In the beginning was a Dane Cook special. This was 2005 Dane Cook, bestride the world of comedy long enough to give us a movie with Jessica Simpson, years before we had to do uncomfortable math about when he first started dating his current girlfriend, and the first known reference to a Karen.

Cook’s theory was that every friend group had one, and “she is always a bag of douche”. A year before that, there was Mean Girls and the line, “Oh my God, Karen—you can’t just ask people why they’re white”.

But Karen as a meme wouldn’t take off until 10 years later, and soon there was the “Can I Speak To A Manager” haircut, and its most notable proponent Kate Gosselin, with the kind of energy that said “No one gets paid enough for the level of pain I’m about to dish out in this Panera”. Then Karens went and got all racist, and the subreddit “celebrating” all things Karen came to life in 2017.

Now that it’s 2024, we’re seeing the Karenification of everything, a sociological offshoot of Cory Doctorow’s enshittification, as people we would normally classify as grown ass adults have amassed themselves Voltron style into an amalgamation of stupidity and confidence that’s assumed Biblical proportions, because at some point whoever’s running this simulation is going to have the pull the plug just to keep the ignorance in the middle of the petri dish.

They’ve all swapped their haircuts for tinfoil hats, bouncing from one conspiracy theory to the next: today vaccines cause autism, yesterday raw milk was going to save us, a few months ago the Democrats could control the weather, and before that the current president-elect bellowed on national television that people in Springfield were eating dogs.

That’s because as former Twitter employee Edward Perez put it in an op-ed about Elon Musk’s election concerns, “Everything looks suspicious when you don’t know how anything works.” In a video exploring issues with his ballot, Hank Green put it even better: “Everything is a conspiracy theory when you don’t understand how anything works.” And even better: “Everything is a conspiracy theory when you don’t trust anything.”

Except Hank Green, being a person of integrity and intellectual curiosity, didn’t stop there, but looked into his ballot, learned a few things, and stepped back from turning into a tinfoil loving Karen. Which is the flipside of what people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, RFK Jr., Elon Musk, and Jenny McCarthy do: instead of looking deeply enough into things and finding that their ideas may be wrong, they spend a great deal of energy and frankly taxpayer dollars finding ways to reinforce their beliefs, however harebrained they may be.

They do their research with the same scientific vigor as the licking lab over at Tootsie pop, and there was a time when the only time we’d hear from these people would be on Springer or on late night AM radio with Art Bell. Now they’re being handed the keys to power as the civil discourse is being derailed by people we should never have let leave the Supercuts.

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_…
• www.yahoo.com/news/opin…
• www.techdirt.com/2024/10/2…
• www.businessinsider.com/karen-mem…
• www.youtube.com/watch
• www.newsweek.com/marjorie-…
• www.pbs.org/newshour/…
• www.bbc.com/news/arti…
• www.latimes.com/opinion/l…

The coverage of the killing of Brian Thompson assumes Stalinesque proportions when we think about how many front line healthcare workers have been punched, spat on, and cursed out when people find out the insurance they’ve been paying for instead of taking the kids on vacation or getting a new refrigerator won’t cover the care those kids need. Because it’s not a tragedy until it’s a CEO at the other end. Up until then it’s all statistics.

Think about the last time you had to call your insurance provider, or they called you to tell you a request for a medication had been denied? What did that look like? Were you calm, measured, civil? Or did you take that opportunity to vent your frustration on whoever it was, because you never got the chance to tell the CEO how his company’s policies are ruining your life?

The “front line” of doctors and nurses are fighting a two front war: one against whatever ails you, and the other against the insurer, most often the pharmacy benefits manager, a middleman organization staffed with pharmacists and doctors whose sole purpose is to enact policies that make sure you’re using the most expensive/profitable drug possible.

When JFK was assassinated, Malcolm X said that happened because of the climate of hate, and that the chickens were coming home to roost. And if we analogize this further, JFK and Thompson had that in common: people hated what was happening around them, and someone opted to take that violence to someone they saw as responsible. In both cases, Oswald and Mangione, they appear to have been individuals who blamed their targets for larger woes, and both those acts were rightly seen as senseless violence.

Unlike the sensible violence of the Vietnam War and the denial of critical care so that the Brian Thompsons of the world can afford to send their kids to better schools and shareholders can build that second lake house. Because that’s the contrast, between acceptable and unacceptable violence.

We don’t want to think of companies doing violence, because it’s capitalism and if you work hard enough and were born in the right place and your parents already had money you too can someday stand bestride the world with your fellow CEOs, toasting each other as those less motivated rail against your country club gates.

