“In the end, cowards are those who follow the dark side.”

– Yoda

I hope everyone had an opportunity to re-watch (or watch) Revenge of the Sith for its twentieth anniversary.

Originally, watching it at seventeen, the political gravity of the film was significantly less heavy . . . likely because I was seventeen, had a sophomoric perception of geo-political socio-economics, and ignorantly presumed the plausibility of twentieth-century authoritarianism engulfing the United States was slim at best. Now, as the prequels have grown with us and we appreciate them more with time, I was excited to revisit the film in theatres as an adult with a denser grasp of George Lucas’ warning. Nevertheless, I was not prepared for the precise parallels of the film to break my heart.

Eventually, Yoda, most Jedi presumably dead, solitarily confronts Palpatine in his senatorial fortress with an army of Clones nearby—a confrontation of hateful cowardice by fearless wisdom—but there’s a moment on Kashyyyk where he senses the dying Jedi around the galaxy after Order 66 and collapses with the grief of ultimate realized failure, knowing well that fearless wisdom is likely too late to prevail.

Of course, the duel is significant and I, as the proper stoner-nerd Yoda fanboy I am, must communicate that Palpatine could, and did, not defeat Yoda—Yoda needed to kill Palpatine quickly before whatever Clones around could descend upon them . . . but he did not and continuing his bout whilst fending off an army would certainly prove disastrous (confronting the hydra then was an exercise in futility of which I presume Yoda was aware). Even so, the strength and resolve to compartmentalize rageful retaliation, fear, and probable failure to confront pure evil in a desperate gasp to salvage the fleeting whisper of democratic republicanism should not be lost. But this was not the plaguing failure ever heavy on Yoda’s soul.

His failure to prevent imminent authoritarianism by killing Palpatine was a defeat, but more so was that realization on Kashyyyk, overcome with collapsing heartache, that he and the Jedi, pacified and blind, had allowed the hostility they’d ever sensed to fester under their noses for so long that it amassed into an overwhelming body of hateful destruction dedicated to one end . . . power.

If, dear reader, you’ve trudged through the Star Wars fanaticism this far, thank you. There’s an analogy here as you’ve likely well-presumed. We here in the United States have historically long pacified, accommodated, and allowed to fester a hateful animosity ourselves, turning a blind eye to the ever growing threat—the ever emboldened hydra—resulting in the insurmountable body of destruction upon us now.

Our founding fathers failed to end slavery, we ceaselessly murdered and displaced the indigenous of these lands, allowed the Confederacy to persist minimally chastised, culturally and economically excluded the very immigrants required to grow and prosper, and have perpetually ignored the socio-economic and ethnic division deeply rooted among these failures—division in the name of power. Having so failed to cut the hydra at the neck, we now find ourselves tackling sprouting heads of hatefully inclined authoritarianism possibly unconquerable . . . and it is our fault. We are in a waiting game now, desperately clinging to a new hope that our rapidly crumbling political infrastructure will, if not directly thwart, cling to its strings long enough for an America better prepared to squash ignorance, hate, and a lust for power to arise.

The Star Wars parallels are heavy no doubt, with warnings only obvious to the once blind when confronted with the enemy’s realized goal, and the horror Yoda felt on Kashyyyk, realizing just how profound a failure their ignorant pacifism really was, is one we all know now . . . but do not be afraid.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will.”

“Patience you must have . . . “

“The greatest teacher, failure is.”

“Always in motion is the future.”

“To be a Jedi is to face the truth and choose—give off light or darkness . . . be a candle or be the night.”

– Yoda

May the 4^th be with you all amid these dark times.

-Matt

“Is this a holy thing to see”

– William Blake

“But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that . . . “

– James 2:18-19

The faithful “shudder” into mental gymnastics justifying their hypocrisy—the ever enduring convenience of Sola Fide.

“Well blossomed is his existence
So unwilling in their souls to see
So weak to face him from
The outcast angle of earth
So rapid do they flee
When bells of order are echoed
Nemesis for the anxious heavy spirit
Nemesis for a generation free”

– Sakis Tolis/Rotting Christ, Sanctus Diavolos

There’s an unavoidable realization faithful individuals eventually encounter, which is this reality’s innate irrelevance.

I first encountered this ultimately existential contemplation at twelve. I struggled rectifying ‘I’ll eventually die and transport elsewhere’ with ‘enjoyably participate in this material reality’. I couldn’t seem to understand why I’d materially indulge until my demise when I could simply orchestrate my demise and transport to this other reality immediately.

