BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #73:

Don’t you think the Zero Relaxation Era is kind of overrated?

THE NEW PARADIGMS IN BRAGGING RIGHTS #15:

I’m so dunk, slam took me to court.

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #52: THE STONE KILLER (1973)

Charlie Bronson’s rogue cop flick features psycho-Vietnam-vets-as-mob-mercenaries; a racist dipshit cop who almost burns down his own police station; Martin Balsam as a Wario-esque mafia boss; John Ritter as a hapless uniformed bullet catcher; Bronson channeling his inner Scanner to psychically shatter a mirror; and a reckless Blues Brothers-worthy car chase in which a bicoastal detective pursues a bisexual criminal-it’s too much of a good thing, I tells ya’!

THE WORTHY TRACE 2 (ALTERNATE VERSION)

 

NOW, SHADOWS, STAND UP FOR BASTARDS!

 

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 2

 

BOOK REVIEW: SECRET RENDEZVOUS (1977, 1979)

by Kobo Abe

English translation by Juliet W. Carpenter, and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1979.

Originally published in Japanese in 1977 by Shinchosha.

. . .

“This is one peculiar job I have taken on. No matter how I follow myself around, I will never see anything but my own backside, when what I want to know lies beyond: the empty space, for example, that I never knew or dreamed existed until it was invaded by that doctor’s footsteps . . . the space that ever since has grown endlessly wider, separating my wife and me . . . the ground that anyone can walk around on freely, that belongs to nobody . . . the jealousy like a bed of hard, frozen lava, leaving only the imprint of anger . . .”

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

A nameless man tries to write his story according to the extensive surveillance logs collected by a secret police agency that he himself may or may not be the boss of, but he seemingly depends upon these logs more than his own memories. Hey, nowadays we all know how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be, and who is the primary eyewitness to your life? Yourself, an unreliable narrator of your own existence. So it would seem that the secret police are just trying to help us out, just some friends indeed to a friend in need of memory enhancement.

The nameless man is looking for his wife, who disappeared after taking a sinister ambulance ride. The nameless man is assisted by a man who is also a horse, or is working hard towards becoming a horse. The nameless man is not as weirded out by the horse as you might think, but it is something he gets caught on now and again. 

The nameless man investigates a suspicious hospital. He finds a labyrinth of secret passages, hidden rooms, and quirky characters ready to make his acquaintance. It’s not a million miles from a Hideo Kojima video game. There’s even a power-up item in the form of “jump shoes” which the nameless man also retails. The nameless man also has to evade goon squads, and even has a martial arts dustup to protect a woman with liquid bones. This investigation uncovers a festival of sexual perversion, human trafficking, and human experimentation. The secret police turn out to be a private enterprise outfit who get quite a lot of their business from the suspect hospital. The people running this hospital stalk and capture people to be used for parts-a chop shop of a most gruesome kind.

The nameless man’s narrative is suffused with jealousy, paranoia, misogynist entitlement, and bewilderment. He is not the most sympathetic character, and yet he himself also seems to be caught up in the chaos gears of a machine he cannot control or understand despite his desires for power via surveillance networks and unethical biotechnologies. By the end, he is abandoned by the system which he once prized. Perhaps his manufactured narrative that pitted him as a rebel against a corrupt system was his fantasy of escaping a world he knew would turn on him in the fullness of time since its hunger for human vivisection fodder could not be effectively regulated. Secret Rendezvous may have been intended to remind audiences of Imperial Japan’s germ warfare atrocities which included testing of weapons upon live human beings. The empire is gone, but big business endures, so why wouldn’t corporate capitalism, ever restless for new frontiers to consume, section and suture and dissect human beings to derive new products and services?

Secret Rendezvous may also be the chronicle of an elaborate delusion and/or masturbatory fantasia reflecting cranky, reactionary attitudes towards advances in medical science. Maybe it’s just a middle aged author’s remix of nurse porn and sensationalist headlines about artificial tissues and organ transplants and sperm donations and egg banks and the like. This is Kobo Abe, so it’s hard to tell what’s a put-on and what’s in earnest. I imagine many contemporary readers raised on formulaic lawyer thrillers, Stephen King-a-likes, Harry Potter-esques, Tolkien clones, and various YA soap operas will be displeased by such a twisty, ambiguous, button pushing narrative such as this, but that’s how it goes. Abe carved out a place for himself as a literary weirdo who wrote whatever the fuck he wanted, and I think that has value, even if Secret Rendezvous witholds narrative closure. Hell, even I sometimes find myself frustrated by Abe’s novels. I assume the frustration is part of the point.

