But Normal Has Been Crazy, For a Very Long Time

A Few (perhaps even useful) Ideas, Where Many Now Prefer Endless Emoting

Hey folks – still having computer troubles (I have terrible luck with PC machines, much as I enjoy the cheapness of the hardware). So again, a truncated foray (you’re welcome or apologies, as appropriate).

I was trying to think of a way to discuss the epic (and so, almost invisible) scale of the fakery of existence in the west, over the last half a century in particular, and I realized I had two key insights which hit me when I was just a kid – both a half a century old, and also hilariously obvious.

Kids like to do stuff – and one of the great things about the world before electronic distractions, was that we almost always did stuff that improved our insight, or skills for dealing with the world. Got a bored kid? – give them some colour pencils and a nice stack of paper, they’ll be fine for hours!

Normal pencils and lined paper work just fine too – all you have to do to make a kid love reading is love it yourself, and share your love of it with them, by reading to them. If you show interest in drawing and writing (or any of a million other skills and crafty interests) they’ll try it too, naturally, and grow into the same spirit of savour and respect for fine work that you demonstrated yourself.

But even in the pre-historic days when electronics for kids meant science sets where you would construct circuits, not pre-made devices crafted to beguile and distract for years on end, there were already commercial interests trying to cut a piece of profit from the territory of skill and imagination.

So – silly memory one was looking at one such offering – very popular many years ago – a “kit” which contained dozens of light plastic re-useable stickers, of characters familiar from cartoons or comic books, with a glossy background image of rather middling quality, considering how many hours it was supposed to serve as amusement – but still commercial-slick “I.P.” (intellectual property) art.

Fun, yes – I enjoyed playing with it myself – but even at age eight, when I saw the word CREATIVE on the box, I laughed my little guts out, and then went back to my drawing again. Ree-dinkulous!

A few years later, I was one of millions of eleven year old kids who went and saw Star Wars over and over again (perfect age – though I also agree with my wife, who considers Spaceballs by-far the superior film).

At the time I was already drawing my own comic books. I had two major characters, the man with no name, was basically an amnesiac in a never-ending chase-scene (we’ve all had those dreams) and the other was an alien called ZOR, who had a lot of cool spaceships and liked to zap (evil) things with fiery plasma-bolts from his hands. (I was a big fan of Gene Colan and Herbe Trimpe’s early work on Iron Man). The funny thing was, even though I was hugely influenced by Marvel comic artists (and even more, by Herge) they always gave me ideas about more things to try using, in my own way.

The insight that hit me after Star Wars blew my little mind, was that all of a sudden my whole scale of ‘good’ had shifted. I could no longer draw my own spaceships and think them cool, I had to work instead toward the (truly fantastic) aesthetics of Ralph McQuarrie (key conceptual artist for the film).

Now, having sat for many fine illustration students over the years, let me first tip my hat to the highly talented McQuarrie himself – getting new ideas from such an artist would have been just fine – but even as a kid, I resented the idea that my own brain, suddenly now operated as if it was a part of the corporate machine that had brought me the film – a plucky upstart production at first – but only until about five minutes after the film started screening. Lucasfilm was a fast growing behemoth from then, mostly because Lucas retained the licensing rights for the toys! (Twentieth Century Fox didn’t even haggle over them – because they didn’t think they’d be worth much – last time anyone did that).

So what’s the basic idea that those two weird childhood epiphanies still seem to point me to, today? Our brains operate on some hard fact (though VERY LITTLE by proportion) and a whole lot of emotionally charged imagination – about what things might, could, should, or would be – if.

We don’t talk about the imagination seriously in the west, which makes us extra vulnerable to the colonization of our imaginations by clever corporations, so where once we could sit down with a blank piece of paper and get great satisfaction from creating our own worlds from scratch, we now tend to reach instead for those re-useable stickers, with already defined characters that the IP owners hope to keep selling us merchandise for, forever.

We end up using what is meant to be our own joyous and adaptive imagination as a Pavlovian tool to advertise to ourselves on their behalf – and the whole time we call this fun-displacing fraud CREATIVE! (I mean hey, they wouldn’t go and print it on the box like that in big bold letters if it wasn’t true, would they?)