It started keeping me up at night and making me not want to really “do” anything . . . since, well . . . this reality was irrelevant and my participation in it was pointless.

My mom took me to talk with the Preacher at our new-age, non-denominational community-church, who reassured me that God wants us to experience this place first (although I can’t remember why) and that nihilistic feelings are natural, so “pray and worship and God will help alleviate these feelings of displeasure.” Then, he gave me a new bible—a New International Version (NIV) common among evangelicals. You just kind of accept the fairy tale at that point.

So, although an unnerving non-answer, this nevertheless proved briefly relieving and I bought an action figure afterwards that produced a smidge of dopamine.

At twelve, I’d already been working for a year and worked with perhaps the most influential individual I’d ever encounter—a young woman named Stacey (Who would move away when I was thirteen. I would never see her again). Stacey, being in her mid-to-late-twenties at the time, would pick me up and drive us to a large farm that housed and raised exotic parrots. Since she was so important to me, I was excited to communicate the “solution” I’d collected for my developing indifferent disposition toward our material existence and see what she could add to it. When I showed her the bible, she simply responded with: “I’m not religious, but it looks very nice. I’m glad you spoke with someone about how you feel.” I didn’t know up to that point that there were “non-religious” people about, and I suppose ignorantly presumed everyone around me believed whatever it actually was I imagined this “Christian” other-reality to be—even the Muslim children I played basketball with at their Mosque down the road . . . they did not, and the instantly-heavy realization that supernatural participation varied tremendously really stuck with me.

“Ah! let me blameless gaze upon
Features that seem in heart my own,
Nor fear those watchful sentinels
Which charm the more their glance forbids,
Chaste glowing underneath their lids
With fire that draws while it repels.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, To Eva

Now, while I certainly felt momentarily dismissed and inferior (feelings that rapidly waned in light of my fond appreciation for/of this amazing human), my mind exploded with what on earth this actually-mythology really was that I so favored and had been encouraged to take extremely seriously.

There were a handful of other “savings” in my youth where religious individuals, astonished at my never having been baptized, would do their best to collect me (they still do). I was happy to indulge them because it all felt like mere theatre, seemed to genuinely help them, and at that age wanting to belong to something seemed important—I’d later outgrow that. But it was really my crack-head indulgence into Ancient Civilizations and their Mythologies, spurred by my grandmother, that really saved me from the clutches of these absurd biblically-literal cultists and their contortion of what Jesus’ message likely truly was—a message I would come to study and appreciate more and more . . . perhaps more than many, if not any, “Christian” I know save one.

There likely isn’t another reality beyond this one, and if there is . . . nobody among us knows anything about it.

But this position of material irrelevance is weaponized and capitalized on to encourage a host of nonsensical immoralities used to exploit the ignorant, gullible, and desperate, ultimately giving rise to the “faith alone” argument (among others) for how to participate in this fleeting reality before us and make it to the other place. “Christians” hoard wealth, strip rights for others, deliberately impoverish their neighbors, adorn themselves and their homes in gaudy aesthetics, judge, hate, lie, cheat, and steal their way to social significance all at the expense of others . . . and they’ll tell you right to your face that their moral role model is Jesus Christ. This is only possible because this reality is irrelevant and so how one operates within it is equally irrelevant, thus manifestly abhorrent behavior is totally acceptable . . . well, it isn’t.

This uniquely religious hypocrisy is enough to perpetually depress anyone—it’s astonishing, confusing, horrific, and materially detrimental to those Jesus’s commanded them to protect. And, like anyone, depression periodically ensnares me beyond the hateful hypocrisy I find myself surrounded by, but I’ve some historical and bibliophilic fortitude against it; not so apathy, nihilism, or indifference, which’ve regularly re-polished my disposition since childhood, often at the emotional or psychological expense of those around me.

I’m an atheist, and so don’t believe the show goes on (beyond my atomic redistribution—a minimally participatory endeavor), but I’m also a Christian—something “religious” people either dislike or discredit (of course, you can’t be a republican and a Christian . . . but many republican voters will say they are—they’re not, so who cares what those hateful bigots think anyway.)

