Overly-Woke Support Group
I'm back from vacation! I need a vacation!
I had to share this video, which is three years old but probably even funnier now than when it was made, because it’s hilarious and true and I only saw it for the first time several hours ago. Serious question: Would the BBC dare make such a video in 2021? I’m surprised they did in 2018. Things feel . . . more chilling now. But I enjoy a good laugh. It is, after all, the best medicine.
In any case . . .
I’m back, at last, from a long and honestly somewhat exhausting vacation up to my home state of Montana. It’s a long drive from the Southwest and I’m ready for a vacation from my vacation.
It was beautiful but also hot and smoky, fire season having begun much earlier this year with blazes sweeping the West from Oregon to Idaho. Gorgeous mountain vistas all draped in brown haze, those striking views obscured and smudged into oblivion. It’s depressing. The heat wave has been brutal, the snow all melted much earlier than usual, the rivers are all running lower than they should be.
While I was in the smoke and heat, my hometown of Flagstaff, AZ was hit by the craziest monsoon this region has seen in decades, with floodwaters carrying boulders and debris down the mountain and cars down the street.
The flooding was the result of fires that burned large swaths of forest on the mountain last year. The natural environment would normally help slow runoff making any flooding much more mild. Instead, burned areas simply washed away. I hiked one of my regular trails today and it was absolutely insane to see how much of the forest was washed out. The devastation was shocking.
This was once a stretch of very nice dirt road:
I can’t even tell where the trail is here:
Madness.
It’s a vicious cycle caused by decades of forest mismanagement—we keep putting out small fires that would naturally thin the forest, making big fires less likely—and climate change. The great destroyer. The calamity that is only just beginning to unfurl around us, while we argue and bicker over who triggered who.
I was planning on writing more at the cabin but the lack of internet and time and mostly the lack of privacy (which is pretty crucial when it comes to writing) put the kibosh on that plan. But now I’m back and frankly hoping it rains more because I missed that glorious downpour. For those of us in the desert, rain is baptismal.
I have some things I’m working on. I had a long draft up about the Wi Spa protests and counter-protests and counter-counter protests and counter-protests to the counters at the Wi Spa but I’m not sure if it will see the light of day or not because I’m not sure it’s any good (lack of privacy/focus on said trip made it rather excruciating to write). You should read Cathy Young’s piece on the controversy. It’s very good.
Other topics I’m working on:
The Netflix He-Man show and inevitable controversy it aroused when it turned out that He-Man is not the star of his own show despite marketing and promises to the contrary.
Tucker Carlson being confronted/harassed at a fishing supply store in Livingstone, Montana. I was in Bozeman that very same day, just a half hour away. It’s a small world, after all. We should strive to be excellent to each other—even if Tucker Carlson has been a royal prick much of the time.
The decision by some gaming websites like The Gamer (my favorite site!) to no longer cover Activision-Blizzard titles due to the ongoing sexual harassment case. (Role of the press—advocacy vs journalism etc. all factor into this one. Also: Shame on Activision and any other video game publisher, including but not limited to Ubisoft, for allowing this kind of toxic workplace to continue. Alas, I do not think the current woke movement is well-equipped to handle meaningful reforms, and what I suspect we’ll see is a lot of “re-training” and such that simply shifts around the assholes.)
Something sort of laying out my political views since people seem so confused by them, since I have I suppose fairly eclectic politics in a day and age when you are either a Liberal or a Nazi (or a Conservative or a Marxist). Freddie has a post about how you need to be for something not just against things and it’s made me think that maybe I’ve done a poor job articulating that (though I also don’t think it’s hard to make the leap from “anti-censorship” to “pro-free speech” and so on and so forth but whatever).
I want to discuss Wesley Yang’s “Successor Ideology” and why I think it’s a savvy observation and an interesting, even troubling dissection of the current social justice movement but also a lousy moniker. It’s going to be a headache using that phrase properly both in writing and in conversation. For instance, I’m not sure Andrew Sullivan gets it quite right here. But Yang is certainly on to something.
The next book club! This one will be open to everyone, though only paid subscribers will have commenting and voting privileges.
Video games! Movies! TV shows! The fun stuff. Yes, I’m working on all of that also both here and at Forbes and I’ll also be making videos again starting this week. We have The Walking Dead returning soon (the latest trailer is simply outstanding) and some other fun stuff coming soon both to theaters and streaming and TV. There are oodles of games about to release as well. I want to do more short previews and stop fretting and worrying about in-depth reviews (though those will still have a place).
If you missed my screenshot contest announcement post you should check it out and think about submitting something. Read about it here or watch this video.
So that’s what I’m up to now, what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks. We went white-water rafting and saw a baby bear. We picked huckleberries. We ate some of the best sushi I’ve ever had at Dave’s Sushi in Bozeman, and discovered that while the sushi in the town of my birth is damn good, the pizza is not. Go figure.
I played video games for the first time in over two weeks last night. My brother and I played Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and won every single match (mostly thanks to my brother who was genuinely on fire) which was fun. I definitely have a lot of other games to catch up on as well. There’s never enough time in the day. There never will be. The struggle, as they say, is real. And time is not on our side.
Quotes of the Day:
“As any married person knows, there are certain words you never say in a fight, because you’ll still be living together when it’s over. Americans, like it or not, are married to one another. That’s not accommodationist talk, it’s just fact. The people we disagree with aren’t going anywhere, and it makes more sense to talk to them than not.”
Oh comedy, their illusions they have no choice but to believe
Their horizons that just forever recede
And how's this for irony, their idea of being free is a prison of beliefs
That they never ever have to leave
Oh comedy, oh it's like something that a madman would conceive!
The only thing that seems to make them feel alive is the struggle to survive
But the only thing that they request is something to numb the pain with
Until there's nothing human left
Just random matter suspended in the dark
I hate to say it, but each other's all we got
~ Father John Misty, from “Pure Comedy” (one of the best songs)