Fiction is a drug as misunderstood as how I feel today. A vacant messianic Netflix squeezes a billion bad books into a luke-warm screen-play syrup, reconstituting re-runs with .2mg of botulinum, 5 mg of THC, a half Xanax, Hyaluronic acid, and a splash of Sauv-blanc.  Disturbingly average actors pour piss-poor lines over ice, Abysmal algorithms shake them, and we sip this bitter antidote for the blahs. Bad news comes as fast as their top ten, just before rumble strips rattle me awake.
[Are You Still There?]...

​Every sleepless night, I startle awake, half-asleep at the wheel -- Desperately patting in the dark for the controls, as it rests loosely in my other hand. I'm on the couch, and should be in bed reading. Anywhere else. Today, I can't seem to keep my head above my Netflix dashboard, (likely because Netfilx sucks), But as water fills my car again, I wonder, "will the next episode entertain me?", "Will the water wake me?", "Save me from myself? ...Just before I drown here half asleep?"
Fictional elixir briefly reconstitutes our desiccated dreams, with drippy third-rate screenplays.  We are becoming something dewy & damp, glistening, slouching, as slowly as lichen devours a stone. Alas, I feel the urgency to pause, and I stand up to go piss. I'm thinking of my moist springtime, and why I can't escape the muck and mire to alas cancel Netflix, and head out to another live show... But I suppose it has something to do with the endless back-ground montage of bad fictions. Fictions which box me in a dry cell, fiction of any kind as a drug, a remedy, a sanctuary, from thinking too much. Summer may not come fast enough. Today another Protest March. Everyone is upset, some for the right reasons, Most not enough.
​Rom-Coms like baby food, require no work, nourishing us to defeat the blahs through rosy soft focus, and deliberately awkward dialogue. Banner descriptions boast tacky flavor notes like: dry, witty, eerie, smart, addictive, but it is all mush. Each chick-flick auto-starts like autonomous taxis, merging into my exit-lane, far too robotically to be safe -- and so I remain on the neon highway.

DOCUDRAMAS WONT SAVE YOU!

Every so often, we wash down another dehydrated film franchise with a luscious golden Sancerre, then we nod off again. So was the winter of my discontent, where fiction could not save me from loathing the fall of America, but it kept me alive just to witness it's end.

["Are you still There"], urges my raison d'etre. This, my streaming simulacrum of planet Earth, as safe as space ice-cream... Dry, crisp, powdered -- Not quite Neapolitan, Not even cold, but somehow each flavor tastes remarkably like the real thing. My freeze-dried room-temp brain-freeze brings a Netflix stupor which is decidedly not as labelled  -- This "Sexy Thriller", is as sterile, as dry "Ice-cream", yet nothing drips on my sofa.  I nod back to my safe place, asleep again at the wheel, biding time, wasting it.

FICTION WONT SAVE YOU!

Netflix is my clueless Lyft driver, from some small town, never watching the road... taking me for a ride around my own block in an endless loop.  Netflix is our substitute teacher who rolls in the steel hammer-tone TV cart, pops in a docudrama, and watches everyone put their heads down.  She is the mean baby-sitter, The bad nanny,, my worst fucking nightmare -- But I have nowhere else to be tonight. Another date alone with myself..., I'm neither awake nor unconscious, micro-dosing episodic fiction, where each "feature" is rated worse than the last. Remakes, reruns, prequels, procedurals, sequels, foreign versions, numbing subtitles, Serbian Cop shows, even M.A.S.H -- all failing me... Netflix is a collage ransom letter demanding my submission.  Netflix is a college job in a book store, where I've read the back of everything, but never finished a book.  Netflix, I love you but you're bringing me down.

"Kill Your Television  Do Something", my phone is jealous.

My Phone is warm... I think my phone is too warm, I think it may be overcharging, because I have nobody to call at this hour. Someone save me from Netflix. 
Netflix is the taxi-driver nightmare running the meter on a desert drive where I'm trapped in their trunk.

[When the] T.V. flashed back to life... I knew the end of the fucking world would begin right then.
​
It is an elixir as quiescent as beer-nuts -- urging another glass to wash it all away,  but there is no place to pull-off and pee.  I implore my driver to find a flooded quarry someplace, and drive us straight over the ledge.  Bleak bland and momentary, we never stop to ask what the hell we are doing squandering so much free-time, in retarded reverie.  Netflix, you are killing us softly with re-runs.  Like watching SNL's smug duds -- Not smiling, hoping to laugh, but Jost's snarky jokes never land, do they?

SNL WONT SAVE YOU!

Alas another hour lost to time, as I gel under the gravity of a neon red "N".  I'm in the Uber, and I didn't buckle-up. I'm going no place, gridlocked, I'm made of stone, my seat-belt is stuck, I'm still waiting for my driver to confirm my drop-off time. My desire, Gone! My free will, Gone! My Drive, Gone!, My joy, Gone! Rainy spring evenings wasted, watching effects-driven film franchises, pantone red and vanillafied previews -- dried, ground and powdered.  The Thrill is not only gone, it is a soulless whey protein. Fake Flowers, the dumpy stand-in's for a real hot meal. A plastic tub of International Coffee's sugary ash, dissolving me into a thick manilla solution -- Sanka single-origin stripped of what it once was. Powdered creamer heavy and hopeless.  Unmoving, I'm sipping Huel, or Soylent, as a saccharin cloud of adult baby-formula scatters like ashes over deceased screen-writers, whose dramas fetch the lowest bid.  

DRUGS WONT SAVE YOU!​

However you feel today about your healthy habits, The fate of the world, Your unhealthy binge watching, it's all hopeless. Another White Lotus, Dexter, Bad Sisters... whether you merely dip your toe in it, or you wade out into Adult Swim..., You are FAR deeper than you think. You are Losing your edge,  we are all losing time. Convenience is killing us all.

NETFLIX CAN'T SAVE YOU!
When I was a kid, My uncle's suburban home was the beta-site for a marvelous and revolutionary invention. The wireless remote control. When the adults left the room for shrimp cocktails, and cold duck, I climbed onto the recliner, reached to the TV table, and  hefted a new prototype Space Command remote control. As I clunked its prominent chrome buttons, and the T.V. flashed back to life... I knew the end of the fucking world would begin right then. I never thought it would take this long to take effect, but I now know we are all doomed to watch our own annihilation unwind on T.V.  

"We owe nothing to the past but wasted time". Clicking through our chaos --
[ARE YOU STILL FUCKING THERE?] Fuck My T.V.!, Fuck my Space Command Remote, and Fuck Netflix!
​
The End is Nigh.
​
​

The Eighties was full of shit, full of so much shitty trauma that it made people believe it was (perhaps) the end of the world.  But every generation thinks it's their last -- Every generation believes it's the end of the fucking world. Rounding the corner to the noughties, a new decade held the promise and hope, which (in some strange concentration), brought people to believe in optimism. Belief, yes... because in truth it wasn't that different than the prior years, as far as epochs go. Anyways that optimism, like the sex, freedom, nudity, and drugs which liberated the 60's and 70's from dogmatic white Christian racist tyranny, landed everyone in a decade's-long hangover where most people put their clothes back on and retreated from view. Risqué returned to it's closet, and divorce was discussed quietly under one's breath.   Nearly everyone bought curtains, and stayed at home, or holed up in a cabin in the woods, in a sense people sheltered in place. This era of retreats, was not new, but rather ubiquitous.  Much like Doctors who'd fled NYC after 9:11 to upstate bed communities, such as Cooperstown.

"Heading Up North For the Weekend?"  became THE most popular late 80's catch-phrase. next to the concept of "Retreats", which were veiled attempts by your neighbor to start a cult.
Seemingly everyone was hiding from their past traumas, fear they may be exposed, and perhaps a backlash against previously exuberant free-love indulgence, or for sanctuary of simply feeling good for the first decade in about a century. Fortunately for them those hippie documentaries wouldn't emerge until Ken Burns became a messiah.
Punks and Skaters were always in police crosshairs, or in custody -- and even post-pop-punk bands like Black Flag spouted blatantly racist drivel. This was done because they had nothing legitimate to bitch about.  Counter culture drove a bit deeper below ground, and everyone with normal haircuts were at surface level indoors sleeping it off. Meanwhile, famous republicans (aka white Christian racist tyrants) realigned with "D-Cell" metal flashlights under white blankets, promising broad-ranging behavioral modification, V1... They even re-kindled Bourbon, with every permutation of the name  "Jim", e.g. Jim Crow whisky was born. This contraction remains the ebb and flow of our American ruin.  So it seems odd that everyone cannot recall just how recurrently shitty the world has been to itself in the low troughs of our banal tyrannical-freedom. The give and take ledgers are paid with red ink and baseless currency which we harvest from the clear blue sky to pay our debts. Or more appropriately, we pay our debts with our debt. This Fantasy-Land which we all participate in, is half the time raw with resentment for the other side fucking everything up. Or sleeping it off. Today, as then... we spend the other conscious half wallowing under the covers from shame, and fierce reprisal. And, (perhaps) the third half taking pictures of ourselves.

Wait!  Does it sometimes feel like everything you do, write, and say is meaningless?

