The Hierophant

What was once deemed worthwhile, noble even, now feels pointless. Not the change your meds kind of emptiness, but rather the kind that feels like an epiphany.

What does it really mean to matter? What was the impulse that drove me forward, like a slave at the oars? The scars on my back are my own creation, and the ship was never moving.

I dedicated a large part of my life to philosophy, theology, history, and literature. Even when my interest waxed and waned with the natural vicissitudes of life, I treated intellectual pursuits as an almost sacred duty. But why?

Philosophy, as I’ve said before, is masturbatory. It does little more than feed the ego. Theology is a fool’s errand, an embarrassing waste of life and an insult to reason. History is written by the victors and might as well be read as speculative fiction. Literature and poetry (the icing on top) are diversions.

The question before me now is what am I going to do about it? I could treat it all like a child who has outgrown his toys, sweep it under the bed and forget. Or I could reframe, change tack, adopt a new perspective. I’m free to do that. I define reality, after all. As Trent said, There is no you, there is only me.

And in writing this, I think I’ve landed somewhere in the vicinity of an answer: l’art pour l’art.

One need not seek extrinsic value. Hell, we can abandon the idea of value altogether. No didactic purpose is necessary. It’s enough to just do something for its own sake, in the moment the interest arises.

And in practice? That would also mean not seeking the affirmation of others. Blasphemy, these days. No look at me social media bullshit, no sharing your accomplishments.

To just exist quietly, to embrace the activity of the moment, and then to let it go when it passes. I think that might be it.

It seems my misanthropy is contagious.

I turned into the neighborhood to find the street lined with cars. Apparently, it’s the day of the Fall Festival, when people swarm the park to enjoy vacuous small talk and sketchy food safety standards.

My first reaction was a quiet sigh and a shake of my head as I slowed to navigate the crowds. To my surprise, my usually outgoing and happy son echoed me from the backseat.

I didn’t say anything, but it made me realize that I must exude this attitude like a virus. It’s shedding, as doctors say during flu season. An absolutely revolting image, by the way.

I’ve come to terms with my contradictions. I would do almost anything to help someone, but I also think our species should go extinct. It’s a delicate balance that I quietly maintain, with varying degrees of success.

The boy, though, he doesn’t have to live like this. What greater gift can we give our kids than to make sure they don’t end up like us?

Okay, not everybody, but I heard the song in my head when I thought about writing this, so we’re going to roll with it.

The project continues to wallow in the red, so extended hours were approved by corporate. Just the hours, mind you, not additional pay. I am a salaried worker in an at-will state, so I should simply lick the boot and be happy to have work.

So now I’ll go about my usual suburban dad weekend routine of soccer games and domestic errands, but this time with AirPods in my ears to take the very important meetings.

If you’re in my neck of the woods and you see a tattooed dickhead wandering the stores, saying things like, “Can you hear me? Oh, I was talking on mute,” have some sympathy.

This time next week, barring a catastrophe, we’ll be wandering around San Francisco.

Philosophy is mental masturbation. Metaphysics, in particular, is closer to autoerotic asphyxiation.

I say this as someone who wasted their GI Bill on a philosophy degree.

It’s for insufferable types with a penchant for poverty and archaic diction to sit around and circle-jerk. Let’s be honest, Hegel is mostly incomprehensible, and you’re just pretending. Kierkegaard was a whiny altar boy, and Nietzsche was syphilitic.

At best, philosophy is a personal endeavor, a hobby. You want to ask the big questions? Go for it, but let’s not pretend you’re doing humanity some great service.

As a vocation, philosophy is long dead. I contend that it exists only to pad out humanities department budgets and provide a refuge for failed intellectuals to ramble in front of a captive audience.

Assez vu. La vision s’est rencontrée à tous les airs.
Assez eu. Rumeurs des villes, le soir, et au soleil, et toujours.
Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie. – O Rumeurs et Visions!
Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs!

— Arthur Rimbaud, “Départ,” Illuminations

Vision. Possession. Knowledge. The human endeavor in sum, disillusionment upon its completion. The melancholy of retrospection, the paradoxical pain of pleasant memory.

And still, the movement never stops. Another step into an unnamed future. New noise, new loves. Always leaving, never arriving.

We’re making it up as we go along.

Remember when you were young and you looked up to the adults in the room? You could rest easy knowing everything was under control.

They spoke confidently and with authority. Declarations and admonishments had real power. Things happened according to their will.

But now I’m the adult in the room. My son looks up at me with those same wide eyes. I sit in boardrooms and nod along to the corporate jargon.

