological illusion created for the express purpose of self-preservation.

So let’s recap what we’ve discussed so far. First, some people might be born with brains that predispose them to being serial killers, and these brains were not of their choosing. Second, the would-be serial killer’s upbringing and environment, both of which are outside of the their control, may have an impact on them becoming a serial killer. Third, although it seems like we can make choices in the moment, many of these choices are driven by prior antecedents, like me linking this journal entry to you in some way or all the seemingly uncontrollable emotions, thoughts, wants, and desires we experience on the daily, so, regardless of how we respond to these things, it seems we are still being controlled by them to some extent. The conclusion here seems to be that we are just balls rolling down hills, and therefore "free will" is an elaborate biological hoax, does it not?

But what I keep coming back to is this: I cannot shake the feeling that I have some sort of choice in the present moment, or at least I feel a sensation that seems like “choice.” Even if some of my thoughts and emotions are unwanted and often influenced by other people, how I choose to respond to those thoughts and emotions seems to be within my control, at least to a certain degree. I cannot shake the feeling that there is something more to this. It may be the case that many, if not all, of my choices might be in response to some external stimuli, some prior antecedent, but I’m still choosing how to respond. I guess, maybe, this could all be some sort of biological trick, but that just doesn't feel right to me.

Another thing I can’t shake is the sense that viewing “free will” through this “free will vs. determinism” lens is an overly dualistic perspective. It seems very black or white to me. I don’t like black or white. I am morally opposed to black or white. Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why can’t we have some “free will” and some “predetermination?" Why can't that be the case?

I was talking to my friend the other day about this same topic. He’s much smarter than me. He’s got a something-or-other in philosophy and teaches literature and writing at a high school. And when I asked him about free will, specifically bringing up the ball-hill thing, he said, “You know about the cylinders, right?” And I’m like, “What? No. What about cylinders?” And he’s like, “There's this one Greek philosopher, I forget his name, but he says that, yes, at the beginning of our lives, we may be balls rolling down hills, but he says we can change our shapes. The hill is like all the external stuff, how you’re born, how you’re raised, how others treat you, the world around you, that sort of stuff. But the ball is you, and through self-reflection, meditation, and how you respond to things, you can change your shape, to a cylinder, or a square, or whatever you want. He says that we may not have control over everything, but we do have control over our shape. And when we change our shape, we roll down the hill at a slightly different angle.”

This struck me as incredibly poetic and insightful. I thought to myself, yes, this seems true, it’s not black or white, this or that. It’s not “you either have full control or you don’t,” instead it’s “you have some control, but not full control.” And when I thought about this further, I came to a weird realization.

The realization was, hypothetically, if we did have free will, that would mean we’re 100% accountable for everything we do, since we would have complete control over our own actions, obviously. But if that’s the case, then why would anyone become a fucking serial killer?

The answer is, no one would become a serial killer if they were in full control of their own actions. The social consequences of being a serial killer would be too great. It wouldn’t make any sense. It’s obvious that serial killers, and other deranged people, are dealing with the Devil Gene, they have fucked-up brains, and they sometimes have traumatic upbringings, and these antecedents have changed their shape, molded them into something dark. Therefore, they are not 100% accountable for their actions. Then, I started looking at things in terms of hills and paths. For example, at the beginning of a serial killer’s life, they were pushed down a certain hill, and at that point they started rolling down a certain path, and they’ve been rolling down that path for a long time. It’s a dark path, but it’s a path nonetheless. You and I, we are also on a path. We are on much lighter paths, but our paths are still paths nonetheless. We did not choose our paths. In a way, we lucked out. We weren’t born with fucked-up brain chemistry, for example. Our paths are easier than a serial killer’s path. It’s easier for us to change our shapes into a cylinder or a square or whatever, but some paths make it much harder to change shapes than others.

When I thought about this, it filled me with a sort of universal empathy. Instead of looking at certain people as being “monsters,” I started thinking of them as unfortunate souls who were pushed down a dark path. And no, I don’t think this means that serial killers should get a free pass, they have still broken the mortal laws, committed the highest of moral crimes. They’re fucking dangerous, so of course they should be dealt with accordingly, but I wonder sometimes, since we’re so focused on treating these people as monsters, maybe that treatment is just putting them further down their dark path? When we dehumanize people, are we really surprised when they start to behave like monsters?

When you throw away this notion of “free will” and accept that nothing is fully within our control, that all of us are influenced by external stimuli, this fosters a certain level of compassion that is absent when we solely believe that everyone makes their own decisions all the time and that they are in full control, because that belief encourages us to reduce people to their worst actions and hold them wholly responsible without considering the conditions that shaped them, their paths.

To me, the empathetic path is the one without “full control,” because when we view people in terms of their biology, their upbringing, and all the other prior antecedents that influence their behavior, we start to see the root causes of that behavior, and this fosters a level of compassion that is absent when we simply assume everyone is in full control of their own actions. And taking this further, if we consider the fact that we are part of a larger system, that our actions may influence the actions of others, we begin to be more critical of our own behavior, because in a world without full control over our outcomes, we quickly realize how our own behavior may carry long-term deterministic consequences for the people around us. This encourages a greater sense of responsibility, not just for what we do, but for how our actions ripple out, impact other peoples' paths, like a small pebble thrown into a large body of water.

I realize I’m using a very inflammatory example here, that being “serial killers,” and perhaps that’s a rhetorical mistake on my part, as I imagine it elicits a sort of immediate “Treat murderers with empathy? What the fuck? Try saying that to a serial killer, they’d just stab you in the throat” type response from some people. And maybe I will get stabbed in the throat, perhaps that’s the price we must pay for being universally empathetic, who knows? But I could replace the term “serial killer” with a more down-to-earth example, like “Trump supporter” or something, and still make the same case.

For example, let’s say, hypothetically, you have an aunt who’s a huge Trump supporter. Let’s say you’ve distanced yourself from this aunt, because you don’t agree with her politics or whatever. But do you really think she had full control over her decision to become a Trump supporter? Do you not think that, perhaps, her upbringing had something to do with it? Or maybe the media, with all their insidious propaganda? Or her friend groups? Social media? Maybe, if we’re being a little mean here, maybe your aunt was just born with a very low IQ. Maybe she’s frankly just a dumbass. Maybe that’s why she’s a Trump supporter. She can't help being a dumbass, she just is. Now, considering all that, do you still feel good about shunning your aunt? When looking at your dumbass, Trump-loving aunt through a more deterministic lens, does that lens not encourage a little more empathy than viewing the situation through a lens of free will where everyone is 100% accountable for their own actions?

Your aunt, she’s on a path, just like you or I. So maybe, instead of shunning her, instead of treating her like some sort of leper, maybe you should try to help her change her shape?

I’ve found that many people believe themselves to be empathetic, but more often than not, their empathy is selective, reserved only for those they deem worthy of it. But as long as empathy remains selective, cruelty and division will continue to fester. Only universal empathy can save the world.

So, that’s why I used the “serial killer” example, because if you can have empathy for a serial killer, then you can have empathy for literally anyone. In a way, having empathy for a serial killer is the final boss.

We must never forget that everyone, including you and me, is on a path. Through empathy and compassion, we must encourage others to change their shape.

So I’m an empathetic cylinder now, hopefully I don’t get stabbed in the throat.

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adaptivism: a very short introduction

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 02:24:01 GMT

I’ve been thinking recently about this rigid duality we find ourselves in. I look around and see black-and-white systems all over the place. I see strict ideologies adhered to even when the situation doesn’t warrant them. I see people identifying as Christian or atheist, male or female, black or white, liberal or conservative, introvert or extrovert, optimist or pessimist, realist or relativist, and so on. I see people clinging to these systems even when they’ve long stopped producing good outcomes, either because the people themselves have been indoctrinated into these systems since birth or because they refuse to admit when they’re wrong; and I suspect it’s mostly the latter, because we all know people hate to admit when they’re wrong; they dig in their heels, double down, rationalize their bullshit in all sorts of ways, just to avoid having to admit that, maybe, just maybe, their belief system might not work in every single situation.

That’s why I’m working on a philosophical framework with which it is impossible to be wrong, and I hope to flesh out this framework by writing this Very Short Introduction. So, with that being said, please bear with me, because this idea is very nascent, as in I’ve only been thinking about it for a few weeks, meaning it probably needs far more thought work to become fully coherent, and, if it were fully coherent, it would likely need far more than 2316 words to fully explain it, not to mention fully tackling all the ethical implications that might arise from its widespread adoption. But let’s be real here, no one is going to adopt some weird philosophical framework found only in some random online journal, so this Very Short Introduction should suffice for now.

Like I was typing, people hate to admit when they’re wrong. This refusal to admit wrongness, at least in terms of belief systems, seems to be rooted in this concept we call “truth.” People believe things to be true, and if something is true, how can it be wrong? And because we believe certain things to be true, many of us refuse to change our beliefs or hold contradicting beliefs; for example, a devout Christian would never believe in Odin, a determinist would never believe that we have free will, an atheist would never believe in a personal god, a strict materialist would never believe in an immortal soul, a solipsist would never believe that other minds exist, a nihilist would never believe in inherent meaning, and so forth. For people with hardline beliefs, changing their beliefs or entertaining conflicting beliefs feels like a sort of betrayal of one’s values, creating a sort of cognitive dissonance, a disharmony in the mind.

But what if it didn’t have to?

The problem with “truth” is that it’s just a word, a concept, an idea thought up by humans, for humans. The universe did not come preloaded with an app called “truth,” at least in terms of belief systems. The universe just is, with or without you. This idea of “truth” is almost like a psychic defense mechanism, to help us make sense of the world, to help us grapple with the fact that we might just be tiny, insignificant specks of stardust floating around in a deep, dark, scary void. We like to believe life has meaning, and “truth” gives us that meaning. And many would argue that this idea of “truth” is helpful in some way, that it provides some utility; with it, we can agree on certain things that might be “true,” per our own concept of truth, like a tree being a tree, or a cat being different from a human, or a PlayStation 5’s processor being faster than a Switch 2’s processor, and so forth, but in each of these examples, humans are making the categories, coming up with the definitions for those categories, and then assigning a “truth value” based on those human-centric definitions. This process of assigning categories and truths is usually through a collective effort appealing to utility, for example, we all seem to agree that it’s useful to separate the animal we perceive as a “cat” from the animal we perceive as a “human” because we observe substantial differences between these two animals, but these “differences” are interpreted through a human-centric lens via our five senses, which we all know cannot be fully trusted, as human biology has a vested interest in interpreting the universe in such a way that benefits only itself. Biology is biased. All this is to say that “truth,” at least in terms of belief systems, is far more malleable than we like to think. A large portion of what we believe to be true is dictated by words, language games, semantics, whatever you want to call it, and we all know that the meaning of words can, and do, change based entirely on the whims of the collective. This isn’t always problematic, but it becomes problematic when it’s applied to more nebulous belief systems, e.g. religion and philosophy, because here we are, in the year 2026 of our Lord, killing or being killed simply because of our beliefs; and I’m not just talking about “holy war” stuff, which is the most obvious example of killing and being killed simply because of a belief, but stuff like putting spikes on park benches so that homeless people can’t sleep on them, or refusing to increase the federal minimum wage, or cutting social safety-net programs, or refusing certain medical treatments, all because of some religious and/or sociopolitical belief we have. In this way, “beliefs,” which are rooted in this nebulous idea of “truth,” have the potential to cause great harm.

But it does not have to be this way.

What then is a boy to do? Should we reject “truth” altogether? No. I don’t think so. One, rejecting truth is itself a sort of paradoxical truth statement, and two, “truth,” as we covered, has some utility, even if most of it is based on words and definitions. Instead, I think we should use the semantics to our advantage and tweak the meaning of the word “truth.” Right now, the word “true” means something like, “in accordance with fact or reality,” with the baked-in assumption that, in the future, “fact or reality” will remain consistent. But I posit that reality is not so consistent, at least not “experienced reality.”

For example, a strict capitalist society may have experienced great success in the realm of technological advancement, which may have had some positive benefits for those living in said society, but later on, when the wealth gap was wider than the Grand Canyon, that capitalist system was no longer providing good outcomes for many people. Another example would be a chaotic, immoral society that may have developed a religion that imposed strict moral guidelines which improved the overall well-being of those in the society, but, at a certain point, when people weren’t constantly stealing or murdering each other anymore, some of those same religious guidelines may have become overly restrictive or misaligned with the society’s new stability, limiting individual freedom rather than protecting it, think stuff like “no same-sex marriage” or the various rigid gender roles imposed by Christianity. In both of these scenarios, the belief system has run its course and needs to be adapted. So, with that in mind, I propose the following slightly tweaked definition of the word “true,” and that definition is, “in accordance with fact or reality, in the present moment.”

Right now, strict capitalists refuse to budge on capitalism. They insist that it works, that it has produced the greatest country in the world, that it has given us better medicine, better modes of transportation, better housing, not to mention computer games and iPhones and virtual girlfriends and WiFi-enabled microwaves and so on, which I agree with to a certain extent, but now, in the year 2026 of our Lord, a check engine light is a catastrophic financial disaster for many people, and those same people can’t even afford to go to the doctor. So, at a certain point, we must be willing to say, “Hey, capitalism has done great things for us in the past, but now we need to shift gears into a different system, at least for the time being, because capitalism is no longer working for us.” This doesn’t mean capitalism is wrong, per se, it’s just not appropriate for the present moment.

But, again, a strict capitalist, someone who believes capitalism is the greatest economic system in the world, would not be open to this change; they would dig in their heels, double down, and rationalize their bullshit in all sorts of ways, because they believe capitalism to be the one true path. We also have this fallacious tendency to assume that if something worked in the past, it must still work today.

This is the problem I have with truth. Per the current definition of “truth,” if something is “true,” it is in accord with “fact and reality,” therefore it cannot be wrong. And we all know people hate to admit when they’re wrong.

So, good news, I have come up with a philosophical framework with which you can never be wrong, or at least that’s the idea. It seeks to remove the shame associated with “being wrong,” instead encouraging one to adapt their beliefs in accordance with the situation, meaning no belief is “right” or “wrong,” just more or less appropriate depending on the circumstances. And I’m calling this philosophical framework “Adaptivism.”

In short, Adaptivism is a pragmatic framework that treats beliefs, values, and practices as tools rather than fixed truths. It advocates selectively adopting elements from any belief system based on their effectiveness in a given situation, with the aim of producing the best possible outcomes. Adaptivism is loosely inspired by the “non-duality” concept found in Buddhism, but it is not beholden to that concept; meaning, in some circumstances, Buddhist ideology may provide the best outcomes for us, but in other circumstances, it might not. Adaptivism does not adhere to any particular belief system; it adheres only to what works at the time. This is the power of Adaptivism: the freedom to choose what you believe without being forced to believe it forever and without feeling shame for having “stopped believing” in whatever previous belief you adhered to. Adaptivism does not care about the “truth value” of any particular belief system, be it religious or philosophical or otherwise, and instead asks, “Will this belief maximize well-being for myself and/or for those around me when considering the present circumstances?”

For example, it’s often said that an atheist in a foxhole will eventually start praying to God to save their life. Now, let’s assume this is true for a moment. If momentarily believing that God exists provides some mental comfort to the foxhole atheist, is his shift in belief systems really so bad? No, I don’t think so. I think the foxhole atheist should do whatever he needs to do in order to soothe his mind. If it works for the foxhole atheist, who am I to judge or care? It’s not like he’s hurting anyone. One may think that the foxhole atheist is a hypocrite, or that he’s fickle, or that he’s unprincipled due to his sudden and possibly temporary shift in belief systems, but an Adaptivist would just describe the foxhole atheist as “open-minded.”

To use the “capitalism” example from earlier, if your society is in the dark ages, needing to foster economic growth and innovation, then perhaps a competition-based capitalist system is appropriate. But, at a certain point, that system must be revised. Capitalism is rooted in this idea that numbers must always go up, that this year’s financial report must be higher than last year’s financial report, even if this year’s goal has been met. Capitalism’s backbone is endless economic growth, but there’s not an infinite supply of resources on Earth, meaning endless economic growth is impossible. It is an unobtainable, self-defeating goal. Thus, capitalism should only be used as a tool to get society to a certain point, then, once that point is reached, that tool should be discarded and replaced with a new, more appropriate tool. We hear all the time how people can’t afford healthcare or fixing their car or even basic groceries. It’s no secret that America’s hardline capitalist system has resulted in extreme income inequality. Capitalism has obviously run its course here. And there are other economic belief systems out there that could solve these problems, like communism or its little brother socialism, yet US policymakers dismiss these systems as impractical or even anti-American because they’ve been indoctrinated into this dualistic idea of “truth” from birth, believing their precious capitalism to be the one true path.

I don’t understand why so many of us think everything has to be so black and white. It’s frustrating. We think that if we change our minds about something, we’re admitting we were wrong, and we don’t like to admit that we were wrong, so we double down, but that doesn’t have to be the case. We have a hard time adapting our beliefs to new information because we get trapped in what I’ll call “truth loops,” where we rigidly believe some dualistic truth, i.e. this thing is better than that thing, and we have a hard time escaping from these truth loops. But the thing is: philosophical, religious, and socioeconomic belief systems are not truths, they’re just ideas, concepts, collections of words and thoughts arranged in different ways. So we’re not betraying our previous beliefs when we change our beliefs, because there’s nothing to betray. It’s all nebulous, metaphysical stuff.

What I’m trying to say is, we are never wrong when we adjust our beliefs to the current situation, we are simply adapting.

That’s why it’s called “Adaptivism.”

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sudden onset consumeristic urges and feelings

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 03:46:10 GMT

A few days ago, I ate an entire sleeve of saltines in one sitting, and I washed it down with a can of Diet Cherry Coke®. You may be wondering, “What’s so interesting about that?” And my answer would be, “Not much.” But it does raise a few questions, the first being: Why?

No one can truly answer this question. It’s quite possibly one of the greatest mysteries in the entire universe. Why? But more specifically, why do we do stupid shit? We are constantly doing stupid shit, usually impulsively and almost always to our own detriment. I no longer question why other people do stupid shit, I just accept it and move on, and this brings about a certain inner peace, but I do question why I do stupid shit. I analyze it constantly. But it seems that, no matter how much analyzing I do, I’m still doing the stupid shit. I did not need those saltines. I knew that. Before I even walked into the kitchen, I knew that. I had known that for years. I knew that eating the saltines was a pointless, stupid endeavor. I just had an impulsive urge to eat them. Even as I was walking from my office to the kitchen, I was thinking to myself, “I probably shouldn’t eat the saltines, they’re just a bunch of empty, carby calories that’ll give me heartburn and make me feel sluggish and gross.” Yet, despite having these thoughts, I still opened the pantry drawer, slid the crinkly sleeve out of the blue-and-white receptacle, got myself a Coca-Cola® Cherry Zero Sugar® from the fridge, brought both products to my office, then opened and consumed them both within the span of roughly 7 minutes. That’s what I did. I consumed the products. In hindsight, it felt like I was overcome by some uncontrollable gluttonous urge, some biological impulse that could not be sated without consuming the products. And, in that moment, as I was consuming the products, it felt good to consume them.

So maybe that’s why we do stupid shit: it feels good in the moment. But does it really? Does it really feel good when even the simplest of everyday activities, e.g. eating saltine crackers and drinking diet soda, cause so much cognitive dissonance?

Later that same night, right before going to bed, I had yet another stupid-shit urge. I was on my PC and clicked an article about the MacBook Neo®. The article talked about how the Neo is the most affordable MacBook® ever made, how the 13” LiquidRetina™ display looks stunning even in direct sunlight due to its 500 nits of brightness (whatever the fuck that means), how the Magic Keyboard™ feels like typing on air due to how low-profile it is, yet somehow it's still clicky and satisfying to use, how the aluminum body is sleek and durable and feels like holding a straight slab of metal in your hands, how it’s super portable due to its small form factor, being only slightly larger than a classic netbook-class laptop, and how it has a super-powerful processor, especially for the price. The article said you would be a fool not to buy one. And as the article was making all these points, I was just nodding along the whole time, buying into all the bullshit, practically drooling for some reason, which is super strange considering that I’ve gone on record stating, “I will never buy an Apple product, ever.”

But, thinking back now, my dislike of Apple wasn’t really based on what I would now consider valid reasoning. I had no true qualms with the hardware or software. It was all vibes and ego. In fact, I’ve barely ever used Apple products. The only Mac I ever had was an iMac G3® in Bondi Blue coloring, one of those big fat boys with the translucent bodies, and this was at the turn of the millennium when I was like ten years old, and I only used the thing to play point-and-click Pajama Sam and Blue’s Clues games. So, I have no real experience with Macs. Yet, at some point in my teenage years, I had decided that Macs were for tech-illiterate dipshits and rich yuppies whom I did not want to be associated with, even though I was very much part of that latter demographic, albeit not by choice, for who has the luxury of picking their parents? The point is, back then, I saw Windows and Apple as camps, and I was willing to die for my camp, so to speak. But now, thinking about it, it seems kind of silly, falling into one of these dualistic consumerist camps, especially considering that my previous distaste for Apple products probably stemmed from some vestige of teenage rebellion. “Fuck you, Steve. You’re not my real father.”

I had always thought of Mac owners as having a certain vibe, like they all live in neighborhoods where the houses range from 700k–1m and everyone plays tennis on the weekends and there's a neighborhood watch and girls sell Thin Mints® on the corner near the stop sign. I picture this one family, “The Apple Family,” in which the mom is like an ex-punk or goth or something, the dad is always away on business, and the quiet teenage daughter has a Samurai X poster on her wall and Bjork CDs scattered all over her desk and also has one of those electronic drawing pads for her MacBook®. In this family, the mom and daughter are both talented artists. The mom draws flowers and landscapes, while the daughter draws anime stuff. They both dye their hair in accordance with the month of the year. They have an unbreakable mother-daughter bond, meaning they are really close, like super-duper close, so close that it's almost as if they can communicate telepathically from any distance. It goes without saying that Gilmore Girls is always playing on the living room TV, even when nobody is around. Sometimes they watch House and Grey's Anatomy, too. The mom also drives a Mini Cooper®, does yoga, hangs framed pictures of David Bowie on the walls, and puts up Nightmare Before Christmas decorations all over the place, so the house has a slightly alternative vibe to it, but not too alternative, not enough to scare off the normie neighbors who visit sometimes. The mom also wears glasses and has a smoking problem that she does a very poor job of hiding, and she always talks about how she "used to see Siouxsie & the Banshees live back in the 80s but I can’t remember it very much because of all the drugs, haha.” And, again, her husband is always away on long trips, hawking software to corporate executives or selling cars or something like that; actually, no one really knows how he makes money, it's a mystery, but he somehow makes enough to pay the mortgage and buy all sorts of Apple products for the family, which they all prefer over Windows because “Apple just works.” And the dad is actually the girl's stepdad, not her real dad. Her real dad lives a few states away, looks like the BTK Killer, and was horribly abusive to her, which left her with all sorts of deep psychic baggage that she won’t talk about to anyone except her mom. The girl in question here is pale, and she looks kind of like Kirsten Dunst, and she likes to draw and watch Cowboy Bebop and cuddle on the basement couch with her boyfriend whom she won't go any further than making out with, and that annoys the boyfriend somewhat because he's an insufferable prick, and she deserves better. She also has a cat named Pickles.

If this all feels oddly specific, well, it’s not. That was just a little writing exercise I was doing. It’s not like I was describing a particular family I used to spend a lot of time with back in high school who were actually very sweet people or anything like that. And it’s certainly not like I was in love with that girl who exclusively used a MacBook® and dyed her hair in coordination with the months of the year and watched Cowboy Bebop and drew anime on her electronic drawing pad. It’s not like I was her boyfriend or anything like that. It’s not like I’m actually pining for them, nostalgically. That's not what's happening here. It’s not like, when I was reading that MacBook Neo® article, I was thinking about this girl and her family who are totally fictional and like not real at all. It’s not like images of that beautiful girl and her upper middle-class house on the hill and her weird, punky family were flashing through my mind when reading the aforementioned article. It’s not as though I was, without realizing it, buying the MacBook Neo® in some sort of sad attempt to reclaim something I’d lost a long, long time ago or anything like that. That would be sad and pathetic and ridiculous.

In fact, I had been toying around with the idea of getting a Mac for a few weeks before reading the article, because I felt like a change was needed, and I like trying new things sometimes, and I think the MacBooks® look sleek and I wanted to see her again and the OS interface looks minimalistic and cool, but buying a Mac wasn’t really something I was serious about until I read the article, at which point I became instantly serious about it for some reason. I became giddy and excited. It was as if I had become overcome by some consumeristic urge that could not be sated without buying the product. So that’s what I did. I bought the product. I instantly whipped out my credit card, went to the Apple website, put a silver MacBook Neo® in the cart, and went through the whole checkout process. And as I was keying in my credit card information, the little angel on my shoulder was whispering to me, “Isn’t this a little impulsive? This won’t bring her back, you know. Shouldn’t we think about this a little more? We have a perfectly good ThinkPad® on the desk right over there, and you love that thing, you’ve written many stories and essays on it, you can’t just replace it like that, after all it’s done for you, can you? What are you, some kind of monster?” but of course I ignored the angel, typed in my CVC code, and hit the big PURCHASE button, at which point my brain was flooded with endorphins and I was overcome by all sorts of anticipatory joys and jitters.

Please note, this is not a brag or anything. I’m not typing this up to subtly be like, “Hey, look at me, I can afford to buy a new MacBook® on some stupid nostalgic whim because I think it will make me feel like I’m dating the girl of my dreams again.” This is not what I’m doing, especially the “girl of my dreams” part, that is NOT what’s going on here.

If I’m being honest, I experience some sort of sudden onset consumeristic urge like this more often than I'd like to admit. One might think these urges are normal, similar to the eat-a-sleeve-of-saltines-in-7-minutes urge, but the buy-a-MacBook® urge is actually uniquely distinct. We are born with a drive to consume food, it's biological, but we are not born with the drive to purchase aluminum junk, the latter is driven by societal norms and corporate mind control. Caveman John does not wake up in the morning and think to himself, “I need a fucking MacBook®,” of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t know what a MacBook® is. He’s a caveman. He just cares about CAVE and defending himself from bears and BOOM BOOM and obtaining the sharpest stick. So maybe he’s not the best example. But the point is, the consumeristic urge to purchase things comes from some hardcore materialist indoctrination, which is human-created, i.e. not biological, which is forced upon us from the very young age of forever ago. We do not need the MacBooks®. We are manipulated by corporate tech oligarchies (apologies for using the hyper-liberal, Reddit buzzwords, but they happen to fit in this context) into wanting the MacBooks®. They have ace marketing teams full of people who graduated from Stern and Ross School of Business or whatever coming up with ad campaigns that make you feel like, if you choose Apple, you are hip and trendy and a cut above the rest of the Windoze plebs. They use hip slogans like, “The ones who choose iMac® are the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels,” as if using your hard-earned blood dollars on corporate silicon is some sort of anti-establishment statement or something. It’s all fucking phony.

But my point is, if we can recognize this, that this consumeristic urge to buy stupid shit is not biologically hardwired into us, that we’re essentially being manipulated into doing this stupid shit by tech bros who only care about getting us hooked on 4k LiquidRetina™ displays and Magic Keyboards™ so that they can line their own already gold-trimmed pockets, then we can resist it. We can resist the consumeristic urges. We can stop letting them tell us, “If you buy this, she might come back.” We can stop letting them manipulate our emotions. We can fight back. It’s not like we need fancy plastic for survival. We can just stop buying their shit.

