Relationship News

In this era of polarization, it’s comforting to know there is one man who can bring us together: Kevin, who everybody agrees is an asshole.

So it came as a surprise when the “tech bro” and man voted Most Likely to Wear His Rectum As a Hat began dating Sarah, an attractive newcomer to the area.

Friends had no idea how the raging shithead was pulling it off. “We tried to tell her what he’s really like,” one said. “But somehow he was managing to be nice.”

However, after six months of containing his fundamental asshole nature the strain became…

Satire-ish

“Morg Pehnshe.”

The therapist tapped her pen, trying to hide her annoyance. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get much done as long as your face is in there.”

Her patient extracted his head from between the butt cheeks of an obese man who’d come in with him, and leaned back in his chair. He was middle-aged, with a helmet of very short white hair and what would normally be a very pale complexion. At the moment his face was flushed, not surprising under the circumstances.

What did surprise her was the blandness of his expression, as though this…

POLITICS & RELIGION

America is a dead country walking because conservative politics is literally inseparable from religion.

The day was Friday, June 6th, 2014. 6:00 p.m. Pacific time, to be precise. Which might seem oddly specific.

I had just finished watching All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC, featuring a story on alternative energy in the heartland. He’d interviewed Bob Dixson, the Republican mayor of Greensburg, Kansas regarding wind turbines:

Your first impression in rural America was, oh, that is something that is political. That’s left-wing. That’s new age. That’s secular stuff.

Let that roll around in your head for awhile. I’ll wait.

…

Humor

Everyone acts like you’ve done something clever. It’s not exactly a mystery, you’ve just successfully completed the IKEA project that is BÄBI: insert Tab A into Slot B, then wait nine months. You don’t even need a little wrench.

Congratulations on your new bundle of joy! As everyone has been told, parenthood is life’s greatest journey. It will change your perspective on everything and help you grow as a person. May you be blessed for life. Mazel tov!

Are we done yet? Because that’s all the upbeat material I’ve got. It’s nothing personal, I just don’t understand babies. …

Fiction

The mind of a squirrel is an inscrutable one.

However, it is possible to gain some insight into it by observing reactions to various stimuli. For example, what exactly goes through a squirrel’s mind as it sees a large Homo sapiens bearing down on it at full speed, shouting obscenities and waving his arms?

Said primate didn’t really care. All he knew for sure was that it scared the hell out of them. That’s why he did it.

The gray thief pilfering sunflower seeds from the bird feeder was caught off guard and tried to flee, but in that moment…

I covered that more in the original drafts, though there's more on that topic in the links.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-24/bulldoze-la-freeways-racism-monument

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-how-racism-shaped-interstate-highways

"Local officials rerouted the elaborate designs of freeway engineers — often at considerable expense — to destroy thousands of homes in racially diverse communities."

Some truly gross behavior. Scratch that, evil behavior.

Writing

Any writer will tell you that choosing a point of view for a story is one of the most important decisions you have to make. I very much prefer the first person, though I’m not sure why. It may have to do with alienation

I’ve dealt with that issue in the past, even considering the possibility of in fact being an alien myself. The weakness in that theory is I don’t know for sure, and it seems like you would.

It’s true there are stories featuring beings from other worlds so undercover they don’t realize it themselves, but how common…

The Environment

Hi, everybody, Earth here.

I noticed you celebrating Me Day recently, and I just wanted to throw in a few comments.

First off, damn, have you seen what you’re up to?

If Earth Day is supposed to be a celebration of me, how do you celebrate your human mom on Mother’s Day? Go over to her house and piss in the pool? I’ve already got lots of primates who like to fling shit everywhere. If you can’t be more polite than a gorilla then what’s the point of you, anyway?

And maybe it’s a minor thing, but I think you…