Do we really have to correct another historical record again so soon?  Because nobody gives a fuck about history any more, and even gray liberals are normalizing the fall of Democracy; as it's written -- Let's begin our day with a slice of jelly toast in upside-down-land.  It is all white-noise to comment upon such daily chaos.  In our news vacuum we watch Orange jelly eaters destroying America like it is a reality show we can turn off. But the failure of America is real. This is happening.
Because the charade of speculative panic about insane tariffs were bandied about the world with outlandish conspiracies as to what they really mean, I too will waste ink to report some truth. 
Chump, is a lonely, depraved, senile, failure who once found a lever on a field-trip to the Smithsonian. Here he discovered that African History was legitimately cool, and that slavery made his daddy rich. While the teacher was in the potty. The kids shoegazing around exhibits, and placards, A bored and confused Chump discovered a lever.  When he pulled it, the clatter drew so much attention, faces in the diorama illuminated, and an amazing animatronic calliope clattered to life. The giggles from classmates implored him for more.  Naturally, all the kids in class stared in awe at the defiant kid  who would certainly be punished, or expelled for touching the levers.  Initially, no guards nor docents, and no teachers saw him hit that lever, and nobody spoke up because they'd hoped the idiot (who'd  surely soon be expelled), would do it again.

​And, of course nobody can take their eyes off a train wreck... Frankly they would love it if he was dumb enough to do it again before their teacher marched out of the ladies room and began her trademark reprimand.  There were "Ooh's", and "Oh man is he busted..." "...Sooo Busted", "In Sooo much trouble", etc... But because the teacher had been up all night drowning in a bottle of Chardonnay, she didn't give a fuck, and so the class moved on to the next exhibit without incident.
This President has absolutely no original ideas, but as a class clown, and a bully, he would combust without constant attention. and so he keeps pulling that lever. I'm not completely stupid -- I do know that Chump and his boy band bet heavy on Futures and made a mint in the maelstrom.  I know that there are all sorts of side-room deals, but these criminal mob ideas are not only NOT his own,  they are also nothing new.  
Trump was losing One Trillion dollars a day for 6 days straight.

Their are some far off places where nobody has ever heard of this man, Or jelly for that matter, and they don't speak of Dr Doom every day in panicked histrionics. Nomadic tribes, Sheep Herders, Fishermen, and Bedouins who manage to avoid the tyranny of worrying about what some far off boy-king and his idiot entourage are up to, live free.  So when Mr. Crazy asked his loyal yes men where in the world their may be more idiots and savages who didn't yet live in fear of him, he pressed them to bring one into his Television Set. or to bring them this news. [Chump] 'Would soon become a household name even in remote huts, and stone-age tribal communities'; Those who comb sheep for precious downy wool, or those who shoot seals adrift upon massive sea ice.  [Chump] 'Wants them to also know that he has these fancy levers to pull, and that they too should fear him'. 

But because the "So Called Democrats" keep hoping he will make some epic public blunder, and perhaps literally explode -- They just watch silently the burning train-wreck of America.  Silently sheepishly hopeful that there will be enough tiny pieces left to rebuild, if they ever get back in the driver's seat. And just to be clear, when US Bond yields drop our Federal interest rate goes way up, and we are staring at Recession, which would hand the House back to Dems... Basically, Mr. Stable Genius incited a rummage sale at the highest level, inspiring foreign and domestic investors to dump the safest of all treasuries.  Everyone is pulling out of the "Safe Space" which had been America.  For perspective, Musk claimed to be saving America a Billion here and another Billion There, by laying off a quarter million people in  a few months -- Whereas Trump was losing One Trillion dollars a day for 6 days straight.  [by MAGA Messiah deal maker Chump.]  That's lighting fire to a Thousand Billion Dollars a day from the wealth of his donor's stock! Gone! So there would be a rally, as the bro's high-fived, and chest bumped... but what is gone is gone.  America is unreliable -- Not to be trusted. Of course, "In God We Trust", but God can't save your 401K, and Chump cannot be trusted.

The So called Trade war is not that at all.  There is no trade war... Just a lunatic, and complicity. Chump needs everyone to be discussing him.  EVERYONE to fear him.  Even.., everyone to laugh at him.  He needs constant combustion to remain in motion, to be relevant. He needs to be doing something, anything, because before him, things just worked, and the "American exhibit" basically spoke for itself.  The dark energy of chaos, keeps all eyes on him, lest he fizzle out as the failure he most assuredly is.

Smucker's recently lobbied Chump to tariff the EU, and France in particular so that Delicious French fruit preserves such as Bonne Maman would cost more than Goober-Grape at Costco..  Smucker's even wanted Goober-Grape to cost less than Bonne Maman in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, etc... This "brilliant strategy" was misguided, in the belief that adjusting cost could make literal shit taste better. But more misguided, because Americans and in particular Trump voters love cheap crap.

Imagine this... "If The good stuff cost more..., Americans would prefer Smucker's", to a lovely jar of French or Belgian Preserves.  Ipso-facto, the French would adore Smucker's crap at a lower cost,  to their higher quality local jams because, well, they couldn't possibly know what they were missing in such an exciting flavor palette: Concord Grape, Squeeze Berry, Goober-Grape, Mint Apple Jelly, and Sweet Orange Marmalade. The reality of this game, is that The French do not give a fuck about Smucker's, because, well they don't prefer that strange American taste;  And also... They already have a better product.  Much like Germans do not prefer Chryslers to Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Mini or VW, There will always be demand for German Autos in Trump-Land, and IF they build more factories here -- They will likely be robotic, not requiring a cadre of racist white power to run.

In the same vein, ETSY --  loosely defined as [A garage-sale of crafty crap scattered across a country lawn in a tornado], will be truly fucked when people have to pay double and a half for crafty junk they didn't need or want anyway. This goes for Dollar Stores, Harbor Freight, Farm and Fleet, and most cottage industries, held and adored by MAGA voters. This Sudden death is real, and the trickle-down of the stand-off will be epic.
The real fact is that MAGA's quiet enablers lack the fortitude to bear this burden. Former Dollar store shoppers, will be having a fuck-ton more rummage sales, bake sales, and the like, to make ends meet. So what happens when a steady stream of broken exercise equipment, and HSN debris stops flowing into 'Merica at below what it could possibly cost to produce?  What happens when his entire constituency run out of debris to decorate the lawn? Who will save them when they can no longer buy more cheap junk to decorate folding tables out front?  When there is nothing to feed the chickens with?

Archaeologists mostly uncover society's trash piles to reconstruct ancient cultures. Likewise it is an accurate method to get to know a trump voter parked on the shoulder to stroll their Yard Sale.  In a world where nobody cares much for history, "Proper Rummage" will elucidate his legacy, just before being burned along with any books about it.  In a sense, a 125% tariff on China is the most ecological leap of faith, a Republican lawmaker has ever made.

To believe that pulling a tariff lever will make naive consumers prefer shitty home spun brands to imports is bananas. Another classroom prank in the chaotic arsenal of a boy who never knew a consequence for stupid. 
Anyway... Who would purchase shitty trash, just because it's cheaper, more sugary, more disposable, tasteless, even orange, simply because it costs less... Hmm?
Well -- That trick ONLY works on "Stupid Americans".

​...So I suppose he may be right to keep his tiny hands on those levers.
​

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.
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​

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?
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