​Well, I came to a conclusion while in the shower this morning: the only rational explanation is that the very upper echelon of Exxon, the Pentagon, the Saudis, the Chinese, various shady billionaires and possibly even the Kochs, know that electromagnetic field technology has advanced to a degree that Plasma Fusion is no longer a Phillip K. Dick subplot but actually on the horizon, and so blithely ignoring our communal carbon death event while spending billions on propaganda to deny obvious and indisputable climate truths is really just a pragmatic game to frack as much wealth out of the world economy as possible over the next ten years, right up to the precipice where California, Texas, and most of the planet's coastal cities are uninhabitable, at which point Plasma Fusion reactors will become as ubiquitous as gas stations, or probably pre-loaded as apps on the new iPhone CoolMax 12, and clean, readily available energy will flow freely to all who desire it, whereupon a worldwide combustion/consumption enema will return us to the untouched, oxygen-abundant, coolly verdant Pliocene era of 64 million (give or take) years ago, when the greatest source of pollution was Stegosaurus dumps and the offal left over from the latest conquest of Flightless Terror Birds, known to wreak havoc well into the Miocene Epoch and have a blasé, if not unrepentant, attitude about picking up after themselves. Because, really, is it possible to be rich enough, or sell a sufficient tonnage of plastic water bottles, or liquify enough plateaus of Canadian Tar Sands to smugly assume that the sun is not also rising for you?

​As much as the consensus seems to be that millenials are weak and coddled (an opinion I don't happen to share, because who can control the relative richness or tidal shallows of the culture that happens to rise around their ankles during the inward-hormonal madness of their formative years?), I do think that no young person of today went through the particular trial of fire that I endured, namely at the age of eleven being dragged by my aunt and much older cousins to a late-night showing of "The Shining" in a creepy theatre in upstate New York. Clearly, I still haven't recovered. Buying a threadbare copy of "Remain In Light" a few years and many therapy sessions later may have been more an unconscious imperative than mere coincidence.
And yes, it probably helps to be Gen X to understand this joke.

​Spent the very early hours unable to sleep and turned to thinking, as I often do, about Stanley Kubrick. Should I feel bad that it took me 53 years to realize HAL is actually a slyly coded takedown of the acronym IBM, let alone the soulless cultural monolith it represented in 1968, given that H precedes I, A precedes B, and L precedes M in the alphabet?
Or maybe that's just a coincidence.
But is it also a coincidence that a film about the fallacy of a species measuring itself by technological as opposed to human evolution that culminates in a computer achieving sentience and its first action being the sterile, emotionless murder of its creators, is just as germane today as it was fifty-three years ago?

​Not to get all schadenfreude this morning, but some dude paid $518,628.00 for Tom Brady's last touchdown ball literally hours before Gisele's Husband announced his un-retirement, rendering that pigskin decidedly less valuable. It's tempting to feel a passing sympathy for the karmic lack of timing, but I can't quite muster it. What does one actually do with five-hundred K of equity sunk in a bladder of cheap leather and stitching that otherwise retails for $89 at Dick's Sporting Goods? Encase it in amber? Build a shrine? Mark it with a bloody handprint and whisper to it late at night like bearded Tom Hanks?
"Hey," people might say at your next soiree, while gazing up at the mantle, turf-stained laces facing out, "Is that Tom Brady's last touchdown football?"
"Sure is," you'd say with pride, topping off martinis all around.
"So how much it run you?" someone would ask.
"Oh, around half a mil," you'd say, with a modest smirk.
"Did you consider maybe donating that money to Gluttonous Purchaser's Anonymous instead?" the wife of Chet from accounting (who you've never really liked but Suzie insisted on inviting anyway) would say, and your face would flush and you'd stammer for a bit, a snappy comeback or even plausible answer on the tip of your tongue but ultimately eluding you, and so you'd have to settle for, "...but...it's...Tom Brady's last touchdown ball."
Things would be quiet through desert and everyone would leave early and Suzie would toss the dog blanket at you and make you sleep on the couch, but at least you'd be anywhere from between eight and ten feet from the ultimate trophy of the most storied franchise in all of NFL history, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Hey, as it says in Exodus Chapter 20 verse 4, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, so you might want to think twice about bidding on ultimately banal and meaningless objects of worship, let alone trust that The Golden Boy is ever as good as his word."