jabberwoCKY

I feel like I did a lifetime’s worth if reckoning with the prospect of an impending nuclear apocalypse before I turned 21, and you know what? I really haven’t missed it at all.

If you can’t be yourself,
you’re not in the right place.

I’m fundamentally opposed to the verb-ing of nouns, with the exception of “catastrophizing” which is a word that I have needed all of my life.

If you’re happy, then you’re doing something right. Whether that something is big or small doesn’t matter. Go with what makes you happy. Not exactly genius-level advice, but it’s what I’ve got today.

I’d like to think that after the past 10 years, we can safely redefine the concept of imposter syndrome to mean a healthy skepticism about whether anyone holding a position of power and authority is remotely qualified to do so.

Imagine a great actor reading your ad script? That’s child’s play. If you really want to pressure test it, imagine it’s being read by a bored and disinterested podcast host for the 50th time.

Some professors at the University of St. Thomas are doing a research project on the effects of the ICE occupation on Twin Cities parents. They're looking for parents who are US citizens, who live in the Twin Cities metro area, and who have kids ages 5-10.

stthomas.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Working with a new accountant this year, and they sign off all of their correspondence with “Respectfully,”. Which, as I have had to remind myself multiple times, does not in fact mean that they’re mad at me.

I’m not a complete idiot. There are many facets of my idiot game that I’m still working diligently to perfect.

More pilgrims on the road to Funky Town.

Well, that’s the fastest pivot from “addition by subtraction” to “subtraction by addition” that I’ve seen in a while.

Some days it’s hard to tell the actual humans from the bots. And to be clear, this is not a statement about how plausibly human the bots have gotten.

Hearing him shut down these jumped-up MAGA trolls today renews my enthusiasm for catapulting whatever handwringing wet blanket of a political consultant who told him to tone it down during the campaign straight into the sun.

I’ve tried that, but the sound of my own voice fumbling through what I’m trying to say produces what I can only describe as a full-body wince. I think having to type deliberately has evolved (devolved?) into part of my editing process. Halfway through a word, I’ll be like “Nope! That ain’t it.”

I’m a pretty good writer, but an absolutely shit typist. Luckily for me, writing is approximately 99% thinking and 1% typing, so it doesn’t matter that I hunt and peck like a dork T Rex when I’m trying to get an idea out of my head.

Turns out that refusing to wear pants to work, putting LSD in the coffee pot, snorting a conference table-long line of blow to end a presentation, stealing my boss’s car to drive to Vegas and ditching it by bailing out just before it sails into the Grand Canyon was just testing company norms.

As if the NHL wasn’t already putting forth a Herculean effort to make itself completely unlikable, I watched a game broadcast last night that was essentially a two-hour ad for in-game betting. I know the economics of pro sports are obscene at the best of times, but this ain’t it.

It’s January 1991. The U.S. has just sent troops into Kuwait. I’m a semester away from graduating college, wondering how long the war will go on, wondering if I’ll be drafted to fight in it. It’s February 2026, we are launching air strikes against Iran, and I don’t think that war ever really ended.

A message from the Wonderwall

I’d say ask the Soviet Union about the wisdom of launching a war of regime change in the Middle East, but we can’t be bothered to learn from our own history on that subject or any other. More bombs and bodies brought to you by ignorance, avarice and greed.

I’m starting to feel like dystopian fiction may have underplayed things a bit.

It’s really no surprise that I wound up working in advertising because my entire life is a mind-blowingly amazing concept that’s entirely beyond the scope of the budget I have to execute it.

A charmless, soul-sucking assault to the senses, which unfortunately puts it in good company when it comes to what passes for architecture in downtown Minneapolis.

“The brutality of state violence was supposed to only ever be directed at their ideological foes. And in exchange, the Trump voter would never again have to live with the mortifying ordeal of responsibility.”

The American right’s fear and hatred of immigrants is rooted in the utterly unfounded but firm conviction that people who come to this country in search of a better life want to do to them what their ancestors did to the people who lived here when they showed up.

I live in Minnesota and I want the federal government to stop trying to kill us. And hurt us. I want them to stop attacking us.

It sucks.

We’re just trying to live our lives and take care of each other and we don’t deserve all this.

I kid around sometimes here but I’m not kidding now.

I always think I sound fairly erudite and well-spoken in my head, but reading through an interview transcription instantly unmasks me as a gibbering doofus who can barely complete a sentence without tripping over the verb.

Exactly. Combined with the mockery and disrespect of the women’s hockey team (who’ve out-medalled the men consistently for nearly 30 years) and it’s not just “political differences” — it’s deliberately insulting and demeaning.

Pro hockey allegiances aside, I want to believe that Herb Brooks would have straigt up ass-whupped any political hack who dared to set foot in the locker room after his team won the gold. It’s the romantic in me.

A call for unity is admirable only as much as that unity is on just ground in the service of the common good. When it’s made in protest by someone being held accountable for bad actions, it’s an insistence that their behavior be overlooked, tolerated and accepted.