American Madness Journal

  So, Republicans’ meticulously maintained system of intentionally insane gun laws once again extracted its toll. And since they remain ideologically opposed to (checks notes) protecting children from gun violence, we may as well start the countdown to the next...

  Keeping up with the news these days makes me feel like someone is using my skull for a vomitorium, at a party where somebody’s gross cousin brought really bad acid. Well, there’s no way that image didn’t whet your appetite, so I’ll take the liberty of assuming...

  Wooooooo…rough one this week, even by the weary, battered standards of the year two thousand twenty-two. Well, grab yourself a beer, or a whiskey, or a great big slice of cake, or, I dunno, your favorite tentacle porn video, whatever gets you goin’, and let’s...

  I feel like there are two kinds of news stories these days: those demonstrating the catastrophic consequences of empowering the rageful nationalism sweeping through the global Right, and the ones about America’s Republican Party looking upon those consequences...

  When Kickstarter backer Fran Scianna asked me to review his band’s song, my initial thought was that I have absolutely no qualifications to review music. Then I remembered I have absolutely no qualifications to talk about politics, either, so I figured I’d...

  “There’s no shortage of assholes,” my dad used to say, as a sort of catch-all explanation for the seemingly endless supply of irksome weirdos one collides with over the course of one’s life. And I think that holds up. There are certainly no kinks in the asshole...

  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...

  “Concise” isn’t really the house style here, but if I had to boil this blog down to something like a mission statement, it might go, “the authoritarian Right, because of their bottomless stupidity and nigh-incomprehensible malice, should not be in charge,”and I...

  See, this is why you don’t let narcissistic assholes run counties. Because countries come with armies. We should have known, I suppose, that even war would find a way to be dumber in this age of fuckheads run amuck, but my God, it’s soul-crushing, how stupid...

  Y’know, my greatest hope is that the need for this blog will fade with time, that the madness dies down, and the billions of humans who just want to get through this damn life with minimal bullshit will no longer be subject to the insane whims of the shittiest...

 Didja see where CNN hired George Orwell’s Force Ghost as an on-air contributor? You’d think he’d have tons of useful insight to offer, but he mostly just yells, “I fucking TOLD you! Why didn’t anyone fucking LISTEN?” and cries. Which, looking at the news, I totally...

  Every night-before-blog-night, I secretly hope this is finally the day I wake up next to Bob Newhart, eager to share all the insane details of the crazy dream I just had, but no such luck this week. Oh well, guess I better prepare for Operation Jade Helm III:...

 Y’know, the way I sorta judge how things’re going in this country boils down to, “is there more Nazi shit going on than last week, or less?” and I tell you, folks, since that fateful escalator ride what seems like a fucking century ago, the answer hasn’t been “less”...

 Look you guys, our Republican brothers and sisters just want to burn books, disenfranchise minorities, roll back women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, gun political opponents down in the streets, and make it illegal to bruise their fragile fee-fees by suggesting any of...

 It’s been one of those fuck-you-for-living-here winter weeks in Chicago, and since Omicron hasn’t quite moved on, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to crawl under some fluffy-ass blankets, and experiment with hot cocktails. Despite such lovely intentions,...

Wait, step on another couple rakes before you go, Jim!

There once was a boy called Kevin McSomething, who ventured out into the world, looking to swap his soul for something shiny and hollow. The old witch who lived in the dumpster in back of the abandoned Blockbuster Video offered him half a pack of stale cookie dough...

Remember, this is the Republican Party when they’ve had plenty of time to prepare. A presidential primary debate. The impeachment hearing they’ve dreamt of since Biden first whooped their boy’s ass. As we gather here to gape at ineptitude that simply should not be...

  Historians will surely mark this week as the precise moment American decline became irreversible, as John Fetterman presided over the United States Senate wearing pasties and a g-string, while Susan Collins go-go danced in a shark cage suspended above Josh...