I mistreated a lot of people in my youth. Music, weed, and self-destructive/dangerous behavior were my self-medication, which manifested aggressively or dispassionately toward the ones I cared for. But as I was periodically losing my faith, friends, family, partners, and mind, a steadfast lantern of guidance and compassion illuminated a judgement-free carefully-secular easement of what was and is a permanently re-reinforced self-hatred long after I’d accepted my exponentially waning theism. That lantern was my Presbyterian Minister, who died from Covid during the pandemic—Reverend Hunt. Now extinguished, a void in it’s place, the lantern leads to nowhere, smothered by the supernaturally unscientific. I find myself often lost amid some contorted Dickensonian discomfort, without a lantern, looking for myself.

Reverend Hunt and his partner Keal were almost certainly homosexuals, but because they no doubt knew how hateful “Christians” really are, they could never reveal it. Even during Reverend Hunt’s funeral, with Keal in the crowd, it could not be uttered (“he married the church” they said). It’s hard to admit now that many of our neighbors, friends, and family who’ve helped usher in this kakistocratic neo-fascism are actually disgusting, hateful, immoral, and hypocritical dipshits. May we weather this storm and communicate to those immoral, false-Christian republican voters among us that they need to pray really fucking hard and apologize, or seriously piss the fuck off—I’ve got so little time for the hypocrisy, hate, and/or stupidity.

I do my best to foster an inclination for critical thinking and general worldly fascination reinforced by Stacey and my Grandma, and the compassionate empathy devoid of any supernatural necessity Revered Hunt ever carried with him. I’ve been an atheist for nearing a quarter-century but I will always be a Christian—The Reverend Hunt kind of Christian. It’s a charge I can never live up to but I do my best to pass along that light when I can in perpetual repentance for the sins of my youth.

This reality matters because it’s the only one we’ve got. Don’t let the powers that be encourage you to abandon your own well-being in the name of religion so the most selfish and hateful among us can exploit you, loot your assets, and leave you dry to amass their own material wealth in the reality they Know is absolutely Not irrelevant.

“Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak and bare.
And their ways are fill’d with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.

For where-e’er the sun does shine,
And where-e’er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.”

– William Blake, Holy Thursday

In Jesus’ name we pray

– Matt

I’ve a broad collection of muddled ramblings in a folder called “Sola Fide.” It’s a topic I consider often and it usually weaves my mind around a winding route to some unrelated consideration. But, if I can recall the treasured tid-bits collected along the way, there’re often the festerings of things to expand on later . . . even if seemingly unrelated.

“I talk to god by blasting music and doing yoga.”

-me

Compartmentalizing internalized chaos is a skill I’d like to have. I’ll often cut on a flick, mute it, start some music, billow the diffusor with Eucalyptus, Lavender, or Rosemary, light some incense, candles, make some tea . . . and coffee too, drum on my practice pad, periodically yoga, and go to bed without having materially accomplished anything I’d originally set out to do at all. So, it would appear as if I can multi-task rather well . . . just not focus on a singular objective to completion. I simply . . . give up.

We all know those, though, who can impressively quiet (perhaps even silence) the boisterous badgering to do this before finishing that and start something else while forgetting about whatever’s probably still boiling on the stove . . . and has been for an hour.

Eventually, periodically . . . sometimes . . . I can so exhaust the yammering of personal fault, incomplete accomplishments, evaporating relationships, and neglected yardwork, and spring cleaning, with so many frivolous momentary distractions that I find myself desperately on the floor in a deep flow, relishing in the oxygenation for which my ever-tightening anatomy has been silently begging.

Universal whisperings tip-toe much clearer upon the mind in these moments, as they might, to a lesser degree, in the shower. Whilst contorted so, I rarely move for a pen, less I risk sabotaging my prostrated desperation, and rely upon my rapidly waning recollection to collect perhaps one profound universal truth.

In those moments, the shift from overwhelm to contentment . . . to calmness . . . understanding . . . is precious . . . perhaps religious. The Universe graciously delivered upon me a dose of this concise personal awareness the other night amid a two-hour yoga session accompanied by Rosemerry, Frankincense, and Fit for an Autopsy (who I’m going to see soon . . . fuuuuck yeah). But to get there, I’ll need to preface this mind-journey to profundity with a smidge of inception.

Now, I’ve recently watched Adolescence (as I presume many of us have)—a masterpiece—and found myself spiraling down a dark YouTube rabbit hole of terrifying human disregard, objectification, and misogyny—tread cautiously (and I plan to delve deeper into this manosphere corner more in the future, or at least exploitable Jungianesque vulnerabilities). But surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, while some of this information was genuinely astonishing, much of what I discovered seemed familiar, similar, or adjacent to commentary I’ve heard from conservative thought leaders (Tucker Carlsen, Matt Walsh, Charlie Kirk). And after starting my YouTube search with “Adolescence Manosphere,” I ended up on a video titled “The Red-pill to Alt-right pipeline.”