We can overcome this.

But damn, this keyboard sure does feel nice.

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swept by seasons and timeghosts

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 02:41:06 GMT

The seasons have shifted and with it, my entire fucking vibe.

For the southern coast of America, what this means is, over the course of one day, the sun has banished the clouds, the air has gone from chilly to muggy, bloodthirsty gnats have come out of their fetid pools to feed upon the young, and the deciduous trees have shed most of their leaves as if it’s Autumn when it is clearly the cusp of Spring.

To be honest, I don’t know why the tree thing happens. The remaining leaves on the trees themselves are bright green. It’s clearly not Autumn. It's like an old reheated cup of coffee out here. Maybe dead leaves on the dirty ground are normal for this time of year. Maybe they get stuck up there in Winter and are now just tumbling down. Maybe this is tea weather. I don’t know. I am not a dendrologist. It has been said that premature abscission can be caused by drought, fungal disease, and lack of nutrition. This is not so different from humans. Perhaps the trees are depressed. I like to believe that everything has a soul, even rocks. This belief is likely bullshit, as the jury is still out on whether humans even have souls, but this belief fosters a sort of compassion for all things that’s otherwise absent. Sometimes it’s worth believing in bullshit if the bullshit produces good outcomes. Truth is highly overrated. But what do I know?

What I do know is, yesterday, it felt like Twilight Princess weather, today it feels like Chrono Cross weather. For the record, I’m OK with both types of weather, but I’d prefer to slip into them, not be forced into them over the course of one day. The Chrono Cross weather came too quickly, I had gotten used to the Twilight Princess weather. Now I can't wear sweaters, and I like sweaters. I also can't wear my camo pants, which I wear because one, it’s ironic, two, I think they kinda look cool, and three, they help me blend in to both the hickass people around these parts and, of course, the local flora. I'm like Solid Snake in this here bigoted Southern town. “I'm invisible. Yeah, that's me. If you look then you'll see right through me.” That's a song by The Dismemberment Plan. It's a great song, you should listen to it right now. Also, I can’t wear my beanie, so of course my brains are spilling out all over the place.

Weather conjures all sorts of different images in my mind, all sorts of different memories and their associated moods, like Twilight Princess and Chrono Cross. Those are moods for me. I'm big on moods. For a brief stint in my teens, my mom sent me to a psychiatrist. She was a blonde woman with an angular face and an athletic figure. I got the impression she did a 5-mile run every morning and drank lots of vitamin water and ate avocado toast. She had an upper-middle-class soccer mom vibe, if you know what I mean. These are not the sort of women I'm normally attracted to, so it was easy to talk to her. I remember I told her that I could sense auras, and that these auras fucked with my mood. I told her about intrusive auras and how I did not appreciate them. I told her that I would adjust the lighting in my room very carefully so as to cultivate certain auras. The psychiatrist told me this was normal, that many people do this, and this was not something I wanted to hear. I wanted to feel special. I still want to feel special. I bring this up because, when outside, I cannot cultivate auras. There is no dimmer switch on the Sun. The clouds are amorphous and beyond my reach. This is fine, but again, I need slip time.

Speaking of, or typing of, clouds, the other day I went to the beach and the clouds were so low that I couldn’t see even a few feet in front of me, but I could cut through them with my bare hands, which felt empowering. A foggy beach is a very powerful image, mysterious and spooky. The shoreline was like a graveyard, blue blobs every few feet. They say the southern coast is where old people go to die, I guess this is also true for jellyfish. My son, who was with me, kept trying to touch them. I told him that you don’t want their death on your hands, plus they’ll shock you. Of course, he didn’t listen, and he touched them anyway, but they didn’t seem to shock him, so I guess the electricity had left their bodies, perhaps at the same moment their souls mixed with the mist. I am feeling somewhat poetic today, if you couldn’t tell.

A day later, I took my son to the park. He brought his toy sword with him. We ventured into a wooded area where he slayed at least three moblins. He’s getting good at moblin slaying. He likes to pretend he’s Link, from The Legend of Zelda. He’s been watching me play that game obsessively for about a month now. I think it may be infecting his crazy little brain. I wrote all about it on oncomputer.games. The essay is titled “Breath of the Now Now.” It functions as a sort of love letter to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild while also being a Beginner's Guide to Zen, of sorts. It was fun writing it. It covers a lot of the Zen stuff I've talked about in this journal, just in a more articulate, fun way. I think our world leaders should read it. I think maybe they would stop bombing schools in the Middle East if they read it. Maybe my essay could save the world. I realize that’s a very egotistical thing to say, like I'm some enlightened guru or something. I'm not. Besides, the essay is probably not rhetorically convincing enough to push someone like Trump into the meadows of enlightenment. And who am I to pretend that I know how to save the world? I just don’t like it when schools get bombed.

The cultural zeitgeist has been infused with death as of late. Note, “zeitgeist” comes from the German word “zeit,” which means “time,” and “geist,” which means either “spirit” or “ghost.” TIMEGHOST. Even the word itself has deathly implications. Right now, people are focused not only on kids dying in Iran but also this one missing-persons case regarding Nancy Guthrie, who was abducted from her home at night about a month ago. The cultural obsession and media coverage remind me of this one summer when I was a kid, when my grandma was watching the news a lot, and they were always talking about this one girl, Natalee Halloway, who was abducted in Aruba and never found. I believe drugs and alcohol were involved, as they normally are. There was a suspect in that case who I'm pretty sure admitted decades later to bludgeoning Natalee over the head with a cinder block after she refused his sexual advances on a beach one night, meaning he pretty much forfeited his Human Race Membership Card right there on that salt-crusted shore. Funny how a split-second decision, like bludgeoning someone in a fit of rage, can totally alter the course of so many lives, not only Natalee’s life, but also his own and the lives of all the people who watched cable news that summer. The ripples we make. But the difference with the Guthrie case is that, despite us now pretty much living in a CCTV state wherein basically anyone can be tracked at any time, we have very little in the way of leads here, outside of a creepy Ring Doorbell video. Perhaps this is why the case is so compelling, and it doesn’t hurt that her daughter is like a famous news anchor person or something. The point is, it’s been almost 40 days now, and Nancy’s still missing. No one seems to have a clue as to who did it. She has just completely vanished. And there are basically no leads, as far as I know. Although, there have been many ransom demands, none of which provided proof of life, many of which demanded “one bitcoin” as payment, which seems oddly specific and weird. Why, just yesterday, I saw that someone called in a tip to the authorities, claiming they sighted Nancy in Mexico, but they wouldn’t tell the authorities the exact location without payment of, you guessed it, “one bitcoin.” I’m starting to wonder if the same hoaxer is phoning in all these tips. But I try not to speculate on these things. I tell myself that I'm above all that. But I too am swept up in the TIMEGHOST, so I can’t help but come up with my own theories. And my main theory is that Nancy has been dead for some time, and that she quite possibly died the night the crime took place. I imagine the intruder intended to rob the house, botched it, thereby waking Nancy up, at which point she had a heart attack or fought back, both of which would have resulted in her death, because she’s old and on medication for heart problems. I then imagine that the intruder freaked out, took the body, and disposed of it somewhere, possibly in acid. There is some evidence to support this, such as blood found at the scene of the crime. And yes, I realize I’ve swayed off into very grim territory here.

What gets me is that many people still seem to think that Nancy will be found alive, despite her being super old, despite her needing medication, despite her being on a pacemaker, and despite it having been over a month now. Yet, despite all this, people still cling to hope. So perhaps I was wrong, perhaps the TIMEGHOST is not infused with death, but instead infused with hope.

But hope is a funny thing. It's a trick, almost. We trick ourselves into a present state of calm by looking forward to some supposed optimistic future. Most Zen teaching advocates against this, advising that we should stop clinging to future possibilities and instead live fully in the present moment, and since hope is grounded in future expectation, we should therefore abandon all hope, ye who enter here. I know, this sounds awful on paper. Insensitive, almost. But it seems intuitively true that if you have very little expectations, you have very little to be disappointed about.

In any case, I wish all the best for Nancy Guthire’s family and hope they find closure.

Yes, I used the bad word, “hope." I'm only human, after all.

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this is only a glimpse of my chaos

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 21:34:50 GMT

Reports of my death have not been exaggerated at all, because who actually cares?

I know I haven’t been posting much here lately, and I also know that maybe two people, at most, are wondering why. I’d love to say this is because I’ve been hyper-productive in writing elsewhere, but that would be a great big lie. Between November and now, the hyperactive gray matter of my brain has come up with ideas for two different fantasy novels, loosely inspired by two works of fiction: one, Earthsea, and two, Inuyasha mixed with Arthurian legend for some reason, titled Where Does the Wind Go? and The King of Arcadia respectively. I wrote about a chapter of each before getting distracted and drifting off to some other fleeting idea. Oh, and I also wrote a couple of paragraphs for a short story titled I Am a Cat II, cheaply inspired by Natsume Sōseki’s 1906 novel, I Am a Cat, except mine is set in modern-day United States. So, that’s three projects that will likely go forever unfinished. This is only a glimpse of my chaos. I’m quickly realizing that, without amphetamines, my talents, if you can even call them that, are much better suited to short-form than long-form.

Alas, it’s a constant struggle trying to balance my focus, which is basically nonexistent, and my ideas, which sometimes overflow like a small pond during a great rainstorm. This, as you might imagine, can result in some heavy cognitive dissonance when I have big ideas but little focus, as I’m always beating myself up with shoulder-angel, shoulder-devil shit like, “Shouldn’t you be writing right now?” and “But writing is hard, why not just play video games instead?” And this can be quite paralyzing, but it’s not the real reason I haven’t been posting much.

The truth is, I’m an adult with two kids and a full-time job, and as such, I’ve been busy. But that’s just an excuse really, because I’ve always been busy, yet despite that, in the past, I’ve always made time to write. So what’s different now? Could it be that I’ve lost the will to write? Has the fire gone out? Maybe I’m just getting too old to juggle all of life’s bullshit along with my numerous hobbies? Perhaps it’s just writer’s block? No, I don’t actually believe writer’s block is a thing, writer’s block is just another excuse, covering for a willpower issue more than anything. The truth is that my desire to write, like many things in life, waxes and wanes, and these moon phases are usually correlated with computer games, specifically how much I enjoy the computer game I’m playing at the time.

And it’s been particularly bad lately because, for the last two months, I’ve been playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and I fucking love that game. My two-year-old son loves the game too. “I wanna play Zelda,” he says, “Let’s go find some Koroks in Zelda,” he says, “I wanna climb the towers in Zelda,” he says, with all the cherub-like syllabic mispronunciations that come with toddlerhood. He just sits on my lap, with his own battery-less controller in hand, watching Link climb mountains and fight Moblins and dash through the meadows of Hyrule. He’ll watch me play for hours if I let him, which is crazy considering he’s more hyperactive, mentally, than I am, hardly able to keep focus on anything at all. He just loves Breath of the Wild, and so do I. It’s quite possibly the best computer game ever made, a Ghiblian masterpiece, which is a word I just made up, but you're free to use it, as long as you use it correctly.

Ghiblian (adj.)
Etymology: From Studio Ghibli, noted for its distinctive animation style and thematic depth.
Definition:

1. Of or relating to the visual, narrative, or emotional qualities characteristic of Studio Ghibli films; marked by a hand-drawn anime aesthetic, a focus on nature, and a sense of childlike wonder and magical realism.
2. Denoting an atmosphere or tone that evokes serenity, nostalgia, ecological harmony, and gentle wonderment; often blending the fantastical with the mundane in a manner that emphasizes empathy and the sanctity of nature

Example: Kakariko Village, nestled between the misty hills of the Necluda, dotted with cherry blossom trees and traces of ancient magic, has a distinctly Ghiblian charm.

I’d tell you all about it, about why I love The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but I’m currently in the process of writing an essay about that very topic right now at this very moment. The essay functions not only as a love letter to the game, but also as a beginner’s primer on Zen ideology, with references to Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peace Is Every Step. The essay attempts to use Zen ideology to analyze the game’s flaws, such as the weapon-breaking thing and the general aimlessness of both the narrative and gameplay, to argue that these supposed flaws, and others, are actually not flaws at all, but instead some of the game’s greatest strengths.

So, if you’re interested in the two Z’s, Zen and Zelda, bookmark oncomputer.games, because that’s where I’m going to upload the essay, which will be called Breath of the Now Now. It should be up in a few weeks, hopefully, if my focus holds.

That’s another thing I’ve been doing: rebuilding oncomputer.games. A good friend and I built this site back in April 2023. The original idea was to release nostalgia-focused essays on video games, which we resolved to exclusively call “computer games,” because that’s what grandma used to call video games back in the day when it was a bright summer day and you were holed up in your room playing Chrono Cross or whatever: “STOP PLAYING THOSE DAMN COMPUTER GAMES AND GO OUTSIDE.” The first essay was a review I wrote on Final Fantasy XII, which you can still read but is about 5,000 words too long and so dry that I wouldn’t recommend it. But after that essay, oncomputer.games veered into more bizarre territory, merging philosophy, history, personal stories, and even tanuki lore with computer games. Between my friend and me, we wrote about 23 long-form essays before it all got too competitive, and we basically ended up wanting to rip each other’s heads off; and by the end of 2023, some nasty words were exchanged via text message, at which point my friend deleted all his stuff from the site and didn’t speak to me for over a year. And I wrote about this exact situation in some detail in the essay/short story titled I, SEPHIROTH, which can be read on the site, so I won’t get into all that here.

In December 2024, my friend and I got back in touch and mended the grievous psychic wound, but for about a year there, I imagine we were both stewing in envy and denial and angst, at least I was. I let the oncomputer.games domain name lapse, and the site fell into obscurity, but I kept writing oncomputer.games-style essays for a while, posting them on a different site, howdoyouspell.cool, and then eventually on Substack, and then eventually on Dreamwidth.

About a month ago, however, I realized that my desire to write was waning a bit, and I started thinking back to those oncomputer.games days, about how much I was writing back then, even though most of my writing was pretty bad, and I realized something: the competition between my friend and me motivated me, drove me to write when I otherwise would not have written, and I started to miss those days. I thought to myself, if I could temper that competitive spirit with some self-awareness, and use it all in a friendly way, perhaps that will drive me to write more, and frankly oncomputer.games was just cool as fuck, if I do say so myself. So I texted my friend out of the blue and said, “Hey, let’s do oncomputer.games again,” and surprisingly he had been thinking the same thing, and so immediately he said YES.

They say never to lease an apartment or start a business with your best friend, or at least I think they do, and I know this to be true from firsthand experience, but I hvae awlays had a hrad tmie wtih teh wohle leanring tihng. I guess we’ll see how long this lasts before we're both dead or dying.

But so and anyway, about a week ago, I renewed the oncomputer.games domain name, spent several hours on the Wayback Machine copying my friend’s old deleted essays, reposting those deleted essays and backdating them to their original post dates, and then I uploaded all my own OCG-style stuff that wasn’t originally posted on OCG to OCG, and now I’m working on an essay titled Breath of the Now Now. And I have ideas for other stuff too, like an essay about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time titled “Pulling the Master Sword,” recounting carefree events from my childhood, pre-“pulling the Master Sword,” and comparing them to my responsibility-ridden adulthood, post-“pulling the Master Sword,” and another one using Chrono Cross to argue for and against determinism and free will. Knowing me, both of these essays will probably end up not happening at all now, now that I’ve loosely committed to them here, but we’ll see.

So yeah. That’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve also been reading I Am a Cat, which is a classic Japanese novel told from the perspective of a cat with no name that satirizes human behavior, and I’ve been listening to the band Ivy a lot, particularly their album Apartment Life, and I’ve just recently been listening to Gorillaz’s new album The Mountain, which has this one song, “Orange County,” that’s one of the catchiest songs in the universe, so maybe you shouldn’t give that one a listen unless you want the little whistle melody stuck in your head for days.

Anyway. I think, going forward, with my focus for the time being on writing long-form essays for oncomputer.games, I’ll use this space to write more general “what’s going on in my life” journal entries, like an old LiveJournal from the early 2000s or something, and occasionally I may post essays or short stories that wouldn’t fit on oncomputer.games here.

But actually who knows. My mind could change tomorrow. I have recently given up trying to wrangle the old gray matter, instead just going where it wants to take me, with the flow, as they say. When it comes to hobbies and other activities meant to be fun, I’ve found that forcing myself to do something contrary to my immediate whimsy makes those things not very fun at all, and after a long day of adulting or whatever, what I really want is simply to relax and enjoy myself, within reason.

It may be a little hedonistic, but right now, with where my head’s at, and with all the crazy shit that’s going on in the world, I think a little bit of hedonism won’t hurt.

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alien soul

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 04:08:36 GMT

My sister says that I was an alien from another planet in my past life. She says that, when I died my most recent death, my alien soul chose to reincarnate on Earth to “try it out.” She says that Earth is the worst place to reincarnate, that it has a terrible reputation among all the sentient souls, that it's a sort of “hell world” that sentient souls don't normally reincarnate on unless they’ve been punished or have something to prove.

What am I trying to prove, sister?

My sister says that, back in 2019, she went to a spirit medium who, for some reason, told her all this stuff about me. My sister says the spirit medium told her, “There is someone very close to you who is an alien soul.” And when my sister asked, “Who, who is the alien soul?” the spirit medium responded, “Wait, wait, hold on, the veil is thick tonight, but I see him, he’s tall, very tall, dark, a shadowy, dark figure, a skeptic, a soul who believes in nothing, wait, wait, just a moment, here he comes, the veil is thinning, dark, tall, distant, very distant, he wears a scowl, a deep scowl, he’s saying your name now, he’s close to you, maybe a cousin, a family member, a tall, dark family member.” And my sister goes, “That sounds like my brother, could it be my brother?” And then the spirit medium goes, “Ah yes, yes, that’s right, of course, it’s your brother, I see it clearly now, his previous form, from across the stars, a rare alien soul, he chose to be here, but he should not be here.” And that’s how my sister came to learn of my true origins.

So of course she’s dead now. I had to zap her with my ray gun. Some things just should not be known by earthlings. We Zeta Reticulans, or Grays as the humans like to call us, have many secrets, many schemes and machinations that, if the powerful elite on Earth were to learn of them, would lead to all sorts of trouble. What do you think happened to JFK?

Although, if I’m being serious, who knows what I was before I was a Zeta Reticulan. I could have been a fish, or a dragonfly, or a COVID-19. Those who don’t believe in reincarnation often say things like, “It doesn’t make sense: if you die, you would have to instantly be replaced by a new baby, and there are not enough humans on Earth at any given moment to sustain constant reincarnation like this; the math doesn’t work.” And maybe they would be right, if humans only reincarnated into other humans. But according to my sister and various spirit mediums, those non-believers are wrong, because what they don’t know is that anything can reincarnate into anything else, anywhere. Case in point: me, once a Zeta Reticulan born on Glorp-7, now a human born on Earth. Across the universe, there are infinite vessels to inhabit. What these non-believers also don’t know, according to my sister and various spirit mediums, is that you could die tomorrow but be reincarnated on the same planet 500 years later, meaning the soul does not adhere to the numbers on your wristwatch. Apparently, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in the non-believer’s philosophy.

My sister, I’ll call her T, she’s very big into this spirit medium stuff. This is how she knows so much about reincarnation and the soul. She’s been to see a spirit medium many times. It all started about fifteen, twenty years ago, when her boyfriend died. I’ll call him B. My sister gets obsessed with men, gravitates toward them, makes them her world. Although she doesn’t completely give herself up to them, she likes to exert control, gently manipulate, subtly dominate them, but in doing this, she becomes entirely dependent on them in a weird way. And she was entirely dependent on B.

B was a nice, charismatic guy, and he treated his girl “like a princess,” per his own words, but he was also a thief and drug dealer who stole money not only from me but also from everyone else in my family. One time, this was back when I was a young alien soul of about seventeen or so, I made the rookie mistake of showing him where in my bedroom I kept my money for some reason, and of course the next week that money was gone. I knew it was him but never confronted him about it. What’s an alien soul to do with money, anyhow?

But like I said, T and B didn’t just steal stuff from me but also from everyone else in my family. They once lived with my aunt and, after about a month of living with my aunt, they stole all of her jewelry and sold it to different pawn shops all across the county for drug money, I presume.

Although, back then, my alien soul didn’t understand why my sister and B did this, and I barely even understand it now, surely they knew they couldn’t hide this from my aunt for very long. Surely they knew that my aunt would notice her jewellery was missing. Was the short-term desire to get high really so powerful that it overrode all basic sense? Perhaps this is a stupid question. If I’ve learned anything from my time here on Earth, it’s that human souls are so racked with crippling addictions, insatiable desires, and harmful compulsions that, when observed without context, their behavior seems absolutely fucking nonsensical and insane. Fortunately, we Zeta Reticulans don’t have to worry about any of that; we just desire gold to wire our spaceships.

Anyway, T and B tried to be sneaky about it, selling individual pieces of jewelry here and there every few weeks to avoid my aunt noticing her entire jewelry cabinet was suddenly empty. But my aunt’s no idiot, so of course she very quickly noticed her stuff was missing and just as quickly figured out who was behind it, because who else would be behind it if not the drug-addicted family members living in the spare bedroom? My aunt confronted T and B, and they eventually admitted their crimes, but they didn’t have the money anymore, as they had already spent it all on drugs, meaning my aunt had to buy back the jewelry from the pawn shops herself, with her own money. So she bought back the stuff that was sentimental to her, leaving the rest behind. And then, of course, she kicked out T and B and didn’t speak to them again for a very long, long time.

It was over ten years before she spoke to T again, and it would be an eternity before she ever spoke to B again, because, well, he’s dead now.

Just a few months after the whole jewelry incident, B was driving while high on Xanax. He crashed into a school bus. The school bus was full of kids. B died instantly. Thankfully, none of the kids were harmed. The whole thing made it into the local paper.

That’s how T got into spirit mediums. B was the love of her life, supposedly, and died in a car crash, and this broke her in more ways than one. Before the crash, T was a lost soul, clinging to whatever man stole her heart; after the crash, she’s still a lost soul, but now, instead of men, she clings to crystals and witchcraft and spirit mediums. This sounds like harsh judgement, but it’s just the facts.

Sometimes T will talk to B’s soul through a spirit medium. B, through the medium, will tell T that he misses her, that they’ll be together again soon one day, and this makes T cry. She cries for a long time after these sessions. She calls me afterward sometimes and cries. I am a skeptic, but on these calls I try to be understanding. I try to cheer her up, but for some reason the skeptic always ends up coming out. I tell her to stop going to the spirit mediums, that they are taking advantage of her, that they deal in death, peddle false hopes and lies, and they make her feel worse so that she will keep coming back, keep coming back to talk to B, who is not actually talking to her at all, because he’s dead, dead and gone.

And after these calls, I feel bad. So now, when she calls, I just don’t say anything at all.

My sister says that I don’t understand. She says that I am an alien soul and that I have a hard time feeling human emotions and that I lack human empathy. She says all alien souls lack human empathy and have a hard time feeling human emotions. She says the spirit medium told her this. I try to tell her this is not true, but she doesn’t believe me.

But one time she told me that she wished she was an alien soul.

So I asked her, “If alien souls can’t feel human emotion, why would you want to be an alien soul?”

And she said, “Isn’t it obvious?”

She says that Earth is the worst place to reincarnate to, that it’s a hell world. She says that no sentient soul chooses to reincarnate here, but says that the spirit medium told her something like, “Some souls have to reincarnate here as a punishment; others, at a certain point in the cycle, can choose where they want to be reborn, and those souls, those that can choose, almost never choose Earth, and those that do, they have something to prove.”

T says that she must have been punished, because she has nothing to prove.

But she says that I do, that I have something to prove. She says that I am an alien soul, that I chose to reincarnate here on Earth just to prove to the other souls that I could do it, that I could endure it, so that I could say Earth wasn’t so bad, so that I could hold my head high and say that I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. She says this is something I would do, that it fits my personality.

She's wrong.

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ursula of earthsea

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 05:54:43 GMT

When was the last time you sat down with a book and just got totally lost in it? I’m talking about hours flying by, people looking for you because you’ve forgotten all your worldly responsibilities. I’m talking about out-of-body experiences wherein you’re like hanging out with characters from the book, a psychosis-like dissociative state in which, while reading, nothing else matters because the world you once knew has melted away, replaced by the world of the book. I’m talking about feeling as if you’re personally involved with the author, like you know their thoughts and can relate to them on some deep, profound level. I’m talking about feeling as if the book was written for you and you alone, like it speaks directly to your soul somehow. I’m talking about being overcome with intense longing whenever you can’t read the book, as if, whenever you put it down, it becomes like a long-lost lover, the one that got away, the one you dream about.

When was the last time you felt like that about a book?

The last time I felt like that was actually a couple of weeks ago when I decided, after watching the Studio Ghibli movie for the tenth time or so, to pick up A Wizard of Earthsea, written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published in 1968. It’s a high-fantasy novel set in a world called Earthsea, an ocean world with thousands of little islands, all with different cultures and customs and whatnot, where magic exists and is performed by knowing and using a thing’s “true name.” The story is about a gifted young mage named Duny, whose true name is Ged, though he mostly goes by his use-name, Sparrowhawk, and it follows him in the third person as we watch him grow from a stubborn, prideful child to a slightly less stubborn, more humbled adult. It’s essentially a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story, a story about coming to grips with oneself, or more specifically, coming to grips with one’s inner darkness. And there’s just something magical about it. A Wizard of Earthsea feels eternal, like a story that was always meant to be told, like it was floating around in the great aether of stories out there, just waiting for someone like Ursula K. Le Guin, with her beautiful mind and unbridled talent, to come along and put it to paper.

I can’t tell you what it was specifically about A Wizard of Earthsea that so entranced me; maybe it was the fast-paced storytelling, the epic-poem-like prose, the general mysteriousness of the world, or maybe it was just a right-moment-right-time type of thing, or maybe some sort of dark sorcery. But from the very first page, something hooked me and did not let go. Some books, when I’m reading them, my mind will drift; I’ll start thinking about work, or what I’m doing tomorrow, or some conversation I had earlier that day, and although I will read the words on the page, I won’t be able to recall them minutes later. But this was never the case with A Wizard of Earthsea. I absorbed every word fully, anticipating each new word with bated breath, thinking of nothing else but the words, never once becoming bored with them. I was so into this book that I finished it in less than two days, and while it’s not a long book by any means, only about 200 pages or so, this is still a record for me. Most books I read take the span of several weeks or months to finish, depending on length, but not this one, this one I could not put down.