For my millennial chums, I could say it’s as if everyone now thinks in fanfic (fan-created fiction, derived from corporate intellectual property). I can even understand the attraction – there is a built-in audience (though that is always owned by the IP corporation, not us) and there are also rules and training wheels for us, laid out by the hard work of the writers who first created the characters that we now borrow and use, however we like (often quite outrageously, compared to the original spirit).

The problem is, when we don’t think and talk about the imagination as a culture, and we don’t train ourselves to own and use and keep deliberately feeding our own imagination nutritious and stimulating matter for constant growth, so that it doesn’t ever get stuck or stagnant, we surrender far more of ourselves to corporations and consumerism than just the shape of ZOR’s latest space buggy!

Put another way – you may think you are being very imaginative, putting your favourite super hero into a new setting – but half the time, the propaganda/con-job is about making you reach for a super hero to tell that kind of a story – not about what they do, once they do show up on the scene and start dealing mass violence of whatever kind, for whatever conception of “Good”. (They made a lot of comic books – and they exhausted all the dumb variations, before they found the cleverest of them).

I had a funny conversation with some dear old friends the other day that had another piece of it. When I mentioned a mutual friend they knew years ago, as a worker, had really screwed up as a manager, they were outraged – at me, for saying so – and completely uninterested in what he’d done!

Their judgement was – we like him, he was very nice to work with, so therefore he could not have... (what he did specifically, was deny students the specific tools they had paid to learn, during covid).

Personally, I’m always with the underdog – students first (especially those having a hard time with institutional bullshit), then occasional teachers, who now do the heavy lifting in every institution of higher learning – for truly shitty pay and outrageous short term contracts which seem designed to work directly against any respect for effort, and thus hurt motivation, spirit and talent retention, badly (for no gain at all).

Since I know multiple teachers who were left with an ethical conflict (do I take money, to then not be able to give students what they are paying for?) I come to the completely unsurprising conclusion that the guy is a great teacher (which he really is) but not well suited to management, wrong kind of regard for coworkers and their respectful support, or perhaps just a wrong sense of how to use, such power as is granted him (sadly not even close to rare, and almost always trouble in direct proportion to ego).

In a funny way, what they were doing, instead of thinking about the other people involved (or even being curious about them) was like an emotional/tribal/institutional version of that truly fantastic line from Douglas Addams’ Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about a guy who “Really Knows Where His Towel Is” – because a guy who knows where his towel is – has self-evidently already sorted dozens of other lesser tasks effectively, in order to reach that lofty level of life-competence.

We like him, therefore he didn’t do the bad thing you say. QED. Now don’t ever mention it again.

If you allow the opposing proposition also – we don’t like him, therefore everything bad is on him – you have pretty much covered the full range of modern popular political thinking – little plastic cut-out superheroes being placed on a boring half-assed background that you got sick of an hour after first seeing it – CREATIVELY, mind you.

Notice I say “Popular.” I could also simply say this covers the range of argument of the sort of people who are so incurious, they still think corporate BigNews is a source of information, instead of a never ending cascade of state-serving spin, and a constant erasure of cool and imaginative new drawings, in favour of those same old plastic stickers that came in the box. (You’re a democrat, so you HAVE to wear an egotistical heroes cape and speak patronizingly – yes it’s compulsory, get over it)

One of the things I like most about substack (and Rumble and Youtube also) is the huge range of smart people who still laugh at the word creative on the box of pre-made cut-outs, and love instead to draw fresh smart and interesting ideas for themselves. They know when it isn’t a super-hero story, they see when the comedy inverts to tragedy, even while the tribalist mob is still screaming about how great Bill Clinton’s knowledge of his badly stained towel really was – completely ignoring long term war-crimes of staggering scope and evil to a sanitary perfection. Sex sells denial, also, it seems (scandal-bickering is still much easier than mass-murder facing?)

Now – as a book maniac, I should remind people – essays have done this work for CENTURIES now – and smart people have been gorging on them and sharing the inspiration for yonks, for pleasure, edification and stimulation.

Still, the web (so far, in some countries, on some topics – all limitations which downright hurt, to note) frees us from the corporate gatekeepers and even lets eccentric keeners like me find a soapbox, so we are no longer presented with the unison voices of institutionally compliant (power-mad) careerists, whose view of the world is filtered through the limitations of their (to me, woefully inadequate) goals.

