Random Misanthropic Notes.

These are all taken from my phone. Whenever I feel compelled to write a social media post, I write it there instead, to save my friends the agita. The subtitle I don't remember adding:

look away

You know how deaf people get all bent out of shape when a fellow member of the silent tribe has their malady surgically alleviated, and how they consider themselves a community happily defined by what they lack? Know why that is?

Because deafness is a luxury. Think of what it must have been like back in the dinosaur times. (Yes, I’m aware that “The Dinosaur Times” would have been a better name for this blog.) A planet densely flocked with vegetation—between ice ages, that is, as we are now—with herbivores munching away, the tranquility interrupted only by the violence of meat-eaters doing their thing, thunderstorms, and the occasional earthquake. Normal ecosystem shit. But no traffic of any kind, automotive, aircraft, whatever. No music blaring. No voices! Oh, god, to be blessed with such a paradise!

(Wait, did they have birds back then? Probably a lot, huh. Those goddamned things make a hell of a racket. Just one outside my bedroom window at the crack of dawn is enough to drive me up a wall. Fucking birds.)

Speaking of ice ages, if we’ve managed to stave off the next one by a couple thousand years, will that still be the thing that kills off humanity? Or will we be long gone by then? I kinda hope our stinky emissions have done just enough to help heat up the planet to the point where we can’t survive the climate anymore, then once we’re deservedly broiled alive, things will quickly go back to normal. Let us try to engineer a bona fide Jurassic Park, with the understanding that humanity must bow out in the bargain. Last one left, go ahead and leave the lights on.

Speaking of JP (and unavoidably thinking of its many wretched sequels), I’m tired of all this entertainment. Too many movies and TV shows, too much music. Oh, what's that you say? That TV show I’ve never heard of is really great? I’m sure it is, doesn’t mean I need to see it. And I bet I never hear the name again.

I’ll read that some new band is good, but when I listen to them it sounds like nothing to me. Maybe I’ll catch some influences, but really, I’m at the point where even the influences are too recent for me to recognize. I say we stop making new music, OR we erase what’s been recorded so far. I would eagerly dispense with all the music I’ve ever loved, every Elvis Costello album I’ve listened to eight-thousand times, if it also meant no human eardrum would be assailed by Nicki Minaj again.


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I’ve heard that if a woman has only ever been with other women, like never even kissed or dated a man, she is called a “gold star lesbian.” If that’s so, then I must be a gold star atheist. Never believed. I wish I could say I’ve never prayed, but when I started Catholic school, first grade, 1975, I figured I should get with the program. My dad was an usher, after all, and my family’s name was on one of our church's Stations of the Cross. My family sponsored something else too, can't think of what it was--a stained glass window, or a pew, or a cuff link for the archbishop of the diocese, or a hush payment to the parents of an altar boy. (Just kidding--there's no way we could have afforded the last two.)

As I had seen it done on TV shows, in cartoons and comic strips, I knelt beside my bed and planted my elbows on the mattress, palms together. I closed my eyes and thanked God for my parents and brothers and sisters, and I asked that He look after them. I made sure to mention each family member by name, really more to lengthen the prayer--like padding out the word count for some dreaded essay assignment--than out of concern that He might get confused and divinely intercede for the benefit of a different family. A few nights of this and I thought, well duh, of course I appreciate my family and want the best for them. The whole thing just seemed silly, so I decided I wasn’t going to do it again, and I haven’t since.

Wait, that’s not true. I was once ambushed by a Christian fella who was doing some labor for my business, trapped into a prayer circle with his legal slaves (three teen-aged sons, dull-eyed and identically dressed). He insisted we petition the Lord on behalf of a local lout who was in the hospital, a guy I didn’t know but had only heard terrible things about. So, since I was being forced to pray, I silently entreatied Jehovah for his death to be prolonged and excruciating, with unspeakable afflictions upon every organ and orifice. (I guess I was outnumbered: he soon got better, as had always been expected anyway).

(expand on: went to church twice a week / confession was a farce, priest snoring, made up sins, never did penance / never assisted mass, sneaked into classroom and erased my name from list on blackboard of students who still needed to participate)

[We'll see if I ever get around to this "expansion."]


