Interesting Times

A brief talk about current events.

On August 30th of the last year, I released this article in which I encouraged caution regarding a concerning spike in news relating to a resurgent Coof-19 and renewed efforts by Pfizer to, er - give themselves a shot in the arm, shall we say, to get their flagging numbers back up. Given that the most overrated and over-exposed figure in the entirety of football…

No, no, I said the over-exposed and overrated guy in football¹. Y’know - this guy.

Yeah, since this guy is willing to dance like a trained capuchin monkey for the organ-grinders in Big Pharma - Pfizer in particular - and Big-Literally-Anything-Else, and you literally can not fucking escape him or his supposed girlfriend, which I’m 97.5% convinced is a marketing sham unto itself that cannot end fast enough… well, let’s just say if and when the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco Forty-Niners at Da Superb Owl in two weeks, don’t be surprised if you see the above ad where Kelce is, as the children would say, sticking out his gyatt for Big Pharma in the coming weeks.

Also don’t be surprised when he tries to propose to Taylor Swift. Like I said, their whole relationship feels about as authentic as a plant-based soy oil and mung bean protein ‘burger’ patty, so the only logical way to escalate the absurd histrionics surrounding their fake relationship is to have Kelce propose at the end of the game.

But I digress. This isn’t about football, the NFL, Travis Kelce or Taylor Swift. Though, I will say… I don’t dislike the Chiefs as a team, but I was hoping it would be Kelce’s brother, Jason, in the big game this year.

You bring shame upon the name of Philadelphia, Sirianni… which is pretty fucking difficult to do, given how bad of a reputation it already has.

Yes, yes, take a moment to laugh. I know you need it because A) I’m an Eagles fan B) the spectacular late-season implosion the team suffered or C) I care even the smallest bit about professional hand-egg. It’s okay. I don’t mind. Just get it out of your system.

You done? You need another minute? Are we good?

Okay? Okay.

Anyways, it goes without saying that the concerns I expressed in the article over a potential second round of lock-downs and Pfizer knob-slobbing were ultimately - and thankfully - unfounded, and only so by the grace of God. Now, I’d also say that, unfortunately, however after Pandora’s Pfizer’s Box was flung open in 2020, the threat of new lock-downs and fresh pandemic hysteria is now out, about, and always ever-green. Due to the vast majority of not just the American population, but the world kowtowing to the dictats of the World Health Organization, the crowned heads of global politics - especially those in the West - know that a new virus, er - conveniently emerging and scaring the piss out of their serfs citizens so they can declare emergency powers is basically their new handy-dandy tool hidden behind a Break Glass In Case Of Emergency sign.

The risk of a new ‘pandemic’ - interpret the scare quotes there as you will - just swooping out of nowhere and causing our benevolent guardians in the hallowed halls of power to lock us in our homes again - y’know, for our own good - is kind of like the risk of being killed by a duck; the odds are exceedingly low… but they aren’t zero.

Since this viral Sword of Damocles now swings over the collective heads of all us hoi polloi the world over, I’d say that, even if my concerns were unfounded this time, the general gist of the article is still relevant, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. And the general gist was not, as some may think, about the superiority of neo-funk as the best genre of music to come out of the late 2010’s and early 2020’s… though, I am sticking by that claim.

No - the point was that you need to be prepared for when the next shoe drops. Because it’s increasingly feeling like a steel-toed boot is about to drop on the heads of the unaware. And, no, I’m not saying you need drop everything you’re doing and dig a bunker in your backyard right this minute, but I am saying that you need to have food, water, supplies for you an your family. Even if it’s only a month’s supply, Hell, even if it’s only a week’s supply, you know who you’re gonna do better than? Someone who doesn’t even have that. And, sometimes - that’s all you need before normalcy, or at least some semblance of it, reasserts itself.

For instance, a week before the lock downs hit, I sensed which way the wind was blowing. YouTuber Styxhexenhammer666 - which, despite the silly name, is a rather astute political commentator - was sounding the alarm well in advance. I went out and get a bunch of food with a long shelf-life, water, and other stuff I figured I might need if I was going to be stuck inside for an indiscriminate amount of time. As soon as people started making jokes about toilet paper, I went and bought some, because I remembered, oh, right - I probably want that, too. A lot of it. People were, no joke, laughing at me as I checked out.