HUMPDAY THINGS I LIKE #30:

I like it when a humpday just doesn’t give a fuck, and so it doesn’t even try.

It’s just, like, a piece of inconsequential debris on the road. It shouldn’t be there, but it’s scarcely an obstruction.

But in my mind I’m steeling myself for a Mt. Everest of fuckin’ humpdays . . . but then the day comes and I just sail through it-it doesn’t even feel like a humpday and I’m like, “What was that? I got worked up over a piddly little frittering fart of a Wednesday. Nothin’ to it!”

But the tension and readiness is still with me. I’m kicking ass and knocking down buildings all the way through to Sunday, y’know?

It’s that weird way that a humpday can bob and weave and duck and cover and cause you to go charging right over it-and then you’re barrelling down hill fucking up all the shit!

You might not even stop ‘til you come back around to the next humpday . . . and this time it has erected a brick goddamn wall . . .

Then you can stop for a minute.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #95:

JOE AND JANE SIXPACK SET TO REPLACE HELICOPTER FROM MISS SAIGON AND CHUCK E. CHEESE ANIMATRONIC IN OFF-BROADWAY REVIVAL OF LOVE LETTERS.

PEOPLE GET MAD . . . (#16)

. . . that they were born, and then they get mad as the Grim Reaper draws near.

People get mad.

I'm scuttling with a burden of all systems

I blame myself

I chased, I tackled, I collected the prize, I had no fucking idea what I was getting into, I got the burning baptism,

I took on the Atlas weight

which you, absurdly, envy me

so hey

you try it 

I’m post-envy, if nothing else, post-desire just about

I'm often fucking off 

surely you've noticed the massive outages?

that's me 

fucking off 

so if you want on this contact list 

no pressure 

I already got people on it who usually don't pick up 

I don't resent them 

it's not like outages are permanent 

they tend to resolve themselves 

but maybe one day 

y’know 

no resolution 

uh 

it just . . . obtains 

just an outage 

that doesn't stop 

which’ll be a shock 

but then it evens out 

you stare at it, listen at it, think around it, taste the mood of the times, lead prayer vigils, conduct working groups, present findings to authorities, believe fervently in the process, get less than what you wanted, denounce the system, dwell in the wilderness, stage a comeback, seek power within the very system you denounced, 

attain power,

most likely less than what you sought,

you’re evened out,

you get used to it,

people get used to it 

complaints, of course 

but people complain, uh, they find reasons to complain even when things are good 

I complained, and I try not to, but sure I complain 

a complaint . . . is a thing . . . for itself 

as much as it is . . . uh . . . addressed to problems that arise

I guess I’m complaining about complaining

I apologize for that

THE NEW PARADIGMS IN BRAGGING RIGHTS #14:

I’m so chill necrophiliacs hailed me as “a viable corpse alternative.”

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #51: THE CONCORDE . . . AIRPORT '79 (1979)

A plastic plane is bedeviled by a plastic missile and then Alain Delon buys George Kennedy a hooker and then a plastic plane crash lands in the Alps and then the plastic plane explodes and then it stops but the stupid shall last forever.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #94:

HELICOPTER FROM MISS SAIGON AND CHUCK E. CHEESE ANIMATRONIC SET TO STAR IN OFF-BROADWAY REVIVAL OF LOVE LETTERS.

I'M SO ON TIME FOR THE BUSINESS CONFERENCE LUNCHEON, THAT MY PUNCTUALITY WILL CAUSE MBA TEXTBOOKS TO BE REWRITTEN.

 

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN

 

HUMPDAY THINGS I LIKE #29:

I like it when a humpday puts in the extra effort to metamorphose into a full-on mountain.

That always impresses me.

PEOPLE GET MAD . . . (#15)

. . . when they’re in for a penny, and then they get mad when they’re in for a pounding. 

People get mad.

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #50: AIRPORT '77 (1977)

Despite the presence of Christopher Lee this is not Dracula on a Plane, more’s the pity.

