What about the whole Burning Thing?..
While not being intrinsically cool or crispy, we often struggle with 'rational' v. 'make-believe'. We may fancy ourselves as fictional characters, projecting false competencies which today we don't really possess, while dwelling in a fictive construct we call "our reality",  [See also:  Social Media].
I, for instance, do not resemble that one Linked-in cover photo any longer, but I don't update it.  Our new  american pageant floats its figurative, fictive idols above everyone like obese Parade Balloons. Tethered to tiny human hands marching slowly below the protective dome or my WAN I.P. (See also MAC Address)... Normies (marginalized minions who blindly follow, see also: 'canon-fodder')  struggle against gusty winds -- Bumping, and lolling, like drunks in sumo fat-suits... A tiny broken slave class which keeps wandering, holding up ludicrous swollen cartoon babies. [See also Zombies]... In this life -- Who wouldn't want to burn some shit to the ground? "I suppose the pay is good", one guy mutters as his shoulder yanks leftward, and another replies with a labored "Whew, fuck it's hot!", then a nod and a tired grunt. Occasionally the people required to suspend cartoon icons above the parade route, have an itch to scratch -- But they humbly hold on tight, squirming whilst idiots wave and jockey for a better view. Sickly sunburnt supporters who sucked at gym-class, safely dodge & bob their celebrity dirigible. All dressed up in slogan-wear to shame even Lollapalooza. All longing for an elusive signal. A sign... praise perhaps from their air-filled god. A nearby clown twists phallic balloons into elaborate shapes, and it would seem to the passer-by that everyone along the parade route is buying cheap glowing logo'd jetsam with government money. Asking the clown for a straight balloon was a non-starter. 
All of this is figurative, I suppose you could say.
Insurrection, or Parade? -- Heathen Idolatry, or Ecumenical bake-sale?
Completely devoid of authenticity, they wear the same tired uniform -- A six-year wash-worn C.M.A. awards outfit, complete with cut-offs, or plain Carhartt's and a cap.
The occasional Outlier yells, "This fucking revolution is coming for you! -- (and) YOU MOTHERFUCKERS will be the first against the Wall!" ...
Nobody hears another zealot over the squelch of cultists hoisting their puffy baby aloft. 
Occasionally the pageant slows, while support staff ask themselves "What the fuck am I doing here?" Short-lived self correction is quelled by the smell of Corn-Dogs, Port-o-Lets, and Diabetes, right before tossing a trash-can through a window. 
Aligned with the desire to restore narrow-minded 50's 'Archie Bunker' doctrine. Racism, and fundamental fascism override any fleeting notion toward self-correction. Everyone just does this same bumbling zombie-wander forward, whether it be On-line, or In-line... They hold meaningless slogans, and a balloon on a leash as clever retort for misplaced rage. Most are wearing red hats, ordered from Alibaba -- Furiously flinging mildewed junk from Chinese cardboard into the crowd. Make America Magic Again, and again... MAMA. Same logo emblazoned upon their giant rusty orange balloon head, donning, a plume of yellow.  A pasted swoop covering two thirds of its plastic hair plugs. Role Models..., sigh.
"My Life was real before the internet. My rage, my fears, my ambitions, and my desires came in knowable packages, which only needed to be opened". When the deliveries stopped, I filled my life with trash, and lost my grasp.  
"Anger is an Energy"  we suppose... But what is the motivation of the misinformed undereducated, (Normies)  skipping work for unpaid racist cheerleading? Interviews reveal that most hold themselves culpable in sedition sentencing. -They still believe their last stab at the totem pole was stolen by a fiction called ANTIFA. When the carnival comes to town every fucking day, through a gap in the tent so small It takes a few fingers to zoom in, one is bound to forget which was their favorite attraction.
Under the Big Top, we fall in love amidst a cartoon of bizarre faded fantasies. We prize "reality TV", and Coke IS the real thing. Its a filthy orgy and nobody checked for surveillance. When you imagine back to when you were 7, and how you saw your life play out, or end... Few could say they saw this coming. Cultists, affixed to a fictive icon so surreal, so pornographic, so unaligned with its crowd, as to be alien, and forgiven for getting them convicted. Fewer can say that they'd imagined themselves striving for "likes" or praise in a subreddit about nonsensical venom, because few imagined themselves ever striving (To be a  "Supporter"). Far fewer "supporters", imagined themselves in an actual cult -- But well... the same cadre of normies stormed the capitol, and the rest is history. Nobody brought their own agenda, Most were there for the ultimate seditious selfie...  ''Supporters' (See also: Minion, Normie, Super-Fan, Lacky), conflated algorithmic agendas spun by social media with bored contempt bled into their dialyses. All the while their fictional super-hero sugar-daddy didn't have his own plan.
​The end game was never an accomplishment -- Only to be popular!

