PHOTO #5:

I took all these really great photos.

But there was this one that was simply perfect.

Captured the instant of someone walking off the job that they hated for so long.

It was, of course, a selfie, and, no, they didn’t actually let me quit.

It was a whole thing. 

They’d invested so much in me, and they wanted me to feel valued-they gave me awards, I built out that fuckin’ network-and, honestly, I didn’t feel so bad as I initially thought . . .

But I was also on five different non-prescription amphetamines. Didn’t do the sleeping thing, not much of it, didn’t miss it, either, not for a long while. The sources of my award winning productivity, my value. My emotions were separated out into two kinds, broadly speaking, and most of my “up” vibes were constantly surfacing, and pretty much all of my “downs” were in some kind of intrapersonal blacksite. And I thought that made all the sense. I mean, it did . . . but then things started getting loose from that blacksite. Which was interesting. My downs and my ups were working together at last. That was even more interesting. Because then I started doing what I actually wanted to do. I took all of the pictures all of the time. I even forgot that I had “quit,” which was funny. The bosses did a real good job of getting some of me to buy into this sort of temporary amnesia thing, but most of me hadn’t actually forgotten anything, which is why I persisted with my photography project past all sense and warnings and fears.

And then I got fired not too long after that for taking so many damn photos in the office, which was strictly forbidden, but I didn’t give a shit, because I just wanted to capture people inside that space that wasn’t supposed to be documented like that. And then I told the world about all those cameras and microphones in the restrooms, got a big thing in some magazine I’d never read before in my life, spent years in court, dictated a tell-all thing to some mercenary ghostwriter, sold it to some independent producer who sold it to some studio who sold it to some streamer-

Most shocking of all? It kinda broke through the noise for a solid seventy-six hours or so. 

Not much, in the scheme of things, but how much speed could I ever ingest to compete with the Trumps and the Swifts and the Climate Catastrophes of this vacuous world, y’know?

I did okay.

But honestly, I never set out to be a whistleblower.

I just followed the leader to some weird places is all.

The company had-has-all kinds of surveillance: keystrokes, metal detectors, explosive sniffers, drug testing, background checks, cameras all over the place, microphones all over the place, open plan offices, offsite mandatory social gatherings, apps on everyone’s mobile-really, my whole photography adventure was just like me-working it out with some next level hilarious Speedy Logic-trying to be like the company, to beat the company at its own shit. As it turns out, my firing offense wasn’t breaking the rules so much as it was a kind of blasphemy.

The selfie holds up, even if it turned out to be a picture of a “fake quitter.” 

People just screen out the convolutions of my story no matter how many times I tell it, and the movie based on my life did the same thing. 

I think I’ll quit again, just go along with the Hollywood version. 

Actually, the selfie that got memed the most is the one they staged with the lead actor . . .

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #235:

AT THE INAUGURAL MEETING OF THE BOARD OF PEACE PRESIDENT TRUMP TOOK THE OPPORTUNITY DURING A RAMBLING, NONSENSICAL SPEECH TO DECLARE WORLD WAR III.

FANTASY MASHUP FORCE #31:

The ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion Episode 26 (1996)

+

The ending of The Game (1997)

=

An overload of people from your life surrounding you to congratulate you for making some huge existential leap into some great unknown whatchamafuck something or other . . .

NEW MERCH #7:

IVAN INSULTO

Ivan Insulto is a mean-spirited, baldy-headed, jug-eared talking doll wearing a sport jacket and khaki pants that looks like a puppet some cornball comedian would put his hand up inside of back during the late 1980s to early 1990s proliferation of stand-up comedy shows on TV.

Like do you remember when VH1 aired stand-up comedy? Like do you think some dim-bulb executive of programming was fantasizing about replacing all those music videos with a never-ending parade of self-loathing cokeheads zooming through their Tight Five? Would that have been a more defensible outcome than a never ending stream of Behind the Music, reality TV junk, and talking head retrospective inductions of phony nostalgia for the dystopian 1980s of Reagan and Thatcher and their right-wing ilk? Who can say . . .

But, um, Ivan Insulto isn’t a puppet, but he is marketed as an insult comedian automaton who follows you around your home relentlessly ridiculing you. 

Basically, when you go to order him online the manufacturer accesses your Identity Profile and programs your Ivan Insulto to insult you on that basis.