But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.

That’s Martin Luther King Jr., articulating better than I ever could that if you take away people’s agency, their choice, their voice, they turn to the only option they have left. Note that I didn’t say “feel that they have left,” because it’s not a matter of perception. It’s a matter of every other turn being a dead end, and while a violent path isn’t a desirable one, if you’ve been silenced long enough, it can feel like the only one.

In 1989 Alan More convinced me that class war was inevitable, but I’d probably have to move to the UK for it, which given their predilection for beans as breakfast wasn’t in the cards. Then in 2005 V for Vendetta brought More’s graphic novel to life, and while I kept expecting Hugo Weaving to introduce Mr. Anderson, the masked man was a worthy protagonist and figurehead for doing what needed to be done to those elites seeking to oppress everyone who wasn’t them.

In 2024, the anti-hero looks like what happens when you bring a lacrosse stick to life, and has the kind of jawline that’s more Harlequin Romance than Anarchist’s Cookbook. Not that I’m condoning what Luigi Mangione did, because murder is murder, but this from Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro is a big swing the other direction.

“In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint. I understand people have real frustration with our health care system, and I have worked to address that throughout my career.

But I have no tolerance, nor should anyone, for one man using an illegal ghost gun to murder someone because he thinks his opinion matters most. In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.”

Two things here:

1. The “ghost” gun
2. That this is about “policy differences”

Here’s why the governor focuses on the “ghost” gun, so called because it was a handgun that Mangione made himself, or if not him, someone else with access to a 3D printer and the blueprints: Democrats like Shapiro want to be law and order candidates just like their GOP counterparts, but don’t want to alienate those voters that think the 2nd Amendment was carved on the back side of the 10 Commandments and is therefore holy writ so owning more guns than a Somali militia is a divine right.

It’s the same reason they’ll go after the so-called “black rifles,” the AR-15 variants so popular with the kind of gun owner that does their own research and so they don’t vaccinate their kids or take care of their teeth: most gun deaths in the United States are pistol-related, and while cutting down on the number of handguns would likely mean fewer homicides and suicides, it would be political…suicide…to stand for that in the current political climate.

Pragmatic gun control, then, means going after “ghost” guns, which don’t account for nearly the same level of violence as legally owned handguns, and it’s the legislative equivalent of “thoughts and prayers”: makes people like Shapiro feel better, appeases the masses, and does no actual good.

And I’m sorry, but, “policy differences?” Describing the oppression and destruction wrought by America’s healthcare system on those subjected to a profit-driven bureaucratic behemoth like United Healthcare as a “policy difference” is like saying that the real problem with Auschwitz was that there were too many people in those railroad cars.

Yes, this is a policy problem, but it’s a matter of systemic violence on the part of corporations benefiting from our obsession with capitalism and the collusion of lawmakers afraid to take the system apart. While it pains me that it took an act of murder to bring that discussion to the forefront, love to see the receipts for how the governor has “worked to address” this issue during his time in politics. Mangione’s no hero, but Shapiro and his ilk are the cowards here, chasing ghosts instead of crafting policy that could mean real change.

Idioms are the bane of a literal mind, and if you’re anywhere on the spectrum, you know the pain of being told you take things too literally. It’s not that we autistics can’t get idioms, it’s that we’re likely to ask questions about their meaning, their origins, and if there’s one thing neurotypicals don’t like, it’s a lot of neurodiverse questions. I don’t know why that is, but I have a two-part theory:

1. It’s like dealing with a full grown toddler, because that was the last time their neurotypical mind was that curious about the world, and it’s disconcerting to hear a post-pubescent voice asking the same things you’d hear in your average preschool.
2. All of us, but neurotypicals especially, conclude early in life that it’s just best not to ask too many questions, because the answers end up being somewhere between frightening and depressing, and there isn’t enough Xanax to cover it all.

Thanks to TikTok and an autistic Man Of A Certain Age whose wife asks him questions about his ’tism, my own curiosity about idioms—their origins, their meanings—has been resurrected, and since there’s currently a cat pacing across the desk here trying his best to get me to pet him instead of wasting precious hand gestures on typing, this one’s bouncing around in there:

Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back.

The origins of this, like many such things, are murky, and until today I hadn’t heard the second half. I had a friend that used to end it with, “…but it also broke the sound barrier” which resonated with my all-things-jet-plane special interest for years.

Cats are curious creatures, and I’m sure that’s led to fatalities, but the implication to me is that someone coined the first half of the phrase to get their kid to stop asking so many questions, and then came up with the second half to show that while curiosity could be a bad thing, in the next life you’d return having learned something valuable.

