jabberwoCKY

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.

This meeting could have been an edible.

YouTube video by Budweiser Budweiser | Super Bowl LX Commercial 'American Icons'

What’s easy to overlook about this because it’s a beer commercial rife with patriotic symbolism is that it’s a story about the strong protecting and nurturing the weak and defenseless, helping them survive, grow strong and be free—even though they have nothing in common. youtu.be/a_mh-v02-Tw?...

The reason we're here is that tens of millions of people will punch a hole in a wall if they hear someone used food stamps to buy soda but they're fine if the right-wing podcaster turned fbi director uses his taxpayer funded private jet to go party whenever he feels like it bsky.app/profile/thed...

When I played hockey in high school, I thought it was kind of fucked up that my teammate’s dad would occasionally barge into our locker room between periods to rant drunkenly at us. I don’t think he was the FBI director, but we didn’t have Google back then so who knows.

Carried my club to its first Cup. Did his country proud, kept them in every game and gave them every chance to win gold. No slander here.

Canadians literally invented the modern game of hockey and taught it to the rest of the world. Americans are finally beginning to catch up. Nothing but respect and admiration for Team Canada, now and always.

Perfect, no notes, etc.

Gen X has absolutely seen this movie before. Several times. And it always sucks.

It’s always amusing to observe someone speaking with the sort of unshakeable confidence and self-assuredness that can only come from complete ignorance of the subject they’re addressing.

a man in a yellow and black uniform with a star trek badge on his chest ALT: a man in a yellow and black uniform with a star trek badge on his chest

Do ‘em like you did the Duras, Worf.

Crime without punishment emboldens criminals and undermines society. We’re living the consequences of a history rife with unacknowledged, unpunished wrongs and violence. A history that’s destined to repeat itself unless and until we demand justice for all, not impunity for the privileged few.

The arrogant conviction that we have nothing to learn from the rest of the world, that no other nation’s experiences are relevant to us, is of a piece with the pernicious refusal to hold powerful people accountable for violating laws and shielding them from any form of meaningful consequence.

Ever since I learned to read, I’ve wanted to be someone who told good stories, who wrote them. And some days, I just feel like somebody who knows a lot of words.

When people fail to see community in dense and diverse city neighborhoods, it’s often because the community that thrives there doesn’t look like, talk like, think like, or worship exactly like they do. That’s a feature, not a bug.