​My friend Chelsea says that childhood trauma is something you may wish to share with any random stranger on the bus. That even Creepy family trauma is just a natural casualty of the human experience. That life is so full of that sort of shit that it’s perfectly fine, (even recommended), to share shit with any imperfect stranger. It is a time-bomb to hold on to our trauma, As if this unique burden defines your brand, lest it control our days. The preceding and following "generational flow fails because they carry their 'woody-allen-daddy-diddle' trauma with themselves everywhere". "Why was it so traumatic?", "Really?  Are you OKAY?"  "You look OK...", "So suck it up and move on".  Chelsea says, (before bearing her soul at Karaoke) [that] "...People need to be more open, to be in touch with their emotions", "Let that shit go". Share & shed your repressive shame of (perhaps) simply being raised catholic, you think you have to?. Think of it like a micro-dosing cure for sleepless deep set mental anguish.  Curiously, but unsurprisingly the entertainment which most sells to the couched and coddled post-modern churchgoer are a limited PBS series, a podcast, or books, full of other people's trauma. "Their Story" about survival... is a strange therapy. While the other side adores horror, and John Wick. In my version we all kill the monster, and take a few gratuitous kicks to his nuts. What is so fascinating about someone else's dirty anguish? Do we really need another podcast about church abuse, Russel Brand, or Hip-Hop celeb molestation?  No we do not.  "Share!", she says -- "And set yourself free".  But by sharing, you make everyone more aware. Let that shit go.

Now, I know that is a wacky perspective, but it is not wrong.  People pay big bucks to their online shrink, Psychic, Hypnotist,  or even a pedigreed counsellor to emerge from something they could have dropped-off on a perfect stranger in coach class seat 22B.

Increasingly America turns to fictionalized memoir — Novels full of other people’s trauma, pain, and misfortune to feel alive, to feel anything at all besides defeat.  It is Defeat which rears when the world tips to the dark-side. Today that is totally understandable.  But perhaps letting things go is merely scratches on the surface of a Fight Club methodology.  To be in tune, to really get in tune requires coming to terms with anger, frustration, fear, anxiety -- But also Wonder, Fascination, Awe, and Joy.  It is an unpacking of sorts.  Memory perhaps is the operant which we most need to tame.  It has been suggested that most memories are conflated by trauma and become inflated monsters casting far larger shadows against the walls of our safe spaces. How we remember our traumas is perhaps as much to blame for fucking us up, as are those who have wronged us. Was it really that bad? Like mistakenly being flown to a super-max in El Salvador?
In the Nineties, we used-to tape everything in some strange philately conservation, ostensibly meant to cherish our memories a bit longer. To make it last longer so to speak. A mix tape to share one’s raw emotions, a VHS tape of a birthday party, or recital, perhaps using TiVo Hard Disc to record a big event.
Americans obsessed during the noughties over preserving better times — perhaps simply to bathe in their glow, became the oddest phenomena of Human Kind. Fetish level universal obsession with recording everything everywhere, in lieu of being present.

Within the 90's Boot sector of our human condition needlessly photographing everything all the time deserves a silly noun like 'philately' is to stamp collecting. Perhaps "Phillatiography" will become the catch-phrase for human-kind's obsessive photo collecting. From Doorbells to Ray Bans, everything is loaded with a lens. 

Meanwhile somewhere in the late Noughties, literally all of our tapes were tossed to the waste bin, or “donated” to a charity resale shop. If we had only ascribed more meaning to them -- throwing them away could have been so much more cathartic.  If we were smarter back then, we'd have burned them, as tiny, poignant magnetic effigies, just before Y2K destroyed humanity.  But we didn't think of that, in our frenzy to clear the historic record. Those of us who yearn to come to terms with destroyed evidence of post-Reagan perversity, can be trapped within their imaginations. Relax!, All the evidence is toast.  Alas that long lost history is only an oral one, (tongue-firmly-in-cheek). Fortunately now, your newest greatest trauma's are forever uploaded someplace. Your device will remind you daily through "memories" of how well you are aging.  ...And The ONLY good outcome from our big fat orange permanent record is perhaps that a few survivors will reflect upon our dead empire. Hopefully, they'll drop that trauma on some unwitting stranger on the bus. "You know the story, the one about those billionaire dickheads who'd boiled our oceans, and torched the countryside, before blasting off in a fiery space ship. Let the record reflect how they'd burnt this place to the ground, before they flamed out in space.  This is all sharable, (of course) while you are snapping pix of your Musk Burger and Putin Fries, and Orange Cheese.

Bright sides: Some precious memories, later become snarky Greeting cards in some clever stationer, bearing ironic phrases -- Anonymized awkward strangers sport ever more ironic hair-cuts.  But the nostalgic novelty of our worst eighties exposure has been doubled-down by commemorating every single thing one does today. It seems that we cannot get free of the 70's fascination with capturing ourselves from every angle. Ego, Vanity, or "vainglory" is merely a form of self idolatry where someone likens themself to greatness, Pictures, constant pictures are the modern equal to some idiot carrying around a mirror everywhere. This Vanity is a construct to guard against feeling piteous. "Vanity well fed is benevolent. Vanity hungry is spiteful."[5] -Mason Cooley

The Noughties, were a period of vanity's revival wherein the world emerged from the regressive oppression of 80’s disaster politics, Reaganomics, several hundred million suppressed egos, and an adjacent series of recession… Right about then -- Everyone began recording everything, especially themselves perhaps to trap these better times like specimens under glass. A dried Flower, pressed between volumes which would soon be burnt by our Government. Archiving our tattered taxidermy of a soon extinguished golden era -- Kodachrome came to capture our better times in vivid hues, where we breathed cleaner air, drank cleaner water, and enjoyed an idyllic togetherness. Government by the people and for the people encouraged the EPA and the FDA to guarantee our public health.
But, barely after America had learned to bake cakes together, road-trip together, relax together, being blissfully together manifest a strange outgrowth — An obsession to preserve our good times, at all cost.  The world went Coo-Coo for cameras. Taping everything went haywire. Americans, started to do precisely what they'd disparaged proto-Japanese tourist memes for doing in the early eighties... We began to capture everything, and print the shit out of it. We even got duplicates for free, so we could share how great we looked in one out of every thirty-six frames. 
Today everything is memorialized well before it is even experienced. Every meal, every scenic overlook, every party. Time stamped. It's even likely that the chefs are taking cell-phone pix of the meal you are currently taking a photo of right now.
These recordings are rich vibrant, 3D, 4K, HDR, and also boring as fuck! They include every Texture, every photon, every grain, every crumb, of spreading butter upon toast, and yet they taste like nothing at all.
Nothing matters more than what you ate for dinner, and nothing matters less than what it actually tasted like.
Nothing is intrinsically important about our collecting banal memories like butterflies on a wind-screen. Our obsession to collect (good) memories, began with Kodachrome, expanding into magnetic tape, hard-discs, and (gasp) THE CLOUD, (wherever that is). The insecure cultural obsession born of a nervous cult(ure) searching for meaning, nay belonging through rewinding, is bonkers. Your "Cloud Memories" are like a remedial memoir for illiterates.  We are all doing it, and each and every photo, video of every concert, fades just as fast as our liver will metabolize a sixteen-dollar cocktail.  Nothing at all is being recorded and posted at such a frenzy, that reality is suffocating beneath the huge vacancy of experience.

The joy, even awe of lived experience is lost to the process of manipulating every meaningful moment through a filter, and getting that shit out in front of everybody as fast as one can — Literally everyone. But nobody cares, and everyone just keeps doing this thing, without knowing why, or even that they are doing it -- Like a roller rink without getting to cop a feel.

But seriously -- literally everyone gives zero fucks about what you had for dinner, nor even that you've eaten, just that your capture outshined theirs.  Vanity, is where flavors are delivered in the form of praise, or not at all.  Coo-Coo, right? 
So, part of our potential energies could be implemented to delete all that we wish to no longer remember.  While a smidge of our idle energy could be used to own up to some or all of our mistakes.  The rest of that shit, (namely the trauma) simply needs to be dropped on a perfect stranger -- And this can be done just like "Donating" your old video cassettes, computers, photos to the thrift store.  Like a shitty memoir, or The Moth Radio Hour -- others may benefit from your shame.
The time we kill, is killing us.
Delete the history of your trauma along with those pix of tonight's "small-plate courses"  You'll never see them again, right? Let that shit go.  Share a dark secret with a total stranger, just before choking on the: #BEST-BUFFALO-WINGS-ever?
When the person next to you breaks out pics of a pet, or toddler... why not start out fresh with, "That looks like a proper shithole... Let me tell you a story."

This is a Pixies song about a Phone, right?
​
​

No More Food for Bomb-Sniffing Dogs, Abandoning Pediatric Cancer Treatments, and More Genius DOGE Cuts c. 2025

By Charles P. PiercePublished: Mar 17, 2025 1:59 PM EDT
Reprinted without permission, but full credit to Esquire Mag as below:

Anna Moneymaker//Getty ImagesThe ever-essential Margaret Sullivan points us to this remarkably delusional headline in The New York Times. Now, I find all of the president's attempt at charm to be offensive, but I don't think that was the NYT's point anyway. But let us take a look at how the charm offensive was going this weekend.
Our own Logan Airport apparently has been turned into an immigration black site, complete with enhanced interrogation. Dozens of stories have emerged of the human costs on the ongoing DOGE and pony show--graduate schools rescinding acceptances because federal funding for programs has been cut, Social Security recipients being denied benefits because somebody, somewhere declared them dead, pediatric brain cancer patients are being abandoned mid-treatment, court orders are now being routinely ignored to the point where tinpot Central American presidents are mocking them. The president is now threatening to ignore the lawful pardons granted by former president Biden, basing this latest power grab on a theory even more laughable than the one he used to justify his reverse human trafficking to El Salvador. Arlington National Cemetery and the U.S. Army scrubs its website records of black and Hispanic and other minority military members, including the 442nd Infantry, the famous Nisei unit in World War II that was recruited from Japanese Americans out of the detention camps where they were being held. He's demanding that Columbia University knuckle under even more than it already has, and has said quite plainly that Columbia is merely the lab rat for a genuine assault on the country's colleges and universities. Bomb-sniffing dogs are being denied decent nutrition.
Charming, wot?

