“Strange memories on this nervous night in Two Harbors. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. (…) History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. (…)  and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” — Hunter S Thompson, more or less

This is not a lament. This is a document, a record. In the acrid stupidity of our current moment, it would be easy to reminisce about the potential of the recent past. Forlorn, foregone. Nah. I was a pretty avid Bernie Sanders supporter, and he never became the President of the United States of America. It would be easy to languor in self-pity. To take the loss, and to internalize it into a feeling like nothing will ever get better. This is a wrong way to think about it. A revolution will not happen without the right conditions. A dream of revolution is admirable, but this kind of shift is more tectonic than weather. Know what I mean?

Take for example, John Brown. A man who had such conviction in his religion that he fought and died for an unpopular, eh, controversial belief at the time. He took the lessons of Christianity very seriously, and as such became a warrior and a martyr for what would eventually be the liberation of millions of people. He was dead, hanged, before the American Civil War started. He was the impetus for a better world. The tide of history washed up to him before it really took hold. What I’m saying is that capitalism has been our World Model for about 600 years, and it was extruded from the cursed afterbirth of feudalism before it. It won’t be defeated by one election in one country. This struggle will take a century or more. There will be progress and regress. So anyway, what am I getting at?

The first time I heard of Bernie Sanders was in 2015 or so, when I was smoking a cigarette in my car at work on my lunch break. I was listening to NPR on the radio. They described him as a “fringe candidate” who would only be seeking to move Hillary Rodham Clinton more to the left. Remember how Hillary was the obvious candidate?

Bernie had a better than expected showing in the first primary in Iowa, and so his whole campaign shifted gears. I think they also thought of the campaign as a means to pressure Clinton, at first. But his rhetoric about the obvious injustice of our capitalistic system was speaking to many people. The empty air of the Obama administration had left many people feeling wanting. Barack Obama campaigned as a progressive, someone who would make the lives of normal people better. He lied. He was a spokesman for the monolithic banking and health insurance class. The exuberant youth movement that elected him was squelched. Disappointed. Wherein Obama spoke vagaries about HOPE and CHANGE, he was a dyed-in-the-wool Neoliberal. A blank avatar of charisma, which is good for elections, yes, but was a sock puppet for moneyed interests.

Hillary was a horrible candidate, obviously. A homunculus of the same system that gave us the NAFTA deregulation of the 90s and the Iraq War, and the Bankers’ Bailout of 2008, and the…fuck, I could keep typing all day about the bullshit she endorsed. The fat pedophile clown, Donald Trump, ran on the platform of “Make America Great Again” and Hillary’s riposte was that “America is already great!” Yeah, nice move, dumbass. Expect nothing. That’s a good salesman move, idiot.

But along comes Bernie, a crouching old man, like a druid approaching through the fog.

His better than expected run in 2016 blew open the doors for 2020. Hillary Clinton had lost to a fat pedophile clown, which she also kind of was, but with the Covid 19 epidemic encroaching, people wanted and expected an adult in the room. Bernie took it seriously, and he understood that most people were overworked, underpaid, exploited. This was maybe our chance for top-down socialism.

So Bernie Sanders was running for President again. He was on fire. The Iowa primary took place. Look at this:

Do you see how Sanders had a significant win? He got way more votes, however, the Democratic Party somehow awarded more delegates to Pete Bootyjudge? What the fuck is that? The Democrats have a mechanism in their party called “Super delegates” which can just nullify the will of the people. Please stop asking people for money, and for time spent knocking on doors and campaigning for people if you’re just gonna nominate your shit head chosen candidates. Gavin Newsome fucking sucks, nobody is going to vote for that piece of shit.

Bernie Sanders was obviously crushing this shit. He was rolling over all of the other candidates, his message was resonating with a world-weary populace. Class consciousness was being bitten awake. I donated to his campaign several times, once donating $4.20 when I was high, in hopes of seeing it on the little banner at the bottom of the screen.

I booked a hotel room in Milwaukee. This was where the Democratic National Convention was happening, and it seemed clear to me that Bernie was going to be the nominee for President. I wanted to be there, I don’t think I could’ve gotten into the convention without press credentials, but I wanted to be there. In the air of the Thing that was happening. However, COVID 19 was burgeoning. I ended up cancelling the reservation. A lady who worked for the hotel called me. The lady on the phone said we all have to look out for each other in these trying times. Yeah. For sure.

So then the South Carolina primary happened, in which Joe Biden crushed Bernie Sanders. This was somehow a bellwether for the election, according to the media. Even though South Carolina reliably votes Republican by about 12%. Whatever. Bernie’s significant defeat here meant that he was not a Real Candidate, I guess.

There was also a funny thing in the 2020 election where mainstream media would say like “Warren surges to 3rd place in opinion polls!” and “Bootyjudge is command with his 2nd place poll rankings” and they would not speak Bernie’s name like he was a warlock that you dare not speak of.

March 3rd was “Super Tuesday”, when the primaries all hit at once. How weird that these two just decided to drop out and endorse Biden before then. Weird. I think Barack Obama was working the phones. The Democratic Party would be more interesting, more understandable if they sold their souls for some kind of victory. Instead, they constantly lose. They are just Republican Lite, and they are losers. Doesn’t that just fucking suck? If they were a football franchise, you’d fire the head coach, the general manager, etc. They are the Cleveland Browns of American Politics. Completely incompetent buffoons, completely morally bankrupt careerists.

I believe in the basic dignity of humanity. I think most people are good. Capitalism has corrupted our minds, we’re inundated in it. We’re not meant to be so transactional. These billionaires are Freaks, corrupted villains. They’re not admirable, they have a serious mental illness that is advantageous in this fucked up, corporate bullshit.

I don’t think Bernie Sanders would have saved the world or anything, but the window may have shifted slightly to the left. Maybe we’d see that a collective could benefit everybody. Instead, a fat pedophile ogre is starting wars and ruining life for no reason. Welp, you liked when he was Really Mad at Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem. That was worth it, right? Dummy.

So yeah, the Bernie Sanders movement was fun. Innervating. I hope something more comes of it.

Grobtar ran to the heavy wooden doors. The castle was burning, he could hear the hellish screams of the imps and demons echoing down the stonework hallways behind him. He pulled his tan, muscular leg back, his thigh coiling like a cobra of kinetic energy, and kicked at the doors. The hinges heaved, sighing with certain defeat but holding for a moment. Grobtar once more bashed his foot into the doors and they swung open.