Now we get some ACTUAL rebels, genuine diversity, real new creative drawings from non-Pavlovian minds – rather than the Kayfabe (fake-conflict) performative hectoring corporate stooge sellout “rebels” (known in some circles as “Controlled Opposition”) – and OMG are the creepish classholes who have been holding our leash all this time, ever scared of all these fresh ideas!

(Please tell me we aren’t so foolish, scared and divided as citizens, not to be worried in common, by their ever more obvious panic)

I should note a couple of other rather dusty minor epiphanies that have been haunting me again.

My wife and I like zany things as decorations, so for years we browsed the toyshops from time to time, just to see what kind of silly stuff was out there. In the early nineties I noticed that Chinese toys went from mid quality to top quality, which clearly showed they had begun to install cutting edge fabrication machinery, best of the best – but also made me worry for my expert chums in the tool and die trade (literally, THE foundation-block of all industry – heavy and light). One day they are making copies inexpensively, the next, making the master-mold itself. Not sure how much 3D printers have shifted the economics, but high-precision molds for manufacturing were, for many decades, staggeringly expensive (could easily be hundreds of thousands of dollars for a one pound chunk of steel, done just exactly right).

In any case, with a little bit of extrapolation (and more and more evidence from the made in China stickers in the bargain stores) I soon realized “The Chinese are using the American Market to Capitalize their own development, and raise millions of people out of poverty, into the middle class – but at some point, their own market will get big enough that they don’t need the Americans anymore, and won’t be willing to take any more rude treatment, to keep them sweet. Only then, decades after their unbeatable scale of cheap manufacture began to undercut and close-down small industry all across the west, will the poor in the west – whose whole lives have been greatly and directly subsidized by cheap Chinese goods for this whole century – finally realize how poor they actually are.”

Crazy kid, eh? To be clear, I wouldn’t ever suggest all of my predictions are this good, but this one wasn’t a guess, just a logical chain of “and then that obviously leads to this, which leads to that,” etc...

The other one which hit me decades ago, and suddenly seems brought into high relief again, is the question of the capital of the boomers – the richest pot of citizen-held loot in human history – something which one senses the bankers always thought a great mistake (that is, sharing that much loot with citizens in the first place) and a degree of distributive largesse they have been careful to avoid, for all subsequent generations.

The most obvious and obnoxious denial common to boomers remains their hilarious insistence on very special high morality and goodness, coupled with their undeniable role as the greatest ever saviours of globally rapacious Wall St and a ready source of ‘liquid’ fuel for a million scams and bubbles which always make speculators rich, and then are used on the backside to justify a “regrettable but necessary” ratchet-down of the rights, standards and dignity of society as a whole.

I don’t remember the John Lennon song “All you need is ten percent return, even if that means you have to back the offshoring of the job your kid is in college studying for, right this minute!” Sadly, they were really good at pointing fingers, but swore-off that whole serious look in the mirror thing for life.

Which brings me to a couple of words I was using a lot, for many years – Morlocks and Eloi – that is, subterranean worker slaves, dehumanized by hard labour and low pleasure, versus the pampered indulgent and wildly ignorant surface-dwelling Eloi, who live in great manicured gardens and pursue lives of petty pleasures. (and only occasionally get carried off by some Morlocks and eaten).

I heard a smart and articulate talk recently, which made the point far more subtly and relateably. People who have entirely surrendered the idea that they have any control influence or responsibility, also surrender a whole lot of power and basic rights. Above all – they lose the right to define rights.

The most obvious example of this is playing-out right now across the world, in the form of shock – because for decades now, the US has commanded and the west has obeyed, and now, all of a sudden The Big Mob Boss has turned a sharp pivot and said “HOW DARE YOU” do all of the things that, months before, it had still been blackmailing extorting and even jailing opponents around the world, to force.

How dare Canada allow sneaky US corporatists to poison our relations with India China and Russia, all at once? (leaving us infinitely more vulnerable to US pressure, than we would be on our old, widely-friendly diplomatic footing). Easy – we were just saying “Yes Sir” because we got used to the idea there was nothing else TO say. No sense making those murderous maniacs mad, look how many countries they kill.

Of course, in a moment like this, we are suddenly left recognizing that this was never a solution, a plan for national vitality or defending the national aspiration or interest. It was always a dodge, a surrender, a betrayal of duty.

What would a Canada (or a western European country, for that matter) which could defy the US cheerfully, without any fear (economic or otherwise) whatsoever look like? Well – it would definitely know where its towel was!