Your adolescent Hollywood Crush was exaggerated, (of course it was). You know it is fact, that if you'd ever met your pin-up crush, (Eric Estrada perhaps) He'd soon tire of, and come to loath you too. Or soon enough you'd explore his/her dark side -- perhaps within a month?.. Short-lived idolatry doesn't retain the friendship you thought you'd forged. And so the poster comes down leaving tape and tack holes. This is why posters are cheap, and possibly why expedited Vegas Weddings are a real cash  business, but also reasonably priced. 
One does have to ink the deal before the fantasy fades in a wink.  But, most crazy Cults are forever.  Perhaps, this is why winning someone back, never fucking works. No real emotional or tangible capital is spent to recover the wayward ("day jus gone!")-- unless you are Patty Hearst.  What is it with Cult leaders, that sticks so tenaciously to the tongue of the meek? Why do we recite, and  buoy up belligerent balloons (fuckers), at the expense of our true tribe?, Our true selves? -- Escapism?
The chemistry of White frailty crystallizes in the void of positive role models.
Watching cartoons as a kid, was rather straightforward, advancing a classic Good v. Evil architecture. Today, evolutive Heroes and Villains are built more exaggerated & more grotesque, by the year.  Fantastic and fleeting icons with sweet skills, seemed far better than the real people you'd bunk with. But isn't this the current landscape?, Awash with so called savants, super-heroes, charlatans, billionaires, and mega-villains? From the hijacked amygdala of video game and Marvel franchises, flows an Indulgent golden stream of lunatics who teach resentment via idolatry. ...And being a minion is so fuuucking easy, right? Our Current world is populated with similar exaggerated frenemies? All of them boasting enviable lecherous features which defy gravity  & nature. Once meek super-heroes, with some sweet, if altruistic skills, became biopics of complicated inner turmoil; The mental and moral dilemmas deep within the psyche of homicidal Homelander. Our Idols are a smooth and sexy, nee pornographic version of the plain ordinary beige people we'd actually enjoy drinking light beer with.  But, glossy Fakers, and retouched Fucktards  get all the hits, make the clicks -- whilst we ordinary humans wish it so? I don't know any big celebrities personally, but I do know fake, and lame when I see it. 
​
The Internet is an epic exercise in chaos -- A free-market enclosure chaperoned by spoiled children -- It's all a fucking cartoon.
My young hero worship may have been Bukowski, and Miller -- Yeats, and Bowie, but I always knew that they did not give a fuck about me, and these giants came from humble roots. The catalytic effect of positive role models works when we see ourselves within their own analog timelines, and when we see our upbringing as ordinary.  There is no "Kool Lottery"!
Studying Graphic Novels in College (rounding out a liberal arts baccalaureate), informs  the majority that what we imagine is Fiction, is exactly that... Didactic maybe, but false.  What we pretend and what we believe share that gray space, just below the bleachers where bright paths may change, but never seem to. For effect, (perhaps) the internet has made a Porno out of nearly everything pure, wholesome, or altruistic. The Internet, lacks compassion, a compass, and a timeline. When you imagine the calendar, most people see an elongated flat disc, not unlike a clock face, and the months coordinate to ordinal compass headings.  Oh, Hey shit! that's simple human shit! The Internet is an epic exercise in Chaos Theory -- A free market chaperoned by a few coddled kids tugging the strings of every balloon animal floating below its ozone. No clock, No Compass, No mooring Ball... It's all a fucking cartoon now, Everything -- And nobody is sitting far enough back from the TV to tell their fantasy from a polished turd. Stepping outside of their bubble to Storm the Capital was the first real thing anybody involved had done in years, or in decades, so it's no wonder they were excited! 
(They even got permission slips from the President!)
Breathing only the base liquid of the World Wide Web, & of course Fox -- Can the truly idiotic be themselves? Be accountable? Can the misguided know choice?  If Their fate is a vile silo,  should people be forgiven for being stupid?
Today, within the bubble, Kids can't love anyone, because everyone is reprehensible as compared with their avatar.  Youth cannot be intimate, because intimacy requires vulnerability. Nobody is ever wrong, because wrong requires googling alternative facts to right, and fiction is spun to counter bad reviews. Inside the Bubble, good cannot thrive. Each and every conceited twat float their own balloon up a rope in defiance of the real gravity beneath their gaming chair, which takes up a fuck-ton of space in here --  where a drought from anything clever...  will strand most boats.