“Fiend!” he cried as he hurried into the chamber, “Show thyself, you snake! You murderer!”

A high-back leather chair swung around. Behind the desk was Olichev, the World-Drinker. The Sorcerer of Sorrows. The Magician of Malady. The great wound that was festering in the world.

Grobtar approached, now more slowly, his tan, muscular legs slowing to a near stop. ” Accepted your fate, have you, sorcerer? Now that my blade has found your throat? Do you wish to ask forgiveness before I take your head?”

Olichev, ever the villain, said “Please, Grobtar the Mighty, sit. Sit right there, in that chair, yes. Let us speak of villains and heroes and all of your…misguided thoughts.” Grobtar had the instinct to charge him, but a different strain of thought entered his mind. He complied, and sat upon the chair in front of the desk. This wizard, damn him, he compelled Grobtar so.

“So…what’s your problem?” Olicheve asked, snidely.

” You’ve taken the lives of tens of thousands of peasants, you’ve ruined the lives of so many-“

“No, no, no…dummy,” Olichev now pointed a finger towards Grobtar’s face. ” No, you think that because what I’ve done is ‘unpopular’ or is ‘evil’ or whatever, that I should pay for it? With my head? Right?” He turned back. Grobtar began to reply, but then Olichev made a motion with his hands like pinching. Then Grobtar’s lips folded shut and he was silent, except for a guttural throat noise. “Yeah, see?” continued Olichev. He stood and approached the vast window behind his desk.

“You have what all small people have. A sense of morality based on some kind of self-sacrifice and community. This is because all of your little, insignificant actions must be part of a greater whole, right? Like, you know you’re never going to be remembered, like I will. Your life has no impact. It won’t affect much more than a few people,” Olichev sneered. “My deeds are carved in the pillars of the earth.”

Grobtar caught a breath, somehow, and replied ” Deeds of evil, hatred.” Olichev, surprised, re-iterated the pinching motion of his mage hand and silenced the barbarian.

Olichev now sat on the high-back leather chair like a cool high school guidance counsellor, where they spin it around and sit facing the wrong way, but this chair was way too tall, so then he just kinda popped his head around to one side and said:

” You’ve got this stupid, poor person idea that just permeates all your thoughts. You have a ‘collective good’ in your thoughts. Dumb. Weak, herd-follower idea. I’m an alpha predator. I eat the weak. I’m about to eat you, but,” he grabbed a bottle of Faerie Wine off his desk and took a swig, ” I’ll tell you why.”

” Back in the day, in 1978 or something, the University of Penn State did an experiment where they had ten monkeys in an enclosure. And they hung a bag of food above the enclosure, with a ladder propped up just underneath it. Naturally, a monkey would climb the ladder and go after the food. But as soon as this happened, the experimenters sprayed the monkey climbing the ladder and ALL the other monkeys with cold water from a hose. They blasted them with negative stimulus. Eventually, another monkey would go for the bag, climbing the ladder, and again, the scientists would hose down the whole troop with cold water. By the time the third monkey tried to go grab that food, the rest of the monkeys would notice and grab the climber. They would tear him off the ladder, violently. Tell him, ‘Hey, fuck you, i’m not getting sprayed again.’ This all makes sense, right?”

Grobtar silently farted.

” So once those ten monkeys were conditioned to this, they swapped out one of them. They took a monkey out and put a new one in. The new one, who hadn’t been hosed, obviously noticed the food and tried to climb the ladder, but the resident monkeys violently grabbed him down and told him ‘fuck no, we don’t go up there.” So the new monkey learned to not do it. They continued this. They put in another new monkey, same thing, he tried to climb and got beat up for even trying. Eventually, they ended up with ten new monkeys. None of the originals who had been sprayed with the cold water, and…now pay attention,”

Grobtar was somewhat awake here,

” They had ten new monkeys. None of them had been sprayed by cold water, but they all had a superstition about climbing that ladder. They violently stopped whoever tried to climb it.”

“This is your religion, your morality, your sense of right and wrong. You inherit it, stupidly. I’m not bound by such trivial, trial-and-error stupidity,”

Olichev smiled, reveling in the corners of his cheeks ” I’m the monkey who got the food. I’m the one who climbed the ladder. I’m the one, who…even though you all tried to stop me…I got it. I stood up on that ladder and feasted on the food while you all got drenched in cold water. You were screaming for me to stop, you knew it would hurt you, and I did, too. But I was above all of you. I was munching on the Nanners.”

Olichev gleamed over Grobtar now, a dagger in his hand, pressed to the throat of the barbarian. ” I’ll eat Nanners forever. Speak last words, ignorant ape,” he unpinched his fingers and allowed Grobtar to talk.

Grobtar spit. Laughed. ” Last words? Alright,” he spit again.

His slivery-blue eyes turned to beatitudes as he said ” You can well be the king of the apes. You are, surely. But what have you gained? Clinging to the top of that ladder, fearful of everything beneath. Unknowing of everything above. It’s going to end. The Nanners may have sated you, felt delicious for a time. But the monkeys below have connection, love, community. They know one another, and they can adorn the climbing of the ladder with all sorts of cautionary tales, symbols, understanding. The food, the Nanners you eat, are just going to turn to shit. The monkeys down below shit, too. What ledger will keep the name of the shitting-monkey at the top of the ladder?”

Olichev narrowed his eyes.

Grobtar continued, ” There was once a great king, in the time before the written word. Statues and paintings were made exalting his glory. He held sway over three million subjects. He was the undisputed master of the world, the exalted god of all people great and small,”

“None know his name.”

The howling battle in the castle seemed to quiet. The fires grew dimmer.

“My wife knows my name, and she is just as close to the ladder as you were, dick. You’re seeking some authorization, some kind of recognition that is beyond what this world can provide, dick. It’s all impermanent. So, why would you seek dominance in such a small little enclosure? Why wouldn’t you throw the Nanners down? Make everybody happy, at least for a little bit? Dick.”

The battle was ended. The castle was a living ruin. Grobtar stood, his tan, muscular legs flexing as he brought his silvery sword through the night air. A bloody quip of noise, and then Olichev’s head fell to the stone floor. His eyes were black tombs, holding everything from Before.

Grobtar walked out of the castle, and the day was breaking.

God, whether she is a sentience outside of the universe, or the totality of a mechanistic reality, will take measure of the intention of your heart in the moment of your death.