I feel like an imposter. I've no fucking clue what’s going on. I’m perpetually winging it. I can barely take care of myself, yet I’m somehow in charge of people and paid a stupid amount of money to chat shit.

And I look at my peers. Look behind their eyes and you see the fear. Nothing makes sense, everything is dying, and there’s no real point to any of it.

Equal parts freedom and terror.

A late soccer practice left me home alone to my own devices. Redbreast 12 from a teacup. I left the Glencairns in Scotland. Mei welcomed me into the big chair with a disinterested huff. I settled in for a bit of reading.

Since then the Moon has heard jackals cheeping in thyme deserts,—and eclogues in wooden shoes grumbling in the orchard. Then, in the budding purple forest, Eucharis told me that spring had come.

—Well up, pond,—Foam, roll on the bridge and above the woods;—black cloths and organs,—lightning and thunder,—rise and roll;—Waters and sorrows, rise and revive the Floods.

For since they subsided,—oh the precious stones shoveled under, and the full-blown flowers!—so boring! and the Queen, the Witch who lights her coals in the clay pot, will never want to tell us what she knows, and which we do not know.

— Arthur Rimbaud, “After the Flood,” Illuminations, translated by John Ashbery

And here I sit, a grown man moved nearly to tears. If anyone happens to stumble across this page, take this as a sign. Forget whatever you’re doing and go read Illuminations.

At least by American standards, I’m in decent shape. Military discipline and body dysmorphia keep me in the gym most days, fighting the natural degradations of age. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked in favor of entropy.

Since moving back to the US, I’ve been immersed in the Standard American Diet (SAD). Sugar, sodium, saturated fat, preservatives, all processed to the nth degree for superior shelf life and addictive potential. Portions large enough to sustain three people.

And after a year back, I’m noticing my own midsection growing softer. My wife thinks I have problems when I angrily pinch my love handles in the mirror, but I know what I see.

Then came a petty epiphany: It’s okay to be hungry.

Obvious, I know, and not a choice for much of the world, but for those of us wallowing in overabundance, it needs to be said.

Hunger isn’t the enemy. Food won’t fill the void in your soul. Embrace the minor discomfort. My reasons are vanity and health, in that order.

I don’t believe in body positivity. Being fat is irresponsible. Lower quality of life, shortened lifespan, burden on the healthcare system.

Just stop fucking eating.

On an upper floor of the library at Sam Houston State University, sprawled out on a faux-leather couch, metal bars digging into my spine. Through the narrow windows, the sky is a putrescent purple, the fading corpse of a lazy Saturday.

To the subtle buzz of incandescent lights, I page through William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Only the occasional graduate student, a dreary-eyed ghost haunting the stacks, disturbs my solitude.

The night ahead promises debauchery. Soon I’ll be straining to hear drink orders over shitty jukebox selections, drinking and smoking too much, and inevitably ending up in someone else’s bed. A fellow student if the night goes well, but a local in a pinch.

Fast-forward a bit, and I’m shipping off to MCRD San Diego and then to School of Infantry–West, where I learn to follow orders without question and kill without remorse.

I stop reading poetry.

Until today. I’m rediscovering the beauty of verse in Arthur Rimbaud. A man after my own heart—a delinquent, an addict, a rebel—who had the integrity to burn out on time. I’m just a sellout, trading sight beyond the veil for mere longevity.

Dearest liver, when did you lose heart? You’re just going through the motions now, doing the bare minimum. I’m forced to start looking for a replacement.

Black coffee isn’t the hangover cure it was in my 20s. I’m reminded this morning of why I don’t really drink anymore. A tiny bell choir in my ears, eyes heavy and dull, and a mouth stuffed with cotton—the approaching sunrise promises pain instead of beauty.

My saving grace is that I’m allowed remote work again, so I can sit here alone to stew in the consequences of my poor judgment. Woe to those who want to get an attitude on Teams calls today.

And on a completely unrelated note, I feel my reading slump ending. The desire is returning. I think I’ll start by finally finishing Michael Cisco’s The Divinity Student.

The blogosphere (stupid fucking word, by the way) is boring as hell. It seems to be inundated with AI or AI-adjacent posts. It’s a giant circlejerk of anonymous scribblers fellating each other for their valiant resistance to all things AI.

If not that, it’s something like here’s my shitty TTRPG or blogging is so cool, so I blog because it’s good to blog, let’s blog together.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some gems. I like Lili. I picture her as Faye Wong in Chungking Express. The neo-Luddite lady is pretty chill, too. Some of you are irreverent, authentic, and keep me checking the “New” pages over my morning coffee.

