The Ancient Ones

What do you want to be made of, when the meat fails and the curtain doesn’t rise again? You will die. There’s no glitter here. No hopeful Instagram filter to soften the glare. No TED Talk punchline, no therapeutic euphemism,…
Welcome to the shallow end of the gene pool, where institutions creak, experts preen, and common sense has been labeled extremist. This is the domain of credentialed clowns, procedural necromancers, and moral toddlers in charge of fire exits.
Here I document the slow-motion implosion of governance, education, media, and culture — not with outrage, but with the grim satisfaction of someone who saw it coming and packed snacks. No reform fantasies. No hand-wringing. Just a front-row seat to the theater of the absurd, with the occasional sharp object thrown from the balcony.
What do you want to be made of, when the meat fails and the curtain doesn’t rise again? You will die. There’s no glitter here. No hopeful Instagram filter to soften the glare. No TED Talk punchline, no therapeutic euphemism,…
Because we’d rather die predictably than live differently Ah, the fabled last words of every empire on the brink, every deluded CEO polishing their golden parachute, and every middle manager rearranging deck chairs on a vessel that’s already made passionate…
A Midlife Lament in One Act, Three iPads, and Zero Chickens In 2010, I committed an act of spiritual fraud. I bought an iPad. Yes, I know. Not exactly the kind of thing you’d chisel onto a tombstone. Not unless…
A requiem from the strange lands of uncurated living Let’s drop the pleasantries. Reality is not the Eurovision Song Contest. No glitter cannons will herald your spiritual awakening. No rousing chorus will auto-tune your despair into meaning. No backup dancers…
Inner Fortitude in the Age of hyper-sensitive outrage addicts Is All Lost? The short answer is: yes—if you’re the kind of dopamine addict who needs five likes and a comment thread before breakfast just to feel marginally real. Then yes,…
Dispatches from the Libertarian-Minarchist Schnitzel-Making Fringe The Politics of the Statistically Extinct Subtitle: Dispatches from the Libertarian-Minarchist Schnitzel-Making Fringe Let’s exorcise the formalities right at the top: I’m Austrian. Which means that every few years, I’m expected – like a…
Or: How We Traded Builders for Bureaucrats and Called It Progress Let’s not mince words: capitalism, in its current flavor, is about as entrepreneurial as a DMV line on Ambien. No matter how often the TED talk crowd tries to…
How collapse became a lifestyle brand, why denial is the new national pastime, and what’s left when the lights go out. How do I feel? Not merely today — no, I mean in the grand, cosmic, thunderclap-of-history sense of “what…
A Gen Xer’s shot at Navigating the Ongoing Clusterfuck Surprise, surprise. The void coughed me back up. Call it a mid-life software update… that crashed halfway through install. It was just me, sparring with my personal demons. We’ve settled into…
My twenties were dominated by traveling. Not to your next Spring Break you mind. I was a little more independent-minded and adventurous. The Middle East and Africa were in my crosshairs. Once there, I moved on by whatever means of…