Which actually doesn’t resolve the issue at all, because was the author advocating for reincarnation? Was this the first draft of Pet Sematary? Or did someone just hate their kid’s cat and was trying to explain why Fluffy wasn’t around anymore as the feline had somehow wandered on some quest for personal meaning and would return once enlightened, that was was “killed” was the lack of knowledge, and the animal, or whoever was being so pervasively curious, would have ascended to some higher plane after the death of the less-enlightened self?

I might need more hobbies.

Fog’s a funny thing, floating low altitude clouds, sullied cotton candy, but it has enormous power, enough to get its own verb to describe what it can do. If we’re fogged in we can’t go anywhere: planes can’t fly, cars can’t drive, cruise ships can’t export soft colonialism to countries that wouldn’t survive without the influx of tourists hell bent on making everywhere in the world look the same in an unceasing drive for continuous comfort.

Fog at the lake this morning, made it look like wasn’t there. I’ve been fogged in lately, and by lately, I mean maybe the last three years, rowing the boat in a variety of directions, none of those leading to either a harbor or a clear passage to greater things. Some days the only thing I can hear is the oars creaking in the locks, and so I tend to the noise, keeping the machine oiled with kettlebells, walks, and words.

There’s progress: halting, yes, but progress all the same. Movement beyond just motion, a needle whispering a little further to the right. A little lost in the fog, I can row the boat. Even when the somewhere feels like nowhere, I dips oars again, and pull.

Made the weekly sugar coma run to one of six donut shops within easy driving distance, all of which are run by Koreans, half of them next to a nail salon, and half of those next to a sushi “restaurant”.

Or it used to be, and it’s in quotes for a reason, because the sushi was more than acceptable, it was the restaurant part that was suspect. Not in a “it’s authentic” kind of way, more in a “we pay more attention to the donut machines” kind of way. Which is less a commentary on the proprietors, and says more about the culinary inclinations of where I live.

Before I am pilloried for snobbery, I’m fine with the Olive Garden, which has no foothold here, having only achieved Chili’s levels of franchising, but now that the Jersey Mike’s is here, it feels like things are moving nicely. Just don’t refer to the Olive Garden as Italian food. It’s the Garden’s interpretation of a national cuisine, as such, it does just fine, but it is not good Italian.

Same for the donut shops. They are beyond pedestrian, which is the point of the donut, despite what places like Voodoo Donut and Hurts Donut have tried to do for the genre. I applaud those efforts, particularly the latter, which has managed to cobble together ingredients in a way that’s made me believe in American pastries again.

But when I pull up to the donut shop here, I’m not looking for surprises, because there’s a comfort in sameness and mediocrity, knowing that what you’re about to put in your mouth will taste and feel just like it did last week, and the week before that, and will continue to do so in the days ahead. And in a world that continues to batter at things I thought I held dear, sometimes all I’ve got left is the donut.

It’s been five years since someone else’s therapist and a close personal friend pointed out that while I’m not counting toothpicks or wearing hearing protection to fast casual restaurants, I’m definitely on the spectrum. Took another couple of years for me to figure out what that meant, and while there isn’t an official diagnosis in the paperwork, when I’m at my most unmasked and I take one of those quizzes, I end up anywhere between “Yup” and “Autistic AF”.

Which means navigating a lot of new territory in understanding what my brain’s doing without notifying me or getting my consent. I know that’s going to be an ongoing process, and I thought at the outset that understanding why what’s happening would be this freeing experience akin to those dreams I have about flying. The ones where I’m nudging skyward with little flicks my fingertips, not the other ones with the monkeys and the garden gnomes.

And there is freedom in understanding what’s happening in my head, and manifesting in my emotions, and the sudden urge I have to turn the nearest inanimate object into confetti, maybe with the help of the nearest animate object gripped by their ankles like the flamingoes-as-croquet mallets in Alice In Wonderland. You know, the Hulk and Loki in Avengers 27 or whatever that was.

Except there’s enough ego left in me that I hate having to explain things. All. The. Time. Hate having to spell out that if I’m told we’re going into a crowded store for one item and a decision gets made to find more items it’s best to check in with me on that and either revise that plan for a later date, or give me the option to retreat to the car, or let me find a space in the store that won’t make me actively wonder how heavy that TV set is and if it would make a good hammer for the washing machine next to it.

Because it makes me feel like I’m a temper throwing six year old, incapable of regulating his emotions, to spell out to whoever I’m with what’s happening. Particularly if I’ve shared that information before and I feel like I’m not being heard. And to have what’s happening in my brain dismissed with phrases like, “It’s just a few things,” means I start thinking about other ways to communicate that will get me what I want, which is safety.

