Extra Evil - Manhattan Projection
Today's Fortune: Why wait until spring to riot?
Newsreel
The other shoe landed on the National Guard.
Hegseth's sober choices are worse.
We sent Europe divorce papers.
Eric's staff took free trips to Indeed.
Economist practiced hunting game and making fire.
Meta ditched the project it's named after. Again.
You Need This
Noah's choices may not be long-term winners.
SME | Spotify | iTunes
A Photo
War Journal
The gaming bar down the street shut down. I should get a rent cut.
From the Coffee Coven.
Tarot Dealer: It sounds like dark magic, and is. But dark magic's just a word.
Barista: Word.
Tarot Customer: Oh my. Oh my God. You're right.
Tarot Dealer: These young witches, they're getting all this fear-mongering off of TikTok. It's TikTok. I hate TikTok.
Barista: Fear-mongering TikTok...
Tarot Customer: I'll think about this at my altar.
Barista: Great! You still need to settle up.
Tarot Dealer: Stay off TikTok.
Today, for thirteen minutes, I forgot a name.
I was rereading Cat's Cradle—spoiler, it's still good—and hit Newt's first letter. Newt's father is a bit like Oppenheimer, except Oppenheimer. With some shades of Oppenheimer thrown in.
A fun, simple stand-in. Unless, for reasons known only to neurologists and the gods, you can't summon the word Oppenheimer. Like me, glaring into a pleasantly laid-out paperback. Somewhere between sleep deprivation, my old vodka hobby, and ill-advised jabs at the demiurge, my brain tapped. The slightly-relevant name "Oppenheimer" fell out of my head.
I could've tried my phone. But lately, that lifeline's felt more like a loss than a shortcut. You can only lose so much of your brain to phone number recall. So I toughed it out, glowering on the L train like I'd been kicked in the face during Showtime. Remembering the Reaper's name took me between boroughs.
Mean move on my part. Remembering feels like snatching a gift back. How much would Oppenheimer have given for us to forget him?
Would you believe my disposition's improving?
Three setbacks just landed in rapid succession. Minor news in the world of adjusted adults, or even calmer children. In the Dayle records, this has a mild tendency towards spinning out into Thousand Year Blood Oaths. There's an impulse in my spirit somewhere between Feanor and The Count of Monte Cristo.
This round, the news came in, and I ordered two sugar bombs.
They were massive sugar bombs, so there's still much work to be done. I'm not a fully reconstructed member of sane society yet. Based on the headlines, few Americans are fully reconstructed anything. But now I know there's a Gotham maniac hiding between the song lyrics and state names in my brain. From there, it's just tip-toeing around him.
Or at least putting him to work. Depends on the wind.
The Pomera's treated me nicely, so I'm trying a fancy modern mp3 player. It's been one of those floating "to-do" items for an eternity, like cleaning my writing cave or grabbing a Proton address. Both of those happened too, so this week's theme is "sprinting towards sanity."
I come at living/merging with hardware from an odd place. Relative to worshiping or burning technology, at least. For my strain of madness, it's a question of standards.
I'd love to be a cyborg. There's more postcyberpunk in my veins than blood. But only a quality cyborg. Nice build quality, sane pricing, decent customer service, etc. The current tech wave's standards don't exist. And the everything device is, at the moment, closer to a nothing device.
Anyway, all of the above is wank, since my big gripe was Spotify subsidizing anti-doctor bombs. But it's nice to renew my vows with katanas and motorcycles, in a trying time for our relationship.
A Screenshot
The Present
- Join my new book's victory lap. [How to Dodge a Cannonball]
- I return to my mentor. [1900HOTDOG]
- Every day is Mercury Day. [Exclusive Evil]
- Merritt and I will never be forgiven. [1900HOTDOG]
- You will always need this. [You Need This]
- Join my old book's 2331st victory lap. [Everything Abridged]
The Past
Before You Need This got all caught up in continuous nonsense.
The Future
Delivering on a brick joke.
Dead Sun Theory
Shop's open again. Drop off any suggestions in the comments. Or an old one, if I forgot it. I am not supremely organized.
Not Brought to You By
Ad genres have a way of inbreeding. One I don't get: the house style of "Vote Referendum X" that shell groups use. I don't just mean low effort. There's a specific grey look/feel to them. And yes, it predates autoplagiarists.
For example (thanks to Charles, a patient Q train rider):
See what I'm getting at? It could be either side of any issue. Bizarre, given the profits (or human lives, if you're some kind of deviant) in play. I suppose drab is meant to scan as trustworthy, or intellectual. That was already dated thinking when we were sane, with attention spans. Now it's self-defeating.
Sidebar: Tax revenue's a PR angle for robots. Not just for gambling. For anything. It rarely moves human needles, because it's divorced from what you're actually swordfighting over. In this case, autonomy/fat racks vs. dignity/nannying. Confront the issue.
But the real question: how's the pitch?
Boring, for one. Again, a crazy ball drop for gambling. I think about the details far longer than I should, because it's dull. Worse yet, the name "Sports Betting Alliance" throws up all of a certain type (mine's) alarms at once, which seems counter-productive. I'm looking for the button that joins the Horde.
Creativity: F+ | Persuasion: D | Sanity: D-
One Sentence Reviews
Get Rich or Die Tryin': Who knew 50 Cent made songs between beefs? (4/5)
Blood Cultures - Skate Story Vol. 1: A painful reminder that I can't skate for months. (4.5/God Damn It)
Loveless: Everything is possible in comics. (3.5/5)
The Pervert: Has two perfect panels. (3.5/5)
Cat's Cradle: What do you think my opinion is? (Salieri/God Laughing)
The Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn, Part 2: What do you think my opinion is? (Waldorf/Me Laughing)
A Question
Signing off
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