And, of course, your Identity Profile has been compiled from a vast array of surveillance data that banks, schools, governments, insurance companies, healthcare providers, online retailers, brick’n’mortar retailers, intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA, MI6, FSB, MSS, Mossad, etc), real estate firms, fast food chains, police departments, federal law enforcement agencies (FBI, ATF, RCMP, etc), INTERPOL, credit card companies, airlines, rental car companies, search engines, dark money influence networks, motels, hotels, truck stops, capsule hotels, funeral parlors, adult entertainment venues, adult entertainment vendors, adult streaming video sites, mainline video streaming sites, organized crime families, theme parks, automobile manufacturers, drug companies, arms manufacturers, defense contractors, comic book publishers, video game developers, video game publishers, microbreweries, your friends, your family, your spouse(s), your partner(s), your exes, your employers, your lovers, VPN service providers, and churches have sold to The Ivan Insulto Company that manufactures the Ivan Insulto automatons.

So, like, that Identity Profile on you . . . it’s pretty much on point. The Ivan Insulto Company pretty much knows you better than you know yourself. At least that’s how it all comes across in the marketing. Bold claims, right? But do they have any steak on ‘em, or are they merest sizzle?

Well . . . I can only speak to my own experience with the Ivan Insulto automaton . . . and in all honesty . . . I would have to say its verbal barbs and cut-downs and put-downs and extemporaneous diss tracks and harangues and heckles and diatribes and ad hominem rat-a-tat-tats and invidious invective and vomitous vitriol and bursts of boasts and abusive outbursts were all pretty much on point . . . that little bastard got me good . . . 

But I think it got me a little too good.

How can I put this . . . it took only about a half hour to forty minutes for Ivan Insulto to push me over the edge. 

And I was so angry by that point that . . . how can I describe it?

Have you ever been so angry that you couldn’t even feel your anger? 

It’s like your anger gives you an out-of-body experience-

Or maybe it’s more like a kind of high, like I was so high on my rage that there was a kind of floatiness to the rampage that ensued-

Something like that . . . and, when I came back down to earth, there wasn’t much left of Ivan Insulto . . . or my house . . . or that boring-ass suburb . . . or that state I was living in . . . so I must’ve been having a good time, right, to put out that much effort?

Yeah . . . 

Obviously, I’ve already put in my order for a brand new Ivan Insulto featuring my fully updated Identity Profile so I won’t be holding anything back the second time around, no sir, no ma’am!

That’s how they get you-ha, ha, ha . . .

10 out of 10.

MOVIE REVIEW: FOES (1977)

Written, Directed, and Special Effects Designed by John Coats

. . .

“I’m going to the other side of the island.”

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

UFOs. Flying saucers. People see ‘em. People wonder what they are, and why they’re so mysterious, always flitting about, teasing us, never quite letting us see the goods. All the photographs and video footage are indistinct, blurry anticlimaxes-if not total damn hoaxes. Some people write books about ‘em trying to explain what they are, how they came to be-and they end up making some wildass claims about the saucers and their presumed occupants. Abductions. Anal probes. Harvesting human sperm and eggs to mix ‘em with extraterrestrial sperm and eggs to cook up some alien-human hybrid omelets. Perverse conspiracies involving government/x-tro collaboration. This is stuff people claim is true! Not a shred of actual evidence, and yet people concoct entire cosmologies around a whole array of interstellar creatures. You have people writing extravagantly paranoid science fiction sagas but they’re published as non-fiction. Some marketing genius must’ve realized right quick that these alien abduction stories moved more units if you sold them as “shocking true stories.” What a fuckin’ racket, right?

As a kid, I used to believe all this stuff was true. Like, y’know, when I was K thru Fifth Grade, elementary school. I spent hours and hours watching TV shows that presented themselves as nonfiction narrative recreations of horrifying alien invasion scenarios of the most gruesomely intimate kind: people kidnapped out of their beds by strange entities that could walk through walls; alien mind control powers that could corrupt your perceptions by implanting screen memories; women forcibly impregnated with alien fetuses and nonconsensual medical exams that could be described as a system of organized high-tech rape-and when I asked my parents about this stuff they just kind of shrugged it off, didn’t seem to have much to say about it one way or another. I started to think that my parents were in denial because they couldn’t acknowledge their powerlessness before these alien masterminds. Of course, I grew out of all this by the time I hit middle school. Around that time I got into serial killers, gangsters, and world-ending diseases, so all that UFO stuff seemed less urgent. The X-Files came along and kinda gave the game away with its overstuffed mega-conspiracy style of plots which made all the paranormal/crackpot stuff seem like plug’n’play narrative gimmicks similar to assembling a tabletop role playing adventure from a Monster Manual. Mulder and Scully would encounter one reality shattering horror after another-and Scully still wouldn’t get it. The true conspiracy seemed to be a plot by Chris Carter to make Mulder look right all the time at Scully’s expense. By the time I got to the end of high school I was pretty much an atheist. 