NOT Mythical, but much like Aunt Jemima, just as fictional.  Dr. Gustav Klein, is/was a pharmacist, with a chain of apothecaries, he may never have ridden a bicycle. 
When Browsing the web for a bike part, dynamic search will press the buttons for you, and where you land is manipulated by the very worst Dot-Com era mechanics.  Way Way Back when there was No Google, [GASP], I recall a client telling me about the "New Google Thing" which was democratizing WWW search, and opening doors to so many more narrowed search results, "...and that". He continued excitedly,  "...Results appear nearly instantly!" He said with building enthusiasm (that), "They, (Google) search like a couple hundred thousand places all at once!", and, ["holy shit man!"] "filter super accurate results".  I remained incredulous and, just to get him to leave me alone, I'd promised to look into "Google", when I got back to the office.  This was an era still flush with fresh flip-phones, DSL, Laser Discs, laser-mice, laser printers, Plasma TV's, and Surround Sound.  In this [my] ancient society, it's citizens purchased batteries at their local Radio Shack. Soon everyone would own a Mountain Bike, A Tivo, an Ink-Jet printer, and an MP3 Player, which they'd plug into their dashboard cassette adapter. I remember this like yesterday, mostly because it was the first time I tried a Google search, and perhaps the last time I would actually get an agnostic search result.  Way Back then, people searched for shit, and they saw so much shit, that they had to use hyphens, and commas, and cogent key-words to find anything relevant at all.  Google would show the user how many places it was looking, and how long the results took, as if they wanted to flaunt a rather pedestrian algorithm. Anyway -- That's about when the internet began inventing things all by itself, building upon it's silly methods, and herd mentality.  Filtered search results are why we all hate each-other today, but Hey!, they also are why we all dress alike. As Search advanced, the results may have become more relevant to the typist,  but that was likely only because Americans had become so homogenized that those doing the searching all wanted to find the same crap quickly. Beige Levi's Dockers for example --  And this is basically where we are today.  Search is so slanted and bullshit, that before you actually find what you'd set sail to discover, you've seen so much other bullshit that you've completely forgotten what you were looking for, ...and you'd already bought what they told you to buy.  Even if you'd only wanted a recipe, you'd now be waiting for UPS to bring  that new Gas Grille or pizza oven.
Anyway, before A.I. levels your search into untainted relevance -- Sergei and Fakebook were back in the lab massaging  machine-learning like kobe cows to feed users more directed garbage like fatted  French geese.

Before the wheels came off search the first time, eBay search algorithms, would compile independent nouns and adjectives into "relevant" categories, and largely still rely upon these search terms to feed your results. So it is no wonder that the Internet, which is banefully broken, merges completely unrelated search parameters until they become their own manifest ghost.
In a way, the crowd built the back-end, and 'our results' provide endless amusement when one searches for an alternator, or brake pads,  and find new feminine hygiene products crammed into our cart. The data-set is broken, the mechanism is broken, and the dynamic web wants to destroy us all.
So it is wholly unsurprising that the same cuckoo mechanism would eventually invent a human being out of thin air. Or... More specifically exchange one German Pharmacist for One American Bicycle Builder.  Gary Klein became Dr. Gustav Klein, and at this point in both of their retirements, their brands are merely nostalgic afterthoughts.  For a break from this crummy blog, open a browser and search for a Klein Adroit Mountain Bike.  I Guarantee that you will get results for the widely praised Porsche 911 of Mountain Bikes, and if you want to buy that used Adroit, your search will bear the Name Dr. Gustav Klein, prominently in your result. If you Search for a Homeopathic Prostate remedy, you may land upon Dr. Gustav Klein,  here you will not see any bicycles in your search result.
But there is this one smart guy who'd deserved veneration in the early 90's straight through to Y-2-K for making magical products, and his name was Gary Gordon Klein. Gary Klein was an engineer who grabbed a degree at MIT, and then built some crazy cool Bicycles.  He didn't invent the Aluminum bike, but he patented several innovations and made it an effective, even lethal weapon for bicycle racing.  Gary Klein changed the entire category during the 90's Mountain Bike Boom, Press-fitting cartridge bearings into perfectly milled tubes to cut weight, and to make his bicycles bomb-proof. He invented loads of innovations, but no homeopathic prostate remedies.  Gary Klein was a very real human being who'd set up shop in Mary's Corner, Chehalis Washington.  Chehalis is a tiny rainy whistlestop outside of Seattle where a lake, a river, and a train punctuate, skilled factories catering to Seattle's Aerospace biz.  Gary saw so many opportunities to "Fix" the American Bicycle through methodical rocket science, better metallurgy, chemistry, sexy paint jobs,  and with of course with meticulous craftsmanship.  He was affable, active, and an avid cyclist. In particular Gary's company excelled in building exceptional Aluminum Mountain Bikes. Klein set the benchmark for precision and quality, like a Rolex, or a Rolls Royce. The Klein Brand was gold.
​

Many will take credit for inventing A.I. and rediscovering  Agnostic Web Search, just before it is replaced again by more filtered Bullshit, & Dynamic A.I. Search. Soon all of us will be replaced en-masse by our avatars.  In the meantime I'll cherish fondly thinking for myself, travelling  places, riding cool bikes, and meeting interesting people. 
The other day, an enthusiastic younger person asked me (an old person) about Klein Bikes from way back in the 90's, and unsurprisingly I had a lot to say on the matter. They then asked me about Dr. Gustav Klein, and who he was and how I may have come to know him " Who?" I asked? 

"Dr. Gustav Klein..." "Oh No!", "This is the Guy who the internet invented out of the clear blue sky". "No no", I said,  "That's not a real person". Or rather I should say, he is/was a real Pharmacist or homeopath in Germany and Austria, with a chain of apothecaries to his name, but Dr. Gustav Klein is not the Guy who built your Bike.
In every Web-Search for Klein Bicycles, there is this fictional amalgam who seemingly arrived in America well after Gary Klein sold his company. Klein bikes were venerated in Germany and Japan well after he'd wound down his factory in Washington State.  But Gary Klein was the undisputed father of cutting edge aluminum bikes. Whereas Dr. Gustav Klein, was Known for homeopathic, and Holistic remedies, along with a chain of branded Pharmacies.  Gary Klein built his first Aluminum Bike in 1977 at MIT, and didn't know Gustav.
Gustav is not the German word for Gary, nor is Gary Klein natively German. The Germans admired his bikes, true -- And they started to collect them well after Gary sold his soul to Intrepid, (AKA The Trek Bicycle Corporation).   Because the Germans amassed collections, and even a museum for Klein Bikes, (I suppose) his name became synonymous with German Bicycle craft. Later somehow the Internet linked the Pharmacist to the Bike Maker, and viola!, Dr, Gustav Klein is in the Bike Biz.   This is of course understandable because Germans trend toward quality craftsmanship, and because Klein is a German advective... But also it's strange because Gary Klein built bikes in the Pacific North West, and  although he had no PHD, he may have been secretly fond of Germany -- Who knows.  Gary and his brand were firmly rooted in the US.  First manufactured in California where his parents owned a Prune Farm, and then Washington, where he worked with seed money and a few College partners to  "Innovate and patent Aluminum Bicycle craft". It is important to mention that Gary Klein sold bikes all over the world and while American Boys were wild about them, they became like Levi's, Marlboro, or Springsteen, in Japan.  He was as hot as Hansel, and his bikes were big in Japan longer than any other market.

​There was never a Dr Gustav Klein in the American Bike Biz, but you can find him in Germany, and even walk into his pharmacy for a (quack) remedy. A bit like Chef Boyardee, who was in fact a real Chef, He didn't necessarily invent SpaghettiOs. Dr. Gustav Klein had nothing to do with Klein Bicycle Magic.  Dr. Gustav, may have been cross pollinated in Japan when young enthusiastic boys and men were searching for authenticity by American appropriation.  This adulation of Americana is so beautifully nostalgic, but slowly being erased  by the Mandela effect of internet laundering.  
I checked with eBay as to why their product search Lists: "Dr. Gustav Klein" on every single search for a Klein Bicycle, and they stated that this was (of course) "the correct attribution".  Regardless of this silly misappropriation, Dr. Gustav wants to sell you one of his classic used bicycles for well over market value, plus fees and shipping, and some homeopathic tablets for your back pain.   
Sadly Japan and Germany's 90's veneration of American culture doesn't really happen today -- Our culture, and in particular our hobbies, like bicycling, could use some authenticity, creative inspiration, and really truly needs some ordinary heroes.  As our former authenticity blends it's colors, darks, and whites into one machine, we as a culture come out  quite bleakly grey.   

...Or Beige, Because, well... American is so very blasé right about now!

​The below Klein BIO. was reprinted directly from Wikipedia, because... no one writes their own dating profile or resume these days, and it's far more genuine to state that I didn't actually forge this book report either.