Maybe I got sucked in because I felt a deep connection with Sparrowhawk, who starts his journey as a stubborn, prideful young boy but, after dealing with problems that were entirely of his own making, becomes changed, wiser, by the end. Throughout the book, Sparrowhawk makes a fool of himself and has to deal with the consequences right up until the very end, and this is how I feel literally every day about my own life. Sparrowhawk’s journey felt allegorical to my own, especially my growing up, my dropping out of high school, my being forced to get a job, my hating that job, my slowly learning how to take care of myself, my slowly learning how to take accountability for my own bullshit, and my slowly coming to grips with all the dark aspects of my personality. The only difference between me and Sparrowhawk is that Sparrowhawk is an innately powerful wizard who can talk to dragons and turn himself into a dragon, and me, well, I’m just your average low-talent 21st-century idiot living comfortably in a first-world country, so maybe we’re not actually all that similar now that I’m thinking about it. Yet somehow it still felt like Ursula K. Le Guin was writing about me, like she had tapped into the young male adolescent psyche, perfectly capturing all the stupid pride and compulsive contrarianism of that age, and this left me in total awe, left me wondering how the hell Ursula K. Le Guin, a woman of 38 at the time of writing A Wizard of Earthsea, was able to capture all that without having experienced it herself. How could she have possibly known what it was like? She must have grown up around a lot of stupid boys.

At the time of its release, A Wizard of Earthsea was labeled “children’s literature,” but the book is by no means a children’s book. Sure, it’s fast-paced and entertaining, with cool wizards and big dragons and powerful magic, which is partly why it’s such a joy to read, but underneath that high-fantasy crust is a mantle both philosophical and spiritual: concepts like “identity” and “the self” are explored through Sparrowhawk’s coming-of-age journey; ideas like “truth” and “knowledge” are examined through the magic system involving “true names,” begging questions like “how are things named to begin with?” and “does language actually have anything to do with it?” The novel also explores Taoist concepts like balance and harmony, as major plot points revolve around Earthsea’s balance being disrupted due to the irresponsible use of magic. The book is also dark as hell: wars are going on, slavery is a thing, people die left and right, and there are no happy endings, no bangs, only whimpers, meaning it’s definitely not your standard children’s fantasy novel. But it’s no Game of Thrones either; it’s not shocking simply for the sake of being shocking. A Wizard of Earthsea’s darkness exists for good reason, to support its overarching themes. And yes, I know, this all sounds heavy-handed and intellectual and whatnot, but Ursula K. Le Guin writes this stuff into the story so subtly, and with such skill, that the novel never once feels preachy or pretentious, which is another reason I enjoyed reading it so much.

Another thing I like about A Wizard of Earthsea is that, with it not being a standard fantasy novel with romance and happy endings and all that, I was always unsure of what was going to happen next. When reading each page, there was always this sense of nervous dread, and as a result, everything felt high-stakes and serious, which kept me on the edge of my seat. This complements Ursula K. Le Guin’s fast-paced prose because you never have to wait very long to find out what actually happens next. This praise could also be a criticism, depending on your perspective, since all that dread leaves little room for humor. The story and dialogue are full of wit, but there are no laugh-out-loud moments, not even a single chuckle. The prose takes itself very seriously, like an epic poem, mythology almost, yet the language is neither flowery nor hard to parse nor eye-roll-inducing, which is some kind of feat. The prose is actually very simple and to the point, like: “Sparrowhawk sailed to this place, this is what he saw, this is what he felt, this is what he did,” meaning a lot of stuff happens; Sparrowhawk’s journey is sprawling and dense, even though the novel itself is only about 60,000 words or so. And since a lot of stuff happens and so much of that is subtly injected with philosophical and spiritual subtext, it’s one of those books that, depending on where you’re at in life and what headspace you’re in, can be interpreted in many different ways, like as a simple high-fantasy adventure, or an allegory for the Jungian shadow, or an epic poem full of life lessons, or all of these things at the same time. A Wizard of Earthsea has something for everyone, even if it lacks humor sometimes.

After finishing A Wizard of Earthsea, I was left starving for more, so I ordered the rest of the series off eBay and have been reading through them at about the same pace as I read the first novel. To date, I have read five out of the six Earthsea novels: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, and Tales from Earthsea. I’m working through the final novel, The Other Wind, now. This is the fastest I’ve ever read a series of novels in my entire life, if that tells you anything about the quality of these books. And although I wouldn’t say each novel gripped me quite like A Wizard of Earthsea, the second and third novels come very close. The second novel, The Tombs of Atuan, is another coming-of-age story, just this time about a young girl in a cult, examining the ways cults exert control by cutting people off from their families and distorting the truth, but it’s a much slower burn than the first novel. The third novel, The Farthest Shore, follows Sparrowhawk once again as he seeks to stop a wizard named Cob from eliminating death, thus making all beings immortal, and I enjoyed this one a lot, especially the resolution in which Sparrowhawk basically out-philosophizes Cob about life and death: “In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal? What is it but death, death without rebirth?” This highlights a common theme in the Earthsea books: there is no true villain, no Big Bad to defeat, only differing viewpoints, differing circumstances, differing environmental pressures, and as such, conflict resolution is never as simple as just “kill the bad guy, save the world.” This is a core philosophy of the Earthsea novels.

And this brings me to an almost entirely different topic altogether, the Studio Ghibli film Tales from Earthsea, which doesn’t seem to understand the core philosophy of the Earthsea series at all, which is why I say “an almost entirely different topic altogether,” because it’s just barely Earthsea. I would like to say that I had read the novels before watching the film, but this would be a blatant lie. The film actually introduced me to Earthsea, years and years ago, and for that I thank Studio Ghibli, although I should have read the novels much much sooner. The film doesn’t really get the books or follow them even loosely, instead only using the names of people, places, and concepts from all six books to tell a totally new story that ends up being basically incomprehensible and, worst of all, doesn’t spiritually align with the themes of Ursula K. Le Guin’s original work. For example, the film is full of blood and violence, which the books only rarely depict, and Cob is positioned as the Big Bad Villain, with the climax resulting in Cob’s death at the hands of Sparrowhawk and his companions, which resolves all the conflicts in the movie. Ursula K. Le Guin herself was not happy with how Studio Ghibli adapted Earthsea, but rather than putting words in her mouth, I’ll just share what she actually wrote about the film:

“Much of it was exciting. The excitement was maintained by violence, to a degree that I find deeply untrue to the spirit of the books … Both the American and the Japanese filmmakers treated these books as mines for names and a few concepts, taking bits and pieces out of context, and replacing the story/ies with an entirely different plot, lacking in coherence and consistency. I wonder at the disrespect shown not only to the books but to their readers … in the film, evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain, the wizard Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems. In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions.”

Her full response can be found in her online archive. I include it here because, in her critique, the soul of her philosophy is revealed. And after reading the Earthsea novels, I agree with her critique completely. But it’s funny because, without this film, I would have never known about Earthsea, so the film still holds a special place in my heart. And, divorced from the source material, it is a beautiful film, full of great environments and smooth animation and wonderful music, it’s just doesn’t hold a candle to the Earthsea novels, especially A Wizard of Earthsea.

I’m confident in saying that A Wizard of Earthsea is one of the best novels I’ve ever read, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone, even those who are put off by fantasy or science fiction. Before I read A Wizard of Earthsea, I had this weird hang-up about fantasy novels. I had read stuff like The Hobbit and liked it, but I had started so many others, like A Song of Ice and Fire and Brandon Sanderson’s stuff and whatnot, and been so unimpressed that I had developed this idea that fantasy novels were pretty much all escapist fiction that couldn’t really tell me anything about my life. So I found myself gravitating more toward literary fiction, as it felt more meaningful, more substantial. But I was wrong. I was being close-minded, as I can often tell so clearly in hindsight. There is deep insight to be gained from all writing, even if, on the surface, that writing might seem like a run-of-the-mill adventure story, there is almost always something more meaningful going on underneath if you are just willing to dig a little bit. I realize that now. In Sparrowhawk, I saw myself. In his journey, I saw my journey. A Wizard of Earthsea has changed me.

Ursula K. Le Guin passed away on January 22, 2018. She had incredible thoughts and ideas. She spoke to me, and many others, through her writing. Sometimes I wish she were still alive so that I could write her a letter or an email or something, so I could tell her how much her work means to me. But then I remember her words, the words she spoke to me through Sparrowhawk, her words about an old Earthsea woman’s inevitable death.

“Aye, that's a consequence of being alive.”

And then I smile, grateful for all she’s left behind.

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you ever read the crow?

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 05:48:02 GMT

I feel the need to preface this entire entry with the following: I don’t like what I’ve written here, it meanders without making a cogent point, but I’m posting it anyway because, one, sunk-time fallacy, and two, I’m too lazy to “fix” it and have lost interest in doing so, and three, I don’t really care that much, although I do care enough to post this preface to “save face” with all three of my readers. Anyway, on with the 3443-word ramble.

Let’s say you’re a detective. You’re working a case involving a serial sex-trafficker murderer who has eluded capture for five years or something like that. The guy is always just barely slipping away, killing more people. He’s killed at least 15 people so far that you know of, according to the file. You’re tracking down a new lead for this case, a tip you got in your email last night, and this takes you to a house off the beaten path, a log cabin in the woods just outside town. The front door is cracked open; there’s a putrid smell coming from inside. You cover your nose with your collar and push into the house proper, removing your pistol from its holster and aiming it out like they taught you in training. In the kitchen, you notice mounds of meat, maybe animal, maybe human, lying in a mess of blood on the countertop. There is a trail of red leading to a door in the kitchen hallway. You radio for backup, then walk up to the door, noticing that the knob is wet with blood. You gag a little bit, lower your collar, and take a pair of plastic gloves, slipping them on, then twist the knob with your gloved hand. There is no light beyond the door, only a void pulsating with almost supernatural dread. You pull out your flashlight, turn it on, and hold it beside your pistol. The cone of light reveals a long, narrow stairwell, cement walls, and blood, smears and handprints of blood. You follow the blood down the steps into a small room where there is another door, a metal door with a latch that appears to be unlatched. You pull the door open to reveal a massive walk-in freezer room. There is a single bulb hanging from the middle of the room, swinging back and forth, casting a dim light on the bruised, battered bodies of once-living people dangling from meat hooks. There are dozens of them, missing arms, legs, faces, breasts, parts of faces, scrotums, and scalps. Strips of yellow-green flesh drip off some of the corpses, forming little piles below them. You feel bile rise in your throat; you swallow it, tighten your pistol grip, then notice something: a figure, a figure in the middle of the room. It’s a man, thin, balding, wearing a fur-collared jacket stained with blood. It’s him, the killer, the man you’ve been searching for. He’s on his knees, hunched over, making smacking and slurping noises. There’s something on the floor in front of him. It’s a human body. He’s hunched over the body. It’s missing an arm. You notice the man, whose back is turned to you, is holding something up to his mouth, something long and appendage-like. It’s the arm. He is eating flesh and drinking blood, making smacking and slurping noises. He has not noticed you. He is just there, on his knees, in the middle of the freezer room, hunched over, eating flesh off a human arm like some sort of storybook monster. You see the dead body below the feasting man, stiff-faced, young, stuck in its last look of wide-eyed horror. You don’t know what to do. It strikes you as almost ridiculous how blatantly evil this scene is. You know this monster has killed at least 15 people, more if you count the bodies on meat hooks. You know that if he gets out, he will do it again. He will find more victims. There’s no reform for this creature. He has thrown away his Human Race Membership Card. You lift your gun. You have a clear shot. It occurs to you that you could kill the beast right now, maybe even claim it was self-defense, that it was justified. Who’s going to know? Hell, who’s going to care? Wouldn’t you be doing everyone a favor, removing this vile creature from the world? Your finger inches toward the trigger. And then, well, I don’t know, then what?

Do you pull the trigger, thereby ridding the world of this monster, or do you arrest him, put him on trial, and hope that he’s found guilty? Maybe he’ll be thrown in prison for the rest of his life, or maybe he’ll be sentenced to death due to the heinous nature of his crimes.

All this begs the question: Do you, or does the state, have any right to take another human’s life, even if that person has basically thrown away their Human Race Membership Card? This is pretty much the core question behind any justice killing, whether it be capital punishment or vigilantism. Does anyone have the right? What does it even mean to “have the right?" Who bestows these rights? Are these rights God-given, or are they a construct of society, or are they something else entirely? Is it true what all the superheroes say, that if we kill the bad guys, we become like the bad guys? Is it really that simple, that black and white?

Well, spoilers for the rest of the entry, but I don’t actually know the answer to any of these questions. I just thought that, through rambling here, I might come to understand my own position better. But before I get into all that, I have a question for you.

Have you ever read The Crow, or maybe watched the movie?

The Crow is a comic book published in 1988, written and illustrated by James O’Barr. It’s about a young man, Eric Draven, who, after he and his wife are murdered by a group of thugs, comes back to life as an immortal avenger, possessed by the spirit of a mystical crow, to enact revenge. The whole appeal of The Crow is that it’s a violent revenge fantasy with a dark, beautiful aesthetic. The entire comic is drawn in this super moody black-and-white style, with lots of violence, blood, and gore, all presented without even the slightest hint of critical introspection. In fact, there’s such a lack of introspection that one can’t help but think that The Crow reveals something about the author, James O’Barr himself, who had to have been working through some seriously dark shit as he was writing and illustrating this book. It’s easy to assume that The Crow is some sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy on behalf of James O’Barr, and if true, his wishes are both violent as hell and superficial as hell, considering that The Crow himself is depicted as a gorgeous American bishonen, even as he’s brutally killing his victims. He’s got a chiseled jaw, dark shoulder-length hair, an Adonis-like physique drawn in near-perfect anatomical detail, and a penchant for black leather and goth makeup. James O’Barr even made it a point to add a number of full-page illustrations showing The Crow in hyper-sexualized poses reminiscent of Michelangelo’s David, portraying him as a sort of pinup girl of death, if that tells you anything about the author’s mental state. It’s also obvious that O’Barr was a mega goth in the 80s, as The Crow has to be one of the most goth-coded comic books ever created, both in its visuals and in the fact that it’s full of song lyrics from bands like Joy Division and The Cure, all plainly cited, which is one of the things that originally drew me to the comic book.

Back in the mid-2000s, when I was a teenager, The Crow was like a perfect match for me. It combined all my adolescent rage, all my musical tastes, all my woe-is-me bullshit, and my preference for violent, disturbing media into one irresistible package. I remember the first time I saw the comic. It was during summer break, and I was at the corporate bookstore. The Crow was pulled out of the row of graphic novels as if someone had just been looking at it but forgotten to slide it back into place on the shelf. I was immediately captivated, thumbing through its pages, awed by the unique art style, the tasteful violence, and the Joy Division quotes. I was so captivated that, before even purchasing it, I had decided it was my favorite comic book ever. That was pretty much how I decided what I liked back then, through style-over-substance snap judgments.

As a teenager, style over substance isn’t such a big deal; it’s actually kind of expected teenage behavior. But as an adult, this shortcoming is harder to ignore. It’s especially hard to ignore with The Crow, which is all style over substance to an irresponsible, arguably unethical degree, as it’s an unapologetic revenge fantasy promoting an ethical system that, if taken to its logical conclusion, probably produces an endless cycle of violence. I mean, The Crow comes back to life, kills the thugs, who I’m sure had kids of their own, and those kids are likely to seek revenge for the deaths of their thug parents, turning them into little avengers themselves, which will no doubt lead to more violence, which will only produce more little avengers, and so on and so forth. Such is the cycle of retribution, and you know what they say: an eye for an eye, no more eyes, or whatever.

Upon first read, it’s easy to think that the violence in The Crow is justified, especially when you’re an edgy teenager. After all, Eric Draven, The Crow, had been shot in the head by thugs before becoming The Crow, and this headshot didn’t kill him immediately, only paralyzed him, leaving him conscious enough to watch the thugs do awful things to his wife before finishing her off. Eric, with a hole in the back of his head, watched all this terrible shit happen to his wife, and it filled him with rage and despair. He becomes a hungry ghost, starving for revenge. The idea here is that Eric cannot go peacefully into that good night without first wreaking serious havoc on those who wronged him. And in some ways, he’s also like a karmic consequence made manifest, distilled to its purest form, that is, if you kill someone, The Crow will come back from the dead and kill you, like a cautionary tale of retribution, of getting what’s coming to you, of sleeping in the bed you made, all that stuff. So, again, it’s easy to think that the violence is justified. Eric goes out as The Crow and brutally murders all those who wronged him, and, reading it, it feels good, it feels right, like you yourself are the one getting the revenge. You are vicariously killing people through Eric Draven. Watching him torture remorseless thugs as The Crow appeals to some base, primordial urge deep inside, that shoulder-devil whisper to hurt people whenever they hurt you. The revenge feels justified, necessary almost. Certainly, you can’t have these evil thugs roaming the streets; someone has to put them down, and who better to do it than one of their own victims? The moment those thugs raped and killed Eric’s wife was the moment they threw away their Human Race Membership Cards, the moment that “human rights” might as well no longer apply to them because they are no longer part of the “human” category at all. So, you end up cheering Eric on as he’s killing these thugs because, well, these guys are bad dudes, obviously. They deserve it, right? They deserve to have their skulls repeatedly crushed with a hammer or their brains blown out all over the walls or whatever other heinous shit we can think of. And not only do they deserve it, we as readers demand it. We demand our pound of flesh, our revenge; we sit on the edge of our seats, quickly thumbing through pages, demanding violence, drooling as The Crow bashes some dude’s brains out with a hammer. We cannot get enough. The Crow, the comic book, does this to you. It makes you want it. And it delivers. Eric gets his revenge, and it feels great.

Well, it feels great until you close the book and start to think about it for more than two seconds.

By the end of the comic, after Eric kills all the thugs, it is implied that he stops being The Crow because his soul can finally rest or whatever, as if it’s just that simple, as if all you have to do to find peace is just kill all the dudes in your life who have wronged you. If we were to draw a moral from the story, it would be something like this: “Some people are just so bad that they deserve to die, and you might even deserve to be the one who kills them, and yes, killing them will probably make you feel better.” It quickly becomes apparent that one’s enjoyment of The Crow hinges entirely on not analyzing it too much, or at all.

Because when you start to analyze The Crow, you start to feel really weird and conflicted. The whole thing just seems wrong. But it’s hard to explain why it’s wrong. How can it be wrong when, while reading it, it just feels so right? It doesn’t make sense. The thugs deserved it. They raped and killed Eric’s wife, for God’s sake. They threw away their Human Race Membership Cards.

So now, in hindsight, why does killing them feel so wrong? Is it just me?

Take the long-winded hypothetical at the start of this journal entry, for example. I don’t think I could kill the monster, even though I recognize that the guy is a monster and probably shouldn’t be allowed to mingle with civilized people. I still wouldn’t kill him. I don’t know why not. Sometimes I think about Batman, or Spider-Man, or whoever, when they’re given the choice to kill the villain or let them live. This applies to Eric and the Thugs, too. There are many opportunities for Batman to just kill the Joker, for example, yet Batman never does, even though he would face literally no repercussions for doing so. In fact, by killing the Joker, Batman would probably be saving countless lives. So, if you think about it from that perspective, shouldn’t Batman kill the Joker? Would Batman not be at least a little bit culpable for the lives that the Joker takes if Batman were given the chance to kill the Joker but did not take it? I don’t know. Is it that black and white? Batman, after all, is not controlling the Joker. The Joker is his own man. He makes his own choices, and he chooses to kill people. Batman does not choose for the Joker to kill people; the Joker chooses for himself. So why would we ever consider Batman responsible for the Joker’s choices? Is it because we know, as readers of the comic books, that Batman is the only one capable of stopping the Joker, therefore Batman should use his great power to kill the Joker, because otherwise people are going to die, and since Batman knows that, he should therefore kill the Joker? If Batman is passive here, is he responsible for deaths the Joker causes, and by extension, is he responsible for the Joker’s own choices? If so, how far do we take that?

In the real world, couldn’t we apply this argument to all sorts of people? For example, in the case of a certain president, are we all culpable for the deaths of immigrants simply because we haven’t unalived the man ourselves? If we are passive, are we responsible for those deaths? Wouldn’t that make a lot of people responsible? How can so many people be responsible in this case? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s almost meaningless, these words like “culpable” and “responsible.” Semantics, really. I am not responsible for the choices of the president, just as Batman is not responsible for the choices of the Joker. We are only responsible for our own choices. That makes sense to me. But I don’t know. None of this makes any sense, actually. On the one hand, there are arguments for killing the Joker; on the other, there are arguments for not killing the Joker. It’s all a matter of philosophical perspective, I guess.

But perhaps that’s where the problem festers, in philosophical debate. There is a certain passivity in philosophical debate, a certain detachment, where both sides have strong stances on the subject of killing the Joker, for example, but neither side really does anything. Sometimes I think philosophy is less about making cogent points or convincing the other side and more about justifying your position to yourself, to make yourself feel better about a belief that, when you get right down to it, is purely emotional. I think that under all philosophy there is some raw emotion that we either don’t understand or can’t come to grips with for whatever reason. In the Joker example, or the thug example, there’s a raw hatred there, in the gut. You want to kill the Joker, you want to bash the thug’s skull in. There’s something a little gross about this feeling, isn’t there? Now you have to justify why you want to kill the Joker, not to others, but to yourself. And you justify it to yourself by turning the raw emotion into less of an “I want” statement and more of a “We need” statement: “I don’t want to kill the Joker, but we need to kill the Joker because, if not, he will kill lots of people.”

It may sound like a lot of judgment, but I’m just typing up whatever words come to mind here, some of which I might not even agree with tomorrow or in a week or whatever, so there’s no real judgment here. In fact, I think it’s almost impossible for me to say definitively whether we should kill the Joker or the thugs or whatever. What’s not impossible for me to say, however, is this: for me, personally, it feels wrong to kill anyone, even the Joker or the thugs.

In Buddhist mythology, there’s this term they use, “hungry ghost,” used to refer to the spirits of people who died with great jealousy, anger, or negativity in their hearts. In Japanese mythology, these hungry ghosts are doomed to wander the Earth, endlessly seeking sustenance for their insatiable negative-emotion appetites, often shown eating human excrement, sometimes even corpses, in a vain attempt to satiate themselves. These hungry ghosts can never escape samsara, the cyclical process of birth, death, and rebirth, because their souls are forever attached to the material world through their anger and jealousy. A core idea of Buddhism is to break the samsaric cycle by reaching a state of enlightenment, and you supposedly reach this state of enlightenment by eliminating suffering. You eliminate suffering by ridding yourself of desire and attachment, and you do this, supposedly, through focused meditation. Again, hungry ghosts cannot reach a state of enlightenment, because they are still attached to the material world, filled with negative emotions stemming from desire and attachment.

This is not meant to be a primer on Buddhist ideology. I only bring this up because I think it brings me closer to understanding why The Crow feels so wrong to me.

It feels so wrong because Eric Draven is a hungry ghost, filled with the negative desire for revenge, and yet the story implies that only through satiating this negative desire can Eric be at peace. But I don’t think peace, or any semblance of contentedness, can be achieved through fostering the negative emotions that produce a desire for revenge. I know, personally, that I have never felt content after giving in to anger, if anything, I’ve always felt worse after indulging those negative emotions. So I don’t buy for a minute that, by indulging his worst impulses, like bashing a thug’s head in with a hammer, Eric is somehow reaching some state of enlightenment. In fact, it feels like he’s moving away from enlightenment when he indulges these terrible urges. It seems to me that any decision born from negative emotion is a wrong decision. I get that Eric is full of anger and hatred because of all the terrible things that have happened to him, that makes sense, but I don’t think he gets a karmic free pass just because he had a terrible experience. The goal for Eric should be to move past the anger and the hatred, not give in to it. I am not convinced that simply killing all the thugs can satiate Eric’s desire for revenge, because his desire for revenge does not come from the material world, it comes from within.

Eric just needs to let it go, otherwise he’ll be a hungry ghost forever.

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while you see a chance, take it, or something

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 20:39:59 GMT

All I could see was a bright white light. It blinded me, dominated my senses. There was a presence above, a presence unlike any I had ever felt before, and it was not an angelic presence or benign; it was malevolent, it was a malevolent presence. I could hear things, little movements, speech in sibilant tongues, “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins for some reason, the sound of a buzzsaw getting closer and closer, coming down on my head, about to tear through my skull. I started panicking a little bit, thinking: where am I? How did I get here? Am I dead? Am I asleep? Was I abducted? Who abducted me? The buzz was getting louder. The bright white was starting to fade. I could see outlines. Was it aliens? Am I in the mothership right now? Are they going to probe me? I started squirming, unable to get up, like my body was weighed down by some sort of heinous gravity, or I was on serious narcotics or something. I started thinking, is this it? Is this how it ends? Did a serial killer whack me on the back of the head and drag me off to his basement? A serial killer who enjoys listening to 80s soft rock as he cuts open his victims? Was I about to be a statistic, a headline on the nightly news? “Man found dismembered, stuffed in refrigerator. Suspect still at large.” I was really freaking out now, squirming and sweating something fierce, and the buzzing was only getting louder, filling my head until it felt like it was coming from my own skull. Slowly, the bright white faded entirely, leaving only those sunspot afterimages, and when my vision cleared, that’s when I saw it: a figure hovering above me, only vaguely human. Malevolent. The lower half of its huge head was all white for some reason, and it had these bulging black eyes, as if they were magnified ten times beyond their normal size somehow. That’s when I realized this was no alien, no serial killer, this was something much, much worse.

This was the fucking dentist.

I was at the dentist. I never go to the dentist. I hate going to the dentist. But there I was, at the dentist, because my wife had guilt-tripped me into going: “A tooth infection can spread to your brain, you know, which can kill you, you know, and we have two kids, you know, and I can’t support this family on a single income, you know,” and so on. So I went to the fucking dentist for the first time in over ten years. And, on that first trip to the dentist, they did a cleaning and told me that my back left molar was decayed to hell, beyond repair pretty much, and that it needed to be pulled as soon as possible, but everything else seemed fine.

And I figured, for ten years not going to the dentist, having only one fucked up tooth was a good score, especially since I both smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, and when I drink coffee I often swish the stuff around in my mouth for a while, which I imagine would cause some enamel problems, at least long-term, like staining or decay, which I guess it did, considering I needed to get a tooth pulled. But still, only one? I guess I’m immune to the normal mortal consequences of not taking care of oneself, or maybe I have a high innate resistance, good stats, high CON, albeit low WIL, STR, CHR, and arguably INT.

So after that first cleaning, the woman behind the counter is all like, “OK, let’s get your extraction scheduled, when’s good for you in the next two weeks?” And I’m all like, look ma’am, I am not doing that, that’s going to fucking hurt, so I’m like, “I’ll need to check my schedule and get back with you.” So I pay and get the hell out of there, scheduling no follow-up and never planning to. When I get home, my wife finds the paper, which says “bad tooth, get it pulled, asap,” and I’m like, “I’ll call them back to schedule it,” but of course I never do, so about a month passes and my wife goes ahead and schedules it for me, which annoys me at first, because, one, I didn’t ask, and two, you can’t smoke or drink out of a straw after getting a tooth pulled, otherwise you run the risk of dry socket, which is when the blood clot over the hole doesn’t form properly, thus leaving exposed bone and nerve endings, which supposedly is one of the worst pains a human being can experience, or so I’ve heard, and hell no, I don’t want that. But then I think maybe they will give me some nice pain medication, and maybe I can take a day off work, and maybe I can use the post-extraction period to stop smoking cigarettes, since I will have strong motivation not to smoke during that period, because lord knows I don’t want dry socket. So I start to think, hey, maybe this won’t be so bad.