I’m no hypocrite, either. My stuff sucks. Misanthropic ramblings and journal entries that used to be reserved for fountain pens and sweet Midori MD notebooks. It’s just that my hands shake and my handwriting is illegible.

I shouldn’t drink and write.

Today was probably the first day in five years that I’ve done a proper day’s work.

During COVID, they forgot about me in Scotland. The US office assumed I was reporting there, and the Scottish office decided I was America’s problem. That led to years of collecting a paycheck while I took long walks around Edinburgh and had brunch.

The gravy train is over, it seems. I’m in the thick of it again, LARPing as a project manager. Dealing with consultants and corporate employees seconded to this project is like herding cats.

I decided I’ve earned a drink. I haven’t so much as smelled alcohol in probably a year. I picked up a bottle of Redbreast 12, and let me tell you, it’s fucking delicious.

As Mungo Jerry once said, “Have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find.”

But actually, no, don’t do that. Maybe just the drinking part.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.

Here I am, bitching about my neighbors. I’m in my curmudgeon arc. I bet most can tune out the strepitus suburbanum, but it’s driving me fucking mad.

Every month, I Apple Pay an orthodontist I’ve never met 3,000 of my questionably earned dollars for the privilege of living in his future retirement home. I thought, for the price, it would be a nice, quiet retreat from the city. Shame on me for thinking.

On one side, a guy obsessed with bringing the indoors outside. Lounge furniture, giant TV, sound system, and a diabolical collection of wind chimes.

On the other, Halloween decorations that howl, cackle, and repeat spooky dialogue whenever their cheap motion sensors are triggered.

Then there are the aftermarket exhausts favored by micro-dicked men, the incessant lawnmowers, and the neglected backyard dogs.

I desperately want a moment of silence.

I suffer from Post-Christian Stress Disorder (PCSD). I made that up, but I have faith that it’s real, so you have to respect it or you’re a bigot.

The quacks at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) continue to ignore my strongly worded emails demanding an emergency revision to the DSM. My ACLU lawyer just sighed and told me to stop bothering him on the weekend.

I’ve been cursed with weekend work. Three standups a day with consultants—a desperate attempt to get a $100M tech transformation project back on track. While discussing availability, quite a few mentioned that Sunday morning was reserved for church and Sunday school.

I try to have empathy, remembering the years I spent in that death cult, but I can’t. I have a visceral reaction to all things Abrahamic. Grown people gathering to wave their hands around and sing cheesy ass songs about a failed messiah and a Near Eastern storm god.

Everyone who bothers with this inevitably asks themselves, Who am I writing for?

Many will answer, For myself, of course. But then why a public-facing website? Why the upvotes, guestbooks, Contact links?

Be honest with yourself. Does knowing someone might read your writing change what you’re willing to say?

Perhaps the for myself claim isn't really about the absence of an audience. Rather, it's about refusing to let that audience dictate what you write. L’air du temps, the hate mail, the engagement bait. You can’t fall prey to it.

Writing is intrinsically rewarding. I’d like to keep it that way. To that end, I’ve stripped my site of the little dopamine buttons. No upvotes, no contact. Just me and my bullshit.

If it connects with someone out there, so be it.

Having children is immoral. It is better never to have been.

But what of the joys of life, however fleeting? Only at the cost of immense suffering. Even before your first breath, sickly wet and ragged, your mother suffered for your pitiful existence. As you were manhandled by strangers, you were both a victim and a cause of suffering.

Conscious existence is inflicted upon others. Pain and degradation echo through reality, each of us a selfish epicenter.

If you resist the biological imperative, you spare not only the child but countless others. And it’s at no cost to them, for they wouldn’t exist to be deprived of any experience whatsoever.

One hundred years ago, we were not, and we were fine with it. We missed nothing.

But now? Now look at us.

First outing with the new (old) camera. East End Park; a walk through the woods.

First cool front of the season made it enjoyable, rather than merely tolerable. It’s funny how simply carrying a camera changes your perspective. I’m looking at light and potential compositions.

Eyes drawn to the little pops of color amidst the weathered trees. Laughter in dappled sunlight, captured on 35mm.

I’m still learning, so I left it in shutter-priority. The light meter is roughly fifty years old and probably wildly inaccurate. I’m interested to see how this roll develops.

Expensive and outdated, I know, but film feels closer to life. The grain and the imperfection reflect the melancholy of lived experience. The tangible nature of it all. The fragility of light and cellulose.

Dead kids.