Gary Gordon Klein  6/9/1952 –
AMERICAN ENGINEER
In 1973, Gary Klein was a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As an engineer and as a competitive road racer, Klein was interested in developing a bicycle frame that was stronger and more responsive than those currently available. Klein developed a prototypical oversized tube design aluminum frame as a part of an MIT independent study course, a design he took to limited production in 1975.
The Klein frame was revolutionary; Klein may not have been the first person to theorize as to how aluminum could be employed as a material in frame construction, but he was the first to advance the concept of the oversized aluminum frame. Steel had been the material of choice for most cycle manufacturers as it is a stiff material, approximately three times as stiff as aluminum. Conventional wisdom in the early 1970s world of cycling manufacturing was that an aluminum bicycle, while lightweight, would lack the stiffness to perform. Aluminum bicycles were derided as spaghetti bikes, frames that lacked the stability required by a serious athlete. Klein theorized that if the tubes used to construct the frame were of a larger circumference, an aluminum frame would possess an even greater stiffness at a lighter weight than the conventional steel frames. Klein's aluminum frames were approximately 15% lighter than the conventional models. Klein determined that a 1.5 in circumference aluminum tube (3.75 cm) was approximately five times stiffer than a 1-in (2.5 cm).
Klein developed a proprietary welding process to compliment his frame designs, creating smooth, aerodynamic welds at each join in the frame. Klein ultimately patented 18 different designs and processes in relation to his aluminum frames.
The modern Klein designs have maintained a cutting edge status among both mountain biking and road cyclists. The frames manufactured today are a variety of aluminum and carbon fiber composite constructions.
Klein parlayed his frame development into the multi-faceted Klein Bike company, producing mountain bikes and road bicycles for the international market. As modern bicycle development moves further in direction of frames made from carbon fiber composites, it is likely that the Klein oversized aluminum frame will be given its proper recognition as an important historical step in the development of faster, lighter, and more responsive bicycles.

So, why is it so difficult to see that Trump is a Russian Asset?, Perhaps because it would mean that we were wrong, and ineffective. Compromised for certain. Call it what you will. That we couldn't see it coming, is "unfair adversity".  BUT, in truth he couldn't really know either. This is of course the key to creating an effective ASSet. They first need to be rather dim.  Brainwashed by hubris,  self importance, and the desire to be  a strong man dictator himself, is all the motivation a weak person needs to drink Commie Kool-Aid. All effective cults and religions for that matter, promise nirvana, which you only get when you are dead, so you cannot actually fact check it, can you?  Let the charlatan believe that he is sooo smart that THIS could never happen to him, as was his last administration.  But NOW, TODAY the U.S. is on a disastrous trajectory.  The showman promises that trick with the table cloth, but where everything tumbles. Wait... Which pill did I swallow?

The President of the United States is a Compromised Russian Asset, and everyone is pretending that it is fine.
Say what you will about conspiracy Theories... Or How Bonkers the Right or the Left appear. The World is on edge because of one man and his patsy Donald J Trump, and this is entirely unsurprising. Find yourself a popular, if unlikable celebrity has-been, and promise them billions.  Tell them they can plant a Trump-Tower Man-Phallus directly off Red Square. Allow them to believe they wield unfettered power and popularity, and how do you think they will behave? This is of course safe-guarded by their limited survival.  The last man standing will not be Donald J.

A political lifetime ago The Guardian and many other credible news sources tried to properly decipher the Kremlin Papers, and the Steele Dossier, to reveal what they were at their core.  These purported to improve relations, and cooperation between a ruthless dictator, and a doughy dottering insecure sociopath. But they are a doctrine for takeover.  A means to plant an asset and a flag upon the american capital. Donald J. is the mouthpiece for Russia. He is a Mole. He is a Kremlin Asset.

What follows are cogent adult fact based reporting on america's traitorous ASSet.

​The person to ‘weaken’ America: what the Kremlin papers said about Trump. This article is more than 3 years old Documents appear to show how Russian intelligence worked to install their preferred candidate as president
Papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh
Thu 15 Jul 2021 13.05 EDT
In January 2016, America was coming to terms with what had previously seemed incredible. Barring an unforeseen event, Donald J Trump was on course to become the Republican party’s presidential candidate. Some welcomed this giddy prospect, while others in the Republican establishment recoiled in horror.
The man himself oozed confidence. “I have a feeling it’s going to work out, actually,” he told his rival Ted Cruz, at a Fox News debate. By 22 January, the polls had Trump well ahead, as a snowstorm nudged towards Washington.
Trump’s astonishing and confounding rise had not gone unnoticed in Russia. Unbeknown to the US public, his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was in touch with the office of the Kremlin press secretary. Cohen had begged for help in building a luxury hotel in Moscow – a decades-long Trump dream.

Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

Read moreMeanwhile, Trump had said flattering things about Vladimir Putin, a person talked about by some leading US politicians as a cold-eyed KGB killer. “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia,” Trump would muse.
That he was the Kremlin’s preferred candidate is not in doubt. What has been a source of endless conjecture is the lengths Russia was prepared to go to to help Trump win. The Guardian has spent months seeking to verify the authenticity of papers that may provide an answer to this question.
Our investigation has revealed that western intelligence agencies have known about the papers – and have been examining them – for some time.
Independent experts approached by the Guardian have also confirmed they are consistent with the Kremlin’s thinking and chain of command.
Their fascination in material that appears to have come from within the heart of the Kremlin is easy to understand.
The papers suggest that as Trump surged ahead, a group of analysts inside the Russian administration were putting the final touches on a secret paper.
The title of the document was bland enough: “Report on strengthening the state and stabilising the position of Russia under conditions of external economic constraint.”
Its contents were not.
The document describes how Putin’s expert department was urging a multi-layered plan to interfere in the race for the White House. The goal: to “destabilise” America.
One candidate above all might help bring this about, the experts confidently believed – the “mentally unstable”, impulsive” and “unbalanced” Trump.
This plan was presented as being entirely defensive. The Obama administration had inflicted damage on the Russian economy by imposing sanctions. Living standards were falling, regional elites were unhappy and the sugar rush from Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea had worn off, the report said. Potential domestic political dangers lay ahead.
The sensible course from Moscow’s perspective, it said, was to enact measures that would “pressure” America to ease off – by dropping anti-Russian sanctions, or softening them.
The paper seems to have set off a flurry of activity in the Kremlin.
The documents indicate that on 14 January Vladimir Symonenko, the expert department chief, shared a three-page summary.
“At the moment the Russian Federation finds itself in a predicament. American measures continue to be felt in all areas of public life,” it starts. Next, Putin ordered the head of his foreign policy directorate, Alexander Manzhosin, to arrange an urgent meeting of the national security council, Russia’s top decision-making body. At some point over the next few days Putin appears to have read the document himself.
By 22 January, other security council members had had a chance to digest its contents. The early part dealt with Russia’s economy. The secret American measures were contained in a special section beginning on page 14.
The report seemed to confirm what Trump would later deny: that Putin’s spy agencies had gathered compromising material on him, possibly stretching back to Soviet KGB times.
Trump’s personal flaws were so extensive – also featuring an “inferiority complex” – that he was the perfect person to feed divisions and to weaken America’s negotiating position.
The unflattering assessment of Trump’s personality was based on evidence, the paper said, derived from observation of his behaviour during trips to Russia.
Trump visited communist Moscow and Leningrad in summer 1987 following an invitation from the Soviet envoy in New York. Trump returned in the 1990s, and early 2000s, seeking business deals, and flew in for the 2013 Miss Universe beauty contest, when he stayed in Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel. Putin’s FSB agency had spy cameras in guest rooms, and a full-time officer on the premises, the Senate intelligence committee later found.
The report appears to confirm Trump was being watched, though no dates or locations are given.“Considering certain events that took place during his stay on Russian Federation territory (Appendix 5 – personal characteristics Donald J Trump, paragraph 5), it is urgently necessary to use all means to promote his election to the post of President of the United States,” it says.
The allegation that the Russians had kompromat on Trump would haunt his four years in the White House. True or false, his flattering treatment of Putin was one riddle of his chaotic presidency.
The papers seen by the Guardian suggest that after the security council meeting Putin set up a special inter-departmental commission headed by his close ally Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister. Shoigu was in overall command of the operation to influence the 2016 US election. GRU military intelligence, SVR foreign intelligence and the FSB were all told to prepare immediate practical steps to help accomplish the report’s preferred scenario – a Trump victory.
This certainly came at a time of internal spy agency tensions.
The SVR’s then chief, Mikhail Fradkov, was regarded as a weak figure. In 2010, the FBI arrested 10 of Fradkov’s undercover sleeper agents in America. The scandal badly damaged his authority. The GRU and FSB harboured scarcely concealed ambitions to take over the SVR’s functions abroad. Meanwhile, the GRU’s director, Igor Sergun, died two weeks before the meeting, apparently while undercover in the Middle East.
By spring 2016, the commission chiefs appear to have overcome their institutional rivalry to work harmoniously together. A team of GRU cyber-hackers moved into an anonymous glass tower in north-west Moscow. They worked closely with GRU colleagues based in a downtown building.
The first phishing email was sent on 19 March to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
More followed. As the report correctly envisaged, these stolen and dumped emails became a “media virus” – infecting and weakening the Democratic campaign, and reaching millions of American voters via Facebook and Twitter.
By autumn, President Obama was convinced Putin had personally approved the hacking operation, which Clinton believes cost her the presidency. In October 2016, Obama remonstrated with his Russian counterpart in a phone call, telling Putin his election meddling was “an act of war”. The 2019 report by special counsel Robert Mueller called the Kremlin’s operation “sweeping and systematic”. In 2020, the bipartisan Senate intelligence committee said it was “aggressive and multi-faceted”.
The committee detailed multiple interactions between individuals linked to the Russian government and Trump’s inner circle. The GRU spy Konstantin Kilimnik held clandestine meetings with Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Manafort supplied Kilimnik with private polling and other data. The pair communicated using encrypted messages and shared email drafts.
And what of the report’s claim that Putin would be able to exploit Trump’s weaknesses in “clandestine fashion” during bilateral discussions?
Something along these lines took place during their notorious 2018 summit in Helsinki. Asked at a joint press conference to condemn Kremlin hacking and dumping, Trump endorsed Putin’s assertion that Moscow had not interfered – a claim at odds with the findings of all 14 US intelligence agencies. After a backlash at home, and amid speculation the Russians were somehow blackmailing the president, Trump said he misspoke.
Putin has repeatedly denied claims he interferes in US politics. Western governments don’t believe him. According to US intelligence officials, Moscow sought to influence the 2020 election by spreading “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations” against Joe Biden. Last year, Russian state hackers penetrated numerous federal US institutions, in a massive cyber-attack.
Little is really known about how decision-making works at the top of the Kremlin. The apparent leaked papers seen by the Guardian appear to suggest the bureaucratic paper trail is more considerable than you might think. The security council – the Sovbez in Russian – has increasingly come to resemble the Politburo, the Soviet Union’s powerful executive committee. At the top is a small, like-minded group of individuals, led by a preeminent figure.
For the moment, Putin’s regime looks impregnable, despite mass street protests in January following the arrest and jailing of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, poisoned in 2020 in a special FSB operation. As unrest grows, further leaks seem possible. The lesson comes from history. When the USSR collapsed 30 years ago, KGB files were opened and long-buried secrets fell out.
Trump did not initially respond to a request for comment.
Later, Liz Harrington, his spokesperson, issued a statement on his behalf.
“This is disgusting. It’s fake news, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA was fake news. It’s just the Radical Left crazies doing whatever they can to demean everybody on the right.
“It’s fiction, and nobody was tougher on Russia than me, including on the pipeline, and sanctions. At the same time we got along with Russia. Russia respected us, China respected us, Iran respected us, North Korea respected us."
“And the world was a much safer place than it is now with mentally unstable leadership.”