The appointment comes around. I’m leaning back in the dental chair. There is 80s soft rock playing. The room is mostly white. There’s white wallpaper and there’s white equipment and the chairs are white and all the people coming in and out of the room are white. The oral nurse, or whatever they’re called, she’s a woman. I’ve never had one not be a woman. She leans me back, checks inside my mouth with mirrors, nods and smiles, and says, “OK, the doctor will be right in. How are you doing today?” And I’m like, “Fine,” but I want to say, “How do you think? I’m at the fucking dentist.” I smile and nod, and I think about sex because I always think about sex when a woman is laying me down on a fucking table and getting real close to my mouth. I can’t help it. My mind always wanders to like, “Is she going to kiss me? Are we going to start taking our clothes off right now?” and how interesting and exciting that would be. I’m not even aroused or anything, I’m just thinking it, saying stuff like “Fine” and nodding and acting like I’m not thinking about anything at all, when of course I’m thinking about sex. She’s buxom and dark-haired and pale and maybe around my age, and she says, “OK, sweetie, well sit tight, the doctor will be right in.” So I sit tight. I observe the room. There are oil paintings of ships and egrets on the walls. It is very nautical for some reason. I start thinking that maybe the dentist here thinks he’s some sort of ship captain or something, like he’s navigating the perilous waters of plaque and decay, or maybe he’s like Ahab and teeth are his Moby Dick. Maybe something real bad involving teeth happened to him in high school or something. Maybe some bully made fun of his teeth, and maybe he’s been on a revenge path ever since. Maybe he derives sick pleasure from yanking teeth out of skulls with metal pliers, watching blood pool up in his patients’ mouths as he jerks his hand back and forth, ripping and tearing the tooth out of the gum. Or maybe he just likes ocean stuff, who knows. Maybe he thinks the sea is calming. Maybe he thinks pictures of the ocean and birds and boats will calm his patients, make them forget that they’re at one of the worst places on Earth: the dentist’s office. Maybe he thinks of himself as doing a service that no one else wants to do, “If not I, who? Who will scrape the plaque, who will banish the decay?” Maybe he thinks of himself as some sort of superhero or something.

The guy who walks into the room is this short, muscular bald man with a trimmed red beard poking out around his white facial mask. He wears nerdy glasses but looks serious about working out every day, like he’s got a routine or something. He says, “Forrest? Nice to meet you. Don’t worry. This won’t hurt a bit.” And I of course say, “What made you want to become a dentist?” And he looks down at me, eyebrow raised, not answering the question. So I add, “Just wondering.” And he says, “Well, my dad was a dentist, this was actually his practice for a while.” And that makes sense, I guess, so I just nod and say, “Is it really not going to hurt? I’ve never had this done before.” And he says, “Not with this, it won’t.” Then he puts this thing over my mouth, and within like five minutes I’m loopy as hell, barely able to keep my eyes open, which is when I have the little alien-abduction episode. Then the attractive nurse comes back, helps keep my mouth open, and the dentist sticks these needles into my gums, which pinch a little bit. It’s at this point that I realize that I have ceded control of my body to random people simply because they took out a lease on a building and stuck a diploma on its walls, and then I start thinking about that one episode of Seinfeld where Jerry suspects that his dentist did naughty stuff to him while he was under because he woke up with his pants unzipped, but I’m too zonked out at this point to analyze or care about this stuff too much. And then before you know it, the dentist has these thick metal pliers or something in my mouth, and I feel this pulling and tugging, this pressure inside there, but there’s no pain whatsoever, and the pressure persists for a while, I’m talking like fifteen minutes. Yacht rock is going through one ear and out the other while they are doing this to me. The tugging and the pressure go on for another minute before the dentist stops, wipes sweat off his brow, and says, “This is the most stubborn tooth I have ever worked with. That’s one good bone you got in there.” And then he takes a different utensil, a bladed one, sticks it in my mouth, and I assume uses it to cut the gums around my hard-headed tooth, to help with extracting it, I guess. Then he starts tugging and pulling it again. I feel no pain but taste lots of blood. Sometimes I tense up at the tugging and the pressure, but then I tell myself, “There is no pain, this will be over soon, relax, relax, relax, calm down calm down, look at the birds,” and so I look at the birds. The dentist keeps going for a while, tugging at the stubborn bone. But then Steve Winwood’s “While You See a Chance” starts playing, opening with one of my favorite synth lines in any song ever, at which point the dentist stops, wipes his brow, and literally says verbatim, “There we go, got a little Winwood going, we’re good now,” and then he goes back to yanking and tugging and pulling while I’m pretend-playing the keyboard on my leg to Winwood. Toward the end of the song, I start to hear this terrible snapping and crunching noise, and then, just like that, pop, out goes the tooth.

“Do you want to see it?” is what he says to me. So I look at the tooth and immediately see why it needed to come out: the whole below-gum portion of it was black with rot. I shudder a little bit, then lean back in the chair. He writes me a prescription for Tylenol-3, which contains codeine, which is a pretty hard narcotic, a natural opiate derived from the opium poppy, used as a pain reliever and cough suppressant, and then he tells me it will be ready in an hour at the local CVS, and that’s it. I leave the ocean room with a gaping hole in my mouth, pay, and get out of there. Then I go to Winn-Dixie, buy some ice cream, and then finally I go to CVS and pick up my drugs.

It’s been almost three days. There is still a gaping hole in my mouth, but I believe the blood clot has formed properly. I haven’t smoked a cigarette since the operation, and I don’t plan on smoking another one any time soon. While you see a chance, take it. I could smell winter on the wind, the milky sweetness of my son’s skin, the hearty aroma of bread cooking in the oven. It had been a long time. I had forgotten. The first day without nicotine, everything and everyone was frustrating to me, but I pushed through it. I kept telling myself, “I have done this before, I have quit cold turkey before, it is all mind over matter, I have free will, control, I am not just my biology, there is something more than blood and bone,” and that’s true: I did quit cold turkey before, without a medical excuse too. And of course, the codeine helped, made me care less, masked the withdrawal. Codeine is like a shortcut to a pleasant day. Like most opiates, it puts you in this easy-going, bubbly mood and makes you not give a shit about the things you normally would give a shit about, yet you still give a shit, if that makes any sense, and you don't feel stupid or anything like that, you’re still totally cognizant, not paralyzed. You can still do stuff. You're still functional. It’s just that the anxiety, the edge, is all gone. Nothing really matters, but you’re still going through the motions. It’s a nice, floaty feeling.

Now, on the dawn of the third day, the urge to smoke has passed, the pain is pretty much gone, but I am still popping these pills as if I’m in the worst pain of my life. I am abusing this codeine, which I think is fine, because it’s not every day you get legal access to hardcore narcotics. I told myself, “While you see a chance, take it. Thank you, Mr. Steve Winwood.” And besides, there are only like five pills left in my bottle of Tylenol-3, which means soon I will be forced to stop abusing the codeine, so no harm done, really. This happens every time I get prescribed pain medication; I go through a little cycle of abuse and addiction. I see the chance and I take it. It’s a temporary vice that doesn’t have many, if any, negative consequences, because there’s literally a hard stop, a point when I am forced to stop, because I run out of pills. It’s interesting because, obviously, consuming opiates when you don’t really need them is dangerous, but since there are only like 15 pills in the bottle, it’s not so dangerous that you’re hopelessly addicted to the stuff by the end of it, because, one, I haven’t consumed enough, and two, I can’t just get more, at least not easily. To get more, I’d have to lie about my pain, or I’d have to deal with sketchy drug dealers who might kill me, two things I’m not desperate enough to do, because I just haven’t taken enough codeine.

In a way, I’ve replaced my long-term addiction to nicotine, which has had a number of awful side effects like trouble sleeping, trouble waking up, smelling bad all the time, and having to take a break from whatever I’m doing every thirty minutes to smoke, and not to mention, it’s pretty expensive nowadays, with a short-term addiction to codeine that could barely even be called an addiction at all. So, I think this all works out for the better, is what I’m trying to say.

My opinion on the dentist hasn’t changed. I can’t stand going there. I probably won’t go for another few years. And yes, I know that’s very stupid. I know it's irresponsible. But I know myself, and I know how my mind works, and I know I am not going to the dentist for another few years. I just won’t. There are many things I am very childish about; going to the dentist is one of those things. Going to the dentist is not a pleasurable experience for me. I do not like ceding my body and my will to doctors. I do not like being under the preternatural white light. I do not like being teased by nurses. I do not like having needles poked into my gums. I do not like hearing terrible snapping and cracking noises coming from the inside of my mouth. I do not like the taste of blood for three days straight. I do not like the dentist.

But at least one good thing came out of it, I stopped smoking cigarettes. So if there’s a moral here, maybe it’s that even the worst things in the world, like going to the dentist, can have a silver lining. While you see a chance, take it, or something. I don't know. Maybe I’m just high on codeine.

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transcendental noise vol.2: chuck e. cheese, twilight princess, silversun pickups

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 06:21:10 GMT

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who reviewed the album Swoon by Silversun Pickups over at Allmusic.com, gave the album four out of five stars but really didn't have anything nice to say about it or the band themselves. Specifically, he wrote:

“Silversun Pickups avoid unpleasantness to such a great extent on Swoon that they rarely shift tempos or dynamics. They merely wallow in washes of sound, deriving equally from guitars and whispered vocals, never pushing forward, never achieving any sense of momentum, just glimmering in the sunlight. It's pleasant enough, particularly when the breathy vocals fade away to leave behind cascades of guitars, but even at its best, it's nothing more than an approximation of Smashing Pumpkins at their peak, with all the interesting parts stripped away.”

I totally disagree with this, and the second track on the album, “The Royal We,” totally proves me correct, for it is transcendental noise of the highest order. It’s got ugliness. It’s got tempo changes. It’s got loud fuzz and shimmering guitars and vocals that sound like sex. It’s got shifting dynamics. It’s got lyrics about drug addiction and overdosing. It’s got forward-pushing. It’s got momentum. It’s got all the stuff Stephen says it does not have. It starts with Silversun’s signature androgynous vocals, goes into a pumping cello-like guitar chug, layers in washes of feedback-laden fuzz, all while asking the listener, “How many times do you want to die?” over and over. But none of this really reaches the level of transcendental noise; that doesn’t happen until the second half. The thing about “The Royal We” is that it’s almost like two different songs. At the two-minute mark, the tempo shifts completely, which is something Stephen claims the band doesn't do, and then the song becomes something else entirely. Supposedly the song is about drug addiction, and the structure of the song is supposed to mirror a withdrawal-to-next-hit cycle, and it does this very well, because the beginning of the song is aggressive, nervous, impatient, “look over your shoulder,” then at 2:11, it’s like you just took a hit of whatever your drug of choice is: the song abruptly slows down, the guitars get dreamy, and it enters a second chorus, ending with the great, almost sing-song line of “That’s when we fell in love, but not the first time,” at which point the music feels like a tunnel of noise or a rush of blood to the head, like you just shot up heroin or something, then it suddenly shifts back to a leitmotif from earlier in the song, weaving the original verses and first chorus into the structure of the second half of the music, which again is like an entirely different song in and of itself. Then it shifts back to the second chorus again, the “That’s when we fell in love, but not the first time” part, but now the singer is literally shouting this at you for some reason, and the distortion is turned up to like a thousand, and then the druggy tunnel noise comes in again on top of it all as if you’re having an overdose or something, and then you die, figuratively. The way it drops sections, then brings them back, then drops them again, and then pulls back even older sections to top it all off is, in my opinion, genius songwriting. And the song isn’t good just because the structure is genius; it’s also catchy, melodic in a weird way, and super energizing. It’s a car song for sure, meaning you should listen to it while you’re driving because it just chugs along at this incredible motor-like pace even when it’s doing all the slow druggy stuff. The song asks, “How many times do you want to die?” And I guess I want to die over and over again because I have listened to it 55 times this week as of writing this, according to my Last.fm profile.

But “The Royal We” wasn't actually what I wanted to talk about with this entry. I actually don’t like describing music with the written word. I end up using the same phrases and adjectives and whatnot for every damn song. Maybe I just need to build up my vocabulary, learn some music theory or something. I’m not sure. I suspect that music and writing, being two of the great human arts, can only be truly captured through themselves. Writing can never be music, music can never be writing, and neither can hope to fully convey the greatness of the other. That’s my theory, or maybe my excuse.

Anyway. I wanted to kind of talk about Silversun Pickups, as I've been listening to this band since at least 2006, and I have some nostalgic memories linked to their music that I'd like to try to capture here, stuff involving Chuck E. Cheese and basically stealing a kid’s GameCube so that I could play The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess the day it came out.

First, it must be noted, I was an incredibly late bloomer. I watched Blue’s Clues and lied about it to other kids until I was like 13. I had a Blue’s Clues game for my Mac back then, with the discs hidden in my closet, and one time during a sleepover a kid found it and ridiculed me harshly; I'm not bitter about this, it's just something that happened, to give you an example. I didn't get my driver's license until I was 18. And I hung on to Chuck E. Cheese until I was 16, making my grandma Susu drive me and my two good friends, Miles and Matt, to the pizza-arcade combo every winter and summer break when I visited her. I guess my thought process at that age was, since I had had some great times at Chuck E. Cheese as a younger kid, I would try to recreate some of that old magic as an older kid. I hung on to childhood for as long as the world would let me. And this is something I still do now: obsessively try to recreate feelings and situations long past, usually through video games and music and mood lighting. This is one of my core traits. I'm a nostalgic idiot, always have been, even during those peak nostalgia-forming years when you don’t really need to be. I just was. I started pining for the old days like ten years early. And Miles and Matt would indulge me; maybe they were nostalgic idiots too, as they always entertained my childish late-bloomer inclinations. But it should also be noted that I was a bit of a weird late bloomer, because between hiding Blue’s Clues discs and trips to Chuck E. Cheese, I was smoking cigarettes and having sex and doing all that dumb shit teenagers do, meaning I was not immune to the typical trappings of rebellious youth. I was very concerned about image and being “cool” on what I thought were my own terms, but there was always this background feeling of shame, hence why I’d do things like hide the Blue’s Clues discs. Despite the fact that I would tell myself and those around me that I didn’t care what people thought of me, I did in fact care about what people thought of me. I cared very, very much, although I tried hard not to, often to my own detriment, as I was very aloof and standoffish back then. Which is not super important here. What is important, however, is the music and the memories.

Back then, in 2006, Silversun Pickups was by no means my favorite band, but I had their album Carnavas on CD, and I loved the hell out of that album. Between the years 2006 and 2008, that album was a staple of car rides and just in-general hanging out. I used to have one of those black zip-up CD cases, like a CD binder thing, that held about a hundred CDs. Mine had a few band stickers on it, and I had painted the Smashing Pumpkins SP-heart logo thing on the front of it. I remember I would take the discs and album art booklets out of the CD jewel cases and slide them both into the CD binder’s sleeves so that if you were paging through the binder itself you’d only see the booklet with the cool cover art, meaning if you wanted to listen to one of the albums you’d have to dig your fingers behind the booklet a little bit to slide the CD out. I think each page had two sleeves, so if you had the binder fully open you’d see four albums at a time. And I had a lot of cool albums in there, or at least I thought so: I had the whole David Bowie discography in there, a lot of The Cure, all of The Smiths’ stuff, several Smashing Pumpkins records, Synchronicity and Zenyatta Mondatta by The Police, some Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless of course, Silversun Pickups’ Carnavas was in there, a few Cursive albums, and a whole bunch of burned CDs toward the back, because back then I pirated music like a career criminal. That CD binder kind of showcased my ever-evolving musical tastes as a teenager because I got the case from an FYE in the mall when I was like 12 years old and kept it well into my twenties at least. On the first few pages, you had The Cure and some shitty emo bands, which was the kind of stuff I was listening to at 12, and then, as you paged through the binder, the albums got progressively more varied and interesting or whatever. I think I had that CD binder for a little over ten years before it got lost in a move, or maybe I tossed it, I don’t exactly remember. But thinking about it now, it’s a damn shame that I lost it, because that binder is like a sacred relic of my youth, now lost in some landfill somewhere probably. It’s funny how, at a certain point, you look at something and say, “Oh, this thing? I don’t care about this anymore. I’m just going to toss it,” only to find out later that you cared a whole hell of a lot, you just didn’t know it at the time. I’m not trying to justify hoarding, by the way. Materialism is bad for the soul, they say, but in this case, screw that, this is a spiritual matter. I would fucking love to have that CD binder again.

Anyway, that CD binder would sit in the front seat of the car of whichever parental unit was responsible for me at the time back then: if I was back home for school, the case would be in my mom’s car; if I was staying with my grandma Susu during summer or winter break or whatever, it would be in her car; and so on. Back then, I demanded full control of the stereo of whatever car I found myself in, and neither my mom nor my grandma seemed to mind this; in fact, they liked most of my music, except for the heavy, grungier stuff, or anything with screaming, or stuff with audible curse words, but the music I listened to rarely had profanity, so that was never really a problem, and I often played the heavier stuff regardless of their protests, which meant some car rides were full of sighs and sullen looks, but I didn’t care because, one, I was a selfish teenaged brat, and two, I fucking loved music. Still do. I’m always searching for new music.

Back in the mid-2000s, finding new music wasn’t so different from how it is today, though honestly, it might have been better back then. Sure, you didn’t have music streaming services, but you did have Google Search, Wikipedia, Apple iTunes, Blogspot, The Pirate Bay, and a handful of encyclopedic sites dedicated solely to music, like Allmusic.com, a website that has been around for a long, long time. I’ve been browsing Allmusic.com since at least high school, but the site is even older than that, with it first going live in 1994. I remember, during computer lab or whatever, instead of doing schoolwork, I would just go to Allmusic.com, pull up my favorite band’s page, then go through each band listed under the “Related Artists” tab, all to find new music. I would pick new bands to listen to based on a few different factors, most of which superficial as hell. Do I like the band name? Do I like the album art? Are the people in the band attractive, unique, or cool-looking in some way? How obscure is this band? And so on. Once I found a band that seemed interesting, I would decide which album to listen to either by cover art or by the Allmusic rating, then I’d do a Google search that looked something like this: “‘Silversun Pickups’ ‘Carnavas’ ‘Download’ ‘Blogspot,’” and nine times out of ten, I would instantly find a zipped version of the entire album. Because back then, in the mid-2000s, Blogspot was a prime source of free music, probably the best source actually, at least for people in the know. I mean, you could use The Pirate Bay too, to download an entire band’s discography all at once, which was something I did quite often, but you couldn’t find some of the more obscure stuff on The Pirate Bay; for that, you needed to browse Blogspots dedicated to niche music scenes run by hardcore fans. Back then I even created my own Blogspot for music downloads, which you can find on the Wayback Machine, but it was eventually removed from the platform for promoting piracy. I guess at some point in the last decade or so Blogspot cracked down. Back then, I didn’t think too much about the morality of pirating and sharing music online; I just did it because I loved music and wanted to listen to as much music as possible. The thought that musicians needed money or whatever never really occurred to me, for I lived a very privileged white-person life, but I did make it a point to buy physical copies of albums I enjoyed, not for ethical reasons though, but because owning a physical copy made me feel less like a poser and more like a true fan; plus, having the original album booklet and CD to slip into my binder was infinitely cooler than an ugly Memorex CD-R with the band and album name poorly scribbled in Sharpie. The whole process of finding new music back then was exciting and fun for me; it felt different from how discovering new music feels today for some reason. I think finding new music back then actually felt more meaningful because today these streaming services just push new stuff to you constantly without you having to put in any real effort; new singles come out, you listen to them once, you move on to the next one, whereas back in the mid-2000s, you had to put in real effort to download a song, and because of that, you also spent more time with that song, giving you more time to appreciate it. I realize I sound like an old man in a rocking chair smoking a pipe going “back in my day” between fits of coughing or whatever. But back in my day, if I found an album that I really liked, I would listen to it for months, to the point that it colored that whole epoch of my life in the hindsight of my mind’s eye. But nowadays, I’m more inclined to just hit “next,” because there’s seemingly infinite music at my fingertips and I might be missing out if I don’t go go go. I think the easier something is to acquire, the less you might appreciate it. As a society, we seem to conflate instant gratification with instant satisfaction, but these two things are actually inversely related: the faster the gratification, the weaker and more fleeting the satisfaction. The music industry today does not understand this; they are only concerned with clicks and profits. They don’t even care if you actually listen to the music or use the product or whatever, as long as you click and maybe view an ad or two. So basically: Reject modernity, return to Blogspot and physical CDs and MP3 players and stuff, for your very soul may be at stake.

Anyway.

It was during that winter of 2006, when I was staying with Susu, that I was really big into Silversun Pickups’ album Carnavas. That album sort of colored that whole period for me. I must have been around 16 years old, I think. Susu drove this tan BMW that my mom had bought for her, and Carnavas never left that BMW’s CD slot. I had first heard Silversun Pickups on the radio earlier that year. The single “Lazy Eye” got heavy play on Top 100 rock radio throughout the year, which, in hindsight, is kind of surprising because it’s not the sort of song you’d typically hear on popular radio; it sounds sort of like The Smashing Pumpkins circa Siamese Dream mixed with the dreaminess of Slowdive’s Souvlaki or something, both of which, at the time, were albums I really enjoyed, which is probably why the song appealed to me. The song was pretty popular back then, I think they even included it in one of those Rock Band games or whatever. It starts softly with a pretty simple guitar line that has this little twang to it, then the drums kick in, then the vocals, which are androgynous and airy and nasally and weird, and it stays soft for a bit until eventually it gets into all this fuzzy guitar stuff before just exploding with anger for some reason, with the singer just screaming suddenly like you just cut him in line at the DMV or something, and the guitars turn up the distortion and scream right along with him; all this happens while a druggy noise-tunnel effect is going on, which I think is created in true shoegaze fashion using amp feedback fed through weird pedals, and this persists until the very end of the song, which ends almost exactly the same way it started, with that same simple twangy guitar line. The song is actually a lot like “The Royal We,” just more melodic and less structurally interesting. The first time I heard “Lazy Eye,” I wasn’t very impressed with it until it exploded; the contrast between the pretty and the ugly caught my attention, at which point I was like, “Yeah, OK, I get this. I’m down.” And so then I immediately bought the album and slid it into an empty sleeve in my CD binder, which, back in December 2006, was in Susu’s old BMW.

The car wasn’t old for its time, though. It was actually one of those newer BMWs. I think it was actually a 2006 BMW Series 5, and it was this tannish beige color. In my memory, it has a matte finish, but I know that couldn’t have been right. I remember the inside of the car smelled weird, like mustard almost, because despite being a healthy older lady who looked far younger than she actually was to the point where most people thought she was my mom, Susu was always going to KFC and keeping the sealed plastic mustard cups for some reason, stashing them in the car’s glove compartment alongside those plastic silverware packets and piles upon piles of KFC napkins, which she said she kept “just in case I need them some day,” but I’m pretty sure she never needed them some day, because all that stuff just kept piling up. On the dash, there was this pug dog bobblehead; she had put some of that double-sided tape on the bottom of it so it wouldn’t slide off while the car was moving. I think she actually got the dog from KFC, or maybe it was Burger King; it was a Men in Black II Kid’s Meal toy. It had a tan body and a massive wrinkled head with these great big bug eyes, and it was sticking its tongue out at me.

Whenever I rode in Susu’s car, I would imagine that pug bobbing his head to the music I was listening to, and back in 2006, during winter break, I was listening to Carnavas. I remember riding in the passenger seat, Miles and Matt in the back, Susu up front driving us to Chuck E. Cheese. The lines on the interstate blurred together, the trees were streaks of green, and the sun set orange and pink on the horizon like a distant forest fire. The song “Melatonin” was playing, so the inside of the car was like a shimmering sea of adolescent distortion. I remember Matt saying, “Is this The Smashing Pumpkins?” and I said, “No, this is Silversun Pickups,” and Miles said, “Same initials,” and I said, “Yeah, I didn’t realize that, cool,” and Susu said, “Can you please turn it down?” but I didn’t turn it down because we were now arriving at Chuck E. Cheese.

I don’t really remember what we used to do at Chuck E. Cheese when we were all 16 years old and didn’t really belong there. I remember the general stuff, like the pizza, which I actually enjoyed despite its cardboard consistency, and I remember the arcade area, filled with children who stood up at my thighs because at 16 I was 6’1”. The arcades back then had like three types of games: the big mechanical Rube Goldberg-like machines that you insert tokens into at just the right time so that they slide down the rail in such a way that they end up in the hole that rewards the highest amount of tickets; the sit-down shooters with two big plastic guns where you and a friend sit down and blast zombies or dinosaurs or whatever on a big screen in front of you using said plastic guns, which were usually orange for some reason; and then the skee-ball ones that give you like ten brown balls to roll up an incline into numbered holes, but I would just climb up the incline and put the balls in the best holes because why the hell not. I remember one of the Rube Goldberg-like games kept shouting STEP UP AND PLAY SIDEWINDER in a funny western-cowboy accent, and that one had a brown ball that you had to navigate across a bridge using a single handle without letting the ball fall off the side. And I remember this Simpson’s-themed one that you just put tokens into at the right time and they’d slide down a ramp into one of many holes on a revolving prize-wheel-like thing, with each hole giving a different number of tickets, and I remember getting so good at this one that I could time it perfectly to get the token into the best hole each time, and the thing would just spit out strips and strips of those perforated ticket strips, so many that some smaller kids would come up to me and be like, “Hey mister, can I get some of those tickets?” and sometimes I would give them some, sometimes I wouldn’t, depending on how I was feeling that day. I was always getting a bunch of tickets. Miles was too. But I don’t recall us ever exchanging them for anything. I guess that was never really the point.

I remember, after this particular visit to Chuck E. Cheese, we all went to the GameStop in the strip mall nearby. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess had literally just come out for the GameCube. This game was on my radar, but I didn’t have a GameCube anymore, having sold it a few months prior for PlayStation 2 stuff. But I really wanted Twilight Princess, so I bought the game without having a GameCube. Well, Susu bought it for me, with my mom’s credit card. I lived a very white life. I remember Miles was like, “How are you going to play that?” and I was like, “Doesn’t your brother Gavin have a GameCube?” and he was like, “Yeah, but he’s been using it to play Animal Crossing a lot lately,” and I was like, “Yeah, we’ll see about that,” and, about an hour later, there we are, in Gavin’s bedroom, staring at his GameCube. “Can I borrow it?” And Gavin was like, “What for?” And I of course said Twilight Princess. And he’s like, “But you don’t live here.” And I’m like, “I’m here for the next week, I’ll give it back before I leave.” And he’s like, “But I’m playing Animal Crossing.” And I’m like, “You can play Animal Crossing whenever; me, on the other hand, I have a very narrow window in which I can play Twilight Princess, and that window is literally right now and for the next seven days. So why don’t you be a pal and just let me borrow the GameCube?” There was a lot of sighing and eye rolling, but eventually Gavin handed over the GameCube. He was three years younger than Miles and I, and I got the impression that he wanted his brother and his brother’s friends to like him, so he was usually pretty agreeable. But this time he pushed back a bit more than normal, and he was even grumbling as I gathered up his grey GameCube and all the cords and controllers and whatnot and lugged it all out of his room, after which time I immediately went to Susu’s house and started playing.

