Hunter S. Thompson Takes on Trump

Our hellish cartoony world would clearly benefit by the Gonzo approach of Hunter S. Thompson…

Not much has been written about the Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in Trump’s presidency, but word has leaked out that some of Trump’s top advisor’s have called a Brazilian doctor who is said to be treating the president with ‘some kind of strange drug’ that nobody in the White House has ever heard of. The Ibogaine Effect explains Trump’s attacks on female reporters, the delusions and altered thinking that has characterized his outlandish decisions and, finally, the condition of ‘total rage’ that has gripped him in office. It is entirely conceivable that Trump’s brain is almost paralyzed by hallucinations, that he looks over the crowd and sees Gila monsters instead of people, and that his mind snaps completely when he feels something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs.

Gila Cat ready to pounce

The root of the Trump magic is a cynical, showbiz instinct for knowing exactly which issues would whip a hall full of beer-drinking factory workers into a frenzy – and then doing exactly that by howling down from the podium that he had instant, overnight cure for all their worst afflictions. Whatever it is, Trump assures his supporters that the solution is actually really simple, and that the only reason they had any hassle with the government at all was because those greedy bloodsuckers in Washington didn’t want the problem solved, so they wouldn’t be put out of work.

Trump raged incoherently at the tube for eight minutes without drawing a breath, then suddenly his face turned beet red and his head swelled up to twice its normal size. Seconds later – while his henchmen looked on in mute horror – Trump swallowed his tongue, rolled out of his chair like a log, and crawled through the plate glass window.*

(*Culled and adjusted from Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72)

Oh, To Be An Adult

I dreamed of being an adult when I was a kid. Then I would no longer have to put up with the nonsense of being bullied and ignored. I dreamed of being in the world of sense and fair play. Yes, I know. I couldn’t have been wronger.

Dreaming of getting out of the cage

Everyone struggles with the fact that we’re like every other living thing. We aren’t noble. We aren’t wise. We aspire to have more so that we can have more. We consume energy and expel waste, nothing more. I mean, forget Trump and all of the childish horror that he and his cronies spin. The misinformation and anger is everywhere; it’s in my workplace, my family and dreams.

Camus and company offered us a path out: have a cigarette and accept the dire situation. But we can’t. We need our emperor to have clothes, the confetti canons to spout, the scribe to get one more quote. Listen to me! Please listen to me! But we can’t. Our feed is calling.

Who Will Play Me?

Listening to Jafar Panahi speak about his film It Was Just An Accident made me think about my life, the things that I do, the things that I say I’ll do, my half-baked words and actions, the things that make me the regrettable quagmire of contradictions that I am.

I know one thing and one thing only: time passes. No matter the tastes and pains, the magic and nothingness-eses, that’s what it does. It passes.

I’m on the side of a narrow, cold channel. The lighthouse is in the distance. I take off my boots and socks and make my way across the kelp and rocks, expecting to fall, my body to wash out with the tide, found in the years to come, a human interest story on the northeast tip of Sanday Island in the Orkneys.

It is not as difficult as I imagine and brush the sand off my feet as I examine the small bird skull. The path winds beside a fallow field. The nettles are thick. I look back, wondering if the tide is already rising and I will be stuck here for the night. The lighthouse is fenced in and fully automated.

I return along the coast and am dive-bombed by oystercatchers. They screech and shit, and I scream back and throw rocks. They terrify me.

The tide rises, and I walk in the knee-deep water. There is an ancient tomb at the side of the road, but it has been covered over. Sheep stare back, their bodies oddly sheered and painted blue. I want to write, but I don’t know what about. Something true and real. Something fantastic and simple. Something about what I was doing here. Can oystercatchers be trained? And who will play me?

Are Advent Calendars the Answer?

I was searching for the answer on my phone and clicked on a Studio Ghibli advent calendar. I got one of these for my students last year, and they loved it.

I descended into the advent calendar rabbit hole – chocolates, gummies, ornaments, squishy things, space ships, fishing lures, beers, wines, spirits and cheese – and settled on the Lego, Mochu things, toy spaceships and cheese.

The Lego calendar never arrived because I forgot to submit my data. The Mochu Squishy things was a success. The cheese too, thank god there was only 12 days!

And then there was the The United States Space Exploration 68th Anniversary Advent Calendar sold by forlovegifts.com for $70.98. (Ad on left, and what I got on right.)

I demanded a refund, was offered 50% and accepted that. All of which goes to show advent calendars are not the answer. Or maybe…

24 drawers of Dior gifts for only $8,200? Old and rare whiskeys for just $14,999!? Let’s go!!

The Wisdom of Jafar Panahi

I attended a screening of Jafar Panahi’s latest film It Was Just an Accident at the Jacob Burns Film Center after which the director offered his thoughts on filmmaking and life. The experience has left me in absolute awe.

Mr. Panahi has directed eleven films over a span 30 years, a remarkable career not just for his masterfully inspiring work but also as he’s worked under an oppressive Iranian regime which has repeatedly interrogated and jailed him and then banned him from filmmaking for the past 20 years. And what did he do over these years? Made films.