When the Devil Came..., He was not Chrome, He was not Red, and he said...
Come with me.            -Wilco "Hell Is Chrome*"

What I'd wanted to say was, "...That the greatest music came from the 80's by the grace of god, and that the finest Bicycles were born in the late 90's when God was resting post Cold War Reconciliation. ...That all the colors of our dismantled Military Industrial Complex would soon be poured into a puddle of insouciant engineering who's brilliance gave birth to the millennial "Bicycle-Industrial-Complex". Consolidation moved swiftly to crush cottage bicycle brands. A few Titans, from humble beginnings themselves, began extracting ideas, by torture, and decimating cycling's soul. mixed metals, M2 and Crazy-glue yielded the first "Flat-Bar Gravel-Bike" craze. An Eighties kaleidoscope of primary reds & blues, became Neon-Nineties Mountain Bike fades.  Hideous Lycra was stretched over everything quite inappropriately. By 2000 all of cycling's colors would be melted down, mixed with glue, and fade to matte black."  Anyway, that's right about what I'd wanted to say, but because I'd been drinking Bordeaux with an old friend  ...all that I could manage to reminisce was, "Man, that was some magical shit Gary Klein made back then", "...And fuck I was such a fool to have ever lent Neil Kowalski my custom Black Klein." 
"Fuck Neil Kowalksi !"  "Fuck Man!, ... Just Fuck that dude".

In the mid to late 90's you could not sell a road bike. The Mountain bike was as hot as Hansel, and it became a king, a god, and currency. By 1996 (eons before the bromance with day-trading, pod-casting, and door-dash) Everyone was riding a mountain bike on pavement outdoors. As they phased VHS out, everyone was taping shit with Tivo, to watch AFTER they strutted about on their MOUNTAIN Bike. There were myriad options, but the smart money was on Klein. Klein was King.  
Everybody has regrets about dumb shit they'd done throughout their past, (perhaps in particular the 90's), but my second biggest adult-life regret may have been to ever have trusted that fucking snake Neil with any bicycle. 
In late 1996 Gary Klein built me a special one-off gloss black bike with a custom black strata fork, using a corrected MC2 stem angle, and a full Black-Forest "Tune" Kit -- Then... I blew it.  Boy did I ever blow it. We had just scored the last batch of Anniversary bikes, and another friend got one of those, So Black became our destiny, well before everything headed there. I lent my Klein to Neil and he skipped the country.
For decades I'd contemplated my revenge, when I'd eventually see Neil the back stabber, and get even. But before you think I'm an irrational hater, it merits mention that Neil didn't borrow a bike or two... His calculus was to borrow things like Quimby and promise to pay later.  That wasn't the main issue.  At the core was that Neil was buying and selling other peoples bikes, CD's, Jackets, Concert T's etc. on credit.  He didn't even like bikes. He was a snake who'd have predicted a scheme, even line up a buyer, well before "Borrowing" someone's shit, and selling it.  He would have something sold before he had it to sell. What is a bike if not to ride?  COME WITH ME...

Revenge was warranted.

But vengeance is a jacket who's sleeves tie neatly behind the back. And my commitment to revenge soon faded. I'd never see Neil again, along with several of my CD's. So while I'd also blamed myself, I knew killing Neil Kowalski would not bring my bike back.  I recall the sheepish tone of him on the phone, and knew That junkie fuckwit, had tougher times ahead of him.  Besides that,  his dad was a judge -- So alas I scrapped any plans for revenge. I also abandoned all hope to recover my lost bike, which was now somewhere in Chelsea -- 6365 kilometers from Chicago. I got my friend at Evil Trek to make me a new One-Off bike from honeycomb OCLV which I'd later have stolen mid-winter from my house.

Ex's and itches are far more difficult than one may think to be rid of, even if one could rub  them out proper -- And the thing of it is, that I'd wanted to make something good from my bitterness. So, soon I quit the bike biz, and started freshly forgetting "my precious".

I could (perhaps) ameliorate my psychic itch by keeping a tidy laminated wallet-size pin-up to stroke like a Gen-Z fondles a Frapuccino...
I'm not saying much about my maturity when I long for an ancient (if wholly obsolete) bicycle which many have so prosaically disparaged. [Thank you Pink Bike!]  I don't even own a photo of myself with this beauty, so the entire fuzzy picture framed in my infantile mind is make-believe at best. While I think of it often, the fiction in my head was likely an embellished version, A fictive beauty, which in retrospect would seem tacky, even useless by today's Bike Craft. But that bike was the bees knees, buttered toast, and Miss June all rolled together.  
I was never good at anything, but I'd loved bikes, and loved to ride them uphill and down. I cherished all of them, even the shitty lock-up bikes, and many never get over when they lose a loved one.
I think if I did have a photo with my precious Klein, I could ameliorate my psychic itch by keeping a tidy laminated wallet-size pin-up to grope like a Gen-Z fondles a Frapuccino, or a fidget-spinner, And I would do this whenever life brought me down.
I suppose I want people to understand only this... That when I was eight years old I threw a snowball really hard at a passing Red Cutlass, and the driver chased us down with such rage, and vengeance, leaving his car running, sprinting through slush -- Driver's door wide open, ...that I'd have thought he had actually split in two beings, releasing the devil himself to hunt us down. Later that night, I'd lay in bed actually shaking from his visceral rage, wondering why/how anyone could give a shit about a fucking car that much  -- that they'd be willing to kill a child to protect it.  I'd lost sleep for about a week, waiting for him to wake me. Later, (perhaps to justify the moment) I came to identify his rage as the product of a legitimate obsession.  A fondness which I would not personally know until the 90's.  Two years later at Ten years old, I would watch my first real tangible possession, unironically a yellow Schwinn Stingray, being stolen from the doorway of the Piggly Wiggly, by an older kid on my paper route named Ruben Padilla.  His nonchalance walking slowly up to my Schwinn, making eye contact with me still in the check-out lane, smiling, and then slowly riding off with a bunch of other kids, and my bike.  This was the moment when I'd understood the Cutlass owner's rage.  The Police did not give a shit, and for months I would occasionally spot my rattle-can  re-painted blackish Schwinn Stingray lurking about the neighborhood.  I would generate a dark amalgam of scar tissue from each and every bike I'd lost without a proper farewell.  Nostalgic bike lust pasting fuzzy images in the psychic scrapbook of my primitive brain where "lost bike" wanted poster pin-ups occasionally haunt me.  Like all the useless clutter in my top dresser drawer -- passe' bikes are somehow simultaneously sacred and  stupid.

My friends have warned me of this (my) dark psychosis. That, "Bikes, are like old skis or even older boots... That the old ones just basically suck". My Friend Pete says that the Mantra is a death-trap, actively working to kill it's rider, like a bull-ride, or a bucking-bronco. "Death or Collar-Bone is the only currency exchanged on a Mantra". I know all of this of course, (perhaps), but I need to reenter the cave to see if what was written on it's walls, could inspire me to alas forget about my loss. 

I'm knee deep in the process now, of remaking the ideal Klein Mantra, Restorative Justice you could say... and so far it cost me about half of what a new one did at retail in 1996.  I'm going to ride it of course -- And I'm going to see if it kills or cleanses me of the occasional surfacing  detest for how it all went down, thirty years back.  When the snow melts, I'll check back in, with you, and IF I have a sling supporting a busted collar bone, I'll likely blame Neil Kowalski.
COME WITH ME.
​
END OF CHAPTER ONE.
​​

"We have [also] come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism."
"Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."
-MLK

Hit the lights if you are the last one to leave this shithole, No need to lock it, we know it'll be ransacked. Only Seussian plumbing stretches up from the rubble, bent and absurd. Ancient pipes which once carried effluent of far better men. All of it sold for scrap.  They've alas unbolted his gold toilet and moved it to F.L.A. Wet banker's boxes packed with abandon secrets  mildewed by hydrants. Pages peel and flutter in a light breeze. Ideas, and legacies blow about the rotunda floor.  Upholstery and charred sofas shelter the rodents who'll make better use of rotting rugs, Tiffany, Chippendale, and Louis XIV. 
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to bounce a check. Only sparse Trees watch the barbarians move backwards through time, a retrograde recap of our best mistakes. Dred Scott dead of tuberculosis., and Missouri cheers. All of these reconstructed histories we'd outgrown lifetimes ago, reinstituted. Time scores our modern brilliance against a dark age when all men were actually created equal. A squalid symphony, of scrap trucks, as howling vigilantes keep time to our newly minted poverty. We are all suffering from curable illness, starving, hysterical... D.C. once the dream, drown by ignorance. We were once free, inspired. So long to good people. Some drove this far to save it, some to see it burn. Goodbye to safe harbors, bonsoir big shoulders, au revoir manumission, trees and parks, clean water. Adios to the birthrights beyond the ivy league window.