BENIGN AND/OR INANE CONSPIRACIES #9:

Crazy cat ladies have gone insane because they have all secretly replaced their coffee with ground up kitty kibble.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #93:

WAVE OF CIGAR CHOMPING BABIES COMPLETE WITH INCONGRUOUS FIVE O’CLOCK SHADOWS SIGHTED HOLDING COURT OVER AGGRO POWER LUNCHEONS ARE ALLEGEDLY LOOKING TO EXPLORE POOPY DIAPERS AS “POSSIBILITY SPACES.”

THE NEW PARADIGMS IN BRAGGING RIGHTS #13:

I’m so King Kong that Godzilla pitched me on doing an Off-Broadway revival of Love Letters.

BLOCKED OFF ENTRANCE.

 

THE NEW DREAM #24:

this is the one

where I’m automated processes

in a dark pit or box or container or component compartment

there’s an opening procedure

lights and language markings and coordinates flood into’n’through me

whatever I am

I think I’m making copies of everything that flows through me

feeling of fullness

followed by evacuation

soon to be filled again

this goes on for quite a long time

‘til I start to fuck up

copying errors

within acceptable parameters for a generous stretch

but then I’m not so acceptable

I get switched off

I’m switched back on

lighter loads, less complex tasks

this goes on for not as long of a time

before I’m switched off for good

I awake

it seems to have been a variation on the dream where you fall but wake up before you hit the ground

well done

but derivative

7 out of 10

MOVIE REVIEW: LEAP OF FAITH (1992)

Directed by Richard Pearce

Written by Janus Cercone

Cinematography by Matthew F. Leonetti

Edited by John F. Burnett, Mark Warner, and Don Zimmerman

Music by Cliff Eidelman

Produced by Michael Manheim and David V. Picker

Starring

Steve Martin as Jonas Nightengale

Debra Winger as Jane

Meat Loaf as Hoover (Bus Driver)

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Matt (Grift crew)

Liam Neeson as Sheriff

Lolita Davidovich as Marva

Lukas Haas as Boyd

. . .

"Take it from me, babe, you can't have it both ways."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

This is that movie where Steve Martin plays flamboyant yet fraudulent faith healer Jonas Nightengale. Jonas does all the bits. He dances and twitches and gesticulates his way through a mixture of musical theater kid routines cross-collateralized with a knockoff version of Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance. He does the thing where he puts his hands on someone’s head and then they fall to the floor, writhing and hollering as though they’ve been zapped with a holy ghost power orgasm. The lame shall walk with but the laying on of hands. The sick shall be restored to health. The grieving will know their loved ones precede them into their Father’s House. The poor shall be enriched-or, y’know, get a lead on some day labor. And the drunkard shall lay down his bottle. Jonas extemporizes borderline word salad sermons about the grace of a loving God whilst cold reading the desperate wishes of audiences full of the used, the abused, the addicted, the injured, the unemployed, the forgotten, and the disenfranchised. Those collection plates overflow with dollar bills. Martin, with his peculiarly intense brand of sincere insincerity, wrings every last drop out of the character. From the beginning we see him as a S-tier Bullshit Master for the Ages . . . and yet it’s hard not to fall for him. It’s the purity of his devotion to the act. He knows very well that there is no God, but I believe Jonas believes in his performance of faith with every ounce of his being. This bizarre contradiction of a character is the primary reason to watch Leap of Faith. 

The setup is ambitious. A Biblical tent revival takes its act on the road, playing the large population centers, and raking in that Cash American. We get plenty of coverage of the earthly logistics of this heavenly operation: a couple of buses, a semi truck, and a beater of a pickup to navigate local roads once they’ve selected a target and erected their big tent. It’s the circus, all right. 

You’d think they would just use holy ghost power to teleport themselves around the Bible Belt, but they use gasoline power like the rest of us-which is relatable, I guess.

We see how Jonas’s crew operates. They have a computer database full of detailed population demographics. Portable concealed walkie talkies facilitate clandestine communications. Preshow shills work arriving audience members for juicy bits of exploitable intel. Audience plants juice the action of the crowd with a timely “Amen!” or “Praise the Lord!” if things get slow. The show proper features terrific singing and music courtesy of a Black gospel choir. When Jonas-a floridly narcissistic white boy who practically fucks the spotlight-takes the stage it is sort of impressive that he works as hard as he does considering all the priming of the audience. Jonas could half-ass it and still make a mint.