I work elections. It’s 37-year-old me and a half-dozen 60/70 somethings who I presume are all quite “conservative,” but, as we’re not allowed to discuss politics, I can never really know for sure (and we all get on quite well) . . . but I’m in Georgia, so let’s be realistic. Counting the ballots after 2024’s Presidential Election, I felt a palpable sadness knowing what was likely to come. Later, once demographic statistical information was more available, I was astonished to learn many Millennial and Gen-Z men had voted Republican (I’d later find out much of my own social circle voted the same—many of them married men . . . but some women too). I just couldn’t understand how a generation so exposed to the destruction of Neo-Liberalism could exercise their democratic voice for hate. The content I poured through the other night unfortunately explains this statistical data too terrifyingly well.

This “Red-pill” content is clever—there’re obscure university studies, commonsensical socio-economic factors, evolutionary psychology, natural and sexual selection, and misogyny disguised as self-betterment. I wasn’t entirely ignorant to the material, having heard of Andrew Tate and seen some of the cringy takes by Matt Wash, but there’re a lot more than the ones you’ve heard of. An example argument commonly found might be: If you are attractive and wealthy, you are more likely to be pursued by potential partners . . . well no shit! This quickly descends, however, into: If you are an unattractive man with no money, your potential partners are near-zero. Any human-connectivity component to relationship-building is entirely disregarded—Men are money-makers/power-holders and women are sex-vessels/baby-makers. This sounds familiar, right? Yeah . . . The Handmaids Tale.

I can go further, but this is sufficient to understand how quickly a young, impressionable man with minimal access to positive male role-models, looking for the tools to financial and romantic success, can end up consuming enormous quantities of not only these manosphere influencers but the “traditional values” propagated by alt-right content creators like Ben Shapiro . . . or whomever.

So . . . where the fuck was I going . . .

Right, so, yeah . . . basically, I’ve lately (since the election) allowed my social circle to essentially evaporate to a small number of individuals who are simply not Nazis. One of many things I took away from Adolescence though is that abandoning those among us to Christo-Fascism because communicating with them feels nearly impossible (and I get it, it certainly is), is realistically a dangerous allowance. There is a pipeline capitalizing on deliberately orchestrated socio-economic dire straits that leads directly to oppression and violence . . . and it must be handled.

How so can one begin to undo this energized awakening of put upon youths into aggressive misogyny, xenophobia, and authoritarianism. Well, sadly (and you’re gonna hate this) the answer is to talk with these people.

While deep in yoga-induced universal conversation, a revelation about my own personal flaws epiphanized upon me—I give up on people too quickly. An important revelation for me to explain my failed past friendships and romantic engagements, but more important to this exercise (and certainly a primary message of Adolescence) is the notion that giving up on the unstable, defeated, and weak among us, turns them right over to the violent authoritarians who want to subjugate women, the poor, the sick, the frail, the different, and the powerless. They will weaponize the abandoned lost causes of our communities into militant fearmongers.

It should theoretically be quite simple—we’re all humans going through it so let’s employ the golden rule as often as possible (I won’t get into why capitalism minimizes this possibility just now).

As to those collecting these troubled young men to hopefully orchestrate a Handmaids Tale level of mass subjugation . . . well, they’re “Christians.” They operate under the guise of “Sola Fide.” It’s Latin for “Faith Alone.” These creatures employ the scape-goat component of their mythology to disregard actions of societal and planetary betterment because they can do whatever they want knowing they’re going to heaven anyway and this stage of existence isn’t really important . . . why not exploit it?

Sola Fide is an absurd notion happily employed by many religious among us who perpetually disregard or fend-off any notion of general-betterment and care for others, and who hoard whatever material treasures they can, often to the detriment of the less fortunate around them—an expendable temporary realm to amass trophies, trash with hate, and disregard whilst awaiting a presumed home of spiritual reward this world is for them . . . disgusting.

So, while we all may indeed be treading amid some central plain, should that be the case, let us at least acknowledge that we’re treading on it with everyone else and their life-experience is no less valuable because they’re not attracted to you, or their gender-identity feels uncomfortable, or their sexuality strange, or they’re a drug-addict, or homeless, or sick, or Hispanic, or whatever other nonsense we’re encouraging division for. We’re all human, so let’s be human and not give up too easily on the brainwashed, frustrated, angry, and violent among us. Quiet the boisterous internally exasperated socio-political exhaustion . . . the chaos, find your calm, and let’s save them instead.