Our Idolatry in neutral, whilst picking off people in First-Person shooter burns the clock waiting for our chance to sit on the Orange Santa's Lap. Filled with rage, envy, and adavan, we worship the wrong cause. Truthfully nobody's had an original thought since that "one thing" which got them arrested in High School, and any cause, however horrible seems to be better than just sitting around.
Heroic, fat, and filled with warm air, our iconic giant balloon-headed cartoon god shines cynically down from the parade upon its sheepish supporters. New Boosters arrive by the minute, some marveling in a colored smoke-filled pageant Some skeptical that it's handlers may drift and bump a street-lamp or pop their prophylactic Messiah.  Some just hoping an  loathsome shooter in the crowd won't take aim at its worshippers. Most not speaking their dark desire; wishing, "...A bullet will pop that fat-fuck balloon", so we can all let go of these cursed ropes, and...." "BLAM!!"
​The 80's Mosh Pit served the lost, the angry, and the disenfranchised with a vent. A small valve in the angry balloon which will soon explode, or lay flaccid on a beautiful beach someplace. Perhaps the gulf coast.

The path your one friend took a few years back which entreated a vote for a lunatic, fractured more than just your friendship.  Draconian pathways to stem "the Numbers" made them invest in white sanctuary cities, and so now as "Supporters", or "Normies" they too are fully vested in the Red Pill Club. On the Rupert side of the iron curtain it is in fact so dark that one cannot see their hands upon holsters. You can forget about pretending that they are OK, or that a relo to a temporary condo in FL is well ...temporary.  They are no longer your friend. It may be safe to say that anybody who moved off the cuff to FLA (even the elderly) between 2018 and 2022 may have lost their marbles. 
What this magnificent parade needs today is to unplug, to cross the streams, and perhaps a trunk-full of marbles, and some good old fashioned 80's punk. Could a mosh pit, vent sufficient steam?  Deer Hunting, in lieu of a school?  Could Burning an effigy  of ones enemies, or several for that matter, provide sufficient surrogacy for vengeance?
Happiness, Is most likely a decision we can make.
This Halloween, if you have nothing nice to say, and are considering a violent coup, perhaps tap into your pagan past. As daylight dwindles, put on a punk playlist, stuff some old pants, and a hoodie with recycled Amazon trash, pin a name on it and fire it up.

Some say that the existential crisis humanity will all face from the inevitable maturation of A.I. will be unsubtle, swift, and surprising --And, um-like... well, existential? So what exactly does that mean?
​Well... I'm at this one party, amongst brighter, better looking, more affluent, and far more well-heeled people, who would dare to even speak with a nearly untouchable scum-bag like me, I often exchange blasé' volleys such as answering, "What do you do for a living?", or "What kind of car do you drive?", or some such about the weather, A tragic event, Political faux pas, or even (gasp) a question about a sporting outcome. And I often wonder like you do -- Why is it that nobody knows how to chat anymore?
When I go out to dinner, and pat my hip where my phone should be, like a smoker taps her toast, or an alcoholic washes down osso bucco with vodka... I don't despair, because as each and every other person in the restaurant is up-lit and aglow with their blue screen, scanning QR codes, to order and pay, and texting their friend directly in front of them, before Insta-gramming, the plate they will never really see, food they never tasted, or live streaming their vacuous visit to the bathroom... I continue to talk with my few remaining analog-world friends using an unplugged a cappella voice. I smear some bread in olive oil, and I chew the old school way, assured that my phone is safely on my kitchen counter, where it will sleep all alone well beyond my return home; Perhaps until the next morning when I will likely catch back up with it, and all that miraculous robot inspired shit which I may have missed. I figure 12 hours is just enough time to neglect the angry fuck-tard robots.

When I travel, I often wander unaware, in awe of the vistas, and compelling people, without reference to "recommended" spots, "Google Maps", or an online "hit-list" of "Must See Spots" written by a stranger (or robot) someplace on the innerwebs. I may also get a bit lost, using that paper map from the front desk of my hotel, or the grimy info booth at the train station. It may take me a while to realize that I'm truly lost, and without much ado, I'll likely sit down some place to have a bite, thumbing grease through a paper menu, and orienteering with a mis-folded paper map which will likely get a bit of food and a smeer of some such mess upon it, before I will re-fold the whole mess back into my pants pocket. Actually my pocket isn't a cool-ass slit on the side of my lycra leggings, because I just have the regular pants kind of pockets, and they may not be quite as sexy or slimming as a sheer body-suit with a lump-like bulge for my gadgets, but they do work to keep keys coins, and the poorly folded filthy maps  and money and  such handy.


When I go to a rock show, I actually watch the band, en-vivo (GASP!), regardless of how small they may appear from my cheap seats, and I'll rail against the temptation to watch the whole show from the far tinier 2 x 4 inch glow of that one dick-face directly in front of Row 234, seat 7A, holding his screen up in everyone's way. Somehow I get the feeling that nobody (even that Dick-Head holding his device in the air right in front of my face for each and every fucking song for two tedious hours) [Nobody] will ever see that low-light, shit-tastic video of this entire show buried in his phone. I'm also pretty sure even the fuck-wit in front of me, and the one five seats to his left, and the girl two down... have yet to see any of the performance themselves. When the clapping comes -- Because they both have a piss warm IPA in their left hand and a phone in their right... None of the thirty-eight-hundred of those other D-bag zombies in the same venue holding both beer and phone, could clap. But what cool person would do that anyway?