I carried a rifle through a desert. Dismissed the other as inhuman for their barbarism, their pederasty. Bacha bazi and beaten wives. Not in my AO. Not while I still had control.

And then I come home.

Pedos in charge. Kids shot in classrooms.

Now I sit in a generic suburban home. Armed, suspicious, and powerless. A cog in a machine generating wealth for technocrats and chomos.

The news cycle turns. More dead kids.

This is freedom. This is God’s plan.

Thinking of moves again.

Avec kitty, PNW or Mountain States.

Somewhere rural, on some acreage, but a reasonable drive from proper amenities. Maybe near a university town. Occasionally work as an adjunct, if I work at all.

Sans kitty, the options open up.

SEA and East Asia are top. Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam. Japan, but their visa options suck.

Already lived in the UK and wandered all over Europe. I’d be poor there, and honestly, I’m over it. Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia are increasingly viable options.

I could be out of here in no time. Sell the car, toss some shit in storage, disappear into the sunset. Bonus in March, though, if I can hang.

I’m notorious for spontaneous, irresponsible, and life-changing decisions, so we’ll see. I feel the fuse burning.

For all my bluster about the evils of consumerism and the meaninglessness of it all, I’m just as much a dopamine addict as the next guy. The Ring goes off, and there I am with the hobby knife, eager to carve out my reward. A capitalist caesarian.

First, a new wallet from a leather shop in Alabama. Initials subtly embossed on full-grain. The smells. Definitely an old man thing to be excited about.

Then I attacked a box from Japan to find a pristine Olympus 35 RC. As usual, it was beautifully and intentionally packaged, with a little origami crane and a new 500-yen coin to open the battery cover.

Now I just need to learn how to use the damn thing. I’ve ordered a battery for the light meter and some Kodak Gold 200 to test it out. I’m watching videos about the exposure triangle and I feel like a fucking idiot. Maybe I’m a point-and-shoot guy after all.

I see something that doesn’t see me.

To call its indifference cold would be to turn the lens around, to impose my own meanings. It simply is.

A mountain doesn't care whether you climb it. The ocean doesn't care whether you drown in it. The stars don't care whether humanity exists.

Camus said, “At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.”

When I strip it all away, the desperate need for meaning and purpose, what is it that I find beautiful? Could it be the emptiness itself? Perhaps words are just poor substitutes.

I have a soft spot for indigenous religions, especially the animistic and polytheistic faiths of pre-Christian Europe. My virulent anti-theism is primarily reserved for the prescriptive and oppressive cults of the Abrahamic variety.

The old ways. Blót and symbel. People of the hearth. Legends and myths I’ve almost certainly romanticized into utter fiction, but that still manage to stir my bitter soul.

In an age of reason, I like to hold on to some of the magic. Everything is so serious, almost clinical. I’m too dumb to understand the math, so I’m happy to raise my cup and pour one out for the local landvættir.

My body and mind conspire to keep me unhappy.

I’ve always dealt with health anxiety, but it seems to peak when things are going right. My brain says, No, slow down, big guy. Too much serotonin floating around up here. That ache in your side? It’s probably cancer.

And thus the twitch in my lip becomes a sign of undiagnosed MS. The headache is an aneurysm, and my poor memory is probably early-onset Alzheimer’s. Reflux after a big meal? No, it’s a widowmaker. Now you’ve gone and left them all in the lurch. Way to go.

For someone who seems to be dying every day, you’d think I’d get used to it. But it’s as they say, the horrors persist, but so do I.

I swear it feels like this life is scripted sometimes. A paint-by-numbers midlife crisis. A slowly decaying Rube Goldberg machine.

I turn 41 in two months, and I’ve suddenly developed an interest in photography. It’s a thing, apparently. Nostalgia, a creeping awareness of mortality, and a desire to preserve ordinary moments. The tangible aspect of 35mm film.

So, here I am in the dark, a belly full of Cafe Bustelo, looking up where to buy an Olympus 35 RC. I haven’t the slightest clue how to take a good picture, nor how to use a proper camera. Old dog, new tricks.

Another spontaneous excursion, this time north to Huntsville. I took the back roads through the Sam Houston National Forest. In the shadows of thick pines, windows down to enjoy the sap-scented air. I wondered at the unusual urgency, this need to maximize our time together. Where was it before?

Perhaps it was the recent VA decision coupled with the increasingly frequent aches and pains of a fifth decade. No reason to mourn the time wasted, and no reason to anticipate the end, but every reason to use the hours as if they’re the last. A bit cliché, I know, but still.