You know who was laughing later?

Me. It was me. Because when everyone else was engaging in fisticuffs at Coscto for the privilege of buying that single-ply sandpaper trash to rub their assholes raw, I sat high and mighty upon my Porcelain Throne, my rear both clean and lusciously pampered by the loving embrace of sweet, sweet multi-ply, extra-thick, high quality toilet paper.

It’s all fun and games until you can’t wipe your ass. And, the thing is, it’s not like I was never going to buy toilet paper again. It wasn’t as if toilet paper just disappeared from the shelves forever. But I had it when I needed it, and most people were waiting in queues that wrapped around Costco just to get a two-pack of that thin, shitty toilet paper that had the texture of sandpaper that you only ever seem to find at dingy dive bars, music venues, and office bathrooms.

Also, I highly advise that, if you don’t already have any, you should probably invest in… personal protection, if you know what I mean. It’s really one of those things that’s good to have, even if you don’t need it, because if you do need it and you don’t have it… well, I’m prayin’ for you, bro. Even in the best of times, you never know when a loc’d up G might rock up in your crib, man. Gotta keep that thang on you.

Whether it be some novel virus that just spontaneously manifests overnight, the continued collapse of the United States border, or perhaps another nation-wide display of peace, love, and harmony -

Hell, it could even be something as outlandish and absurd as some sort of super-ultra-mega-fuck-you natural disaster that they blame on climate change and decide to outlaw all cars, or they finally decide to pull the pin on the whole alien disclosure thing and reveal everything they supposedly know about aliens (and it will all be totally true and completely genuine and not total bullshit, just trust them, guys). That may sound laughable, but so did the idea of shutting down the entire country over a nasty cold, right up until it happened.

The possibilities are myriad, but I think it’s foolish to discount any of them out of hand. Especially in an election year. You see, the keen observers among you might have noticed that, from here on out, democracy seems to mean a system of government where all Hell breaks loose every four years so the right people conveniently get put into all the positions of power they need to be.

I believe I recently read an article by Auron MacIntyre in which he said, Democracy is a comically easy system to hack, though, I’ve heard the sentiment expressed elsewhere before, albeit not as succinctly.

Whatever the case may be, I think we all have this feeling deep in our guts that something is going to happen. After all, we’re only a month into this fucking year, and over half the states have lined up behind Greg “Hot Wheels” Abbott to openly defy the federal government, Taylor Swift is the biggest name in football, and Ben Shapiro is, apparently, also now the number one rapper in the country.

I urge you - if you are curious about what Shapiro’s anti-woke rap sounds like, don’t listen to it. Just don’t. I haven’t. You shouldn’t. Love yourself enough to not subject yourself to it. Please.

Point is, with headlines like that, somewhere in the deepest bowels of Hell, Satan must be freezing his nuts off as the whole place frosts over, and I’m fairly certain that I hear oinking coming from the skies as swine across the country spontaneously sprout wings and take flight in majestic unison. Things are getting fucking weird.

And bad. Things are getting very bad. As mentioned before, the situation at the Mexican border is rapidly unraveling, and every time I think they’ve reached a fever-pitch, something else happens. As of today, three days after the passing of the Biden administration’s cease-and-desist deadline of January 26th, Abbott has yet to backdown, and now enjoys the support of twenty-seven other state governors and scads of other elected officials. Many states have begun to send money and material down to the border to aid him, and an increasing number are beginning to send members of their own national guard to assist the Texas National Guard. With Abbott doubling down on his efforts, the ball is in the court of the Biden administration. Though they seem to be biding their time and hoping the whole thing fizzles out without their involvement, I highly doubt that we’ve seen then end of this conflict.

“I see a holy war spreading across the country like an unquenchable flame. A warrior religion that waves the Lone Star banner in House Hot Wheels’ name.”