Jafar Panahi, while banned from making films, made his film Taxi Tehran, telling the stories of an array of Iranians as he drove them in his cab.

It Was Just an Accident asks the question: “What we would do if we were able to capture our torturer. Would we berate them? Torture them? Kill them? Bury them alive? Let them go free?” It is a punishingly raw story, dotted with humor and revelation.

As in almost all Panahi films, a little girl speaks loud and true in It Was Just an Accident

Mr. Panahi’s humility is astonishing. He praises the people for sharing their stories and his actors for their bravery, claiming that he does little beyond frame the work. When asked why he does not leave Iran, he simply states that it is his home.

His strongest opinion is perhaps that there are two kinds of filmmakers: those who make films for the audience and money – some 95% – and those who tell their own stories and make the audience come to them. They’re now coming to Mr. Panahi; the Oscar extravaganza awaits. And little will he care. I just hope that he is treated properly when he returns home, and the threats abate.

AI Gets Angry

AI has become a go-to for tedious documents and letters, but who knew that it could be told to get angry? I asked it to, and it delivered.

Your email is absolutely infuriating! How dare you try to twist my feelings and words to suit your narrative. It is crystal clear that you have no regard for my boundaries or emotions, despite my repeated attempts to communicate them to you. Your gaslighting and attempts to downplay my feelings are despicable. You have the audacity to shift blame onto me for being angry about topics that you continuously bring up. It is not my responsibility to manage your inappropriate behavior.

Love Portal at 14th Street, Manhattan

Stop trying to manipulate the situation and take accountability for your actions. My feelings are valid, and your attempts to dismiss them only solidify my decision to cut off contact with you. I have no interest in engaging with someone who consistently disregards my feelings and boundaries. Your manipulative and disrespectful behavior has left me with no desire to continue any form of communication. Do not contact me again. Sincerely infuriated, The Anger in the Machine

Rags the guard dog from Woody Allen’s Sleeper

The problem is the lack of tone, the same words repeated in a predicable pattern, no typos, no tangents. It’s like Rags in Sleeper, too cute to take seriously. We’ll have to give it time.

Organizing My Disorganized Life

I’ve always wanted to get my life organized, Then I’d know what I’m doing now, Maybe tomorrow too. It would also help compensate my past disorganization. What is that saying again? “If I’d only been organized, what my life could have been!” No, that’s not it, but it’ll have to do.

Truth be told, I am an organized person. My space is neat and my pens are in a row. I have an agenda, and I love to make lists. I’ve got things under control. Even if I don’t. What it is is that I’m organized in my disorganization.

My thinking is that being too organized is worse. You’re left staring into the abyss of “what now?” With everything sorted and labelled, boxed and stacked, pruned and jarred, all the plans and people in your life ordered, there’s only the plans for the plot and stone. And that’s just stupid. Better to have never bothered at all.

The ephemeral is the thing, the magic and tingling, the joy of stepping out and seeing what’s next. And so, yes, to the organization, but only to the point where the moments are furrowed so that things may happen, knowing there’s a drawer full of clean underwear for the morrow.

The Ennui of a Game Seven Final

“Game seven,” offered Toronto Blue Jays John Schneider on the eve of the 2025 World Series finale. “No two words are better in sports.”

I must disagree. As exciting and intense as the contest might be – and was – it’s the finality of it that strips it of its sheen, leaving one to ask “What of tomorrow?”

In other words, as much as tomorrow might creep at its petty pace and life be a walking shadow, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, it’s sure as hell a lot better than the alternative: waiting until next season.

Trump ‘n Hegs: Peace Creates Hate

Trump: We shall have a stirring world again.

Hesgeth: This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, breed ballad-makers.

Trump: Let me have war, say I. It exceeds peace as far as day does night. It’s sprightly walking, audible and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.

Hesgeth: ‘Tis so, and as war, in some sort, may be said to be a ravisher. So it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of cuckolds.

Trump: Ay, and it makes men hate one another.

(Not really Trump and Hegseth – obvi! – but the more well-spoken war-mongering Servingmen in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Corlioanus.)

Verisimilitude of What Ever Shall Be

I was not of age, a year or so too young, and I had found a secret lonely lovely place, the corner of a bar on Yonge Street below Dundas, The Hard Rock before The Hard Rock was The Hard Rock, dark and empty, the street outside like that too, a Blue Diamond stubbie on a Blue Jays cardboard coaster, one other person here, the bartender, an old guy, probably in his 40s, in this magic lonely lovely place.

I was thinking about why I hated teachers, how they liked to yell and assert their bullshit because they could, the bully of bullies. “If you don’t listen, I will kill you.” It was supposed to be funny. It wasn’t. She had assigned a 300-word piece of verisimilitude, as much detail as possible conveying a thing or moment. I had chosen a tea kettle boiling, the click of the switch, the bubbling and steam, the anticipation. She said that I should try again. “You haven’t quite captured it, have you?”

It was my first rejection of many to come. I didn’t know that then, but I know it now. I’m not getting it apparently. “It just isn’t the project for me right now.” I think about, imagining the world on hold, back in the dark lonely lovely place, an old guy in his 40s, slumped at the end of the bar, and have another drink.