During that winter break, my hair was messy and my sweaters were too big and I was staying in Susu’s garage and I was on prescription Adderall. Susu had converted the garage into a makeshift bedroom of sorts. I use the word “converted” loosely because the room was not insulated, the garage door could still be opened and closed, a number of bikes and lawn tools were still stored in the corner, all of Susu’s sewing stuff including her sewing machine was in there, and there wasn’t a real bed, just a box spring with a thin mattress on top of it; but I didn’t care about any of that because there was a big gray Magnavox CRT in there, and back then that was all I needed to call a place my home. I had Gavin’s GameCube hooked up to the Magnavox, and my PlayStation 2, too. I also had a CD-player-stereo thing by the fake bed, which I would use to play Carnavas whenever I wasn’t playing Twilight Princess, which I was playing a lot, obsessively in fact. From the moment I got the GameCube hooked up, I was spending upwards of like ten hours per day just playing Twilight Princess, eating only snacks and one big meal a day, usually Spiral Kraft Mac and Cheese that I would make myself in a very specific way because I was, and still am, insanely particular about my food. My hair was messy, my sweaters were too big, and Twilight Princess quickly became one of my favorite games ever; it was like Ocarina of Time, just with more stuff to do. There was this unlockable combat technique called Mortal Draw, with which you could one-shot basically any enemy in the game if you hit the A button right before they attacked you while you had Link standing still with his blade sheathed, and this was like the coolest shit I had ever done in a video game up to that point in my life. By the time the end of winter break came around, I was still playing Twilight Princess, trying to get all the heart pieces. So on the last day, when Susu had to drive me across state back to my mom’s house, I took Gavin’s GameCube with me and never gave it back. I don't know why I did that.

So yeah, that was what I had going on back then: Chuck E. Cheese, CDs, Twilight Princess, Adderall, Kraft Spirals, Messy Hair, Sweaters Too Big, Stealing, and Carnavas by Silversun Pickups.

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what it's like to be a kid

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 04:36:52 GMT

A few days ago, I finished playing Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, which is a kids’ game for kids developed by Level-5 with art and animation done by Studio Ghibli. And I loved it. What a fantastic game. It's got that Pokemon monster-collecting thing going on, a battle system like a hybrid of Tales and Dragon Quest, and it's got vibrant, timeless cel-shaded visuals, and it's even got music composed by Joe Hisaishi, the same guy who does the soundtracks for the Ghibli films. I would say it's one of the classic JRPGs, a literal must-play for fans of the genre. You play as this young kid named Oliver who goes around mending people's broken hearts with the power of love while literally saying stuff like “neato!” and “jeepers creepers!” The whole vibe is so innocent and uplifting and heartwarming, and not in a saccharine way, but in that special Studio Ghibli way, like Castle in the Sky mixed with Kiki’s Delivery Service, or Howl’s Moving Castle but Howl is like 10 years old and not a total asshole. Ni No Kuni sits right up there in the Ghibli pantheon of greatness. There's a beautiful city filled with fish-themed imagery ruled by cats called Ding Dong Dell, and a desert town called Al Mamoon ruled by a gigantic cow, just to give you an example of the greatness. It was a total joy to play. It took me like 58 hours over the span of a month to complete. And I really should have played it sooner, but in 2013, when the game originally came out, I was far more dark and edgy than I am now, if you can believe that; back then all the childish whimsy put me off playing it, but not now, not anymore, because now, now I love children, but not in a Michael Jackson sort of way, in a spiritual, reverent sort of way.

The main character, Oliver, who’s supposedly 13 but looks 9 or 10, illustrates all the reasons as to why I love children: their carefree attitudes, their innocence, their resilience, their simplicity, their willingness to learn, their aloofness toward the passage of time, their general sense of wonder, and especially their ability to tell right from wrong without even really thinking about it. It also helps that Oliver looks a lot like my son, with his thick orange hair and pale rosy cheeks, which makes the character especially endearing to me.

One thing I really love about Oliver is that, when bad guys come around with all their philosophical rationalizations for their bad-guy ways, he’s just like, “Uh, you can't just do that, that's mean,” offering no philosophical counterargument as to why the bad guys are mean, just that they are, period. And why should he posit a counterargument? He's a kid. He doesn’t need to. He just knows, in his gut, that the bad guys are doing bad things, usually because they’re hurting people, and Oliver just instinctively sort of knows that you aren't supposed to hurt people, because that’s mean, duh. It’s that simple for Oliver. He doesn’t need to sit around pontificating about why the bad guys are mean, he doesn’t need to morally justify his position. He’s a kid. He just knows injustice when he sees it. He doesn't have to think about it too much. He just knows that he doesn’t need a reason to help people.

I think, nowadays, people think they need a reason to help people. Oliver just helps people. Maybe we can learn something from Oliver.

And granted, a lot of these JRPG protagonists do this sort of thing, this whole good-for-goodness’-sake thing, they say the bad guys are wrong without explaining why, without justifying themselves, but when other protagonists do this it sometimes feels a little shallow, especially when the protagonist is an adult, who you would expect some cogent reasoning from; and sometimes, in these other games, the protagonist's lack of argument, their silence, leaves you sympathizing with the villain a little bit, like “Huh, maybe the bad guy is right; he was tortured in a prison for three years after all, maybe he does have some good points, maybe humanity does cause a lot of suffering, maybe we are sick and evil and deserve to die.” But no, to Oliver, that’s obviously wrong, and coming from Oliver, this sometimes-shallow retort of “you can't just do that, that’s wrong” doesn't feel shallow at all, because Oliver’s literally a kid, he practices gut morality, he doesn’t need a reason to help people; he sees something that he feels is messed up and immediately calls it out as messed up without even thinking about it. He knows that you can’t just blow up the world because humanity is bad sometimes. To Oliver, that’s obviously wrong. And he doesn’t need a reason for why it’s wrong; I mean, he literally goes around saying stuff like “neato!” and “jeepers creepers!” for God's sake. He just knows mean stuff is wrong. He just knows you don’t go around killing people. You don’t just go around enslaving people. You don’t just go around blowing stuff up. Obviously, these things are wrong. Why are they wrong, you ask? Who cares. They just are. Deal with it, bad guy. For Oliver, there’s no utilitarian death calculus going on, there’s no “well, if we blow up this city now, we may save lives later” or “if we don’t round up all the illegal immigrants now, some of them might commit murders later” type of thing. Oliver doesn’t think about trolley problems. He just knows stuff is wrong. And this sort of begs the question, if a kid like Oliver knows this stuff is obviously wrong, why don’t so many adults in the real world know it?

Why are powerful people all over the world sitting around in their high castles giving the green light to enslave, bomb, and torture people on the daily? Why are these powerful people always doing things that every kid in the world knows are wrong? They often cite things like “the greater good,” but bro, you are literally killing people. Maybe they’ve forgotten something. Maybe they’ve forgotten what it's like to be a kid? “But, but, you have to consider the geopolitics involved, and the oil, and there are bad guys over there, and we have to consider the long-term survivability of our country, and the well-being of our people, resources aren’t unlimited you know, and, and, and.” No. No you don’t. What you are doing is obviously wrong. You don’t hurt people. Oliver seems to know this. Most kids seem to know this. So why don’t our world leaders seem to know this?

I know what you’re about to say. You’re about to say, “but the world isn’t so simple.” But why not? Why isn’t it so simple? Is it truly the resources, the bad guys, the geopolitics, or are those just excuses, excuses for the fact that we all seem to have forgotten what it’s like to be a kid?

In Ni No Kuni, in the cutscene right after the final battle with the White Witch, when she’s on her knees lamenting over her defeat at the hands of a literal child, and she’s doing the whole bad-guy-rationalization thing, saying, verbatim, “No, why? This world is imperfect. It must be destroyed so that a new one may begin,” Oliver simply responds with, “No. You can’t just tear it up and start over. It may not be perfect, but nothing is, so you make the best of what you’ve got. When things go wrong, you have to try to make them right,” and that’s it, that’s his grand speech, like he’s delivering lines to four-year-olds in an episode of Barney or something. And do you know what the White Witch does? She literally starts crying.

What I’m saying is, maybe some of these powerful world-leader-type people could learn something from a child like Oliver. Maybe we all could.

I think the next time some powerful world leader is presented with the option of bombing some town in the Middle East or something, maybe they should stop to think, “What would my children think of me doing this?” And if they don’t have kids, perhaps they should think instead, “What would I think about this if I were still a child?” And perhaps then we might be closer to making a world suitable for children, because, when we get right down to it, that should be the goal: a world suitable for children. Because, right now, we are far, far away from that world; instead, we are in a world suitable for adults who are trained as quickly as possible on forgetting what it’s like to be children.

We should try to remember.

And that’s another thing I like about Ni No Kuni: Oliver never grows up. He’s a kid the whole time. And, contrary to what so many other coming-of-age stories about young kids try to do, the ending of the game doesn’t force this whole “now it’s time for Oliver to put his big boy pants on and get a real job” thing. He’s literally a kid the whole time. I mean, upon delivering the final blow to the White Witch, while standing in a literal void realm of death, Oliver can still be heard saying “neato!” for Christ’s sake. My point being, despite his long, arduous journey, Oliver has not become jaded or cynical or hardened by the world. He has not adopted an “adult” mentality. I mean, he has learned some things, but his outlook has not changed; he has not “grown up” per se. And this is refreshing. I’m tired of all these “grow up” narratives in media.

I think people should try to be childlike forever.

They say youth is wasted on the young, that kids never appreciate being kids. They say this is a tragedy. But I disagree. This is only a tragedy in hindsight, when you’re an adult. As a child, it’s not tragic at all; in fact, for a child to stop and appreciate their youth, they would first need to acknowledge the transience of youth, the death clock, how time is always ticking away, how things are always decaying, and this is not something that children need concern themselves with. The whole “youth is wasted on the young” thing implies that the only way to appreciate something is by being fully aware of it, that only by knowing something will end can you truly enjoy it. But that’s an adult idea, born from nostalgia and loss. And it’s bullshit. A child doesn’t need to savor the moment to enjoy it; all they need to do is live in it, in the moment, and that’s what they do: they live in the moment, unconcerned with the passing of time and its implications, and this is a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing we should all try to do.

And besides, age is just a number. You can be a kid at any time.

Try it sometime.

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a path totally devoid of empathy

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:55:57 GMT

After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that I guess I would have been a Nazi.

Yes, I know that opening sentence is inflammatory, click-baity even, but please bear with me, because I think this topic, which is actually more of a hypothetical thought experiment, is really worth discussing, as it reveals something about our personal ethics.

Last night, a friend and I were talking about current events, particularly the ICE situation, and the conversation inevitably landed on Nazi Germany. After some lengthy back and forth, the conclusion we came to was that, yes, back in the 1940s, if I had been a German citizen, I would have likely been a Nazi, maybe not ideologically, but I would have been labeled one.

And yes, again, I know this sounds really evil. And maybe it is, I don’t know. I'm still unsure myself. The question of “good” and “evil” was actually the catalyst for this whole conversation, which is something I’ll get into here shortly.

But first, some background. On March 16, 1935, Adolf Hitler introduced universal conscription, basically a draft: any man between the ages of 18 and 45 was subject to military service. Those who denied the call to serve the Nazi war machine were labeled Wehrdienstverweigerer, or “military service refuser,” arrested by the Gestapo, and prosecuted for Kriegsverrat, or “treason in wartime.” And it wasn’t just the refusers who were labeled as traitors, but also their families, the Nazis called this idea “Sippenhaft,” the idea that if someone defied Hitler, that person’s entire family shared moral guilt. The Nazis used this idea to prosecute the families of traitors, evicting them, imprisoning them, and sometimes even sending them to concentration camps.

So, back to my friend’s and my conversation, which was prompted by the recent murders carried out by ICE agents, which we both agreed were unjust and awful. During that conversation, my friend said something that bothered me. He said, “Anyone who works for ICE is evil.” I didn’t, and still don’t, agree with this assertion. Being pretentiously entrenched in Buddhist ideology, I told him that, first, this idea of “good” and “evil” is a harmful duality, that simply labeling people “evil” leads to bad outcomes, as it dehumanizes people and leaves no room for nuance. Second, I told him that these things are more complicated than they seem, that not everyone has a choice in their occupation. To this, my friend retorted, “Sure they do, everyone has a choice; they either enlist for ICE or they don’t. It’s that simple.” And sure, in our current time, maybe he’s right, maybe it is that simple, after all, there is no ICE draft, so maybe he got me there. But, being stubborn, I thought the point I was trying to make was still valid, though I might have been using a bad example, so I posited a hypothetical to try to illustrate my point further. I said, “Let’s say there’s a draft, and all people between this and that age are subject to serve ICE. Would you dodge this draft, labeling yourself a traitor and potentially landing yourself in prison, or would you enlist?” And he said, “Of course I would dodge the draft. What kind of question is that? That’s the only right thing to do.” And I said, “What if, in dodging the draft, your family would also be labeled traitors, and they too would be thrown in prison?” I was trying to illustrate my original point: that these things are more complicated than they seem. And still he said, “I would do the right thing and dodge the draft.” To which I said, “But is that truly the right thing to do here? Isn’t there now more at stake than just yourself?” And he said, “Maybe, but you should always act in accordance with your values and the greater good of society.” So I said, “Even if it gets your family killed?” And it was at this point that my friend assumed, I guess, that I was defending ICE, so he brought Nazis into the mix to illustrate his own point, as evoking Nazis is often the most extreme rhetorical move one can make in these types of debates, so he said, “You’re pretty much saying that if you lived in Nazi Germany, you would be a Nazi.” And me, having a wife and two children, I said, “Yes, maybe I would.” And he said, “Wouldn’t that compromise your values, make you feel terrible?” And I said, “Maybe, but I think I would feel worse if my wife and children died in a concentration camp.” And that’s kind of where we left it.

The whole point I was trying to make was that I have a hard time labeling someone as “evil” without understanding the full systems at play or the person’s entire decision-making process. Like the example above, if there were a draft and your family could be punished if you refused this draft, are you comfortable refusing the draft? At that point, you would not only be making a choice for yourself but also for your entire family, and this choice comes with heavy consequences for everyone involved. Is it fair to force such a choice, such a consequence, on your entire family? In refusing the draft, you may feel good about having stood up for your ideals, but will your son feel good when he’s dying in a concentration camp? “I may be starving, but at least my dad stood up for what he believed.” Sure, you could take your family and try to flee the country, but this also carries a huge risk. And sure, you could say that, in refusing the draft, you’re not the one actually sending your family to the concentration camp, the Nazi state is, and that’s true, you didn’t create the diabolical systems at play here, and those who did create it are more likely the “evil” ones in this scenario, but it’s also true that you’re aware of the consequences in this situation, you’re aware of the fact that if you refused to enlist then your family might be killed, and given you have that awareness of the consequences, your choice now carries a certain responsibility, specifically a responsibility for the wellbeing of your family. So, knowing the consequences, would you still choose to risk your family’s lives, for your own personal ideals? Ideals that, in the grand scheme of things, won’t make any difference? If you refuse the draft, what happens? You die, your family potentially dies, and then the Nazis just recruit some other dude to fight for them, and thus the war machine rages on. Is this individual act of defiance truly worth it?

The potential responses to the draft may be simple in principle, either “yes” or “no,” but the decision tree for those responses is not so simple. You could deny the draft and potentially get your family killed, maybe run away, take your family with you, or you could compromise your values, enlist, and fight for the Nazis, at which point maybe you could do a bad job on purpose, avoid killing people on the battlefield or whatever, sneakily clinging to your idealism while working within the confines of the diabolical system. But which choice is the right one here? It seems morally abhorrent to join the Nazi army, but it also seems morally abhorrent to knowingly risk the lives of your family by not joining the Nazi army.

At some point in the conversation with my friend, I got the impression that he was just not getting it, that maybe my hypothetical was too complicated. So I crafted a new one, a distilled version. I said, “let’s say the Nazis gather you and your family up, put you in a room, hold a gun to your head, then tell you, ‘join the Nazi army right now or I kill you and your entire family.’ What would you do in that situation?” But my friend refused to engage in this new hypothetical; he didn’t even bother to answer the question, instead he said, “That’s ridiculous, that would never happen.”

Oh, but it did happen, my friend. It happened all the time. In Nazi Germany, there may have been a few levels of abstraction between the guns and the heads of your loved ones, but the guns were still squarely pointed there. This happened to millions of people back then. So, knowing this, can we truly call a man “evil” if he’s simply doing what’s best for his family?

I would love to say that if I had been a citizen in Nazi Germany, I would have rebelled against the fascist government and died for my ideals, and maybe I would have done this if I were a single guy with no dependents. But are things ever that simple?

Like the concepts of “good” and “evil,” we often approach these situations from a black-and-white perspective, which leaves no room for nuance, and I believe this kind of thinking leads us down a dark path, a path in which we view those who don’t always make the “morally righteous” choices as vile monsters deserving of nothing more than death.

And is this not the same path as the Nazi ideology, a path totally devoid of empathy?

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mr. cig

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 03:51:23 GMT

Today I want to tell you about the tale of Mr. Cig.

In the early 1950s, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, founded in 1875 and famous for its Camel, Newport, and Pall Mall brand cigarettes, faced a big problem: public suspicion about tobacco was growing and, most importantly, sales were going down. So, they were forced to come up with a plan to save the company, and they had to come up with it fast.

Although physicians had long suspected links between smoking tobacco and respiratory disease, these suspicions were largely ignored until 1950, when epidemiologists Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill published a breakthrough study showing an undeniable link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer. This study, of course, threw the entire tobacco industry into a panic. The best tobacco minds in the world came together to figure out a way to discredit this damning new information. They cut lucrative deals with the film industry, placing branded cigarettes between the fingers of every glamorous movie star; they tripled spending on public advertising, ensuring every billboard and city bus was plastered with the smiling faces of smokers; they even ran blatant disinformation campaigns on public radio, discrediting Doll and Hill as quacks. But no matter what the tobacco companies did, sales still went down. Sales were plummeting, in fact. That is, until one day in 1951, John C. Whitaker, President of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, after many fruitless internal meetings, stumbled upon a brilliant idea entirely by accident.

And that idea was: Mr. Cig.

As told in a famous anecdote published in a local paper in 1951, John C. Whitaker, out of ideas during an internal board meeting, scribbled a quick drawing on his cocktail napkin. The scribble was like that of a child’s: a giant cigarette man with black-circle eyes and a curved-line smile, holding out a lit cigarette twirling with little smoke lines to a crudely drawn child lying in what looked to be a hospital bed. At first, Whitaker thought nothing of the drawing until, as outlined verbatim in the aforementioned local paper, an executive sitting next to him eyed the napkin and asked, “What’s that you’ve sketched there, then?” to which Mr. Whitaker famously replied, “Well, good sir, that there is Mr. Cig.”

It was decided right then and there that Mr. Cig would become the new mascot of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. The idea was that Mr. Cig would go to local hospitals and hand out free cigarettes to the infirm, some of whom would be children, emphasizing the calming, anxiety-reducing effects of smoking tobacco, which the physicians employed by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. linked to faster patient recovery, as there was some evidence that a calm, positive mind improved physical well-being. This idea was hailed as genius, and plans quickly progressed. The company immediately hired a local seamstress to craft the Mr. Cig costume. She simulated the cigarette paper with white cloth, wrapping it tightly around a giant tube of thick particle board; then she took real wood, charred it gray and black with fire, and painted the top orangish-red to simulate a lit cherry; then used industrial-strength plastic to create a bowl-like structure, which she glued to the top of the costume with industrial-strength adhesive; then she glued the faux-smoldering wood into the bowl, which completed the overall structure; but it was still missing something: the smiling, cartoon-like face, which was crucial to appealing to sick people, especially sick children; so she took large pieces of black felt, two circles and a curve, and glued them just below the faux-smoldering wood; then, as a last step, she cut two holes into the costume where a human’s arms would stick out, which was a crucial feature, as Mr. Cig would not be able to hand out cigarettes without arms. This process took weeks of toiling, but the seamstress completed the costume before the deadline. The costume was then reviewed by the entire R.J. Reynolds Tobacco marketing division, who collectively deemed it good.

But before Mr. Cig could tour the hospitals, there was one final question: who, exactly, would don the costume? Who would have the honor of becoming Mr. Cig?

Well, the bad news is, to this day, the identity of the original Mr. Cig is a mystery. Some believe it was the head of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco marketing division, William Slocum, who was a strong believer in the Mr. Cig project and very involved in the planning. Others believe it was John C. Whitaker inside that giant, cartoon-like cigarette man costume. Some suggest it was the ghost of R.J. Reynolds himself, making one last cancer-causing sales pitch from beyond the grave. What’s more likely, however, is that the original Mr. Cig was simply a low-level employee from the R.J. Reynolds marketing division who was perhaps voluntold to don the costume, but even if true, that employee’s name has unfortunately been lost to time.

What we do know, however, is that throughout the remainder of the 1950s, Mr. Cig, with his big smiling cartoon face and faux-smoldering cherry topper, traveled across the United States from hospital to hospital, handing out free cigarettes to the sick and infirm, some of whom were children and many of whom were dying from the very same lung cancer caused by the cigarettes themselves. Mr. Cig was also prepped with various pro-tobacco talking points, many of which were backed by sketchy scientific data provided by physicians paid by Big Tobacco, and he would rattle off these talking points to every doctor and patient he visited. Sometimes he would even leave them with whole cartons of free cigarettes, which were accepted most graciously because the immediate calming effects of the tobacco did indeed alleviate patient suffering in the short term, albeit only unknowingly hastening their demise in the long term. Of course, Mr. Cig was aware of this but, being a faithful servant of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, he continued carrying out his reaper-like duties without question. But Mr. Cig did not just give out free cigarettes and pro-smoking rhetoric, as that would not be very profitable; he also set up cigarette machines in each hospital he visited, and these cigarette machines sold products at a high markup to leech as much money from the dying patients as possible, all while the hospitals received a small cut of the profits.

It is impossible to say how many lives were lost as a result of Mr. Cig’s efforts, but one thing is certain: what Mr. Cig did was utterly detestable. We can say this for certain because it is true.

Or is it?

Well, it is certainly true that if Mr. Cig had indeed handed out cigarettes to dying hospital patients, that would have been considered utterly detestable. The negative health impacts of smoking tobacco are well-documented and backed by decades of research, and there was strong evidence of this even back in the 1950s. But the problem is, Mr. Cig did not hand out cigarettes to dying hospital patients at all, because Mr. Cig never existed, or at least I am pretty sure he never existed. The story above, about Mr. Cig, is an elaborate fabrication on my part, based on supposedly real information documented in a single article posted online on November 24, 2025. You can read it in archive format here. It is roughly two paragraphs long and contains a supposedly real picture of Mr. Cig handing a lit cigarette to a hospital patient circa 1948. But as far as I can tell, this picture does not depict reality, and the events outlined never actually happened. There is no real evidence whatsoever backing up the existence of Mr. Cig outside of this short shock article, which itself has no citations.

But the problem here is not so much that Mr. Cig did not exist, or that the vintag.es article is blatantly lying to us; it is that, even now, after doing a bunch of research, I am still not sure if Mr. Cig existed or not.

When my friend sent me the Mr. Cig article via text message with the question, “Do you think this is real?”, I went down a sort of online rabbit hole to find out the truth, and I got stuck in that rabbit hole for about an hour. Most of my research was spent doing keyword searches, trying to find older articles to corroborate the Mr. Cig story he had sent me, but I could not find anything dated before 2025. I even checked the Wikipedia articles for various tobacco companies, playing fast and loose with the Ctrl+F hotkey on phrases like “Mr. Cig,” “Mr. Ciggy,” “mascot,” and whatnot, but that too was a fruitless exercise. I found a Facebook post that referenced the same article, and I found a Reddit post too, wherein people just accepted the story at face value because, hell, it seems like something a tobacco company would actually do. But I could find no real historical record of Mr. Cig. He did not seem to exist. I got to thinking that, if there is no real evidence, how come people seem to just believe this story to be true? And that’s when it hit me: people believe this to be true because, accompanying the article, there is a seemingly real picture of Mr. Cig, and this picture looks very realistic: black and white, showing a correctly proportioned man with an era-appropriate hairstyle, and the hospital bed looks as if it could have been from the 1940s or 1950s. Photos add credibility; they trick our senses in a way, make us put our cynical guards down. The only truly weird thing about the photo is Mr. Cig himself who, although creepy as hell, looks real enough, certainly not outside the realm of possibility. And there were no obvious alterations to the photo, at least not that I noticed upon first or second glance. But after seeing the photo a third time, it hit me: based on the location of the spiraling smoke lines, Mr. Cig is handing the man a lit cigarette with the lit end facing out, meaning that if the man grabbed the cigarette, he would burn himself. I thought to myself, surely the esteemed Mr. Cig, a paragon of cigarette-smoking excellence, would not hand a cigarette to someone in this way; certainly he knew the basic etiquette of passing a cigarette. And that’s when I knew that the photo of Mr. Cig was AI-generated.

But the problem was, even after coming to this conclusion, I felt that I was still no closer to the truth. Upon emerging from the Mr. Cig research rabbit hole, I was actually more confused than when I had first jumped into the hole. I found that, on the one hand, there’s strong evidence that Mr. Cig did not exist, considering the lack of historical record and the AI-generated photo, and it’s no coincidence that Mr. Cig only started showing up in 2025, the year photorealistic AI-generated images became a thing. But on the other hand, there is nothing saying otherwise. In fact, everyone online seems to think that Mr. Cig was a real mascot who actually handed out free cigarettes at hospitals. And, if enough people believe something, does that make it true? Does consensus dictate reality? Although I believe it very likely that Mr. Cig is a total fabrication, it now seems impossible for me to know for certain, and this disturbs me because it reveals something about the world we live in, something dark and twisted.

It reveals that we live in a world of falsehoods, an era of post-truth.

I’m not the greatest storyteller in the world, but the story I crafted up there, about Mr. Cig, was intended to be believable although entirely misleading. For example, I researched and used historical facts like the names of the actual people who worked at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. circa 1950, per public record, and I even referenced a real research paper published by Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill. I did this because these types of factual details add a layer of believability to the Mr. Cig story, even though everything around those facts was totally made up. I was weaving fact with falsehood on purpose, not only to foster a sense of credibility with the reader but also to make a point. That being, this is a very common rhetorical trick used in journalism. People are more likely to eat bullshit if it’s hidden within a tasty-looking meal. But this is just the first layer of falsehood. In the year 2026, it goes much deeper than that.

In the past, if you were so inclined, you could simply fact-check the story, look things up about it online, go through an exercise similar to the one I outlined in the previous paragraphs to determine a story’s veracity, but nowadays the facts are not so clear-cut. Often you will find conflicting sources supporting both sides of whatever it is you’re researching. On the one hand, this has always been the case, especially since the advent of the internet and the echo chambers spawned from it, but nowadays, with the advent of AI, a bullshit term I’m only using because it’s common tongue, it’s incredibly easy for someone to generate a very real-sounding story and post it online. And to make it worse, as of at least 2025, it’s also now incredibly easy to generate a very real-looking photo to accompany that very real-sounding, albeit totally fabricated, story. Someone could even use AI to generate a real-looking research paper in PDF format to support the details of their fake story. So now, not only are we contending with tricky journalism and internet echo chambers, we’re also contending with totally fake but seemingly factual data that’s incredibly simple to generate. And the technology is only getting better. Just a year ago, AI-generated photos were full of obvious errors and telling glossy sheens, but now, as of the year 2025, ChatGPT can spit out photorealistic images that are nearly indistinguishable from those taken with the highest-end cameras, and we’re also seeing high-quality AI-generated videos and audio recordings. Meaning, with each passing day, it’s becoming harder and harder to discern fact from fiction. We are now living in a post-truth era.