The war in Ukraine is losing more steam by the day, when anyone in the West bothers to remember it’s even happening. Israel’s unmitigated fiasco in Gaza continues at pace and, despite an apparent under-performance by the IDF against Hamas, it seems as if Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for an invasion of Southern Lebanon and a full-on war with Hezbollah. Lingering tension between nations like Azerbaijan and Armenia, Venezuela and Guyana, the glorious Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea and the K-Pop Kingdom of South Korea, all teeter on the precipice of disaster and threaten to ignite at a moment’s notice. In between all of this, you just know Xi Jingping is already working with an interior designer to figure out which curtains are going to go best with the carpet he’s already picked out to install in the presidential palace of Tawain when he gets there.

Meanwhile, shipping lanes through the Red Sea continue to be paralyzed by attacks from Yemen-based Houthi militants, who are backed by Iran, who apparently has decided to just start blastin’.

Blastin’ Iraq, blastin’ Syria, blastin’ fuckin’ Pakistan, and, now, blastin’ Jordan, killing three American servicemen in a perfectly avoidable tragedy, since no single American serviceman should even be stationed in these places anymore.

Predictably, the usual suspects aren’t just banging on the war drum, they’re going hard as a motherfucker on that thing, like me when I get a chance to play those taiko drum arcade machines.

Professional Warmonger and notoriously Craven Disgrace to the glorious state of South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, second only to Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell for the coveted title of Worst Member of the GOP, had this to say on the topic.

“I am calling on the Biden Administration to strike targets of significance inside Iran, not only as reprisal for the killing of our forces, but as deterrence against future aggression,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in a statement.

“The only thing the Iranian regime understands is force. Until they pay a price with their infrastructure and their personnel, the attacks on U.S. troops will continue,” he added. “Hit Iran now. Hit them hard.”

These comments came to the surprise of approximately no one, since the Ayatollah could sneeze and Lindsey Graham would start calling for his head to be put on a spike in front of the Capitol Building. And, look - this shouldn’t even need to be said, but, given that the vast majority of people have forgotten the definition of nuance, I’ll just say that the Ayatollah is no friend of mine. Not a fan of the guy, or anyone else in the Iranian government, for that matter.

But, the laypeople of Iran are not my enemies, either. Remember what Muhammed Ali said about the Vietnamese? It’s not exactly something I can repeat here, for obvious reasons for those who know it, but I will say that no Iranian salaryman or street-side fruit vendor, who would be the people we’d be shooting if it came down to it, ever called me the very disparaging, very unflattering, and often unconscionable things that sitting members of my own government routinely call me and 99% of my fellow citizens who are, nominally, their charge. I don’t really have any interest in bayoneting some poor Iranian conscript in the middle of a cratered desert because Lindsey Graham has beef with the Ayatollah. If Lindsey Graham wants to go to war with him, well, the two of them can duke it out themselves - leave me and Mohammed the accountant in Tehran out of it.

It isn’t just the U.S. that’s spoiling for a fight, either. Recently, the head of the British army, General Patrick Saunders, stressed the need to boost recruitment and prepare the population for the possibility of a potential land war with Russia. Similar statements have been made by politicians and military leadership in Germany and newly minted NATO ally Sweden, while the Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, has floated the idea of a Pan-European army to counter Russia in armed land conflict on the continent.

Again, much like being killed by a duck, though the odds of the culmination of eschatological Boomer Cold War Hysteria finally coming to fruition and a land war with Russia in Eastern Europe materializing thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain are slim, only a fool would disregard them out of hand as the beleaguered Ukrainian forces continue to be slowly attrited.

And, again - really shouldn’t need to be said that I’m not cheerleading for Putin, here, but, again, if the cabal of miserable octogenarians that have a problem him want to scrap with him, they can do it themselves and leave me and Boris the auto mechanic in Vladivostok out of it, because I don’t want to shoot Boris and I’m rather certain Boris would rather stay at home and watch television than shoot me, if given the choice. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have to think that both I, most Americans, and most Russians, all have a mutual disinterest in dodging drone-dropped grenades or having SCUD missiles delivered directly up our derrieres because the idiot we’re sharing a foxhole with posted a TikTok position for the other side to track.