We are just beginning to trample the landscape, packing snow, soil, and crushed red solo cups into the filthy archaeology of our fallen empire. 

The currency of leadership which had framed our scrappy republic, is now worthless. Emoluments have moved our capital alas to a proper party venue, with eighteen holes straight out back, and TV's on every cart. Welcome hangers-on and drunk drivers to a delirious never ending frat party.  Grab a mojito on the lanai, watch us on our news networks.  Grab a snack, and take a roadie for your drive, Hold the wheel tightly as we roll out the gate, and over the cliff.
Boil the oceans, and level the mountains.  Gift shop is closed, but you can carve your initials on a doorway, spray your tag on fallen columns and ink a phrase on Lincoln's backside. Don't get clever, that's all over. We've nothing left to write of progress for many years to come. We are far too busy bottoming out, and building high walls. It was far cheaper to keep them out, then to contain them, so we have walled-in the country clubs. Partitioned our parks. Tolled our byways, and privatized the beaches. We have only this new dark age of infantile carnivals, a caravan of looting nomads, and bullet-proof charlatan carpools. Its too soon to speak fondly of an inevitable rebellion, of mavericks, and of survivors. We are just beginning to trample the landscape, packing snow, soil, and crushed red solo cups into the filthy archaeology of our fallen empire. 
Welcome has-beens, vagrants & campers to these splendid tent cities. Please enjoy our stunning new detention pens. 
Will everyone please welcome the infant tyrant clown, and his Afrikaans puppeteer? 

 
The Dark Web is just behind that door, over in the corner. The backside of a filthy curtain, where levers, gears and pulleys lift and load uncivilized packages beneath a cold red neon buzz.  A conspicuous color red; At a strange time when Americans lose access to their CCP  pacifier, and unpack a fascist. Fucking imbalanced universe! -- C'est la vie, and so long.
​
My fridge also houses the dark web, with three distinct leftovers, but nothing you’d have a taste for.

Past its threshold, sin and promiscuity ravage sidelined humanity.  The dark web is the whole of the web, a polymer ecosystem of intertwined soul crushing empty spaces, filled with vitriol, takeout containers, amazon boxes, and self-help advice. It is where we pretend things are perfect, because the GIF looks nice. The same dark web lingers in the gasket of my high efficiency washing machine, and in my shower grout. By the middle of January mid-winter hum-drum, fuels the same darkness, while the web sprouts a new hybrid strain.
My fridge also houses the dark web with three distinct leftovers, but nothing you’d have a taste for. Suffering the indignity of too many food options, is a killing joke.  By mid-January, the darkness covering our hemisphere begins to relent long enough to balance hope with our despair, keeping us in the game a bit longer, perhaps. Hope becomes a quiet blanket of sugary white crystals lit by the long shadows of a golden sun; While Evil remains a bleak smothering damp grey, dripping wet chill into otherwise dry socks.  
Everyone needs a break from winter, and from devices, from ourselves, boring blogs, and shitty pod-casts. But mid-winter reminds me of how far gone we are into the land of make-believe.
Well before the weather broke us, we’d already spent far too much money and time alone, opening strange canned goods, stacking dishes in a full sink, sniffing containers of whatever lines the fridge. Running out of tissues, and lotion, winter’s survival seems to hinge upon the arithmetic ten-to-one imbalance of condiment, to food. None of these seem to have expiration dates.

In 2023, 74 percent of U.S. "restaurant traffic came from take-out. Today it's even higher, but those who dine-in, bring both their phones, and friends with phones. Sadly, nobody can order without a phone and nearly as many only accept payment by app. All of us are pretending to dine out, while swiping saucy fingers. Everyone is clicking QR's, re-sorting preferences like recyclables, as cookies probe deeper into the nation’s psyche. Nobody is enjoying their time out, Everyone is posting, nobody is present. Everyone is faking it.

Apparently, all of the trained servers who weren’t killed by Covid, now work from home on the software backend. 

If there were ever an argument that we are living in a simulation, this January moment should prove it. To dine out today requires a phone, but nobody uses their phone to call anyone.

"I've been aware of the Time going by
They say in the end, it's the wink of an eye."

Go ahead and fake it!, because pretense is the mod con. Pretending to enjoy the sanctuary of dining out, in that booth by the window, where delivery drones constantly open doors pouring cold chill over a messy dining room. Here the bar is closed, and stacked with containers, and pre-packed take-out, rolled napkins swaddle bendy plastic ware. Your table runner aimlessly shuffles plates, reluctantly returning a plastic container with your check. Apparently, all of the trained servers who weren’t killed by Covid, now work from home on the software backend. Tonight, nobody will ask what you’d enjoyed, because nobody cares. Desserts and Paper Menus have been replaced with a QR sticker and a breath mint.   Since 2023 online reservations for tables of one has increased by 30 percent.  We are pretending to participate in an online class as the only student. Going out to dinner has become a correspondence course in dating, rather than a date.

​It’s deep damp January, and we are on the brink of a vengeful takeover. We are pretending to care about fascism, and we are pretending that Europe is not already at war on a larger scale, while local infrastructure is sabotaged regularly, and planes accidentally fall from the sky.  We are pretending we get good service, at places which suck. We are pretending that our food is organic, healthy, while your hands swell, and tummies cramp. January 6th reminds us that America is still pretending not to be embroiled in a nativist crusade for white Christian supremacy. We are all Pretending to take ourselves seriously, take ourselves someplace, while not leaving our desktop, our doorstep. We are adapting, inventing systems, to cope through loneliness, while posting youthful selfies, instead of the stunning old fucks we've become. We are emulating favorable aspects, which we observe of others, hoping something sticks.  We imitate our costumes, speech, affect, gait, dress, dance-moves, our hairstyles, our religion, past-times, bad habits, and customs. And we do all of that to belong to a larger organism, which is in decline. I am a pretender, and I am the sum total of the junk I once held sacred, crap that I've eaten, collected, wasted, vomited, tossed out, and waded through for decades. Sometimes I’ll scrap everything, perhaps plagiarizing the better aspects of what I've seen -- What I have become.
Imitation is a religion, The hard-disc a temple. Opinions always align with the reviews we’ve read. We simulate a walk, a run, a ride, a row. even golfing can be done from home.  We are pretending to laugh, pretending to fit in, pretending to matter, I pretend to care, and frequently I pretend to work.
I wonder what my life would be like if I were more genuine. If I were, instead of the tapestry of germs and junk I drag around -- Valued for some intrinsic quality unique to me alone. Perhaps, I’d have been a contender.  Nothing borrowed, nothing stolen, nothing soft peddled, nothing synthetic to myself.  Native and raw, I'd still likely suck.
Truth and pretense don’t cancel each other out, they only postpone a reconciliation of the self to a larger organism, which we are actively dismantling now. No rush, they are already breaking down the show by the time you begin your search for tickets. Secular America is reconstituting itself at the mega-church.
​Tonight, the makeover of American religious freedoms applies its orange toner in the mirror of a wrathful god, and I'm pretending he's not real.
We are about to be appalled every waking moment for the next 1460 days by the most fake human ever., and I am pretending not to care about evangelical marauders as I write this. 
I am pretending to enjoy one-in-four meals with close friends while I keep my ideas to myself.  I pretend to give a shit about obscure, even remote events, where empathy is warranted. I'm pretending that two of the five books I'm reading concurrently are decent. I've pretended to belong to book-clubs, groups, gyms, teams, and I fake-it rather well in crowds.  I'm holding a plastic cup right now waiting for someone on-stage to awaken me. I join the audience, anxious, hopeful, mouth parted, awaiting my queue to clap.

If you've not yet taken a meaningful moment for yourself or for someone else today, or perhaps yet this year -- Amidst the kinetic swirl of Santa-Ana Winds, Wild-Fires, Volcanos, School Drop-offs, Funerals, Dog-Grooming, Final Exams, Yoga Injuries, Hangovers, Missed Deadlines, Tax Bills, Snow-Storms, Power-Outages, Confessions, Car-Wrecks, Snow-Shoveling and Migraines, and a high of twelve degrees...  And if your holiday vacation wasn't exactly what you'd saved up for. You can always fake it.  And... You'd be in good company. 
If you didn't unwrap the thing you'd prayed to Santa-Jesus for, you'll likely order it anyway, and a dynamic web-page will have decided which brand you buy. What may be missing this second week post-apocalypse, is to contemplate what you still have to be grateful for, just before our country goes to shit (again). You may think you need some alone time, or a new pair of shoes.  You may believe that your best remedy involves a good book, some solitude, a walk in the park, a punk show..., a vinyl record. Perhaps it is silence.  But, most likely it's some human contact.

"Where the Ad's take aim, and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender."

Because we all fuck up our best holiday plans, to some extent and we still get up and do it again. January 15th is the International Day of "The Pretender".  Where we listen more than we talk, and read more than we flick, Give more than we take... And 'Giving a shit' this early in the year, I suppose, may qualify us to be human again. To claw back from a filthy sub-stack of winter’s dark web.
 