You may be thinking something like, “Well, I can tell the difference,” but what about your crazy aunt on Facebook who keeps sharing fake stories about how Elon Musk created a tiny-home colony for people on Mars, can she tell the difference? And what about your hyper-conservative grandpa who keeps sharing stories about how all the 2024 Kamala Harris presidential rally photos were themselves AI-generated? And what about the countless people who share obviously AI-generated recipes, or innocuous, feel-good fake stories about dogs saving babies from being locked in hot cars or whatever? A few years ago, this kind of stuff was obvious, but now? Now it’s almost impossible to tell. Hell, there’s a whole subreddit called “Is it AI?” wherein people debate back and forth about the veracity of some very real-looking stuff. More and more, people are unable to tell the difference between reality and irreality.

Your first gut reaction to this might be to treat everything you read, see, and hear as fiction until sufficiently proven otherwise, but this line of thinking actually does you a disservice, because there will come a day when something you read will be very relevant to your life, yet you won’t believe it because, well, everything around you might be AI-generated, so why would you believe anything? And even if you do believe something, who’s to say that the people around you believe it? They’re drowning in the AI-generated slop swamp just like you, so they’ve been conditioned not to believe anything too. Hell, there may come a day when, let’s say, the president of the United States kills someone on live television, but who’s to say that the recording wasn’t just AI? What’s to stop the president himself from claiming that the recording was AI? In that case, perhaps half the country will believe the president and the other half won’t, but in reality, due to the level of AI-generated obfuscation going on in the world, neither side will truly know what happened.

This is the danger we are putting ourselves in. Mr. Cig is just the tip of the iceberg.

In this post-truth era, how long do you think you will be able to tell the difference between fact and fiction?

How long, do you think, until Mr. Cig tricks you?

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game over world

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 22:30:31 GMT

“Turns out, if you're brave enough, you can make the real world… your Overworld.”

As Jack Black would say, my son yearns for the mines. He’s 2.8 years old and loves A Minecraft Movie. He stands on top of our living-room coffee table shouting CHICKEN JOCKEY and singing the Lava Chicken song. And he asks to watch the movie every day.

And that’s fine. It entertains him, which is a hard thing to do considering he’s inherited all my worst attention-deficit qualities, meaning, for me, the movie is a brief respite from his normal hyperactive madness. But by extension, considering he watches the movie every day, I've watched A Minecraft Movie maybe six hundred times by now, or at least it’s felt that way, because, despite its fairly standard runtime, it’s an excruciatingly torturous experience that feels much longer than it actually is. This is especially true on rewatches, when you start to notice how the plot is totally contrived, how most of the characters exist for no real reason, and how the pacing resembles my son’s own hyperactive thought-process, which is probably why he likes the movie so much. For example, the first forty-five minutes of the film, before they even enter the Minecraft world, are set in the real world, introduce a bunch of characters that do not matter to the plot whatsoever, and play out like a poor recreation of Napoleon Dynamite, cutting from one weird scene to another very quickly, complete with forced-quirky humor that feels like it was focus-grouped in the early 2000s, with lines delivered by middle-aged women like, “You can bag me up and take me to the curb anytime, but you gotta bungee the lid 'cause I got a lot of raccoons in there,” which feels highly inappropriate considering this is a fucking kids’ movie.

I don’t really want to harp on all the problems with the movie because there are way too many to count, and because that’s not really the point of this journal entry, and also because A Minecraft Movie is a kids’ movie first and foremost, so who the fuck actually cares. But I feel it’s important to let you know that this same take-me-to-the-curb woman later becomes romantically involved with a Minecraft villager who has a huge nose and massive block head that look as if human flesh has been stretched way too tightly over them, and he communicates only in creepy, sometimes pained grunts. The whole thing amounts to total nightmare fuel. In fact, most of the CGI in this movie is total nightmare fuel, as all the denizens of the Minecraft world have fleshy, real-world texturing over their clearly video-game-like block bodies, sometimes with nasty little hairs poking out here and there, which makes for some seriously unsettling imagery that could have only come from the mind of one seriously disturbed individual, presumably Jared Hess, the director, who also directed, you guessed it, Napoleon Dynamite.

Of course, much like the first forty-five minutes of A Minecraft Movie and the weird interspecies-romance subplot, everything I’ve typed up so far is pretty much irrelevant to both the plot of the movie and the point I’m trying to make with this journal entry, which is that, despite being a video-game movie made for kids, it tries to shoehorn what I feel is a very anti-kids message, which is what I'm about to get into here. And this message disturbs me because it mirrors something that I think about and wrestle with literally every day. It is something that I think no child should be forced to think about, especially when they just tuned in to watch Jack Black do funny things in a world inspired by their favorite video game, Minecraft.

But before I can analyze the overall message of the film, which is actually very deliberate, not something the script accidentally stumbles into, I have to provide some background for two of the more important characters.

The first important character is, of course, Steve. Steve’s story is one of escapism. The movie opens with a montage of Steve throughout the years. He starts as a young child who, for whatever reason, yearns for the mines, observing them from afar, dreaming of the day when he can get into those caves and do some digging or whatever. But before long, real life kicks in, and suddenly Steve, now a grotesque fat man in his thirties, is a paper pusher at some corporate office, depressed and without purpose. “My name is Steve. And as a child, I yearned for the mines. But it didn't really work out. So, I did a terrible thing. I grew up.” Toward the end of the montage, Steve has a little epiphany, so he quits his job to follow his dream. From that point, he spends all his free time mining in a nearby quarry, eventually unearthing a glowing blue cube, the Earth Crystal, which opens a portal to the Overworld, i.e. the Minecraft world, where he spends the next several years mining, crafting, and building stuff, basically escaping his real-world responsibilities. In the Overworld, he makes a wolf friend named Dennis, and at some point, he discovers an underworld full of pig-like monsters commanded by Malgosha, an evil piglin sorceress. Things happen and Malgosha captures Steve, demanding that he give her the Earth Crystal so that she can take over the universe or whatever, but Steve refuses, sending Dennis off with the Earth Crystal to hide it in the real world beyond the portal. This leads into the start of the movie, where the whole Napoleon Dynamite rip-off kicks in.

The second important character is Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, played by that same guy who did Game of Thrones and Aquaman or whatever, Jason Momoa. Before the events of the film, he was a child video-game prodigy, having won many video game tournaments and corporate sponsorships, which set him up for financial success and inflated his ego to an absurd degree. However, by the start of the film, he’s squandered all his sponsorship money and is now a washed-up, overweight, mullet-wearing middle-aged man who owns a retro video game store aptly named “Game Over World.” Maybe you can see where this is going. His store is filled to the brim with old stuff from his youth: classic video game consoles, arcade cabinets, ancient CRTs, retro boomboxes, that sort of stuff. One gets the impression that Garrett is a nostalgia junkie obsessed with his childhood. He’s much like that one character from Napoleon Dynamite, the ex-football-player uncle who points at the far-off mountains and says, “How much you wanna bet I can throw a football over them mountains?” Both of these characters live in the past, refusing to move on from their glory days. In fact, all Garrett ever talks about is how he was once the greatest video-game player in the world, which is played for laughs, as Garrett does have some self-awareness about his situation, constantly trying to downplay his boasting by pretending that he doesn’t actually care: “Gamer of the Year, 1989. Whatever. I barely think about it.” Yet despite this, he’s started a mentorship program for people who want to “win at the game of life,” using his own life as a model, even though his own life is in shambles because he is stuck, unable to move on from his glory days. Now, his store is being foreclosed on, and his obnoxious arrogance has made him few friends. After a series of incredibly stupid events, he stumbles into the Minecraft world, where he quickly realizes that he can use Minecraft-world diamonds to make a profit and thus save his soon-to-be-foreclosed retro game store, Game Over World.

Watching this movie, as an adult man in his thirties, I am reminded of my own follies. This is what so disturbs me about the film. In Garrett, I see myself. In Steve, I see myself. This may sound ridiculous, considering this is a kids’ movie for kids, but it is true nevertheless. Like Garrett, my office is my Game Over World. I have games in here from my childhood, from the early 2000s, collecting dust on bookshelves and tables, like a shrine to my youth. In a drawer just to the left of me: jewel-case copies of all the PlayStation Final Fantasy games, Chrono Cross, Arc the Lad, and SaGa Frontier; original Xbox games in their cheap plastic cases, like Panzer Dragoon, Halo, Mega Man Anniversary, and Morrowind; even some old issues of Nintendo Power from the days when I wore a bowl cut. Even further left, on a wooden table that holds my Xbox 360 and Nintendo Switch, old 360 games stand upright between bookends: Fable, Skyrim, Orange Box, Blue Dragon, Oblivion, and more. Next to that, favorite DVDs I’ve had since I was a rebellious teenager: the whole Cowboy Bebop collection, Lost in Translation, the entire Boondocks series, the movie Collateral starring Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise, and so on, all stacked atop each other, their spines facing out, creating a border of nostalgia around the one thing that helps me escape reality: the television set.

Like Steve, I find myself inexplicably drawn to the television, becoming sucked into the pixely glow. I try to fight it, tell myself that gaming has run its course, that it doesn’t bring me the same pleasure it once did, that I could be doing anything else with my time, but night after night I still find myself sitting there, in front of the screen, burning my retinas with the colors of escapism. There is no moderation in my hobbies. I play till ungodly hours. I eschew other things I’d like to be doing, like reading and writing, to stare into this nostalgic glow. I have reached an age where the act of playing video games triggers thoughts of wasted time and irresponsibility, yet there I am, night after night, still doing it, still playing the games, surrounded by all the old things I love. I foster times and places redolent of those long past, not to remind me of them, but to hide within them. I do this every night, to forget, or perhaps to run away from, what I have become, what we all eventually become.

They say age is just a number, that you can be young forever, but at a certain age, the shadow of responsibility catches up with you, and before you know it, maturity has slain the child inside. Your thinking changes, becomes more pragmatic and wise, and while this is enlightening in some ways, it is also scary as hell. What am I to do with myself? Who am I to become? Am I contributing to society in a meaningful way? What is a “meaningful way,” actually? Why do I tell myself that it doesn’t matter when I know, deep down, that it does? The nihilistic excuses start slipping away, replaced by some vague feeling of expectations being missed, but these expectations are not the expectations of your parents, or your teachers, or your boss, but of someone else entirely: you. They are your own expectations, dormant for years, coming to greet you. And the greeting is most unwelcome.

In this way, it is not A Minecraft Movie that disturbs me, but this: my own maturity.

But herein lies my problem with A Minecraft Movie. It is not that the movie has poor pacing, or that the writing is frankly abysmal, or all the weird sexual innuendos, or even the fleshy block people, or how everything looks obviously green-screened. It is that the movie, which is targeted toward kids, tries hard to make the very kids watching it grow up.

By the end of the movie, as you might imagine, both Steve’s and Garrett’s shadow catches up with them, they mature, they end up renouncing their old escapist ways, abandoning the Minecraft world, which the movie treats as an obvious metaphor for escapism, and basically they get jobs in the real world, and the movie totes this as some existential win for the characters. And maybe it is. Maybe it is an existential win for Steve and Garrett, who have spent most of their adulthood running away from their own responsibilities. Maybe this is a good lesson for the adults watching the film, maybe a win for them. But this is not a win for whom the movie is targeted.

Natalie: Are you sure you don't want to come back?
Steve: Yeah, I'm staying here. I got a bunch more stuff I want to build.
Natalie: Why don't you bring some of that magic to the real world?
(The humans enter the portal as Steve ponders about it. Finally, he makes a decision.)
Steve: Screw it. I’m coming with.
(Finally, he heads into the portal to return to the real world.)
Steve: (voiceover) Turns out, if you're brave enough, you can make the real world… your Overworld.

When a child goes to sit down in a movie theater to watch a funny movie about their favorite video game, they should not be force-fed some adult narrative about how escapism is terrible and how they should quickly start growing up. Children do not come into the theater thinking about the Game Over World foreclosure notice they just got in the mail. They do not, and should not, think about these things.

So, Mr. Jared Hess, if you’re reading this, I do not like your movie. In fact, I hate it. Stop fucking trying to make kids grow up. You are an asshole.

These are lessons children’s movies should not teach, as they are inappropriate for children. These lessons are things that cannot and should not be taught by corporate media. A child must find these things out for themselves, and when they do, their shadow will have caught up with them, and they will no longer be a child. At that point, they will be something else. And this is not something to celebrate. This is something to mourn.

Mr. Jared Hess, by subjecting children to your terrible movie, you are hastening the shadow of maturity, and this, I believe, is flat-out evil. So I can only hope that this was an accident, an oversight, rather than your true intent. Otherwise, you sir are a monster.

Stop trying to put kids in Game Over World. This is the domain of adults, not children.

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new year's anti-resolutions

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 20:44:50 GMT

A new year dawns, and so too a bunch of promises inevitably broken.

For the record, I think New Year’s resolutions are stupid. I see people make all sorts of New Year’s resolutions that are never realized. I’m going to write a novel. I’m going to stop smoking. I’m going to lose 50 lbs. I’m going to stop drinking. I’m going to stop being so negative all the time. These are things that never work as New Year’s resolutions. I've seen them fail time and time again, with myself and others. It seems to me that a resolution can be made at any time, so why wait until the new year? Why not exercise some willpower earlier in the year? Is there some sort of cosmic willpower-enhancing magic produced when the Earth completes a full rotation around the sun? How long does that magic last? And does that magic only exist at the exact moment of orbit completion? Perhaps there’s no cosmic magic at all; perhaps it’s all symbolic? New year, new you. After all, there’s no real set “complete orbit” in the grand scheme of things; we humans defined the criteria for when an orbit is complete. I could say that the orbit starts in June and ends next June, or February and February, and so on; it’s all societally constructed anyway.

What really gets me is that people will often put off their resolutions until the new year; they know they should stop drinking, but they don’t want to stop drinking right this second because that would be no fun, so they pick some arbitrary date on the Gregorian calendar to stop drinking instead. “I will for sure stop drinking come January 1st, no doubt about it.” And when January 1st comes around, many will have already broken this promise to themselves. “Just a small glass of wine to celebrate the new year, no big deal.” Or, by the time January 1st comes around, they’ll have rationalized the “no drinking” resolution into something more manageable, like “no drinking on weekdays” or something like that. It seems to me that, if one has the thought to “stop drinking,” or whatever, then they should do that thing right then and there, not wait until some random date on a calendar. Otherwise, how serious are they, really? Do they really want to stop drinking, or do they just want to make themselves feel better? And if it’s to make themselves feel better, isn’t this whole thing kind of counterproductive then, considering they'll most definitely feel bad when they inevitably break the resolution?

This is why, every year, I tell myself that I am not going to make any sort of New Year’s resolution. But I’m now realizing that this New Year’s anti-resolution becomes a sort of New Year’s resolution itself because it fits the core definition of one: a promise corresponding to the Earth’s rotation around the sun. Meaning, by telling myself I am not going to have a New Year’s resolution, I am, in fact, setting a New Year’s resolution, meaning I am unwittingly participating in the very thing I am criticizing. And considering my position on New Year’s resolutions, which asserts that all New Year’s resolutions are weak promises inevitably broken, my own “no New Year’s resolution” resolution is doomed to fail, meaning I am bound to set some sort of different New Year’s resolution for myself, although I kind of already have what with the “no New Year’s resolution” resolution, which we already know is bound to fail, which means I am bound to set some sort of different New Year’s resolution, and so on.

You can quickly see how the “no New Year’s resolution” resolution establishes a sort of paradox in which, when the resolution is broken, you end up fulfilling the resolution by breaking it, and when you try to keep it, you break it by keeping it. It is definitionally self-defeating. Perhaps the only way to break the paradox is to stop overthinking it, or just not care. But even that, I guess, becomes its own sort of resolution, meaning you’re kind of fucked either way.

Ultimately, I think the only choice for me here is to stop being so cynical and just set some non-paradoxical resolution like everyone else does. The problem with that, however, is that whenever I tell myself I’m going to do something, the likelihood of me doing the thing goes down considerably. I don’t know why this happens. When I tell myself I am going to write, I end up playing video games; and when I tell myself I am going to play video games, I end up writing; and when I tell myself I am going to read, I end up outside smoking a cigarette while watching mindless YouTube Shorts on my phone. And yes, I realize this is all a matter of willpower, but unfortunately, willpower is a character stat I sorely lack.

This do-the-exact-opposite-of-what-I-tell-myself-I’m-going-to-do paradigm has gotten so bad that I have taken to telling myself to do the thing I don’t really want to do in hopes that the paradigm will kick in and compel me to do the thing I actually want to do; when I want to write, I will tell myself that I am going to play video games instead, hoping that I will betray myself and thus end up writing. But this sort of reverse psychology undermines itself, because of course, I’m aware of the self-trickery going on and thus end up doing the opposite of the opposite, which means I’m right back where I started. However, I have found that this tell-myself-to-do-the-thing-I-don’t-want-to-do-in-hopes-that-I-do-the-thing-I-actually-want-to-do method of psychological self-trickery does, in fact, produce better outcomes than just telling myself to do the things I want to do.

So, this year, I have come up with a list of New Year’s resolutions that I think are just perfect for producing good outcomes, and I will list them below.

Don’t Read Anything, Ever
This year, I aspire to read absolutely nothing. No books. No magazines. No articles. No blog entries. Nothing. Reading is a waste of time, as it fills my head with a bunch of pointless ideas, pointless because, in the cosmic scheme of things, I'm going to die anyway, so who cares. I could be playing video games or watching YouTube Shorts instead of reading a dumb book or whatever.

Give Up Writing Completely
Writing is a stupid waste of time. No one reads any of my stuff anyway. I only started writing in hopes that people would swoon at how smart I am pretending to be. Writing is a pompous, egotistical endeavor, and I should try not to be so self-absorbed and pretentious; so, writing has to go. Everything I write is some rip-off of David Foster Wallace or J. D. Salinger anyway, so it’s not like I’m even original in any way. And when I die, about three people will have read any of my stuff anyway, so it’ll be like I had never written to begin with, so what’s the point? It’s time to grow up and focus on the important things in life, the stuff that makes me feel good, like watching YouTube Shorts and playing video games.

Spend More Time on My Phone
This year, I aspire to look at my phone way more than ever before. Behind that tempered glass is a wonderland of entertainment and good feels. I will download all the apps, spend hours lying on my bed swiping through YouTube Shorts, and sign up for more social media than ever before so that I can make funny and/or smart posts in hopes that people give me lots of upvotes and retweets because this is a surefire way to get the validation I desperately seek. I will replace my in-person community with the Reddit app and get all my news from echo chambers so that all my smart opinions are constantly validated. This will make me very happy.

Eat Shitloads of Candy
This one’s self-explanatory, but this year I will endeavor to never be without candy. If I run out of candy, I will immediately drive to the nearest gas station or grocery store and buy more. I will dedicate a kitchen cabinet solely to candy. It will be called the Candy Cabinet. I will not share the candy. I will eat whole bags. I will try all sorts of new candies and savor each and every sugary explosion of taste. I will become a candy connoisseur who eats nothing but candy. And I will absolutely not go to the dentist.

Don’t Go Outside and Never Work Out
Going outside is a pain in the ass and working out is hard. These things require a lot of mental and physical effort, all for very little short-term payoff. And, in the cosmic scheme of things, these things don’t matter because nothing matters. Everyone dies, so what’s the point? This year, instead of going outside or working out, I will instead use that time to play video games or watch YouTube Shorts, because life is short so I might as well keep myself entertained at all times.

Drink Every Night and Consider Day Drinking
Historically, I have had problems with drinking; once I start, I cannot stop. But this year, I’m realizing that this is not my problem, it’s society’s problem. It's the people around me who are the problem. If the people around me were more accepting of my drinking, then it wouldn’t be such a big deal. So, this year, I am going to start drinking way more, and I'm going to tell those around me to lighten up and deal with it. “Stop fucking with my vibe.” I'm going to drink a bottle of wine each night and perhaps start day drinking as well, because it makes me more charismatic and sociable and fun, and most importantly it makes me feel really good. Again, life is short, so I might as well spend as much time as possible making myself feel good. I could die tomorrow, after all, so why deprive myself of the things I so enjoy?

And that’s it. Those are my New Year’s resolutions. These are the promises I am making to myself, promises that I sincerely hold and will try my best to fulfill. I am really looking forward to achieving all my goals this year. It would be a terrible shame if I ended up doing the opposite of any of these things.

Happy New Year.

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i love Christmas, it sucks

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 20:29:53 GMT

Despite my overall gloomy disposition, I love the Christmas season, seriously. It’s my favorite holiday. There’s just something about it, something in the air maybe. I love how everything feels different, how the general mood and atmosphere change, how you can put a literal tree in your home without anyone batting an eye, how that tree changes the whole vibe of the house, how the smell of evergreen is redolent of innocence and cheer, and I love how I can wear baggy sweaters and beanies without anyone looking at me weird, and how neighborhoods light up so bright that they can probably be seen from orbit, and how everyone seems to be in an overall better mood maybe because they’re all getting time off work, and how neighborhood kids you’ve never seen before are suddenly out in the roads playing with all their new bikes and scooters and Power Wheels, and all the little rituals like the advent calendars and the candles and the Elf on the Shelf and the putting-cookies-out-for-Santa thing and, of course, the presents.

Who doesn’t love the presents? I mean, that’s what Christmas is all about, right?

We have to get everyone we know a present. I mean, everyone is getting everyone else a present, so you better get them a present too, right? Grandma and grandpa sent you some socks, so you better get them something in return. Your brother sent you a $100 Target gift card, so you need to get him something as well. Great aunts and uncles you’ve never seen before in your life sent you some presents, so of course you should get them a present too, right? And you can’t forget about mom and dad, they’ve been buying you presents since before you were old enough to remember, so you better buy them some presents too, if only to balance the karmic scale of presents. And surely you don’t want your friends and family thinking you’re some sort of Grinch, right? Some sort of ruiner of Christmas. You must spread the Christmas cheer. And if you have kids, you better get them a shitload of presents too, because all their friends are getting presents and you don’t want your kids feeling unloved, do you? You don’t want to ruin their Christmas, right? You don’t want your kids to hate you, do you? This is why it is imperative that you drop everything you’re doing and go to the local Walmart and buy up all the cheap plastic you can possibly fit into your cart, regardless of whatever financial situation you’re in. Every Christmas tree in every home must be littered with presents, this is the American way.

So yeah, I love Christmas, but Christmas also kind of sucks, and it sucks because, frankly, the presents. On the one hand, like most people, I like getting presents. But on the other hand, I dislike the sense of expectation and obligation that comes along with gifting presents. Furthermore, on a philosophical level, I dislike the unapologetic celebration of materialism that comes along with Christmas, as it feels very weird and gross. And because I participate in all this quote-unquote “Christmas cheer,” I myself start to feel a little weird and gross too, like a totally different person almost.

For example, I got my wife nine gifts for Christmas, but she only got me three. This upsets me for some reason.

Every year, I tell my wife not to get me anything for Christmas, and she tells me the same, yet we always end up getting each other stuff anyway. I am now realizing this is an unhealthy dynamic. It sets up a weird, dishonest, self-defeating expectation. We go into Christmas Day expecting something yet vocalizing the opposite, and when we wake up Christmas morning and see nothing under the tree with our names on it, we are left feeling both disappointed and a little bit guilty. Disappointed because, like, if you love me so much, why didn’t you bother to get me anything? And guilty because, if I love you so much, why didn’t I bother to get you anything? This becomes extra complicated when Person A gets Person B a gift but Person B didn’t get Person A a gift, or when Person A got Person B nine gifts when Person B only got Person A three gifts, which turns the whole thing into a weird numbers game that only intensifies the guilt and disappointment. And yes, I realize this is very obviously a self-inflicted problem, but I can’t help but think that this problem wouldn’t exist at all if Christmas were not such a bullshit holiday.

My wife is very familiar with my thoughts on Christmas. I think it’s a bullshit, consumerist holiday. I don't want to give gifts, and in many cases I don't, but I have been primed from a young age to both give and receive gifts. This nexus of giving and receiving has produced a sense of expectation and obligation within me, an expectation to receive gifts from loved ones and an obligation to give gifts in return because otherwise I feel guilty, because to receive a gift from someone while not giving them anything in return feels a little uncaring and gross. In normal circumstances, i.e. not Christmas, this problem rarely comes up, I buy someone a gift simply because I want to, out of the kindness of my heart or whatever, but Christmas is different, Christmas forces my hand, makes me feel bad if I don’t participate, so I end up buying gifts for people simply because I don’t want to feel guilty later on, a sort of proactive guilt-avoidance behavior, which sort of undermines the whole “Spirit of Christmas” thing to begin with, the whole spirit of goodwill and giving, because to give a gift inspired by guilt feels a little gross compared to giving a gift simply out of kindness.

Supposedly, Christmas wasn’t always like this, it wasn’t always about gifts, it was about togetherness and generosity and joy and Jesus or something. I say “supposedly” because I seriously wouldn’t know, as Ultra Materialist Christmas is all I’ve ever known. Whatever Christmas might have been in the past is irrelevant now, as it’s now a corporate holiday that materially benefits corporate execs while spiritually eroding everyone else’s soul. Executives at Hasbro and Sony love Christmas. They do targeted holiday product releases and play ads that are like “show them how much you care this holiday season” and “make this year unforgettable” and “give the gift of cheer, only $199.99” and they do this with great big smiles on their faces. They foster a sense of FOMO and guilt and then they turn these complex emotions into cold hard cash. And we have fallen hook line and sinker for their corporate games, as we now conflate holiday cheer with cheap plastic, electronics, and kitchen appliances, believing these things necessary ingredients of Christmas Spirit.

In some ways, Christmas is a mirror of the general western attitude toward life. We conflate material things with success and happiness. The more stuff we have, the more presents under the tree, the more gift cards and cash, the happier we think we’ll be. We forgo all the basic ingredients of human happiness, like community and kindness and family and compassion and love and friendship and all that sappy shit, for cheap plastic made in China and a new pair of Beats Headphones, and this makes us momentarily happy but we still end up miserable long-term. This is America. This is Christmas. It sucks.

This holiday season, I’ve been watching a lot of Christmas movies. My wife loves them. She plays them every year. They’re always on in the background, like white noise in the house. They add to that special Christmas ambiance. My son enjoys them too. He particularly likes How the Grinch Stole Christmas and the Paw Patrol Christmas Movie, or whatever it’s called. And since these movies are always on, I’ve seen them quite a few times, so I’ve had a lot of time to analyze them, and I've noticed that these movies always try to convey some sort of heartwarming, Christmas-spirit-like message yet ultimately end up just reinforcing Ultra Materialist Christmas, and they do this in a subtle, almost contradictory way. For example, in both of the aforementioned movies, some villain steals all the gifts, which becomes like an existential Christmas crisis for the kindhearted people of Whoville or whatever, but by the end of the movie, they get all the presents back, and thus Christmas is saved. In the Paw Patrol movie, for example, at first the pups of the Paw Patrol resign themselves to the fact that the presents are gone and cope with it by telling themselves something like “we don’t need presents to enjoy Christmas,” but of course the kids in town want their presents or whatever, so the Paw Patrol come up with a way to get all the presents back, and so by the end of the movie everyone has presents and Christmas is saved. But this is very weird to me, because it seems like the movie knows that Christmas is an Ultra Materialist holiday and that this is bad on some level, hence the pro we-don’t-need-presents sentiment, but then the movie immediately turns around and reinforces the same Ultra Materialist message it just criticized, by giving everyone the presents back. It seems like the writers knew in their heart of hearts that this obsession with presents is harmful in some way, but they can’t actually commit to this anti-materialism stance. They can't have the Grinch or whoever break the samsaric cycle of materialism for whatever reason.