Lunch at Cafe Texan. Chicken-fried Steak, patty melt, iced tea. Browsed an antique shop on the square and walked the Texas Prison Museum. I found myself staring at the famous decommissioned electric chair known as Old Sparky. Crazy to think how many died in it. We are a brutal kind.

I woke up with questions. Do I start packing? Is it irresponsible to take the leap right now? Will I regret waiting? Will I even live long enough?

Prevailing orthodoxy says to stay put, work overtime, save aggressively, and target a 4% withdrawal at 65. That would mean another 24 years of this shit. I’ll eat a .40 before that happens.

Perhaps the real question is the boy. Would an unconventional life abroad be a boon or a curse? It’s not like the U.S. public school system is doing much for him anyway.

Maybe I’ll apply for the Taiwan Gold Card while I’m still gainfully employed. It’ll give me a foothold in the region should I finally decide to use it.

Refusing to spend another weekend in suburban purgatory, I booked us for the opening slot at Meow Wolf – Radio Tave.

Whatever my expectations, they were exceeded. Immersive, surreal art that encourages you to touch, read, and explore. Passwords and secret passageways, computers and radio frequencies, and secrets hidden in plain sight. I’m certain we missed so much this first time through.

After blowing some cash in the gift shop, we went across the street to Saint Arnold, Texas’ oldest craft brewery, for lunch in the beer garden. Pretzel, pizza, and chippy. Health food.

All the driving takes it out of me. Now for a lazy evening and Blade Runner 2049 to end the night.

After yesterday’s post, I expected a note or two full of hate in lowercase, but instead I got an email from a burner account calling me a “larping incel.”

I wanted to send my compliments for the creativity, for taking the time to message little old me, but alas, they’re a coward.

I told my wife I’m an incel now. She acted confused, but her eyes said, “Oh, thank god.”

what is this trend that i see in some of your writing? this lowercase affectation? i’ve read that it’s a deliberate rejection of convention, meant to soften the tone, make it more intimate.

I hate it. Not that my opinion matters, or that anyone even reads this blog, but when I click through Bear and see that so-called style, I immediately close the window and hide the blog.

But E. E. Cummings intentionally subverted literary convention as an aesthetic! Piss off. None of us vomiting words out into the digital void holds a candle to someone like him.

It’s not cute. It’s not a clever or pleasing a e s t h e t i c. It’s performative and stupid.

Do consultants not sleep? I passed out around 12:30 and awoke to nearly a dozen Teams messages. The sender is in my timezone. Poor bastard. A lot of them seem to chug the corporate Kool-Aid.

In a matter of minutes yesterday, my carefree, do-nothing job turned into hour-by-hour babysitting of grown people. Dress rehearsal for a major technology transformation project, and it’s not looking good for the real deal.

I dread these Teams calls. Pretending to care, the ridiculous pseudo-business lingo: it’s all a chore. It’s been so long since I did anything meaningful, I’ve forgotten what it feels like.

Honestly though, it’s stupid to complain. I get paid a healthy six figures to sit in front of a computer. Over eight years with this company, and I’m still only pretending to know what’s going on. Just goes to show, everything is bullshit. The gift of gab and a bit of acting take you far in the corporate world.

It finally happened. I’m finished. After so many years of bureaucracy, endless appointments, and countless denials, my rating is maxed. Permanent and total.

After a victory, when the initial excitement fades, there’s sometimes a hollow feeling, a sudden absence of purpose. Not this time, though.

I feel free. I suddenly have options. The company no longer owns me.

So, what changes now? Nothing, really. Not yet, anyway. I’ll continue on as I have for a little while. Save money, relax, let the subconscious chew on this new reality.

The path forward will present itself. I’ll know it when I see it.

Sometimes it’s all a bit much. The pervasive fear of living on the knife’s edge. Destitution on one side, mere survival on the other. In an at-will state, your fate could be decided on a whim.

Then there’s the inexorable march of time. Who said it heals all wounds? Pink Floyd had it right: With each day we’re shorter of breath and one day closer to death. I feel it in my bones, the inevitability.

And as if that wasn’t enough, we shoulder the banal injustices of daily life. The insufferable people, the fear of violence, political madness, the weight of responsibility, and the demise of the natural world.

And so, on occasion, I retreat. I dig through my closet to find a little package from a farmacia south of the border. I swallow the benzo dry and wait patiently. Before long, I don’t care anymore. Blissful indifference, if only for the night.

Reclaim the night. Daylight hours are occupied by the struggle to stay alive, but when the moon is high (and so am I), the time is mine.