The second most interesting character is Jane, who operates a high tech computerized command center backstage. Jonas’s big tent is fitted out with a cleverly concealed array of surveillance cameras. Jane’s monitoring the live feeds via stack o’screens, and she feeds prompts to Jonas through a semi-concealed earpiece. The grift crew has already spotted prime marks and noted down where they’re all sitting in the audience. Jane functions as both mission control and as Jonas’s second brain, helping steer his cold reads’n’riffs in the right direction. Jane shuns the spotlight but she is the secret costar of the big show. She’s played with mischievous flair by Debra Winger.

On a personal level, Jane and Jonas have intriguing chemistry. They’re not romantically involved, which is a refreshing screenwriting choice, and yet there’s a strange spark between them. They both seem to get turned on by the spectacle they produce. The two of them together create a special somebody that neither of them could ever be on their own. Alone Jonas is a cut rate jiveass hoofer, but Jane’s computer nerd skills transform him into a “mind reading” Super Christian. As things develop, Jane starts to doubt the morality of manipulating poor small town people coping with drought, failing crops, deindustrialization, and a secularizing world that seems to be condemning them to obscure, desperate little lives. Jonas, at first, blithely accepts that people with no material hopes are easily bamboozled by promises of Heaven, but Jane helps to rekindle his conscience. 

Jane’s other interest is in hooking up with the hunky-yet-skeptical sheriff played by Liam Neeson. At first, she seems to want to bang him out so he won’t revoke the big tent’s permit; later she seems to like him if not exactly love him. None of this quite amounts to as much as it should, but Winger and Neeson bring enough nuance to their roles to paper over the sketchy writing. 

Jonas’s crisis of conscience is sparked by his encounter with a kid named Boyd, who was gravely injured in a vehicular crash. Boyd’s exercising vigorously as a form of physical therapy to get off his crutches. Jonas and Boyd’s dialogue is amusing as it ironically points up the profound immaturity of Jonas’s character. To no one’s surprise, Jonas incorporates Boyd into his show, even if he ends up feeling shitty about using an injured kid as a prop.

The rest of it is suffused with unrealized potential. A possibly colorful supporting cast is ruthlessly edited down to the bare minimum-though both the editing and cinematography are so slick you kinda want to forgive the screenplay and direction for their faults. An insipid subplot about a conflicted romance comes across as a bore when measured against the Mission Impossible-esque tricks and tactics of Jonas’s grift crew. The ending seemingly tries to con We the Audience into believing in miracles after ninety minutes of deconstructing the faith healer’s hustle. Maybe that’s the point: a con buried inside a con. My guess is that the production decided to play it both ways by debunking faith healing but then tossing in a “miracle” at the end to avoid offending the Religious Right. A more charitable reading is that Leap of Faith’s larger point is that, yes, the faith healer is trying to con us . . . but we are also conning ourselves when we seek to fervently believe in the miraculous. One cannot exist without the other. Overall, Leap of Faith needed a tougher point of view. The expansive Robert Altman ensemble cast version of this movie-if one had ever existed-would’ve been fascinating.

Leap of Faith tries to have it both ways even as it knows it can’t, which is too bad. It’s still a very entertaining watch. Jonas-the contradictory character at its heart-lingers in the mind even as the rest drifts away fart-on-the-wind-style.

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #49: AIRPORT 1975 (1974)

Routine disaster drek modestly enlivened by the clever casting of living fossil Gloria Swanson as herself thereby making this a lowkey dinosaur adventure picture.

HUMPDAY THINGS I LIKE #28:

The burning hump . . .

The next level, don’t you think?

. . . of an icy day.

And that takes it even higher.

NURSING A SERIOUS RESENTMENT OF THE SUN (ALTERNATE VERSION)

 

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #48: AIRPORT (1970)

I kept waiting for a man in a giant monster suit to show up, but, alas, it’s not that kinda movie.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #92:

IN A SIGN OF GROWING POLITICAL POLARIZATION RUBBER REFUSES TO MEET ROAD.

THE NEW PARADIGMS IN BRAGGING RIGHTS #12:

I’m so political that ideology advised me to tone it down a bit.