So, my question is, when the Grinch steals all the presents, why can't we just thank him for the favor?

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transcendental noise vol.1: music pretensions, npr, autocamper

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 18:45:27 GMT

Some songs drift through one ear and immediately out the other, leaving no lasting impact whatsoever. Others work their way into your ear canal, drilling right into the gray matter of your brain, forever changing you in some way. These songs are transformative, like some sort of transcendental noise.

In this life, the closest I've ever come to some semblance of transcendence has been through music. There are some songs that, when heard in just the right mood at just the right time, slip me into a trance. In these moments, I am unburdened by life’s baggage, thinking of nothing else but the music. When I find these transcendental noises, I listen to them on repeat, day after day, sometimes for weeks at a time. I sing and dance when no one is around, and in these moments, I am euphoric and free. I have yet to replicate this feeling with anything but music. So when a melody perks my ears, I pay attention. I become highly attuned. I sit back and listen closely, because missing transcendental noise feels like a cosmic injustice of the highest order.

I like to think that I have a special ear for music, even though I can’t play an instrument, mostly because I’m too lazy to learn how, but from a young age, I have been highly attuned to transcendental noise. I would say, if I have any talent at all, it's being able to instantly identify a good tune. And this is not just me saying random shit, others have said this about me as well, that I have an almost supernatural knack for identifying incredible music, especially incredible pop music. I grew up immersed in the noise of my parents, primarily 70s and 80s pop, and this has had a profound impact on me. My mom always tells this story about how, when I was a toddler, instead of singing “Wheels on the Bus” or the Barney theme song or ABCs or whatever, I would sing “Roxanne” by The Police. I would be at the YMCA shouting, “ROXANNE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO PUT ON THE RED LIGHT,” imitating Sting’s weird white-reggae accent and everything, and my mom thought this, a three-year-old boy singing about sex workers without the faintest idea that he was singing about sex workers, was hilarious. Youthful ignorance produces a special kind of funny innocence, I guess. And I like to think that this was when it first started, when I first became attuned to the transcendental noise, because I have been forever searching for more ever since. I like to think of myself as a sort of pop music aficionado. In high school, a few kids looked up to me for my unique taste in music, others thought I was pretentious as hell. My favorite bands back then were My Bloody Valentine, The Smiths, The Pastels, Orange Juice, Felt, and Talk Talk. These bands are well-known today but were pretty obscure for the average early-2000s teenager, which gives you an idea of how pretentious I was about music back then. I would scour the early internet for the most obscure bands, and when I found one that I liked, I would make that band my whole identity, changing my clothing and hairstyle and everything, until I found a new obscure band to listen to, at which point I would morph my identity once again, and so on. I still kind of do this today, but now, in my thirties, my self-esteem is more firmly grounded, so I no longer base my self-worth on the music I listen to, because frankly that shit’s stupid as hell. But regardless of all that, I'm still forever searching for transcendental noise, because there’s just nothing else like it in the world.

So naturally, when I find some piece of transcendental noise, I have to share it with the world, and I want to share it in a more meaningful way than just some really long list. So, with that being said, today I want to tell you about the UK band Autocamper, composers of one such piece of transcendental noise.

I first heard Autocamper a few months ago when I was sitting in my backyard at night, smoking a Lucky Strike, playing The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on my little Chinese Game Boy SP knockoff, and listening to NPR on my little handheld radio. NPR was doing one of those music blocks where they play lesser-known bands. The DJ put on a song that sounded like it came straight out of the 80s indiepop underground. This song immediately struck me as belonging somewhere on the transcendental-noise spectrum. But, by the time it was over, I had missed the name of the song, so I had to find it online by reverse-engineering the lyrics and humming into the little Google Song Identifier thing on my phone. But eventually, I found it, it was called “Again,” and I listened to it again and again and again, as the song title suggests. But the problem was, Autocamper didn’t have many songs back then, they had only put out a few short EPs, so I forgot about them until one day, a few weeks ago, when browsing AllMusic, I saw they had released a new album, What Do You Do All Day?, so I bought the compact disc version without a second thought from their Bandcamp store, which came with an MP3 download, and I put those MP3s on my MP3 player, and I have been listening to this album ever since.

At first, I didn’t think the album was all that great. There wasn’t anything quite as good as “Again,” at least not on the first half of the disc, which was kind of disappointing, so I neglected the album for a while. But a few weeks ago, when I was driving in my car, listening to the album again, giving it another chance, I stopped at a red light while the song “Dogsitting” was playing, and this song slipped into one of the most angelic choruses I had ever heard in my life. At that moment, I was hooked. I became highly attuned. I sat back in my seat and paid such close attention that someone honked at me because I had missed the light. Since then, I have probably listened to “Dogsitting” more than a hundred times.
So now, I want to describe this transcendental noise to you, but describing music through written word has always been challenging for me, so please bear with me.

“Dogsitting” starts with a few sloppily strummed chords before switching gears into a frenetic, jangly riff. The bass sneaks in with a tricky lick before settling into a rubbery bounce that perfectly complements the rhythmic jangle. The drums keep time with a simple but highly danceable breakbeat. A squeaky electric organ comes in after the bass settles, functioning as the lead melody in some ways but also kind of doing its own crazy thing. The vocals start at around the 30-second mark, a charming pubescent boy baritone, a mixture of Pastels and Orange Juice, quaint and twee almost. The singer tells us that his old man always told him that “religion was unfounded” and not worth his time, but one day, despite his father’s advice, the singer “gave in to the ringing bells” and ended up “dogsitting for the vicar’s wife,” the latter line being used at the end of the chorus, which is harmonized by female vocals and effortlessly slides in from the verse like some sort of pop ninja, sneaking up on you and kicking your ass. Beginning with the second verse, a delicious ba-ba harmony comes in, complementing the main vocal line and cultivating this sort of heavenly atmosphere that fits perfectly with the subject matter. And the funny thing about “Dogsitting” is that it’s actually full of rhythmic errors. The drummer skips a beat here and there, the bassist misses some notes, almost as if the song was recorded in literally one take, which I'm almost certain it was, but none of this detracts from the song, it actually adds to the charm, makes it feel more heartfelt and alive. Musical wabi-sabi. And like many great pop songs, “Dogsitting” is only two minutes long, literally verse chorus verse chorus stop, which is more than enough time for the song to drill itself into the gray matter of your brain, leaving you wanting more, making you wish the song was an hour long before realizing that you can just make it an hour long yourself by playing it over and over, such is the beauty of recorded music.

All that being said, no amount of flowery language can accurately convey transcendental noise, so maybe you should just listen to the song yourself. And if you like it, which I think you will because it's fucking incredible, then maybe throw the band a few dollars because these guys definitely earned it, as it's not every day that someone just records a piece of transcendental noise in one damn take, and also producing music ain't cheap.

<a href="https://autocamper.bandcamp.com/album/what-do-you-do-all-day">What Do You Do All Day? by Autocamper</a>

One thing that makes “Dogsitting” extra special to me is that the lyrics seem to have some hidden meaning beyond the words themselves, an almost existential subtext that I can’t quite put my finger on. There’s something here about doubting a religion but then converting to that same religion, as if the narrator is describing some personal transcendence event, a faith-based contact-with-God sort of thing, maybe. But I can't really tell whether the lyrics are telling a story of genuine conversion, offering an ironic commentary on traditional conversion stories, or if the whole “dogsitting for the vicar’s wife” bit is actually just some kind of weird UK sexual innuendo or something. And the singer’s terminally English accent certainly doesn’t help, since I can’t make out all the lyrics, but that’s fine, because I kind of like it that way. The ambiguity only adds to the mystique of the transcendental noise.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from trying to find the lyrics online. But after many failed Google searches, and even checking Autocamper’s Bandcamp page, I came up with nothing. The lyrics simply do not exist online, as far as I can tell.

But I had to know, so you know what I did? I emailed the band.

( email to the band )

Maybe they’ll get back to me?

In the meantime, I'll keep an ear out for more transcendental noise.

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toonami at five

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 20:57:28 GMT

It must have been around 5 PM. I was in the living room, sitting on the big wrap-around couch. My eyes were glued to channel 176. Toonami. I wanted to watch Mobile Suit Gundam, but they were playing Dragon Ball instead for some reason. Goku and Krillin were fighting each other over a stone or something. Then my dad came home. He walked into the living room, grabbed the remote, and flipped the channel. “Hey, I was watching that,” I said. But he didn’t say a word. He just sat down next to me and placed a big hand on my leg. Then we both just stared into the glow, watching the world burn.

That morning, it must have been around 9 AM, the whole lower half of my face was glittering like a rainbow, and there was a sour, metallic taste in my mouth. I was sitting Indian style in the hallway outside of class, my back to the wall. Two nurses and a teacher were towering over me. I could see a mash of students’ faces through the classroom-door window, they were all clamoring for a peek. The taller of the two nurses held out a clear, thin tube and said, “You drank this?” I nodded. “Why?” she said. I shrugged. Then my 5th-grade teacher, Ms. Brooks, chimed in, “Did one of the kids make you do it?” I shook my head. “Do you feel OK? Does your stomach hurt?” I shook my head again. Then they started talking like I wasn’t there. “You can’t just take his word for it, he’s a kid,” the shorter nurse said. “Maybe it’s slow-acting?” said Ms. Brooks. “What brand is it?” There was a pause. The taller nurse observed the tube closely. “Sakura Gelly Roll, Rainbow Stardust Glitter.” The shorter nurse nodded at this. “They’re all the rage, my daughter has a case full of them.” Ms. Brooks added, “Does it say anything else, safe for children?” There was another pause. “Nothing.” I was just sitting there, smacking my lips a little bit, trying to make the nasty taste go away, watching them go back and forth, like I was a ghost or something. “I don’t think it’s toxic,” the taller nurse said. “We can’t just assume,” Ms. Brooks responded. “Fine, I’ll call poison control.” I felt my stomach twist at the word “poison.” The shorter nurse hurried down the hall. Ms. Brooks shifted her attention toward me, “Honey, are you sure one of the kids didn’t make you do it?” Her tone was fake-sweet, manipulative almost. I shook my head again. “Then why’d you do it, honey?” I shrugged. “Well, I’m going to have to call your parents, let them know, but I’d like to be able to tell them what happened.” I looked down at my criss-cross-applesauce legs and thought hard for a few seconds, then I looked up and said, “I dunno, was trying to be funny.” She blinked. “And I wanted to know what it tastes like,” I added. She blinked again. I could tell the nurse was holding in a laugh. After a few blinking seconds, Ms. Brooks asked, “Well, did it taste good?” And no, no it did not. It did not taste good at all. It was one of the worst tastes I had ever tasted. So I shook my head at her question, smacked my lips, made a face. “Nope. Tastes real bad.” And that’s when Ms. Brooks and the nurse burst into laughter. Then Ms. Brooks held out her hand and said, “C’mon honey, let’s go get you some water, wash that taste out.” I took her hand. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” she added. I nodded and stood up, then I followed Ms. Brooks down the hall, a little worried about the poison.

But we didn’t make it very far before Ms. Brooks was stopped by the computer lab teacher, Mr. Wainwright. He leaned in real close and said something under his breath, at which point something changed, like some sort of heavy gloom had drifted into the hallway. Ms. Brooks looked down at me with an expression I had never seen before. I could not parse it. Was this about the poison? I was still smacking my lips and rubbing my mouth, getting rainbow ink all over my sleeve. I thought maybe I was about to get in big trouble for drinking the gel pen, or that maybe they heard back from poison control, found out that Sakura Gelly Roll was actually poisonous. I started squirming, worrying about death.

Then Ms. Brooks lightly grabbed me by the wrist and led me into the computer lab. There were about twenty iMacs in there, the translucent ones that are all rounded and colorful, and there were kids sitting behind each one, but they weren't focusing on their computer screens, no, they were focusing on something else, the small television up in the high corner of the classroom. There was something happening on the TV. Something was on fire, billowing smoke. I couldn't quite make it out. I looked at Ms. Brooks with a confused look on my face. I wanted to ask her what we were doing here, why we weren't getting anything to drink. I also wanted to ask her if I was going to die from the poison. But when I looked up at her, she was covering her mouth and tears were streaming down her face, so I asked her a different question. I asked, “What’s wrong, Ms. Brooks?”

“The world, honey,” she said. “The world’s wrong.”

I didn’t understand what she meant.

By 10 AM, we were all in the gymnasium, waiting for our parents to pick us up. The teachers were there too, congregated into little groups, murmuring while they kept an eye on us. It was weird because none of us were making any trouble like we usually do. That heavy gloom was in the air, affecting us all. We were all spread out in the gym, sitting around in our little circles, nervously fidgeting and wondering what the heck was going on. It was as if someone had released a sedative through the air vents or something. And the poison control people never came. I guess they forgot. I kind of forgot too. I had stopped worrying about death and was now worried about something else entirely, something I could not quite put my finger on. I was just sitting there in a little circle with all the other nerdy kids. They all had bad haircuts and slightly protruding bellies, and some were wearing Pokemon shirts. And none of them seemed to care that my face was a glittery rainbow, they were all too busy talking in weird, hushed tones.

So I just sat there, not saying a word, listening to the back and forth.

I wonder if anybody died. All I saw was smoke and fire and stuff. How long do we have to stay here? I heard it was aliens. Aliens aren't real, idiot. I need to go pee. Maybe it was Godzilla. Are they gonna let us play dodgeball? Godzilla lives in Japan. He could have come here. No, he couldn’t. Yeah, he could. Nuh-uh. Yeah-huh. I really have to pee. Why are the teachers acting so weird? I don’t know. It's kind of scary. Are they gonna bring us lunch? I saw Ms. Johnson praying in the hall. Why would Godzilla even come here? Maybe he got bored. Ms. Brooks was crying. Big monsters don't just get bored, that's dumb. At least we get out of school early. Anyone got any snacks? My mom’s here, see you tomorrow. My dad works till seven. Are they gonna let us take the bus? My sister is gonna pick me up, she drives a Mustang. My dad drives a BMW. So what? If they let us play dodgeball, I hope they play Cotton Eye Joe. I hate that song. My big brother and I listen to Metallica. I'm gonna go find the bathroom. I'm really hungry. My neighbor has a pet monkey who can do tricks. What's that got to do with anything? I wonder what the teachers are talking about over there. Maybe the school’s closing down for good. Yeah, I wish. Austin said it was a meteor. That’s stupid, they can deflect meteors, I saw it in a movie. You're all stupid, I heard the teachers talking, they said it was terrorists.

My ears perked up. “What's a terrorist?” I said.

The kids just looked at me with big, blinky eyes, saying nothing. They didn't know either.

The teachers eventually brought food for us to eat. They also brought out the balls and said we could play dodgeball, but no one actually played. None of our hearts were really in it. I eventually took out my cow-print notebook and started drawing. I was big into Gundam and had been watching it religiously on Toonami every day after school. I was working on a full-page spread of little Gundams battling each other in a massive city. There were little robots on the buildings, lasers streaking through the cloud-bubble skies, beam sabers clashing over the roads, stomped cars in the streets, explosions all over the place, little stick-figure people with jagged speech bubbles reading, “RUN, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.” I was about halfway done with the drawing when my dad showed up. It must have been around 4 PM. I was one of the last kids to leave.

The car ride was weird. My dad wasn’t listening to the hard-rock station like he normally does. He was listening to some news broadcast. A woman was talking in a very sad tone. "The blaze has only intensified over the last several minutes. At this hour, there is still no word on the status of the search-and-rescue teams who entered Building 7 earlier this afternoon. Our prayers go out to those brave first responders and their families. Reporting live, we will bring you updates the moment we have them.” The woman paused for a while, then she said, “Dear God, bless America." My dad only shook his head and turned the radio off, only the hum of the engine and the bump of the road remained. My dad wasn't saying a word. He didn’t even ask about my rainbow face. So, wanting to break the uncomfortable silence, I started asking him questions.

“How'd you know to pick me up?”

“They called me, kiddo.”

“Oh, what took you so long?”

“I was showing a house on the other side of the city.”

“Is it a big house?”

“It’s big enough.”

“Why are they closing the school?”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“Austin said it was a meteor.”

“Austin said that?”

“And someone else said it was aliens.”

My dad only shook his head, then he said, “Maybe that would’ve been better.”

“What do you mean, Dad?”

“Better than the truth.”

I didn’t understand what he meant.

When we pulled into the downstairs garage, it must have been around 4:30 PM. My dad said he had a few errands to run, so he dropped me off and told me to make myself some lunch. When I entered the basement through the garage, the house felt different, but my dog, Freddy, was waiting for me at the top of the stairs like he always did, wagging his tail like mad, happy to see me as usual, like it was just another normal day for him. So I got on all fours and climbed up the stairs real quick like a wild animal, like I usually do, and I pounced on him at the top. We wrestled a little bit, but my heart wasn't really in it, so I stopped short and just lay on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. Freddy started licking my face for almost a whole minute, like there was something tasty on there, and I just let him do it because why not.

Next thing I did was, I went to the bathroom, and after taking a leak, I looked at myself in the mirror. I noticed the rainbow was gone and realized why Freddy had been licking me for so long. Then I went into the kitchen and made some Easy Mac. The instructions say to leave the water in after microwaving the pasta, but I always poured it out and added milk instead. It tasted better that way. I sat in silence in the kitchen, eating my mac and cheese. It tasted good, but I didn’t eat it all. There was something weird going on with my stomach, and it wasn’t the gel pen, it was something else, something I didn’t understand. When I was done, I put the bowl on the floor and let Freddy eat the rest. He really liked that. Then I looked at the kitchen clock and realized Gundam was about to come on, so I rushed out of the kitchen.

It must have been around 5 PM. I was in the living room, sitting on the big wrap-around couch. My eyes were glued to channel 176. Toonami. I wanted to watch Mobile Suit Gundam, but they were playing Dragon Ball instead for some reason. Goku and Krillin were fighting each other over a stone or something. Then my dad came home. He walked into the living room, grabbed the remote, and flipped the channel. “Hey, I was watching that,” I said. But he didn’t say a word. He just sat down next to me and placed a big hand on my leg. Then we both just stared into the glow, watching the world burn.

A slideshow of catastrophe flashed across my eyes. Images of people screaming and buildings burning and towers falling played on repeat, over and over again. It looked like a scene from Mobile Suit Gundam, but real life. A woman stood in front of it all, speaking directly to the camera. She kept saying things like “unthinkable horror” and “World Trade Center” and “national tragedy and “ground zero” and “Boeing 767” and “no survivors” and “day of mourning” and “terrorist attack.”

At that last one, my ears perked up, so I turned to my dad.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“What’s a terrorist?”

He thought about this for a moment.

“Is it like a bad guy?” I said.

“Something like that.”

“What’d they do?”

“They hurt a lot of people, son.”

“Why’d they do that?”

He thought about this for a moment, too.

“Did we do something bad to them?” I added.

“It’s complicated.”

“Tell me.”

He paused for a moment, then he said, “They hate us.”

“Why would they hate us, what did we do to them?”

“It’s not that simple, son.”

I didn’t understand what he meant.

We didn’t say anything for a while after that. We just sat there, watching the world burn. But eventually, getting bored, I turned to my dad and said, "Guess what?”

“What?”

“I drank a gel pen today.”

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “What? Why would you do that?”

“I dunno. I wanted to see what it tastes like.”

He blinked. “Well, did it taste good?”

“No, it taste real bad.”

And at that, he smiled, then he let me watch Toonami for the rest of the night.

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lolly

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 05:03:00 GMT

Lolly lived a long life.

She was a fluffy white cat, or maybe she was one of those black and tan shorthair cats, or maybe she was an orange cat, or a gray one, I don't actually remember. It was a long time ago. She was the family cat, but mostly she was my sister’s cat, because Lolly didn’t much care for anyone else. She especially didn't care for me, because back then, in my psychopathic toddler youth, I would tug at her tail and chase her around the house and treat her like a toy, and my sister hated me for it. So Lolly spent most of her time in my sister's huge basement room off the garage. We had this massive wood projector TV down there, with a Nintendo Entertainment System hooked up to it, and Lolly would play all the video games with us. She would track the lights and bat the plumber and hunt the ducks better than we ever could. She had a lot of personality. We all thought she was very funny. My sister loved Lolly very much, and as I grew older, I came to love her too.

But one day, when I was about ten years old, something happened to Lolly.

My parents had gotten divorced a year earlier. My mom remarried a rich older man. He moved us into a massive house that was previously owned by famous baseball manager Bobby Cox, which is not a brag, just a fact. And due to my young age, my parents had split custody over me, so I would live with my mom one month and my dad the next, but my sister, being around fifteen at the time, had chosen to live with my mom, and she brought Lolly along with her. My sister and Lolly lived in the upstairs section of the house, which was like a mini house of its own, with its own living room and kitchen area and everything. And when I was living with my mom, I spent a lot of time up there, because my room was up there too.

My stepdad was a self-proclaimed venture capitalist who bred show dogs, Boxers specifically, and he kept two as pets. Their names were Max and Sassy. Sassy was a sweet dog, but Max was a violent animal. Max especially didn’t like cats, so Lolly had to be kept upstairs at all times. We erected one of those safety gates at the top of the stairwell to keep them separated. This gate protected not only Lolly but also myself, because Max didn’t like me very much either. He would often lurch at me and snap at my ankles and chase me up the stairs. I was scared shitless of this dog. It got so bad that my mom hired a dog trainer, but the trainer didn’t so much train Max as he trained me. The idea was that I was just not approaching Max correctly, that if I just adjusted my behavior with Max, then he’d stop trying to basically murder me. So a few days a week, this dog trainer would take Max and I into the backyard to train us. He would show me how to properly walk up to Max, how to appropriately react when Max lurched at me, how to give Max a treat without getting my hand ripped off, how to hug my mom without Max flying into a jealous fit of bestial rage, that sort of thing. But the training sessions didn't help. Max remained a violent animal, and I remained a frightened little boy.

So, every day when I got home from school, to avoid Max, I would quietly slip through the front door, tiptoe through the kitchen where his dog bed was, army crawl behind the big couch in the living room so that he wouldn’t notice me, and then I’d bolt up the stairs for dear life, latch the safety gate behind me, and spend the rest of the day in my room playing Final Fantasy games on my PlayStation and watching Degrassi on The N.

But one day, that all changed. I had just gotten home from school. The house was strangely quiet. My mom was asleep on the couch. Max was nowhere to be found. I walked through the house relieved and unafraid. But when I got about halfway up the stairs, I noticed something. The gate was wide open and there was a trail of mangled fur leading to my sister’s room. Her door was cracked. The carpet around the door was darker than usual, a sort of reddish brown. I walked up to the door and called out my sister’s name, but there was no reply. She wasn't home. I heard a wet, mushy sound coming from inside the room. I started to feel uneasy but pushed the door open anyway. And that’s when I saw it, clumps of bloody fur, little chunks of muscle matter, small trails of intestinal tubing, an entire cat’s anatomy strewn across the room. And there was some sort of smell, some sort of awful smell. I remember staring, dumbfounded, unable to process what I was looking at. I was only ten years old. I had always assumed that those around me were invincible, that they could never die.

That mushy, wet sound got louder. I shifted my eyes toward the source, and that’s when I saw it. Max. He was in the corner of the room. He was hunched over a mound of flesh and blood. He was chewing and slurping. I felt a mixture of fear and anger swirling in my head and stomach. I stepped back, wanting to get out of there, which caused me to bump into the door, which must have alerted Max, because that’s when he turned his box-like head toward me in what felt like slow motion. His muzzle was dripping with blood, and I swear, in that moment, he had the red eyes of a demon. He let out a vicious snarl, and then he launched himself at me.

But in that moment, something happened. The fear was gone. I stepped forward, met Max in the middle, and then I kicked him right in the fucking face. I kicked him so hard that he yelped and twirled and fell to the floor, whimpering like a pathetic fucking animal, and then I kicked him again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

I don’t know how long I was in there, but eventually my mom rushed in and restrained me. Max was still breathing, but Lolly was not. And when my sister came home, she broke down in tears and refused to go in her room, but she started treating me a lot nicer after that day. Max was taken to the vet. They treated him for severe internal bleeding. He barely survived.

But I guess the dog training worked, because Max never fucked with me again.

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a highly subjective review of Underworld

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 20:38:24 GMT

A few days ago, I finished Don DeLillo’s Underworld. It took me over a month to finish, and now, looking back, that entire month is like a gaping hole in my memory, a void, one of those paranormal loss-of-time events almost, because I barely remember a thing.

I don’t blame Underworld. I blame myself.

I've got more than a few bad habits, like smoking almost a pack a day, eating whole bags of candy in one sitting, biting my nails to the quick, chewing at the tips of my fingers, drinking coffee after midnight, staying up way too late, being an absolute terror in the mornings, compulsively watching YouTube videos that I don’t even like just to post snarky comments, picking scabs to the point that they take months to heal, picking my nose, eating boogers, drinking straight out of the carton, throwing recyclables in the garbage because I’m too lazy to go through the whole can-crushing process, a seriously unhealthy relationship with digital entertainment of all kinds, sudden-onset procrastination when some mandatory task presents itself, eating only like three types of food because I refuse to try new things, and all sorts of other stuff. But the bad habit that’s most applicable here, which is sort of a blessing and a curse in some ways, is my tendency to finish every book that I start regardless of quality, because that’s exactly what happened with Don DeLillo’s Underworld, a book that, in hindsight, was a colossal waste of my time, like I could have read three other books in the time it took to read all 900 or so pages of Underworld, and the worst thing about it is, I barely remember what happened in the book. In fact, I’m pretty sure nothing happened at all.

I don't know why I do this to myself, the whole force-myself-to-finish-things thing, because it's a catch-22 really, a situation that ends up making me feel like shit whether I finish the thing or not. There's also a sunk-time thing going on, too. But mostly, when I tell myself I'm going to do something, it becomes like a matter of personal responsibility for me, a self-inflicted obligation almost. So when I don't finish something, it feels like I’ve broken some sort of oath, which makes me feel like a failure on some level, as if I can't keep my word, which makes me feel like a dishonest, lazy person. Yet, when I do force myself to complete things, I’m always doing it begrudgingly, and there’s never a feeling of satisfaction afterward, because I’m very aware that I only have a limited amount of time on this planet and not everything is actually worth completing, and so every minute spent doing one thing sacrifices time for another thing, so when I force myself to complete things I don't want to complete I end up feeling like I've wasted a bunch of time. And even though I know the outcome of the whole finishing-things-I-don’t-really-want-to-finish thing, I still persist with finishing the thing because of the whole aforementioned personal-responsibility thing, and this, combined with feeling that I’m effectively wasting my time, creates a sort of dissonance in my mind, a dissonance that's present not only when completing the thing but also upon completion of the thing, so I can’t win. This is one of the many types of psychic torture I inflict upon myself daily. Underworld being just one of many such cases.

