This is not a blog. It’s a website populated by fictional characters, whose writing should not be taken as expressing the opinion of any real person, company or organization. It’s a work of entertainment. If you’re not entertained, read something else. Even when the author of a post is a real person, fact and fiction are intermingled, and are not always clearly labeled, so don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. Read more →
Bob Dylan on Why Music Keeps Getting Worse
I remember something Dylan wrote about most popular music artists in his book Chronicles: Volume One, and that is that making music “isn’t their destiny.” Van Morrison has an album called Born to Sing: No Plan B. Other than making music, there wasn’t anything else these guys could have done. When I think of the artists whose work has meant a lot to me, I’m not recalling anyone who seems to have gone into the music industry to make money by churning out songs that sound like everyone else’s songs. In fact, for most of the people I’m thinking of, that wasn’t even an option at the time they started. If you could make enough money to support yourself with music, you were doing well. Now you can make money putting out songs that sound like every other song, which is good in a way, because you can be a… Read more →
This Is What Propaganda Looks Like
View this post on Instagram A post shared by William Reusch (@willreusch) Read more →
Gene Hackman, 1930-2025
Gene Hackman died in his New Mexico home, which is not shocking in itself, given that he was 95 years old. The shocking part is that his much-younger wife died and one of his dogs died at the same time. Well, that may not be quite right . . . they were all found at the same time, but had apparently been dead for a while. As I write this, the reasons for the more-or-less simultaneous deaths remain a mystery. Maybe it’s just a really, really amazing coincidence, three living beings all dying at the same time. I’ve seen Hackman in a lot of movies. I liked his work. The French Connection and Unforgiven are two of my favorite movies. French Connection was the first R-rated movie I ever saw. My dad took me when I was 14. RIP Gene Hackman Read more →
Goodbye Joy Reid, et al
How naive of me to think Joy Reid was fired over ratings: https://t.co/ToLxT96iNN pic.twitter.com/MoJh3WsPwm — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 25, 2025 Joy Reid is one of many media personalities being shuffled about recently. Joy Reid oozes racial hatred from every pore. She used to laugh at “white tears.” Who’s crying now? After being fired, Reid will have more time to grope around for some kind of an explanation for how little influence she and people like her have over increasingly large numbers of the American public. Imagine that you’re an MSNBC host and every day you show up and say the same things. Trump is a fascist. Trump is a racist. Trump is the new Hitler. Trump’s going to destroy our country. Trump is a rapist. He’s a white supremacist, white nationalist. Then you see a huge portion of the country vote for the person that you’ve been obsessively condemning… Read more →
Look at the Sunny Side
I was in the mood for a breakfast burrito this morning. I drove up to the drive-thru speaker at Carl’s Jr. I was the only person in line. I waited a long time, tried saying “Hello” a few times. I couldn’t see inside the restaurant and I thought maybe they had gone out of business. Finally, a Hispanic woman came on the speaker, said “Sorry about the wait” and took my order. When I got to the window, she apologized again and said “I’m the only one here this morning. There’s three in the back” — meaning the kitchen — “but just one in the front.” “You need some help,” I said. “No, they cut my hours and my days.” The geniuses running the state of California recently raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20/hr, thinking, I guess, that everyone would get a nice pay increase. and not… Read more →
Garth Hudson, 1937-2025
With the recent death of Garth Hudson, there are no more surviving members of The Band. They’re all gone, or maybe they’re all back together. Every member of KISS is still alive. And yet there are people who can’t understand why I don’t believe in God. RIP Garth Hudson View this post on Instagram A post shared by Robbie Robertson (@robbierobertsonofficial) Read more →
Maybe You’re Dumb and He’s Smart
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Major Williams (@majorwilliams) Read more →
It Worked Until It Didn’t
God, You’ve Done Enough
I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You’ve done enough, You’ve robbed me of enough, I’m too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever. — Graham Greene, The End of the Affair Read more →
Prevent trouble before it arises.
Put things in order before they exist.
Adam Carolla: White Privilege
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) Read more →
Melancholy hypochondria. It is a terrible disease: it makes you see things as they are. — Gérard de Nerval
Traveling Alone
Oh, If I had a son I would make him laugh, I would teach him something I’d say, “Son, you gotta hold your own And it’s good to have a taste for traveling alone” — Tift Merritt, “Traveling Alone” Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Preemptive Pardons
My fellow Americans – In his final hours as president, Joe Biden pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and the lawmakers and staff who served on the January 6 committee. He also issued pardons to a number of his own family members, in addition to the previous pardon of his son Hunter. These are all preemptive pardons, for unspecified crimes that those receiving the pardons have not actually been convicted of or even charged with. This is a cowardly act. After years of lawfare against President Trump, and after expressing his displeasure over his attorney general’s failure to put Trump in prison before the 2024 election, Biden explained the pardons by saying this: “Baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.” Even making allowances for the man’s senility, that is one of the most brainless statements I’ve… Read more →
Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it. — Schopenhauer
All the High School Sweethearts
All the high school sweethearts from this year and last year and every other year are gathered in the gym. You remember her. You remember him. The band plays every couple’s honor song but nobody takes the floor except the King and Queen of Memory. Maybe a few sweethearts are still in love with each other but everybody else is just sipping nostalgia from a plastic cup. Funny how beautiful our scars become. After the band plays one last ballad, a few stragglers linger at the door, wanting more, please, a little more, but everybody else will say goodbye to their favorite ghost and travel home, fast or slow, to whom they treasure most. — Sherman Alexie, “All the High School Sweethearts” Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Oligarchies
My fellow Americans – It’s the oligarchy guy again (video below). I don’t remember his principled denunciation of George Soros receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Or Mark Zuckerberg serving as Biden’s personal censor. Or Google for rigging search results to the Biden admin narratives. Or Reid Hoffman, Michael Bloomberg, Howard Schultz, Tom Steyer . . . Oh, he means REPUBLICAN oligarchs . . . Oligarchy is the enemy of democracy. As Louis Brandeis said, “America has a choice. We can either have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy. But we cannot have both.”https://t.co/wvSxNhYrKc pic.twitter.com/kYMni0HDZM — Robert Reich (@RBReich) January 18, 2025 Read more →
2024: The Year in Books
These are the books I read in 2024, roughly in the order listed. The ratings are mine. They don’t represent a consensus of opinion. It wasn’t a great year. I didn’t read enough and what I did read wasn’t as good as I would have liked. That said, Bluets, by Maggie Nelson, is one of the most exceptional books I’ve read. My Library at LibraryThing Read more →
You Gotta Have Faith
No, I don’t really agree. WFH has tradeoffs like everything else although LI posters tend to gloss over those. For example, it’s easier for me to communicate with someone who works 10 feet away from me than if I’m at home and they’re at some distant point in time and space. Synchronous vs. asynchronous. I also glean a lot of valuable project information from conversations floating around if my team members are in close proximity. I can’t do that from the South Pole. There are other tradeoffs. Cybersecurity, that’s an easy one. WFH is not just trust people and everything will be okay. Thus spoke The Programmer Read more →
Half a Life
Do not live half a life and do not die a half death If you choose silence, then be silent When you speak, do so until you are finished If you accept, then express it bluntly Do not mask it If you refuse then be clear about it for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance Do not accept half a solution Do not believe half truths Do not dream half a dream Do not fantasize about half hopes Half the way will get you no where You are a whole that exists to live a life not half a life. — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet Read more →