American Madness Journal

 As you’re putting the finishing touches on your New Year’s plans, don’t forget: it’s not enough to merely drive a stake through 2021’s heart; you need to cut the bastard’s head off, burn everything, and scatter the ashes separately, or you’re gonna wind up with...

 So certain is Santa’s naughty verdict, I doubt America even bothered leaving a stocking out this year. Though down in Texas, under Greg Abbott’s Freedom Grid, I’m told they frankly could use the coal. Yes, I offer season’s greetings from 21st-century America, a...

 I’ve decided to adjust my attitude about this whole Fall-of-Rome thing we’ve got going on in America; I’m just gonna rub it in young folks’ faces, all the rights and privileges I had when I was their age. “Oh yeah, it was fuckin’ fantastic, you could tell the truth...

 I don’t say it enough, at least not directly, but boy howdy, I am gettin’ mighty tired of assholes ruining everything. Look, I understand there are always gonna be assholes, that’s unavoidable, but maybe we should stop putting them in charge of shit, on account of...

 I am ridiculously, insanely, unhealthily, eye-twitchingly thankful for this holiday-shortened week, and the proportionate reduction in wingnut fuckery it brought. Anyway, I’ve got a can-shaped, vodka-infused blob of cranberry sauce waiting for me, so let’s get...

 Forgive me if I’m off my game tonight, it’s been a dark, ugly, infuriating day. I’d love to focus on the good news, like the recently-enacted bipartisan infrastructure bill, or the House passing the Build Back Better Act, but the sheer, institutionalized efficiency...

 Hey, I see that infrastructure bill finally passed the House, about nine minutes after I got last week’s post up, no doubt because Joe Biden covets my Friday night thunder. In fairness, the Democratic Party’s achievements this year, the trillions of dollars worth of...

 Wow, not the best week, huh? Well, I hate to disrupt the traditional Democratic post-electoral-defeat hand-wringing and self-flagellation, but life goes on and so does the fight. Besides, if you keep crying into your beer, you’ll ruin it, and if there’s one thing I...

 Hey, before we get started tonight, a quick pro tip for the savvy news consumer: laminate the daily paper before reading it; that way, when one of the many stories of ascendant American fascism inevitably causes you to projectile vomit, you don’t render unread...

 Lotta fun little stories this week about cocaine hippo personhood and zebra honeypots and such, and I bet having a funny animal news blog would be goddamn delightful. Alas, I’ve made…different choices. Well, let’s wade into this shit, shit ain’t gonna wade into...

 I never thought I’d wax nostalgic over the days when the sole purpose of the Republican Party was to make rich people richer, but now that they’re bringing equal guile and fervor to efforts to feed and grow their shiny new fascist death cult base, I confess I...

 This week has been…an unusually specific We Didn’t Start the Fire verse, and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. You may want to put on something splatter-proof before proceeding. I mean, what the fuck. A whistleblower granted the world a terrifying peek...

 Kind of a slow news week, meaning American fascism creeped a little more quietly than usual, I suppose. Which is welcome enough, as is the subsiding of the Delta surge, certainly…I guess I just wish we’d managed to build a better world for John Hinckley to come back...

 Like a lot of folks, I think it’s a shame public schools don’t teach kids essential shit like paying bills and making budgets, but, reflecting on current events, the more problematic omission is clearly Rudimentary Con Man Identification; the average American is just...

 Life in America in 2021 is like being trapped in a snow globe that somebody won’t stop shaking because they’re afraid you’ll gather your bearings enough to notice the crazed, dead stares in your idyllic Norman Rockwell neighbors’ eyes. Also, the flakes are bath...

 I’m feeling kinda nostalgic tonight, for the bland normalcy of the Before Times. Wouldn’t it be nice to post some innocuous gag about the mildly irritating annual reemergence of pumpkin spice everything, and then just go about your day, free from worry about the...

 Longtime readers know this blog’s opening paragraph has traditionally been a needlessly verbose “stuff sure is crazy” sort of thing; it’s a gag that’s worked for me for a long time, but would anybody mind if today, I just…screamed? I need me a good, sturdy, primal...

 Just to rip the bandaid off right up front, we are indeed now in week three of the Won’t Take No Experimental Vaccine Pass the Horse Dewormer story, in case anybody woke up this morning hoping they’d somehow Rip Van Winkled themselves into saner times. You’re not...

 It was naive of me, but I really did believe things would be a little less crazy, and a little less stupid by now. However, here in the 297th consecutive week of the Exact Same Right Wing Pandemic Tantrum, it’s clear I was foolish to ever dream this fever could...

 Has anybody given any thought to putting the good folks at Moderna or Pfizer to work on a cure for brain maggots? Cuz it turns out it’s not enough to just create a solution to the biggest public health crisis we’ve seen in decades, there’s whole ’nother step; you...

  In many ways, the universe has been telling humanity the same story, over and over again, for at least half a decade now, and the moral of that story is that Nationalists Cannot Do One Fucking Thing Right, on account of the debilitating inefficiencies of their...

  A week without malignantly insane, world-wrecking assholes…that’s all I want. One little week. Wouldn’t that be nice? To just once click over to Ye Olde Shower Cappe Blog, braced for the expected litany of horrors, only to encounter a brief, “Well whaddya know,...

  If anybody had this week in the office pool as the one when the world’s many asshats would finally stop fucking more or less everything up, and let the rest of us just LIVE OUR FUCKING LIVES IN PEACE, you lost your fucking money, didn’tcha? Well, feel free to...

  Y’know, I’ve been writing these posts for five fucking years now. I’m just…I’m really, REALLY ready to live anywhere other than here, at this hellishly inescapable intersection of idiocy and indecency. Someplace with better restaurants and fewer violently angry...

  I feel like “don’t put assholes in charge” is probably the single clearest lesson of human history, and yet here we are again, dealing with the inevitable, catastrophic consequences of Putting Assholes in Charge. At the risk of upending an already contentious...