God bless.

-Matt

Central Plain is an awesome song by Carbon Based Lifeforms . . . check it out!

“One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”

-Niccolo Machiavelli

 

Elizabeth Holmes is currently imprisoned for defrauding investors . . . puppets—taken for a ride by her misleading and fraudulent nonsense.

Elon Musk has an extensive history of something similar, which is to say: raising money by promising projects which ultimately never develop because the science is either impractical or impossible. Nevertheless, countless puppets disregard the improbability of his many promised projects manifesting in the way originally described or at all, opting evidently instead to await his orchestrated cyberpunk dystopia where corporations and the individuals who run them run the world . . . and whoever assists in that may have a place at the top. Among these gullible puppets is unsurprisingly our art-of-the-deal extraordinaire, multi-bankrupt, bleach-in-the-blood President, Donald Trump.

Of course, a uniquely dangerous kind of puppet is one under the impression that the relationship they have with their master is reversed, and has puppets of their own ensuring them so.

“I’m your source of self-destruction.”

-Master of Puppets, Metallica

-Matt

Inspiration:

A continuation of the previous rambling . . .

“To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your path, and don’t worry about the darkness, for that is where the stars shine brightest. Always do what you are afraid to do, always do what you are scared to do. And remember, every man and every woman is a star.”

-Sakis Tolis

Years ago, my older sister and I met at a downtown Atlanta coffee shop to discuss our insufficiently nurtured inclination for personally-gratifying creativity.

She and I sat at the table, a sketch pad between us, doodling in our fashion. She had, and still has, an eclectic fashionable sense for decorative aesthetics (clothing, décor, and communicable exclamations). My desires have long been gratification through entertainment in varying degrees of subtlety.

She and I decided then, well over a decade ago, to exercise and communicate these inclinations eventually digitally. I believe in that moment, the seeds for what would, some six years later, become our corresponding blogs (a progressively outdated mode of communication). Nevertheless, we nurtured these desires until she—my sister—produced “cafethenightaway” for her love of staying up late over a pot of hot coffee in a cozy, lamp-lit, enjoyably decorated environment to discuss what mutual interests may manifest. This proved challenging for her as a mother of two and her attention to this outlet exponentially waned. As my interest in this endeavor was constrained, balanced, and dependent by and upon our collective participation, I ultimately allowed mine to do the same, having disregarded what was ultimately unsuccessful frivolity anyway.

As I consider, now (or lately anyway), our global and sociological paradigm evolutions, I can’t help but hunger for some outlet to discharge these potentially psychologically-calamitous considerations. So, to exercise a creative and artistic desperation, I return to my lonesome platform to produce whatever inspired considerations cerebrally fester. Perhaps the future will play out positively and perhaps this sort of self-therapy will help prepare myself for that hopefully, minimally doom-ridden reality glistening off the future’s horizon . . . but perhaps not.

So, for myself, the happenstantial passerby, family member, or friend, welcome to whatever the fuck I decide to write about . . . again.

-Matt

Note: The sketch above is of Bearspot—my teddybear—from this meeting with my sister. This was eventually turned into a short story here.

“Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath, but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip.”

-Arthur Schopenhauer

Half a decade?

Yeah . . . well, sorry. Not like anyone reads this incoherently vivid verbosity anyway.

There was a time, long ago, when half a decade seemed endless . . . so quick it flies now—the rhyming of history. And how wasted was it? I’m not sure it has been.

The value of what marrow we extract from life is only ever up to us. But whatever that value is seems so regularly displaced by a contemporary, sociologically-imposed perception of necessary aesthetical participation—it’s heavy . . . and constant. We’ve been drugged . . . distracted . . . hypnotized . . . enslaved . . . to disregard any inclination for a non-prescribed obedience to our unique enjoyments.

Yet, despite our pseudo-global, progressively dystopian, neo-liberal, end-stage-capitalistic hellscape, there’s a refreshing recapture of wasteful frolic as our distracted fascination wanes. Not all . . . or everywhere . . . but sometimes . . . and someplaces. Class solidarity, global empathy—humanity’s desperate gasp for a lovingly-collective compassion fending off those frightened by the curtain being pulled back—are remanifesting (I presume what empathetic envy we bear for our indigenous/aboriginal contemporaries and their ancestors—those of us that have it—blossoms from some hopeless desire to participate with the planet, one another, the life around us, and ourselves in such a way instead of conquering it).