Underworld itself is one of those works of literary fiction that functions as a sort of commentary on twenty-first-century, first-world society. It takes place mostly in New York City between the 1950s and 90s, chronicling the life of a man named Nick Shay, who killed someone in his delinquent youth, then went through the justice system and came out reformed as an executive for a waste management company, which is supposed to be some profound comment about something, but what that something is is elusive to me, as the novel attempts to wrestle with multiple themes but is so overwrought that it only ends up wrestling with itself and the reader.

The themes, from what I gathered, are garbage, literal garbage, like waste, refuse, trash, but also spiritual garbage, like dealing with life-altering mistakes and bad habits and harmful obsessions and aversions to change. Another major theme is human interconnectedness, like how everyone is connected, how every human action has an equal and opposite reaction, even though you might not be aware of it, and also how six degrees of Kevin Bacon applies not only to Kevin Bacon but to everyone you meet, like how you could probably connect yourself by association to someone on the other side of the planet when considering that the people you interact with also interact with other people and so on down the chain. “There are only connections. Everything is connected. All human knowledge gathered and linked, hyperlinked, this site leading to that, this fact referenced to that, a keystroke, a mouse-click, a password—world without end, amen.” And the novel’s theme of garbage supports this theme of interconnectedness as well, as DeLillo is keen to point out that one person’s garbage is often recycled into another person’s cardboard box or plastic bottle or whatever, highlighting that we are even connected by our own waste. Also baseball. Baseball is a big theme. In fact, you could probably make the argument that the main character of the novel is not Nick Shay but actually a baseball, a literal baseball, the baseball hit by New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson at the Polo Grounds in New York City on October 3, 1951, dubbed the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” because the novel sort of follows this baseball chronologically from owner to owner, starting from when a young boy named Cotter Martin obtains the ball at the ball game itself, which is told in a beautifully written novella-length chapter at the start of the book, to when Cotter’s father steals the ball from his son and sells it for rent money, after which the ball exchanges hands multiple times, each of those hands belonging to a different character in the book, so there are a lot of interconnected characters associated with this specific baseball. There’s Nick Shay, Cotter Martin, his father Manx Martin, Nick’s wife, who’s like a heroin addict or something, Nick’s wife’s secret lover Brian, Nick Shay’s secret lover Klara, who’s a “reclamation artist” that turns trash into art which obviously ties into the themes of garbage and interconnectedness, then there’s this gay graffiti artist who might have AIDS, then there’s Sister Edgar, a nun whose consciousness gets uploaded into the World Wide Web after death or something, then there are like twelve other characters who are so underdeveloped that I could barely tell them apart. Oh, and also fictional versions of J. Edgar Hoover, Frank Sinatra, and Lenny Bruce, the latter of whom functions as a sort of comic-relief sage who does subversive stand-up comedy highlighting the existential dread and paranoia of living through the Cold War, ending most of his raunchy routines with “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE.” And all of these characters are connected in some way through the Bobby Thomson baseball, which all serves to reinforce the novel’s Zen-like central theme of human interconnectedness, which is basically the only thing I like about the book. And, considering that Underworld was written late in Don DeLillo’s career, when he was like 60 or something, this Zen-like theme of interconnectedness kind of reinforces my suspicion that most philosophically minded writers, given enough time, tend to lean toward Buddhism. And if you don’t believe me, see the late work of J.D. Salinger, David Foster Wallace, Jack Kerouac, and now Don DeLillo, because, despite the fact that Buddhism isn’t mentioned even once in the novel, Underworld is essentially a Buddhist text.

But that alone does not save Underworld from being a boring, overwrought waste of my time, unfortunately.

And despite the novel’s name, the Mafia is not involved here. The book is not about crime, although crime does happen. The name Underworld is more like a symbol for what’s going on underneath the surface of society, how underneath everyone is connected, both spiritually and metaphysically, and maybe the name is also a reference to the World Wide Web, which is also used as a symbol for human interconnectedness, a point DeLillo clumsily shoehorns into the epilogue, which is one of the few highlights of the book, alongside the opening baseball chapter, and this one late chapter that reveals the circumstances around how Nick Shay killed a guy, a scene that did indeed make me put the book down and be like, “damn.” The rest of the book is a series of short vignettes that jump from one time period to another in random order, which only serves to make the novel more confusing than it needs to be. These vignettes follow one of the many dull characters as they just go about their normal lives talking to each other about stuff, which results in a reading experience that goes something like, “nothing is happening but surely something must happen soon because, according to literary critics, Underworld is a masterpiece, so I’m going to keep reading because surely there must be a big payout coming up here soon,” but, spoilers, there’s no payout. There’s no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Nothing fucking happens. All the excitement is frontloaded into the beginning of the book, when Cotter Martin, who only appears in the first chapter despite being the novel's only likable and compelling character, obtains the baseball. That’s pretty much it. There’s your excitement. The rest is so dull that I can’t even recount it here, because, frankly, I do not remember. The majority of Underworld is just dialogue exchanges between characters who talk past each other about literal garbage and other topics loosely related to the overarching themes of the book. And, due to the nature of this quote-unquote “story” being told in a disjointed, out-of-sync manner, there’s no real build-up or climax or whatever, just lots of pretty words with supposedly deep subtext.

As I read through Underworld, I was struck by just how much it resembles David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, in its length, its number of characters, its fragmented storytelling, its critique of modern society, and its story that loosely gravitates around a central object. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Infinite Jest was inspired by Underworld, given that, if you check the Underworld Wikipedia page, one of the only cited pieces of praise is actually a quote from David Foster Wallace himself. “This novel is (1) a great and significant piece of art fiction; (1a) not like any novel I've read; (2) your best work ever, so far; (3) a huge reward for someone who's read all your previous stuff because it seems to be at once a synthesis and a transfiguration—a transcendence—of your previous stuff; (4) a book in which nothing is skimped or shirked or tossed off or played for the easy laugh, and where (it seems to me) you've taken some truly ballsy personal risks and exposed parts of yourself and hit a level of emotion you've never even tried for elsewhere (at least as I've read your work).” But the difference between Underworld and Infinite Jest, frankly, is that Infinite Jest is actually good, whereas Underworld is just not. Infinite Jest is sprinkled with exciting moments, occasionally beautiful prose, outrageous situations that capture your attention, short stories within stories that cause you to put the book down and stare off into space thinking about shit, spot-on future-sight prescience, well-developed characters that you actually grow attached to, and comedic moments that break up all the existential dread, all written by an author who could speak in multiple subcultural languages. Whereas Underworld is just like, “here’s a baseball game for 100 pages, here’s people making supposedly profound observations for 700 pages, here’s a nuke going off and a nun getting trapped in a computer or something for 30 pages, the end,” written in dreary prose by a 60-year-old boomer who lost touch with modern culture decades ago and is now interested solely in baseball and writing, desperately trying to marry these two loves to produce some sort of grand meaning-of-life type statement that vaguely hits on conclusions Buddhism already uncovered centuries ago, all of which basically amounts to a 900-page ramble, likely because DeLillo’s editor probably wasn’t ballsy enough to be like, “OK, grandpa, time to put the pen down.” And this is obviously true when reading the epilogue, which feels tacked on as an afterthought because, one, it’s written in an altogether different tone from the rest of the book, and two, it reads more like a thesis paper than an actual part of the novel, almost as if it were written solely because, after finishing the main bulk of the novel, DeLillo realized that he had failed to sufficiently make any sort of cohesive point whatsoever, so instead he just decided to tell us the point point-blank, meaning the bulk of Underworld functions as literary masturbation while the epilogue functions as a sort of post-nut clarity.

To me, a long novel is like a rainbow, a beautiful, awe-inspiring, mysterious thing, and you kind of expect there to be a pot of gold at the end, but there’s no pot of gold at the end of Underworld, only a wastebin full of garbage, in keeping with the major theme of the book. And, in comparison with other long novels I’ve read, notably Moby Dick and Infinite Jest, two books I enjoyed overall but also have grievances with, at least there were nuggets of gold sprinkled along the arcs of those rainbows, whereas in Underworld there are just a few gold flakes here and there, but not enough to justify the journey.

I want to caveat all this with the following disclaimer. I have a deep respect for all writers. It takes serious dedication and love-of-the-craft to write anything, especially a novel, especially one that’s almost 900 pages long. Underworld is an incredibly impressive book, from this standpoint. I also want to caveat by saying that, despite throwing around claims like “Underworld is just not good” and other criticisms, the qualitative measures of “good” and “bad” are basically stupid and almost entirely subjective. As such, my opinion of Underworld is just that, an opinion, a stupid, subjective opinion. I am not trying to make any objective claims about the quality of Underworld here. I am probably not even qualified to critique a work of this caliber to begin with, as I have not written a novel myself, and I’m also not that great of a writer. I’m also not that smart. I just have a high-school-level grasp of English vocabulary and grammar, opinions, and a tendency to ramble using far more words than necessary, as evidenced by this poor excuse for a book review. What I’m trying to say is, there’s a good chance that Underworld just went over my head. I probably just didn’t get it. And since I begrudgingly forced myself to read it, I was probably not in the best mindset to fairly judge the material when I was reading it. But, if I’m being fair, Underworld’s themes are interesting, and the way it ties those themes into baseball and trash is clever. But the whole thing just kind of fell flat for me, likely because these are things I’ve already thought about on some level, so there was nothing new for me here, at least nothing new that I picked up on, keeping in mind that I’m not that smart and that this book probably just went over my head.

To be honest, I didn’t even want to write about Underworld. I was just going to move on. But then, after considering that I had spent over a month with the book, living in its world, breathing its air, getting to know what little there is to know about its incredibly dull characters, the sunk-time fallacy sunk in, and I felt obligated to write something about it, otherwise, I would feel like I’ve wasted a bunch of time.

So here I am, making up for lost time, inflicting that old psychic torture on myself again, finishing something I don’t want to finish, effectively wasting my time, writing the last sentence of a highly subjective review of Underworld.

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call me deacon blues

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 03:09:41 GMT

Back in 2016, when I was 25 years old, I was living in one of those single-wide mobile homes perilously held up by stacked cement blocks, one of those ones with the cheap vinyl skirts they wrap around the bottom to hide all the duct-taped plumbing and rotted-out wood and raccoon colonies and maybe a dead body or two, because who knows what was actually going on under there. I may have flirted with the dark abyss, but I sure as hell did not want to crawl into it to find out what was inside. My life philosophy at the time a laissez-faire mixture of red wine and nicotine clouds and pixels, so I didn’t even care about much of anything, to tell you the truth. In fact, the rent was so cheap at $650 a month that when the landlord originally showed me the property, I immediately said “Where do I sign?” and moved my wife and three-year-old daughter into the place without even so much as a basic cursory inspection, driven mostly by the fact that I was destitute both philosophically and financially, answering phones for a coffee company for like $14 an hour and binge drinking every night. I just wanted a stable roof over my family’s head, a place that wasn't in an apartment complex, a place with a yard, with some level of privacy, a place where I could play video games, drink wine, and blast super loud music while chain-smoking cigarettes outside without someone filing a noise complaint, and this super cheap rundown trailer from the 80s checked all those hedonistic boxes.

But as it turns out, skipping the cursory inspection was a big mistake, because, as I would come to find out years later, the place was a deathtrap, and I learned this the hard way, or, well, my daughter did, when the roof in her bedroom collapsed.

It’s hard to believe that almost a decade has passed since I first moved into that shithole, because I remember it as if it were yesterday. My daily routine started in medias res, do something with my daughter after work, pour my first glass of wine around 8 p.m., finish my seventh by 2 a.m., pop a few Benadryl to fall asleep, drive to the call center six hours later, repeat. I would drink so much the night before that I was pretty much still wasted the morning after. My skin was always clammy and pale and my eyes were raccoon eyes. They say men between the age of 20 to 30 are in their prime, able to muster almost supernatural levels of strength, persevere through any hardship by sheer force of will, but I spent whatever supernatural strength I had just getting out of bed in the morning with the worst hangovers known to man and then somehow driving five miles through busy morning traffic all without getting into a single car accident despite the fact that I was nodding off behind the wheel the whole time. Half the time, I wouldn’t even remember driving to work, I’d just appear at my desk in the call center, as if I had somehow teleported there, taking calls in this autopilot-like daze. “Thank you for calling Keurig, my name is Forrest. May I have your first and last name, please? Thank you. And your email address? And your coffee maker’s serial number? Thank you again. And you say your coffee maker is short-cupping? I understand. I know that must be frustrating. We’ll have to do some troubleshooting, so please be aware that the needles inside the machine are very sharp, but could you please gather a paperclip and small measuring cup, then we can get started.”

And this worked for me somehow. I reached a certain level of homeostasis. I made around $1,800 a month, $650 of that went to rent, $300 went to utilities, food was paid for by SNAP, a couple hundred went to things for my daughter, and whatever money left over went to Marlboro Lights and Liberty Creek Cabernet Sauvignon, which was the cheapest supermarket swill wine money could buy at the time, at like $8 per 2-liter bottle, which, at 30 proof, was also the most bang for your buck in terms of getting absolutely shitfaced as quickly as possible, outside of just drinking straight liquor, which I never had the stomach for. Back then, when I was 25, I was still a child, singularly focused on myself, and whatever seemingly grown-up big-boy shit I did do was only done to maintain my comfortable homeostasis. I knew I had a drinking problem, but the negative consequences were not severe enough for me to take it seriously, especially since the euphoria after a few glasses of wine was so strong that it felt like I could not live without the stuff, like life would be just a boring slog without my Cabernet. And there was an identity aspect to it as well, because I thought drinking was super cool, and I even thought that having a drinking problem was kind of cool too, like it added character in some way, a sort of tortured-soul aesthetic. When I drank red wine, I felt like some sort of vampire sophisticate. I loved the whole ritual, the orbed glass, the twist of the wine key, the pop of the cork, the glug-glug of the pour, the exotic aroma, all of it. I would hold that first sip in my mouth for like a whole minute, just swishing it around in there like a mouthful of blood. And after a few sips, I would go outside and sit on the small uncovered wooden steps that functioned as my porch, to smoke cigarettes and listen to super loud music, bringing my orbed glass along with me, because music just hits different and cigarettes just taste better when you’re wasted, and that’s a fact.

After my daughter went to bed, I would sit myself down at my computer desk with a glass of red and boot up a video game. I would play Final Fantasy XI or The Elder Scrolls Online or some other life-suck type game, just getting totally fucked up and lost in those virtual worlds. Eventually, I started joining a Discord server with my old friends from high school, which only made my drinking worse, as we’d all drink and get fucked up together. A sort of digital drinking culture evolved, to the point that, for a few years there, we would be in that Discord server every night, drinking to the point of blurred vision and slurred speech, playing our preferred game of the week, be it Monster Hunter World, Tekken 7, Risk of Rain, Counter-Strike: Source, Diablo III, King of Fighters XIII, or whatever, just yelling and laughing and trolling the shit out of each other, sometimes to the point of bitter rivalries, weeks-long feuds, all settled with our preferred choice of alcoholic beverage and controller. There was a real sense of community there, built on old friendships and video games and, most importantly, alcohol, because it was weird when someone wasn’t drinking while everyone else was, like you couldn’t connect on the same existential plane or something if you weren’t basically blackout drunk. It was the same sort of peer pressure you might experience in high school, just carried over unspoken into adulthood.

Between rounds of whatever we were playing at the time, I would step outside and smoke a cigarette or two, making sure to bring my wine glass along with me, because after I got my first taste of blood, I could not stop. The moment I could no longer taste the aftertaste of that bittersweet earthy red, something like anxious dread would creep in, a persistent fear that the night would end, that the euphoria would fade, unless I kept drinking, so I would drink and drink and drink, a crimson tide flowing down my esophagus every minute of the night, even when I was outside smoking. And to make my outside-smoking excursions more entertaining, I would play music from my phone’s speakers, and I would literally dance and sway out there in my front yard, sometimes singing at the top of my lungs.

This is the night of the expanding man
I take one last drag as I approach the stand
I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long
This brother is free
I'll be what I want to be

Back then, my favorite band was Steely Dan. It all started when I heard the song “Peg” on the radio one day. I had heard the song before but never really paid much attention to it until one day, when the stars aligned, when it came on the classic rock station and I happened to be in just the right mood. The song resonated with me. The downtown strut of the electric piano, the intricate bounce of the bassline, the bitter darkness hidden within the joyful melody, that rich baritone background vocal by Michael McDonald, all the crazy guitar shit going on that you don’t even notice without specifically listening for it. It’s just a fantastic song, one of the greatest pop tunes ever written. It got me obsessed with Steely Dan, head over heels for their whole dark-irony-hidden-behind-layers-of-smooth-jazz sound. They had that whole anti-hipster thing going on too, which aligned well with my own anti-hip contrarian attitude. Of course, being an anti-hipster is actually just another flavor of being a hipster, perhaps the worst kind, but that didn’t stop me from going through Steely Dan’s entire discography, repeat listening to each album, falling in love with songs like “Only a Fool Would Say That,” “Bodhisattva,” “Rose Darling,” “Kid Charlemagne,” “Gaucho,” and “Your Gold Teeth II,” which, if you’ve been rolling your eyes at the Steely Dan stuff thus far, is probably the song you should listen to because it’s just straight-up poetic and beautiful, one of their few uplifting songs, musically transcendent almost, so much so that if you don’t like it, then there’s a good chance you just don’t like music, period. But back then, “Your Gold Teeth II” wasn’t my favorite song by them. My favorite song was actually “Deacon Blues,” a song that sounds like the inside of a smoky underworld dive bar, a place where the tragically hip and the perpetually misunderstood come together to drink their lives away.

Learn to work the saxophone
I play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long
And die behind the wheel

Back then, Steely Dan was my band, and “Deacon Blues” was my song. I identified with that song. I wanted to live inside that song. I saw myself as the protagonist of that song, the tragic hero, the misunderstood artist, playing exactly what he feels, drinking all night long, maybe one day dying behind the wheel, because who cares, nothing really matters, the universe is all chaos and jazz, no one even asked to be here, we’re all just specks of stardust, a flash in the cosmic scheme of things.

So call me Deacon Blues.

And alcohol was my one true love, my muse. It got to the point where, if alcohol wasn’t in my bloodstream, I wasn’t really there, in the present. During the daylight hours, when I wouldn’t drink, I would spend time with my daughter, take her to the playground, the indoor kids’ places, even play dolls on the floor of her small 10x10 trailer park bedroom, but I was never really there. I mean, my physical body was there, but my soul was not. It was someplace else entirely. I was pretending. I went through the motions because I felt like I had to, out of some persistent feeling of guilt, but my heart was never really in it. Every moment I spent with her, I was counting down the seconds until my first glass of wine. The daylight hours were just an excruciatingly long prelude to getting wasted, hammered, shitfaced, sloshed, just absolutely ossified. These were my priorities. I was a child pretending to be a father, a shell of a parent. I would constantly tell my daughter that I loved her as a way to sort of compensate for my parental absenteeism, as if cheap words could ever make up for shit parenting. But whenever she would have trouble falling asleep, making me late to my first glass of wine, I would suddenly become a harsh disciplinarian, not because I thought it was an effective way to discipline a child, but because I would become frustrated and short-tempered without wine, sometimes shouting orders at the girl like I was an army drill instructor or something. “THAT WAS THE LAST STORY. GET IN BED. PUT YOUR DAMN TOYS AWAY. CLOSE YOUR EYES. IT’S BEDTIME. DON’T MAKE ME TELL YOU AGAIN.” And this was usually followed by some pathetic apology and cheap I-love-you.

When my wife would confront me about the shouting, I would justify my outbursts by espousing some rigid parenting philosophy that I didn’t actually believe in. “Kids need discipline. There’s a certain level of fear that must be maintained. This is the way of the world, just look at countries, states, governments, they all maintain order through fear. This is just reality. Laws exist for a reason. My shouting functions as a deterrent to bad behavior, in the same way that the threat of jail functions as a deterrent to crime. What do you really think the world would be like without laws? Do you really think it would be a better place? Honestly? Don’t be naive.” And then I would pour the first of many glasses of wine and disappear into my office, feeling guilty for a whole ten seconds before my blood alcohol levels spiked, at which point I would ride the crimson tide, waves of drunken euphoria, without a care in the world. And this is how it went, night after night.

And it was on one of these nights that the roof caved in.

It had been raining all throughout the week, so it was a damp Friday night. I read my daughter a short story, cleaned up her Legos and Bratz dolls and stuffed animals, tucked her into her cheap Minnie Mouse toddler bed, kissed her on the head, told her that I loved her, apologized for shouting, turned off the lights, shut the bedroom door behind me, poured my first glass of red, logged into the Discord server, and started my whole hedonistic routine. I drank and smoked and listened to Steely Dan for hours and hours. And by the time I got ready for bed, which was around three in the morning, I had drunk so much that my head felt like it was being repeatedly hit with a hammer underwater, and my stomach was one of those bubbling lava pits you see in video games. I had lost control, failed to pace myself, as I often did. I was hunched over the toilet at three in the morning, vomiting up a crimson tide. The inside of the bowl looked like the scene of some grisly murder. After about an hour of throwing up, through sheer force of will, I picked myself up, stumbled to bed, and fell face first on the mattress, passing out.

When I woke up, my head was pounding something fierce, my chest was burning, and it was still dark outside. My wife was shouting something from the foot of the bed. I didn't want to get up, but it seemed serious, so I used some of that supernatural strength young men supposedly have and rolled myself out of bed. My wife was gesticulating, frantically explaining something that I could not comprehend in the moment, and then she grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the living room. It was dark, and our daughter was sitting there on the couch, hands in her dark hair, sobbing. My wits were slowly coming back, so I walked up to my daughter, put a hand on her shoulder, and tried to comfort her, but she wouldn’t calm down. Then my wife said something like, “It’s her bedroom. The roof. The roof fell through. She was in there for hours.” And I could not believe it. So I rushed to my daughter’s bedroom to see for myself.

It was dark in there, and there was a draft, and there was a heaviness in the air. I started coughing, covering my mouth. Then I turned the light on, saw the pile of rotted wood right by the Minnie Mouse bed, the bed itself covered in a thick layer of gray and brown. There were clouds of dust hovering throughout the room, obscuring the Disney pinups and galaxies of glow-in-the-dark ceiling stars. I looked up, and that’s when I saw it, a huge gaping hole, pieces of ceiling and wood jutting out all around the wound, just dangling there, still in the process of collapse. My wife said something from behind me. “I told you this place was a deathtrap.” So I turned to my wife, asked her when this happened, and she said it must have happened hours ago, according to our daughter, so it must have happened when I was awake in the office. She said our daughter was paralyzed with fear, that she couldn't move, that she had just stayed there in bed, under the covers, for who knows how long, frozen with fear, calling out for help. My wife asked if I had heard anything, if I had heard the crash, if I had heard our daughter calling out. I told her that I hadn't heard a thing. She glared at me with something like disgust in her eyes.

I remember just standing in that broken room, thinking it was a symbol of some kind, of neglect, of carelessness, of dysfunction. I had no words. My eyes were like super moons, and my body had taken on some sort of heinous gravity. I imagined our daughter, under the covers, eyes closed tight, her little body trembling, fearing for her life, believing some monster had crawled out of the ceiling and was about to eat her. I imagined her calling out for mommy, for daddy, for God, for anyone, to come help, how her cries went unanswered solely because I was too drunk to hear them.

My wife said something like, “This place is unlivable. I’m going to file a lawsuit.” And then she pulled out her phone and started fiddling with it. “We’re going to need pictures. Let me take a picture.”

But I stopped her, told her to let me do it, so she gave me her phone. I walked further into the room to get a better look at the hole, but I was too afraid to go directly underneath it, so instead I booted up the phone’s camera app, turned the flash on, stretched my phone-arm, positioning the phone under the hole, and snapped a picture. And that’s when I saw it.

( Photograph #1 )

Apparently, there was a hole in the top roof, and a family of raccoons had been living up there in the attic-like space between the ceiling and the roof itself. The hole must have been pretty old, judging by the water damage and amount of mold shown in the picture. So I figured that, due to the accumulated rain water and who-knows-how-many raccoons, the ceiling just couldn’t hold anymore, finally collapsing under the weight of it all. And I figured that the raccoon in the picture must have been the matriarch of the family, who must have gotten out of there before the ceiling fell through. But, eyes wide and mouth agape at possibly the craziest picture I had ever taken in my life, I wondered why the mother raccoon was looking down into the room, like what could she have possibly been looking for?

That’s when my parenting instincts kicked in. The mother raccoon must have been looking for one of her babies, one of her little kits, who must have fallen through the ceiling. So I scoured the bedroom, looking for raccoons. And it only took me about five minutes to find one, a little baby raccoon, hidden underneath a pile of toys in the corner of the room, curled up in a little pink bowl.

( Photograph #2 )

The kit’s eyes were closed tight, and she was shivering a little bit. There was a pinkish bulge on one of her legs, like an injury of some sort, maybe from the fall. I knew she couldn't have landed in the bowl itself, as the bowl was on the other side of the room, so I figured that she must have crawled across the room after falling through the ceiling, and when she found a place to hide, she just curled up there and waited for mommy and daddy to come rescue her. But mommy and daddy never came, just me. And, luckily for that little kit, I love raccoons. But when I was holding that pink bowl in my hand, looking down at that injured baby raccoon, seeing it all helpless and afraid, I didn’t really see a raccoon at all, I saw my daughter.

My wife wouldn’t let us keep the baby raccoon, even though I wanted to. So, later that day, I put the kit in a box stuffed with towels and put the box outside, at the treeline of the woods near my trailer, hoping that mom would return, take her baby back home, wherever home was for them. But hours passed, and mom never showed up, so I got worried about the little kit, worried that she might starve, that she might succumb to her injuries, so my daughter and I took the baby raccoon to the local animal hospital, but they told us that they couldn’t take wild animals, that they didn’t have the proper permits or something. So we left that animal hospital dejected and confused, having no idea what to do with the little kit. I remember just sitting there in my car, head still pounding from the night before, coming up totally blank on what to do next.

But after about five minutes, a young woman walked up to my car and signaled me to roll down the window. “We’ll take the raccoon, but you’ll need to sneak it into the back. Drive around.”

So I turned the key, revved the engine, and started driving around to the backside of the animal hospital. The car’s stereo connected to my phone automatically via Bluetooth, playing the last song I was listening to the night before, which just happened to be “Deacon Blues.” And when I got to the backside of the animal shelter, I left the car running in park, told my daughter to wait, and carried the box with the baby raccoon in it to the back door, where the same young woman from before smiled at me, took the box from my hands, and said, “Don’t worry, she’ll be fine, we’ll take care of her.” And I was left feeling a little sad, because for some reason I knew that I would never see that baby raccoon again.

“Deacon Blues” was still playing when I got back into the car. It was on the chorus, so before I buckled my seatbelt and put the car in reverse, I paused to savor that dark, jazzy sound.

They got a name for the winners in the world
I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues

But this was not the song I knew. It was different. It was an entirely new song, with an entirely new meaning. I started thinking to myself, the protagonist of this song, he’s not some tortured-soul romantic, some hip idealist, some sort of tragic hero rebelling against the tides of a dark, unfair world. He’s not any of those things.

He’s just some fucking alcoholic loser.

So call me Deacon Blues.

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