If someone from the past asked me what kind of culture we had in 2017, I’d explain how we sell fake books that people use to decorate their homes.
Dec
19
So you’re unhappy with how the past year played out. The people elected a tacky, crass demagogue whose grade-school language winks at racism in his speeches and incites bigotry and xenophobia. And emboldened by his example, the volume of other ugly voices has been dialed up to eleven on our cultural speakers.
It’s like half the country is embracing the worst stereotypes the rest of the Western world holds about Americans, and embroidering them on Chinese-made red ball caps.
So what are you going to do about it, cuck?
Jun
4
It’s 0018, just past midnight, and after a pouring a pot of coffee into my face over the last hour, my brain has been making a sort of chewing gum of the news I follow, to give itself something to do in the background while I wrap up things that don’t really require my full attention.
Bleak economic analysis of jobs and markets and trade deals, an upcoming election between two equally repugnant options, coverage of the progressively more intrusive technologies that come bundled with a sense of entitlement to every private word or picture or moment, and the standard, vapid celebrity nonsense– all congeal into a rubbery, foul-tasting lump of thought.
Oct
9
The difference between peasants and free men is that peasants are only allowed to bear arms in the service of their betters.
The bulk of feudal peasants led lives that, for the time, were safe and comfortable; as long as they served the nobility well and knew their places. But we abandoned Feudalism for a reason, and our ancestors faced all sorts of horrors and brutality at the hands of princes to do so for their children’s children: us.
Fear may be the most effective force for motivating large groups of people, but it tends to motivate people in one of two ways: to prepare for a fight, or to huddle together in the hope someone stronger will protect them.
Which group you fall into says a lot about your character.
Aug
28
I had a short conversation with an Internet friend today, that stirred the coals of a sort of existesntialist burnout I’ve been feeling for a while now. She’s someone I only really know by her occasional posts on various threads, including mine, but whose opinions I’ve always found insightful.
I had made some off-the-cuff post expressing my frustration with the state of our culture, referencing Huxley, and lamenting the fact that unlike his Brave New World, in ours, people willingly dumb themselves down. Honestly it was unoriginal, pretentious crap. But at the time I wrote it I was being assaulted by vapid bullshit from a 24-hour news station, and making that post had fewer consequences than ripping the TV off the wall and smashing it.
Jun
21
Feb
17
I don’t get why people think New Yorkers are rude; over the last few days I’ve found the exact opposite to be true, and there’s a damn good reason for it. A rock that sits in a river long enough won’t have very many sharp edges. Or less poetically: when you have this many people crammed onto a relatively small island, individuals who are rude won’t remain un-stabbed for very long.
People here hold doors for strangers, smile and nod, and say “excuse me” when pushing through a crowd standing shoulder-to-shoulder in an over-packed restaurant on a Saturday night.
Oct
12
Getting all the meat off the bones, then going for the marrow…
I’d meant to write this about a month ago; so while the timeliness of the post isn’t exactly optimal, at least this is an exercise in following through.
The sign read “everything up to 70% off”, and they weren’t kidding; even the fixtures were marked down to a price point that tempted me to buy, and I don’t fucking need 15′ of commercial bookshelves. That was just a few steps into the store.
Aug
10
Before we start, yes, I fully grasp the irony of what I’m about to write under the above, meme-derived title.
On the way home from work today I mashed my car stereo’s “on” button and settled in for the return commute. A few minutes into the drive, after dodging idiots who managed to get a license without ever learning how to merge onto a freeway, AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” came on the local rock station to which the radio was tuned.
I’d heard the song several billion times, so I wasn’t really paying it much attention, but for some reason the line “I won’t take no prisoners, won’t spare no lives / Nobody’s putting up a fight” jumped out at me. And as many things tend to lately, something about it irked me. After a moment or two of trying to ferret out of my subconscious why that was, I finally figured it out. But instead of just coming out with the reason, I’m going to explain via dialogue. Read the rest of this entry »
Jul
12
This is from a speech Robert Heinlein gave in 1973 to the United States Naval Academy. I’ve picked it up where he gets to the heart of the subject he wanted to impress upon the midshipmen; the fundamentals of morality and why patriotism is a practical matter of survival.
…why would anyone want to become a naval officer?
In the present dismal state of our culture there is little prestige attached to serving your country; recent public opinion polls place military service far down the list.