It’s fun to revisit what I once thought clever, even if it reads poorly, incoherent, incapacitated, or boring. I think, though, considering now’s all, I’ll return . . . even if only for individually exercisable psychological-preservation and the maintenance of primitive practices.

Maybe the marrow’s richer now.

“The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.”

-Thoreau, Walden

-Matt

Title quote from Fit for an Autopsy’s Black Mammoth

“My river runs to thee”

-Emily Dickensen

I again require an outlet.

The time it’s been since it last seemed so was much. I’ll discuss that later.

Anyway, the posts before this are old . . . perhaps terrible—(t)read cautiously.

“It’s a new dawn; it’s a new day”

-take your pick <3

-Matt

Title quote by Mark Twain

Are you trapped in an area of the country where scientific illiteracy and an overall unapologetic ignorance has got you totally bugged out? Do you want to know how to engage with the individuals among you in that area to encourage an honest abandonment of their emanating imbecility?

Well, don’t we all.

Now, I don’t mean to isolate the bible belt as a unique regional cesspool of bungling idiocy. But it is. During so calamitous a time as we find ourselves in now, individuals are struggling with perhaps a uniquely capitalistic existential crisis. Should I sacrifice my health and well-being to provide for those I care about, potentially endangering them? Or should I abandon my inclination to provide in order to protect loved-ones and citizens in the long run? This is a daunting position to be in. Typically, individuals must ultimately answer questions like this for themselves if they’re to legitimately employ their values in a problem-solving way. But our society is structured such that somebody with a value-system encouraging them to isolate could rapidly impoverish not only their reality, but the reality of the very loved-ones they want to protect.

It’s a false manifestation of existentialism since the right answer is pretty fucked. People in the United States simply cannot not make money. Our continued participation in the workplace safeguards not only the powerful elite—heavily invested in the stock market—but also our ability to provide for ourselves and our families. And while mass citizen economic abandonment is truly the fear of the powerful elite, they must find reassurance in the average individual’s necessity to work. It is a juxtaposition of power maintenance and mere existence.  So, the ethicality of economical sustenance amid a pandemic which plagues the fragile is certainly minimal, if not non-existent, but few American citizens are financially situated to employ ethicality in deciding what to do here.

The decision becomes even harder in the bible belt. Georgia, where I live, is led by so bungling an idiot that now, while we as a country test so few per capita and thus barely know who among us may be carrying this virus, our state is charged with getting back to normal. What constituted a non-essential business here already pushed the envelope. Now, pretty much everybody aught to just get back to work.

At the very least, steps should be taken to adapt each social environment to as least deadly a situation as possible. I wear a mask and goggles at work, where we have been significantly busier than ever. Even still, I hear from many individuals in my area that “this is a democratic hoax,” or “it’s all to make Trump look bad.” These individuals often quote the nonsense or pseudoscience their fed on either Faux News or conservative radio. Many champion the savior treatment Hydrochloroquine, which had they done a smidgen of research would see that there is little to no benefit and possible harm from incorporating this Lupus treatment into the toolbelt of medical professionals around the country. We’ll see if this propaganda continues to be parroted by these media-sheeple now that even Faux and the president have abandoned this drug.

So we have:

– Scientific illiteracy

– Mass ignorance

– Powerful incentives to work

– Leaders encouraging unsafe conditions

and

– Brainwashed imbeciles regurgitating force-fed horseshit.

Now, it is increasingly likely that COVID-19 is less deadly than originally thought. And while that is to some extent reassuring, as the percentages of individuals with anti-bodies indicate a heard-immunity on the up-and-up, the practical measures to ensure that as that happens the fragile among us endure as well are sadly being abandoned. What can we do? I guess go bowling and get our hair done.

No, don’t stick your fingers in the same balls other people’ve just used. And have a partner or loved one cut your hair . . . or cut it yourself.

It’s difficult for me to implore any individual to stay home though because I’ve worked this entire time and I have yet to experience the economic misfortunes plaguing so many right now.  At any rate, I hope you guys can employ your own values to your best ability to make the most reasonable and beneficial decisions for yourself and those you care about. Be safe and God bless!