What they don’t tell you about vulnerability is that it’s not always affirming. Or encouraging. Not always received well by those in the audience. And when you’re vulnerable into a vacuum what’s going to be left in those moments is that kid you were the first time something like this happened, embarrassed in the aftermath of feelings too big for you to contain or understand, and the temptation is to wall that up somewhere and never let it out again.

I know I’m not alone in this, but in those moments, that’s the only feeling left, because no other Man Of A Certain Age is holding his shit down like you are. Or you don’t think they are. Sure, there’s one over there having his wife dress him like he’s a stroke victim (he’s not) who can’t dress himself (pretty sure he could) so at least you’re not that guy.

No, but I’m this guy. The guy working it out. Refusing, despite the evidence to the contrary, to believe that this is all there is. That it’s progress, not perfection, and that’s all life really is: staying afloat, sometimes working with the current, others, just letting it take you. And some days, just staying out of the Costco.

In my continuing quest for filthy lucre, inspired by both my love of shelter and my bank’s insistence that they, too, would like me to keep sending them money, I regularly send out documents that indicate to people who have money they would like to distribute in exchange for services rendered that I am indeed capable of executing those services in such a way that they would willingly part with those funds and entrust them to my care.

I’ve applied for a lot of jobs, is what I’m saying.

And this is for you LinkedIn posters who think that 3 days/weeks/months is a long time to go without gainful employment. Call me when the months find their way into the years column, and you start to use words like “unhireable” to describe yourself.

It’s indeed a First World Problem, but being a Man Of A Certain Age trying to find employment after a minute spent moving from job to job in a contract-based environment with a Bachelor’s degree as your sole credential ranks among the most miserable things I’ve ever done. I suspect I will feel the same once my first colonoscopy is behind me (I know, I heard it, too), because looking for work at this stage in life? Is just a grim, grim slog.

I’ve had a few opportunities open up: some of them slipped away because I wasn’t part of the winning bid, others because I was a little too honest in the interview process, and still others because I’m on the spectrum, and y’all neurotypicals know there’s something not quite “right,” but you’re going to pass anyway.

This isn’t about that, although at some level it’s always about that, because the ‘tism isn’t a temporary thing, but it’s more about asking for what you want, employers.

If you’re looking, say, for a glorified secretary? Put that in your job description. Make it clear that you’re looking for a low level cog, and don’t write a job description that sounds like the next step on the ladder is the C-suite.

I’ve been the one writing job descriptions, or usually copy/pasting someone else’s descriptions before this, and everyone on the hiring team knew the person described? Doesn’t exist. We’re just hoping for people that hit that 50% to 75% of the JD that we really need, and that maybe they turn out to not be an asshole.

Yes, this is specific to me, but I also know I’m not alone in this, because we humans? Are really bad at asking for what we really want.

We have convinced ourselves that people should be able to figure things out for themselves, and the ones that can’t figure things out we don’t want to talk to in the first place. And rigorous honesty? That’s just for recovery, for the druggies and the alkies, not the rest of us.

From job postings to dinner conversations to work around the house, try asking for what you want. What you really, really want. Go full Spice Girls. Doesn’t mean it gets easier. Just simpler.

If I’m grateful for anything, it’s that Google doesn’t limit the number of edits to calendars. And that there isn’t a readily available log of the changes I’ve made to mine over the years. Or weeks. Or days.

I’m a planner. I make great plans. Glorious plans. The kinds of plans that overcome oceans and conquer continents. It’s the doing that gets to me.

Love to tell you that it’s a matter of not having enough time, but if I told you how much time I’ve available over the years to pursue The Muse, you’d give me the same look I’ve been giving myself.

Because it’s a few things, but mostly it’s fear. Fear that this thing, writing, is the last thing I haven’t really failed hard at, and while I’d love to believe it’s because The Universe wants it for me and that’s why I’ve struggled with other things, Fear wonders what happens if it’s not.

If I pour myself out into this One Thing, and even that goes nowhere. But then there’s that voice, the quiet one, that sits, often alone, and when I give it space, asks, “But what if it doesn’t?”

What if it goes somewhere, anywhere. What if instead of nothing, I end up with something. What if that happens?

That voice found the volume knob, and the calendar looks different as a result. Scarier, because there’s just one thing I’m working on creatively. Instead of 3. Or 6. Because when I see that I have One Thing to do, I always want to add One More Thing. As a backup, or a diversion.

