Extra Evil - Five-Stage Fillet

Today's Fortune: You can skip bargaining.

Okay, I used that bumper on other channels last week. Here’s a freshie.

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Newsreel

Pundits blamed alienation, the stars, and sitting ghosts.

I feel better about heckling Bezos’s divorce.

Stephen Miller slithered back into headlines.

An archbishop retired for the usual reason.

Escaped lab apes had the best week in America.

The Vision Pro is sinking as well as you guessed.

Today's Mood

War Journal, Deluxe

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama announced the End of History. So enjoy… the Re-Scouring of the Shire? New Game-Plus-Plus? Star Wars Episode 14? Imagine willingly handing that sentence to an editor. Your balls would have their own moons.

Sure, Reagan alumni did worse, and still do worse, and have exciting new demons coming. But the ego bugs me. And I have to get my Ronald lines out now, before his record’s obsolete.

Amusingly, Fukuyama’s line radiates Soviet-level historicism. They didn’t invent the conviction that history’s headed one way. That habit’s older than paper. The game’s always on. Until the last monkeys ascend or burn, the tug-of-war between the sane and the away team continues.

Not quite as comforting as utopia. The upside? You’re not doomed or done. I’m definitely talking to you, and not myself. Thank me later.

If I were a crueler soul, I’d suggest abandoned men try drowning. That’s not me. I just think the ocean’s a great place to reclaim your masculinity.

On that intro image: bargaining’s the worst stage.

In a perverse way, denial’s a great experience—it’s like nothing’s happened at all. Depression’s numb by definition, and that’s close to par. Anger has Sith appeal, hence half the planet’s addiction (Meta should get twice Philip Morris’s flack). Compare that thrill ride to bargaining, where you watch yourself do something that won’t work, watch it not work, despair over it not working, and restart the entire cycle. Shit time.

Though I always have nit-picky feedback for the gods. Squeaky wheel, I guess. No wonder I’m on read.

Maybe I’ll cut denial too. There’s no smart reason for me to express shock at the neighbors. I don’t even have to leave a building for behavior to change.

Petty example: half a year ago, give or take narrator fiat, I reconnected with some old friends. A live musketeer reunion, for the first time in an epoch. One night only. Promoters have retired off less.

Toward the end, I stepped out for a standard bathroom break. I overheard some banter:

“I don’t see what their problem is.”

“Try asking Dennard.”

“He’s not really black.”

“Ha!”

I stopped in the hallway. Standard American content, but the sources were…surprising. We’d gone a lifetime without tripping a racial landmine. Maybe I’d misheard, or projected. These were my first drinks in an era, just for the occasion. While I’d never heard of a soju hallucination, I was open-minded.

They went on. Much longer than the standard bathroom break, or theoretical soju hallucination.

This theme continued until I stepped inside, eyeing the time. My train was still an hour out. One of my life’s longer hours. By the time my chariot pulled in, I’d given up on raising hell. Much easier to march along with new data. I had a whole ride for bargaining.

I’ve built up a chain-bagel habit, and I suspect it’s a band-aid for a thousand other things. Okay, two other things I’ve written about at length, but you know what I mean. I planned on kicking it this month. I’m not kicking it this month. I have other psychic priorities this month.

For once, Macrofactor’s the enemy. Bloating-free bakery addiction goes against nature. The only gatekeepers left are maturity and dignity, and…no one’s good at everything.

Or, just maybe: the presence, dominance, or absence of bagels doesn’t matter at all. My brain’s just running laps to avoid thinking about mushroom clouds or genocide. Thinking about thinking about thinking is the true madness.

I don’t know. I’m buying another bagel.

Acrimony later. Some dumb shit just happened. One hour ago, as I type.

In Trader Joe’s, I noticed wild salmon for the first time. Rough price for reality, but ideal for New York.

And a sentence gripped me. Nothing smart, or edgy, or worth repeating in any format. Yet I was possessed.

“I might not live in a democracy next year. But gains are back in town.”

I laughed, leaning against a rack of fish, like a child. At length.

On cue from God, a woman watched this obvious sanity unfold. I kept losing air. I could’ve suffocated, but my audience looked like my ex-wife. I reclaimed the composure I could.

“What’s so funny?”

I’d love to tell you I lied. That I pivoted into a sitcom line. That I thought of something, anything besides the truth. But survival means taking reality straight.

“I might not live in a democracy next year. But—”

The Present

• Preorder my book about the first U.S. Civil War. [My Next Book]

• I talk about a ventriloquist Catholic Superman knockoff. That’s not the weird part. Or the twist. [1900HOTDOG]

• Brush up on Love Bombing Safety Guidelines [Exclusive Evil]

• The period after Prodigy. isn’t a typo, and it gets wankier from there. [1900HOTDOG]

• Seanbaby and I unpacked Mark Millar’s genius. [1900HOTDOG]

• I’ll have the next episode edited soon, it’s been…fraught. [Weeaboo Hell]

• Everything Abridged is a perfect diversion. [My Previous Book]

The Past

I keep “Is it Satire” pinned for a reason. I can’t see it without grinning.

The Future

Something I forgot pitching worked out, saving my soul. More on that later.

Not Brought to You By

I wonder why I buried the lightest section this far down. Feng shui? A bonus for the freaks? Maybe Past Dennard knows something I don’t. He seems reliable.

The N-Gage looked like a pager welded to a Game Boy, which is fair for the first pager welded to a Game Boy. Dedicated devices won the tug-of-war, since you really need your own Mario or turtleneck sociopath to sell a pager welded to a Game Boy. But how were the ads?

Multiplayer puns.

Headline: “This is where Denise showed me how to do it right.”

Fraternity multiplayer puns. Bet you buried that shit, didn’t you? These were in normal magazines, front and center.

Headline: “This is where I tried my best moves on Rebecca.”

Don’t worry, they hit normal crimes too.

Headline: “Are you ready to give someone a good beating on the subway?”

I’ve mocked game ad habits a lot here, so I should note: this isn’t a typical failure. This is, in genre parlance, an S-Rank, 600-hit, no-dodge failure. Nokia is a smaller company today because this saw print. That takes work, so I’m ducking more sanity than creativity.

Creativity: C+ | Persuasion: D- | Sanity: F

One Sentence Reviews

Lucha Underground - Ultimate Lucha Dos: A recording of my almost-brain. (5/5)

Cynic - Ascension Codes: Chasing it’s own tail. (2.5/5)

Persefone - Spiritual Migration: Catching Cynic’s tail. (3/5)

Camilo Wallace, The Ventriloquist: What in hell? (0/5)

Mentor - Wolves, Wraiths, and Witches: Meat, potatoes. (3/5)

Easy Question

Harder Question

Signing off

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