As I see it - which, I will admit, may be incorrect - the world is being pulled in two separate directions by two disparate competing geopolitical blocs as America’s unipolar hegemony over the world stage deteriorates. These conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and even those simmering in the Caucuses and South America and the South Pacific, are all part of a greater conflict that will ultimately decide whether the new world order of the 21st century will be one based in D.C. and London, or Moscow and Beijing, and there is no small chance that the two will finally discard their proxies and come to blows tête-à-tête in 2024. Worse still, if even one of these situations boils over and goes nuclear, the chances that the rest will follow suit in short order. Once the dominoes in the Balkans began to fall in 1914, by 1915 you had African levies shooting Englishmen in Africa for the German Empire, and Indians were being shipped en masse from Delhi and Bombay to be cut down in French fields with Union Jacks on their uniforms. I imagine if you asked the average American in 1914 if they thought that a Serbian terrorist killing an Austrian duke would end with 116,516 of their countrymen dead in Europe, it would have seemed unthinkable. And it was until it wasn’t.

And, make no mistake - regardless of who ultimately wins this new Great Game being played by the Great Powers of our day, I think the common people of the world lose will lose in the end. For as bad as the current crop of geriatric ghouls pulling the strings in the West are, their adversaries are no more benevolent.

We’re entering interesting times. The windows of the House the West built rattle as they’re buffeted by the winds of change. The reports of the Death of History were greatly exaggerated, and now it’s come back, and it’s banging on the front door to prove it. I won’t claim to know what lies in store for us in 2024, but you’d have to be deaf, dumb, blind, and just plain stupid to not see the bad signs in the skies. There’s a tension in the air. It seems like the world has it’s breath held, waiting to see which tenuous thread snaps first. And, perhaps worst of all, there’s really nothing anything anyone can do about it. The ships are all set on their courses, and their going to go where they’re going to go, whether that be back to safe harbor or steaming head-long into an iceberg. But you can start getting your life-vest on.

And, yeah, yeah, I know what I probably sound like.

But I’m not writing this to be an alarmist. I’m not writing this to be a fearmonger and… monger fear, I guess. I hope that, six months from now, I can come back and, like my little piece urging caution about a second lockdown, say that I miscalculated.

All I’m saying is that, with everything going the way that it is at present, it would be wise for you to top up on what you need if you already have it, and start collecting it if you don’t. If the transportation grid that enables easy shipment from one end of the planet to the other gets gummed up more, or one of these proxy wars goes kinetic, you can bet your ass that the prices you saw at the grocery store at the peak of last year’s inflation are going to look mighty pretty compared to what they’re going to be.

I just feel the need to reiterate that, if anything, you need to be alert, aware, keep your wits about you, and, more than anything, keep your critical thinking skills intact. Americans are the most thoroughly and relentlessly psy-opped people on the planet, what with the regime blasting basically a non-stop stream of unending fear-porn into our eyeballs from every single screen, and no matter what may happen, the ability to think clearly and use both rationality and your higher mental faculties to seperate fact from fiction is going to be imperative to keep yourself sane and those around you, some of whom might depend on you, safe. There’s going to be a lot of people who will be telling you what to think, and many of them, most of them, even, will not have you and yours’ best interests in mind.

I’m not going to tell you what to do to get ready. I wish I could, but, really, I’m not cut out for it, and, even if I could, what I need to do will be vastly different from what you need to do. In a crisis, everyone’s needs will be different, and what you need to keep stocked in New Hampshire is going to be vastly different than what someone in Arizona will need to get by in case the taps won’t run or the shelves at your local store go bare. There’s dozens upon dozens of people out there and well-written, well-made resources on the internet who could tell you better than I how to properly stock your larders and prepare for potential hardship. A little bit of research will go a long way, and an ounce of preparation will save you a whole lot of headaches.

After all, if people were willing to bare-knuckle box over toilet paper… what do you think they’re gonna do when it comes down to food when they’re hungry?

To close, I’d like to share a bit from the comedy show, The Whitest Kids U Know, which featured the criminally underrated and tragically, prematurely deceased Trevor Moore.

This tweet is evergreen.

Watch this. It isn’t just funny, but it’s incredibly pertinent, and keep it in mind as the news cycle continues to spin.

1. I actually don’t dislike Pat Mahomes, but, fuck, do I hate those State Farm commercials he’s in. And every other ad, too. Because I had advertisements.