I’m slowly reading Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, by Isaiah Berlin. Today I came upon a reference to the League of the Just, an “international society of proletarian revolutionaries with a vague, but violent, programme.”
Maybe we should revive the League of the Just. I like the name, and I like the idea of being a violent revolutionary. I don’t want to hurt anyone, of course, but there are certain types of violence I am willing to endorse: Setting off a stink bomb at a Nazi rally. Popping a balloon.
I consider myself a socialist poet—or, as we prefer to call ourselves, a “verse worker.”
Some dogs are so small they can no longer be taken seriously as animals. They’re highly animated punctuation marks.
The odd thing about Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy, is that he’s not snoopy at all. He isn’t intrusive, or even curious. In fact, he’s fairly oblivious to everything.
In my writing class last Thursday, Cara said it’s a shame that the word humane has human in it, as if only humans had compassion. Then Beth said it’s a problem that human has the word man in it. So we were trying to find another word. Dan suggested “humom.” Because, at our best, we are all like mothers. So maybe that can be the name of our movement: humomism.
I’m not a man’s man, or a ladies’ man. I’m a child’s man.
Today I sat across from a woman on the subway at the exact moment she began to regret her tattoo.
My narcissism is incomplete. I still don’t like my knees.
Every year I go to a New York Yankees game with my old friend Jeffrey. He and I met in fourth grade, but we didn’t become close until fifth grade. That means we’ve been friends for sixty years. We watch the game mostly without speaking. The silence between old friends is like a wind stirring willow branches.
I was once a young whippersnapper. Now I’m an old whippersnapper.
When I was ten, I believed the USA was the greatest country in the world. When I was seventeen, I believed it was the worst country in the world. Now I believe it’s the twelfth worst.
It’s interesting that ghosts and disapproving audiences use the same word: Boo!
I want to open a restaurant where the plates are the shapes of the American states. There will be fifty different dishes, and they’ll all fit together. A big gathering of friends could shape their plates into a map of our nation. But what should the restaurant serve? Chinese food perhaps.
Over the years, I’ve grown more and more naive.
I read The New York Times only when I find it in a friend’s apartment. I never seek it out. I’m like a guy who smokes weed only when it’s offered to him.
People seem to have forgotten the fun, giggly part of smoking marijuana. It’s become another dreary medicine.
I don’t have a cat, but I do have a litter box, just in case a cat comes to visit.
I’m against Big Pharma. But what about Little Pharma? Does it even exist? I don’t think there’s a small-business owner with a pill machine in their garage that spews out Tylenol. So I can safely say: “I’m against Pharma.”
I live in a double-wide, and every time I pass a trailer, I feel a sense of kinship. I’m part of the Trailer Nation.
I don’t live off the grid, but I’m close. I live right on the edge of the grid.
I remember a time before seat belts and airbags, when riding in a car was exciting.
Deadmalls.com lists more than 450 “dead” shopping malls in our nation. What will become of them? We should transform them into giant thrift shops, where you can buy the same stuff you bought at the original mall, only shabbier and much cheaper.
I’m an “anti-influencer.” I wear what everyone else won’t.
When my friends and I hang out together, I’m not sure whether I have an entourage or I’m in an entourage.
Some people take a gap year between high school and college. I took a gap lifetime.
When Buddha was born, a prophet predicted that he would be either a great military commander or a renunciant. Hoping for the former, his father the king devised a scheme to protect his son from the knowledge of old age, sickness, and death. Young Lord Buddha lived in a sumptuous palace with numerous dancing girls; he had every pleasure and amusement. One day the prince went on a parade and saw an aged person, a sick person, and a corpse. He asked his driver what these strange beings were and discovered that such conditions are universal. At that point Buddha left his life of luxury to seek enlightenment.
Most Americans are like young Lord Buddha. We shield ourselves from old age, illness, and the sight of the dead. We amuse ourselves with sex, drugs, and video games. We even distract ourselves from our distractions. (It’s not uncommon to see someone texting while watching a movie.) Are we happy? Not particularly. When will we leave our palaces and walk into the forest to seek the Truth?
Today there is one-quarter inch of snow on the ground: the thickness of the beard on a Hollywood actor.
Hard work is overrated. A lot can be accomplished with soft work.
If it’s possible to make an art form out of pure laziness, I have done so.
People need to read more books, especially at night. The internet will not let you sleep. You can watch YouTube videos till five in the morning, and you’ll never get tired, but read two pages of a Philip Roth novel, and you’re unconscious for eight hours.
When you put eyeglasses on a squash, it looks more intelligent.
In the 1980s I went abroad. Though I returned, I never quite became an American again. I’m a domestic expatriate.
I wish the police were afraid of me.
I love composting. Our nation should have a National Compost Pile somewhere in the center of the continental United States, where any American can bring their food scraps and turn them into fertile soil. Eventually the National Compost Pile will become a tourist destination like Mount Rushmore, but more inspiring.
Meat is murder. Fish is manslaughter.
I know free will exists, because some of the things I’ve done were not supposed to happen.
Nostalgic Rain
This
rainstorm
reminds
me of
rain
in the
early
nineties.
My father, who died recently, always said: “America will go fascist before it goes communist”—and it looks like he was right.
It’s better to live in a shantytown than in a lone shanty.
In the late 1980s philosopher Joseph Campbell advised people to follow their bliss. I have always followed my bliss. I’ve just never caught up with it.
Every day, the island of Manhattan drifts farther from the USA.
In New York in the 1970s everyone hated windows. People were constantly breaking windows. And no one had a Band-Aid. It was considered unacceptably bourgeois to own a box of Band-Aids. You’d break a window and just bleed.
We need something like vaudeville, but more compassionate. We need Buddhist slapstick.
AI scares me. I much prefer NS: natural stupidity.
There are too many states. We need to start combining them. For example, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada could easily be combined into one entity called Arimexada. Kansas and Nebraska could become Nebransas. New York and New Jersey could combine into New New Jork. If we had just twenty-one states, our nation might be governable.
Today I got a massage and discovered I don’t like being relaxed.
Somehow, as my bank account dwindles, there’s more and more stuff in my house.
When I was a kid, there was a magazine named Life, a board game named Life, and a breakfast cereal named Life. People were in love with life.
The problem with America is that the American dream is completely materialistic. Every American is taught to want a house, a spouse, and a new car. (A swimming pool is optional.) As fewer and fewer people can attain this, more and more citizens are deeply dejected.
We need a new American dream: having lots of friends, a compelling hobby, a love of nature. This American dreamer may live in a cabin, a housing project, or a trailer and still achieve our national goal.
If I ever learn to drive, I’d like to start with a dump truck.
To have a war, you need an army. A bunch of people fighting without officers is just a brawl.
The purpose of government is not to help billionaires. This may sound cruel, but billionaires can take care of themselves.
A Small Protest
I pick
up trash
on the
roadside
and mail
it to
Mar-a-Lago.
It’s only fair that the next forty-seven presidents be women. After that, we can start alternating.
For the last five years, Noah has been the second-most-popular male name—perhaps because everyone’s awaiting the Flood.
When I was a kid, men believed that women didn’t know math, couldn’t drive a car, and were generally incompetent. Many women pretended to be helpless, because they imagined it made them more attractive.
But successive waves of feminism ended those stereotypes. Today around 60 percent of new college graduates are women. Single women own more houses than single men. Once women stopped spending hours “setting” their hair, the natural competence of the female gender was revealed.
Birds are happy in the sky, nervous on the ground. Humans are the opposite.
I’m microdosing faith: I pray the rosary ten seconds every hour.
Sometimes just one person in a theater is laughing. Often that person is me.