-Matt

 

“With flames as manifold resplendent all

Was the eighth Bolgia, as I grew aware

As soon as I was where the depth appeared.”

-Dante’s Inferno, Canto XXVI

 

 

 

     Motivation is an elusive mistress and often manifests amid idle hours. Nevertheless, her fruits respire a lively oneness, the achievements of which are the hallmark of life. Woe be to those whom she regularly infrequents.

“At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.”

-Ayn Rand, Anthem

     It is indeed odd to find that those who champion this particular muse minimize any legitimate aspect of egalitarianism in so empathetic a quote to preclude other individuals’ potential to achieve it. To be sure, the “free-ness” of a Rand-like philosophy is very much semantically maximized, frivolously charging constrained subordinates nationwide to exercise their fruitful potential whilst frolicking amid an ever emburdening livelihood. Contemporary Republican parsimonious attendrissement encourages our diligent citizenry’s passivity despite a waning provisional procurement, particularly considering the fervorous fidelity expected by affluent liege-like overlords. The continually degenerating psychological turmoil collected during a progressively intolerable subjugation, necessary for mere existence, albeit, geographically-dependent, often insufficient, thwarts any preservation or manifestation at all of a Rand-like oneness. The creation of a nation of “second-handers” is no easy prescription from which to self-liberate. It is fraught with economic turmoil. Thus, a most abysmal depression manifests amid occupational reconsideration. So precarious is any self-serving exodus, regardless of its temporariness, that any attention to betterment is thoughtfully suppressed. Lo, even if the escape occurs, one must then embrace barely survivable capital-provisions, which often exhaust before securing even a weekly livability.

     The charge of a Pseudo-Randian disciple is to encourage each of the 330 million among us to participate in an entrepreneurial enterprise of whatever the sort their luxurious abundance of capital and free time will afford–an obvious solution on the eve of automation.

“Yes! And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make money. Now I don’t see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose–to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury–he’s completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They’re second-handers. Look at our so-called cultural endeavors. A lecturer who spouts some borrowed rehash of nothing at all that means nothing at all to him–and the people who listen and don’t give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers.”

-Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

     It’s really as if the current Republican torchbearers’ve conjured some sinister doppelganger spirit of Ayn Rand to lately commandeer the Republican party and perpetuate a false patriotism to indenture a gullible populace. But this depraved contortion of Lincoln’s party has no greater claim to American prosperity than anybody else. So read Ayn Rand, because it’s good stuff, and don’t let the Republican second-handers, hoping to scapegoat their ravaged reality upon us all, convince you that what she has to say is anything but what you find in her pages for yourself.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed a powerfully contemplative Independence Day.

-Matt

“…I find that I am wandering beyond the limits of my walk and will therefore bid you adieu.”

-Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Oct. 28, 1785

 

 

Copyright © 2019 Matthew Bell. All Rights Reserved.

 

 

     Gilfred Wayne Osiris (Freddy-Wayne for short) didn’t know it, but whatever typical anatomical-degradation had accompanied his everyday, average aging had also been aggressively expedited by his loquacious consumption of that syrupy delight–honey-rye whiskey on the rocks. But, irregardless of this, since he was entirely unaware of it, although he’d had his suspicions, Freddy-Wayne decided there’d be no more drinking for him . . . after one more night anyway; and he’d arrived at so seemingly brash a conclusion after the recent, dramatically-inflated legal consequences regarding any such indulgence whatever. Truly, drinking had become a dangerous frivolity, akin to hypocodrone and practically-meth. It seemed the leader of the free world and his legislative specialist had declared aggressive punishments for any individual involved in an arguably-discernible mind-altering avocation and the on-the-spot execution of any individual either peddling the contributory wares or in possession of “excessive narcotical quantities.” This was a real bummer for drunks and their dealers . . . I mean bar owners.

     Poor Freddy-Wayned had attempted all the last month long to abandon his fancy for the sauce, but no try would take root. And on this night there was not a drip of substance at his house, and so Gilfred Wayne Osiris had had to brave great peril for a sip at the last local spot to still serve the ruinous dribbles of the devil’s water. So there he sat, savoring every unforgivable drop. One by one, the glasses emptied down the delightable tippler’s gullet until he could hardly produce a reasonable sounding sentence for the gentleman to his left:

     “Seems so strange to come time I myself be abandoning all those luscious driplets of whiskey and the sorts, the government gone declared the termination of evildoing drug-kinds . . . even if they ain’t killed nobody.”