No really, basic competence is now so far back in the rearview mirror that some young people actually consider it an implausible idealist fantasy, rather than what was once an expected (and very useful) standard. It isn’t even just about quality of work and service, it means dignity for workers also.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance is REAL!

The basic problem? Again – surrender (and denial, such a powerful pairing) we are so worn down by the petty nonsense getting in the way of the objective realities around us, we decide – that can’t be helped, fixed, improved, ain’t worth the effort/agro/BS and with that decision, we give up on better.

It feels strange for me to say this (I literally used to use “Samuelson” the great economics reference tome, to put myself to sleep, when I was having trouble with insomnia), but I am currently following seven different economists (and another half a dozen energy specialists) and all of the economists are from a deep left background and progressive tradition (Hudson, Varoufakis, Wolff) or else a solidly grounded, principled and civilized humane vision (Stoller, Sachs, Krainer, Mercouris).

So when I tell this particular part of the tale, please understand I’m not spitballing, or going with crazy conspiracies, I’m just ignoring sound-bites and propaganda to read and listen to pages and hours of deep thought from wise, experienced, principled and insightful people.

Tariffs are for-real – I’ll start with that. Though not at the current crazy levels (as Varoufakis wisely says, in a talk I’ll link below, with Trump you have to distinguish the Showmanship from the economic policy – which is not at all random and spastic, no matter how the delivery and fireworks come off).

As I said above – part of what is happening is a dignity implosion across the world which was in the habit of obeying the US faithfully, even in all its craziest and most destructive excesses.

But while that is a deeply upsetting shock emotionally, it’s still just a symptom – the cause is structural and economic – and Trump is not reversing course, just as Biden didn’t reverse Trump’s trade wars – (and Obama enshrined the Patriot Act, and Clinton intensified, instead of refuting, Reaganomics) both parties in the US continue to work in lock-step to leash the world. Only this time, the empire, the servile vassals and the despised/exploited aren’t entirely sure whether the leash will still hold, or break.

Some of my older chums might remember Nixon pulling the US out of Bretton-Woods (a fixed exchange rate currency system which completely prevented currency speculation, based on gold).

Even though it was the US which had set up Bretton-Woods, to favour development of, and access to, markets around the world for US factory goods (then the most plentiful in the world) post WWII, the Vietnam war did such profound damage to the US economy, they could no longer afford to honour the terms of Bretton Woods, which said other countries could demand gold, instead of dollars.

They needed more dollars than they had gold, to back it up – so all of a sudden instead of the US dollar being worth something real and definable, it became a pure abstraction – in essence, Nixon told the world “No you can’t have the gold you are owed, you can have IOUs from la-la land, instead.”

We do not commonly recognize this, but this was a profoundly risky move and moment for the empire. Mercouris (who is deeply versed in classical history) is convinced that there are no other examples in history of an empire which became so deeply bankrupt (the Vietnam War moved the US from global lender to desperate borrower, where it has stayed forevermore) and yet preserved their imperial dominance.

The key to this was the petrodollar – as long as the US guaranteed the rule of the Saudi Royal family and protection from local opponents (and sold them tons of boutique weapons), the Saudis agreed to make US dollars the only way to pay for oil. If we were honest, we would all recognize that we were all shifted from a standard based on gold that they did have, to a standard based on oil that belongs to others.

In any case, the gambit worked, the dollar retained unique value for energy trading, which guaranteed it had unique weight as a reserve currency. In effect, the US forced the whole rest of the world to buy their debt, rather than get their economic house in order and return to their early tradition of genuine (productive) prosperity.

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The drunk at the bar demanded another drink, and even though we all knew he was plastered, we served him. Seemed easier at the time, than throwing the bum out and losing another tooth or two in a pointless fight.

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I was working on an analogy about the outrageous ignorant “Showmanship” rhetoric of Trump about tariffs, based on a troubled twelve year old girl going on a shopping spree with a credit card she got in the name of Jane Doe, and saying “I dunno, wasn’t me,” when her mom (and the cops) show up with security footage of it absolutely being her (and anyhow all the bags of loot, are still in her closet).

How dare you let me spend money that I didn’t have in your store – you evil bastards!

Just pathetic stuff, weird too. Maybe some Taylor Swift tickets would help, or a puppy?