Sadly, we seem to have lost the plot. We melt into couch cushions and scroll brainrot until our eyes are too heavy. Then we make terrible diet decisions and pass out. Midnight dumplings hit the spot, though.

Let’s make more of our nightly ritual. We used to play games together (you cheat at backgammon; no one rolls double six so often) and watch proper films. But now we’re always so tired.

Tonight, I’ll look the other way from those suspiciously weighted dice, and when we watch something, it will be worthy of our time. We’ll start with Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express.

Feeling nostalgic, I spent my commute singing along to this Incubus album from 1997. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can remember the lyrics to almost every song. I pulled up to my corporate gulag with a shit-eating grin on my face. This album is pure fucking brilliance and Brandon Boyd’s voice is nothing short of magic.

The first half is quintessential nu-metal. The heavy guitar with syncopated rhythms and the almost out of place turntables. But the second half transitions into something with an almost city-pop vibe. Think funk influences and jazz fusion.

Memories of a scratched CD in my new Discman, the odor of dirt weed clinging to my baggie hoodie, carbon paper detention slips crumpled in my pocket. I was a kid, lost in the music.

Deep inside, ‘cause I’m so stoned I can’t see straight.

Finally booked a trip. Off to San Francisco at the end of the month. The plan is to split time pretty evenly between the city and nature.

We’ll base in Pacific Heights, check off the big city tourist spots, and then grab a rental to cross the bridge and hit Muir Woods and the Marin Headlands.

I recently got the “Gold Star & Veteran” America the Beautiful pass, so national park access and parking are free for life. My wife jokingly said that I spent thousands on a trip just so I can use a pass to save $30. She’s not far off, if I’m being honest.

Fact is, I’m restless. I hate being in one spot for too long, especially when it’s somewhere as ugly and boring as Houston. I need a change of scenery, and I’m craving natural beauty. Big trees and wild coasts will soothe my soul.

Every morning, before the family wakes and after the cat has been fed, I light a stick of incense, bow toward a kakejiku of Amida Buddha, and plunge it into the little bowl of sand and ash.

It’s said that our sense of smell is more closely linked to memory and emotion than any other. It bypasses the Thalamus; straight to the dome. Shoyeido's Kyoto Autumn Leaves (Kyonishiki) incense takes me places.

There’s a whole world in that tiny stream of smoke, rising in the light of a fake candle. It speaks of countless hours of zazen, of emptiness and contentment. A reminder that this life is transient and fickle, dispersed with a sharp exhale and ultimately reduced to ash, indistinguishable from what burned before.

Memories of those years are hazy, at best. A chaotic slideshow of wanton debauchery, ragged at the edges. Police lights, smoky rooms, girls who knew too much. How I survived is still a mystery.

My poor son, I see you on the cusp of those wild years. The world has changed; everything is recorded. A foul word, a bad decision, they can follow you forever now.

The advice I offer, I can see that it doesn’t land. The vacant gaze betrays you. I’m an old man. What do I know? Your naiveté frightens me.

I wish I could lock you inside. I can keep you safe here. But I know you have to live. You have to fall, alone. This is a father’s burden.

Always waiting. An existential snare pulled tight around the neck of humanity. Like a wolf that wanders into a farmer’s trap, we snarl and thrash about in futility until he comes around to put a bullet in our head.

Waiting for the weather to change, for an opportunity to arise, for things to get better—for that nebulous time in the future when you can finally do what you want to do. It will have all been worth it, just not now. Not yet.

There is no future. It isn’t real. Hope is a comfortable lie. The snare is a creation of your own mind, an illusion born of fear. Cowardice in the face of inevitable annihilation.

An RSS reader was the key to breaking my Discover page addiction. The Redditification of writing needed to be nipped in the bud. I don’t want to be concerned with upvotes.

Stormy weekend ahead. I’m an hour into the Elden Ring DLC. Respecced from mage to melee. Occult Nagakiba build goes hard. I also just got a handful of Dandadan manga. My wife wants me to wait for the next season of the anime, but I need to know what happens.

I’m not much for meta-blogging, but I’m finally happy with this page. You might notice the name change. And I think the short-form suits me well. It’s clean, and only the ten latest posts will display on the home page. The rest will be in Archive.

I’m considering a getaway over Halloween. I’m feeling Redwood National Park for some dramatic scenery, but we’ll see. For tonight, the plan is to get stoned and watch Perfect Days.

木漏れ日. A Japanese word that describes sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees. Think of the dappled, shimmering patterns of light and shadow.

It elicits that longing, almost nostalgic feeling deep in my core. It speaks of transience—the fleeting beauty of nature and the interplay of light and dark.

