JUNE 18, 2025
Jeff Larsen is an Occupy Wall Street veteran, a demanding wiseacre, and a generally good egg. He now lives in New Jersey, was born at the same hospital as Bob Dylan, and was hit by a car as a child on Highway 61. He still ruminates on these as portents of something, but hasn't yet put all the pieces together. He fears for our Republic, and actively pursues a moral and ethical way of living. Follow him on his personal website: http://surrealplumber.wikifoundry.com
I'm a born contrarian. I look at conventional wisdom, the orthodox point of view, and try to detect the flaws in it. I'm generally suspicious of group-think, and I prescribe to what Charles Bukowski once said. If you have two lines of people, one with 100 people in it and one with two people, always get in the short line. I have worked directly in technology for 30 years, give or take, primarily in editorial or technical writing positions. I Continue Reading...
I was approached on Manhattan's Sixth Avenue a few days ago by a fund raiser for the Working Families Party, a progressive bunch who want legislation to improve the prospects of this increasingly beleaguered demographic. Continue Reading...
When I left central Pennsylvania, its single most defining characteristic for me was its blatant racism. Second was how profoundly unhappy and uninformed the people were. Not coincidentally, this area was most responsible for Trump winning that state. I always thought Harrisburg was an exceptionally rotten place, but now I realize places like this make up maybe 70 percent of the country. As a white man in New York, I have been totally Continue Reading...
Szell: Is it safe? [pause] Is it safe? Babe: You're talking to me? Szell: Is it safe? Babe: Is what safe? Szell: Is it safe? Babe: I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's safe or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about. Szell: Is it safe? Babe: Tell me what the "it" refers to. Szell: Is it safe? Babe: Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it. Szell: Is it safe? Babe: No. Continue Reading...
It was maybe 18 inches from me, and it announced itself with no subtle gesture. It was exclamatory, a punctuation on everything surrounding it. It's color was indeterminate, its texture apparently quite smooth and soft, its presence spectacular. It was the wide horizontal grin of the top of an old man's ass, peeping out of the top of his miscalibrated, less than form fitting blue jeans. And it was riveting. Continue Reading...
The boys were tarring the on-ramp to the interstate again, and the smell wafted through to sun porch on to the kitchen and into the dining room, where Daddy Melon sat in his adjustable LazyBoy recliner. Daddy Melon has a habit of taking off his shoes, falling asleep for two or three days at a time, then waking with a start. Typically, it takes him on hour or two to rekindle his time/space continuum. Instances in which his discombobulation were Continue Reading...
The gesture was ostentatious, the prerogative obscure, the objective nebulous. But I sounded like I had a load of dough when I walked into the deep southwest stall at the Port Authority, jingle jangle with every step. And then the stench wafted like only poorhouse wino stench can waft. And I cursed the day I was born. Continue Reading...
Dear Presidential Candidate: How I received your solicitation for money is really bizarre, even subversive. I have never voted for a so-called "conservative" in my life, and surely never will. Your laundry list of credentials and ideological buzz points below are strikingly offensive to me in their level of hypocrisy and manipulation. I am somewhat slack-jawed by the fact that you are indeed running again, given your implausible and Continue Reading...
The Buzzcocks live and dope smoking are two activities in which one should never engage concurrently. Particularly on the long end of 50. While in the mosh pit, being pummeled by nubile little kamikazes in ripped fishnets and fire-engine lipstick and smirking double-takes that say "what the hell are you doing here, old man?" But the dope surge dims the reception and you get an elbow from a little shit who clearly doesn't care about the slight Continue Reading...
In my view, no debt is positive. It sucks your net worth, it gives you a subordinate position to predatory lenders, it endangers your future. That said, it's impossible to acquire property without debt. That, because of the tax write-off, is probably the only worthwhile debt to incur. But even as we speak, the real estate market is being gamed, particularly in the southwest. It's being gamed by banks that are renting foreclosed properties at Continue Reading...
Justice is the linchpin of a society. Without a system of laws that reflect it, a nation’s government will lose its credibility among its governed. Plato used the Greek word "Dikaisyne" for justice, which translates to 'morality' or 'righteousness.' Justice is not the right of the stronger but the effective harmony of the whole. Since his time, a common ideal to reflect justice in codified laws has been the purview of a select body of Continue Reading...
This guy is old. Post-70 old. He’s wearing a tie. He looks like Barry Goldwater. His lower lip is recessing into his skull. He appears to be some sort of former CEO-type who hates the fact that he’s old and can no longer function as a prima facie cog in the dream game of capitalism. Yet, he’s still alert enough, aware enough, to follow his stock on Schwab. Yeah, Schwab! If he is all what his countenance suggests, he’d be talking directly to Continue Reading...
Miley is guiltless. She’s just a cog in the machine. Women have no choice but to play the cultural role in which they are ordained. It’s our myopic patriarchy that’s wrong here. Miley has all the talent to make it without twerking and otherwise acting like an peripatetic inflatable sex doll. Nothing to be done. Continue Reading...
"It ain't my fault It's 6 'o'clock in the morning" He said As he came up out of the night Continue Reading...
Goldman-Sachs, acknowledged far and wide by all objective sources not engaged in predatory global finance, is perhaps the most devious, all-consuming, and nefarious institution on the planet. Its role in the 2008 meltdown is well documented, yet it emerged entirely unprosecuted. Its wink and a nod loans to Greece in 2001, to allow that country to enter the EU, was directly responsible for the catastrophic state of that country. Continue Reading...