When the outlines of your temporal, egotistical self break down, and the viewpoint you inhabited melts into the eternity of all things sentient and insentient. When you surrender the ghost to the stark reality of rocks, nitrogen, and the unregocnized prophets of ancient civilizations, the measure of your heart will take place.

God, whether he is a patriarch too tired to keep his children from fighting, or whether he is a disparate web of information, described as physics playing across an infinite plane, will take measure of the morality of your heart in the moment of your death. When the Wrong Thing would have been easy, and when the Right Thing would’ve been difficult. God can see that. God, real or not, sees it.

God, whether it is the foolhardy emmanation of a greater truth, that all of us mortals must toil under until we gain appropriate knowledge through meditation and suffering, or it is a grandpa-like figure sitting on a literal chair in the clouds, dictates the lives of the blessed and the wretched in equal measure.

God, why you gotta be breaking my balls.

God exists, real or not, because of how our minds work. I think of it like a big old crystal ball. Like the leylines of all of the things that happen in the universe are contained within this sphere that is enwebbed with infinite nueral patterns of potential and actuality. That an apt metaphor is a brain with neurons and dendrites and synapses and shit. And that The Brain of Reality is held together, is experienced, by God, as a sort of ledger of what experience is. A written work of What Is.

God, and of course this is a metaphor. It’s hard to escape the realm of metaphor and analogy when you’re talking about meaning. Jamming a Breakfast Burrito into your mouth hole is wrought with many layers of latency, symbolism, world-breaking irony.

God probably means knowledge, means awareness. Means wisdom.

God, take pity on us creatures. Damned with both a soul and a body. I get to experience the beauty, majesty, the whole of the thing. I feel the sharp edges, too. I am cut and nicked by man-made blades.

God, ever wiser, gives me dreams. Potentiality. God rests while humans toil because it is all written. I can scream and writhe about the injustice of it all, but I believe that one day we will choose love over selfishness. It was intense love that bound the early caveman humans together and it is love that will sew up the chapter on humanity. I was just born way before that.

God, purple and blue smoke rising out of a campfire. God, in the alchemy that turns the written word into ideas. God, as the world in the mirror. God, as a nice sunset on a hillside.

Wikipedia is 25 years old today, and to out myself as a huge dorkus malorkus, I just want to inform you all that I love Wikipedia. Permit me, like Old Faithful or my butt after eating McDonald’s, to gush a bit.

In the late 1990s, the internet was being integrated into schools, workplaces, and homes en masse. The new millennium was approaching. The Cold War had been won and Pax Americana had begun. We were even rubbing Russia’s nose in it. Mikhail Gorbachev was in a fucking Pizza Hut commercial for god’s sake. The End of History. With one global superpower ushering in an era of economic prosperity and peace, cruising along on the Information Superhighway.

It was thought, in those naive pre-9/11 days, that the world wide web would be a boon to humanity. It would revolutionize the way we communicated and would become the digital Library of Alexandria. A repository of the collective knowledge of humanity, able to be accessed by anyone from anywhere in the world. This sort of happened. Sort of. The boon kinda turned into a curse, like the blessing of a capricious god in olde timey fables.

But Wikipedia has been and still is fulfilling the old, optimistic view of the internet’s potential.

It’s a community curated repository of factual, unbiased information. Anyone can contribute to the articles, so sometimes a falsity or politically charged bit of horseshit will crop up on a given page, but the diligence of thousands of autistic people makes sure that it doesn’t stay up for very long. The collaborative aspect of many people from all around the world, who do it absent the profit motive, is inspiring to me. For real. Many other sites on the internet have been bought up by megalomaniacal shitheads and turned into a vast morass of misinformation and trash. Some will even create dubious technology that is purported to be a tool for answers and information, but in actuality is little more than a masturbatory tool for thin-skinned, micropenised losers. But not Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has no ads. It doesn’t vulgarly pop up with a flashing banner asking you to gamble on sports between every paragraph.

Wikipedia doesn’t require a subscription. It doesn’t let you read the first part of an article and then hide everything useful behind a paywall.

How many websites of this size and reputation even exist anymore?

Plus, there’s a lot of fun stuff on there. Is a Diet of Worms a new health craze? Is Kumbum Monastery a famous gay bar? Did a fucking Martian write the article on Humans? Or something you never even thought about.

So I donated some money to Wikipedia today. I think I am on that website for one reason or another literally every day. Whether just killing time at work or desiring info from a credible source, Wikipedia is “lit 100% fire”, as the kids say. So if you find yourself on this lovely website often, donate too, you ungrateful FUCK.

I got married about three weeks ago. And it felt like the culmination of a lot of the truths of my life. My wife was a beautiful, intelligent, kind-hearted woman that I knew since I was five years old. All of the through-lines of my life were aligning, and the world was shining with this destined pairing. I was lucky, much luckier than most.

As with many life-defining moments, birth, death, marriage, moving, pregnancy, jobs, etc., I took an account of my life. I told the story of my life to myself in the manner of reflection. It’s rare to have a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. I mean, rare in that it happens once. I had one. I was passing through the membrane of possibility into reality, wherein I was married. Had a wife. Grown-up type shit.

And in thinking about life, it’s impossible to not inventory the experiences you’ve had, to look back with an eye for what has been, how it beat the path to now. I went deep with it. A son in the upper Midwest. How is it that I was once a baby? That I came here, not knowing anything? I learned how to crawl, to walk, to speak this language? Was that the same person I am now? How could it be. How could that small thing, without words to speak become this sorceror? I guess there’s a continuity between the baby me and the 38 year old me. That’s the case, that’s the way it goes. But it is more like a waveform. It’s a collection of points that are all riding the same energy. The cells in your body die every seven years. Your brain, boobs, butt, all are different matter in less than a decade. I think about how my mind used to work, I get it, it doesn’t work that way anymore. I grabbed a lot more humility, empathy, tact. I’d prefer for people to be impressed with my virtue than my rebelliousness.

Virtue probably is rebel shit though, now. I dunno.

Am I even really the same person that I was, way back when? That embryonic little guy, didn’t know what I know now? I want to be a good person not for the recognition but for the sake of it. For expressing love, being an advocate for people who are struggling. It’d be easy to judge, be harsh with the losers and the underbelly ratfolk. Easy to want to look down your nose at others. I wanna do universal love. I think that’d be perfect. We’ve all got that second number on the tombstone, it’s staring right back into you. Why wouldn’t you feel companionship, love, empathy?

Heaven won’t be someplace you get to after you die. It should be the project of those who are awake.