Which brings me to the 1977 movie Foes, a film that benefits greatly from not trying to over-explain itself. Foes is about a flying saucer that harasses a quartet of people on a small island that’s home to a lighthouse. We get some exposition laden scenes of clueless military officials whose equipment is all being malfunctioned by an energy field projected by the flying saucer. The occupants of the saucer zap the humans with strange energy beams that pick them up off the ground and/or cause them to catch fire. You ever burn ants with the sunlight concentrated through a magnifying glass? Well, now we’re the ants. Eventually, we see creepy lights come out of the saucer that may or may not be living beings. Much of the running time is taken up by nondescript humans overcome with a nameless sense of dread to be in the presence of the opaque and ominous saucer. Nothing is explained. We’re never told who or what the saucer and its accompanying lights are supposed to be, nor are we reassured that the government has any secret answers. You watch what happens, and then you have to make up your own mind.

Foes didn’t scare me here in this year of 2026, but I found it utterly fascinating to watch. It doesn’t back down from being creepy and mysterious. Sure, the special effects are obviously special effects, but they’re also precise and evocative. Foes is absolutely committed to preserving the mysterious and the inexplicable without any trace of romance or sentiment. Something from beyond takes an interest in us, and we may have to accept the fact that it will always be incomprehensible to us. 

Of course . . . we may also be beyond the understanding of the saucer beings . . .

You ever got the ants' side of the story before you burned ‘em on a whim?

Probably not . . .

SIMPLE PLEASURES #21:

Realizing I need neither physical media nor streaming video for I have attained an Inner All Regions All Formats Media Player of the Mind!

PLACES YOU CAN GO #4:

There’s this pristine restroom in the heart of the public university campus which just about nobody uses because it’s completely outside the typical flows of student traffic. Not to mention the fact that it’s deep inside a boring-ass maze of institutional hallways that few undergrads have the patience to navigate. This restroom is so underused that the toilet water’s still blue after 5pm most days. Sure, sure, every now and again someone finds it . . . but even those that find it almost never find it right after someone else finds it. No one posts about it because it’s too mundane, and/or people who stumble across it realize it’s a secret worth keeping. I suppose one could say it’s too lame to post about online-that it’s the kind of thing people would mock you for venerating. But the most important thing to realize, I would say, is that you can only get to this pristine restroom by looking up from your handscreen, taking an interest in your actual surroundings, and willing your feet to move your body in novel directions . . .

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #234:

“PERHAPS WE ARE MORE HUMAN THAN WE CAN KNOW.” IN A SURPRISING INTERVIEW THAT HAS CONFOUNDED PHILOSOPHERS OF MIND, THE DOW-INDUSTRIAL-AN ABSTRACT SET OF PROCEDURES AND MEASUREMENTS WITH NO PREVIOUSLY DOCUMENTED CONSCIOUSNESS OR MORALITY-CONDEMNS ALLEGEDLY CONSCIOUS U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI’S CRUEL INDIFFERENCE TOWARDS EPSTEIN SURVIVORS.

THE NEW OBVIOUS #47:

The ultimate goal of American Existence is to make enough money so you can bribe the crooked President and produce a Super Bowl Halftime Show so you can placate the masses being robbed blind by the Executive Criminal and all his cronies.

It’s something to work towards, y’know?

Something you can incorporate into your Personal Paradigm or whatever . . .

THINGS NEVER SAID #52:

“I didn’t do so well as an artist. Those magazines trashed me, said my work was juvenile, execrable, a waste of resources you’d be loath to waste. So, I went into finance. Got all the golds. I bought all the magazines. I streamlined the human elements. Just let the A.I. things spit out good reviews of my stuff. I don’t even have to make anything. I just tasked the A.I. things to imagine what I could create, and then praise it to the highest damn heaven. I don’t even have to leave the house. Those things have no choice but to imagine this godlike, oh-so-stable genius version of me, just boring in deep to their hallucinations-emergently, unprompted-I don’t even have to exist . . .”

FANTASY MASHUP FORCE #30:

The Sandlot + EarthBound graphics assets . . .

"You're killing me, Smalls!"

Basically, some kind of fan video game adaptation of The Sandlot that looks like EarthBound. 

People will dig it, call it ‘cozy,’ call it ‘a worthy distraction from our troubled times,’ the usual bullshit. 

But . . . there’s a dark secret level based upon the baseball game being played by the insane soldiers from the movie The Face of Another . . .

"Smalls . . . you're killing me . . . !"