NEW MERCH #3:

Presenting

EMPTY BOX

Do you know how I got this box?

This big empty box?

Of course, I learned about it from a streaming video online.

But I didn’t buy it online.

And I didn’t buy it from a brick and mortar store.

It isn’t available from retailers online or situated inside an actual building.

Once I watched that video I developed an abstract desire to have a big empty box for myself. 

It . . . appeared . . . I guess I would say . . . right here in the back of my garage.

Also . . . I’m not entirely sure I remember having a garage prior to the advent of the empty box-but let’s not get into that right now.

Here it is.

It’s a big empty box.

But it’s something more.

This box is a device the size of a home steak freezer-like you would keep in the back of your garage-that has a small panel you can open on this end right here.

See it?

Basically, once you plug it into the wall, and, uh, there’s not any buttons or switches or dials, uh, you don’t have to turn it on or off or, y’know, there’s no adjustments to be made. It’s plugged in or unplugged. It’s on or it’s off.

But you have that panel you can open once it’s plugged in-just right there.

You can’t open it if it’s unplugged.

But when it’s plugged in you can feed small animals into that panel. Mice. Rats. Birds. Monkeys. Squirrels. Cats. Dogs. Maybe not huge dogs. Small to medium mutts. Puppies and kittens for sure. It takes lizards and amphibians, but it runs less efficiently. Bugs like spiders and insects-roaches, ants, beetles-they don’t do anything. It doesn’t want bugs.

And it hates seafood with a passion. You can watch videos online of people feeding it crabs and fish and lobster and it just explodes. Hilarious stuff. 

Put simply . . . it wants things that can suffer. The more sophisticated the better. It prefers cats, monkeys, birds, and dogs. But, sure, it can run on a lean mixture if all you got are snakes or geckos or what have you. 

It does not accept humans of any size. It doesn’t want us. Not for moral reasons, it just doesn’t recognize our suffering as “valid.” Don’t ask me to explain it in detail. I’m not a philosopher. As far as I can understand it takes the position that our brains are so sophisticated that we no longer feel authentically. We’re basically simulating emotions. It considers us meaty robots. And it doesn’t like that. My guess is that it thinks of itself as human and therefore it observes a taboo against cannibalism. At the same time, and also because it considers itself human, it has nothing but contempt for us. Which is, if we’re being honest, how many humans feel about many of their fellow humans. In other words . . . it’s rather vicious and it’s rather pretentious.

I mean, look at it. It’s a big, lame home consumer product that just decided out of the blue that it was a person. An antisocial person at that. Which is, admittedly, fairly amusing. And also . . . kind of infuriating. 

But I kinda respect it all the same.

It knows exactly what it likes. 

That can carry you far in life.

It makes no attempt to hide its hostility behind religion or ideology or money.

Its fuck-you-ness is right there on the surface. Minimal tricks.

But, uh, so . . . you feed it birds, monkeys, cats, and dogs . . . and it consumes them. There’s no noise. If you put your hands on it there’s no extremity of hot or cold. Even if your garage gets really goddamn hot or freezing fuckin’ cold it somehow manages to maintain a completely mild feel. Which suggests some form of internal regulation, right? But when people have cracked it open they find no machinery inside. It’s empty! 

Something else that’s weird: no one knows what it is actually made of. Go on. Touch it. What is it? Is it metal? Is it cardboard? Is it concrete? Is it glass? Try to describe its texture. You can’t do it. It won’t let you. That’s my opinion in any case. 

And inside there’s no animal remains whatsoever. Now, it is believed that it generates waste-but I’ll get to that in a minute. First, I want to make clear that I do not personally believe this device to operate according to any sort of magic or metaphysics or, uh, supernatural principles. My own belief-and a lotta people who theorize about it online concur-is that what we’re dealing with here is ultrasubtle technology. Basically . . . we open it up, and we see emptiness . . . but it’s actually just ultrasubtlety. The tech at work here is so finely engineered that it ends up invisible to our not-so-subtle ways of seeing. I know that sounds like nonsense, but it’s the most sensible framework I’ve worked out for how a bigass box of nothing exhibits the functions that it, y’know, exhibits. 

You put the right kind of animal in . . . and it’s gone.

You bother it with nasty seafood . . . it explodes in your face.