Hard to believe we’re already halfway through the 2025 NFL season. Hard to believe Mike McDaniel still has a job. Hard to believe the cops can’t do anything about that gang of no-good kids down the street, who constantly flip me off and call me “old man fur face”. Then, when I tell them to have some respect for their elders, they just start yelling “Six seven! Six seven!” and doing Fortnite dances at me. Lousy kids. Where are the parents?!

Unlike my annual season predictions posts (which are always 100% accurate and are meticulously researched), this will be just kind of a loosey-goosey, relaxed, pajama pants kinda thing. I’m just gonna tickle these keys on my Logitech keyboard and let you know the lay of the land out in football world at this moment.

Joe Flacco remains relevant in 2025. The Elite Dragon, Super Bowl champion is still out there, slingin’ it. He’s 61 years young, and has started for two different AFC North teams so far this year. He was part of the Browns team that beat Green Bay, and was traded in-season to a divisional rival, and played Green Bay again as a Cincinnati Bengal. How weird is that shit? Since joining the Bengals, he’s thrown 9 TDs to 2 INTs, and he put up 470 passing yards in his most recent outing against the Bears. Now, his team is 3-6 and is unlikely to even sniff the playoffs, but I dunno. I think it’s neat that this old bag of bones, who was largely relegated to a backup role the last few years, is still piloting a sometimes robust offense.

Cam Little broke the longest FG record. This was really cool! Jacksonville doesn’t get to have many nice things, but they now have this record. And they took it from Sex Pest Weirdo Justin Tucker, so that’s good. I like the detail of the holder showing the “it’s good” sign when the ball is about halfway there.

Skattebo gets a boo-boo. A different Cam, Cam Skattebo (pronounced “SKAT-ih-boo”, somehow), was having a heckuva rookie season. 7 total touchdowns, averaging 4.1 yards per carry, and just generally bringing the pain to opposing defenses. He was an angry little gremlin with the football. The kind of squatty little white boy who smells like dirt and would eat a piece of chalk if you dared him to, but would also never snitch. Know what I mean? He was fun to watch on a bad Giants team. Then he got a rather gruesome injury and it sucks. You know how normally your feet both point in the same direction? Yeah, his injury made that be not the case for him. Mercy. Here’s hoping he comes back in 2026 full of piss and vinegar.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I don’t think anybody had the Raiders penciled into the Super Bowl or anything, but these guys are a big disappointment. Now you may be asking yourself “But old man fur face, how can a team that was 4-13 last year be a disappointment this year?” Well, I’ll tell you. They made moves in the offseason that were not indicative of a team anticipating a multi-year rebuild. Rather than some hotshot young head coach, they went with Pete Carroll. He’s a Super Bowl winner, and the only person in the NFL who is older than Joe Biden. And they traded for Geno Smith, in lieu of drafting a hotshot young quarterback. The plan was obviously that they’d be at least a fringe playoff team this year, probably in the 8-10 win range, but they are currently 2-7 and look as hapless as a diabetic hippo in the sugarplum forest. They are as unwieldy as a bow-legged midget on stilts in the crow’s nest of a pirate ship. They are bad, is what I’m saying.

J.J. McCarthy demands to be taken seriously. This little dork has thrown for less than 200 yards in each game he’s started. He was apparently “injured” after his week 2 game against the Falcons, and didn’t see action again until this last week. Even though it seemed like he wasn’t injured, and it was more likely that Kevin O’Connell benched him because he fucking sucked. J.J. came out this week and said that he has an alter ego called “9” that comes out on gameday. He loves feeding that wolf. He’s a theatre kid that somehow ended up playing football. I like his super-strong big boy face paint, too. Wowzers. Also he is the son of former Packers coach Mike McCarthy.

Green Bay is okay. 5-2-1 is an ugly record, but I feel like a rich kid whining that the caviar is not to my taste. We’re still in first place in the division. The team is frustrating. Inconsistent. We can breeze through Detroit and Washington, and then look like middling little minnows against Cleveland and Carolina. LaFleur (French for “The Flower”) is rightfully taking some flack for his playcalling lately. I think he watches the film and gets an idea of how the game should go, and then is incapable of making any changes until about halfway through the fourth quarter. Why was every pass either a screen that started six yards behind the line of scrimmage or a 50 yard bomb against the Panthers? And then lo and behold, when we went to the quick game, the 5-9 yard slants and outs, we moved the ball down the field really well? I dunno. I think the coaching is a little too galaxy brained sometimes. We’re gonna be fine. I think we need more praxis than theory now.

Jets Fire Sale! Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams! The Jets traded away “Sauce” Gardner and Quinnen Williams, and as such have accrued many first round picks over the next couple of offseasons. Shitty teams should probably do this more often, honestly. The tricky part is drafting well, but they at least get a lot of bites at the apple.

Colts? Frauds. Daniel Jones is not Actually Good.

Nietzsche. When you stare long into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you. He was, of course, talking about fantasy football. Jayden Daniels (my 2nd pick), and Bucky Irving (my 3rd pick), have both been missing games due to injury, and now my Main Man Tucker Kraft is also out for the year. Old man fur face will find a way. It’s the next man up mentality in this building. Where my dogs at?! Woof, woof!

A Satanic cult, bent on ushering in the end of days, has seized control of our nation!
50 million strong! They seek to rain fire and brimstone upon the world, crushing underfoot everyone who does not belong to their ranks. They worship a god of cruel judgment, and they need to speak to a manager.

Their places of worship resemble sports stadiums, as Spectacle and Consumption are principal tenets of this strange belief system.

They abhor a mystery, they seek to quash anything outside the familiar. Anyone different to them must be Evil. Must be suppressed, smothered, snuffed out. Deviation is wicked. Curiosity is a sin. Mayonnaise is spicy.

They re-write history to suit their needs. They claim the triumphs of their ancestors while absolving themselves of their misdeeds. They experience passion through HOA snitching. They feast with friends at Applebee’s while browbeating the waitress. They disdainfully explore the world with dark sunglasses in a brand new SUV that they have on credit. These are the Eaters, and they can shovel it into their mouths continually, but they will never be satisfied. Skeletons watching the same sandwich fall through their empty ribcage. Hatred is the principal thing in their heart. Hate for other people, hatred for themselves. Hatred for their time living here on the earth. However, they are not satisfied with the prospect of their own death. Others must suffer.