I’ll still be here, blogging, but the other things will keep for now. Until this project, this book, this novel is out the door and either banished to the ash heap of history, or has found life on shelves, electronic and otherwise. I owe it that much, a chance at a life, however brief it may be.

Today as a nation prepares to gorge itself on turkey, football, and guilt, I’m thankful for Mad TV and its “Lowered Expectations”.

I’m more thankful for no expectations, for those few in my life who like me for me. For whom my presence is enough, and there’s a space where the performativeness of this thing we call life gets put on hold. It’s something I didn’t know I needed until I stumbled on it, and now I can’t imagine living without it.

Be that person for those around you today, if you’re gathered with family or friends or the server at the restaurant who doesn’t want to be with their family either, and they’ve got bills.

Expect less than less. Expect nothing. Be open to what’s on offer. To the person, not their performance.

Smart people know they’re not, just that they’re smarter than they used to be. “I’m smart” gives one the sense of arrival, that I’m here, and I don’t need to go any further. And smart people usually know better than whoever’s in charge, lately because they’ve “done their own research” which is just a series of Telegram, Truth Social, and Rumble influencers all sharing the same information that probably started in either a misinformation ministry in Moscow, or more likely at the Dorito-dusted digits of some keyboard warrior reclining on the futon in his mom’s basement between shifts at the Dollar General, where they’ve been promoted to interim assistant general manager in training.

Smart people would agree with F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

For example, I can think that little people are stuck in a world that goes out of its way to make them feel inadequate. And I can also laugh myself unconscious at the thought that a hotel would give someone in that community the job of restocking the minibar, because while a job gives someone a certain level of agency, that feels less like equity and more like a, “Well, their hands will fit those little cans, so…"^[1]

So maybe it’s OK for me to think that RFK Jr. is right that the way to tackle obesity in America is through better habits instead of pharmaceuticals, and also think that the one guy we all know has a recipe for bear carcass used heroin like it was Adderall and while it’s in line with his hate for Big Pharma, I’m not sure the answer to the attention deficit problem in American schoolchildren is growing in a field in Afghanistan.

Today in “Why NextDoor Is the Worst,” this is someone’s “without comment” post from Veteran’s Day, which was commemorated here on the compound with coffee and cinnamon rolls served amidst about 2 dozen large plastic American flags, because the local Christian nationalists are deeply red, deeply religious, and cheap as hell.

Comments included:

• “So profound”
• “Powerful photograph”
• “Never forget”

What, exactly, is your low-res tribute to Those Without Bone Spurs supposed to commemorate? That time the Six Flags guy got old? Or never forget that digital imagery is supposed to look like you found it on an old Geocities site that someone scraped for their MySpace?

Because the silhouette? Is from somewhere post 2001, and unless Grandpa Gene there enlisted after he started pulling Social Security, there’s no way anyone geared up like that is that old in 2024.

For context, these are the some of the same people that posted a Tropic Thunder publicity shot WITHOUT IRONY a few Veterans’ Days ago.

I get it, I live amongst The Olds. People who miss rotary phones, watch Matlock, and eat at Luby’s after 4:00 if they’re “feelin’ fancy”. I also get that it’s this kind of weak sauce performative bullshit that leads us down the garden path of strong men and foreheads. Because we don’t take a beat to wonder what, if anything, might be wrong with the picture.

Today in “Why NextDoor Is the Worst,” this is someone’s “without comment” post from Veteran’s Day, which was commemorated here on the compound with coffee and cinnamon rolls served amidst about 2 dozen large plastic American flags, because the local Christian nationalists are deeply red, deeply religious, and cheap as hell.

Comments included:

• “So profound”
• “Powerful photograph”
• “Never forget”

What, exactly, is your low-res tribute to Those Without Bone Spurs supposed to commemorate? That time the Six Flags guy got old? Or never forget that digital imagery is supposed to look like you found it on an old Geocities site that someone scraped for their MySpace?

Because the silhouette? Is from somewhere post 2001, and unless Grandpa Gene there enlisted after he started pulling Social Security, there’s no way anyone geared up like that is that old in 2024.

For context, these are the some of the same people that posted a Tropic Thunder publicity shot WITHOUT IRONY a few Veterans’ Days ago.

I get it, I live amongst The Olds. People who miss rotary phones, watch Matlock, and eat at Luby’s after 4:00 if they’re “feelin’ fancy”. I also get that it’s this kind of weak sauce performative bullshit that leads us down the garden path of strong men and foreheads. Because we don’t take a beat to wonder what, if anything, might be wrong with the picture.