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I’ll hear “Puppy Love” by screechy little Donny Osmond and think it’s the worst dribbly shit I’ve ever heard, and then the next time I hear it, I’ll almost enjoy it just a little bit, on a nostalgic level. Next time I happen to hear it, I’ll decide it’s really kind of sublime. Then upon another listen I fucking hate it again.
Is it me? Or is it “Puppy Love?”

This is a joke, btw. I’ve never found “Puppy Love” sublime. Only subpar.

You know how they based the 70's Saturday morning cartoon show The Oddball Couple on The Odd Couple, but with anthropomorphized animals? Just say yes. Well, they should have done that with The Nutty Professor and so the alter-ego could have been "Puppy Love."

[Okay, that one wasn't especially misanthropic. Just somewhat anti-Osmond.]


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I haven’t been posting much because I just haven’t felt like it. I don’t think I’m depressed exactly, just tremendously discouraged. I’m sure you get it.

Yesterday I saw reporting on this “George Floyd challenge,” where people take photos or videos of themselves kneeling on another person’s neck. I can’t imagine what the purpose of such disgusting stupidity could be. What’s the challenge? To replicate his heinous murder in hopes that the stunning insensitivity of such an act might somehow jump-start some empathy into your shitty heart, like a defibrillator for your impaired conscience? If that’s the intention, I predict all participants will fail. Forever.

By the way, if you want to do the challenge properly, let me know. If the point is to survive, how can we trust that your friend will really put his weight into it? Me, I’ll do that. I’ll do my damnedest to pin you to the pavement. (Or asphalt—it didn’t happen on a lawn, remember, it was in the street, next to a car tire, and I think the car was running.) After all, that cop was just doing his job, right? I promise you I will kneel on your neck like it’s my job.

Seeing it made me remember something I wrote a while back, from a larger piece that’s still in undeveloped scraps. Or maybe this was meant as the idea for the larger piece, one which is theoretical at best, if not outright imaginary. Anyway:

We’re living in an age where beautiful things become more beautiful through technology and imagination, but inexorably the ugliness also intensifies. More than ever, people seek ways to degrade each other, dehumanize each other, literally destroy each other, as if aspiring to be The Worst. Now, monstrous acts are often broadcast proudly, for any and all to see.

It always seemed to me like episodes of humanity’s ugliness—on any scale, not just those visited personally—used to arise sporadically. Even the most shocking of them would then eventually fade (although of course without disappearing entirely), perhaps through a kind of self-preservation, protection of our sanity or a humanity we foolishly believed worthy of preserving.

In the Internet Age, however, ugliness doesn’t really go away, or even diminish anymore. It just accumulates, as if along the narrowing beds of an ever-congealing yet unceasing river of blood. Cruelties inflicted easily and enthusiastically, watched and watched again, in layer upon thick, horrific layer. How much of this ghastly weight, I wonder, can a soul bear before it falters?

(I had a funny line comparing the internet to the impatiently-dug space below a lazy fat man’s outhouse—way too shallow and rapidly filling—but I couldn’t quite shoehorn it in there...)

I shouldn’t be pontificating on this subject anyway. I’m really more of a “No Lives Matter” kind of guy. We’re ants on a pile of puke, frantically battling over the choicest fragments of partially-digested ramen noodle.

[Haven't read this since I wrote it. A river of blood metaphor. Yikes!]


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I’ve learned not to underestimate Trump’s seemingly boundless capacity for scumminess, so I’m assuming there will be desperate attempts at subterfuge come election time, mainly regarding the election being postponed—i.e., called off—due to the virus (or the economy, or violent protests necessitating martial law, or another reason not occurring to me because my DNA doesn't contain the proper mixture of greediness, shamelessness, and overall shittiness).

Maybe he’ll blame a postponement on rampant voter fraud making a fair election impossible, assertions which will certainly be unsubstantiated (or, if any fraud does surface, it will likely have been manufactured and orchestrated by the right).

Given the damage he and his minions have done so far (chipping away at accountability, and checks and balances, and the rule of law, and the foundations of the Constitution, and goddamned simple decency in general), the four years after he wins will undoubtedly be a lesson in how to completely dismantle a democracy.

I fear the four months after he loses will be a bloodbath.