But I now think my “Keep serving a drunk when you know you shouldn’t” analogy works even better.

Because the west fell into alignment (complicity) with US economic hegemony, rather than setting up systems which allowed truly fair participation for others (African development, most grotesquely stalled by uncountable western policies designed to deny them markets and capital – with South America thwarting, following close behind).

That is – because this whole century we backed “Winner take all” instead of “Raise All Boats” (which has always been the evil/aspirational split, in historical development of civilizations) we missed the boat, and are now left up a very nasty crick, without a paddle. Earned ourselves way too many enemies, with very good reasons.

The good news is that the global east and south aren’t actually as psychotic as we are – they still just want a decent chance (surely we haven’t become so western supremacist we can’t relate to that basic fairness). Revenge is how we think, because we’ve worked so hard to destroy gratitude, and to undermine the things which used to make us all feel it in common, relentlessly, for so very long.

The bad news is that the drunk who fell asleep on the bar has just woken up and demanded another drink, then checked his wallet – which he is shocked to find is empty – and now he’s yelling at everyone else in the bar. “Did you steal my money? Was it you? I bet you all stole it!” No dude, you spent it in a drunken spree, and now you’re hoping that if you get really scary, someone nervous will give you their money, so your wife (banks) don’t spank your ass blue when you get home, for drinking away the vig.

More seriously – and apologies for indulging so much in the showmanship side, I think Varoufakis is the closest to nailing the true purpose – to once again force other nations all around the world to take on massive amounts of US debt and prop-up the most leveraged, undermined and unstable economy in the world.

Different pressure on different countries is also important – Trump definitely wants German industry and Taiwanese Chip manufacturing to invest in the US big-time. Pretty sure he wants the entire Canadian auto industry packed up and shipped across the river to Michigan, too – all of which would be both visible and genuine wins for American workers. But save the economy? Far more dubious, especially mid-term.

Above all (least said on BigNews, most obvious to many wise economic thinkers) the structural problems remain. Tariffs weren’t paused because he changed his mind about them (the guy has been obsessed with tariffs and balance of trade since the seventies), nor because the market lost trillions.

THE MARKET IS SUPPOSED TO LOSE TRILLIONS, THAT’S HOW THEY FINALLY STEAL THE BOOMERS VAST PIGGYBANK!

The only reason he paused, was because bond markets were “softening” in a scary way – which is to say, US debt was getting harder and harder to sell directly, to the rest of the world. The leash was getting too loose, he had to back-off or risk losing imperial status altogether, immediately.

But that leash is still loose – and the whole world can see it now.

Couple of bonus notes – China just announced they have developed a completely new approach to nanometre chip manufacture – bypassing all the tech the US denied them with sanctions (mostly to suppress Huawei, so they wouldn’t grab I-phone market-share with cheaper better products).

Extra cute bonus – where before they were happy to work on stuff at the same level as us, they now have their own technology which can go even further than we have ever been able (from two, to one nanometer traces).

All of which is as obvious and predictable as the US threatening to nuke North Korea, then refusing to let them ever sign a permanent peace (only a ‘ceasefire’) resulting in their own nuclear program.

Amazing how crappy and back-firey force is, as a policy tool, isn’t it? (Like I said, the leash is loose).

Also seems the Chinese have a new international payments exchange system which works on blockchain (making fraud and money laundering impossible, because you can always “wind-back the tape”) and reduces costs and time-lag by many orders of magnitude. So much for SWIFT dominance (huge boost for BRICS independence).

Finally, I am searching hard for a third source on this (suspect the two I have already, shared data) but some suggest that the Biden team managed to get thirty percent of the annual US budget out the door before Trump took office. Even if that is much exaggerated, it could explain some of the wild desperation, which presents to the horrified bar patrons like danger, but is actually acute fear of (bank) spanking.

Not to say sympathy is in any way appropriate – he drank it, he can take the beating – only that the bastard is throwing fists not just for showmanship or by temperament, but because the whole ruling street-gang he represents is teetering on the edge of aging-out and going historic.

I mean Rome is still deeply fascinating, but it isn’t exactly ROME anymore now, is it?

Now one last little idea, which seems like it might be helpful. Others may use these words differently, and there is certainly lots of room for argument, but the distinction between qualities of spirit is still important, whichever words we use to draw it.

Patriotism is not the same as Nationalism. Love of country does not require hostility to other countries.