I imagine autumn woods. Eyes closed, face turned toward the slanted light of a dying sun as it teases its way through the branches. It dances across my eyelids as I breathe in cool, crisp air, the languid sigh of the forest itself.

It’s an invitation to pause for a singular, beautiful moment that will never exist again.

I’ve been dreaming of retiring early, selling all my shit, and slow-traveling S.E. Asia. We're close. Plans have been made; the pieces are coming together.

But now there's Mei, our little Bombay void. She was VIP at the shelter, a cat nobody wanted. And now we’re all obsessively in love with her.

Considering the strict quarantine protocols and the stress of constantly moving between countries, dragging her along would be unreasonable and cruel. It looks like I’m going to stay in the U.S. because of a cat.

I can't make this shit up.

Philosophy for a rainy afternoon. When I learned Peter Wessel Zapffe was Norwegian, I wasn’t at all surprised. In his 1933 essay “The Last Messiah,” Zapffe suggests that human consciousness has become grotesquely overdeveloped. We are animals made intolerably aware of death, suffering, and meaninglessness.

He uses the image of an elk gone extinct because its antlers grew too large. We avoid a similar fate by cutting ours off. We isolate by collectively suppressing talk of death and the absurdity of existence. We anchor with religion and convoluted systems. We distract with work, media, and shit like this very blog. And we sublimate, turning the horror into something a e s t h e t i c like philosophy or art.

He proposes a Last Messiah who doesn’t preach another flawed ideology or religion as metaphysical opiate, but rather reveals to us the biological mistake itself. He teaches the suffering-producing organism not to perpetuate itself.

The takeaway? Cut your balls off and let the human animal fade into the dark.

We can give Texas back for all I care. Let Mexico and the Native Americans pick their parcels. This place is a fundamentalist shithole.

The Texas Senate race has everyone all hot and bothered. The core of the debate? The candidates’ preferred version of Jesus. Talarico is leaning into hippie Jesus, while Paxton is all about that supply-side Christ.

Am I the only one who thinks this is fucking madness? We have very real and imminent issues to address, but instead my lawmakers want to argue about an itinerant Jewish cult leader and failed messianic figure from 2,000 years ago.

Abrahamic religion is a cancer. We’re cooked.

Despite my tendency to wax poetic about revolutionary politics and the evils of free-market capitalism, I’m just another tool trying to get that bag. My hypocrisy knows no bounds, but at least I own it.

I have a C&P exam today. I’m already on the dole, but even a 10% rating will put me at 100%. Permanent and Total. Set for life. I’ve spent years fighting the bureaucracy, and the finish line is in sight.

I traded my youth and my sanity for this. Committed unspeakable acts against humanity. Played the pawn for a shadowy cabal of oligarchs and sociopaths. I’ll kindly take my pittance and be on my way now.

It’s a curious thing. An uninvited traveling companion, a creepy houseguest. I think I’d prefer a poltergeist to this tedious kind of haunting. That’s okay, friend, I didn’t like those dishes anyway.

But no, this demon is much more intimate. It stretches languidly along my spine, like a spoiled house cat, one hand on my brain and the other in my gut. It plays deep jazz cuts with my receptors – a serotonin sax with a dopamine bass line that really brings it home.

Twenty years without anything felonious, and yet the cravings arise. I see a stupid GIF of someone smoking a cigarette and my stomach knots with something akin to lust.

This is a ridiculous life.

We don't truly appreciate the fact that a substantial number of otherwise rational adults believe in an omniscient creator god who watches you pee and judges your sex acts.

Personally, millions of years of animal suffering that serves no purpose, redemptive or otherwise, is proof enough that a loving god does not exist. Quite frankly, if the Abrahamic god were real, I would be morally obligated to reject it.

A spectre is haunting America – the spectre of Christian Nationalism. In the highest echelons of government, there are people who eschew their democratic responsibilities in favor of bringing about a purported apocalypse – from Huckabee’s heifers to outright Zionism.

On a recent drive, I passed two gun shops and three churches within four city blocks. Priorities. Memetic death cults; brain worms force-fed into the minds of children. The old image of a quaint, pastoral faith, a mere moral code, was always an illusion. We're all in danger.

空 假 中. I have that middle character in mind – the truth of conventional reality. Inherent temporality forces an incessant dynamism; existence on a spectrum of never-now, only was and will be. That is, until it’s no more.

This movement through the phenomenal, what drives it? Is there a name for what underlies this relentless forward compulsion? It’s appetite.