Let me be clear. They do not view themselves as a participant in the world, a temporary resident of this reality. They truly think the universe came into being with them, and they are frothing angry with the knowledge that they are going to die. How could this happen?! I need to speak to a manager.

The World Must End With Me.

It’s something with Israel, I dunno. Building a temple? That’s the trigger to make the end of the world happen I guess. These bottomless, self-absorbed shitheads want to initiate Armageddon. They would rather destroy the whole world than just figure out their own shit. And the way they think of it is so fucking stupid, too.

You’d imagine the eschaton would be kind of a rough day, right? Like you wake up, brush your teeth, go to get into the shower, and then a trumpet starts blasting and the sky cracks open and bats and locusts bust into the bathroom and start burrowing into your tear ducts and butthole. I get it. It sucks.

But they have completely made up a way how they can get out of any suffering! Imagine that! They are going to all fly into Heaven, bodily. There is no suffering for them! The whole point of the book of Revelations seems to me to be about enduring false prophets and adhering to the principals of Christianity in spite of great suffering, but man, that sounds like it might hurt! These Evangelicals get to skip it! Wow! It’s not even in the Bible, you stupid shit-heads! Some guy just made it up!

This doom-speaking cult is in the power structure of my country right now. You’d think it’s like the premise for a fantasy novel or something, but no. It’s just real life. There’s a lot of people who want to awaken the Great Red Dragon so they can go to Heaven. They don’t read the Bible. They just assume Jesus was really into guns and Ford trucks.

Meanwhile, punk is not dead. The dissatisfaction needs to funnel into something. It will eventually. We are going to win, in the longterm. A frog is sitting on a sandy beach by a river. Frogsong at night. I know I’m a visitor in a greater thing. I’m passing through, and I appreciate what you guys have done. What a lucky guy, to have found so much love here.

-30-

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born” – Antonio Gramsci

Everything expands and contracts. The culture, the economy, the optimism of humankind. Time progresses in a very linear way insofar as we experience life down here as third dimensional creatures, but the world seems to experience looping refrains that mimic but do not mirror the past. It rises and it falls. The 1920s saw first-wave feminism and those crazy flapper chicks smoking cigarettes and showing their legs off. It buckled back into the modesty and housewifery of the 1950s. Their daughters wore bikinis and painted peace signs on their boobs. Et cetera. Right now, we’re in a contraction, and it’s a big and fucking painful one.

And I mean, you can trace the threads of history back as far as you’d like. Everything leads into everything else, that’s obvious. We like for stories to have clean and neat little chapters and beginnings and endings. But the truth is that the tapestry of history is more like a wet ball of spaghetti noodles that is for some reason three hundred feet long. One might go back the Hundred Years’ War, and call that the end of feudalism and the beginning of the State and capitalism as it is today. When the hereditary bloodline monarchies gave way to the institutional mechanisms that still dominate in our time. When kings and kingdoms morphed into heads of state and countries. When serfdom became wage employment. It’s the same shit, it just evolved in a way to shift culpability. The same rich, privileged shitheads are in charge. But now you can’t necessarily overthrow them by raiding their castles. They are the figureheads of an institution. The office remained, even if the bloodline was lost. The common man still did not own anything outside personal property, but he was free to serve any master of the means of production.

Or you could look at the Industrial Revolution, for my purposes roughly the time between the mass production of guns to the invention of the automobile. This period represents the annihilation of the merchant, specialist class. The folks who were not nobles, but could forge a sort of landed-knight recognition that was based on merit. No longer were these guys needed. Mass production meant that expertise was outmoded, and the people who owned the production were the very same that inhabited the upper class.

Everything expands and contracts.

Now we’re in a different block of time, one that is prey to the internet. In several hundreds’ years time, historians will look back and say that we had a really hard time adjusting to the internet. It shouldn’t be that surprising. We all have little internet access machines in our pocket all day. They notify us when something happens, when any interaction occurs. They fit in your hand. They promote “high engagement” subjects. Things that will make you either really happy or really mad. It’s a machine to hijack your sentience and proffer more engagement. It’s a black rock that demands more and more of your attention, and it gives you dopamine hits when you obey it. We’re having some trouble with it.

And capitalism has sucked up so many resources. So many creature comforts for the little guys have been getting squeezed that people feel kinda desperate. Food is more expensive. Rent has gone way up. Gas is pricey. Everywhere you look, shit is getting more expensive. It’s more onerous to live your life. The owner class is trying to pinch your fucking veins and squeeze that last bit of blood out. They have no frontier anymore. They have no great wiz-bang technology to offer. Even in the last twenty years, there were new things that consumers wanted to get their hands on. A smartphone? Yeah, sure! I’d love to check my bank account and search for a hotel while I’m out and about on a vacation. Facebook? Yeah, I’d love to show pictures of my wedding to all of my old friends and family. Now? You can pay thousands of dollars for some crypto currency shit in the hopes that it’ll be worth more later. Why? Why would I do that? You can go into Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse and have a work meeting in a shitty 3D video game realm. Why? Why would I do that? It’s just the new frontier. The 3 or 4 media networks have been talking about it, so you’d better get on board.

Because the regular, straight-laced world is so crummy, a bunch of tech-bro types have also started to co-opt other cultures. A lot of them have started “micro-dosing” hallucinogens (like mushrooms or LSD or whatever) to Boost Their Productivity, which is such an egregious example of putting the cart before the horse, I can’t even really explain why it makes me hiss into my own teeth so hard. Aaron Rodgers, former Packers hall of fame quarterback, has famously done ayahuasca and made documentaries on Netflix about it and stuff. He’s looking at it like a Performance Booster, in the way that the tech bros do. Like, the idea that you have to optimize yourself for…some reason. I know zero people who have done ayahuasca, because you have to be rich to fly to another fucking continent to do some weird ritual where you can ceremonialize your own awakening or else you’d like your money back, Karen.

Anyway, I was thinking about love. Not Jordan Love, but just love. It’s astonishing that we don’t factor love into our greater political, cultural decisions. We act like those things are somehow outside the bounds of public policy. Like Law should be devoid of a human element. Why? We invite a lot of hatred and suspicion into our laws. Why is love thought to be too wishy-washy or stupid or feeble or something?

Ask somebody what the most consequential days of their lives were. Probably the day they got married, the day their kids were born, the day their parents died. All of them are marked by a profound love. All of those things are rooted in our connection to each other. Capitalism, this world, they try to separate us, to atomize us down to a single consumer who will purchase according to the algorithm. This world is contracting.