Today is the day that we'll let go of having to suck it in, while we suck it up. Perhaps we are pretending to be nice for everyone else's sake. Today we'll trash malingering leftovers. Perhaps we'll leave the TV off, 'til we toss-out those take-out containers. Today, I told the kid at the coffee shop that, "We'd only just met", [and that] "I gave your tip to my Garbage man, my Mail Man, and my Dog Groomer, who always come through for me". Today, I brought dinner to my neighbor’s house, and drove 250 miles to visit elderly friends just to check in on them.  I wrote a few letters to newly minted strangers and spun my chair around to jet them off to the letter box.  I remember this estranged feeling of being human, and being part of a larger organism, well before I'd taken the shape of some bleak winter island. In seclusion, I'd forgotten about so many things, & the fragile lattice of people who'd shaped me, whom I've (perhaps) taken for granted. 
​Fair weather friends, never call mid-January, unless their TV breaks, their internet goes down, or someone dies.  There was a spike in deaths when they certified the certifiable. Good people left the game simply to quash its unrelenting background noise. Far less people sing in their cars... Nearly nobody owns a legitimate home stereo.  A portable web speaker sits on the counter, like the speaker phone from Charlie's Angels, lonely uninspired, we await musical instruction from a non-randomized algorithmic playlist. Then more thumbing through phones for the song’s meaning. I try to contextualize how any person from outside our culture, perhaps aliens, would observe billions of people at dinner, driving, jogging, cycling, and sunning themselves on a beach-holiday staring deeply into tiny screens for wisdom, for company. How we must appear from outside the bubble. Swiping for food -- Posture stooped and slouchy.  A four-top with three lost to a 3" screen. 

I'm pretending it wont be quite so bad.
​
Make-believe sketches in the season’s margins, establishing the time scale for Winter's cruel work. To get clean of the blahs, I’ll begin by tossing those tiny hot sauce containers I’ve been keeping for some reason, and throw away a dozen flimsy plastic sporks, cheap chopsticks, soy packets, tiny tubs of parmesan, single serving chili-flakes, and 6 condiments of unknown origin.   Perhaps I’ll bake something, embarrass myself at Karaoke, and then hit that 4 AM Punk Bar.
​If I make it ‘til spring, I'll need to pretend to really enjoy winter.

Man! this Jackson Brown Track is Magic.

What if we could simply go back?

Perhaps not strangely, the realization of time travel largely depends upon a shit-ton of capital investment, a bit more 'time' (ironically) to get things right, and a ton of negative energy, (even more ironic) which we already have in spades here in the U.S.A.  As Nasa states in their conclusion from initial feasibility studies with JPL on Time travel, They acknowledge it's "more than theoretical possibility",  "...The concept (of Alcubierreian Time-Travel) is still a mathematical toy until the need for negative energy can be adequately addressed". Should we perhaps ask the White House for some of that magical fuel?

With arbitrary parameters R > 0 and σ > 0., Alcubierre's specific form of the metric for viable Time Travel can thus be written as the following handy equation:
𝑑𝑠2 = −𝑐2𝑑𝑡2 + [𝑑𝑥 − 𝑣𝑠(𝑡)𝑓(𝑟𝑠)𝑑𝑡]2 + 𝑑𝑦2 + 𝑑𝑧2
ds2=(vs(t)2f(rs(t))2−1)dt2−2vs(t)f(rs(t))dxdt+dx2+dy2+dz2.
I'm unsure (of course) as to whether you may believe we can move through time more quickly or more slowly, than our droll slog through a midwestern winter -- Or even if you'd care to go back in time to fix some shit right now... But when you look at the math, it sure looks possible. Especially when, and if technology catches up with theory.  Before then -- Like most inventions, Time-Travel remains science fiction.  Nobody gives a fuck what I think. Really. 
What is important, is that tech billionaires are competing for insane tax-subsidized NASA contracts, including 'lunatic' plans to colonize Mars. Which is way fucking stupid. Elon thinks this is his ULTIMATE, Bug-Out Shelter, so fuck New Zealand, right? Mars,  Instead of Time-Travel?, seems to me a stupid fucking investment.

But "Space travel", is NOT "time-travel", and the rest of this trip is going to fucking blow when you see your Hotel.

Mars: that totally hostile wasteland (way more desolate than Vegas with or without burning Cyber trucks). A red planet which is completely inhospitable to humans. Seated in coach, This trip will be the literal worst fucking idea anyone ever had. Like being air-dropped along a trump-era Mexicali border-path just to get a mean summer tan.  THIS, excursion without water, I.D., a visa, or any hope for survival whatsoever is way fucking lame. Like Mars.

Space is loosely defined as: "EMPTY, if a bit more boring than Mars". So perhaps Mars is even a bit less fun than being rounded-up and later caged by white-nationalist border patrols in a wicked hot desert.  You feel Desolate, desperate... You may initially be grateful to see someone, anyone else alas, for a moment.  But "Space travel", is NOT "time-travel", and the rest of the trip is going to fucking blow. Until someone can use Alcubierre's time travel plan, driven by copious amounts of Earth's abundant "negative energy".  We are not going anywhere fast. Spinning our magical wheels.

Meanwhile somewhere near Davenport Iowa, an only-child falls dead asleep, exhausted after playing with cousins at aunt and uncle's lovely home on Christmas eve. They are carefully, quietly carried out to the car, sleeping soundly as they are driven home two towns away. They drive for hours, and are later being tucked into a happy blue bed, lined with H.A. Rey books, and stuffed animals -- They awaken way too fucking early on Christmas morning to a shit-ton of presents.  Is this NOT Time-Travel?

For my money, I'd prefer to see investment in a mode of transportation where I simply awaken comfortably at any given destination.  No hassle, No TSA, No road rage, No cramped coach-class single-serving cutlery.

Has anyone ever wondered what the fuck people are actually doing up there in "Empty Space", On a space station? In fact when you think of it as "Empty" and even call it "EMPTY", instead of "Space" -- It seems rather self-evidently "UN-FUCKING-FUN".  Research....  Is it really "research"?

Building a way cool new rocket-ship, (which is basically a red-hot jet-fueled man-member), is a bit like getting excited about a brand-new electric sports-car which you still have to drive manually, cautiously, and slowly through heavy rush-hour traffic every damn day, just to pay for the fucking note & insurance on the thing in the first place.  So why is it that humans equate time travel with 'Space", and why is Space travel (mediocre rocketry) still so highly venerated that we aspire to make new larger ones every day? IF The Moon landing were done and dusted... then what is the rat-race to Mars really about, besides braggadocio B.S.?  Where are the Jet-Packs we were promised as children, and if we had them, could we not travel someplace interesting?, Like Michigan?

Fuck Elon!, and Fuck all of that reckless burning of "the people's" tax-subsidized cash to light the weekend wick of billionaire-boys-club benders.  Back-yard BBQ bull-shit boy-games  involving 400 tons of lighter-fluid, while really kind humans suffer, starve, helpless, and homeless... Seem strange to anyone else?  Here is a brilliant first step for the "DOGE-DOLTS"... sit for a dozen grueling congressional hearings on how this "research" is beneficial to it's constituents.

It's like space-era crusades, where (wait for it), Men (again) decide not to conquer any more (new) land but instead go about slaughtering each-other for not digging their version of the facts and some wacky religion.  Conquest of Mars, or "Empty-Space" for that matter is another stupid lark. Like paying for a shitty album, with one OK track, just for the right to say you'd heard of them first. What really happens when living out there all alone with your Tesla Mars-buggy?  Boredom. Blissful Beautiful Boredom.  Mars Colonies are as fictive as Fox News, but you can't use a sharp axe to escape Mars. This is not to diminish many way cool new space telescopes, which have little to do with fictional Martian Colonies, and Space-Based warfare. Space telescopes launched a decade ago give real insight into our human origin story, well before we flushed it down the toilet. Time seems to slow during some significant incidents, such as a car wreck, or a bike accident, but also in an injury, a high-dive, or a gymnastics routine. This is called a Time Expansion Experience. Moving objects of larger mass appear to have a distinct time-scale as compared to smaller objects throughout "space".   Between the two reside the possibility of controlling our own time travel.

Empty space without time-travel portends a Sisyphean Odyssey, without end,  or justifiable reward for humankind.  NASA says that until we can make a machine arrive someplace meaningful in a far more efficient time-scale, we are spinning our wheels. So Cool Your Jets, because anyway Mars will be rather like Nogales, or Santa Fe... for a Canadian -- a strangely beautiful foreign landscape --  Peaceful if you can pack enough good shit to eat, drink, and play with, to fend off boredom in your desert time-share, because it's too fucking hot outside. With  nothing much else to do, but meth, and whisky, we succumb to writing bad blogs, and the socials.

Look, I'll be the first person in the mosh-pit to welcome Space-travelers. In particularly if they look like Bowie in the "Man Who Fell to Earth" or the copycat "Terminator"... But let's begin with welcoming  all of the lovely "Aliens" living right here on Planet Earth.
Mars is rather crappy, and time travel is how you use yours.

We all have limited time, and most of us have broken time-machines -- What matters is what one does with it.