Globalism is not the same as Internationalism. Internationalism is about seeing the advantages of peaceful cooperative relationships between strong sovereign nations, each of which represent their own popular will and aspirations ethically and well.

Globalism is about bypassing national governments altogether in favour of corporations and NGOs – reducing the already very thin impact of popular will on politics, to more or less zero, in favour of committees appointed by experts – all screened from view and citizen input and feedback by an unprecedented level abuse of law and censorship. In simplest terms, it is aristocrats forgetting their place!

This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it is what they say in their own papers (READ ONE!)

Once more I repeat my new favourite chant – TWO THINGS AT ONCE! (two thinks, too)

The Democrats (Liberals in Canada, Labour in England, Imbecile Traffic-lightists in Germany, etc.) were not representing nationalism, or patriotism, or internationalism, but globalism. They were all trained to believe that their job was to sell their people out, to the grand project of global ‘rule by our betters’. This is why every trade treaty for decades has meant less workers rights and protections. And why voters everywhere in the west are truly pissed. None of their elected officials are doing what they want.

They don’t give the slightest shit about workers or their countries – just global capital and ever more centralized control. Trump makes me want to scream (though again, his electorate are not crazy fascists as often depicted, many are idealists who are feeling just as betrayed as leftists always have been, by creepy smooth-talking globalists).

But the Clinton, Obama, Biden axis were also insane mass murdering imperialist scumbags. And when you not only set the bar that (racist graveyard) low – but convince idealists to defend it? Like I said above – you end up losing the right to define rights. Not necessarily because you were wrong about the ideals, but because you used the same bullying power-leveraged tactics that horrify and outrage you, when reversed.

None of which makes Trump good, in any way whatsoever, just inevitable. Functionally, not morally.

Damn, did I actually just paint myself into a corner as basic as the golden rule?

Should we update it, maybe, for our extra bellicose age of rage? Perhaps:

Screw unto others, as you would have them screw unto you.

Not you though, eh? You must love like your life depends on it. Savour every bittersweet drop. Do the thing you are here for, like Doris Lessing says “Conditions are always impossible.”

Screw it – do it anyway. And f@ck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

Crying is valid too – no denying that. A lot of exquisite things are about to be lost forever (and were, regardless of which team of imbeciles steered the fast-sinking empire next).

But laughing and doing the thing, even if everyone else thinks you’re crazy for it, is a hell of a lot more fun!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Here, as promised, Varoufakis explains the true tariff goals (not what you think – worse!)

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I also want to note Glenn Diesen’s superb recent point about the eternal shape of state war propaganda – Any objection to state violence is immediately (falsely) branded as the influence of the enemy, instead of the insistence on simple (and once, supposedly universal) morality. “Thou shalt not n” Where n relies upon you having a soul.

I am too old to make proper deft use of memes myself (and acknowledge this limit, graciously). But one really cannot deny that they have a neatness and compactness which is often quite delicious!

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Here’s another amazing talk from Nima’s Dialogue works – with a whole team of diplomatic heavyweight insights - wow!

Larry Wilkerson, Chas Freeman and Trita Parsi on Dialogue Works – outstanding!

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Here’s dogged Lee Fang with another clue to the staggering fakeness of Kamala’s campaign

Exclusive: Democrats' Dark Money Fund for TikTok Influencers

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And here’s another surprise from someone often demonized on the left (likes Crypto too loudly) Steve Sailer.

As I mentioned (and also shared) before, much-demonized Aleksander Dugin has unique and powerful insights which his critics never convey (nor refute). Always go to the source. Still, I read this piece by Sailer, expecting to find reasons to object to his tech bro thinking. Kind of shockingly, he actually has a bit of insight on (and a lot of respect for) what Canada is, and could be.

Always read the actual source, not the snarky pamphlet or the soundbite version! (ideally, an inspired genius, not a textbook digest, or if not genius, clever as heck works too)

O Canada - by Steve Sailer, from Takinmag

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Sincere apologies that I have no deep inspiration links to finish with, today – blame the (Friday) doofus who assembled my new computer, so badly that it self-destructed, just when it was finally running sweet!

At least I didn’t find a sandwich or a screwdriver inside (saw both several times, as a tech). Still, most vexing indeed.

Anyhow, I’ll make up for it, just as soon as I can – promise!