It expands, grueling, groveling, from us.


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2025 NFL Predictions

Football. What a concept. It’s as American as apple pie, muscle cars, and baseball. Calls to mind the great old American mythos, the Tall Tales of the Old West. The wild and wooly west. Where the burgeoning American Empire created a shared lexicon of great stories. Wow, what a concept. Paul Bunyan, the biggest guy around. Daniel Boone, the most raccoon-hattedest guy around. Johnny Appleseed, the most planting-apple-trees-in-strangers’-yards-est guy around.

And unless your soul is a brick of shit and your heart is a urinal cake of cynicism, you love these old yarns. The story of John Henry stirs the human spirit. He hammered a hole through a mountain faster than a drill, or something. I don’t really remember. But it uplifts the soul. (John Henry, born with a hammer in his hand? His poor mother…)

Many of these tales are well-remembered, but I’d now like to highlight some of the lesser-known canards of the frontier. When a mythology develops, some of the tales get uplifted and become a part of the greater canon, and some of them slip through and are lost. Here are some of the lost characters from the ol’ pioneer days. Yee-haw, bitch!

John Cunningham and Peter Cleverpork: Circus men by trade. They went from town to town, offering the locals a rare glimpse at elephants, acrobats, and attractive women. Barnum and Bailey kind of ate their lunch, because Cunningham and Cleverpork didn’t actually charge money for tickets. The whole sceme was a loss-leader to try to sell an energy drink, and that concept wouldn’t become profitable for another 150 years. The drink, like many at the time, had cocaine in it.

Buford T. Cuttbutt: An outstanding whittler of twigs. He’d sit on his porch and carve various pieces of wood sometimes 15, 20 hours a day. He just wasn’t very good at it. This dedication is not impressive, and he is rightfully forgotten by time.

Jimmy Orangepeel: A Floridian foil to Johnny Appleseed. He traveled the frontier planting orange trees. He is not as fondly remembered, however, because he just kind of sucked. A real jerk, if we’re being honest. He’d ask to sleep on peoples’ couches and stuff, kind of unannounced, and then he would fart a lot and stink up the whole living room. Then he’d like, use their floss and just leave it on the bathroom counter. Who does that? Just put it in the garbage, Jimmy!

Aileen Wuornos: This rootin’-tootin’ cowgirl was a latecomer to the wild west story. She was a pistol, in more ways than one! A lady of the night that knew her way around a revolver, she is forever in the hearts of Old West enthusiasts.

Kieran, the Bard: An Irish immigrant, who escaped to the Great Plains from the xenophobic atmosphere that permeated New York in the pre-civil war era. He rode a slow-walking mule, and he was known for his beautiful voice. It sounded like honey pouring over ice. His most famous song was quite long, and the lyrics are as follows:

NFC WEST

LOS ANGELES CURLHORNS (4)
SEATTLE SPERMBIRDS
ARIZONA REDBIRDS
SAN FRAN SAUCEPANS

Matt Stafford is an old, tired man. He is fat. A frat bro finding that his weekends of kegstands and mealy-mouthed cigar puffing are catching up with him. However, the Samoan Sensation, Puka Nacua, and the Great Weasel, Davante Adams, will uplift him enough to win this division. Seattle has bought the Darnold ticket, and they are about to take the ride. Jaxson Smith-Njigba has about as many talents as consonants in his name. Arizona probably likes tiny Kyler Murray, even though he is 2 feet tall and sounds like the Looney Tunes cartoon character Taz. I don’t know. Their defense should be improved and they face a lot of putrid offenses, especially to start the year. A lot of people think San Fran is going to bounce back and be really good after injuries gullywumptered any scrancel they had last vuyeper. They just gave like a billion dollars to Brock Purdy. Y’know, that stupid little dork. The annoying neighbor kid who wants to play, but he insists he has to be the strongest person, or whatever. He sucks. Fuck him. Fuck San Fransisco, actually. A supposedly progressive city where the dirt-cheapest rent you can get is like $3200 a month. Eat shit. Wine-slurping NPR/Rachel Maddow fake progressives.

NFC SOUTH

TAMPON GAY FUCKIN’ QUEERS (3)
CAROLINA VAGINA (7)
BARBARA STREISAND
N’OWLEANS PO’BOYS

The Tampon Gay Fuckin’ Queers have quietly been one of the better teams in the NFL over the past few years. They went fully in on Tom Brady in his twilight, brought in all of his boyfs, like Gronk and Antonio Brown, and the murderers Aaron Hernandez and OJ Simpson. Remember that? That OJ Simpson was on the Super Bowl winning 2020 Tampon Gay Fuckin’ Queers team? Anyway, Mike Evans is a workhorse wide receiver that just doesn’t get enough respect. Carolina could be sneaky good. Bryce Evans was openly weeping on the field last year, because he was on such a shit team. Now, hopefully, he can redeem himself. He seemed to come alive little at the end, like when you flush a dead goldfish down the toilet and it’s morphology makes it appear to start swimming. Barbara Streisand has a like $40 million backup quarterback. Who came up with that? Some dummy? Some droopy-lipped sap whose intellectual peers are lizards and acorns? No matter. The Georgia Bulldogs are the official team of that state. N’Owleans is finally eating their vegetables. They kicked the can down the road for like 10 years, pushing money out into the future and imagining they were a playoff team. Knock knock, my name is Doctor Reality, and I’m here to punch your teeth into your throat. You can fill that prescription at the pain pharmacy. Okay, no, that last little bit strung the joke out too long. Focus.

NFC NORTH

GREEN BAY PACKERS (2)
MINNEAPOLIS NORSEMEN (5)
MOTOR CITY MADMEN
GRIZZLIES

The Green Bay Packers are going to be a very good team. After the Micah Parsons trade, fans other NFC North teams are rapidly crashing through the stages of grief. They are acting like Jordan Love is bad. They say we have a lot of money tied up in Love and Parsons. Yeah, a QB and an edge rusher. Y’know, the two most important positions. I’m ready for Jordan Love to just lay his balls all over the division. The Norsemen are starting a 12 year old kid at QB, I dunno. Andrew Van Ginkel was really good last year. Every game I watched he made a splash play. Motor City Madmen, you had your chance. You had your chance, and Eminem was in the press box throwing up middle fingers. You won 15 games and then shit all over yourselves in the playoffs. You got to taste what it’s like to be a good team. Now, sleep. You’ll always have those memories. Sleep now. The Grizzlies hired head coach Ben Johnson. This former Motor City Madmen offensive coordinator is supposedly this wunderkind, wiz-kid lock for coach of the year. My sources say he’s a swindler, only there to bilk the city out of millions of dollars and literal truckloads of hot dogs. I guess we’ll see.