     The man sitting at Freddy-Wayne’s left was steadfastly situated atop his stool, in a crisp brown suit, and having a glass of icy lime-water:

     “Whatever seems so strange about it, good man?”

     “It just ain’t right, you know. Gotta have someway to escape.”

     “Oh, simple citizen, best be on your way, lest you collect some trouble; wouldn’t you say?”

     “And why is that, Mr. Coffee suit? It’s my last night ain’t it? Why should I leave?”

     “Because, woodland spirit-drinker, we are here to end the peddler of which fruits ye now take.”

     At that moment, merry Mr. Marmenheim–the tavern owner and its regular tender (a double strike for him)–was with great effort dragged from the back room out into the bar and dropped on the floor. He’d been so severely battered that Freddy-Wayne could hardly recognize his longtime friend and confidant.

     Now, Mr. Marmenheim was almost exclusively jolly, but lately his protestuous inclinations had enraged a fervent disobedience regarding the swift outlaw of indulgeable substances. He’d refused to shut his doors and continued to alleviate his patrons’ daily woes to a capitulatory incapacitation up until this very night. His unapologetic judicial disregard would henceforth never again materialize into some substantive distribution.

     Mr. Marmenheim gasped a curdling appeal for air which flung spritz of blood across the floor. The two men who’d dragged him out into the bar had certainly defeated the barkeep’s formidable physique, but at considerable damage to themselves. They were panting, bloodied, and disheveled. Evidently Mr. Marmenheim had put up quite the fight.

     They dragged Marmenheim to the man in the coffee suit, who collectedly erected himself at the man’s devastated condition:

     “Do you, Mortimer Marmenheim, admit the legitimacy of your being charged with being in possession of extremely large quantities of drugs?”

     To which Mr. Marmenheim gurgled a surprisingly boisterous: “What!? Hell No!!”

     But the gentleman in the coffee suit cut him short with a deliberate: “Nonsense!” He motioned to the two men, who were in fact members of the police force: “Officers.”

     The policemen lifted Mr. Marmenheim on to the bar and flattened his back down soundly. Creamy gobs of ether were smeared under his nostrils as Mr. Coffee Suit himself produced a pair of needled vials filled with fluorescent liquids. The officers on each side restrained any of the victim’s floundering the ether’d yet subdued. The first needle slid into Mr. Marmenheim’s arm. The iciest sensation crawled through the man’s veins leaving behind a fleeting sensation of warmness. The chemically-intensified realization of his final moments alive stirred the once-jolly bar tender’s thoughts to his wife and daughter. His lips fumbled a nearly inaudible: “please . . . no . . . ” And with that, Mr. Marmenheim went limp in the arms of his fast-holding civil-servants.

     “How did you like that, Mr. Gilfred Wayne Osiris?” called the man in the coffee suit.

     Gilfred Wayne fell from his stool and staggered backwards toward the doors.

     “Not so fast, my good man. Gentlemen, please bring him to me.”

     Gilfred clambered to his feet and made for as quickly a bound as his body could muster to the hopefully awaiting safety outside, but it was of no use. His determined survival was no match for the failed reality of inebriated kinesthetics. Freddy-Wayne fell almost immediately to the floor and sunk into a brief visual blackness.

    When Gilfred Wayne Osiris came to, he was in the clutches of the very officers who’d assisted in his bartender friend’s single dose of capital punishment. The ghastly likelihood of his similar demise panicked a medley of violent frolicking which contributed minimally, if at all, to any possibility of Freddy-Wayne’s imminent escape. And with that the men raised him up and flattened him atop the bar as they’d done to Marmenheim’s tattered body moments before.

     The gentleman in the coffee suit appeared over Freddy-Wayne and calmly exhibited the glass syringe with its glowing contents as the officers applied the probably unnecessary gobs of either under his nostrils. Gilfred shuddered; the second needle was for him. It pinched into his arm with the cocktail’s hallmark icy surge. Freddy-Wayne felt light and happy. The vial’s contents seemed to quench his thirst, and he relished amid the chilly pleasantries of chocolate and coconuts until his ability to produce astounding recollections extinguished forever on the last night of Freddy-Wayne’s frivolous narcotical indulgence.

 

     Have a nice day guys!

-Matt

 

Copyright © 2018 Matthew Bell. All Rights Reserved.

Cartoon quote from Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.

Italicized snippet taken from an actual memo by Jeff Sessions articulating his hopeful employment of capital punishment for nonviolent drug offenses.