Violent fusion in the heart of our star emitting light snatched out of the void by outstretched hands of green, roots slurping nutrients from the decay, feeding in turn the beating heart of prey before fang or knife tears it apart for the blood (life is in the blood), for the sweet proteins and carbohydrates that keep the synapses firing in this lump of sentient meat.

Breathe. Even your breath is ingestion of molecules that enliven, carrying energy ever forward in the ten directions for no real purpose at all.

Everything is hungry.

You eat, work, fuck, and sleep – all for what? It’s just your nature. You take from something that takes again in turn.

Life feeds on life feeds on life.

So brave of you to reject AI. I mean, we would never know if you didn’t plaster a “No AI” badge on your blog, so thanks for that. Now we can be certain of your artistic integrity, your place on the right side of history. When Skynet goes live and humanity becomes subservient to the machines, you can go out knowing you resisted.

I see it most on the so-called IndieWeb and echo chambers like Reddit, this anti-AI circlejerk. Oh, you didn’t use AI to write your latest rambling post about your half-assed philosophy or the birds you saw in your backyard? Well, thank the gods. What a disservice to the arts that would have been.

And then some of you go so far as to put warnings on your pages: My writing may not be used to train LLMs. I’m sure there’s a developer at Anthropic throwing his hands in the air, exasperated by this enormous setback. His day is ruined. Progress is stalled.

Oh, and this was not written by AI. Does that make me authentic now? Dorks, the lot of you.

Those who can’t do. I’ve no respect for them. Heresy, I know. Give me all your hate. I don’t care. I’m tired of pretending they’re heroes. Here, they are the lowest common denominator, bottom of the barrel. It's a job anyone can get when nothing else works out.

Blame the feral children? I’ll give you half credit. But I’ve seen you in your classroom. You think the phone ban keeps you safe, but the kids are clever. Coward drunk on your measly authority, you belittle with one breath and demand respect with the next.

Oh, you have a certificate to teach science? Then fucking teach it. Instead you hand out Chromebooks and tell them to listen to AI-generated lessons while you scroll TikTok at your desk. COVID methods long expired.

Public schooling is akin to breaking a wild horse. It’s spiritual castration. Generations of eunuchs eager to obey the bell and show gratitude for a union lunch.

Every generation looks back and shakes their head at the next one. Look at them, with their long hair and marijuana cigarettes. How quaint. But the days of puritanical hand-wringing are long over. It isn’t a moral panic that elicits my disappointment, but rather a realization that the young are well and truly screwed.

I owe my son an apology for my part in his birth. On the cusp of manhood, the scales are falling from his eyes, like that fraudster Paul on the road to Damascus. Public education is shit, the environment is collapsing, we’re ruled by oligarchs and pedophiles, and technology is being leveraged to fuck us mind, body, and soul.

Look around. The population is fat, sick, and stupid. All according to plan. Fuck a car; I think I’ll get him a vasectomy for his sixteenth. Antinatalism is the only moral stance that matters today. We’re the Earth’s Stage IV cancer.

Everyone is scrambling to find a place on the spectrum. They plant their flag with stupid smiles and parade their mundane neuroses around as autism. Look at my quirky mental illness. The whimsy of misfiring synapses. The romance of chemical imbalances.

Shut the fuck up. You don’t need a semicolon tattoo or an awareness lanyard so people on the bus can force the smile usually reserved for three-legged dogs and deformed babies. Being bothered by loud noises is not a personality.

Desperate for an identity, you force yourself into a minority. Find a hobby and embrace the fact that you’re fundamentally unimpressive, a boring wage slave who will perish in obscurity like the rest of us.

Too bad that isn’t enough for you, but no one cares. Your life is the "–" carved on granite between your birth year and a rapidly approaching date with death.

Brevity is the soul of wit, or so said the buffoon.

Without imposing an arbitrary limit, I want to embrace the short form. Verbosity is a disease. I was infected by a philosophy degree. Unstable old men cowering behind rhetorical obfuscations.

So many of these blogs scream 00s MySpace. Today I’m feeling: Anxious to the sounds of shitty emo. Performative, sprinkled with desperation, reeking of loneliness. We collectively agree to hold our noses and upvote. Enjoy your dopamine.

Today I will wear the mask of a good father. Beneath it, only a Valium hangover and a nicotine craving. We reap what we sow.

I stumbled upon this post about Unstory, who is characterized as nihilistic, contemptuous, and often intellectually sloppy.

First off, brother from another mother. Any of that could've been written about me and the nonsense I write. Hell, I've been called those to my face.

Second, I shamelessly stole the theme. Fight me.

I've deleted all my old posts. It was time for a reset.