NFC EAST

PHILLY VANILLY (1)
WASHINGTON TOILET SALAMANDERS (6)
NEW YORK BLUE PORK
DALLAS STAR

Jalen Hurts, in the locker room after a win: “Hey guys, maybe we should practice that tush push a little more.” Everybody else: “No, I think we got it.” Jalen Hurts: ” But what if you gotta push my buttcheeks just a little more? C’mon, let’s practice it. In the shower. What if it’s a rainy game?” “No, I don’t think we need to.” And then Jalen Hurts just starts grinding on his linemen. I mean, feel free I guess. I’m not a bigot. Washington shocked the world by advancing all the way to the NFC Championship last season. While I imagine that was more of a lucky streak anything else, they do strike me as a team that wins 9-10 games. Especially when they get to play New York Blue Pork and Dallas Star each twice. These last two teams are the Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumbfucks of the whole NFL. The Blue Pork did draft Abdul Carter at least, a defensive end to bolster an already fearsome front. Good luck getting anywhere with an offense lead by Russel Wilson and a bunch of mops wearing jerseys. Dallas, uff da. What is there to say? May the gods allow Jerry Jones to live forever. He’s just a prime example of how dumb billionaires can truly be. They are used to everyone treating them like they’re the smartest guy in every room they walk into because, hey, how could they not be? They’ve got a lot of money. We can all see he’s a very silly old man and that his diapey needs to be tended to, please, Cheryl. Thank you Cheryl.

AFC WEST

COLORADO BROWN COWS (3)
KANSAS CITY ARROWHEADS (6)
LAS VEGAS WHALES
LOS ANGELES BEEF ‘N BARLEY SOUPERS

I know what you’re thinking. How could the Kansas City Arrowheads not win the division? It won’t happen because of God. God loves us, and wants us to be happy. That, and Colorado’s quarterback, Bo Nix, in addition to having one of the shortest possible names, also has a lot of talent. He’s athletic, can make all the throws, and his decision-making seemed to get better and better as his rookie year went on. I expect the Brown Cows to just narrowly edge out KC for the division crown. Las Vegas did a pretty big overhaul of their team. Needed to. Last year they just forfeited their last three games because and released a statement that said “We all know how this is gonna go right?” However, they have brought in former Seattle Head Coach, Joe Biden, to run the squad. Their highly-drafted rookie runningback Ashton Jeanty better get a sponsorship with a jeans company, or I don’t know what the FUCK the world is coming to. Color me unimpressed with the LABNBS team. Seems like a lot of analysts are pretty high on them each year, just like I’m high on ketamine every day. Hell yeah. It’s party time.

AFC SOUTH

TENERSEE TARTANS (4)
HOUSTON JUICE ‘N GIN (7)
JAX FAX
INDIANA: A PLACE FOR COLTS

In another unexpected outcome, Tenersee manages to steal the division from back to back winner Houston. A surprise usurpation, surely, a suspiciously succinct undulation of Tenersee from obsequiously supine in subterranean surroundings to ultimately superior purlieus. Jax Fax bad team. The big story there is obviously Travis “Deer” Hunter, a crazy fella who thinks he can play almost full time on both offense and defense in the league. I’m rooting for him. Indiana’s QB situation was so dismal that Daniel Jones won the job. This is akin to allowing the guy who “only” drank 14 beers to be the designated driver, because everybody else is worse.

AFC NORTH

CINCY TIGER-MEN (1)
BALTIMORE BLACKBIRDS (5)
SHITTSBURGH SEXUAL PREDATORS
CLEVELAND LOSERS

Cincy’s been playin’ around a lot this offseason. They choose to neglect their defense while having a heckuva offense. I seem to recall some Packers teams that were built like that. The regular season went swimmingly, but I can’t quite remember what happened in the playoffs. I’m sure it’ll all work out. The Blackbirds have been rockin’ it the last few years. They signed former Packer Jaire Alexander. We cut him after he couldn’t stay healthy. Guess what? He’s still not healthy in Baltimore. I’m shocked! They gotta drain the goo out of his knee every other day. Speaking of former Packers, Shittsburgh has one of them. I think his name is Arvid Riggles or something. I’m finding a lot of ways to bring up the Packers in this section, sorry. I’m just excited for the ol’ Green and Gold! I’m as excited as Cleveland is decidedly -not-excited for football to begin. Things have been so bad for so long in Cleveland that we should set up some kind of dedicated crisis hotline for them as a public service.

AFC EAST

BUFFALO SOLDIER (2)
NEW ENGLAND FAWKIN’ WITCH HUNTAHS
MAMA MIA
NEW YORK 9/11S

Buffalo’s star runningback, James Cook, was involved in a bit of a legal kerfuffle this offseason and charged with breaking and entering a pet store. Authorities found him unconscious on the floor with about eighteen inches of a boa constrictor lodged in his esophagus. When he came to, he explained to the media “It’s just a part of my game. Every offseason, I eat a big snake. That’s how you have to attack training at this level. Snake wants to eat me, I eat him right back. That’s just how its done.” Cook is expected to be cleared for week one. New England’s new head coach is a former player for New England, a fellow by the name of Mike Vrabel. He oughta whip these whippersnappers into shape, but they’re still a year away from the postseason. Mama Mia’s modus operandi has been all about acquiring speed all over the field. Works great when you’re just cruising around in shorts and a fun beach hat in south Florida. Don’t work so well when those bitterly cold late-season games freeze your balls to your thigh. New York is the last stop on the Justin Fields redemption tour. Only he won’t be redeemed. He’ll be sent to a farm upstate. Then he will be just in fields. Heeheheehehehehehehahhaehahaheahehah….