Try this Book out: "Time Expansion Experiences" by Steven M Taylor


Last Night At The Bar

"My flying saucer is Ziggy Stardust My time machine is a bicycle", He Said
"I'm stuck", She said
"So you don't have a car then?"
She looks at her phone.
"Nothing but Negative Energy"
"Our timeline is non-linear."
"Pardon Me?"
"I Left my charger at home"
Two percent remaining,  panic
"Faith is a passable forgery"
But Western Union has one of those pens.
It's Mid-January
And everyone's desperate for a party.
So it's loud as fuck.
Shoulders knotted into my neck
"It's loud here", "really fucking loud!"
"Right?"
Teeth stained with wine
Dehydrated, My heart pounds ...I ask her if she could "stop talking about work"
For just a minute?
"Any Books you love?"   Changing the topic? 
Then, a loud car-wreck outside the front window
Who's just now staggering in.
"Where you from?" Beautiful ring", she questions.
"...I'm an artist, painter really."
"Lovely", "showing anything"?
"But I've only finished one so far."
"One what?, Painting?"
"Long Story."
"I've got about 12 minutes until my Lyft arrives..."
"Okay... Let's do this."
Back to, "Where you from?"
"I've painted a portrait of God."
​"Yeah?"
"Wisconsin."
"God from Wisconsin too?" She asked.
"Nope, nowhere near there."
"How was it?"
"What?, he said" 
"When she sat for you, 
"She Nice?"
"God's NOT a she"
"How do you know?"
"God is something else, Way cooler"
"I have to ask..., is it a nude?, the picture?"
"Clever!"
"Nah, No nudity, just a painting really"
"Where is home?"
"What?"
"The ride is taking you home?"
"No... elsewhere."
...
"Okay cool, ...So anyway, I have to be someplace"
"Sorry."
"Sorry?"
"Do you have a picture of your portrait?"
"What portrait?"
"'God' "I mean, On your phone?"
"Oh, yep."
"May I?"
"Sure"
[She moves in closer]
"Ready?" [He swipes a few times.]
​[The room mutes]
There is no sound, None
No movement
He hums something from "Black-Star".
She looks beautiful and Lost
​He sets his phone in her palm.
Her eyes dilate,
As she falls from her stool
Her bag spills under the  crowd,
...and the music returns, loudly
He lunges for his phone, and lifts her up
"I'm a black star... I'm a black star"
Plays
"It's fucking Bowie", She says.
"Yes, I think".
The music changes
To Theologians, and her phone pings
"What's happening?"
"To Me?"
"You saw him? That's the Picture."
"Holy Fuck!"
"Holy Fuck, yep!"
"Let's Go!"
​
We get into her car, as snow falls.

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:
Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
On old long syne.

Of course whenever this incantation is sung aloud, it is already too late for reconciliation, but the sentiment and the nostalgic question is noteworthy.  As always the appropriate singer is  a Scotsman, fragrant with Lagavulin, beer & haggis.
What first comes to mind are the torrid letters from a past girlfriend (when we sill called them that); Letters ritually burned in my weber grille just before leaving my old apartment, for a new city and a new beginning... The Bobby Burns song begins by posing a rhetorical question: Is it right that old times be forgotten? The answer is generally interpreted as a "call to remember long-standing friendships".[9]  It is always appropriate to know where one comes from and how they have landed exactly here -- Which begins within the retro-perspectival tunnel of contemplation. Like Dickensian Time-Travel, ghosts revisit us on holidays to poke fun.   But... to become well regarded, is to become wealthy.

Remembering this oft dreadful feeling of kissing goodbye, The songs, and sounds of celebrants as they snore, and sleep off an entire year's worth of forgettable moments, is classic "Old Lang Syne". Half drunk cans of  still beer remains -- Memories, many will try to erase, linger before their inevitable reboot.  Good Morning! What is it which most harkens in the New year? Dread? Is it the pursuit of some mythical newness?, as if a clock tower could ring absolution. Or is it the feeling of cheating on your past, expecting a clean slate for all of one's crimes? Absolution is the auld lang syne.
​
This (largely plagiarized) Robert Burns poem most encapsulates:
A. Post-trump-era funk.
B. The Seasonal affective disorder of January 1.
C. Post-Covid Identity-Crisis malaise.
D. The end of Western democratic mismanagement over all human endeavor. 
E. Selfish dismantlement of social order, whilst taking our lovely contentment for granted.
F. All of the Above

ʃɪd o̜ːld ə.kwɛn.təns bi fər.ɡot
The Internet Bubble having truly popped, smearing hot plastic trash everywhere, broken vacuums, charging-cords, cardboard boxes blanketing our otherwise lovely landscape. We are left to consider, if forgetting isn't (perhaps) better than remembering where we'd gone wrong. The Blahs are indeed real, but they are not a ready replacement for being happy. oːld ə.kwɛn.təns come at a person without invite, and they are hard to ward off. They naturally come mid-winter, when my vitamin D levels have bottomed-out. They reliably arrive on "January One".

Last year I broke up with my entire family, but not over something petty. Nor for semantic differences.  Nor because of Covid, Vaccines, Fauci, Trump, Palestine, nor merely for their actual behaving badly, (as they have), but not before trying -- I left them for my own mental health.
​Considered justifications bounced off of many close friends -- My 'real' relatives, returned similar astonishment as to how my very darling siblings could have become so conceded, so base, and so petty, as to be unwilling to participate in "family" whatsoever for decades -- And then to criticize those who do it well.
As comparisons go, we all split up with friends over politics, babies, pets, recycling, global warming, sports teams, venereal diseases...  And for many, having moved to some smug suburb, ostensibly keeping their families safe, this broadens the gap of our very different lives. But Family had, (until now), seemed immune to dissolution. And our differences had seemed not so far apart. Our cohesion mandatory, unwavering.

There is nothing new in the act of falling away from former friends. As one discovers, adjusts, and rearranges how they'd like to be perceived.  People change -- Plain and simple.  Families also change, but unlike "All In The Family", or "The Brady Bunch", there is no special connective tissue preventing a family from decomposing. Few of us consider how to navigate our lives with the goal of later being well regarded.  Instead we adopt a new crowd when the old one no longer suits our interests.
Moving away from old college friends, or relocating for work... A family, nearly always appeared as this thing which (I'd imagined) was permanent.  Much like the home one grows up in, had seemed a hub to a wheel of growth. Elastic bands stretched out like rays from our parent's curved coffee table, allowed broad leeway, and the freedoms to invent oneself.  Yet... Retracting rubber-bands always returned siblings to it's core year over year, for what (I'd believed) was intractable, (Generally around the Holidays).
​Many rediscover religion during crisis, or death. They may attend Church during a tragedy, or Only at Christmas when feeling un-moored.  Some may say a prayer at a funeral,  But, the realignment of family always seemed nonfungible.  A warm permanence. 

​"We two have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne."

It's not you, it's me, and I understand the consequence for not having worked on some relationships. Especially the ones we may take for granted.  I know the heavy lift required to reinforce these bonds.  This year however, in spite of trying my level best, I found out that family is not actually permanent. Nor in the way I'd expected, is it always there when you need it.  Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Is it broken, or even worth fixing? 

"Auld Lang Syne" fairly epitomizes the wishful New-Years page turn. 

I got pocket dialed by an old friend today, News Years Day. And of course, I'd received all sorts of strange out of the woodwork texts from friends, past and obscure. But the pocket dial seemed more to me that someone called to tap that Auld Lang Syne, and lost their nerve. As Holidays trace the life-lines which construct us, I'm sure that we'd all conjured similar memories for and of, those who'd helped shape our current world.  And so it goes that we reflect when we are idle enough to do so, upon our missteps, and those myriad souls who've shaped our understanding of the self. 

Whether I'm locked in prison figuratively today, or (for fuck sake) actually incarcerated... Having enough pause to reflect upon where we come from, and the connective fractals of our being, "Auld Lang Syne" fairly epitomizes the wishful New-Year's page turn.   This non-literal shortest day of the year, is always (fucking) New Years Day.  It is one generally without chores.  Where we perhaps fix the boiler, or wipe down the bar, but today, we mostly reflect upon relationships for auld lang syne ["Old Long Since"].   "Since basically forever", ...or more appropriately "Since you'd last thought about them".  Or, simply... "For Fuck-Sake".  And as the poem goes, "Auld Lang Syne's" latter verses wander through meadows picking flowers,  sharing pints, paddling rough streams... Together and apart, reminding us of what a dickhead we may have become. Nostalgia rears to shore up patterns within our human experience which bring both joy and sorrow.

My Family collapsed when my Mother died, burdened with shame and true sorrow. And as my siblings were inventing new ways of behaving badly, slinging blame for who did whatever wrong... We alas combusted in earnest whereupon my Father died nine months later.  With nothing left to bring us back together, and nothing remaining to complain about -- It alas appeared that each sibling now fostered one of two permanent familial failings:
[A.] loathing for those who'd judged them harshly for "NEVER LIFTING A FUCKING FINGER TO HELP THEIR AILING PARENTS..." Or
[B.] A throne from which to sprinkle resentment upon the selfish ones who'd "NEVER LIFTING A FUCKING FINGER TO HELP THEIR AILING PARENTS."

There is a rite of passage in saying goodbye to family, and I've recently consoled neighbors, and friends who are struggling with the same care-giver conundrum. I'm now sure that this is how many families break up, and whether they ever reconcile  remains a mystery. 

"And surely you'll buy your pint cup!, 
and surely I'll buy mine!
And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet, 
for auld lang syne."

My takeaway, grazing leftovers contemplating this short & lazy day where things often go wrong... I lounge in awe of the wishful absurdity that 'a single day', (or a single song) could wipe away past dumb-shit behavior -- If we could simply find the will to drunk-text upon new-years.  Or to pocket dial those who we know we should have kept in touch with, we'd be absolved. Hopefulness builds in the incantation of this poem.  What is most profound, I suppose is remembering, Old acquaintances', and of course reaching out to those, as awkward as that is. One should do that right?  ... yes definitely, if one is able. It is a fascinating time, and if you cannot fix it, then sing about it, and move on.

 With a full heart and speech impaired by Speyside whisky, one can recite the Scotts version, ...Although every year I return to a more melancholic Dan Fogelberg, (alto sax and all).
​