When I walked along the ocean, listening to the sea, and skipping stones, I often brush past and perhaps even photo-bomb a really fucking hot young couple who know exactly how to hold their phone just perfectly -- Because the app tells them how -- And the GPS point which  is most meaningful, give or take a few Millimeters. The Robot even tells them from what angle to snap the perfect post-able image. I realize they are really in love with themselves or each other, or whatever -- But I also wonder if they've left their shoes on simply because they forgot they were actually at the beach; Or if the app told them that the outfit wouldn't show up as well if they were a few centimeters shorter. Anyway, the sunset which they never saw was lovely, that night, and they giggle and pout their lips and angle the camera from above to shadow their weak chins and improve their hunched drop-neck postures, to remarkable fanfare from "friends" afar. I continue with my feet in the water until I'm completely immersed to cover my undies, and I realize that being in my underpants may not be what they wanted as their back-drop, but they can just use a filter to soften my form into fuzz for their dissolving bokeh horizon, and a shit-ton of digital applause.
Do you think the A.I. is also this conceited, or have they not fed that data into it's way smart mechanical mouth yet.

Saturation by A.I. Driven Dark Thoughts, and Horror, will certainly come to this new world when A.I. finally matures, right?
Somebody said the other day something about some such political event, and I remember that they were all up in arms, and later they were losing sleep because they heard such and such about this one really horrific event "that really fucking happened!", and how barbaric the slaughter was, and the sheer inhumanity of it was of a scale which would surely give rise to more violence, and more blood-shed, and they just had to tell me all about what I should definitely also be losing sleep about, ...and that these "Um like, one terrorist dudes were so fucking bad...", as they showed me some grotesque, but blurry images of some such atrosity some place. And so I took a sleep aid to fall asleep that evening and was restless all fucking night and my dreams were fitful and startling, and I could not focus for days at work, until I read in a real live newspaper that all of those images which were fucking aweful, "could not be corroberated by fact checkers in both the government nor in the media and soldiers may have exaggerated, etc..." and that perhaps they were actually even, "um-like faked". The next night I finally slept rather well. Until someone else reminded me about the hurricane, and the wild fire, and the Tsunami, and the bomb blast, which I was supposed to definitely follow on this one guys blog, and this one news feed, because I should stay up on current events of gastly proportions, and... "um-like  I should also be losing sleep as well, dude", said the robot.

And Last night right before bed I'd set the thermostat lower because it was a cool autumn night, and I knew this for a fact because my phone said so, and Also I had just come back from a long walk with the dog, and so I could corroborate with my (smart)-Phone that it was in fact a cool breezy autumn evening, and later when I woke up to grab another blanket, (because I was chilly) I glanced over at my Dumb-Fuck "Smart" thermostat, and it was set to 64 and was running for a while now rotating that tiny wheel on my electric meter so fast that I'm pretty sure I should be getting an SMS from the electrical utility to let me know I would be punished, and... Well I had to actually remove the piece of shit Nest Thermostat from the wall to get back to my icy sheets to try to catch up on sleep with all of these climate tragedies, and terrorists, humming this one live version of this one live track that I think I recall seeing on this one guy's tiny glowing device right in front of my face, and I think I remember him and his girlfriend checking this one blog with some other fucking tragedy, and some really fucking beautiful people on the beach at sunset, and I fell a sleep and I think that I'd dreamt about living in the woods, in a sod home, with an elevator, and wickedly fast satellite internet that I wasn't paying a dime for, but I didn't sleep well, so I cannot be certain.
Later just before dawn, I woke up cuddled my dog, and checked my phone for air-fares to anywhere but here. And... I recall that post by that one blogger who seemed to agree with that one billionaire who was also definitely wearing the same fucking cool ass shoes and the same T-shirt as that one dude in front of me at the concert who ruined the show. Seems the Robot already got to them, by making everyone dress alike. Both of whom seemed to keep popping up in my side-bar on the airfare web-page... and they both were discussing the "Existential threat" and the future of A.I., and they both had the same phone in the same silver phone case in their right hand, and a glass of tepid water in the other, and they were gesturing animatedly about how amazing A.I. would be, in the future...
The Future. (laugh)
The next night was Saturday, and after the play, We were out with some analog friends at a bar chatting with some newer A.I. people lit from below by the blue glow of someone's phone, and The good looking one said, "Um-like, what do you think about this new A.I. thing?" Existentially? I took a slow sip of my stale Red Bordeaux, and I told him, "The Fucking Internet already Fucked up the whole Mother-Fucking planet, and I blame Google and The fuck-tard Robots for your total lack of understanding of the word Existential"!