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #94:

The karaoke system that needs neither singers nor audience.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #233:

MOTHMAN, IN A RECENT CONTROVERSIAL PODGRIFT INTERVIEW, EXPRESSED DEEP RESENTMENT TOWARDS BOTH THE ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY COMMUNITY’ AND ‘THOSE URBAN LEGENDS PEOPLE,’ WHILE ALSO PUSHING HIS OWN LINE OF BRANDED ATHLEISURE WEAR.

EMERGENCE #7:

. . . years after the Battle of Burnguy Mall, Snak had convinced himself that he saw the poster of the girl balancing a knife on her fingertip after he couldn’t get his severely injured hands to pick up the gun. Basically, Snak was just gonna lay down and die, but then he saw the poster up on the back wall of the physical media store, and that gave him enough energy to walk out of Burnguy Mall and eventually be rescued by one or more unidentified Good Samaritan(s).

But we have numerous earlier accounts in which Snak told interviewers that he tried to pick up the gun after seeing the poster of the girl balancing the knife on her fingertip. In other words, Snak’s inability to use his hands is the more immediate cause of his decision to leave Burnguy Mall, perhaps to seek help or perhaps to stumble to his end somewhere outside the mall.

Snak also claimed both the poster and his nonfunctional hands as coequal factors in his decision to leave the mall.

Snak also seemed to admit to his own confusion over his memories of this difficult time in his life during at least one after dinner speaking engagement . . . a confusion he also strenuously denied on several other occasions, including during a promotional tour for his band A Brontosaurus in Sheboygan.

Further complicating matters is the possibly fictitious widely licensed nature of Snak. There have been so many spinoffs and alternate reality versions and bootlegs and remixes and ripoffs and hoax-i-fied versions of Snak that it is hard to determine which-if any-one of him was present at the Battle of Burnguy Mall in the first, middle, and last place . . .

THE NEW OBVIOUS #46:

The sooner Trump leaves the White House, the sooner we can try something else.

Maybe the Couch Man will be even worse, but at least he speaks in complete sentences.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #232:

POP CULTURE HYPE ALERT SECTION: THE JUST ANNOUNCED IRON LUNG 2 IS SET TO STAR YOUTUBE’S OWN RICH EVANS WITH ORIGINAL SONGS BY TAY ZONDAY . . . BILL COSBY IS REPORTED TO BE INCREASING HIS INTAKE OF ANTIOXIDANT-ENHANCED JELLO PUDDING SO HE CAN LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO HEADLINE THE REFURBISHED TRUMP-KENNEDY CENTER . . . AND THE HELLFIRE SHROUDED GHOST OF EPSTEIN ANNOUNCES A NEW GROK-GENERATED ‘YOUTH-FOCUSED FILM FRANCHISE’ TO BE PRODUCED BY BRETT RATNER, DIRECTED BY WOODY ALLEN, SCRIPTED BY NOAM CHOMSKY AND STEVE BANNON; WITH PETER ATTIA AS LONGEVITY COACH; LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS AS SCIENCE ADVISOR; BILL GATES PROVIDING TECH SUPPORT; HOWARD LUTNICK AS FUNDRAISER; BARRY WEISS ON PUBLICITY; ALAN DERSHOWITZ LAWYERING UP A STORM; ELON MUSK SUPPLYING THE SPECIAL K; FEATURING AN EPIC THEME SONG BY THE I.C.E. DEATH SQUAD’S MEN’S CHOIR WITH SAXOPHONE SOLOS BY BILL CLINTON; AND HOSTED BY DONALD JOHN TRUMP . . .

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 94

THINGS NEVER SAID #51:

“Welcome to the Blog Level of Godding.”

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #231:

WELCOME, ACTUAL DAMN HUMANS, TO THE HEADLINES: “BUT WHERE WILL MY SWEET BOYS SING?” MUSIC DIRECTOR FOR I.C.E. DEATH SQUAD’S MEN’S CHOIR DISMAYED BY TRUMP’S ANNOUNCEMENT OF KENNEDY CENTER CLOSURE IN JULY . . . “WAIT. AM I STILL IN THE NEWS CYCLE?” NICOLAS MADURO SPENDS TIME IN JAIL PONDERING WEIGHTY EXISTENTIAL CONUNDRUMS . . . “ALL IS FORGIVEN.” BAD BUNNY’S ANTI-I.C.E. GRAMMYS SPEECH EARNS PRAISE EVEN FROM DISGRUNTLED COACHELLA ATTENDEES . . .

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #93:

The party that needs neither hosts nor guests.

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #46:

I WONDER WHAT THE PEOPLE WILL SEE IN THE FINAL DAYS.