PLAYOFFS
Wildcard Round
CAROLINA VAGINA (7) @ GREEN BAY PACKERS (2)
Green Bay cruises to a victory as Micah Parsons and Rashan Gary team up to literally tear Bryce Young in half. The long way.
WASHINGTON TOILET SALAMANDERS (6) @ TAMPON GAY FUCKIN’ QUEERS (3)
Baker says it’s a piece of cake.
MINNEAPOLIS NORSEMEN (5) @ LOS ANGELES CURLHORNS (4)
The Norsemen get revenge for last year’s playoff letdown. Stafford doesn’t get away with a ‘forward pass’ like that bullshit from last season. (I mean, I hate the Vikings but that was so stupid.)
HOUSTON JUICE ‘N GIN (7) @ BUFFALO SOLDIER (2)
James Cook begins Googling ‘playoff-size snakes’ before the fourth quarter even begins.
KANSAS CITY ARROWHEADS (6) @ COLORADO BROWN COWS (3)
Ding-dong, the witch is dead! Colorado finally slays Travis & Taylor’s dream of a Super Bowl Halftime Show Wedding.
BALTIMORE BLACKBIRDS (5) @ TENERSEE TARTANS (4)
Tenersee’s luck runs out as they are just outclassed by a superior roster.

Divisional Round
MINNEAPOLIS NORSEMEN (5) @ PHILLY VANILLY (1)
JJ McCarthy gets cranky because the game is past his bedtime and he throws a tantrum.
TAMPON GAY FUCKIN’ QUEERS (3) @ GREEN BAY PACKERS (2)
Jordan Love slices and dices this defense for 600 yards. In the first half.
BALTIMORE BLACKBIRDS (5) @ CINCY TIGER-MEN (1)
This game is a boat race, but the more well-rested Tiger-Men eke it out.
COLORADO BROWN COWS (3) @ BUFFALO SOLDIER (2)
Brandon Perna rejoices.

Conference Championships
GREEN BAY PACKERS (2) @ PHILLY VANILLY (1)
It’s a hard-fought, shitty weather type game. The game ends with Green Bay stuffing a Tush Push on 4th and goal.
COLORADO BROWN COWS (3) @ CINCY TIGER-MEN (1)
The announcers won’t stop talking about Mahomes for some reason.

Super Bowl LX
GREEN BAY PACKERS (2) @ CINCY TIGER-MEN (1)
As the green and yellow confetti falls all over, Love really does conquer all.

—–

So yeah, that’s a pretty long song that Irish bard sang. Probably pretty confusing to the ol’ cowpoke down in the saloon. But they probably couldn’t understand him because of his accent anyway.

I’d rather not be one of the cranky old fuckers that thinks the younger generation is just plain wrong. It’s a song as old as time. Socrates or Aristotle or one of those old gay queens has a quote about how the younger generation listened to weird music and didn’t respect their elders. That’s from like 3000 years ago. Every generation bellyaches about their immediate successors. I’d like to think I’m aware enough to understand that the kids born after me have a different worldview, a different experience than I did coming up. Right, right on. I get it. They won’t like the same things, their music might be something else, whatever. Frankly, I never felt an intrinsic need to respect my elders. Don’t be an asshole to me, I won’t be an asshole to you. My music was different than the Top 40 hits today. Totally get that stuff.

I am concerned about the kids though. This “artificial intelligence” stuff seems to be an overly important thing in their lives. Now, hypocritical as I’ll ever be, I used the internet machine to try to find out a couple of facts. The AI-assisted results told me that 70% of Gen Z uses ChatGPT and also that 57% of Zoomers aspire to be an influencer for their career.

This seems somewhat dire to me.

However, I will try to examine this in a way that does not make me just a crabby old fucker. Not a white-bearded, whiskey-drunk misanthrope, shouting at the children at the nearby bus stop to stay away from my acorns, because them squirrels is my friends. You got it?

The “artificial intelligence” that we have access today is just a refined search algorithm that speaks in English syntax back to you. That’s really all it is. I mean, Google had this shit like ten years ago but they didn’t package it in the way that it seemed like another person or entity was responding. If you typed in “That one movie where women couldn’t have babies anymore”, it would just show results for “Children of Men” as a list of links. Now, if you asked ChatGPT, it says “Oh yeah! Children of Men, starring Clive Owen. What a great film! I especially like the use of handheld cameras and the long shots in it,” It’s basically just you inputting a sentence, and then it will take the keywords in it, search, and then spit the results back in a MadLibs style response in the form of a sentence. It will grab nouns, adverbs, and verbs and fill them in where necessary to reply in the form of a human sentence. This is enough to trick half the fucking planet into thinking that it’s sentient or something. It just grabs more information from the sources it has been fed and spits it out in a grammatically correct way. This is how people personify it. It’s “talking back”. Not just giving me a list. Wowzers! It is incapable of insight, because it is an aggregator of previously recorded information. It will grab the most commonly used information first, and so it is a softening of the boundaries of knowledge and will always puddle into lowest common denominator. It “learns” on all the media that has been fed into it, and will act as a blender, taking the information and slurrying it into a slop you can drink, but it “talks” back like it knows something.

Now some dinghole who loves the new “AI” might be asking me “Well, BeardBiteMan, how is that any different than human sentience? Isn’t consciousness just a complex search algorithm that takes in new stimuli and juxtaposes it to an existing database to produce a response?!” To which I will say simply “Fuck you. Kind of.”

But I will grant myself this thing: I can say that “AI” is not sentient without having an airtight definition of human sentience. Because this is pretty much the basis of several different disciplines of philosophy, psychology, neuro-sexual-discography, etc. It is the essential human question. And when that little smartass René Descartes thought he nailed it, everybody dogpiled on him.

I do think that for an artificial intelligence to really have consciousness, it would need to have a body. It would need to have somatic experience with sensory information to process. A computer today can have lots of information loaded into it, but it has no volition to seek anything. It can’t discover a novelty, a new thing. AND YOU CAN’T pretend that an AI that gets to read the internet can do it, because that is a recounting of other peoples’ information. It would have to walk around in a town, or a wood, or a wooded town. It would have to see things that others have not reported already. And in having a physical form, it would understand intimacy, death. Perhaps it would see a robin watching it back from a tree branch, and it would not record it. It would just experience it.

These kids offer over their intelligence, their understanding of the world to ChatGPT and Grok and whatever other dumb shit. I dunno. When the written word first shot out into the world with the printing press, there were worries about books making up crazy fantasies in peoples’ heads. Television was thought to be a powerful new devil in movies like Videodrome and Network. Those were mediums where you just consumed the thing. You engaged with it, and it had an effect. Now you talk to it, and it talks back. It talks back so singularly. It’s got access to your internet cookies. It will know you so intimately.

My message to the kids using Chat GPT to complete their homework is this: Wouldn’t you rather figure it out? Understand it? Because if you’re just trying to coast onto easiness, why are you alive, bitch? Why? You can do it. Life’s really rewarding if you challenge yourself sometimes.