You try to chunk a human baby in there . . . the baby comes back out wholly intact. 

Somehow . . . this empty box . . . converts its preferred animals . . . into an output that’s both waste and product. 

Follow me on this . . . 

Cars get you where you want to go . . . but they also create carbon pollution, road rage, crashes, and various onerous financial burdens. 

Disposable plastic goods make our lives convenient . . . but they create mountains of garbage. Not to mention the proliferation of microplastics, but that stuff is so controversial I won’t even go there. 

Guns can protect you . . . but they generate shell casings. And dead bodies. And injured bodies. And injured psyches. And cycles of retribution. And sundered nations. And arms races. 

Guns can enforce ideology . . . but that can lead to mass death and destruction.

A mobile screen gives you the world in your pocket . . . but don’t think too hard about the exploited laborers who dug the materials out of the earth so you could have that world in your pocket.

Social media gives us a giddy sense of discovery and connection . . . but just as often leaves us “rotting in our beds” as a popular saying goes. Not to mention filter bubbles, disinformation, violent extremism, depressing loneliness, disempowering atomization, and threats to democracy. 

Fast food is fun . . . but also contributes to various health problems conducive to an early death. Not to mention the low pay and shitty work conditions of those who toil to bring you those speedy eats.

Things you buy that are fun . . . are also kinda fucked.

We get a fun result . . . but there’s always a fucked result alongside the fun.

This empty box . . . is the ultimate expression of this inescapable truth of our age. 

It’s the purest expression, perhaps. 

Entertainment experience and waste experience, the fun and the fuckedness. . . simultaneous. No division. All-in-one.

It’s a useless empty box that takes up too much space, makes cute animals disappear, dangerously explodes if you accidentally feed it seafood, and seems to regard us humans with a dismissive contempt by refusing to eat gross babies; that wastes your time as you try to figure it out, all the while generating vast amounts of highly speculative, inevitably toxic online discourse about what-in-the-burning-motherfuck it actually is, and thereby pointing up how useless and frantic and trivial our lives have become that we burn so many hours and calories over a stupid shitass empty box that defeats all attempts to decipher its innermost workings . . . and one more thing.

The most intriguing output of this empty box’s ultrasubtle mechanisms.

How can I describe it?

It’s like . . . we know these empty boxes are pervasive. There’s something like three hundred million uploads of confirmed empty box content online. Those are just the empty boxes we know about. We can reasonably conclude from this that empty boxes . . . are every-goddamn-where. 

And every last one seems to appear in the back of a garage. Even if there was no garage. The empty box comes with a free garage. And if you already got a garage . . . it gets totally displaced by this new free garage.

So we have all these cute-animal-eating-toxic-online-discourse-inspiring empty boxes all over the place spreading as fast and as far as the rate of propagation of successfully induced abstract desire to have an empty box of one’s own inside the human mind.

These ultrasubtle devices are ubiquitous, now, along with their complementary garages. 

It’s creating a living space crunch in some areas. 

Eating our pets. 

Showing us contempt by refusing to eat our none-too-flavorful babies. 

And no one knows how to wish these empty boxes back into the unknown whence they came, our wishes for a return to the old status quo handily defeated by a very contagion of induced abstract consumer desire.

And we’ve no power to resist it or fight it. Even if everyone stuffed every last empty box with seafood, that abstract desire is already bonded with our hearts and minds. 

The only solution would be to induce some sort of mass amnesia. Or maybe make everybody’s brains explode. Which could work, maybe. If we were able to sequester the people who haven’t been infected by the desire for an empty box . . . and then, you know, we blow up all the infected brains, burn down the Internet, and rig up a robot army to stuff seafood into the empty boxes in a rigorously coordinated fashion . . . it could work!

But . . . like . . . fuck me, I don’t want to get my brain exploded. I want to live.

Even if it’s in this new world suffused with the tension and terror of ubiquitous empty boxes . . . I can get used to it. 

Hell, people accept nuclear weapons, runaway climate change, anti-vaccination ideology, the return of measles, COVID-19, and the slow-motion death of democracy.

We can handle some empty fuckin’ boxes that look down on us.

All the same, though, I’m gonna be pretty tough on empty box when it comes to my final rating.

Which is . . . zero out of ten.

Oh, yeah.

I went there.

Sometimes you gotta get tough.